Guild Wars 2

My specific problem was actually related to the WMI process. Apparently some malware was riding on it and it was sucking up a ton of CPU power.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wmi/archive/2009/05/27/is-wmiprvse-a-real-villain.aspx

I recently came back to Guild Wars after a 4 month hiatus. Previously, my computer would run it at about 40 FPS, only dipping to 20 in big WvW fights.

Well NOW, it runs between 15 and 22 FPS all the time. My GPU is an AMD Radeon HD 7520G. I updated the drivers through Windows, and was thrilled that Windows seemed to find new drivers. I figured that’d fix it! Problem was, that broke the downloader. No matter what, it would lock up whenever I launched the game, before even downloading new patches.

Soooo, I decided to use AMD’s tool and get the drivers it recommended. That didn’t fix the problem, but at least I can run the game. They’re probably the same drivers I had prior to updating through Windows’ automated system.

I went through ANet’s recommendations for AMD systems. Most of those settings for already in effect, but I made the recommendations for the in game settings. That didn’t have any noticeable impact.

I don’t know what to do, so I figured I’d just ask here. My next step is reinstalling the game, which my wife will probably do for me today while I’m at work. I was wondering if anyone else had any other advice though.

The other computer specs are:
AMD A-Series Dual-Core A6-4400M 2.7 GHz (1 MB Cache)
4 GB DDR3 RAM
500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive

It’s an HP G7 laptop. I know it’s not top of the line, but it should be doing better than an average of 20 FPS, and it used to just a few months ago. Changing the settings to lowest everything doesn’t have a noticeable impact, which is another reason I don’t think it’s a general performance issue. It has to be related to the drivers, or to something getting bottlenecked where the game can’t be processed as quickly as it should be.

How do we know the difference in healing provided by the regeneration versus the passive effect/ I’m guessing the regen is stronger, since otherwise activating it would be pointless. I’ll just try and figure it out when I get home, I guess. Some green numbers should pop up on the screen or something lol.

Or Aurora Armor of Melandru, or the others, I suppose. The skin must be attached to multiple armor sets, assuming the wiki is correct.

Light Whispering Armor of Infiltration, I believe.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Norn_Female_Arcon_Armor_of_Dwayna_Light.png

Kindread.9481:

I think its best to avoid kitten conversations with people in general. Some people have the need to constantly out-do everyone around them, make others feel bad, and make themselfs look godlike. It seems to happen a lot in this game because there is no way to measure how well others are doing.

Honestly the best groups I have had while doing dungeons were the ones that were doing low amounts of damage. The only way I could tell was that the mobs seems to take a bit longer to kill, but hardly anyone ever died. IMO go for lower numbers, but keep a resonable amount of survivability. You do no damage when you are dead.

And if people have to constantly revive you, they’re not doing any damage either.

Katai.6240:

It was really awkward being introduced to Trahearne after already meeting him >_>

Yeah, I hope they fix that at some point.

It kind of worked, if I just suspended my disbelief for a bit. Tybalt introduced us, and Trahearne didn’t say anything in response, so I just assumed Tybalt wasn’t aware that we’d already met.

Small gripe though. I still love the personal story quests.

Guardian has two fire combo fields, both consecrations: Purging Flames and Hallowed Ground.

Just a small fyi.

The trick seems to just be well rounded. So if you create a purely offensive build, then you need to gear for defense or else you won’t last long enough in a fight to dish out your damage. Likewise, if your build is all defense, you should gear for power/precision/etc or else your fights last foreeeeeeever.

But I agree that there don’t seem to be any real bad builds unless you try.

Guardians can’t shoot people on or from the top of keeps. That’s about it. I admit this irritates me at times, but I also know that zerging a keep without siege weaponry is an exercise in futility anyway. You’ll spend 20-30 minutes slowly watching all your people get arrowed to death, then eventually have to retreat.

Anyhoo, does it still feel a bit lame that guardians can’t do one of the things that all the other classes can? Yeah. Is it a game changer? Nope. And they DO need to offer rewards for support during zergs. This patch focused a lot of dungeons, so I’m hoping they’ll work on WvW for the next one.

Oh, and yeah wandering around alone in WvW is kinda lame. You generally just run into a group of 5-50 people and die (or run away and try to find a way around…and then die in a similar situation somewhere else). So if you can even get a small group of folks to regularly go with, it’s worth it. You don’t have to go join a 1k member guild or anything, just make some friends or nag your RL friends into playing.

Edit: And I figure the reason we don’t have a rifle/longbow/whatever kind of ranged weapon is because Wall of Reflection is probably the best skill in WvW, period. If they gave us a more viable ranged weapon that could zerg/defend keeps well, they’d probably take our WoR away.

swilkers.5938:

and Guardians can take an ENTIRE team on.

Not if you’re in a keep! You ever seen us with our staff out, and our little orb slooooooooooowly making its way up to you? Cause if that’s the kind of thing that scares you, then you must be afraid of clowns.

I figure it all comes out in the wash. sPvP is about small matches between equally matched teams. WvW is, as the name implies, about entire worlds. Some people will have better gear and some won’t. It’s likely that the numbers are comparable by server.

And while gear makes some difference, it’s a small one compared to some other MMOs. I think the biggest difference is simply being lvl 80 or not.

Garillo.1349:

My only problem with WvW is that staves can’t fire upwards.

This irritates me to no end, because it’s sooooo noticeable. You see it not only when attacking keeps, but even with the most modest of terrain. Maybe I just got the kitten orb, but it seems like it stumbles on every little pebble, and sometimes even seems to just go off in some random direction completely opposite my targeted foe.

The staff’s 2 skill is very effective for the following:

killing fish in barrels
killing ants walking in a straight line
checking for wind direction
measuring the distance between yourself and the top of the keep

I DID manage to hit someone on the top of the keep yesterday. I was amazed. I tried it again and kept getting the usual “obstructed” message, but thankfully by then all my support skills were back up so I went back to that.

What I’d really like to see is Shield of Absorption and Sanctuary protect against arrow carts. I’m sure ANet thinks this would be too powerful, but I consider it a fair tradeoff for the crapiness of the staff’s retardo-orb. I swear half the time that stupid thing just wanders around like a drunk bum.

Yeah, George Carlin used swearing to great effect. The people on these forums are not George Carlin (or Penn Jilette, for that matter.) Swearing has a time and place. This isn’t it. <3 kittens

thegreatheed.8502:

darcdante.2753:

It’s amazing how many times I see the word “kitten” appear, even in thread titles. “Your rewards are kitten.” Really?

It’s not like people are using curse words to express an actual viable rage. They’re doing it because it has become ingrained in our culture curse out of habit. If someone stubbed their toe and then typed “KITTEN that hurt!” I could understand it (though it’d be odd to type it out lol). That’s not what we see.

Though you quoted me, I said nothing about people using curse words to express rage or anything of the sort. If there is a situation where I can understand a curse word, it is in a moment of rage or surprise.

I said people typing forums posts use curse words in lieu of actual language. I agree, it is a cultural degradation and simplification and retardation of language. I prefer kittens in this situation over potty references and bigotry.

No, I’m not an language major or anything of the sort, I’m a computer nerd who works in a tech support job. I’m just not a blathering idiot, and prefer to communicate intelligibly.

Yes, I was agreeing with you.

I’m only level 49, so it’s still theorycraft right now, but here’s my original post.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUUQJARWlo5yD3FyMEm4ERmCROyKFx7eYP04HzIA

What it does:
Designed primarily for group play (dungeons and WvW), it’s designed to move in and out of combat, from the front lines to the back. This way, you can either deal damage with your greatsword or support with your staff, as needed.
It focuses on a reduced cooldown across the board. Since both weapons are 2h, all weapon abilities have a reduced cooldown. All utility skills are consecrations, fully utilizing the Master of Consecrations ability.
Front line fighting:
The front line fighting portion is fairly straight forward. You have 20 points in Zeal to boost your greatsword damage. This can be combined with Purging Flames to give you the Burning Blades combo on your 3 and 5 gs abilities. Your Symbol of Wrath (gs2) is larger, applies vulnerability, and heals allies. This is also where you want to use your virtues for their quick and easy buffs.
When your frontline abilities are all on cooldown, roll out of the front lines, preferably towards an ally who might need healing.
Back line fighting:
This is possibly where the build really shines, since you have the staff’s Symbol of Swiftness and all consecrations able to be ground targeted. I went with this because of my interest in WvW and the often difficult time guardians can have defending keeps due to our fairly lackluster ranged attacks. This allows you to provide a great amount of support/cc at long ranges.
The goal here isn’t to try and Wave of Wrath or orb everyone to death. We know that often doesn’t work well. Instead, make tactical use of your Symbol of Swiftness and consecrations to keep allies alive and provide combo fields/buffs for them. Use Line of Warding and Wall of Reflection to keep ranged people safe from opposition.
If everything ends up on cooldown, switch back to your greatsword and roll back to the front lines. By this time, all your front line abilities should be ready again for use.
Healing:
There’s a lot of healing in this build. I go with Healing Seed because, at my level at least, its single heal gives me what I need and it still provides the regen to allies (most of you aren’t sylvari, so just use whatever heal you think is best here). Sanctuary, Orb of Light, and Symbol of Swiftness can be used to heal from afar, and there’s the obvious Tome of Courage.
Where it suffers:
The build is poor for solo play. Fiery Wrath is easy to use if, like me, you’re wife is an elementalist who loves fire attune. However, the only ways you have of burning foes are Virtue of Justice and Purging Flames. Additionally, the staff just isn’t great for solo play (imo). If you wanted to use this build for soloing, I’d recommend changing it out with a hammer (but at that point I’d also likely drop the consecrations, which would require some reworking of the build).
Summary:
This build is primarily for support, but should ensure you some face-time with your enemies. The intent is to keep you constantly busy by allowing you plenty of options on both the front and back lines, which everything on a 20% reduced cooldown. If you’re interested in defending keeps in WvW, it also allows you a fair amount of options rather than just trying to orb people to death.

Their hair. At first I wanted to play a norn, because they drink and fight and boast and I like that. I was thinking “plant people? Pheh, that’s dumb!” Then I saw a video during beta of sylvari character creation, and I thought “oooohhhhh, I love how they did the hair as leaves!”

So I made one! And the more I got to know them, the more I liked them. Now they’re my favorite race.

Huh, I’m level 49 and I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself glow. I’m going to check on this tonight, and hope I look OK.

jebidiah ubershiet.2580:

if you “need” to be addicted, smoke crack while you play, and only while you play. I bet you get addicted through association and your life becomes perfect and complete

hahaha! That’s hilar!

ANet wants people to play because they enjoy what they’re doing, NOT to get some new piece of gear that’s the same kind of gear every other person is trying to get. That doesn’t make people stand out from the crowd, it just shows everyone else who got lucky and doesn’t do anything else in life.

They’ve said all this from the beginning, so I don’t know why people are shocked. Someone said earlier (page 1) that players want to stand out in a game. GW2 actually lets you stand out more than WoW ever did. Here, you can not only transmute your gear, but dye it! Whereas everyone in WoW was trying to get the same few pieces of gear from the same raid bosses at the same time, here it doesn’t matter nearly as much what gear you’re wearing. And most astoundingly to me is that every class as multiple viable builds and play styles.

In the past, whenever a new patch would come out, everyone would just find the best dps build and jump on it. Everything was extremely cookie cutterish. If you weren’t pulling 8k dps, then you need to go to the same build as everybody else, and get the same gems/enchants/gear as everybody else. <3 GW2 because it’s not like that.

thegreatheed.8502:

“I’m saying that people that are perverted enough to take offence at sequences of sounds shouldn’t be catered for. Yet we see the opposite all over and that’s perverting the perversion even more – teaching people to shun what they shouldn’t be bothered by.
Using euphemisms isn’t cleaning up speech, it’s just temporarily hiding the truth from the shortsighted.”

No, Just No.

People should be mature and literate enough to express themselves without causing others offense. If someone was saying something offensive, I’d much rather read about kittens than about their immaturity and lack of verbal flexibility.

It has nothing to do with me being shortsighted, it’s about being respectful of others. It is in no way perverting anything other than your liberal sensitivities.

Besides, kitten is a great way to show the truth – the truth that people are illiterate jerks on the forums most of the time. Quit excusing their idiocy.

It’s amazing how many times I see the word “kitten” appear, even in thread titles. “Your rewards are kitten.” Really?

It’s not like people are using curse words to express an actual viable rage. They’re doing it because it has become ingrained in our culture curse out of habit. If someone stubbed their toe and then typed “KITTEN that hurt!” I could understand it (though it’d be odd to type it out lol). That’s not what we see.

I love it! I get sick of the amount of profanity in our culture. At least here I don’t have to be subjected to it.

Oh, and RPing can be helped just by adding some emotes. I can wave, but I can’t wave AT someone. That’d be nice. And I don’t think /kiss is in there at all. I figure these aren’t priorities though.

I had a guy bow after reviving me the other day. That was cool. I like RPing, but probably not enough to change servers since I’ve got RL friends on Yak’s Bend.

Sometimes I wish there was a little bit of roleplaying just cause of the names.

Look, there goes my friends Jack the Snake and Telwar Hindlar! And trailing behind them is….Ilikebigbutts.

There may already be an option for this somewhere, but I haven’t seen it. I know you can view your journal to review your personal story, but I wish there was a way to view the interactions/videos again.

I’m starting to forget everything that’s happened in my personal story thus far, and the journal-like entries don’t seem quite as encompassing as I would like.

Well, it might be accurate to say they are a race within a species that is non-human. However, they are still a distinctly non-human species as they are not a primate.

But “playable race” is much less wordy than “playable species” lol.

I think it’s neat, cause it makes sense for a species (they’re not a race) that’s brand new, are all plants, and don’t have sex for procreative purposes.

I’m also sad that my character can’t marry Caithe. But there WAS some hot norn chick hitting on me in Hoelbrak, sooooo I’ll just hang out there a bit more.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUUQJARWlo5yD3FyMEm4ERmCROyKFx7eYP04HzIA

I haven’t seen this build posted yet, so I’m posting it myself.

What it does:

Designed primarily for group play (dungeons and WvW), it’s designed to move in and out of combat, from the front lines to the back. This way, you can either deal damage with your greatsword or support with your staff, as needed.

It focuses on a reduced cooldown across the board. Since both weapons are 2h, all weapon abilities have a reduced cooldown. All utility skills are consecrations, fully utilizing the Master of Consecrations ability.

Front line fighting:

The front line fighting portion is fairly straight forward. You have 20 points in Zeal to boost your greatsword damage. This can be combined with Purging Flames to give you the Burning Blades combo on your 3 and 5 gs abilities. Your Symbol of Wrath (gs2) is larger, applies vulnerability, and heals allies. This is also where you want to use your virtues for their quick and easy buffs.

When your frontline abilities are all on cooldown, roll out of the front lines, preferably towards an ally who might need healing.

Back line fighting:

This is possibly where the build really shines, since you have the staff’s Symbol of Swiftness and all consecrations able to be ground targeted. I went with this because of my interest in WvW and the often difficult time guardians can have defending keeps due to our fairly lackluster ranged attacks. This allows you to provide a great amount of support/cc at long ranges.

The goal here isn’t to try and Wave of Wrath or orb everyone to death. We know that often doesn’t work well. Instead, make tactical use of your Symbol of Swiftness and consecrations to keep allies alive and provide combo fields/buffs for them. Use Line of Warding and Wall of Reflection to keep ranged people safe from opposition.

If everything ends up on cooldown, switch back to your greatsword and roll back to the front lines. By this time, all your front line abilities should be ready again for use.

Healing:

There’s a lot of healing in this build. I go with Healing Seed because, at my level at least, its single heal gives me what I need and it still provides the regen to allies (most of you aren’t sylvari, so just use whatever heal you think is best here). Sanctuary, Orb of Light, and Symbol of Swiftness can be used to heal from afar, and there’s the obvious Tome of Courage.

Where it suffers:

The build is poor for solo play. Fiery Wrath is easy to use if, like me, you’re wife is an elementalist who loves fire attune. However, the only ways you have of burning foes are Virtue of Justice and Purging Flames. Additionally, the staff just isn’t great for solo play (imo). If you wanted to use this build for soloing, I’d recommend changing it out with a hammer (but at that point I’d also likely drop the consecrations, which would require some reworking of the build).

Summary:

This build is primarily for support, but should ensure you some face-time with your enemies. The intent is to keep you constantly busy by allowing you plenty of options on both the front and back lines, which everything on a 20% reduced cooldown. If you’re interested in defending keeps in WvW, it also allows you a fair amount of options rather than just trying to orb people to death.

Daboris.6730:

Soylent.4197:

I’m not sure I understand the point of this thread.

People don’t understand. I wish I had a pool or large man-made lake so I can collect the tears of these people and then offer some salt-water fish a new home.

Hahahahaha, funniest thing I’ve read all week.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

darcdante.2753:

I ran CW at lvl 45 and got a full level’s worth of XP. I hope that got nerfed lol. I had a lot of fun, but it’s the only dungeon I’ve done so far, so I cant comment on all the posts. I just hope that people can’t gain an entire level by running the same dungeon over and over and over. But if people are getting less gold than a single waypoint use at level 80, that seems silly.

You should be getting a full level. The dungeons take 1-2h to complete. Normal leveling time is 90 minutes of level-appropriate play.

So one level per dungeon run (which take anywhere from 60-120 minutes) definitely makes perfect sense.

I think we beat CM in about 45 minutes. If a group was taking 2 hours on that then they probably need a full level out of pity.

We died a few times apiece on the first boss, but after that it seemed like we got the hang of it and the deaths were few and far between. I was floored when I got a full level from it. Maybe it’s just because it all hit at once, but it definitely felt like a bit much.

I ran CW at lvl 45 and got a full level’s worth of XP. I hope that got nerfed lol. I had a lot of fun, but it’s the only dungeon I’ve done so far, so I cant comment on all the posts. I just hope that people can’t gain an entire level by running the same dungeon over and over and over. But if people are getting less gold than a single waypoint use at level 80, that seems silly.

I think the conversations are hilarious anyway. Props to whatever writer put in the “I challenged my wife to axe throwing.” That’s hilar.

There is order-specific armor, which apparently matters to some people. I don’t know how to check which order has which armor though. Aha! This thread should have the armor information, if you care about that sort of thing:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/938738-guild-wars-2/63896186

Otherwise, it just depends on your personal preference.

Echo.7634:

6. Gather, Gather and Gather. When your inventory is looking full right click on the little gear icon in your inventory and “send all collectables to stash” They are now all in your bank.

Are you freaking serious? Yeesh….

Carsormyr.3950:

Wow I can’t believe what I’m reading. Guardian is flat out awesome for WvW. I just got my 3100th kill in WvW today. I have only lost once in 1v1 (since adjusted my skills) and I have won a number of 2v1 fights.

Wall of Reflection is amazing, so is the support tome. Nothing quite like healing to full when they’re already having a hard time killing you. Its going to be a very long time until I get bored enough to play another class in WvW.

Can you post your build, please? Just curious.

I use Healing Seed, but I realize not everyone is a sylvari.

Yeah, I’m wondering if it’s supposed to work on defeated players. That would certainly boost its power.

Glyph of Renewal flat out states it doesn’t work on defeated players:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Renewal

The Signet of Mercy entry doesn’t say that. Buuuut, I’ve also never gotten it to work on a defeated player lol. It’s been awhile since I’ve tried though.

It’s really the cast time that gets to me. People can go from downed to defeated very quickly.

“Edit: if doing that you could go all the way into zeal & also grab zealous blade or greatsword power as they both effect maces now as well”

wait what? I didn’t hear this.

DirewolfX.5861:

For healing, I like to take Signet of Resolve, simply because it’s the biggest self-heal and provides passive condition removal. Healing Breeze can be used if you need to heal your group more, but I find it’s usually less effective and hard to aim for max effectiveness.

Just as an aside, the sylvari racial Healing Seed is really nice for group heals. For any other sylvari support guardians out there, I highly recommend trying it out, particularly in dungeons.

Me! Lvl 42 sylvari.

You should be able to play together if you’re both connected to the “main” server for whatever zone you’re in, just as if you were in the same overflow server.

I saw another thread on this subject recently. From my understanding, they stack and work independently of one another. The 10 second timer activates once you enter combat, so every 10 seconds you would have two conditions removed unless you activate the signet.

I definitely don’t think you should be easy to kill, seeing as how you’re built for defense and healing. That kinda scares me since my build would be less defensive than yours, which means I’d die even more lol.

It looks like a solid build to me. It’s similar to what I’m going for with the consecrations, but I plan on going into the Zeal line rather than Valor to increase greatsword damage (I plan on running gs/staff with 2 handed mastery).

Is this for WvW, PvP, or PvE? Or all three?

I’m only level 42, so I haven’t been able to test my build out much:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fUUQJARWlcgyDHGyMEm4ERWhRW9Ie3zeYP0YG/IA

I actually might like your build more. I feel like mine’s trying to do too much in trying to be effective at both support and damage.

If you plop down a Line of Warding and a Wall of Reflection, you’ve incapacitated an entire army. Sure, it’s just for a few seconds, but it’s still incredibly powerful in the right locations. I figure that’s one reason why guardians’ ranged attacks are fairly weak damage-wise.

I like the support provided by the consecrations, so I keep wanting to go into the Virtues trait line, but only one of them grants a boon (stability, granted by Hallowed Ground) so the line’s +boon duration seems meh. That is, unless I start swapping out consecrations for skills that provide boons (like shouts), but then I diminish the impact a trait like Master of Consecrations can provide.

I figure all this is because ANet wants us to be well rounded characters, but it certainly makes choices harder when creating a build lol.

Edit: Of course, if I paid more attention, I’d realize that the Virtues trait line causes all three virtues to grant a personal boon. So nm this post lol.

Does anyone have a link with what the armors look like?

My wife didn’t even get the usual invite to join my personal story last night, so I’m thinking there just might be some issues going on right now.

In WvW, I’m really interested in playing my guardian in a healing/support role using a staff (I’d like to try such a thing in PvE as well, but I’m not sure it’s as viable compared to straight damage builds). Do any of you have a build you can share for a staff-equipped guardian, as well as what other weapon selection you take into battle?

I’m thinking a greatsword might be nice as it would give me the option of jumping into the fray, but I’m worried that without being built for damage it wouldn’t matter much. I also like a mace/shield combo for its protection abilities.

Per the Moderators’ standard post:

“The players helping players subforum is for players to provide or seek help. This subforum is not for general game feedback. We are currently rolling out the subforums a few at a time. Please be patient until a subforum appropriate for your topic is opened.”