Guild Wars 2

Hello. I haven’t played for a considerable amount of time. I am looking for a new class to re-explore the world with. My main criteria is that the class is effective in PvE, so that means fractals and raids with a weapon I enjoy the aesthetic of. If I ever (unlikely) WvW it will be with the zerg, not roaming. I will probably never pvp. My top priority is to be desirable to fractal/raid groups.

Elementalist: I only really like staff. Would this hinder me at all? I am concerned about having low hp and no armor, meaning I might die a lot. I like the idea of 1h or 2h sword which may be an option in future. I also like playing healer/support.
Warrior: I don’t like hammer, mace, horn or torch. I don’t like to mix and match weapons, so dual wielding would have to be 2 swords or 2 axes, or a shield. The new daggers look.. wrong.. for a warrior. Are the remaining options effective? Would I be forced into a non-condi spec if I didn’t want to use torch?
Mesmer: I don’t like the idea of a mage using a shield. Would that render me a bit ineffective? (I’m guessing chronomancer is the spec to be which uses a shield).
Guardian: I guess i just don’t really see the point in guardian? What are they used for? That said I only really like the sword, 2h sword, shield, bow and staff. I’m guessing they’re mostly used for WvW zergs. I don’t know if I see what they bring to a fractal/pve run? Similar dps to a warrior but way more fragile?
Rev: I know nothing about this class. How are they in fractals/raids?
Necromancer: Only interested in staff or 2h sword. How would that work out?
Druid: Pretty much the only way I’d like to play a ranger. What are they like when played effectively? Are healer druids useful in fractals or only in larger raid settings? Do they use spirits? I don’t particularly like the look of the spirits.

Night capping was one of the main things which killed Shadowbane (wvw style pvp). I’m surprised more than 10 years later we’re suffering from the same design flaws.

Like full tank items and build. Ventari gear I guess. The only focus is on not dying.

I’m trying to decide whether to main my guard or rev as a tank/healer if anyone has any opinions on that.

What is the common build for nomad/ventari guard now? I want to compare it to what the common tank/heal build for rev is.

Which would make better use of my full ventari gear?

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

low mmr

I really don’t think enough people take pvp in this game seriously enough for “mmr” to actually be a thing.

This shows how long I haven’t played for, but where’s sigil of bloodlust? Do people not use those anymore?

Or are they better off used at 80 for spirit shards?
JW because my revenant needs levels and I have a load of these sitting around from when I played ages ago.

Been a while since I looked at this game and wvw in particular.
How are the different servers and tiers doing?

Apologies if this sort of thing is not allowed?

http://strawpoll.me/5842077

So far it looks like necro and revenant are the most popular and most satisfied. Thieves are the most unhappy followed by rangers and warriors.

TheWhitevulture.9382:

The copper-fed-salvage -o- matic however, I would recommend getting in any case. It’s simply put the handiest item in the whole game.

That good huh? I kinda thought it was useless since it has less chance to get good salvaged items than the kits?

Thank you

The ones in the gem store..
are they worth buying for a new character with no bank or bag slots?

Account jump:
30 Account-Bound Unidentified Dyes
15 Transmutation Charges
2 Bag Slot Expansions
2 Bank Tab Expansions
10 Black Lion Chest Keys
2000 gems (worth 290g if you convert the gems to gold instead?)

3 Bag slots
Copper Fed Salvage -o- matic
3 unlimited use tools
10 Transmutation charges
10 Experience Scrolls
3500 gems (worth 500g if you convert the gems to gold instead?)

I used to have a guardian with two sets of ascended gear (zerker and cleric) but I quit playing ages ago.
I’d kind of like to give gw2 another try with the expansion.. but I do not want to play guardian.

Would I have to regrind all the asc gear again if I wanted to play another class other than warrior/revenant? Is it still pretty hard to do? It feels a big shame if I have to just ditch my asc gear. I probably won’t bother with the expansion if I have to regrind that gear.

Or do people bypass asc gear and go straight for legendary now?

Amaya.1483:

This is an MMO, please take your time to accomplish something or you are probably better of in a differen genre.

You’re about several years too late with that sort of attitude. The genre has changed.

I doubt the raids are going to be on the same level as heroic 10-man firefighter mimiron style encounters. GW2 has a massive casual playerbase, even the ‘difficult’ raids/fotms will cater for a large amount of the playerbase. It simply doesn’t make sense to focus so much of their development resource on something a small amount of players will gravitate towards; we have seen this approach plenty of times from anet.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

We have already seen in the silverwastes that a good consistant Regen and Good support is needed for success while Full Zerker Maps can easly fail because they have not covered all Anets roles only providing 80% damage 10% CC , 10% support .

I have never been to silverwastes (possible returning player). Can you go into more detail about why full zerker maps often fail at silverwastes? I’m keen to understand what anet have done to make it require diversity.

I think arena net have learnt a lot about class design in gw2 over the last few years. You can tell by how each of the legends offers a unique playstyle and the weapons and traits clearly synergise with the playstyles. I think revenent will be the first class to truly offer the ability to play how you want and be effective with whatever your goal is. For that reason I’m switching my guardian for a revenent if I return. Rev feels more like a guardian than guardian anyway. Not sure what happened to guardian but they are certainly not fitting the theme.

just need to be able to swap my heavy armor for light/medium now

#freaks out#

/15charrs

I just saw a vid on youtube which looked like an engineer using grenades without a hobo sack.

Did this happen? If so I might finally play an engi.

Kraljevo.2801:

TBH, the only thing I like about it is the new aura.

Radius is way too small.

This has always been the problem with support / group heal / boon abilities. The small radius encourages stacking, and stacking encourages zerker metas.

[quote=5197943;Kraljevo.2801:]

Possible returning player here.
Tempted to come back when I read that I could change the stats on my ascended gear. Can I also change the armor type? The only character with ascended gear I have is my guardian and the changes to that class look awful. Am I stuck with guard/warrior/revenent or can I try something else?

Can someone summarise the changes to burn for me please? Why can it tick for so much now?

I don’t get where you’re coming from Obtena. The backline support option is sans a longbow. The low radius heal support option comes with a longbow. If anything it should be the other way around. You’re choosing lemon cake with ketchup, and bacon rolls with icing sugar. They should be paired the other way around.

Why would you put the support-y ability with signets? The trait is in our DPS line.

And the shout ability is geared towards offense, yet our shout traits are in our support line.

I understand you might be trying to balance things out, but that sort of thing is just counter-intuitive. IMO the heal should be the shout and the quickness should be the signet. Then I might finally have a reason to unlock GM traits for radiance on my 2h sword guardian.

Only 600 range and 240 radius?
If dragonhunter is meant to be dishing out support, I’d MUCH prefer my old 1200 range 3 condi clear insta heal.
This will only promote stacking. Again.

Morsus.5106:

Except, well, everyone is hunting Dragons, not just the Guardian.

No, you guys are merely fighting them. Hoping to defend your cities. Dragon hunters are hunting them down and purging them from Tyria with zealous fury and righteous justice. Or something like that.

I view traps as another style of consecration. Warding an area with magical glyphs. Yes, sure, come attack me or my friends.. But this ground will sap your strength, blind you, heal me, and set you on fire. Come at me bro.

Speak for yourselves. You all can fight the dragons, defend against them, protect the weak. I hunt them.

Shield of courage is going to be insane. It will have great use in wvw and pve (block one shot abilities for your team). The Mace block skill is likely being upgraded to this, as is shield #5.

I like it. The name is strange but I like the trap idea and have wanted a bow for ages.

From the dragon hunter reveal :
"
please note that we’d like each new virtue to retain properties of the traits that affect them, such as Renewed Justice and Justice is Blind. When not recharging, they’ll still have passive effects so that you can continue to provide Battle Presence and provide your allies with a full health pool as you currently do."

Currently afaik battle presence passive is shared to your allies even when virtue is on Cooldown. Does this wording imply they changed that?

Nomad / cleric is brilliant in high level fractals if your group is not very good. You will make the whole run a lot easier. If your group is good then you will not be as much use, but still useful as your ability to facetank will cause the target to be stationary and allow easy melee rotations from your zerkers. In easier fractals and dungeons the content is so easy there is little reason not to bring as much dps as possible.

Thanks
15 chars

And another elite spec weapon we haven’t yet seen?

I was once advised this by a member of the gw2 support team:

“Your forum account status does not affect anything related to your game account at all. You could be permabanned on the forums, but yet have a great account in-game. There is no reason for your forum account status to be tied to your game account status. The only thing that ties the two together is your login.”

Probably to balance the high hp/s and condition removal.

Ether renewal has one of the highest base heals per second in the game. With bonus condition removal.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

They are also one of the squishiest classes and require a fair investment of time to learn to play properly.

This misconception has always bothered me. Elementalist has never been hard to play.

I just want the tome bugs fixed. Currently however much protection you have when leaving tome form, even if other people applied protection to you or you buffed yourself.. You lose it all.

I really like the new trait system. It encourages traiting to define your style rather than effectiveness. With clear decisions to be made, rather than trying to combine too many parts of too many trees.

Did I read these articles right? I can be 0/0/6/6/6 valor, honour, virtue and still have 100% zerker stats? No more healing power and toughness?

I prefer the current abilities to those ones.

Useless for dungeons, great for wvw zergballs, great for un-organised high level fractal pug groups. Not so great in high level fractal pug groups that are all top tier players.

As a potential returning player, the prospect of levelling up a new character sounds great – until I remember that I will need something like 500g for the crafting professions I already had on my main, another ~360 or so for the armor, and 200g or so for weapons.

Not so bad if all you want to do is roll an alt, because you can always give up and be happy with your main… but how do new players feel about this? If it’s enough to put me off rolling a new character for HoT surely it’s enough to put off new players?

Apolo.5942:

People use Zerker builds because the damage in fractals is so kitten high (on the upper end) that everything one shots you, regardless of what you are wearing or what your build is.

Speak for yourself. My Ventari Guardian can tank pretty much any boss in fotm49+ and survive just fine. I do it to keep things stationary and easy for the zerker pugs in my party.

Good posts Faythe. Yes the dps will suffer in theory, but I have found that by facetanking bosses to keep them stationary, keeping everyone at 100%hp for scholars, encouraging melee rather than safer ranged options, reducing the movement they need to avoid taking damage etc – the overall dps does not suffer by as much as you would think in the average pug.

My favorite example of this is Mai Trin. Consider 5 ranged pugs trying to ranged kite her, missing shadowstep dodges, and generally having a bad day. Now consider an experienced healer guardian telling them to stack on him and melee her down while he keeps everyone at 100% without breaking a sweat. Which is more likely to down her faster?

Considering all of the pit stops and trash mobs speedrunners would have skipped, portals, jumping routes etc not used… I think 8 mins is perfectly reasonable for a pug considering you lowered the skill requirement to make it a quick run by a decent amount.

You only have to look at the forum/reddit post counts vs the speedrun contest view numbers vs the anet financial statements to conclude that although the forums are a vocal crew, the number of people hugely worried about everyone being perfectly performing zerkers 100% of the time and blitzing content is quite simply tiny.

Yes but not as you know it. Megaserver was the foundation. Challenging group content simply means open world bosses and events tweaked to be done by a specific number of players on a zone map private to them.