Hell, I forgot to say which mode play. Your assumptions are correct. I do know that LB has little to no condi damage at all. I thought about dropping that spec and changing it to Radiance and switching my weaps to S/T and GS.
You mean scepter or sword-torch? DH can still be good for burn guard build, just drop the bow for something else that triggers VoJ more often. Viper won’t be too good for anything outside of PvE, you’ll drop like a fly without toughness and vital stats. That little twirling trap is perfect for VoJ triggers.
Condi build still very viable though. Haven’t had any trouble with any DH on my climb to diamond pvp with my core guardian. I remember I’ve done around 750,000 condi damage in a single match.
Still having tons with my guardian, and I mean pure vanilla guardian, not DH. Even reached Diamond in pvp league with it. A burn guardian. It eats minion necros like nothing and there are tons of necro minions in higher pvp tiers. I think I reached 700,000+ total condition damage in one match alone. So no, we are not weak, and no, it’s not go DH or bust.
to say Ranger is dead is a opinion and i’d rather not have Players in the ranger Community
Fortunately your are not in charge of people, so they don’t have to subscribe to your delusions.
deluded now whos putting words into peoples mouths , Telling people a class is dead is like killing someones hope as that new player tells other people spreading that crap around forums isn’ the answer to help people progress so who is Deluded certainly not me.
if people want help in pvp vs Dragons hunters or somehow think they are better need to focus on the weaknesses rather than the strenghts then they will start to see the differences but they can only do that with experience + practice , simply not playing ranger Because of a person implying " ranger is dead" isn’t a reason at all nor that comment does not help the ranger community at all , you wana help put some Tips into your comments and share some knowledge.
Climbed up through Diamond in pvp league using pure vanilla ranger. And it’s not because I got lucky and got paired with a pro team or something, all solo queue. Some of the matches were literally 500-499.
When played right, it’s dangerous, just as any other class. It’s definitely not a keyboard smash class, very technical and tactical. Just a bit of random tips. Know all the characteristics of each weapon:
How the sword leaps on autoattack, master how to parkour with sword#2, turn corners with sword#3. Understand the cone of vision of the longbow, practice how to avoid WASD and stand completely still so your character rotates properly if the enemy is dancing around you.
Read enemy’s boons, especially stability, before you randomly spam bow#4 knockback on your bow. Know that you cannot invisible on bow#3 when you have a bow#5 barrage still raining down. Basically all bow skills needs some situation awareness before being used.
I think the best would be to have someone do some play-by-play commentary on their ranger during fights.
I’ve already posted this in the Bug Forum but I thought I’d make a PSA over here in the Ranger Forum as well. Not sure if this was posted before but this is a big one.
So if anyone has noticed, the ranger shout Protect Me! forces players and NPCs to unsheathe their weapons. The thing is, doing this in WvW procs Contested on keeps, towers, and even camps – and yes, I do mean your own keeps, towers, and camps.
If you use Protect Me! on any of the gate/wall guards with weapons, it forces them to unsheathe, making the game think they’re in combat and thus forcing Contested. Interestingly, it doesn’t work if you use Protect Me! on non-combatant NPCs like merchants or repairers.
So fellow rangers who do run shout builds and use it for the Swiftness, hold off from using Protect Me! inside your own objectives, especially keeps because it will close the WP.
Now I know ranger bugs are usually overlooked, and more so WvW, so it might be some time before this gets fixed. The best thing to do is to spread the word.
Don’t know if this was posted before but this is a big one.
So if anyone has noticed, the ranger shout Protect Me! forces players and NPCs to unsheathe their weapons. The thing is, doing this in WvW procs Contested on keeps, towers, and even camps – and yes, I do mean your own keeps, towers, and camps.
If you use Protect Me! on any of the gate/wall guards with weapons, it forces them to unsheathe, making the game think they’re in combat and thus forcing Contested. Interestingly, it doesn’t work if you use Protect Me! on non-combatant NPCs like merchant or repairer.
if you have 5 dragon hunter team in pvp its a sure win , after 1 cap
they set up traps , no one will live with 20 traps set on cap ground lol
Mesmer GS#2 will spawn clones at target. It’s a 5 second cooldown when traited, even faster under alacrity. Yeah, 20 traps all useless thanks to 1 clone.
-If a ranger respawns in pvp, the pet respawns where the ranger dies, takes damage, and the ranger spawns in combat.
-Pets names don’t stay.
-Bristleback still gets obstructed on everything and has issues with targets above/below.
-Bristleback got -25% damage reduction instead of fixing the 20 projectiles to 15.
-Pets still have issue hitting moving foes: due to stopping and then attacking. All pets need a sort of leap like moas.
-Projectiles that pass through sublime conversion, staff #5, become airborn and slow down, and miss 99% of the time.I’ll add more as I think of them.
Worst one I can think of from the top of my head is when pets get that infinite Chill bug on their skills. Swap pets, switch them out with a different one, die and respawn, the Chill will still be there.
I don’t really find myself needing to rez teammates very frequently so the 85 second cooldown isn’t that bad. The teleport functionality also isn’t needed since it activates when you begin rezzing.
Just because the shout it’s based on got buffed doesn’t mean the trait is suddenly useless. It’s exactly as useful as it use to be.
No argument here, it definitely is still useful. But it still doesn’t solve the problem of redundancy. You use S&R to teleport a downed ally, then when you begin reviving… you use S&R again? That’s a broken mechanic, simple as that.
Allies’ Aid is still a useful trait. It has the same functionality as the old version, which means you can start to revive a player, stop, and start fighting while your pet does the rezzing. Or you can speed up the rez by continuing it with your ranger and pet together.
Yes agreed, still useful. However you lose 3/4 the functionality (no teleport, no regeneration, point-blank distance required vs. 1200) and… at double the cooldown? It doesn’t really make sense. I guess the only real pro is the +10% revive speed that the new S&R doesn’t have?
I mean, at an untraited 85 second cooldown, who would actually take this trait?
(edited by mambastik.8735)
WoW, Search and rescue is amazing now.
‘Enemy mid-stomp’
yoink mine now! I love this skill so much.
But now we need to talk about Allies’ Aid. It’s still showing the old 60sec+ cooldown, and the teleport mechanic would be useless since you’re already standing on top of them reviving. Perhaps instead of Search and Rescue, it should be the other shouts like Guard! or Protect Me! instead?
Every weapon can be a condi weapon, but some do it easier than others. Most of our ability comes from Virtues, and augmenting that to become more powerful is key.
The different weapons are also better in different situations. I actually used a carrion build in wvw zerging with Staff and Permeating Wrath and became a portable mortar. 15 people all ticking for 2k burns or more. GS can have similar results.
Sword and Scepter do well with single target, but Permeating Wrath can make that single target all of a sudden become aoe. Permeating Wrath is really a great trait, especially paired with Supreme Justice.
Dunno why everyone’s saying burn guardian isn’t a thing when it’s still most definitely a thing. It’s especially deadly in WvW. Pair it with the meditation heal and you’re practically invincible for the next 6 seconds while it’s active. Best combo for me is pre-activate Zealot’s Flame + JI + Whirling Wrath into a tight stack in WvW, you’d easily get 10k/sec burning, easily dropping any tank in less than 3 seconds flat.
I still prefer the scepter over staff for long range. Staff#3 symbol is nice but CD is too long, traited symbol is too long duration (might be better in PvP for on-point fights, but in WvW long duration is pretty much useless when groups are flanking/juking). Scepter#2 is spammable, perfect for fast re-positioning.
Out of all the builds, burn Guardian is always most fun. The strategy is to never stomp. Scepter#2 + Torch#5 on a downed with their fellow teammtes trying to revive, VoJ will just trigger like crazy.
Take a moment and visit the Signet of Humility wiki page. Familiarize yourself with the skills you will be having access too there, instead of panicking in-game pushing buttons and not knowing what to do.
You may notice that you can use Flee to evade some attacks, and it even sends you running a short distance if you wish to try create somewhat of an gap between you and your target(s). Perhaps to LoS around a corner, down a ledge, or otherwise.
You can use Screech to apply Weakness and lower the potential incoming damage coming your way. It’s not huge on range, but should serve its purpose.
See a field you can Combo Finisher: Leap from to gain something beneficial? Use Kick, besides using it to Cripple your target(s). You could use this before trying to Flee as well.
Or go on the offensive. Kick them, throw in a Screech, then Peck the kitten out of their hides before you Flee and Dodge for avoidance. And before you know it, you have dealt them some damage when they least expected it, and find yourself back out of the Moa form ready to curb stomp them and teach them that Moa is not such a easy thing to win with after all. If you got a buddy, practice in a empty Lobby with them.
Good ones will just wait till you panic and burn your dodges, after that every lockdown/immob is 100% contact because no stunbreak or cleanse.
Like others have said, it’s selfish and only benefits yourself. I guess the small benefit would be having iDefender out for your team to dish out retal.
I run it on my power phantasm mesmer and it’s pretty strong for 1v1. Open with mass invisible, pump out swordsman and zerker phantasms along with defender, most of the time they’re down 60% health (pure damage + 2x retal if they attack the swordsman or zerker), burn their heal early, all while you didn’t reveal.
A lot of retal was removed or nerfed from mesmer like gain retal on block or gain retal when downed – which was amazing when you still had an iDefender out on field . Not only that, retal trait used to be 100% uptime for phantasms. Pretty sure we used to have more retal access than a guardian.
People also used to fantasise about Mesmer Portal highways and recursive Signet of Inspiration boon sharing. Turns out trying to get a bunch of Mesmers to synchronise is harder than herding cats.
Just need practice and good comms. We did triple portal supply run back/forth for gate repair. You can see in the mini map we almost caught up to the commander when he was running uphill on our way down.
You know I once had the idea of getting 10 (2 parties of 5) mesmers running PU with MI and running around WvW with 20 supply each completely invisible. You would be able to get all the way to the furthest away towers and get enough superior Rams up and the gates down quick enough to flip even the most upgraded tower.
Still possible at a 7.5s duration and trained 72s cool down, food for thought maybe to the OMFG WvW =P
We did that before with 3 Mesmers back when PU was +100% stealth duration. With the right rotation it’s possible to get 100% stealth. We could run around the entire EB map completely stealthed, even do Dolyak kill runs completely stleathed with pure phantasms and avoiding auto-attacking, can take a supply camp completely stealthed as well. Harass and cripple entire groups with random GS#4 phantasms popping up out of no where with no players around (in enemy’s perspective). Good times.
(edited by mambastik.8735)
WvW roaming with my brothers running a triple Mesmer build. We were all running condi staff/staff builds most of the time. Funny enough if anyone ever got close, no one could ever withstand 3 pulsing geomancys.
So what did we learn? Always target necros and guardians first with staff autoattack. They have the highest survivability/health and lowest mobility, making them the perfect host for Winds of Chaos to bounce off from.
Footage was all from pre-patch. My first music video I made, hope you guys enjoy!
Also need to mention that Lighting Reflexes will roll you back relative to your character’s direction, regardless of your target position. Has killed me many, many times.
blast finisher goes off at the start of the channel, that’s why you can blast while cancelling the skill =)
Wait, so you can blast HS, cancel WH 5, and then blast again, and repeat?? I gotta try this when I get home
This has been bugging me for a few days now. I love Retreat! its a great skill. gives Swiftness and Aegis, pretty useful in a lot of situations. The only problem is…
… Does anyone actually use it to retreat?
Im sure in WvW and sPvP the time comes when you need to get away, but even there I doubt its used to for actual retreating.
any thoughts?
It does seem weird using Retreat! when heading into a fight. That’s like saying pulling out of a fight is a tactical charge.
Kind of afraid of what Druids will get. Who knows? After all of this dreading, it might turn out to be really cool. If not, we can always stay a Ranger.
Also, if Druids get Mantras, there better be some cool lines that vary depending on the mantra AND pet. “Power. Torment. Bacon!” (with a pig)
I’d rather it be “Pork, Sausage, Bacon!”
The active of this skill is make your pig explode and does huge AOE damage within 1200 range.And in keeping with the theme of pig pets, you get an environmental weapon – a ham to whack people with.
Prepare to meat your doom!
As spoj said, the interesting thing about Sigil of Mischief is the number of hits you can gain versus a single target when in close combat. It does require a significant investment, sure. I would indeed miss Soul Reaping. But the new specialization tree might offer traits which compensate for giving it up.
Spite/Curse/Reaper should be pretty nasty damage-wise. 20 stacks of Vulnerability on weapon swap, 4s or more Chill. Chill of Death for even more. Close to Death. With this set up the new Gravedigger skill could potentially one-hit many classes as soon as they drop below 50%.
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQB2ALoBqg~If the new Curses just had a crit or power-related trait…
I’ve used Mischief+Chilling Darkness and unfortunately does not work that way. It will launch 1 snowball per player, so it will not act as a shotgun with you swap at pointblank (unless you swap with 4 enemies present and you’re standing in front of one of them). It will not, as the Wiki suggests, shoot out in front of the player in a cone. The cone description in the wiki describes the sight required, meaning it will not launch snowballs to your immediate left or right, and obviously not behind the player.
If Druids get Mantras I am going to be very sad. Very clunky mechanic with effects not really worth the charge time compared to other classes instant use skills.
As long as we don’t get warrior banners.
They aready have Well of Power for stability (they can stand on it). Anyway, stability is not a requirement for melee classes even if you’re hitting slowly (Hammer Guardian).
Except it applies 1 second of stability, and that’s it. It does not pulse stability like Hallowed Ground.
For a spirit weapon build you’re gonna be doing a burning build
Not if you’re going to optimize for Symbols, then you can go into Honor and pick up the rest of the Symbol traits. You wouldn’t need to touch Radiance unless you truly wanted to pick up every single possible SW trait for the sake of making a fully-fledged SW build. Even SW duration in the Virtue line is optional, because in the middle of battle, when would a SW last it’s full duration anyway? Which brings me to:
the benefits you get from the minor traits (10% more symbol damage and a couple of stacks of vulnerability) are incredibly meager even for minor traits.
At Honor, you can pick up 10% more damage, bringing a total of 20% more damage for Symbols. Not bad at all I’d say.
This only leaves you with mace as an option. Mace has very little synergy with the spirit weapons build as it’s more of a protection and support weapon, while spirit weapons are more for a DPS type of build.
On the contrary. Like Obtena said, it has the most synergy for SW than any other weapon. You’re picking up Symbol traits along Zeal, and no other weapon has a near 100% Symbol uptime than a mace. Sure there’s no mace-specific trait within Zeal, but all the Symbol traits just scream mace. You’re right, SW are more for a DPS style build, and what’s better than a weapon which can nearly keep 100% uptime ticking Vulnerability for all your SWs to take advantage of?
the mace has very slow auto attack skill, where you want a fast swinging weapon for proccing burning and crits as much as possible.
When traited, mace’s Symbol only has a 2 second window (6s duration, 8s CD) in which there is no Symbol on the ground. When you factor in auto-attack + ticking Symbol, then applying Burning doesn’t seem too slow.
When you have both mace and torch equipped, you have no access to any built in CC outside of the spirit hammer. If you do stun someone with the spirit hammer, by the time you get in range to hit the enemy with your symbol, it takes so long to place it, that they can get up and out before even taking 2 ticks from it.
Optimizing for Symbols means you’re playing for sustainability, not for burst. Knocking someone down just to apply a Symbol on top of them is unnecessary. People evade through and teleport away from Meteor Showers and Chaos Storms and Null Fields, but when’s the last time you saw someone trying to escape a Symbol for their own safety? Enemies know they can walk through Symbols like it’s nothing and the only reason they avoid it is so they can stay out of combat.
the block on the mace is at most a minor inconvenience as you don’t have any traits to take advantage of it. The spirit shield does a better job over all accomplishing this, even if it only blocks projectiles.
Even if there’s no mace-specific traits within Zeal, I’d hardly call the block an inconvenience. It blocks and does more damage than hammer#2, how is that any inconvenience at all? And at 60 seconds, the spirit shield is tied for 3rd highest CD utility just behind 120s Sanctuary and 80s Hallowed Ground, all for something that doesn’t move. It will block projectiles for itself, not for you.
Simultaneously tracking where your SWs are at any given time during a fight takes skill and practice.
I’m a bit confused by this. What sort of skill is involved here, and how to you practice this? I can make note of where the spirit weapons are, but the positions they decide to stand in or the speed at which they adhere to my commands are determined by the AI. As I have no direct influence over the AI algorithms, I’m not really sure how I can practice the positioning of the weapons and become more skilled at it.
In my mind, there would need to be some specific pattern of manipulation that could be learned and refined, but I’m not seeing that as far kitten positioning is concerned.
Yes positions are decided by AI, which is exactly why you need to practice your multi-tracking skills. Where am I, where are my SWs, where is the enemy, is my Hammer in range for knockdown, if I knockdown with my Hammer, is my Sword close by for the command, etc. It’s a skill many WvW’ers have, it’s called not putting your blinders on. Those who don’t have this skill will chase an enemy without realizing they’ve just run straight into a zerg. It’s training yourself to get out of tunnel vision. To learn to left-click camera pivot to scan your environments mid-fight.
Macro-management of SW positioning would be way too complicated.
This further confuses me. Macro-management is a skill that can be practised. It was something available in GW1, and is the same sort of skill you would utilize in an RTS. I think having that sort of control over the spirit weapons would provide a great way for players to maximize their usefulness as well as apply a meaningful and tactical mechanism.
As far as “way too complicated”, I don’t think it would be as far as a player’s skill is concerned. One is always able to practice to get better at something. It would only be too complicated from a usability standpoint as the GUI and game engine is not designed to support this style of play in general. I think this is what will ultimately prevent this level of change from entering the game, although I still believe this sort of change would be beneficial to anyone wanting to run spirit weapons.
I haven’t played GW1 so I can’t comment on that. Yes in terms of gameplay/UI it would be way too complicated. Yes we all can practice it since it’s the type of skill you would utilize in an RTS, but this isn’t an RTS. Right-click turns your character, left-click turns the camera, what type of RTS-practiced skill would transfer over? How would you create a bounding box to select your SWs like you would in any other RTS? Would I have to do some ninja finger contortions to do some hotkeys? What about including move, stop, hold, attack, attack-move for each of the SWs? Would it turn into some kind of “required skill: 150APM” to master RTS-style summons? Would the UI turn into some cluttered WoW-styled UI that looks like a ’95 IE with 50 addons?
In the end, summons would just turn into a burden. And those playing their single characters with no summons can solely focus on what they are doing and what you are doing, and they will run circles around you while you fiddle around with all the extra UI and hotkeys and whatnot. Eventually will you practice enough to get used to it? Sure. But the learning curve is just that much steeper. You would need 2-3 times more practice to get to the same level of your opponent. It’s not something I would want anyone to go through, because it’s not fair.
(edited by mambastik.8735)
7. Too much investment for traits.
Can also be said for Meditation/Heal builds right? You go full 6 into something to get maximum benefit. And unless you’re a condi build, you don’t really need anything into Radiance. Look what else you’re picking up in Zeal, all of the Symbol traits (symbol @ 50%hp, pulse Vuln, increase dmg). Pair that with full Honor also picking up all Symbol traits (larger, lasts longer, pulse heal). I might be wrong, but no other skill has 6 full traits dedicated to it. This makes Symbols really really powerful.
8. Insane leash range.
My experience has always been 70% useful 30% harmful. In most of my experience in pvp, you will forever tag a runaway enemy as in-combat until they run into one of your teammates for an easy kill.
So, what to change? Well I don’t know that I’m the best to give suggestions, but I think a first step might be to condense the number of traits that spirit weapons use. To begin with, A Fire Inside requires a 4 point investment in radiance, which is an uncommon choice even in the most experimental of builds.
I completely agree there. Radiance for SW should be done away with completely and instead be an inherent attribute. Much like the Guardian, they should apply 1s Burning for every 3 hits (since a normal Sword/Hammer chain is 3 hits).
And like I said earlier, I’d love to see a trait where “does X on death.” Since they are on the Zeal line with Symbol traits, the obvious thing would be something like “Spirit Shield applies Symbol of Protection on death.” Another idea is to have them mimic their weapon counterpart such as “Spirit Sword does Whirling Wrath on death.” Finally, I’d love the ability to control the AoE command of the Sword, just like the Bow.
“Furthermore, it’s a bit odd to have two cooldown traits. You need one trait to lower the cooldown for the actual spirit weapon summons, and then another one to lower the cooldown for the active skills for the spirit weapons.”
Not really, most (all?) summons have this in common. One to reduce their summon recharge, the other to reduce their skill recharge. Mesmer clones (which aren’t even true summons) also have these as separate traits of reduced summon recharge and reduced skill recharge. And like all summons, cooldown starts at death, not after summoning.
“As far as the spirit weapons themselves, the shield would be much better if it wasn’t prone to wandering off on it’s own. "
Agree here as well. The Shield should be close to the player as it has no point being by itself in the middle of a battlefield and remain completely stationary. I mean it was a really long time since they fixed the Mesmer’s Illusionary Warden (phantasm that twirls in place) to actually move around to their target.
“Compare this to something like meditations, where you can have damage, two stun breaks that don’t need to be pre-summoned, fairly reliable condition cleansing including one full cleanse, healing, and at least one blink. It’s much easier to fit everything you need in a medi build than it is a spirit weapon build. "
“As for use in WvW, I don’t think you can really fix them in the current state. It has the same problem as minionmancers and turret engineers.”
Like you said, you can’t have everything. And It’s impossible to do so. That’s like trying to make full banner warriors as effective as shout ones. I wouldn’t say it’s a “problem that needs to be fixed.” It’s just different tools for different purposes, and SW just isn’t the right tool for anything outside of 1v1 or small group roaming.
1. No stability on the spirit weapons.
2. Unreliable stun break.
That’s why there’s always sacrifices to make. You have no reliable way from getting CC’d, so you need to take more blocks and blinds with you, like mace or focus, or both. This also makes the case for SW, you can still control them while you’re being CC’d. Command the Hammer to knockback your opponent when they CC you to give you breathing room.
3. Poor condition clearing.
True here. Zero cleansing once Bow is gone. With certain SW builds, the best you can do is mitigate it with more healing and keep kiting and surviving till your Bow is ready again.
4. Uncontrollable positioning.
Simultaneously tracking where your SWs are at any given time during a fight takes skill and practice. Macro-management of SW positioning would be way too complicated. It’s also why I never take the SW Shield ever, it’s pretty useless. It should belong to an Engi as a shield turret. At least with Bow, it will cleanse something, follow you somewhere, and you’re able to control where the barrage healing arrows will be.
5. No way to have it all. You can’t take all 4 spirit weapons, so you always need to give something up. If you give up the sword, you lose damage. If you give up the hammer, you lose CC. If you give up the shield, you lose defence. If you give up the bow, you lose healing. With my build, I usually use the sword, hammer, and then either the shield or bow depending on the matchup (I find I use shield most often). A more defensive build would maybe be inclined to use the shield and bow, and give up either one or both of the sword and/or hammer.
There’s also no reason to maximize all your skill slots to be all SWs. I think it’s pretty much given if you’re going to do a SW build, taking Sword and Hammer is a requirement, then possibly take SYG for the 3rd slot. It gives you something to alternate, if one is down and on CD, the other is up by your side. If you’re taking all 3 SW slots, there’s no reason to take Bow and Shield together. Once your main Sword/Hammer is down on CD, you pretty much just have your main 1-5 weapon skills.
6. They die.
Same thing for all summons. However, the other summons have effects when they die: Engi turrets detonate, Necro minions leave poison clouds, Hunter spirits trigger skills on death, and Mesmer clones explode. This is where the SW is lacking. However unlike other classes, the Guardian has access to multiple aoe heals, Staff 2, Staff 4, Mace 2, Shield 5, Healing Breeze, etc, that make SW at least a little more viable and live a little longer than your average summon. But yes, they will still die in a blink for WvW.
Newly built desktop Jan 2015. The R9 290 (stock) is maxing out at 100% usage with low cpu usage, which is unusual since most complaints about this cpu-intensive game are that there is minimal gpu usage.
I have completely opposite, but normal, readings when gaming on my laptop (2011 AMD Llano A8-3500m + 6750m), with expected high cpu/low gpu readings. Great thing about high cpu usage on my laptop is that I can overclock the thing from base 1.5ghz to 2.7ghz resulting in substantial amount of fps gain. The frustrating thing about my desktop’s low cpu usage, any amount of overclock gets no fps gain.
That’s normal with an as strong cpu as the i7 4770k. I personally tried everything from 3.2ghz/HT off to 4.8ghz/HT on and there was no change in framerates, which is normal because the gpu is running at it’s limit. It’s still strange that you’re only getting 50 fps, you should be experiencing at least over 90 fps average. Have you by any chance enabled some kind of frame limiter? Like nvidia inspector or ingame, or whatever software AMD may provide? Given, that should also drop your gpu usage, but it’s probably applied after processing.
Have you tried running gw2 at low resolutions, just for a test?
Might have confused me with OP. Apologies if I’ve highjacked the thread. I myself have i5-4690k with R9 290. I’m getting 18fps in Black Citadel with all settings max, with an embarrassingly low 20fps running around an empty Hoelbrak. CPU is running pretty cool at low 50s, even dipping to high 40s, feels like it’s not even being stressed
I wondered if it was any drivers or AMD Gaming Evolved or anything else, so I did a clean Windows 8.1 install. Before I did anything else, I installed GW2 straight out of the clean Win8.1, even before doing any updates. I was still having the same performance before and after installing all those cpu/gpu drivers, all those dx, .net, c++ runtime environments, etc.
As for the topic, since the cpu isn’t running at it’s maximum capabilities, what about your gpus? It sounds like a software problem at first, but given I stay above 50 fps in black citadel with a single gtx 660ti (even with DSR to 4k), that doesn’t seem to be the issue. After all it’s probably just one more myth. Just as I’ve been getting 1-2 fps in the urban battleground fractal but 80+ fps everywhere else. Or that the internet is actually working, given that’s just a lucky coincidence.
Newly built desktop Jan 2015. The R9 290 (stock) is maxing out at 100% usage with low cpu usage, which is unusual since most complaints about this cpu-intensive game are that there is minimal gpu usage.
I have completely opposite, but normal, readings when gaming on my laptop (2011 AMD Llano A8-3500m + 6750m), with expected high cpu/low gpu readings. Great thing about high cpu usage on my laptop is that I can overclock the thing from base 1.5ghz to 2.7ghz resulting in substantial amount of fps gain. The frustrating thing about my desktop’s low cpu usage, any amount of overclock gets no fps gain.
Not true and it’s not how a CPU works. Of course, the choice is yours to believe as you wish.
Ok? Instead of replying with such attitude, why don’t you reply like the guy under you? If you can’t contribute to the conversation then why are you even here? Unbelievable.
A piece of software can be written, and usually is, to run in a single “thread”. Threads are assigned to cores and a single thread cannot exceed the performance of a single core…
Thanks for the good read. Always welcome to learning new things as I’m still trying to troubleshoot a problem myself. I’ve been monitoring this subforum for some time and it seems fps issue is increasing with either post-patch or new laptop/desktop builds (influx of returning players who thought their new machine could finally handle the stresses of WvW), but come here to find disappointed fps, some even lower than their older machines.
So far I’ve tried disable cores to force it to only 2, disabling hyper threading, enabling/disabling various BIOS settings and still no-go. I’m getting 18fps in Black Citadel on max settings while others with similar builds are getting 60fps.
It doesn’t work that way. That’s why I wish people would stop going by CPU “usage” as an indicator of how their system is operating
But it is a good indicator of how the software is operating. If it’s not utilizing maximum amount of resources and your fps is suffering, then CPU usage is important. I have the same problem, low cpu usage resulting in low fps, and no amount of overclock can fix that because of such low usage by the software. It’s why many AMD’s have an unparking core fix to stop them from having 0% usage. In my particular situation (i5-4690k), none of my cores are parked but they all are locked in at relatively low usage.
“30 fps initially but 1-2 minutes later it had dropped to 10 fps…”
“The only difference that I notice is that I don’t hear my fans running anymore…”
I’m pretty sure you answered your own question. Just to be sure, download a hardware monitoring program. If you can’t hear your fans, chances are they aren’t even running at all. If that’s happening, it means your CPU is throttling. That means it’s going to a lower clock speed to maintain safe temperatures before it actually fries itself.
High temperatures -> lower speed -> low fps.
Thanks for the help. GW2 is currently installed on a Samsung Evo 840 SSD. Apart from matching overclocks, probably the absolute last resort is to completely mimic all your settings down to the BIOS. Right now a lot of my BIOS settings are set to Auto (hyperthreading, etc). My brother has an AMD rig + HD79XX (forgot exact hardware) and he’s getting better fps with graphics on all high and texture set to super sample even.
My laptop has A8-3500m (Llano APU) + HD6750m and I can overclock the mofo to be just as smooth as my current desktop if I set both rigs to have Medium settings.
The quality of “low fps” is different. On my laptop, low fps means choppy, skipping frames, and camera rotation around my character is choppy during large WvW zergs. On the desktop, is feels like running through peanut butter. It’s still technically “smooth”, but everything feels sluggish and in slow motion. My camera rotation movement is laggy, as in I will flick my mouse, and camera movement will follow behind a few ms later, but in a very smooth fashion. It’s as if my camera is strapped to the mouse by a rubberband. In contrast, on my laptop the camera is pretty much locked exactly on the mouse position, if that makes any sense.
You can also try more things:
- Set gw2.exe priority to high and afinity to all cpu cores. Go to details in the task manager.
- In the Catalyst, create a system settings for gw2.exe. Put both Anti-aliasing and Texture filtering in “Use application settings”, Vertical refresh in “Always off”, and Tesselation in “AMD Optimized”.
- Create a shortcut of the gw2.exe and put -repair. You can find here (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments) how it is done.
- Create a shortcut of the gw2.exe and try these commands to see if they help (-forwardrenderer, -dx9single, -fps 60). Try one by one.
- Clear CMOS and have the latest bios of your MB.
Previously, I did:
- Full complete Windows 8.1 install (yes, legit and fully updated).
- Latest CPU/GPU drivers.
- Unparking cores.
- GPU set at x16 slot
- CPU and GPU well below throttling temps (Corsair H75 on CPU and H55 on GPU).
- Power Options set to High Performance.
I also did your suggestions:
- Priority set to high and affinity was already set to all cores.
- Catalyst already had those settings as default.
- Performed repair, no change.
- Updated BIOS, no change.
- Played with -umbra gpu, -forwardrenderer, -dx9single, no change (only -fordwardrender increased fps, but only because it made everything look like it was set to Best Performance).
Seem to me I read somewhere that the R9 290 cards have issues something about the card using an older GPU processers and AMD over clocking them and calling it a new card
Good to know. Although I have i5 4690k + R9 290, I don’t think this is an issue with mine. I can run Crysis 3 and Farcry 4 on max settings no problem. The problem for me is that GW2 is pretty much locked at 35% CPU usage while GPU is 100%. That means even if I overclock, I will practically get 0 fps gain because of such low CPU usage (which I also tested).
I guess more research and testing tomorrow. Seems like nothing is working. There is definitely something holding back my CPU usage when playing GW2.
(edited by mambastik.8735)
Fresh Windows 8.1 install. Before I installed any drivers or anything for that matter, the first thing I did was installed Guild Wars 2. I get the same exact performance as before, 20s in zergs, 30s in running around WvW. I get 20-25 just running around the center of Hoelbrak in the snow.
What catches my eye is that we have the same vid card
i5 4690k + R9 290 reporting here. Fresh newly build desktop in January. Safe temps, updated drivers, virus scanned, x16 slot, etc. GPU showing 100% usage and CPU seems locked in at 35% usage regardless of graphic setting. I will be doing a fresh Windows 8 install over the weekend and see what happens.
Re-seat your graphics card.
While my cpus are pretty much locked at 35% usage during load (in GW2), my gpu usage is showing 100%. I’m not sure it’s my graphics card as I’m currently playing Crysis 3 and Farcry 4 at highest setting with no problems, but I will re-seat it anyway. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll be reporting back when I get home to try it.
I got an answer from someone with an Intel 4770k and AMD R9 290. He gets 60 FPS at that Ingame-location. So it’s not a general R9 290 problem.
Thanks for all the help, really. I’ve been playing with BIOS all evening with no change in performance. Toggling various items between enabled/disabled such as hyperthreading on/off.
The only thing I found interesting was that if I shut off all cores except for 1, that 1 core will run GW2 at 100% with similar 20 fps in Hoelbrak. I turn on 2 cores and it’s 50/50 usage. 3-4 cores will bring me back to 35% usage – all while retaining the same fps.
Totally bizarre. It’s as if the fps is dictating the cpu usage when it should be the other way around. It will only use the most minimum cpu usage to keep fps from reaching slideshow. For example, I will be roaming around with a 20-man zerg at ~25fps, then we run into 2x 40-man zergs from both servers in an all out battle royal in SM lord’s room, and I will keep 20 fps without a single stutter.
The only way to get above 30 fps is if I look directly at the ground or up at the sky – and that’s when my fps skyrockets to 100+ and usage goes to 65-70%. I’m probably gonna have to keep playing around in the BIOS when I get back from work.
(edited by mambastik.8735)
Try this:
- Monitor cpu and gpu temperatures (should be lower than 85ºC).
- Make sure your cores are unparked (look for google if you don’t know how to do it)
- The gpu has to be placed into the closest pci-e line to cpu and running at x16.
- In graphic options put frame limiter to unlimited.
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Low-FPS-100-usage-and-minimal-CPU-usage/first#post4731885 That guy has similar hardware than you and enabling VT-d seemed to solve his problem.
Thanks for the quick reply. I do have all those checked. Both cpu and gpu are <60c, so thermal throttling is out. I did apply the patch which unparks the cores, did not set an fps limit, the gpu is installed at x16, and my VT-d was set to enabled by default (tested it with it disabled but got same results). My mobo is linked here. I’m gonna have to keep going through bios and see what things I can change, at this point I really have no idea what’s going on.
And because my cpu is pretty much locked at 35-40% usage, any overclock provides 0 fps gain.
You have an interpretation problem if from making the game more alive a proper it you understand better performance… All I’ve seen is new content, but nothing is about improving game performance.
And about the time, note that the engine of this game is anet owns, they created it. Coding for any other API would require a full team of programmers working for maybe 1 year. It’s not a thing devs can do at the same time they develop the new expansion.Souces about WoW problems are all over the internet, just search wow dx11 w8…
Again, the fact that new APi’s allow better graphics doesn’t mean a game will have them. You need to code the new things, which will take even more time. Porting a game to a new API is what most games have done, and there’s no graphic difference.
About the graphic level, again, gw2 only has performance problems when there are +50 people combating on your screen. But in open world, in dungeons, while roaming… performance is quite good. Hell I’m getting 70-80 fps in pve maps with a midrange pc.
And if you feel the game doesn’t look good, then be our master and develop a wonderful game ngine that will blow our eyes.If you could post your pc… but I think I already know where they come all those complains.
And finally, gw2 is a mmo, probably the best looking mmo out there. If you want astonishing graphics not this game neither this genre is for you.
Hey! I got the i5 4960k + R9 290 (both stock) myself and I’m getting 25fps when running around the center of Hoelbrak with settings set to best appearance and 60s on all low settings. What gives? I check my HWinfo and it’s reading ~35% cpu usage with 100% gpu regardless of what setting I use. Any idea what’s happening?
Really low FPS even on performance settings
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Posted by: mambastik.8735
Hey! I’m also having relatively terrible framerates with my i5 4690k + R9 290. Here are a couple of recent threads discussing this:
Low FPS 100% usage and minimal CPU usage
I still haven’t found a solution that works for me.
Finally got it to a stable 50 FPS (not the best, but I’ll go with what I can get) without any stuttering, although the GPU usage is still 100% the entire time. For those who may have the same issue, I went into the UEFI for my motherboard and enabled VT-d under chipset configuration.
How did you figure out what it was? And what does your cpu usage read now? I just checked mine and VT-d was already enabled. I disabled it just to test, and I’m still reading the same ~35% usage.
GW2 profits alot from Ram overclocking too. You could try to overclock the Ripsjaws to 2200mhz cl10 with 1.65Voltage.
The 4690k should run at 4Ghz core and cache with Voltage (core and cache) set to 1.1Volt. My 4690k runs at 4ghz core and cache with 1.05Volt. It clocks up to 4.6ghz core (4ghz cache) with 1.22volt core, but for everyday use, 4ghz is enough for me.
Just google Haswell overclocking for guides.My FPS mostly stays above 55FPS with some drops to 40FPS in the Black Citadel. I only have a small GPU (Nvidia 750 ti @1360mhz).
That looks amazing. I have the same 4690k (+R9 290) myself. I’m standing in the exact same spot as you with the exact same settings as your screenshot, and I’m getting 17fps! I mean I’m running stock right now (HWinfo showing 3.9ghz) but I didn’t think the difference would be that much.
What’s your CPU utilization? That’s one of the biggest problems for me. Mine is topping out at ~35% usage, and even the easy software pre-set overclocking to 4.5ghz, I still get the same fps performance – with the same 35% usage. Is something bottlenecking? I know it’s not thermal throttling as I have a Corsair H75 water cooler, average temps 50-55c. Any ideas?
Do you also get low FPS like the Thread starter? If you just get high GPU usage with high FPS, try enabling Vsync.
Yes just about. All medium and all high yield just about the same fps and same cpu usage, struggling to keep a stable 30fps on small skirmishes, dipping down to 20fps on large scale WvW.
Hey! I have the exact same problem, 100% gpu usage with ~35% cpu (i5 4690k + R9 290). And that’s regardless if I set all settings to low or high. I’d love to see 95-100% cpu usage like when I play on my laptop. At least on my laptop, I can go from slideshow framerates to butter smooth if I overclock it (since it’s using 100% cpu), but on my desktop which uses 35% cpu, any overclock is useless with 0 fps increase. It’s driving me insane.
Hey guys! I just recently built my first desktop. Before that I’ve been playing GW2 on my laptop. Basically the specs are i5 4690k + R9 290.
Firstly, my laptop (A8-3500m + 6750m) gets 90-100% cpu usage while <50% gpu usage. This is perfectly fine since this is a cpu intensive game, I’m reaping the benefits with a lot of the utilization going towards the cpu. If I overclock it from 1.5ghz to 2.7ghz, I get buttery smooth results.
So while playing on my desktop, I’m getting totally opposite readings. I’m getting an average of 30fps while dipping down to 20fps on large scale WvW battles. I checked HWinfo and it’s showing 35-40% CPU usage with 95-100% GPU usage. I thought it was pretty odd, considering many complaints about low gpu usage. I’d love to see cpu at 100% usage like normal. Any cpu overclocks I do doesn’t have any performance gain at all, I still get 35-40% usage along with low fps. At this point, my 3 year old laptop feels better than my high end desktop. Pretty frustrating.
I’ve disabled core parking. I’m also using Corsair H75 water cooling so my cpu is staying cool at an average of 50-55c so this is definitely not thermal throttling. Any other ideas?
(edited by mambastik.8735)
Delete the contents of the folder %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/. This is where your settings are stored.
Delete the contents of Documents/Guild Wars 2/, though just rename the Screens folder. This is an alternate storage location for logs and settings, as well as the location for custom music and screenshots.
Open the folder where Gw2.exe is located, delete the bin folder and any other files, excluding Gw2.exe and Gw2.dat. While in the folder where Gw2.exe is located, enter Gw2.exe -repair into the folder’s address bar and press enter. This will begin the repair process and will take some time.
Been playing since since launch when I suddenly get the same problems with gw2.exe. In the folder where the gw2.exe is located, it is showing a 0kb size. I tried doing gw2.exe -repair on address bar but a Windows 8 error popup shows “This app can’t run on your PC”.
As per Guild Wars 2 troubleshooting section, I created a shortcut of gw2.exe and added -repair inside the Target (“C:\Program Files (x86)\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -repair). Same error, “This app can’t run on your PC”. Pretty frustrating, since I was able to play yesterday.
Edit: Icon is also showing the generic/default program icon, as if it were to ask “Choose which program to open it with…”
Edit2: Found a solution this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Gw2-exe-is-not-a-valid-Win32-application-1
Didn’t want to reinstall the whole thing, so I downloaded a backup Gw2.exe someone uploaded. Client ran fine, update worked, and now in game.
(edited by mambastik.8735)
I love how I have to spam my F2 for it to activate, but god forbid I do an accidental quick double tap on sword#2 and jump straight into the zerg.
Not sure I understand why you’re saying targeting is broken. This is on #2? I’ve never had an issue with it. I know a lot of people would rather have it ground targeted, which I’m against for personal reasons, but I don’t think it’s broken.
No I was still talking about sword#3 ZD. It will fire off the projectiles to where the target is, which is fine if the target is standing still. The problem is when the target starts moving.
ZD will shoot where the target is, so slices will lag behind a moving target. In contrast, scepter autoattack will shoot where the target will be, so orbs will shoot ahead of a moving target.
I’m pretty sure all projectiles use some sort of predictive path targeting, but ZD doesn’t at all. That’s the broken part of it.