Guild Wars 2

I ended up renaming Gw2.dat and running gw2.exe, and it redownloaded gw2.dat. Everything seems to be working now.

Since the last update my game has started crashing after I log in when I press the “play” button. The screen goes black, and then it crashes. I sent in a crash report. Any tips?

They talked to a manager at GameStop and he took care of it. Hope the original employee got some training.

Thanks for the reply. I’m passing this on to my sister. This is why I never buy from “real stores”

What is the difference in effectiveness between someone geared in exotics and someone geared in Ascended?

According to the wiki, Ascended armor major stats sum to 1087 and exotics sum to 1003. So Ascended has 8.3% more stats. That’s a meaningful difference, but not huge. Not enough for me to grind.

Hello,

I’m trying to get my nephew to play with me, and his mom just bought him a new copy of GW2 at GameStop. His dad tried to install it last night, but couldn’t because the game code was invalid. They went back to GameStop today and GameStop wouldn’t refund their money.

My sister-in-law said that the box had previously been opened by the GameStop staff and the DVD removed for “security” reasons, and that the DVD was handed over after checkout. Obviously a customer or staff member stole the activation code when the box was opened.

This isn’t really ArenaNet’s problem, but it’s infuriating. Obviously GameStop should refund the money, but I suppose their perspective is that my nephew could have activated the code and is now trying to return a useless box.

Any suggestion on what to do?

Thanks.

Hello,

I’m trying to get my nephew to play with me, and his mom just bought him a new copy of GW2 at GameStop. His dad tried to install it last night, but couldn’t because the game code was invalid. They went back to GameStop today and GameStop wouldn’t refund their money.

My sister-in-law said that the box had previously been opened by the GameStop staff and the DVD removed for “security” reasons, and that the DVD was handed over after checkout. Obviously a customer or staff member stole the activation code when the box was opened.

This isn’t really ArenaNet’s problem, but it’s infuriating. Obviously GameStop should refund the money, but I suppose their perspective is that my nephew could have activated the code and is now trying to return a useless box.

Any suggestion on what to do?

Thanks.

How rich is “rich”? I’m pretty noob at GW2 but came over from EVE, and the GW2 market is super easy to profit from. Starting from around 10g I made about 300g in two weeks of trading before I got bored with trading and started actually playing the game again. I’m very unlikely to ever craft an Ascended item (I’ve got no crafting skills above 100), so I just don’t need money for anything. I can buy plenty of exotic items for my toons and get within 10%-15% of the min-max-meta.

Each incremental bit of performance costs more than the bit before, so when are you rich?

Ah, thanks. I just hit level 32 with my warrior, and it looks like Deep Strike and Forceful Greatsword will be my first goals.

It appears that the Axe traits are pretty weak, considering that Berserker’s Power gives a huge DPS bonus that penalizes using your adrenaline.

maxinion.8396:

intently.4502:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Most people go axe/mace since the extra vuln and knockdown are net DPS gains.

For open world roaming though, what do people do for swiftness?

Sword/warhorn (for leap on sword 2 and swiftness on wh 4)

So Sword/WH + GS? No axe? Isn’t that a big DPS loss?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Most people go axe/mace since the extra vuln and knockdown are net DPS gains.

For open world roaming though, what do people do for swiftness?

Great info, thank you everyone!

I’m really enjoying Axe/WH. The WH skills are great for pve mobility (WH4) and easily dominating overleveled mobs (WH5).

Axe1 does so much damage that I don’t really feel like I’m missing out on DPS by having a utility offhand weapon. Is there a strong offhand DPS item I should pair with my axe though? I could go Axe/WH + Axe/X, but what’s the best X?

(Also note that my warrior is level 17 now, so no traits yet.)

Thanks for the pointer!

My interpretation then is that Axe is superior to GS until you get Forceful Greatsword.

Guides seem to agree that GS is the best primary weapon for warriors, but it appears to me that the autoattack of axe is superior to the autoattack of GS. Am I wrong? It’s not obvious to me that hundred blades is better than axe autoattack.

Can someone point me to some numbers?

Thanks!

JMar.3254:

The trading post is game wide, not server wide.

Oh, thanks!

And thank to everyone else who said that level 80 Soldier’s doesn’t exist.

There is zero Soldier’s armor for sale on my server’s trading post. There are lots of armors of other kinds, but no PTV at all. Am I missing something? Do people not sell these?

Well, EM seems like it could give at most 4 stacks of might even if you crit every hit, and the radius to affect teammates is only 240, which is the size of a large symbol. In most group fights I’ve done it seems like people run around a lot and don’t stand that close together. So, in actual play do you get more than 0-1 stacks of might on any given person other than yourself?

I see THM give +20% dps with GS especially because most of the GS damage comes from skills. So usually I will use all GS skills, switch to staff and use all those skills to damage and buff, and then switch back to GS and the cooldowns are done. Rinse and repeat.

This approach is very tolerant to errors by myself and my teammates and doesn’t require any coordination.

For most of my solo PVE I’ve used GS and staff, and two-handed mastery has been awesome. Most GS dps comes from skills, so THM means 20% more dps.

So I’m just getting to level 80 and I’ve been doing some group content for the first time. GS+staff still seems to rock, and so I’m still using THM. However, from reading on the forums it appears that few people use Honor, and those who do use Empowering Might rather than THM for their Master-level trait.

What am I missing? Do people just not like GS, hammers, and staves? Or is THM not as good as it appears?

foofad.5162:

I personally hate Knight’s. I find it to be totally lackluster.

Here’s an example of a build with Berserker/Soldier mixed and here is that same build with full Knight’s. Here it is again with Knights replacing the Soldier pieces from the first.

The important thing to look at is the EHP and Effective Power. Berserker/Soldier has the highest EHP and comparatively close Effective Power. Full Knight’s has the lowest Effective Power and second lowest EHP. Knight/Berserker mix has the highest Effective Power and the lowest EHP.

If you compare the most extreme set in terms of damage with the most extreme set in terms of EHP, you trade a 30% increase in EHP for a 6% decrease in damage. I find that to be more than equitable.

Take-home message: If you want survivability and to maintain your damage, mixing in Soldier’s gear with your DPS gear is the way to do it. You’ll get a ton of EHP for the very minor sacrifice in damage.

Edited to add: Your higher base power with a full Power-Primary gear set means you get a bigger benefit from the Fury boon as well, by the way. The damage difference with Fury active changes in the above scenario to a meager 4.5%.

Thanks for all the answers!

For knight’s vs. soldier’s… the knight’s would obviously give more crits if you’ve got a build with crit effects, so could that be worth the much lower EHP? Not sure if on-crit effects are awesome or mediocre at high level.

For armor upgrades, I notice that the builds you link all have rubies instead of runes. Is that widely considered “best”? I see a lot of superior runes that look pretty good on paper.

Hello,

I’m a fresh level 80 guardian and I’m trying to decide what exotic weapons, armors, and trinkets to get. I play mostly PVE, and I’m thinking of getting a full set of berserker’s plus some knight’s pieces to swap in when I want to be tankier.

My question is: what pieces give me the best bank for the buck, if I don’t want to buy a full set of knight’s?

It appears that exotic weapons are less than 2g, whereas armor pieces are all 5g-6g. For trinkets, I can buy ascended pieces with laurels.

My current plan is to buy knight’s weapons and breastplates, since they seem to be the cheapest and contribute the most to stats.