Guild Wars 2

The fastest? Get extremely, incredibly lucky and have it drop from an enemy or chest. Next fastest is to get extremely lucky and get it from the Mystic Forge with relatively few tries.

But by far the most reliable way is to save up and buy it from the trading post. It’s unlikely to be quick, unless you have a lot of stuff to sell, but on average it’s quicker and less frustrating than waiting for a lucky drop or trying your luck and potentially wasting your gold in the Mystic Forge.

Ayrilana.1396:

Danikat.8537:

Ok I think some people might be confusing the two different achievements you get for binding legendary weapons.

Legendary Collector is for binding unique legendaries. The first tier is 1, tier 2 is 2 and the max tier is 5. This requires you to have different legendaries, so Sunrise, Twilight and Eternity would get you to tier 3.

Twice-told Legend is for binding two duplicate legendaries. Meaning two of the exact same ones. As the description says: “Present a matching pair of bound legendary weapons to Historian Dozza in Divinity’s Reach.”

Since Twilight, Sunrise and Eternity are not all identical they don’t count.

(Also you have to actually have both legendaries with you when you speak to the NPC to get the achievement.)

They have awarded credit for that achievement if someone has eternity bound and either sunrise or twilight bound as well. This is because eternity is a special case in that it uses both of those weapons to create it.

Do you have a source for that?

I tried searching online (both this site specifically and the internet generally) and didn’t see any mention of Anet awarding the achievement to people who made Eternity, but a lot of discussions where someone theorised that would work and were told it wouldn’t.

Such as this one on this forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Twice-Told-Legend-really/first#post4250274

You’d also have to find out how many people actually tried for the various achievements.

Otherwise the data would be inaccurate because of people (like me) getting the mini or meta achievement and then stopping.

Tongku.5326:

I think the people that dont like exclusive items are same ones that don’t like putting in effort to obtain legendaries (for example WvW map completion or SPVP matches, or something truly heroic).

In general, that whole crowd would be more at home in a PVE exclusive MOBA rather then MMORPG with all sorts of different elements within it.

I just recently returned to the game and missed the coclusion of season 1 and whole season 2, so I missed a lot. Am I kittened about it ? no, why should I be ? I wasnt here so its it and thats that.What does kinda irk me though, is that in turn I have items from way back when, and some of them feel extremely devalued, especially because via these return events they are just too easy to get. I don’t think its fair to undervalue anyones accomplishments and effort in this way. If a person A puts in a ton of effort and a person B puts in 1/4 effort, then person B should get 1/4 of the reward, not the whole thing.

Actually I really enjoyed making my legendary and the only reason I haven’t moved on to making more is I want to wait for HoT for the new ones and the precursor scavenger hunt. (And I want to put my gold into my mini pet collection.)

I’m also really proud of my mini llama from the Tournament of Legends but I still think they haven’t done enough to make it available to everyone who wants one. Especially now you need loads to make the upgraded versions. Ideally there would be a repeatable PvP reward track which gives one.

But as other people have said there’s a huge difference between an item that’s exclusive because you had to put effort in to earn it (which anyone could get if they were willing to put the same effort in) and one that’s exclusive because it was only available for a short period of time.

The Celebration Hat is arguably one of the most exclusive items in the game because it was only available during the headstart weekend. But it’s nothing special. No one is impressed by it because it didn’t take any effort to get. I got 2 just because I accidentally clicked the button twice.

(Although maybe that’s a bad example since I suspect the main reason it’s not very popular is it’s pretty ugly and the bald head effect is even more glaring than with most hats.)

My main reason for being in a guild was always to have a consistent group of people to talk to while playing, so my main reason for repping was to be able to see guild chat.

That hasn’t really changed since guilds you’re not repping get a dull brown chat colour that doesn’t stand out easily. If we could customise chat colours this wouldn’t really be an issue, but as it is only my repped guild’s chat is easy to read while playing.

Other than that the only reasons I can think of are that you have to rep in order to get credit for guild missions (I did Rush the other day with a guild I’m not part of and only got the normal event reward, no bouncy chest or commendation), and to access some guild hall features and benefits.

And obviously many people just like to show they’re part of a particular guild.

I’ve just done a couple and their health is noticeably higher. They’re still easy to kill on your own but you have to actually make an effort to bring them down in seconds.

I’m not going to answer the poll because I’d have to use my Google account, which is under my real name.

But I’m in the “I’m planning to raid someday” category and have been since raids were announced. I like the idea but it seems to be quite a time commitment. Even my guilds casual, training runs require you to commit to raiding at a specific time on the same day each week which just isn’t possible for me.

I don’t think it’s complicated, at least not based on what Anet sell. You can’t get the base game any more, just HoT and you get either the standard, deluxe (with some novelty items) or ultimate (with novelty items and cheap gems). If the rumors are true there will also be a free trial version, but if they’re true it’s going to be heavily restricted.

Where it does get complicated is with other retailers still selling the base game (with a wide variety of prices), I’m not sure if all new accounts from now on get HoT or if you’d have to buy it separately.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

In PvE pets won’t accidentally pull mobs. The pet can go right in the middle of 20 foes and not aggro, as long as the Ranger won’t aggro or the pet won’t be commanded to attack.

This is also a common misconception (by both people who play rangers and people who don’t) that causes a lot of problems.

They did used to draw aggro, that was changed a long time ago but some people don’t realise. What happens now is the ranger draws aggro and, if they’re not told otherwise, the pet will run to attack whatever is attacking you. Which looks a lot like the pet drawing aggro and a lot of people seem to assume is an inevitable part of having a pet (and therefore a ranger) around.

But rangers actually have 3 options to stop it happening:
1) Use F1 to order the pet to attack another target.
2) Use F3 to recall them. They’ll then stand by your side not attacking until either you tell them to or a new enemy hits you.
3) Set them to passive and they won’t attack anything at all until you tell them to.

Which one is best obviously depends on the situation – if they’re just attacking the wrong target use F1, if you want them to stop completely use F3 and if you know you’re coming up on a bit where you will be hit and don’t want to hit back use Passive. (For example skipping part of a dungeon.)

Some people go further and just keep the pet on passive all the time and manually order them to attack each target, but I generally don’t find I need that level of micromanagement.

I’m not saying pet AI is actually perfect. There is a lot that could be done to make it better, but this one is usually a L2P issue more than anything.

I think some people actually don’t realise there is a chest. Twice now I’ve been in pugs and had a conversation that started with “Don’t forget the chest!” “What chest?”

Similarly I suspect a lot of people are forming parties who have little/no experience doing it before (since there’s not really any reason to unless you’re doing dungeons) and they don’t realise that if the leader leaves everyone else is kicked. They might not even know they’re the leader since the party window doesn’t really make it clear.

I don’t think making dungeons easier would solve your problem. Even if they did make them easier for lower level characters doing them on a level 80 would still be easier than that and therefore faster and LFG listings would still ask for level 80’s.

In-game you can also type /wiki and then the name of the title. e.g. /wiki Fashion Collector

Even if the thing you’re searching for doesn’t have it’s own page it will show you the search results which will probably include a page that answers your question.

I’ve been thinking about this too. The cat scavenger hunt is a bit like mini pet collecting – at first it seems like a fun bonus for casual players but the requirements have rapidly gotten more expensive and difficult.

Part of me thinks it’s just Anet experimenting – they’re seeing how far they can push it and when players will give up. Part of me thinks this was the plan all along and it’s actually building to something that will justify the effort (for people who like the thing) and part of me thinks they’re just making it up as they go along with no real plan and the cats, locations and requirements are just whatever they come up with at the time.

Having said that the blue catmander (the one that wants a Gift of Battle) isn’t actually as bad as it seems at first. I started playing WvW for the first time in a few years on Sunday evening, specifically to get the cats, and I got the Gift of Battle yesterday evening – it took about 6 hours in total and in the process I got the canned chili for the yellow catmander and the 100 skirmish tokens needed for one of the minis. So now I just have another 100 tokens left to get and having reached gold tier it should be quite quick.

I’m going to post a guide in Players Helping Players when I get home from work explaining how to go about getting it – aimed at total WvW newbies.

Vistas unlock at level 10. (They can be used before then buy don’t show up on the map and newbies won’t have been told about them.)

I think it’s pretty unlikely anyone below level 10 will be worrying about completing daily achievements. (Especially since those are introduced at level 11.)

I know some people who have never enjoyed any of the storylines in GW2. They find the personal story, season 1, season 2 and HoT to all be too short (each individual section anyway), too disjointed and too easy to complete and don’t like the characters or the style of writing. If you’re one of those people then I think it would be reasonable to assume Season 3 will be the same.

But I’m the opposite – I’ve enjoyed all of the storylines we’ve had so far. No, it’s not the greatest storytelling there has ever been, or even the best I’ve seen in a video game. But I’ve enjoyed playing through it and I’m looking forward to seeing more of it.

I particularly want to know what will happen after HoT. My guess is there’s going to be a lot of political fall out from the Pact’s actions. We persuaded all the races to send soldiers to join us, put together a huge (and presumably expensive) assault force and then got almost all of them killed in one go. We were eventually able to defeat the dragon but the fact that in the end it only took a relatively small force (even including the people doing the Dragon’s Stand meta-event which in lore is happening at the same time) only reinforces the idea that the big attack was a mistake.

In other words a lot of people aren’t going to be happy and with the Pact currently leaderless and Destiny’s Edge mainly out of action the player character looks set to take the blame.

These new events seem to be pointing towards things falling apart a bit back home too. There’s increased activity from the bandits, the other dragon minions and probably other groups before LS3 starts.

On top of which there’s the unanswered question of what will happen with Glint’s egg, and 4 other dragons still to sort out.

In other words there’s a lot going on right now, and I’m excited to see how it’s going to play out.

Silverwastes is a bit of an exception within GW2 because it has a lot of fights that use specific mechanics instead of simply requiring enough damage to win.

If you’re lucky you’ll be on a map where people take the time to explain some/all of this before and during the events.

If you’re unlucky you’ll be on a map where those who know what to do assume everyone else does too and either don’t say anything or use abridged versions that make no sense to people who don’t know the fights, like “don’t pop bubbles!”, “no AoE!”, “build honey!” etc.

(I have to admit I’ve been guilty of deciding I can’t be bothered to type full instructions and will just see how it goes this time, then regretting it when the run goes badly.)

I definitely recommend reading the wiki to learn about the different events, but also don’t be afraid to ask if you’re not sure what to do or why to do/not do it. Not only will it get you an answer to that question, it will remind lazy people like me that these things need to be said.

You are correct. There are no purely ranged professions, and likewise no pure melee ones. I think the nearest you can get is an engineer without the elite specs – then all their weapon choices are ranged (shield skills both work at range).

But you’d still have to move into melee range sometimes, even if you’re still using ranged attacks. Especially in dungeons and Fractals where there often isn’t room to stay far away from the enemy and PvP where they will close with you even if you try to stay away.

I recently got around to creating my final 3 permanent characters and spent what my husband tells me is an absurd amount of time coming up with names for them. But to me the name is at least as important as their appearance and I want to make absolutely sure I get something I’m going to be happy with.

But it did make me curious about how much thought other people put into this and what kind of things you consider when choosing a name.

For me the most important factors are:

1) It should mean something, reflect the characters appearance or personality, even if no one else will understand that without me telling them.

For example my asuran necromancer is called Ambage. Which is an archaic English word that means a long-winded and overly complicated description. I stumbled across it while looking up Latin words (more on this below) and decided it was perfect for an asura, and especially the one I was planning.

It can be a lot simpler than that though. My yellow/orange themed sylvari warrior is called Aurhedyn which means ‘gold seed’.

2) It should look interesting. Which to me usually means not using English words. English isn’t the prettiest language and it’s also my 1st language so it’s a bit dull to me.

For example I wanted to call a GW1 character Holly but it didn’t suit her. I remembered liking the Latin word – Ilex. I added the Latin for ivy (Hedera) and got a name I liked so much I reused it in GW2.

3) Ideally it should be lore-appropriate.

At least it shouldn’t stand out too much, but I’m willing to be flexible. Like the above example of Ambage for an asura. It’s longer than most asura names, but inline with ones like Batanga or Hrouda.

But sometimes sticking to the lore can help. I was really struggling to name my norn revenant until I looked up norse names. Then after a bit of debate over my favourite I picked Vanirar Corvusson (‘spirit warrior’ ‘raven son’).

So that’s me. How do you do it?

Considering the absence of a gear treadmill was one of the major selling points for this game I think adding one would lose a lot more players than it would gain or retain.

If you’ve run out of stuff to do then just take a break for a bit and come back later. Although remember we’re getting new Living Story content soon.

GuzziHero.2467:

That’s a good point Vayne.

I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, I’m not trying to insult anyone either, which is why I don’t want to think or feel that EU players are ignorant when they most likely are not.

Does having a broad mix of languages create disaffection at a subconscious level? Is there an element of belief that the respective lack of communication due to the language diversity in the EU means that one would not receive verbal appreciation if one does help another?

I think it’s just that it makes it more difficult. Even people who know multiple languages may struggle with things they need to say in-game because a lot of the names aren’t translated directly and the name chosen isn’t always obvious unless you’ve played the game in that language.

Having said that attempting to coordinate players in multiple languages can be a lot of fun too. One of my favourite experiences in this game was playing The Battle for LA on a map with a roughly even mix of English, French, German and Spanish speakers and people whose first language wasn’t any of those but knew enough to get by.

We had one commander who happened to speak fluent English, French and Spanish, one who knew French and German and a few other people who contributed whatever they could. It was absolute chaos but the added challenge made it a lot more entertaining than some of the smoother runs I’d done before.

I agree with the others.

I was one of the lucky ones who got to “play” through Lost Shores. Most of it consisted of hanging around the computer waiting for the next bit to start, playing for a few minutes then going back to waiting. The finale was a complete mess: run from the waypoint to wherever the giant karka was, get as close as you could before the game froze, mash your skills, wait to see if you died, the event moved on and you were left behind or you got completely disconnected and then start the process over. And that was with a pretty good computer that could normally run the game with little/no lag.

It’s not something I’d ever want to repeat.

Lil Puppy.5216:

I’m glad I don’t have any human characters, a wedding mini-skirt with train really isn’t appealing. I mean maybe today’s generation with their super loose morals would think it was awesome but this just screams “look at my panties!” It’s better on the Norns but it still looks like an Asura tent.

I was going to say the first thing it reminded me of was Stephanie Seymour’s dress in the November Rain video, and that was from 1992, over 15 years ago now and hardly ’today’s generation’.

But I guess if your issue is loose morals (as represented by clothing) a Guns N’ Roses video isn’t a great counter argument.

Contact Support and ask.

A lot of people asked when the shared slots first came out and based on posts on the forum responses were pretty random. Some people got refunds, others didn’t (as far as I know no one asked for an exchange). Some were told to buy the slots and/or delete the duplicate items first, others were told they should delete them after or could keep them. Some were told only certain items (mainly the Royal Terrace and Airship pass) could be refunded and others could not.

They may have sorted a consistent response out by now, but you’ll have to ask them to find out what that is.

I don’t think we know, but at a guess either it was destroyed or the Krytan government has it. Or maybe the Priory or Order of Whispers since both have collections of interesting artefacts, including some they’re probably not supposed to have.

But unless it does a lot more than we were told in GW1 it would be fairly useless now. It’s purpose was to detect the ‘chosen’ – those who were capable of completing the Rite of Ascension and gaining the Gift of Truesight, which enabled them to see and fight the mursaat (and also do a bunch of other things like enter the Mists).

But now the Mursaat are gone, except for possibly Lazarus, the site of the original Rite of Ascension is inaccessible but we’ve found other ways to achieve the same thing, and other ways to enter the Mists, although completely different areas of it.

Of course we were never told how a creepy floating eye crystal could detect the chosen, so maybe it can do more than that. But it would need someone who knows how to use it to find out.

Malkavian.4516:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Bob F It.5701:

I’ve had another playthrough, and while the same problems are still there, Trahearne’s voice lines have been updated. So while ANet still cares about Personal Story (of course they do, just see their “improvements”), unconfusing the end chapters appears to be another large patch away.

If that’s the case, it is what we have feared then, they wont return the missing arc, but will preform a hard edit, to cleanse its existence from the remaining chapters. Well, even this is better than leaving the story as it is though… But why Anet? Why fix what isn’t broken? What we all love and enjoy? And what contributes so much to the infrastructure of the story.

I got a theory. If memory serves, people vocally complained on the forums about how Trahearne stole your character’s spotlight on the last half of the Personal Story, which I honestly do not see considering that he never joined my character and Destiny’s Edge towards the attack on Zhaitan and was just perched atop his ship on the Straits. This change was meant to address this, although I think it backfired. I may be kitteny for saying this, but if this is true, then I sincerely blame the people for voicing that out and we eventually got what we got right now.

Most of the complaints were focused on earlier events though.

Mainly the fact that unless you play a sylvari you’re first introduced to Trahearne at the start of The Battle of Claw Island. At the end of the instance your mentor dies and Trahearne instantly takes their place. Very shortly afterwards he becomes the head of the Pact and you’re his second in command, following his orders from that point on.

It’s extremely jarring given that until that point you were lead to believe your Order mentor would be the one going up against Zhaitan with you.

Rangers can apply a lot of conditions using sword + dagger/torch and shortbow. Even more with traits and pets that cause conditions. (And obviously more with runes and sigil.)

I have no idea if there are any meta-builds or whatever for them, but I do know condi builds were popular for rangers, particularly in solo PvE or WvW even before the condition update and afterwards some people complained they’re OP.

TexZero.7910:

It’s season 1 all over again.

Hated season 1 for a reason, still hate this.
Give us a proper story and instanced content, not this fluff.

If you have a desire to change the world again, one can easily do that through living world without this piecemeal garbage.

They’ve already said both Season 3 of the Living Story and a new expansion are being worked on.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t actually part of Season 3 since it’s not got a story chapter and the achievements are under the ‘general’ heading, but I’m also sure it’s leading up to it. My guess is that Season 3 is going to be mainly about the aftermath of the disastrous initial attack on Mordremoth nearly wiping out the Pact and all the racial forces that came to help us, and these events fit with that because they seem to be implying that other problems have gotten worse while we’ve been gone.

But the way they’ve been presented, I think, makes it clear they’re not supposed to be the main storyline, or a replacement for the main storyline. They’re more like the mordrem attack events that were added to the open-world maps during Season 2.

Which does mean they are part of the Living World. Although players often use it to refer to the story the two are different. The living story is the core of it, but the living world also means the wider impact of that – the fact that the story won’t only take place in new maps and old maps won’t remain static, they’ll be changed by the storyline. Like Kessex Hills being damaged by the Tower of Nightmares or Fort Salma and Fort Concordia being destroyed by Mordremoth. These events are part of that process of the storyline impacting what goes on in the maps.

Kraggy.4169:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I thought I read you now have 2 hours before you’re forced to update.

Yes you did, you’re correct, that message appeard in-game the moment the build became available .. 1 hr 45 mins message appeared as I’m typing this.

@Lycan Nibbler, the dailies are valid for 24 hours, so leaving it till the last 30 mins is really leaving yourself no room for any sort of delay, isn’kitten.. although this is going to delay it in any case.

For a lot of people in the Americas reset time is right in the middle of prime-time (evening). If you’re at work during the day you don’t have a lot of options for when to play. Especially if you’re at work during the day and then have to get the kids their dinner, walk the dog, get the kids to bed and everything else.

So if you start doing your dailies, get part way finished and then have to download an update you could easily be left without enough time to complete them before the reset and not enough time to play to do all 3 afterwards.

Edit: And if they schedule the update for earlier in the day (which as someone else said would mean holding it until the day after it’s ready) then it will conflict with prime-time in Europe and you hit exactly the same problem with people being unable to play during the only window they have.

Admittedly that’s a bit more flexible because the reset doesn’t hit until midnight (or 1, or 2am) in Europe, so people could stay up to finish dailies, but that’s not ideal when you need to work the next day.

My main character has been level 80 for months and I haven’t finished the story.

In my case it’s not even that I don’t like doing it. It’s having to go to the location that put me off. I stopped doing my sylvari’s story for ages after I got fed up with being sent to Kessex Hills, back to the Grove to watch one cut scene, back to Kessex, back to the Grove for another cut scene…. And having to keep going to Orr is even worse. I know I can use waypoints but then it feels like a waste of money when I play for 2 minutes and have to go somewhere else, either to continue the story or because I want to do something different.

So has this daily definitely been removed? Or is that still speculation based on the fact that it hasn’t come up in a while?

If it’s been removed I’ll stop saving up Essence of Luck and just use them as I get them.

Essence Snow.3194:

TexZero.7910:

Nefarius.9702:

As the topic title says, I think the accessibility to raids really is an issue.

That was pretty much my only goal yet, until the legendary armor was previewed.
It simply shouldn’t be that top tier content is limited to a small percentage of players.

And that really is the case – I’m in a large guild and roughly 5-10% are successfully, experienced raiders.

Other people (and I think that’s reflecting in the rest of the gw2 community) simply don’t get into raids – cause of the reasons mentioned above.

You’d have to join a somewhat professional raid guild to be really succesful.

Now i’m gonna teach people who keep saying Raids are inaccessible a lesson real quick here.

You see that LFG tool. Use it.

Here’s what you do
1) Create your own group
2) Label it one of the following things, Inexperienced / Fun / Teaching / Learning run
3) Set you own req for comp & let people know what if any voice tools your using.

You are now the proud starter of a raid group.

Lets stop using this false equivocation that raids are inaccessible, when the cold reality is people whom claim this don’t want to put in the same effort those before them did in building raid groups & learning.

To be fair even if they did do this the group would most likely never fill. Few would join and eventually leave b/c they realize it won’t fill in any reasonable amount of time (talking hours of waiting in the slim chance of filling).

Have you tried?

I admit I haven’t tried this with raids (simply because I haven’t gotten around to wanting to raid yet) but I see the same thing with dungeons and it does work.

I look at the LFG tool and I see nothing but “EXP 80 zerk” or whatever, basically groups looking for people who already know the dungeon to complete it as fast as possible. I talk about it in game or on the forum and get told that hardly anyone does dungeons any more and the ones who do only want experienced players for speed-clears.

Then I put up my own listing saying something like “My first time, everyone welcome” or “casual run, first timers welcome” and within about 10-15 minutes I’ve got a group.

Now I know to speed-clearers (who are expecting to complete the dungeon in 10 minutes that’s an absurd amount of time to wait for a group and proves it’s a complete waste of time. But for casual players who are expecting to struggle and therefore willing to spend longer playing the dungeon it’s nothing.

It’s been the same when I’ve looked for groups to do Living Story achievements (where there are frequently no groups at all advertised) or to complete the Mordremoth fight at the end of the HoT story.

I suspect there’s actually a lot of people out there who want these kinds of groups and are even looking for them on the LFG tool but very few of them (or should I say us?) are willing to actually put up the advert. Maybe because there’s an underlying expectation that you are then the ‘group leader’ and will be responsible for how the run goes? Maybe just because it’s calling attention to yourself by being the ‘odd one out’ in the list? I don’t know.

I can’t find where they talked about refunds now, but if I remember correctly they also said they’d refund the difference. Meaning if you bought 4 tags at 400g each you’ll get 100g back.

Doing the same for people who only bought 1 or 2 would technically mean they take an additional 100g – 200g from your account.

Kentaine.4692:

Essentially, you’re asking for a refund because something increased in price. I’ve worked retail, and we honored when things went down in price, but no one would ask for a refund because it grew more expensive. Look at it as if you saved 100 gold or didn’t lose any money. Those who bought 4 still paid 300 gold for their new commander tag as well since they only get a refund for every tag in excess of 3.

I bet it’s happened at least once. I’ve seen similar situations like a customer wanting their money back on something they got for free. Mostly I could explain it but one person was only happy when I took it back, ran it through the till and handed them a receipt showing they had paid £0.00, returned it and £0.00 was refunded back into their account.

Randulf.7614:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Randulf.7614:

simplesimon.2084:

It is going to be rough on any one running burn as there main damage.

Hoping for a mastery or something. They can’t realistically proceed against Destroyers w/o solving the burning dps issue.

Trailer does look good. Can’t wait for next week. Bloodstone was a very cool map, but doesn’t really have much staying power.

They didn’t in GW1, you had to change your skills as they where immune to fire damage.

The flexibility of the gw1 skill system allowed for. Here it would severely hamper many eles and make Berserkers next to useless in pve. They couldnt get away with it here if we are taking on destroyers for a sustained period.

Agreed.

A big part of GW1’s design was that you needed to think about your build before each area and choose skills to suit the enemies you were going to be fighting. That was part of why there were so many skills.

But also you only had those 8 skills to determine your attacks. Well that and maybe the upgrades on your weapon. But you didn’t have anything like profession skills, traits which add effects on your attacks or runes which add effects. So it was a lot easier to change your build completely.

GW2 is very different in that respect. Some professions (like guardians) would have a very hard time swapping all the burning in their build for other damage types. It would basically be penalising those people.

In part it’s because “OMG they ruined it forever!” is the standard response to any update/sequel to any game. And most movies. Probably books too.

It’s also because Anet tend to want to keep the meta-game active so whenever a build becomes too common they’ll change something to either make it work differently or nerf it completely. And then of course everyone who relies on that build and other players telling them how to use it is stuck until someone invents a replacement and puts a video up to show them up to use it again.

What is it you like about set gear? Chances are there’s an equivalent in GW2, it’s just done in a slightly different way. Here’s a few examples based off what I know as ‘set gear’ in other games:

Stat bonuses for matching pieces
Runes: You can apply sets of runes which give bonus stats and effects based on how many matching ones you use, up to a maximum of 6.

Themed appearance
Pretty much every armor skin (and a lot of the weapons) are part of a matching set, and many of them have a distinct theme. For example all of the Sorrow’s Embrace armor has a sort of industrial/steam punk look whereas the Ascalon Catacombs sets are more of a traditional fantasy look.

Collecting sets
There’s less examples for this, but it’s gotten better since HoT. There are a few sets you collect by doing a variety of events and other tasks in an area (like the carapace and luminescent sets) and of course the dungeon ones which come from earning tokens through dungeon runs.

So you think it’s too hard and takes too long, but DON’T want it made shorter and easier?

I spend most of my time exploring, which is mostly because that’s what I like to do in any game, but it seems to be greatly encouraged in this one.

I use the Points of Interest, Vistas, Hearts etc. to guide me around the map and keep track of where I’ve been but when I’m going between them I always hold down ctrl+alt so I can keep a look out for anything worth checking out and even if I just think the scenery is interesting I’ll detour to go and see what’s over there. I’ll also stop or detour for any dynamic events nearby.

If I don’t find many detours then I’m checking off points on my map, completing hearts and consequently levelling faster. But more often than not I’m doing a mix of everything as and when it comes up.

For example the other day I started in the bottom corner of one map and was heading towards a POI I needed when I found a cave mouth. I went in and found a rich silver vein, a different POI which I had intended to get later and an ettin who kicked off an event chain. When that chain ended I found myself near another exit to the cave, which lead me to lots of harvesting nodes and as I worked my way through them I found my way over to another cave, which turned out to be the start of a jump puzzle. It took me a couple of attempts to do the puzzle and I got some nice loot from the monsters along the way. When I finished it I found myself near some diving goggles and a vista. I couldn’t do both at the same time because they were on different ledges so I had to get the vista, jump down, stop to complete a skill point event and pick up a few more harvesting nodes, then back-track to get the diving goggles. On my way out this time I stopped to revive someone who had failed the skill point challenge, helped them finish it, detoured briefly to explore what proved to be a fairly small spider cave and then headed off to finally get that POI I’d been going for in the first place.

All in all that took me about 2 hours, so I had to stop for the night having only achieved one thing I set out to do, but also having had a great time and gained a lot of nice loot.

Oh, it’s often worth hanging around after a DE finishes too and watch what the NPCs involved say and do. There’s often another event that will start up following it, but they rarely go straight from one to the other, there’s usually something that needs to happen in between.

Also someone else has probably said this but don’t forget about crafting. Even if you don’t want to focus on crafting or sink a lot of money into it it’s well worth harvesting materials and then taking some time when you’re in town to see what you can craft with them just for the XP.

I think it’s a very good idea.

They actually used to have this back when there were town clothes instead of outfits. I have no idea why it wasn’t carried over because it made using them much easier and therefore more appealing. Although it’s not difficult it is a pain to have to go through the menus each time I want to switch in or out of them.

It would also be nice IMO to have an option like GW1 has where you can set them to turn on automatically if you enter a town, or explorable zone.

Hmm…these types of being seem suspiciously common in Tyria. I suspect some Inquest interfearence.

So far I’ve sighted the rare winged, racoon tailed moose, the winged panther and the terrifying quaggarka. (I believe the balloon may be a lure to attract the small children on which it feeds.)

The maximum armor rating is 1271 according to this page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor#Defense_rating

That is of course on a full set of ascended heavy armor. Maximum for full exotics is 1211.

I couldn’t find a simple answer to how toughness adds to that and what the maximum defense rating is but that page would be a good starting point to find out. I doubt you could get an answer to how many additional hits you can take because that depends on a lot of other factors, like the stats of the player/creature you’re fighting and any additional effects on you and them.

But basically all you need to know is ascended armour always has the best stats, heavy armour always has the best armour rating and toughness adds to it. So what you want is a set of heavy ascended armour with toughness as the primary stat.

I agree, this way is much better.

For one thing I’ve been thinking for a while that part of the issue with the bad voice acting is actually down to the way every cut scene is presented. Because all you see is two people against a non-descript background you’re already pulled out of immersion and faced with the idea that this is two people reading lines to each other. So when some of the voice actors sound like they’re reading lines in a sound booth with no context (fair enough, they are, but that’s where the acting comes in) it becomes a lot more noticable than it would otherwise be.

But also this way makes a lot more sense. It really hit me when I did the Greatest Fear arc where you blow up a bone ship. Tonn (the demolitionist) was activating the bomb and in that case the voice actor did a good job but it was completely ruined because when he was saying something like “Ok, here we go…wait, let me try again….it’s no good! Something’s wrong!” all I saw was him standing there doing nothing, so the dialogue didn’t make any sense.

Telling a story needs both dialogue and actions. There’s a few ways that can be achieved but when you’re using a visual medium it makes most sense to show us the actions.

Anet have said before you can report all types of names through the report option. They’ll check the character name, guild name and ranger pet names (if applicable).

Of course you won’t hear back from them, they never tell the person who reported a player what the outcome was, but they’ll see it and if they think it’s inappropriate they’ll act on it.

bigmooky.9106:

I think Anet should just fix the reward system because it’s ridiculous to farm forever then when you finally get an exotic drop it’s crap that’s only worth 97 silver it’s getting very out of hand and making it harder and harder for me to enjoy the game I really hope arena net reads this and changes it because it gets very frustrating

How do you suggest they fix it?

Most of the drops that are actually worth a lot are valuable because they’re rare. Demand out-strips supply so people can charge high prices for them. If they increase the drop rate then the price will drop and the end result will be that there are even less valuable drops in the game.

They could add more popular skins but that’s extremely difficult to do because what’s popular is a matter of opinion and if they succeeded it’d have the same effect – demand would be spread out between multiple different items so each one individually wouldn’t be as valuable.

I have to say though, as much as it can be really frustrating when you’re trying to achieve long-term goals it does have it’s upsides.

The graphics are excellent (although as a few people have noted it depends on your hardware) and the zones are huge and incredibly detailed. I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring them and I still feel like I’ve not seen much of it.

Of course this is when the lack of fast travel and the gold cost for everything gets really frustrating. Even if I’ve been to a place before I can’t teleport back there, I have to repeat the whole journey first. And of course you need to make sure you’ve got food and other supplies to avoid the debuffs and somewhere to sleep (or equipment to set up a ‘camp site’ so sleeping outside is safe).

But once you get used to it getting all that set up isn’t too bad and it really is worth it. I thought I took a lot of screenshots of the scenery in GW2, but I’ve got far, far more from Outside and some include crazy things you’d never believe the devs could have thought up.

Also, for those of you who mentioned the urban jumping puzzles you might like to try some of the ones out in the wilderness. Some of them are crazy-long and really confusing, but some great achievements if you manage it (although not much in the way of actual loot, it’s mainly novelty trophies that you can use to decorate your home instance). Just make sure you avoid falling, the damage is brutal!

Have you looked at where you can get mastery points from?

A lot of them come from open world stuff like defeating open-world bosses, finding hidden things like the coins in Drytop and Silverwastes and completing jumping puzzles. A lot of others come from stuff which is quite straight-forward, so even if it’s not content you enjoy you should be able to get through it quickly, like doing the personal story on multiple characters.

They also recently added a bunch of Central Tyria mastery insights – you literally just have to find a spot on the map and you get a mastery point.

You probably will have to do some of the ones from other content if you want to completely train up all the mastery lines. But then you may not need them all. For example if you’re not doing Fractals you’ll miss out on a lot of mastery points, but can also skip putting points into the Fractals line because it has no use outside of the one dungeon.

Alternatively if it’s just about doing content which gives you XP you can use the expansion is coming in 3 weeks and that has a whole load of new maps, with new mastery lines and mastery points to go along with it.

It just doesn’t interest me. There’s no story, no progression beyond a points system (you don’t unlock new maps for example) and you don’t have the same freedom as in PvE or even WvW to do things at your own pace or in your own way because you’re locked into a rigid match structure and the rest of your team is depending on you to do your job.

This isn’t specific to GW2 BTW, I very rarely like PvP in any game and when I do it’s extremely casual.

In GW2 I did enough when practising for the Tournament of Legends 2 to see how it worked, got extremely lucky and won a llama mini because the other team didn’t turn up for our first match, lost the second and haven’t been back since.

I can kind of see why some people like it, but I have more fun doing PvE and if I want something more varied/unpredictable than the AI to beat WvW.

There’s two exceptions to this:

The Explorer achievements (Maguuma Explorer, Ascalon Explorer etc.) for uncovering areas of the map and Been There, Done That (for doing all the hearts, vistas, skill points and points of interest) have to be done on a single character.

The game does track all your characters progress but separately and the progress shown on the achievement is for your most complete character. To complete them you have to get 100% on one character, you can’t combine all the bits each character has done.

You can do it multiple times (and map completion will continue to reward Gifts of Exploration) but you’ll only get the achievement and achievement points once.

I’m guessing it’s because among certain groups of people in some English speaking areas (including at least parts of America I think) ‘beaver’ is a euphemism for a woman’s private parts.

Someone probably reported your guild name without ever thinking you may have been referring to actual beavers.

But that’s just my guess. If you want an actual answer and especially if you want the chance to keep that guild name you’ll need to open a support ticket to discuss it with Arenanet.

Depraved Ambience.7942:

You get Tomes in every section of WvW reward track, every second section of PvP reward track, in Fractal daily chests, as personal story rewards. If you aren’t getting a lot of Tomes, what are you doing?

Besides that point, you get experience for literally everything you do in open world. Sorry, but Tomes are junk.

I rarely do WvW and never do PvP. As far as I remember you only get them from the very last personal story chapter.

So for someone like me, who spends the vast majority of their time playing PvE the main source of Tomes is login rewards, which works out at 10 per month (16 if you choose them from the final chest). That adds up pretty slowly. 8 months to get a level 80, if you log in every single day and don’t use a single one.

Personally I don’t feel that I’m short of Tomes, but mainly because I actually prefer to level normally in most cases and don’t bother with the recipes to make money from spirit shards so I don’t need a constant supply of them. I only have about 30 in my bank right now.

But there’s always going to be disagreement when someone asks for something to be removed from black lion chests because there’s always someone else who likes having it. I’ve seen people say bank access express and revive orbs should be removed because they’re useless junk and a pain to delete, whereas I actually find them two of the most useful ‘common’ items.

Milennin.4825:

Because someone else has it worse than me, my issues with -insert issue- don’t matter.
By that logic I shouldn’t be sad when my family gets killed by a terrorist, because there’s been people whose families got first tortured before getting killed. No, how dare I be sad when other people have had it so much worse than me.

PS, I’m not agreeing with the people that the Clock Tower, or Halloween event sucks. I like both, but this argument to try to make people shut up is just stupid.

Believe it or not people do use logic like that.

I’ve seen people, completely seriously, telling someone who’s just found out they have cancer that at least they’ve got a kind that can sometimes be treated so they should’t really be complaining because some people have it much worse.