Guild Wars 2

Smirgel.9460:

Yeah, strength runes are OP atm. There are decent alternatives though: pack runes for fury and swiftness + swiftness duration, something that mesmers normally lack ; traveller runes are also nice for +boon duration and movement speed bonus.

Centaur + Mantra of Recovery is nearly 100% up-time on swiftness for 1/100th of the cost of Traveler Runes.

Pack can be fun esp. if you are running in groups a lot.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Get on and do some testing like the rest of us?

Can I hold your hand for you today on your way to work too?

Thanks Ross. It’s nice to see that the feature pack didn’t include any improvements to players attitudes.

Don’t forget that SS does greater damage at greater ranger.

DeadZombie.6928:

I don’t see why this is a topic of disappointment. I’ve used the skill point node twice since I’ve activated it. (I’ve had it for 3 days, missed 1 day) So it’s definitely re-usable.

Were you by any chance on alts? It’s one SP per character per lifetime. It does not reset like the other nodes. If yours does I suggest you report it as a bug.

It’s an interesting mechanic that would lend itself better to dungeon runs than open world PVE. It could open up some interesting gameplay mechanics depending on enemy downed abilities.

But let’s not pretend, as it is now its a way to sell PvP finishers to PVE players.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

lordkrall.7241:

You can get it without using SPs at all.

That is not being helpful in the least.

Healing Tome- : Antitoxin Spray
(this item costs 5 Gold coin + 250 Pristine Toxic Spore Samples Pristine Toxic Spore Sample; it is available from from Marjory Delaqua during Tower of Nightmares after giving her 50 of the samples)

Still too much.

How was that not helpful? Op kittened about SP cost and this guy told him it was available for zero SP.

Sure he could have elaborated, but then you wouldn’t have had the chance to jump in here, put him down, and look like a hero while doing it.

jazzllanna.1278:

I got it as well but feel like I should be in a rodeo. I like it.. but it just seems odd for light armor. I love the top though!

Hmmm…..I may need to reconsider this set. Honestly everytime I see it I think its atrocious, but it looks great on your character. Maybe my color scheme is distorting my perspective on this as mix and match.

slurpey.6014:

Shyhalu.4891:

Is getting bifrost on a Mesmer sort of a waste? How often do you use your staff in Dungeons/Fractals/WvW? :>

Thanks!

There are plenty of other classes or legendary weapons for the mesmer but staff ain’t one

Not really.

GS? Not for fractals or dungeons
Sceptre? In one specific type of build in WvW/PvP(maybe)
Pistol? Great weapon, only works with skill #5 on Mesmer
Torch? In that same sceptre build.

So that leaves us Bolt(great choice), Bard(great but unspectacular effects), and Bifrost. Staff fits into WvW builds well, is good for mob tagging in open world PVE, and can fit into a dungeon build with chaos storm/armor, and a phantasm that hits bosses like a truck. I can’t speak to fractals.

Our PVE meta is very limiting right now, I would pick a legendary that you like aesthetically, because once you’ve done the work, you will make it work.

To me it reads as one skill point per day, and given how easy skill points are to acquire already one a day is not an unreasonably large number. Not to mention Anet has plans to add new skills into the game, so this provides a casual stream of sp for players who just want to log in and muck about – at the going rate of Antitoxin Spray (25) that’s one skill per month minimum for just showing up.

Sorry for the late reply, but thanks for the advice everyone. That should keep me pretty occupied for the time to come!

Edit: Spelling

Thanks guys. So I will craft Zoijas Sword as my first ascended.

When I start to craft other weapons should I craft to its strengths? For instance, were I to craft an ascended scepter should I go for CD primary?

My goal is to not have to craft multiple of the same weapons with different stats, but not to go celestial and end up unfocused. My logic is that sword is primarily power so a power build is suited to it, where scepter is usually found in condition builds and is calculated off of CD rather than power. Does this make sense?

Thanks again.

Hey All

How should I pick my ascended weapon/accessories/amulets/rings?

I’m a day or two away from my ascended sword and was going to go Wupwup since I could always fit it into a build. I’m also about to get my accessories and am thinking that going celestial in those slots as well is just going to leave me with poor stats all around…

In PVE I run mostly zerk gear with a few pieces of knights thrown and Scholar runes, and in WvW I have a full rabid set w/ Runes of Perplexity and run a variation on Blackwater.

I usually PVE the new meta, then once my checklist is done either run dungeons, or swap builds and WvW.

I dont want to pick my gear with such a narrow focus that it hinders me from doing other things…dungeons, WvW etc…but I don’t want to have to do this gear grind 5x over in order to stay competitive.

Thanks in advance!

Pick whatever looks the best to you. Builds can change and what is popular today could be nerfed tomorrow. But as long as you like the look and play style of the weapon you chose you will always find a reason to keep it equipped.

Be sure to check out YouTube for videos of mesmers using the legendaries. Some abilities change with them and some do not, which could lead to disappointment. For instance quip only uses pistol 5-while cool-it seems like a lot of work for one ability on a moderate cool down.

colesy.8490:

The two reasons to not get greatsword are that it is bad on a mesmer, and that you won’t be seeing it that much because they don’t swing it around.

We might not swing it around much, but it does copy onto your clones so that’s 4x Sunrise or Twilight. Which makes up for GS sub optimal performance if you ask me. Just don’t take it into dungeons.

Gnat.9405:

champ.7021:

Gnat.9405:

The reason Ascended takes so many resources is because it’s supposed to be the end-all to character stat progression.

WHATT!?!!??! it was supposed to be a bridge between legendary and exotic…..thats what cj said

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy7CcwnfUdU

2:35-2:50

It is equal to legendary and represents the final tier of gear progression stat wise. It bridges the gap in acquisition by giving players who have full exotics something more achievable to work towards.

Draco.2806:

Blix.8021:

What is not considered farming to you in pve? Just curious.

Not following some pre-set goal that results in your earning specific loot or the most amount of gold, is not considered farming, I think.

This difference between those who have and those who don’t in thus game comes mostly down to goal setting. My friends and I set goals and plan our play sessions in a way that works towards them.

This is my daily (if I play, I don’t play everyday) routine.

1. Pick 5 dailies
2. Go to a zone that I can do my daily AND work on map completion
3. Find a world boss whose timer is nearly up
4. Jumping puzzle
5. Do a LS achievement or 2
6. Use my crafting cool downs.

None of this is set in stone, and even though it’s organized I don’t consider it farming.
A lot of this is synergistic. A dungeon run can easily take care of my dailies. Doing dailies leads to monthly completion etc…

I am never ever broke. I have 30g in my account today, and that’s after crafting immobulus last week and getting weaponsmithing to 500.

Everything in this game comes down to button presses. Set a goal, plan your time out, and have fun along the way.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

boredinbc.2786:

I have zero opinion on the quality if the designs, but from the images you posted the blue does look much less intense in the second photo.

Different lighting, which was intentional.

The Sword in the first photo and the Scepter in the second are both from the first set (first half of the set) the Torch in the first photo and the Focus in the second photo are from the new set. If the only color difference you see is between the lighting of the two photo’s, then it’s not a difference between the two sets.

To me the ‘two’ sets appear to match up just fine.

My guess is that people are comparing the new set in the preview pane, to weapons they already have. But the preview pane offers the dullest lighting in the game.
Everything looks better when actually equipped. and when equipped together I fail to see what the complaint is.

Awesome, glad to hear that..

ArtemusHunter.9521:

and you can’t simply just trade gold in for gems nowadays, not with the outrageous rates that they are going for now. My friend spent well over 30 gold to get 600 gems for the continue coin.

I don’t understand how an item can be important enough to kitten about wanting on the forums but not important enough to spend gold on. 30g does not seem like that bad of a deal honestly, I can think of a dozen worse ways to spend it on than what is essentially a free pass for the next 2 weeks of content.

Is the continue coin a leg up for those who have it? Sure is. Pay to win? No, since anyone can still buy it with gold. Unless an item is cash only and inaccessible without a credit card then you can’t cry foul play. You have access to the same opportunities as everyone else, no cash required.

I have zero opinion on the quality if the designs, but from the images you posted the blue does look much less intense in the second photo.

neon.4863:

I did this on infantile mode with 4 guildies. It was long, frustrating and unfun even with the clouds, but it could get better as we learn the ropes.

I have to complain about the part with the frogs that suck you into dart traps, though. One of us activated the checkpoint after it, and then it was a complete deathfest because we’d barely finish respawning and we’d get sucked back into death again, and again, and again, and again, and we collectively died some 50+ times before we managed to kill all the frogs just so we could all stand on the checkpoint to proceed. Plus, if you got even a little bit of lag on respawn, you’d get sucked back into the death trap before you could even do anything.

This is just world 2. I don’t even want to know what the difficulty level of world 4 will be. Even extremely punishing games like Super Meat Boy allow you to try again repeatedly and have a less harsh learning curve than this. People who mastered world 1 should not be dying 50 times in world 2 before they can even get anywhere.

Plus, the “you have to learn this blah blah” argument falls short when this is gated behind continue coins that cost 50 baubles each (not to mention the parts that need upgrades and you only find out when you get there) and you’re going to die a lot more often than the 5 lives you’re given with a coin until you learn anything.

I bought an infinite coin just to spare myself the headache of grinding to get past, and that’s p2w in my book.

Your last paragraph is why the first 4 paragraphs are true.

Sadly I did miss the first even. Ah well. TP it is then! Thanks.

Was it intentional? From what I can tell we are the only class that can’t put together a full MH/OH set, nor can we use the 2H weapons.

Am I forever doomed to walk this planet mix-matched? Scandoulous!

ZudetGambeous.9573:

skullmount.1758:

Vince Ste Marie.2081:

Obsidian Shards are no longer available from Moto.

If thats the case, then why the kitten did you make the chests/digs once per day??????
I just don’t get Anet logic anymore. Obi shards were the only thing of use outside of SAB that were rewards for doing SAB. Now the only thing in there is skins, which requires grinding, and we can’t even grind it how/when we want to, its stuck behind another kitten time-gate. Getting really tired of these time-gates and farming removal (gold ones I get, but SAB is only for skins, so why the kitten do you remove it?).

gem store is that way->

they needed to find a way to force you to buy the infinite continue coin, which people wouldn’t do if you could get continue coins on your own.

Why would i need an infinite continue coin if Moto no longer sells the one thing I wanted?

Thanks for the info. I just hopped on my guardian and the F&F dyes do indeed look much better on heavy armour.

@Farzo – love the look.

181 gold

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

Honest question, why all the love for these dyes? I mean some of them are really expensive and they are all just variations on red or blue with a bit of tarnish thrown in.

I wear light armor so maybe I’m not seeing the full effect…

Stop making sense. Good ideas are a ban-able offense.

Espionage.3685:

I don’t have an amazing PC by any means (a Phenom II X4 @ 3.3Ghz, Radeon HD 7850, 8GB of RAM), but performance in a lot of cases is lower-than-expected, especially during world events and WvW. I’ve tried plenty of different drivers, OS setups, settings, etc. but I’m 99% sure my processor is the bottleneck.

The Tech Support forums has loads of posts about low performance on top-end both Intel and AMD processors, with or without overclocking. There’s posts about how ArenaNet “doesn’t care” about such performance issues either, talk of how the game was designed for consoles, never going to be fixed, ArenaNet refusing help from NVIDIA and/or AMD, etc.

Every time there’s a new patch, I eagerly check out the notes and look for any sign of performance changes, and usually end up disappointed with the lack of any.

I really want to believe that ArenaNet does care, and are secretly doing some behind-the-scenes update that’ll bring forth crazy performance improvements and other optimizations, but lack of any mention of anything performance-related is pretty discouraging I even tried asking about it on the questionnaire post on the official Facebook page recently (yesterday) but didn’t even get a “thanks for the question” response (other questions prior to mine did).

Does ArenaNet really not care about improving performance? Or is it secretly being worked on (a hint might be nice I suppose)?

Guild Wars 2 is possibly the best MMORPG I’ve played, and I recommended it to all my friends (who haven’t purchased it). The game looks beautiful, but I just dislike how it performs currently :/ I mean it’s playable to an extent I suppose, but it could be better.

I don’t really want a timeframe (one would be nice I guess if it could be given), just would love to see something stating that it’s at least being looked into currently…

It is most certainly the bottleneck. I run a 3750k overclocked to 4.7GHz and I max out my core 1 of my CPU playing GW2. I play no other game that has even come close. Ive been playing some FF14 and it doesnt go past 50%, with more consistent FPS in large events. Mind you I find GW2 to be orders of magnitude more beautiful the FF14.

To the best of anyone’s knowledge – no. But we don’t know what we don’t know.

Wow. This is possibly one of the best uses of the guild system in GW2.

Name: The Mad Shatter
Server: Blackgate
Role: Scholar
Playtime: 5 days all/anytime, then 5 days mostly absent (shift worker). PST here.
Playstyle: PVE, Looking to get into dungeons and fractals.

Knote.2904:

boredinbc.2786:

Clearly they are not insane, I’ve seen tons of people rocking them these past few days. The item might not be priced competitively for you, but others obviously have no problems paying for them.

P2W doesn’t need to happen in one fell swoop, it can be a slow creep. Faster gathering then its one extra resource gathered, then the time after that why not a % chance for rare mats….etc.

Take these items for what they are worth, a convenience money sink with cool animations.

Or they add an extra bit of convenience that has no negative affects and get even more sales. /shrug

Personally I would prefer if the items weren’t soulbound, but rather account bound. I like the idea of paid items extending their usefulness across multiple characters. I think that a lot of players would jump on some of these sales if that changed.

Clearly they are not insane, I’ve seen tons of people rocking them these past few days. The item might not be priced competitively for you, but others obviously have no problems paying for them.

P2W doesn’t need to happen in one fell swoop, it can be a slow creep. Faster gathering then its one extra resource gathered, then the time after that why not a % chance for rare mats….etc.

Take these items for what they are worth, a convenience money sink with cool animations.

boredinbc.2786:

It’s fine the way it is IMO.

People are always complaining that real money items are not powerful enough in this game. This is a good problem to have.

skullmount.1758:

Highwinter.3190:

This is one instance where I actually think the temporary content works. The novelty would get old pretty fast if things like the Super Adventure Box stayed around permanently and the community would quickly lose interest. Bringing it back every few months with some new levels and new rewards is a good way to keep it exciting, without overstaying its welcome.

Except you’d still get that even if it was permanent. You’d still get the same enjoyment, cause it has new stuff, and you can stop doing it when you want, and know you could go back to it (if it was permanent).

Disagree. I think that in this case the temporary nature of the content adds to its specialness. It’s arguably the most well loved activity in GW2 and people are already getting psyched up for it. It’s like Christmas or Halloween, you need to find just the right amount of saturation, if it hangs around for too long it can cheapen the experience(see Christmas carols in malls the day after Remembrance Day). I’m all in favour of this being a permanent piece of temporary content.

Congrats and enjoy!

Nausiation.1469:

I am NOT saying clockwork is bad, it looks pretty good….and I hear it’s fun. However, it can only be enjoyed TEMPORARILY by level 80s. I’m not level 80 so it’s as if anet isn’t even updating the game. I know the invasions will still happen but not a lot after the event is over. Why have 4 teams working on silly events like this that don’t add any REAL content when they could be adding skills, professions, something big that truly adds to the game.

We know that crafting will be increased to 500, hopefully within the next 4 months. There was an interview a short while back, ill try to dig up the link saying that new professions are not in the cards, but additional weapons are in progress or being considered.

But whats the point of new skills/professions/weapons if there is no complementary content? The tools already exist in game for everyone to beat pretty much everything. Why make a new class, or add new skills if they aren’t needed?

New content drives the story forward and provides opportunities to expand on game play and design.

adamaknight.9237:

I bet that’s going to be fun for people trying to do their world completion or just level up in a few weeks when the next living story farm-o-matic draws the zergs off the invasions. At random you’ll have a zone turned into an uninhabitable mob-fest.

Which is the price we pay for living content.

I mean honestly people, come on. Everyone is clamoring for change and more dynamic content to be added to this game, and then Anet does one event, which frankly just scratches the surface of how game altering dynamic content should be, and we already have someone upset that the zones will not stay static.

I need a drink.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Every day. There are no other recipes yet, but you know what replaced wind up spring watchworks? Quartz crystals. You don’t think the introduction of Charged Quartz and now watchwork sprockets is a coincidence do you?

Oh my god…..

A WATCH!

Wait what?

As another example I am currently running

i5 3570k 3.4ghz
AMD Sapphire 7870 XT 2gb
8gb ram

My CPU is currently overclocked to 4.7 stable and it still runs at 100% load when WvW or in LA. There is nothing that I play currently that brings my CPU to 100% except GW2.

FPS in LA is erratic at best, sometimes dropping as low as 8. But usually running between 21 -35. It looks choppy 75% of the time in LA. My settings are all high with FXAA on.

You can throw money at this game all you want, but you will not get good FPS in high pop areas.

EDIT: I should add that with this set up and most settings to medium (animations high, LOD high, character models high and FXAA on) I run 30-45 FPS in LA. This does drop in large DEs.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

tolunart.2095:

They could not be bought for BL claim tickets before yesterday.

Now that I recall, you are right. It still doesn’t change the fact that they said they were bringing items back to the gem store.

They were a bit misleading, I assumed the weapons would be in the gem store again and not the merchant.

They are bringing items back to the store. The kitten was yesterday, and today is the molten pick. Tomorrow is either the axe or sickle. They are just not the items you wanted, I’m not sure whats misleading about this at all.

One main hand with two off hands is not that weird.

Quite a few mesmers rock sword/sword-sword/focus or sword/focus-sword/pistol. I’d bet 90% of them are phantasm builds. Sceptre has its highs and lows. There is one popular PVP build that rocks sceptre/sword for 2 blocks for defence and relies on phantasms for damage.

I don’t have any specific comments about your build, builds are not a strong suit of mine. I do look forward to seeing how your build is working out for you though, keep us posted.

Ursan.7846:

When farmers create a ton of gold and inject it into the economy, it causes inflation and screws over the rest of the playerbase which doesn’t farm.

Whether this effect is substantial or not is unclear. However, there is absolutely no denying that farming (specifically, the type that creates gold, i.e Deadeye and CoF) has the potential to harm the economy.

In this case its intended. On the BLTP forums a week or so back John Smith made a comment about wealth distribution and the economy, stating that individual wealth is not something he worries about, he is only concerned with resource distribution in aggregate.

The point – They know precisely how much gold they want in circulation, and these events and rewards are tuned to that. I have a feeling that gold + time gated T7 mats equal a steep hill for 500 crafting.

Yes, this event – seen as a string of nearly hour long invasions – repeated ad nasium is boring if you farm the hell out of it. My suggestion is don’t. I’ve got my meta achievement and now plan on doing only 1 invasion per day for the boss chest and am going to try to tie it into my daily.

Less than 2 weeks from now this event will slow down substantially. I don’t know what the pace will be, but it will be less frantic and act as a more permanent piece of open world content. It will be like claw or SB, but on a grander scale with a global alarm sounding and rallying the people to a zone. Concurrently a new piece of The Living Story will be released filling a larger chunk of our time. Anet hopefully has a wide range of events, not all of them being zerg fests like this one, planned out/in development to tie their living story together. Now fast forward 3 months in the future, that’s 6 living story updates and 6 pieces of repeatable content. Throw a Halloween and Xmas in there and we will have content to keep us occupied for a while.

Now, would I be happy if every piece of the living story was like this? No. But this is the first installment of persistent content that they have released, so I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

They should not be handed out retroactively. Everyone bought their collectors edition knowing what was in the “box”. Anet should not give us whats in the new one. No one would ask any other retailer to give promotional items to them on a different sale a year later.

Elbegast.6970:

boredinbc.2786:

Something to consider is that this update is designed to be long lasting. The grind is getting old at this moment since everyone is busy doing it on repeat, after this next week and a half passes, the invasions will slow considerably.

Which is what people wanted – recurring, repeatable open world content. I consider a grand invasion to be a step up from adding just another claw, or SB.

No, that’s not what we wanted at all. We wanted more zone-by-zone storytelling through chained dynamic events….events that would have a permanent and visible impact on the zone and it’s surroundings.
What we got, instead, with this update was nothing more than a rolling zerg on an hourly schedule.

I think its fair to say that people wanted both. And I agree that the hourly rolling zerg has been played out, my point is that once the next installment rears its head, this hourly zerg will slow down to-hopefully- a crawl. The Scarlet story will continue and when an invasion happens it will rally people to a specific zone, for a short faceroll. This will be ongoing, but better paced.

Think ahead 3 months, that’s 6 opportunities to add persistent events to the world. I hope they will not be all like this, and I hope that the story telling will get better. But that’s a lot of change and a lot of content to look forward to.

Something to consider with any open world events is that the masses will always go to whats profitable. Zone by zone DE chains, sound fun on paper, but will be no less of a zerg. And regardless of how well ANet balances the rewards for different parts of the chain, min/maxers will find a way to use the content for farming. They have to design within this constraint.

Elbegast.6970:

jweez.7214:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/short-story-what-scarlet-saw/

Haven’t read this yet, but I figured anyone who would post here likely cares a great deal about the lore so I figured I’d inform you of it.

I care a great deal about the lore but if it isn’t in-game, I’m not reading it. I’m don’t support this kitten poor extra-game storytelling.

A tad duplicitous coming from someone on the forums. This game is not just built inside the client. It is a community effort. I see nothing wrong posting a short story on this site, and frankly it would have felt cheaper if it had just been info dumped by some random Asura in a wall of text in Rata Sum, which technically meets your requirements of “in-game”.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it as an info dump, and the story itself did nothing to deepen the character. I’m just disagreeing that an online short story is a bad way of expanding content.

Something to consider is that this update is designed to be long lasting. The grind is getting old at this moment since everyone is busy doing it on repeat, after this next week and a half passes, the invasions will slow considerably.

Which is what people wanted – recurring, repeatable open world content. I consider a grand invasion to be a step up from adding just another claw, or SB.

Ayrilana.1396:

While I agree that some sort of tracking should be done but what’s so difficult about writing it down on a piece of paper?

Paper comes from Sylvari pulp mills. Oh the humanity!

But seriously, nothing is difficult about it, it’s just a nice quality of life addition.

I like her…a lot actually. Her character fits well into the writers style of overly campy and expositional dialogue. That sounds like a dig, but it isn’t. I think the writing style has struggled in this game since day one, the writers built square characters and tried to write them into round holes and it almost always fell flat. Here they have made a character they know how to write, and hopefully are finding their footing.

“Cannonballs! My one weakness”. Bravo.

Yes please. More information is more better.