Guild Wars 2

I was wondering if other players are experiencing performance issues on the new stronghold map. My game does not run perfect in crowded areas but stronghold really takes the cake. Not only do I get low FPS (24 where I can get 40+ on a normal map) it also stutters, like my game is constantly trying to load something. My character will run slowly / stuttery a second and then run way quicker then is normaly as if trying to ‘catch up’.

Does anyone else experience this problem and what could be a possible fix?

EDIT: just wanted to add that tinkering with the graphics settings does not change anything. My graphics drivers are up to date (I have a 660ti, i5 Ivy Bridge processor and plenty of RAM) and my directX is also up to date. I am not running anything else in the background. I also did not experience this issue during BWE3 when I tested the strongholds map, it ran just fine. The only difference then was I was running Windows 7, which seemed to have a little better performance with GW2 overall.

Ragnarox.9601:

Haha balance team has no clue what is balancing

Guess its time to go back do meditation DH.

Why would you run a full meditation or full trap DH? The middle road is way stronger regardless of the nerf.

The nerf is definitely called for in my opinion, traps are very strong and with the low cooldown they are almost always available when you need them (and they still will be). I don’t really get why people are complaining, (burst)damage is not going down. Obviously DPS is going down a little bit, but we are not reliant on traps for DPS.

Phantaram.4816:

I played a ton of Revenant over my first day of playing HoT but Dragonhunter took the cake as the class I had the most fun on after only about 3 games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EEo1r3cSX8

Hope you enjoy it!

Cool to see some highly regarded players taking the stand on Dragon Hunter awesomeness, both in effectiveness and fun. Now for a stupid question… How do I use sword blink for mobility if I don’t have a target? My skill just goes off and I go nowhere. kitten I feel like such a noob right now.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAT8ensABVdilDBeDB8DhlEi6aZDgEQe5j+sPL/+vAE-TZBFABiXGohjAQN7PswkittenHAAA

I recommend that build. It gives you more sustain than the previous poster. 2 stuns breaks plus the best condition clense in the game and gap closer.

Renewed focus also adds an insane amount of sustain since you have an extra VoC shield to tank then another 4k heal with condi clense.

The shield is a personal choice, but you can decap points really easy with your bow knockback and shield knock back

Also with shield and that trap you can set up the big combo I love.

-Lay the trap which puts up that white fence
-hit them with VOJ chain
-shield 5 to knock them through the fence trap
-VOJ chain pull them back through it.

If it crits twice yoy are looking at 7k damage ez.

Also remember if projectile finish through your light field bow #4, you remove conditions.

Interesting build, I had sort of ignored Test of Faith because why would people run through them anyway? With the shield and VoJ we get ways to push or pull people through, nice! The only thing I don’t see is Judge’s Intervention since you already have sword blink; why would I want a longer range blink than that when I have a longbow? Lastly won’t you lose a lot of burst with this build so comparing them might be pointless (I don’t know though).

I have been running something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAT8NnsABVDBekittendilEi6aZDgEQe5j+sPL/+vAE

It is basically Meditations but with dragon hunter / bow. Use the empty utility slot for Contemplation of Purity or another trap, whatever you fancy.

Bow is obvious, when the target has taken some damage use sword 2 to blink on them and drop all your traps + sword 3 for sick damage.

I am having extremely low FPS, yesterday I was fine. In the Silver Wastes I got arounf 17, in the first story instance I am now down to 10 FPS. I have not completely downloaded the game, does this have something to do with it? My PC is only using 30% RAM and 40% CPU…

EDIT: fixed by downloading more of the game client.

Ragnarox.9601:

ebslike.1852:

Ragnarox.9601:

ebslike.1852:

Drennon.7190:

Because as of right now, I don’t see it being better than the typical meditations or shouts.

Elite specs are not supposed to be better, they are supposed to be different from the core class.

Chrono, Reaper, Herald, Druid says otherwise.

Then those specs are the problem, not Dragon Hunter.

So better specs are the problem? lol.

If the design decision is to create elite trait lines that offer a different way of playing a class but those trait lines are not supposed to be more of less powerful then the original trait lines, then the trait lines that are more powerful then their original counterparts are not hitting their design goals. Right?

Ragnarox.9601:

ebslike.1852:

Drennon.7190:

Because as of right now, I don’t see it being better than the typical meditations or shouts.

Elite specs are not supposed to be better, they are supposed to be different from the core class.

Chrono, Reaper, Herald, Druid says otherwise.

Then those specs are the problem, not Dragon Hunter. Dragon Hunter (and for example Berserker) offer a new way of playing the original class without outshining it.

Ayrilana.1396:

MrH.2591:

Ayrilana.1396:

Upgrading DX also will not provide the performance boost that people are hoping for.

I remember when WoW went from DX9 to DX11 and it doubled my frame rate in town, it made a massive difference. Why wouldn’t it do the same for Guild Wars 2?

Do you know what DX does? That would be why.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

That’s a really clear and cohesive explanation of the issue with Guild Wars 2 but that does not explain why Guild Wars 2 runs terribly on older and newer systems. If this was the end-all of the discussion then a lot more games would be suffering from the issues Guild Wars 2 has with performance.

Drennon.7190:

Because as of right now, I don’t see it being better than the typical meditations or shouts.

Elite specs are not supposed to be better, they are supposed to be different from the core class.

@Warlock: you expect people you are playing with to conform to your rules/wants? That is they should not be allowed to play meta/zerker because you don’t want to. This is like a 5 year old on the playground going up to a bunch of kids playing hide and seek and demanding they play tag and then when the other kids don’t listen the parents are dragged in because they have to force the other kids to tag. Don’t you see how backwards this is?

merchantchuck.4875:

Tom.8976:

Also to add to the discussion, I do not want to see a change to ‘True Shot’ i love that it roots you it gives the longbow that added flavour it needs plus if you are finding the root as a problem i think that is more of a l2p issue than the root being the problem.

Long bow root adds Flavour? what the heck are you smoking?

It adds flavor because instead of being a button you hit every 4 seconds it becomes a choice: do I go for a big hit but let the enemy get closer or do I keep him crippled but over-all deal less damage. It also differentiates the class from Rangers who have a similar high damage skill that feels completely different (Rapid Fire, here the player has to take into account if the enemy can dodge or not, rather then judge if they want them to get closer or not).

Build used: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAT8dnsABVDhdDBekittendilEi6aZDgEQe5j+sPb/+vAE-TZxAABzXGwjjAAAXAAOOIAR8AAAA

Mostly played Stronghold this beta weekend and I mostly played defence.

Virtues
Spear of Justice – Did not use it much, the passive feels way stronger than the active.
Wings of Resolve – Love this, most of the time I want to cleanse conditions I want to get away from the enemy anyway.
Shield of Courage – Not sure yet, at least for small-scale PvP. Potentially very strong but I would have preferred something that was more all round.

Bow skills
Puncture Shot – Very nice auto-attack, good damage and the cripple is really strong in some situations. Almost noone is getting away from you anymore (something I feel plagues Guardian).
True Shot – Decent damage, critical hits do about 5,000 which can really add up considering the short cooldown.
Deflecting Shot – Not too sure about this skill, the damage is low even compared to auto-attack. The only time I ever wanted to use it was to get an extra blind in. Considering we already have Shield of Courage to deal with projectiles this skill seems out of place. I would suggest upgrading the damage a little bit and making the blind an explosion that affects multiple enemies.
Symbol of Energy – Cool skill, wish it was a little bit larger, especially with the long cooldown on skill 5.
Hunter’s Ward – Nice skill, very long cooldown though. The only issue I have with this is the combination of the cooldown and the fact that the barrier only activates at the end of the skill. If this would activate a little bit earlier the skill could be used as an additional escape / kite mechanism. The way it stands now if you try to trap someone that is already close by you will die.

Utilities
Purification – Did not test this.
Procession of Blades – Nice damage and with the stun it almost always hits. Make sure to Smite Condition for Fury, if this does not get critical hits the damage is meh.
Test of Faith – I did not like this trap, damage is reliant on enemies being idiots (running over the dangerous looking blades).
Light’s Judgement – Pretty nice but PoB does more damage and that is what I’m looking for in my traps.
Fragment’s of Faith – I’m not a fan of mixing offensive and defensive skills. When I’m in a situation where I need defence, I don’t want to have an enemy trigger my trap and then run around to get protection. Maybe with a build that utilizes Aegis-effects this can be good.
Dragon’s Maw – Love this! Might be weak for an elite so lower the cooldown (pretty please?).

Basically what I did was get some damage in at range, when the enemy gets closer use True Shot / SoE and lay down PoB. The stun makes sure most damage gets in, while this is happening switch to sword and use Zealot’s Defence. This combined takes of a good chunk of the enemy. Use sword / focus skills to defend yourself until weapon swap is ready. If you manage to get range just keep your distance with auto-attack, otherwise use True Shot / SoE again with Dragon’s Maw.

Match-ups, depending on skill of course!

Hard enemies
D/D Elementalist
Necromancer
Engineer

Medium enemies
Ranger
Mesmer

Easy
Thief
Warrior
Guardians
Revenants
Non-D/D Elementalist

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

There are a lot of possibilities!

I’ve theory crafted a half dozen different Druid builds thus far, when the build calculators are updated, I’ll add them to the build sticky along with everyone elses.

Yay!

If you plan on running a Druid build, what is it going to be? I am just curious what people can come up with and how you envision your Druid build working!

Looking for an answer from ArenaNet though any opinions on this topic is of course welcomed. The game that should not be named (who am I kidding, WoW, I am talking about WoW), has damage reduction for pets from AoE damage. This solves a lot of issues the Ranger equivalent has with their pets.

Why isn’t there something like this in Guild Wars 2? The pet is a large part of the Ranger class but completely useless in WvW, large events or even smaller fights that have AoE in it.

Nyx just a word of advice, if you want to discuss things in a civil manner on a gaming forum don’t use passive aggressive emoticons or randomly capitalize words.

Swamurabi.7890:

Actually, Chess has 20 possible opening moves, which is more than GW2 has, and I’m not counting surrendering or asking for a draw. Chess modeling also has to take into consideratin the zone of control that a piece will have when moved, which will affect the opponents options or even set up a move later on.

As for when to do an action, NOT ACTING is an action and can be accounted for, so can moving to optimum range (kiting/closing).

Movement to a point and distance between points are also things that can be put in the decision matrix of the program.

You don’t have to model realisitcally, just by crunching the possible combinations you can judge the level of player skill needed to achieve a certain level of a build’s TTK.

What do you consider an opening move? Elementalist has 20 skills from just their weapon that they can open with and that is just 1 class….

Exedore.6320:

This thread is such a farce. Its promoters don’t really understand what they’re talking about. For example, chess is easy to solve conceptually, but its decision tree quickly becomes immense and takes too long to realistically process. We have multiple models for weather, especially if you look at hurricane path prediction. If they’re so great at what they do, why do we still run multiple different ones which come up with different results? The result is that models aren’t perfect. And grandmaster chess computers and meteorological models are run on supercomputers. Much more than what a game developer would have.

When you talk about an MMORPG, there are many more variables and possible decisions than in chess. And because it’s real-time – not turn-based – timing of each decision becomes a further variable. It becomes so ridiculously complex that you can’t realistically solve it. You can try and model it, but models aren’t trivial to do and aren’t perfect. But you can only model what normally happens. If someone puts together an unexpected combination of abilities or traits which wasn’t in the model, what then? Do you put every possible permutation in it and make it even more unwieldy, uncertain, and require immensely more time to run? If it didn’t turn out well, you need to tweak some numbers and do it again.

The best you can realistically do is make a lot of assumptions and look at subsets of encounters in a vacuum. Developers do this a lot and come up with “good enough” balance. It can never be perfect because you’ve made so many assumptions and limited the scope. But maybe once you actually go play it, it may turn out differently. So you go back and tweak it again. Now consider you have a myriad of match-ups and skill interactions which vary. In order to realistically examine that, you make further assumptions about a generic enemy. But that can’t always account for details. For example, slower attacks are more susceptible to blind and block. A defender may end up with an advantage against those.

Worst of all, the OP’s original assumption is that ANet hasn’t balanced TTK. Maybe they have, but your assumption of the value of TTK is incorrect and ANet uses once which is much higher. Maybe they actually balance DPS vs bunker and it’s working how they want it to?

/thread

You cherrypick one question and you answer it with: TKK is basically everything (you switched out game balance for a new term TTK I guess?).

• What are some games that are perfectly balanced? In 15 years of playing MMOs and multiplayergames in general I have never seen a game that was in perfect balance. You claim it is easy, so asking for 3 examples does not seem so steep.
• TTK accounts for mobility on the map? Since PvP in Guild Wars 2 is not a death match (with the exception of Courtyard) things that influence the outcome of a match. but are outside the scope of combat, must also be considered. Even in Courtyard I would consider mobility a factor because it allows you to return to fighting faster. What about ressurection speed on some classes versus others? If this is included in the TTK-model you might as well call it game balance.

You do realize we are talking about thousands of variables that all interact with eachother in an environment where input follows up from 10 different sources (players) within mili-seconds? Making a small change to only a handful of these variables is going to impact thousands of scenario’s that can happen within a single PvP match.

So in this alternate reality where TKK is perfectly balanced, I guess every class also has the same attack-range? The same mobility? Every PvP match is played on Courtyard (as opposed to maps where killing the other team does not mean an automatic win)?

Since balancing videogames is so easy, could you provide 1 example of a perfectly balanced multiplayer videogame? I can’t think of any, which would mean the people making these videogames are all idiots (since it’s so easy to balance). Hell even MarioKart has a best kart setup and there are waaaaaay less variables then in an MMO like Guild Wars 2.