Guild Wars 2

Hello,

My wife and I just finished up Point of No Return for her character, and when she attempts to accept her rewards, the game crashes, not only for her, but for me as well. This happens even when my character is not in her party. The games only crash when she attempts to accept her rewards; she can log into her other characters just fine.

What’s going on? Will she get her character back?

-Matt

I have a feeling that if ArenaNet could have cracked the code on scaling content to the number of players participating, they would have implemented it a long time ago.

-Matt

Hi guys,

As a bit of an update, I realized that I had enough gold and Lumps of Mithrillium to purchase the remaining components needed for my first Ascended weapon. So I double-clicked my Crafting Booster, zoomed to 500, bought a whole bunch of Iron Ore…

And I crafted a Zojja’s Sword. The allure of a Berzerker weapon won the day!

As a sort-of benchmarking test, I tried soloing Caudecus’s Manor, and I was able to pull it off, so I feel like I’m on the right track! The question now is “where to take this build next?” Do I change around my runes or sigils? Or is there a different combination of traits which can pull off what I want to accomplish (I’ve been experimenting with 0/4/3/3/4 and 0/6/0/5/3 lately), but more effectively than my current setup?

My current build:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fhUQNAscRlknpItdoxSN0zRCvxYuBOXKoMniKZA3C-TxDBwA8U/ZgNAaVSIWJiSlQKMhB4EA45IAkV5gKtAhOEAp0Fw4BAMRJoz1HAA-e

What can I do to take this thing to the next level?

-Matt

Here’s a couple of questions for refocusing discussion:

-Soldier v Knight: what are the pros and cons for each on a Mesmer?
-What tends to be the target total armor rating for “tank” builds typically run by members of other professions?

-Matt

So… what about for a Mesmer who doesn’t do dungeons and plays solo 95% of the time?

-Matt

Hi Ross,

Your post has me wondering something. Why Assassin’s gear? The damage formula clearly shows that the Berzerker array yields more damage than the Assassin array, so why are they mentioned in the same breath? The only reasons I can think of are on-crit sigils and the Critical Infusion trait. Are there others I’m not seeing?

-Matt

Hi everyone!

I’ve gotten back into GW2 thanks to Season 2 of the Living Story, and the Silverwastes have been a blast to play in. Also, thanks to all the bloodstone dusts, dragonite ore, and empyreal fragments I’ve been picking up, it hit me that Ascended gear is now in reach for me.

However, that means I have to lock myself into my choice of weapons and a set of stats.

So, I could use some help in making these choices. I’ve played around with different stat choices and weapon sets, and here is my starting point for these “upgrades:”

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fhUQNAscRlknpItdoxSN0zRCvxYuBOXKoMniKZA3C-TxDBwA8U/ZgNAaVSIWJiSlQKMhB4EA45IAkV5gKtAhOEAp0Fw4BAMRJoz1HAA-e
(updated after first Ascended weapon acquired)

The gist there is that I’ve been playing a “survivable” Mesmer in the Silverwastes with Exotic Knight’s armor and a lot of Valkyrie-ish upgrades and trinkets. When I was playing a lot more a year ago, the “Zerker meta” was the talk of the town. Nowadays, I see a lot of outdated guides and builds, so I really don’t know whether that has changed.

So, here’s what I’m looking for and not looking for:
- I play open-world PvE 99% of the time, and rarely do dungeons. I wouldn’t mind some dungeons, but I would play them as part of a casual group, and definitely not a speed-clear group.
- I usually play solo, though I play with a couple of close friends pretty often. My party size is 1-3.
- I enjoy challenging content like the Silverwastes, and I don’t get involved in “zergs” or “champ trains.” Rewards are cool, but I don’t like farming.
- I really like taking on tough group events either by myself or with a small group. This is part of why I like the Silverwastes, by the way, because the player-cap forces the players to divide up into smaller groups.

So, I’m looking for an effective balance between offense and survivability. What sorts of Ascended gear selections would help me accomplish these goals? Also, has the “Zerker meta” changed since about a year ago?

Also, I’d be glad to take advice and discuss my current build, and am totally open to experimenting with changes. I’m not locked into what I’m running now; it’s just a starting point for comparison.

Let me know if you guys have any questions.

-Matt

And… if Champion loot isn’t touched, and this scaling were to apply to normal monsters and veterans, would that perceived “fairness” problem go away?

-Matt

Galtrix.7369:

Whether it be every couple of weeks, every couple of months, people would still find a way to farm them and ridicule the people that want to do it differently.

Fortunately, the world of Tyria is so gigantic that this is very hard to do. Especially when, in order to pooh-pooh the people who want to do it differently, the farmer would have to be in the zone watching his crop. He or she can’t play traffic cop without being at the scene. Which means that person isn’t actually farming at that time.

Would a true farmer take a break from his valuable farming time to police every single monster in Tyria? Is that even possible?

-Matt

Keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that this idea does not do anything to affect the current “champ-train” way of doing things, beyond perhaps shrinking the number of passengers a little bit, passengers who would prefer to Not Ride if the rewards were not so vastly inferior. All it does is work to bring rewards for Not Riding the Train up a bit, so they are not so far behind.

If someone off the Train gets a few more rewards while off the Train, that does nothing to the level of rewards received by the Train-riders. There is not a zero-sum dynamic here.

What was the phrase? Play Your Way?

-Matt

This is a great idea, one I have been meaning to suggest for quite awhile. I’ve noticed that there is already a mechanism in place which awards bonus XP for defeating a monster which has not been defeated in some time. Perhaps that mechanism could be expanded on, in which defeating the monster yields bonus rewards as well as XP.

-Matt

Casmurro.9046:

You need to wait until Dulfy finishes a guide for this living story. Like how to collect all those fragment kitten to get to that thing and so on

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I have not found any info on Dulfy about the wurm event. Can anyone post a link?

TooBz.3065:

I find that 90% of the time I learn what to do from Dulfy.

These snippets are indicative of something that seems to have become a big problem for the game. A lot of the challenge of figuring out how to defeat something has been outsourced to Dulfy, and the community seems to be okay with this. Thus, ArenaNet can safely assume that “everyone reads Dulfy” when designing their content.

In other words… the strategy guide has become required reading, and that seems to have affected the design process.

-Matt

When I click the button to guest into another North American server, they all show up as having the same level of population. I can only guest into two different servers in a day, so it’s not really feasible to just choose blindly until I land on a good one.

Is there a list anywhere of high-population servers, for those of us who aren’t in the know?

-Matt

As I have been approaching Orr, I realized a problem which is preventing progress. The respawn rates on Orr itself in the Straits of Devastation and in Malchor’s Leap are proving to be just too rapid for me to be able to make progress.

For example, in the Theater of Delight area of Malchor’s Leap, there is a small fort to the northwest, and I discovered that I just could not kill the undead fast enough to make any progress, as their respawn rate was very rapid. In particular, after I would, after an extended fight, finish off a Veteran, a new one would respawn in a matter of seconds.

After noticing this, and how it was simply impossible for me to make any progress in the Theater of Delight, I slipped through enemy lines and gave the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance a try. Once again, the respawn rate proved to be so rapid that I was constantly fighting multiple undead, to the point where it was impossible for me to make any progress in that area, either.

These respawn rate troubles are not confined to Orr, though the problem is quite obvious in Orr. For example, I have been going through the game with a friend, and the two of us are running into the same issue with the Dredge of the Shiverpeaks. They just respawn so quickly that the two of us have a very difficult time making progress. Even if we manage to kill them very quickly, there are so many of them that we spend all our time mowing through Dredge after respawning Dredge.

So, I’d like to suggest scaling the respawn rates of the hostile creatures in an area based on the number of players in the area. This way, progress can occur without requiring a mob of players to do it.

Thank you for reading,
-Matt