Guild Wars 2

maddoctor.2738:

Bratec.7136:

I played many MMOs with teamwork groups. Never i heard that “melee stacking” equals teamwork.

When you stack you get buffs, you get buffs from your team mates -> teamwork.
When you don’t stack and run around like a headless chicken you do not cooperate with your team mates, you do not buff, nor receive buffs -> no teamwork.

As for your other MMOs in a lot of MMOs I’ve played, like most of them, they did not place such importance in buffs. Even the giant of MMORPGs has only a handful of buffs and most abilities buff yourself, instead of buffing others. Therefore, there is no need for players to stay at such a close range because buffs play a much less important role, it’s all about doing dps, healing and holding aggro.

In GW2 the big three, PS, Chrono and Druid can triple the damage output of the team (group of 5). Therefore, buffs in this game are the absolute king and maximizing those buffs (by being close together) is how you can finish content in the fastest and most efficient way.

This is a game of buffs, while in most other MMORPGs party wide buffs (with limited duration) are rare

WoW became a game of ‘Simon Says’, and peeps were fast and efficient screaming at anyone who didn’t do as ‘Simon’ said. As a game after a few years it became considerably less enjoyable if you were not a friend of Simon.

Careful what you wish for!

maddoctor.2738:

lilypop.7819:

Maybe, but the key drawback of ranger melee is that the pet will steal buffs etc from another group player. So for group melee, rangers would also have to stow their pet.

You cannot stow your pet in combat.
The pet won’t steal buffs because players have higher priority than pets

My error.

Ashen.2907:

lilypop.7819:

It’s wrong to say Ranger are suboptimal when ranged.

An LB Ranger will have a pet that gains melee buffs and can buff in turn, will stack invulnerability and heal peeps around the target. The latter two mean that ranged Ranger will do less damage than buffed melee group members for balance reasons. But this is only suboptimal if your only yardstick is damage delivered by a player.

Another utility in LB Ranger in a group is that they or their pet can quickly revive downed players if the group is smart enough to move the target when this happens.

Also note that a key feature of LB Ranger is the ability to damage all foes in the line of sight of the arrows – as such the Ranger has to continuously move at ranged to max their damage – which few do ofc No minor ability in Pvp/WvW but usually pointless in boss fights.

In addition many bosses have weak dps but strong buffing adds that sit at a distance, Ranger is the ideal profession to deal with these – ofc many Rangers don’t.
Do
In contrast, Ranger as melee – currently – is quite weak even when buffed etc. The Ranger profession – even as Druid! – is inherently optimal at ranged.

It’s sad that so many berate the Ranger players for not fighting melee – which makes the profession quite pointless for the Ranger player. Ranger is actually a very good group profession and I suspect the real problem is other players poor mindset and the fact that a weak ranger player’s failings tend to be more obvious to other players.

It’s certainly at very fun profession to play and others players need to loosen up a bit and not be so dogmatic whilst ranger players learn their craft!

Ofc it doesn’t help one bit that the game has no build template system, but there you go.

The fact that the ranger has some things to do that might, might, be situationally useful doesnt mean that they are not suboptimal when playing at range. For what it is worth, there are multiple other professions that are better at dealing with the strong adds that you mention.

I am not arguing rangers are best of profession at this or that, I am pointing out that ranged ranger makes contributions that may not be so obvious to non-ranger players or are measureable via dps meters.

Frankly the reason I stopped playing WoW was because of dps fanaticism, it would be a shame for GW2 to be reduced to such narrow simplicity as that once great game. I for one would think twice before telling another player how to play their class/profession merely because I know what the game end point is. If you go the black/white route you end up with a black/white game.

Also note that raid bosses are designed to have very narrow success windows, it’s foolish to apply that rubric to all engagements. This is essentially where WoW went awry after a few years, the developers didn’t make the game boring, the player base did.

Astralporing.1957:

lilypop.7819:

zoomborg.9462:

I wouldnt go as far as to say that ranged combat sucks….but longbow ranger is flat out useless….even blurred frenzy does more dmg than that crap.

Making buff aoes higher would completely break the gameplay, especially in wvw. They are fine as they are and reward groups with proper positioning. If u wanna roleplay do it in divinity’s reach pls, not fractals.

LB Ranger stacks invulnerability. If that was all the ranger did they would be adding approximately one half member damage in the standard group before you add in any LB dps the ranger is directly credited with.

LB Ranger can also AoE heal around their target. No credit for this either I suspect.

LB Ranger can also strike anything in their arrows line of sight. No credit for this either I suspect.

So yes LB Ranger pinging at distance on a dps target dummy is going to have low dps.

Notice that, with the exception of piercing (which is a really poor substitute for cleave) everything else is not dependant on the “LB” part of “LB Ranger”. A melee one can do all of that as well.

Maybe, but the key drawback of ranger melee is that the pet will steal buffs etc from another group player. So for group melee, rangers would also have to stow their pet.

My point was the LB contribution is deceptive for group play.

zoomborg.9462:

I wouldnt go as far as to say that ranged combat sucks….but longbow ranger is flat out useless….even blurred frenzy does more dmg than that crap.

Making buff aoes higher would completely break the gameplay, especially in wvw. They are fine as they are and reward groups with proper positioning. If u wanna roleplay do it in divinity’s reach pls, not fractals.

LB Ranger stacks invulnerability. If that was all the ranger did they would be adding approximately one half member damage in the standard group before you add in any LB dps the ranger is directly credited with.

LB Ranger can also AoE heal around their target. No credit for this either I suspect.

LB Ranger can also strike anything in their arrows line of sight. No credit for this either I suspect.

So yes LB Ranger pinging at distance on a dps target dummy is going to have low dps.

It’s wrong to say Ranger are suboptimal when ranged.

An LB Ranger will have a pet that gains melee buffs and can buff in turn, will stack invulnerability and heal peeps around the target. The latter two mean that ranged Ranger will do less damage than buffed melee group members for balance reasons. But this is only suboptimal if your only yardstick is damage delivered by a player.

Another utility in LB Ranger in a group is that they or their pet can quickly revive downed players if the group is smart enough to move the target when this happens.

Also note that a key feature of LB Ranger is the ability to damage all foes in the line of sight of the arrows – as such the Ranger has to continuously move at ranged to max their damage – which few do ofc No minor ability in Pvp/WvW but usually pointless in boss fights.

In addition many bosses have weak dps but strong buffing adds that sit at a distance, Ranger is the ideal profession to deal with these – ofc many Rangers don’t.

In contrast, Ranger as melee – currently – is quite weak even when buffed etc. The Ranger profession – even as Druid! – is inherently optimal at ranged.

It’s sad that so many berate the Ranger players for not fighting melee – which makes the profession quite pointless for the Ranger player. Ranger is actually a very good group profession and I suspect the real problem is other players poor mindset and the fact that a weak ranger player’s failings tend to be more obvious to other players.

It’s certainly at very fun profession to play and others players need to loosen up a bit and not be so dogmatic whilst ranger players learn their craft!

Ofc it doesn’t help one bit that the game has no build template system, but there you go.

Ameepa.6793:

It just is like that with laptops. No one knows why. Your FPS is fine.

Laptops have a tendency to use a single RAM stick – with a spare slot for expansion – whereas at a minimum desktops use two sticks. If I remember right GW2 takes a 50% hit on FPS is you go from dual to single channel RAM. Many laptops motherboards won’t even do dual with two ram sticks, the reason for this is that for many tasks, dual channel ram yields little difference in performance, and those task that do you won’t use a laptop for.

Generally speaking laptops are half as powerful as desktops for the same technology year. The reason for this is power consumption, there is no magic way for laptops to make more of power that isn’t also available to desktops, and games are designed for desktops.

Also note that if you go to the cinema the film you’re watching is 30FPS, lack of stutter/tearing is more important than fps – above 20fps say.

megilandil.7506:

from the point of view of a poor silver/ low gold scrub(me) problem whith the condi spam becomes dramatic when you get a 3rd condi user in enemy team, builds and players are ok whith the usuall 2 condi users you get , a mess and a necro, but in the mix you put a condi ranger or a burn guardian (two weak specs with a high condi burst)there is no clean to manage it if you dont have a pocket ele cleandbot that completely nullify the 3 condi users.
as said many times there is no condi meta, condis are balanced with the insane amount of condi cears but … when more than half enemy team run condis and you dont have the cleanse major ofender (ele) near this becomes broken and unplayable

Would very much agree with this, the matchmaker attempts to balance up professions but NOT build types. Hence a lot of games are actually decided by the matchmaker.

I have suggested elsewhere – giving the very nature of PvP gameplay and I suspect game mechanic exploits – that condi burst needs to be balanced with movement impairment effects, i.e. spam-a-lot <—> slow-a-lot.

Skyhammer points are essentially 3D and unique in the game. It’s great fun once you realise this.

It screws up many of the meta specs nicely hence why many hate Skyhammer.

If you’re not meta or prefer you own thing Skyhammer should be the map of choice.

Not sure if burst condi damage is bad. What IS bad design is encouraging the tactic of running around the victim to exploit the targeting systems appalling lag (or bugs?) and thereby negate any counters EXCEPT cleanse.

High condi burst just has too many game mechanic exploits in PvP.

A simple solution would be to make some casting static only, then the skill is with the caster and not the poor quality of some parts of the game engine. The real problem for PvP is combining high DoT burst with high mobility. An alternative is a general mechanic that slows movement say 1% for every DoT active, then you have a counter other than cleanse – not a great one ofc but one requiring a bit of thought rather than key mash, i.e. you could go too far with the spamming in some situations and hence skill is required. There is some justice to this, if the victim can’t runaway from the DoT damage shouldn’t the DoTter receive a movement penalty? DoT till you’re immobile?
The other reason for this suggestion is that with the rising number of leap effects snare effects are becoming defensively worthless. If you want to be more positive you could instead say add a 1% movement buff for every DoT on the victim.

Personally I think high melee professions shouldn’t be capable of high spell damage and v.v., After all we are not restricted to one character only. The problem with ability spread is that it makes professions pointless, countering this with elite specs will in the end be pointless as well. But it’s not my game or livelihood, however other games with a more distinct classes/professions became more attractive as GW2 rolls onward.

Put simply you don’t roll a thief to be a great sharpshooter, nor a ranger to be a great healer, or a warrior to burn people to death etc. I mean where does this end? Why not just dump professions totally and have the elite roles, and of course remove all the garbage abilities that no doubt add pointless lag/processing to the game engine.

Mudifcation keeps designers employed but in the end kills a RP game. ESOL looks a more attractive investment with limited game time with every additional cross-profession elite spec added to the game.

Time and time again I have seen 20+ peeps in WvW target and fail to kill a running thief.

I-Win OR I-Run just makes a mockery of everyone else’s gameplay. It’s as if the game designer wants to mock anyone foolish enough to play WvW. Whether its OP or not, it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. End of.

Simple cure is to tag a ‘cannot de-target’ effect for a small period onto jump effects. Thieves are not the only ones who exploit the game’s dire targeting mechanism – which after five years still seems to have an unfair spew of micro-bugs.

The problem with the condi spammers types is that there is no way to achieve distance from them once they attach, they all seem to have leap & snare abilities and are well capable is nullify anything the victim has. It’s an ugly way to fight but highly effective..

The point is that the spammer can more or less completely ignore what the victim is doing as the mechanic is the same irrespective of profession – except another leech ofc.

My poor wee Ranger is becoming more and more thief like with every session – I have to wait till I see the leech’s back or adopt a position where leaps don’t work, anything flat and I need assistance. Becoming a very poor profession to be honest, at the moment I can’t hold or delay point loss for love or money – which leads to a heck of a lot of abuse from other players who spam ‘fight on point’ burb.

I have played five professions for about four years and Guardian is the most ‘naturally’ solid. You can spec them for auto-micro-heals and 25% movement without too much of a compromise in PvE. The addition of bow-and-arrow dynamic makes them equally solid in HoT against nasty HoT mobbing. A joy to play if a little limited on direct damage output – in HoT, not dying is far more important than in core maps. Very handy profession to have to drop into new maps!

Would also agree Rangers can be very solid as well, in time.

Neat new one for me – four years playing!

Another feature that is not some obvious is that when your overall world % complete gets high enough you get a screen pointer in the top right corner to the nearest missing point on the current map – not always useful but helps. Think the trigger is above 90% complete.

RedCobra.7693:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

lilypop.7819:

Yes that that is why PvP will never be popular in GW2. Such huge burst builds just wreck the low-level game. As for counters the trend now is for one-shots to tag-team up and blow player after player away, irrespective of player skill etc. Players leave PvP faster than the one-shooters rank up, low-rank Qs get longer and long because of the low-pop of low-level players.

The solution is to regressively cap burst damage by rank. That way high burst / glass cannon would not be an option at low levels, and consequently more players would have the time to learn – rather that merely grab there profession one-shot build from a web page – and progress up ranks.

As is, broken, with no evidence of any learning whatsoever from the devs over the last four or so years. The only thing keeping PvP afloat are the quick dailies, sans these. PvP is wasted pixels.

No

also no,

new players should be learning on a completely different meta?? because thats what it will be then they will have to change meta to fight better players? that sounds even more oppressive for newer players.

PvP was essentially designed as a eSports game with professional gameplay. 1-shot builds would have been weak in such an environment just as they are weak in high-level ranked on common servers.

BUT these builds inhibit the grown of PvP because they greatly discourage casuals and new players. Ofc they can load their profession one-shotter and join in only to discover the build weakest as they rank up. How is this any different from my suggestion – isn’t the low-level game being full of one-shotter no a different meta as well??

The other factor is that such huge burst damage stats argue against an anyone-can-play mentality because technical factors come into the game (which would be meaningless in eSport professional play ofc) – for example I could argue that ranking is merely a measure of the PC/connection quality of the player rather than skill. If player A hears that little bell sound 0.25 of a second later than Player B, can Player A ever advance past rank 1000 given the scale of one-shotter in the lowbie game?

Ofc I don’t have the stats but I am absolutely certain that such builds will argue against the growth of PvP, as the last four years clearly suggest.

Capping burst damage by rank is worth a thought or too, existing high level PvPers would be unaffected but it might just encourage more people to stay with PvP, unless ofc the intent is to make PvP elite only.

Ithilwen.1529:

There is no such thing as a Mesmer one-shot kill. There is a burst which uses up several skill slots and happens rapidly.

The same can be said of DH, War and pretty much every other class.

Yes that that is why PvP will never be popular in GW2. Such huge burst builds just wreck the low-level game. As for counters the trend now is for one-shots to tag-team up and blow player after player away, irrespective of player skill etc. Players leave PvP faster than the one-shooters rank up, low-rank Qs get longer and long because of the low-pop of low-level players.

The solution is to regressively cap burst damage by rank. That way high burst / glass cannon would not be an option at low levels, and consequently more players would have the time to learn – rather that merely grab there profession one-shot build from a web page – and progress up ranks.

As is, broken, with no evidence of any learning whatsoever from the devs over the last four or so years. The only thing keeping PvP afloat are the quick dailies, sans these. PvP is wasted pixels.

Kinda of assuming the cast is working as intended, I have my doubts.

Imagine if DH traps moved with the DH, that’s the effect. “Snare and Hoover”.

4secs is a hellishly long cast, DH have a 2sec full group heal and I have never found it of much use nor apparently has anyone else. So the ele comes up behind or to the side of you whilst you are fighting another and presses that one button and you’re dead because once that first tick hits you get the next 9 no matter what, ~30K over 5 secs on a single button press. Makes a joke of condi thieves to say the least.

Obviously in a higher level game such eles with this build would get there name-tags noticed and everyone on the team would target them on sight for an easy kill. So its only really effective in the low level game where it gives one profession a simple “I-Win” button and causes some degree of rage-quitting. As I said, four year old game ….

Well my poor wee DH is getting stomped by Fire Eles doing 30k damage (100% crits) plus 50% heal inside 5 seconds. Seen this over a dozen times, huge burn, huge crits and a tidy heal. Only draw back seems to be a 4 secs cast time, negated by tag teaming with invis profession. Max target 3. Overload Fire can do 10 times it’s base damage, 2 to 3K per person hits 10 times (for one button press) – to 3 people max inside 5 secs -with 7K follow up. (two buttons)

Press one button and chase….absolute joke in a game this old.

Sure it hoovers up lowbies and kills pvp for many newbies and is a build that wouldn’t fair too well at non-lowbie levels but who at Anet thought this was a good idea!

I can accept thieves having high burst damage because they can be weak in other aspects and there are counters that force them to have care, but here we have a build which can easily wipe 3 players out with ONE button press! Way to go Anet. Ho Ho Ho.

First two are definitely the most important. However :-

6: dont use sieges

I would disagree with. Sure if your trying to open a gate or wall, leave if you have low masteries. But really people need to get used to using siege and the sooner the better as most group fights go to the biggest unless you use siege.

I have seen siege unused far more than inefficiently used. It particularly bugs me when defending a point/fort than the siege is not being used.

Agree regards DRR3/DDR4 prices. I tend to look only at one vendors prices as I have never had any problems with their sticks. Motherboards are another matter I kinda like a bit of history with them.

The pull for the new stuff just isn’t there for me so anything bought needs to be ultra cheap to justify the spend. The new stuff seems to be targeted at games that don’t yet exist.

Sounds like your internet connection is dropping bandwidth, is it shared? Some cheap ISP providers may give you random bandwidth dips as well.

You need to monitor your PC internet download data rates and see if the dips correspond to the fps dips – you can do this crudely with the task manager graphics ` you can also expect dips in cpu loading as well if this is the cause. Would certainly rule this out before doing anything to your PC.

If you are using WiFi be aware there are things in the environment that can distribute the 2.4Ghz channel – you can actually switch to an alternative channel on the same frequency. However it is not unknown for a simple light switch or thermostat to briefly jigger a wi-fi signal.

Anyway check that the problem is within the PC and not outside it!

Note, if you have Win 10 it is simple and harmless to engage Game Mode – suggested as may be an easy cure. Who knows…

Try running GW2 windowed and not full screen.

ArchonWing.9480:

lilypop.7819:

Fermi.2409:

Especially if you’re just playing GW2, you’re going to be immensely better off with a Pentium G4560 instead of an Athlon CPU.

That being said, you can muddle by in GW2 with incredibly low specs but you will see massive performance increases by not buying absolute bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Even with It’s especially obnoxious when you’re always recommending this stuff in threads where the OP is looking to spend a much larger amount of money.

It doesn’t matter if a build has the absolute most frames per dollar if it isn’t close to the tier of PC/level of performance that someone wants. And the double whammy is when the recommendation isn’t even the best in the price range.

but I am not sure of the worth of 4K gaming in general – and clearly a bit pointless where GW2 is concerned

Every game out there will benefit from a higher resolution if you have the hardware to drive it. GW2 is no different, although there are (apparently) issues with UI scaling above 1440P

How could I be immensely better off with a G4560 when I don’t see a significant benefit with an i5 when actually playing GW2? Seriously I gave an honest opinion above, I switch between the two PCs every week there are minor differences of little worth – to me anyway.

The g4560 is less than $60 so just as cheap, and has a modern upgrade path.

Go to Teq (or a world boss of your choosing), HoT maps, and report your fps/resolution.

From experience, it is true that for regular play it’s not really that big of a difference, but weaker processors tend to suffer from worse lows.

And even excluding this, I am not really sure if it’s wise to build a PC around a single game. That’s why I recommend SSDs because the OS performs better, even if actual game performance does not increase. But you can’t really avoid using an OS so….

As far as I can see the G4560 makes the i3 series very close to redundant as far as games are concerned. And yes its a cheap CPU but the mobo/DDR4 Ram are not so cheap. Therefore the upgrade path is an i5. The price of the G4560 feels like bait-and-switch marketing to me. Frankly I would target a 6-core Ryzen 5 at present if your buying a complete system in the $500 to $1000 price range.

Alternatively, I recently purchased a second-hand FM2+ crossfire mobo with USB 3.1 + 3.1c + M2 SDD PCI slot plus a A10 7870 plus 16Gb of 2400MHz DDR3 Ram for less than the cost of the Ryzen 5 1400 CPU. The stuff is less than 6 months old and I already have an never-used 240GB SDD plus used 2TB HDD and available Win 10 Pro licence. I know what this PC could do for GW2 gaming – if I come across a cheap RX-460 over the next year I might just give it a go but I expect my existing FM2+ gaming PC to outlast GW2.

I can’t see GW3 being on the horizon within the next 3 years – next expansion would be Nov and probably 2 years of gameplay afterwards.

Truth is I have tried quite a few games and have found GW2 to be the most enjoyable by far.

Fermi.2409:

Especially if you’re just playing GW2, you’re going to be immensely better off with a Pentium G4560 instead of an Athlon CPU.

That being said, you can muddle by in GW2 with incredibly low specs but you will see massive performance increases by not buying absolute bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Even with It’s especially obnoxious when you’re always recommending this stuff in threads where the OP is looking to spend a much larger amount of money.

It doesn’t matter if a build has the absolute most frames per dollar if it isn’t close to the tier of PC/level of performance that someone wants. And the double whammy is when the recommendation isn’t even the best in the price range.

but I am not sure of the worth of 4K gaming in general – and clearly a bit pointless where GW2 is concerned

Every game out there will benefit from a higher resolution if you have the hardware to drive it. GW2 is no different, although there are (apparently) issues with UI scaling above 1440P

How could I be immensely better off with a G4560 when I don’t see a significant benefit with an i5 when actually playing GW2? Seriously I gave an honest opinion above, I switch between the two PCs every week there are minor differences of little worth – to me anyway.

Regards the Intel G-series CPU I have always found them attractive for games till I looked at the full specification and realised how Intel are protecting there i3-series. These CPUs are clearly cheap because they are likely to have a lower practical lifecycle before you have to upgrade to another Intel CPU a couple of years down the line if you are gaming – Intel are not stupid and there is a bait-and-switch feeling about the G-series. Frankly I prefer the X4 860 because in a couple of years time I’ll be using it for non-gaming tasks whereas the G4560 would have significantly less utility in this respective. It’s a judgement call, do you upgrade the CPU or relegate a older PC and buy a new one. Personally I have on the whole been disappointed with the long term benefits of PC upgrades, you usually find the upgrade was a pointless waste a year or so later.

That aside I would rather have an old 4-core (X4 860) than an old 2-core (G/i3) if the starting point was roughly the same. Quite frankly where new gaming titles are concerned 2-core CPUs will have as much utility as 2-wheeled cars in the future. For $570 I would still aim for a 6-core CPU/Mobo/Ram combo even if this means very basic components elsewhere – something retailers will never offer in off-the-shelf PCs – they’re not stupid either! In doing so I would be looking 6 years ahead and expect very good value for my money across the whole period.

Xanctus is right. If there is one thing that drives noobs away from PvP matches it’s 2 sec deaths. You have no time to learn anything and who the wants to play a game that requires browsing and studying of youTubes and forums to enjoy to just START to improve?

The low end rank of this season is completely broken as low-play / low Q-time players are being channelled into matches with high play / high Q-times / high burst spec players.

A win is a roll of the matching dice and peeps catch onto to that pretty quick.

I play 3 matches a night only because I wanted to clear AC on all my professions. After this season it’s 1 game and off. Enjoy the 2 secs of fun huge burst spec deliver and those ever longer Q-times …

One solution is to have capped damage queues in a similar manner as boxing weights. A player can then choose what weight to fight at and by-pass the never-going-to-work-across-the-player-gametime-range ranking system. This way instead of X-pip PvPers you had 1k/2k/3k/4k/5k/6K/etc/no-limit Pvpers. A player who had a X win/lose ratio after 100 matches would advance to the next ‘k-weight’ and a Y win/lose ratio would drop a ‘K-weight’. Ks would only fight Ks of the same wait.

The important thing is to give peeps fighting time to learn – giving that the combat log is the biggest heap of mince in the game.

A capped damage scheme would also increase spec variety – not a bad thing imo.

I also suspect that map tactics will improve as well, my guess at low-ranks is that peeps just roll high burst (this seasons build for profession X) and solo whatever the map or team make-up or opposite team make-up.

Dawdler.8521:

lilypop.7819:

Best value for performance for GW2 atm:-

Fm2+ mobo
Athlon X4 860
Rx-460

You’ll get 40 to 60 fps on near max settings for probably the next 3 years.

There is ofc a reason for the extremely low cost to performance ratios but if you’re only interested in GW2 you can save a lot of pennies/cents and buy lots of goodies in game.

If anyone buys that well then they deserve the potato they get. Add like $150 to the cost and you can probably make that a Ryzen 1400/RX570 instead and at least reach budget gaming.

The idea that you get 40-60 fps on near max settings with that is laughable. I didnt even get that with a 980Ti in many zones. Not to mention other games.

I am speaking from experience. I have one gaming PC based on the above spec and another based on a i5/RX-470/16GB spec. The differences are minor as far as GW2 gameplay is concerned – the main noticeable differences are in small graphical artefacts which without being able to instantly compare would be unnoticeable and in terms of dynamic gameplay I have the feeling that in PvP there is slightly more graphical lag with the lower spec PC – but that is of on consequence as I am not a high rolling PvPer. All minor and certainly not worth troubling about. ANY big zerg will drop the fps on BOTH PCs by undeterminable amounts, but the lower PC still gives decent gameplay under these circumstances – for me anyway giving the frequency of the such events.

Really GW2 does not require an expensive PC. My comments refers to GW2 only and I would fully accept that more recent games and new titles would most definitely argue for a higher spec PC. But is GW2 is your game of choice hen the spec I have giving is extremely good value and will allow pretty much most of what people do non-gaming wise as well.

FYI: The X4-860 is currently selling at double the price-to-performance of the best Ryzen CPUs – quite unbelievably cheap imo (the low-spec 1400 is approx. three times the price) – and the RX-460 can easily deliver quality that few would criticise as far as GW2 graphics go. Both these components are cheap as vendors clear stocks – may not last long ofc.

GW2 is heading for GW1 status, playable on almost any 4 core and most 2-core machine (excluding sub 20w TDP CPUs designed for HD steaming) with recent sub-100 GBP GPU. Those with high spec machines may resent this but I suspect this trend is what is keeping GW2 popular. This should be welcomed by all fans of the game.

If you love GW2 spend your pennies/cents in-game!

In general if I was buying a completely new PC with an eye for the next 6 or so years I would absolutely ensure it had 6+ cores, as this would be the only way such a cost could be justified – especially if you add in the huge cost of a 4K monitor. If you’re looking at 4-core then go for the cheapest-that-will-do-now as the lifespan is likely to be far shorter when considering the unreleased games to come. ATM the newer hardware is too pricy for 1080p gaming – different story if you have an existing 4K monitor (but I am not sure of the worth of 4K gaming in general – and clearly a bit pointless where GW2 is concerned). Just my 2-cents ofc!

BTW: Cheapest I have seen this week for the x4 is 53 and for the rx-460 75, both from amazon uk. Shockingly good value if you can source a 50 FM2+ mobo and recover bits and bobs from your existing machine! For say a 180 spend, a bit of knowledge and roughly 2-days fiddling about – thank you Microsoft! – you could give a 4+ year old 2-core/1080p PC a heck of a bump whilst the dust to settles on the 6-core/4K builds over the next few years. Worth considering …

Best value for performance for GW2 atm:-

Fm2+ mobo
Athlon X4 860
Rx-460

You’ll get 40 to 60 fps on near max settings for probably the next 3 years.

There is ofc a reason for the extremely low cost to performance ratios but if you’re only interested in GW2 you can save a lot of pennies/cents and buy lots of goodies in game.

Would always wait a few weeks with a problem like this. The reason is that Window 10 updates for older hardware can cause problems, which giving that it’s old stuff they are slow in fixing – same would apply to your GPU vendor.

Another possibility with an old computer is that the PSU has degraded, and that when pushed the one or more of the power lines is dropping below spec causing the motherboard to disable this bit or that – ie like randomly dropping the network and/or GPU but keeping the CPU/Mobo powered

If giving the choice I would guess the PSU is the problem. In general hard worked PSUs are more like to degrade faster than non-OCed hard worked GPUs.

Check for disabling of IC components by looking at Win 10’s Event Viewer – look for recent big red exclamation marks ! corresponding to the time of the crash.

Frankly I would consider replacing the PSU anyway after 6 or more years since if it pops it’s possible to take a few more things with when it does and good PSUs are obtainable for a relatively low cost compared to the current worth of the older computer.

You can buy good solid old ex-business (and hence never driven hard) PSU for around 10 to 20 GBP. The are actually far better than retail PSUs but tend to have exacting cable lengths for particular business PCs and ofc not as pretty as the ones costing three times the price of retail PSUs

If I was spending this sort of money on new kit, I would make sure it had 6 cores – even if this is of little consequence to GW2.

Whatever response Intel make to AMD over the next few years it’s not going to be significantly faster 4-cores so the odds are that games are going to spread sideways rather than upwards!

At the low end, death rates are often a major reason for losses rather than tactics/builds.

A single death costs 5 points but the real killer is the downtime which I would guess at 15 points.

The likely reason you can’t upgrade the GPU is because the motherboard BIOS needs to be updated. Unfortunately this is one of the reasons for avoiding branded PCs – in the long term – as the vendors are much less likely to doubleback to older PCs to provide an BIOS update for newer GPUs. This is less so with motherboard vendors.

You should therefore consider the option of just replacing your existing motherboard, if no BIOS update is available. However it is fair to say there is more risk involved in doing this as branded PCs tend to be hyper-tuned to the level of making significant changes difficult.

My advice would be to go over to PCPartPicker and select the best AM4 motherboard platform for gaming. In all likelihood the new AMD R5 processors due in a few weeks will max GW2 out on the CPU side and from experience there is little worth in going higher than a RX-470 for GW2.

I am willing to bet that a R5-1400 + RX-460 will come very close to being the optimum spent-for-performance for GW2 in the future – I suspect you’ll get very close to max settings and 60Hz(when possible) at 1080p.

Run Microsoft’s Memory Diagnostics – type memory into Contata.

Process is harmless and would take 10 to 20mins – testing requires a restart.

Would rule out a failed or partially failed Ram chip which could have this sort of effect.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

There’s a post over in Account Issues with video of a player using Ryzen, for anyone interested.

Good luck.

Good video. Shows stutter free in-your-face dragon fight with probably 100+ toons – max settings bar high on shadows – with a R7 1700. I was very impressed till I saw the fps meter!

17 to 24 fps.

I am sure there would be little difference fps-wise with an i7. There appears to be no reason to play GW2 with more than four cores.

Behellagh.1468:

A new CPU architecture isn’t something you design overnight. You have to guess at what your market will need 3-5 years in advance and can be scaled from $500 desktop PCs to server racks. AMD guessed wrong when they were designing the Bulldozer architecture, expecting software using lots of threads with more complex math handed off to GPUs with their hundreds to thousands of simple floating point processors. Whoops.

Ryzen is considerably faster than even the pre-Bulldozer Athlon II/Phenom II cores. If you look at Tom’s Hardware review of the Ryzen, single core performance at 3.8 GHz is 95% as fast in Cinebench as the i7-7700K single core also at 3.8 GHz. Bulldozer was 55% of an i7-7700K when both are clocked at 3.8 GHz. Huge improvements, congrats AMD.

Now I’m starting to wonder if issues with gaming is a problem with AMD’s data interconnect from the quad core CCX blocks and the PCIe x16 controller driving the video card. Intel’s ring bus in their CPUs may simply be a superior solution than AMD’s “data fabric” interconnect (will you stop giving marketing naming privileges AMD).

Actually there is a very interesting youtube that demonstrates 8-core FX processors actually holding up very well four years after the initial release with current games. What seems to have happened is that as time rolled on, the games started to utilise many-cores more then the FX moreorless beat ‘superior-on-release’ Intel processors of the time. If things are similar then any move from 4 to 8 core gaming is likely to take four or so years to pan out.

As far as GW2 is concerned there can’t be much benefit in going above ‘new’ AMD 4-cores – other than a cooler/quieter PC and I doubt new processor architecture is of much concern with 10 year-old Dx 9.0c. All that is going to happening in time is that more and more casual GW2 players will be experiencing existing i5 levels of performance from stock PCs.

Intel’s market/profit orientated i3 layer is a dead duck.

Behellagh.1468:

The R3 is 4 core/4 thread … R5 is 4 core/8 thread and 6 core/12 thread.

https://www.techpowerup.com/230916/pricing-of-entire-amd-ryzen-lineup-revealed

Yeah the real gamers AMD bounty is going to be at the low end. Even a casual look tells you that i3s are going to be toasted giving the likely price range of the 4-core R3 being $120 to $150. Combining a R3 rig with a similarly priced GPU is going to give peeps existing low-to-mid end i5 like performance for half the cost!.

If you are thinking of purchasing a cheap PC with a high game usage, you wouldn’t touch an i3 with a bargepole as things stand.

Then consider an APU with 50% more performance than existing A10/A12 with built in graphics boosted to a similar degree? That would be a very fine GW2 platform by today’s cheap PC standards.

Peeps can argue about R7s only having 140 fps compared to 150 fps etc in 1080p but the boost at the low end is likely to be HUGE for casual gamers.

Main benefit of Ryzen to GW2 will be server side.

As far as I can see there isn’t much point in going past a 4th gen intel i5 on the client side so the recent three Ryzen chips are going to add little to GW2 performance – you’ll be better off waiting to see the costs of the 4 core Ryzen processors or even the associated APUs(due last) with an eye on laptops (giving the reduced thermals and power requirements).

Frankly giving how few games are making use of Dx12 now it’s going to be a few years before these high core processors are going to be a requirement for gaming-only PCs unless you are purchasing Xbox/PS4+ like games for your PC which begs another question! For the cost of the 1800x processor (or i7) why not just purchase an Xbox/PSP4+ when the time comes and play another game? All in 4K ofc…

I have also argued elsewhere that mmo-like games can’t really make use of more than 2-cores giving there inherent nature (i.e. you won’t see 100% processor loading on four cores far less 8, no matter your GPU if the only app playing is an mmo).

Best advise I would give to anyone entering HoT for the first time is to have alt(s) in core to go to for those ‘stuff this’ moments in HoT.

Guild PvP Missions (level17 Guild)
—————————————————————-

Question is, do they work?

Here is what is happening:

Peeps get together – full team of 5 – in the PvP Lobby, form a group, start the mission, get the in-Q signal, accept dialog pops up with match found, then dropped – and in-Q restarts. Time after time.

Checked as best as possible that everyone was hitting the accept button.

Wasted about 40mins of 5 peoples’ time this Sunday trying to get this to work.

Any ideas?

Too many of the mini-bosses in the storylines are bugged making progress a lottery as far as game-quitting-annoyance goes.

This weeks example: Maze in DryTop, you move around the maze being continuously snared and knocked back then at the mini-boss the 4 NPCs you collected run around you making no attempt to fight. The mini-boss fight lasts 5 to 10mins before you die with it on less than 10% health five times – playing a tough engineer. About 90 mins for pure hell – no problems at all with a guardian.

The visual effects on the last boss in the HoT storyline should have been removed long ago for H&S reasons. But no that ‘difficulty’ remains.

There are some preambles/storyline WITHIN the instance – i.e. you have not fully followed the story, hence why you have no crew with you – they are probably waiting at a prior step. Sounds like you have rushed forward of the internal storyline.

For example, he may only start throwing rocks when the servants start feeding him phase – the fight proper. Note, if you’re in a group others can kill the servants making him vulnerable for others to kill – not doable solo.

I play six characters that are splatter all over the place and thus don’t necessarily continuously follow the one storyline.

Perhaps that is a problem!

For the OP – as others have said – the best choice is between the RX-460 and 1050/Ti – the latter being slightly better.

I play only Gw2 and bought a RX-470 which is an overkill (with a i5-4750). I would have bought a RX-460 but reckoned its improvement over my current R7-260x was at best 30% – not cost effective to me. I will be replacing the R7s with the RX-460 if I see a decent deal in the future.

The XFX dual fan 4GB RX-470 is a stunning card and a jump up from the R7 260x in almost every way but clearly you need a powerful cpu to go the it, and GW2 is not a game to task it.

My advice would be for anyone with oldish equipment who mainly play GW2 to seriously consider the RX-460-4GB or the 1050/TI. For around $100 to $120 they would be great buys which might keep you old PC going for a few years as far as GW2 is concerned. I would also suggest that the reduced power requirement makes the switch almost cost-effective if you have a old >150w GPU.

I would also be a bit wary of selecting GPU based on benchmark tables in relation to GW2. These tables are really concerned with DX11 and 12 rather than 9.0c(GW2). and the differences are much low when considering the latter and in my experience GW2 in particular.

Here are my benchmarks (9.0c)

RX-470 —> 24 to 30
R7-260X --> 17 to 24
HD 7570 —> 6 to 7 (Range reflects different processors, numbers NOT fps)

Frankly as you go up that scale the fps increases -say 20 to 60 – graphics get slowly prettier and the game feels less sluggish (only dynamically noticeable in PvP, imo).

Subjectively the difference between the 260x and 470 with GW2 is marginal – I regularly switch between them as have two gaming PCs – although I most definitely hear the difference!

I would predict than with decent graphic quality the RX-460 with give you 40 to 50 fps and be very quiet. Personally I don’t think GW2 is worth spending a lot of money on for if you are considering a recent GPU with older equipment. You’ll get more fun from spending your money in-game once above say $100 or so!

In have a two-year old HP laptop with A8-6410 (15w) processor – kitteneaper than your spec. Will run GW2 smoothly for low to med settings at 20 to 30fps. You can certainly get >30fps without too much compromise – imo – especially if you are into pvp.

The new Windows 10 Game Mode will give a small boost of maybe 2 to 4 fps. The newer versions of the above processor will add a couple more.

kitten adds little to the gameplay although it does give a much better feel to the laptop overall – especially giving how annoying Windows 10 hammering to a large mechanical disk is after start-up.

I won’t be too quick to right off budget AMD laptops, for lower end price points they are better for graphics than Intel by quite a big margin. Of course the more you spend the less likely this is to be true.

Also note that with only a 15w processor you are far less likely to suffer fan-abuse after a couple of years

Careful what you wish for.

I know there are many people that will use whatever aid they can to progress their gameplay, but please understand there are also many who prefer to always remain in game.

IMO, it is very bad practice to provide no clue within the game and frankly this ruins the end of season 3 for some.

I would also add that it provides an opportunity for some players to create mischief.

It’s a bad idea to change from the normal. This is one of the worst examples of bad game design in GW2.

Evidence being the number of people asking questions in this area on-line and the sheer WASTE-OF-CUSTOMERS-TIME caused.

The Quaggan is stationed in an area of dynamic events so you assume you have to trigger something to get him to talk. Not so, of course.

BTW: Wiki doesn’t help in this problem area as it doesn’t indicate where either.

I am ranked around 500 to 600!

It is clear to me that the match result is pretty much determined by the amount of profession stacking – try winning against 3 rangers with 3 Smokescales roaming together between points only 5 seconds apart, same applies to almost any pet class – rather than the skill or knowledge or map tactics of the players.

Result is that the match outcome is random as the profession stacking on joining is random – hence the so-called Bronze Hell.

The other factor – on EU servers – is the language variation/problem. It is all very well grouping people randomly but any idiot knows that is they all speak different languages you’re not going to get much team work. SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ANET!

I have GW2 on multiple computers and the only thing that seems to be stored locally is the PC graphical setup. You would certainly be able to run GW2 from a external USB rive – albeit updates take longer. I always put the GW2 folder in the root directory – i.e. right at the top.

One thing to bare in mind is that switching locations and thereby routers will often trigger Anet’s two-step-verification – clearly the game links the internet address to the login id. So makes sure you take your authenticator with you before changing locations. Not sure what happens if you move around without two-step-verification but I would play safe or expect delays of some sort.

Would go with the guardian.

To be competitive in PvP the elite spec are necessary, imo.

I play both professions and would say the staff ranger is a far bigger jar than the bow guardian – which feels very ranger like. Additionally the elite spec for guardian is much more handy as the profession never really had a ranged option with the core spec – something than is extremely handy in HoT. The guardian also makes great use of traps a feature I never made great use of with me ranger – usually because of the pet dynamics.

Guardian works well, staff ranger is still a bit iffy to my mind.

The most popular place is Lion’s arch – which will not be your starting point.

You can jump into the PvP hall and back to PvE without cost and ditto WvW. This may not be obvious.

Best advice is as above: follow your story line.

All races start off at different cities and have different initial stories. So don’t be afraid to have a mix of low characters at the start of the game.

You should find there is no grind in the core game- if you feel this way just switch to another character for new experiences. In general there is no benefit to fast levelling.

Dry Top and Silverwastes zones are possibly new to you. If so make your way there via your story journal. These will give you a sense of the HoT zones – although you will still get a shock. Frankly giving your experience you need to consider purchasing HoT or you’ll just get bored with the game, imo.

Otherwise I suggest you aim for map completion.

Pvp is mid way thru its season atm so there may not be many peeps around core PvE.

WvW has changed a wee bit – note you can get Hero Points via a method there.