Guild Wars 2

Apparently, everyone wants to party with zerk but doesn’t want to use zerk gear themselves.

The same thing happens time and again with online games.

1. People love the game, the company makes sweeping changes to something a lot of people love.
2. Huge amounts of complaints flood the forums but result in nothing being done (yes some just complain for the love of complaining). No company is going to come out and say “we messed up and are going to undo huge amounts of the changes”.
3. Opposing side who love the changes come on the forums to defend and tell the haters “well leave then if you don’t like it”.
4. Haters leave the game for another.
5. 3-6 months down the line the forum starts seeing “How do we attract more players to the game” “I can’t find people to play with” posts.
6. Hardcore lovers of the game remain and play in increasingly small circles until the company tries something along the lines of server merges (Anet preempting this with Megaservers?) which buys them a little longer or fails completely

And of course the community suffers from the division during the whole process.

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Poor implementation is poor implementation. It’s worse when people warned them long before the update of many of the issues that we see now. Anet does not listen. That makes people even more upset.

So far it’s a nightmare for guilds to be put in the same instance.

Being with Guild mates should be the biggest priority in a game called Guild Wars 2 for grouping players in the same instance.

Please implement a way for players to move between instances easier! Like the way you could switch between Districts in Guild Wars 1 would be perfect.

Please ?!?!?!

Post deleted due to getting merged and loosing original point.

Half way through Lyssa and disconnected. No problem, there’s still enough time to get back. But no. Thanks to megaserver I’m on a different instance. Good job.

OR From a Hilly Hike to a Climb Up a Sheer Cliff

I have played Guild Wars since Autumn of 2005. I have played Guild Wars 2 since Beta Weekend 2. I have twelve alts, three of which began their lives in the headstart period. Let’s get that out of the way.

Outside of a few of them, I play mostly casually. I like to take my time and enjoy the sights and sounds and smells of Tyria. I have games that I have not yet beaten, DOZENS, because I adore getting immersed and lost in them. GW2 is devilish because it has tickled that fancy of mine.

That said, I came into the patch with a wide open mind. A lot of changes were coming and the fundamentals of the game would be changed for good. I welcomed the wardrobe, the dye consolidation, and the megaserver. If nothing else, towns are a lot livelier now. I adore seeing the world alive with players.

But here is the rub—traits. Before the patch, progression was very gradual, but it was there. Every level you’d have a shiny new trait point to assign to a line of your choosing. You’d incrementally increase your basic stats and work towards minor and major traits as a greater goal. What is missing now is that incremental increase that kept you focused or gave you the idea to try something else.

In my opinion, there was absolutely zero reason to disembowel the trait progression as it was. All it did was turn levels 11-30 into flyover country and greatly inhibited the capabilities of younger characters to make their way through the wilds of Tyria. I was overjoyed when I was finally able to unlock my first major trait on my mesmer, because her burdens became that much easier to shoulder. That was at level 20. Now, at level 32, a single minor trait is all she can afford, and her efficacy is that much reduced. Trash mobs may be cannon fodder now, but taking boss veterans and larger enemies has become a kitten exhausting battle of attrition. I was just starting to love my mesmer, but if the next 48 levels are going to be like this, one can hardly blame me for wanting to just hang up the pink butterflies and make the curtain call.

Life has certainly improved for my veteran characters. But the experience of newer characters has been severely impacted by the removal of gradual progression, the engagement of experimenting with builds in early levels, and the ability to take on challenges in the mid-level ranges.

ANet, you have either inadvertently or by design turned GW2 into one of those games where the endgame (which many argue doesn’t even exist) IS the game. You have turned my hikes into chores, where leveling was previously a joyous little race where little victories gave way to meeting goals and eagerly trying out that combination of traits that you had been eyeing for so long. I implore you, please, please consider reverting to the old 70 point system, at least for PvE. (The new system works extremely well in PvP, kudos to that.)

Your players and new players are not too dumb to comprehend 70 trait points, I promise.

Don’t get mad (not a troll), get even. Play a tanky condition build and show Arena Net the horror they hath spawned.

Now there will be more zerker only LFGs because those zerker groups that previously had enough DPS to bring a non-zerker with them now won’t be able to.

I’d like to point out that the most important change in this patch was the change of the town clothing system. I have no idea what was wrong with the old one, but really — I payed for my town clothes. I payed with real money. I mixed my town clothes as I wished. Now, I can’t do that. I’m already too scared of using the new Armorsmith at the traders, because it gives us Tonics. For example: I had the Khaki leggings for one of my characters, and ONLY that. Now, I have an entire set, and I can’t remove parts from it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t change it. I mixed 4 town clothes on my main character, and I’m not gonna use this system, because I WANT to use THOSE clothes on my character. The parts that I want with the colors that I want.

WE, the GW2 community don’t want refunds in form of gems or other things…
WE, the GW2 community wants the OLD town cloth system back…

I would buy a hot bikini so fast, like unbelievably fast, from the gem store. Yes, I am that vain.

hoegarden.4287:

I agree is some ways. If the connection is lost i can understand that you don’t want to get banned for it. You can’t really predict when your internet will be down or when your PSU explode. If we knew all that days ahead, our life would be much simpler isn’kitten

Then about the family part. You know getting involved in ranked matches takes time. If you just have a few hours where you can be alone, then don’t do it. Better go to the park with the kids or do something else
So in Draygo’s view, only players who pay 200€ each month to get fiber optic internet who never fail can play ranked pvp… not very fair i guess.

That is not my view, I suggest you don’t put words in other peoples mouths.

To get dishonorable you must leave more than one match, you have to leave multiple matches. At that point you are providing a negative gameplay experience to several other people. Ranked matches do not take a long period of time, especially compared to League of Legends which has a similar system called leavebuster which can lead to automatic bans from the entire game.

If you leave the occasional match because your internet cuts out a couple times a month, you wont be getting dishonorable. If your internet is cutting out every single match you need to get your ISP to fix it.

I think what he was saying is due to how ele played at harder content they were better as ele/X where X defines their role more than the base class.

I kinda like the spider queen. A good fight right off the bat before I waste time with a bunch of idiots. If they can listen to direction and/or figure out the mechanics quickly, i will stay in group and complete it, even if it takes longer due to others running clerics gear or bearbows (or, both on the same toon)

That being said I was in a group just yesterday doing story, they wanted a guide, but they wanted me to run a low level toon so it would be fun instead of a complete carry. So I hopped on my glass ele, level 40 something to help. Keep in mind I suck at ele since i have like 5 hours into it. I played it well enough to carry the party to the lovers anyways. But they were too “play how I want” to listen to directions and wiped. Instead of trying again the instance owner just quit complaining of “to hard”… Talk about a lazy wimp.

On the variations of dungeons. In GW1 they had these huge multi path dungeons that required organized groups to effectively clear. Emphasis on effectively. After a very short time of these areas the best builds and paths ways to run these became well known. A skillbar ping required on joining. Failed basic duty = kick. Suck too much and get kicked out of guild if it was a pve speed clear guild. The different paths were an illusion, it was all about running the same path order, pulling the same mobs, balling up the entire instance in one spike ball and clearing content in minutes that takes unorganized groups hours (or not at all). The dungeons in this game are easy by comparison.

Ranging basically contains “adadadadadadad” + dodging once per ~15 seconds.

So far I have 3 toons that are 50 plus, 1 is 48 and 2 near 30 (I purchased another slot) and I haven’t run any instances yet and it is attitudes like this that make me not to bother.

I have thought of trying to do AC or maybe CM but not sure it’s worth it. I guess maybe at least doing the story modes would at least give me an idea but if their are elitists around then have fun in other ways.

I can understand people might want to do something before they go to work and don’t have much time so want a certain level and do speed runs but I guess as as long as they make it clear what they want when asking it is fine. When your just asking in general for a group and don’t specify you only want lvl 80 to run with then you have problems.

Ultimately some of us aren’t as skilled as others and take things a bit more slowly and need to learn the ropes a bit and some people are willing to run people through dungeons to help then learn and some just want to do speed runs.

When I was in EQ2 I would only run with guild and then ventured out to doing PUGs and made some awesome friends doing it. IT is also a great way t socialise and meet people and have fun and that is what we all ultimately want to do.. have fun.

Ok enjoy yourselves everyone and relax

Your level and your gear may be related to why you found it so much easier the second time around. However, this is not because being a higher level and having higher-level gear makes you drastically more effective.

The reason for this is simple: When you’re downscaled to lower-leveled content, the downscaling takes into account the higher stats you can get from traits, the higher stats that your equipment will have, etc. You can test this:
- Take a level 80 character and a level 30 character, of the same class, into Ascalonian Catacombs, with all of their trait points unspent, and all of their equipment removed. Their stats will be identical.
- Now, spend their trait points. The level 30 character will gain the full benefit of +10 to each stat for every trait point they spend. The level 80 character will gain much, much less than that – if I recall correctly, even with 80 trait points spent, the level 80 character will have lower stats than the level 30 character who only had 20 trait points to spend.
– Equip both characters with Masterwork (Green) level 30 equipment. The stats on that equipment will provide a much greater boost to the level 30 character than they will to the level 80 character.
- Equip the level 80 character with level 60 or level 70 Masterwork equipment. Their stats will still be significantly lower than the level 30 character in the level 30 equipment.
- Equip the level 80 character with level 80 Masterwork equipment. You’ll find that only then do the two characters have comparable stats.

If you want to test further, get the lower character to level 35 and repeat the test, only try putting the level 35 character in Rare (Yellow) equipment. His or her stats will once again be higher than the level 80 character’s, wearing level 80 Masterwork equipment. The stats will even out again when you equip the level 80 character with level 80 Rare equipment. If, and only if, you equip the level 80 character with Exotic equipment (which as far as I’m aware is not available at level 35), then that character will have a statistical advantage over the lower leveled character – but not an overwhelming advantage; it’s more likely to be in the area of 5-10% efficacy.

So, why then, did you find it so much more difficult at level 30 than at level 80? Chances are, at level 30, you were mainly playing by doing events, hearts, and otherwise leveling up on the overworld, and dungeons were just something you wandered into to take a shot at, on a lark.
Except that 1) The rate at which you level up in this game is fast enough that you can easily be 10 levels higher than some of your pieces of equipment, by the time you finish a zone, and 2) Events and hearts simply do not provide enough of a challenge to force you into keeping your equipment up to date.
You probably went into the dungeon wearing a mish-mash of equipment, where several pieces were outdated by several levels. Your accessories were probably just whatever pieces you happened to pick up as Personal Story rewards along the way. Your average equipment level was probably several levels lower than your actual character level.
In contrast, at level 80, the advancement stops. You can immediately gear yourself in a full set of level 80 equipment, and know that you’ll never have to upgrade again unless you’re actually moving from Masterwork to Rare, or Rare to Exotic. When you played the dungeon at level 80, you more than likely had a full set of same-level equipment.

Being at level 80 does confer some definite advantages. Grandmaster traits can open up entirely new avenues and playstyles for you: For example, a Warrior who is not level 60 cannot heal other party members in any meaningful way. Once that Warrior hits 60 and can use Grandmaster traits, they suddenly have access to healing banners and healing shouts, allowing them to play a very effective team healing role. Being higher level also allows you to equip Superior Runes and Superior Sigils, and it allows you to use higher level and more effective food and potions. All together, these add up to a significant advantage, but they aren’t game changers.

I played a lot of dungeons on my first, main character, both at lower levels as I was leveling, and at level 80 with full level 80/Exotic gear. My second character used crafting skills to 35, and has done nothing but dungeons since (at level 60 now). There is very little difference in difficulty between the two.

Things that don’t matter when you do dungeons:
- What level you are.

Things that make a little difference, but will not magically take you from ‘wiping repeatedly’ to ‘clearing a dungeon easily’:
- Whether your equipment is Exotic or Rare instead of Fine or Masterwork.
- Whether you have Minor or Major Traits that make a qualitative difference to the effectiveness of your playstyle (Note: The stats you gain from trait points do not make a difference – only the traits themselves matter.)

Things that make a huge difference when you do dungeons:
– Your equipment must be the same level as your character (or very, very close). Update it from the TP every five levels. This is a necessity. Level 70 Exotic Gear on a level 80 character will perform markedly worse than level 35 Masterwork equipment on a level 35 character.
– Being able to play your character efficiently.
– Knowing how to spot, recognize, and deal with enemy special attack patterns quickly enough that you avoid 80-90% of the danger that they pose.
– Whether you are specced (traits and equipment) at least partially into Vitality, Toughness, Healing Power, etc, rather than pure Power/Precision – this is class-agnostic: Toughness is not a dump stat for an Elementalist, for instance.*
– Whether you build with the rest of your party in mind re: support skills and combos, instead of trying to maximize your personal DPS. Any skill you have that the entire party can take advantage of is multiplied five-fold in effectiveness; you’re just not going to outperform that by building as a lone wolf.
– Whether your party consists of people with enough patience to not turn to kittenoon as something frustrating happens, enough humility to realize that every party is a little different and that they might have to slow down or change up their usual playstyle to deal with a newer/less experienced party, and enough ability to communicate that they can strategize and cooperate with the other players, without simply barking orders, without condescending to the less experienced in the party, and without getting offended if they’re asked to do or to not do something.

*Once you are very, very good at dungeons, this is waived, as skill and coordination can eventually take the place of statistical defenses to keep you alive. By the time you’re good enough for this, you consider each and every dungeon path to be easy, with no exceptions. For the record, this is not me.

AC: Story – Easy, even with the lovers being bugged. Boring. Stupid hat.
Exp – Not worth doing anything but the ghost eater until they fix the kitten hitbox on the burrows. Chests suck.

CM: Story – Easy. Boring. Stupid hat.
Exp – Easy with a dash of one-shot cheese. Chests suck.

CoF: Story – Easily the most fun SM dungeon I’ve played. The last boss is a hoot. Stupid hat.
Exp – Easy, if you fight cheese with cheese at “Magg’s Deathmarch.” Chests suck.

Arah: Story – Not hard, but annoying. Tries to use all kinds of alternate mechanics
(cannons, etc) for variety. Does it badly. End boss is a disappointment.
Extremely stupid hat.
Exp – A combination of some great, innovative parts (corrosive light football, crystal guardians), progress-wiping bugs (Lupicus), and cheese (Ooze zergs, Illusionist Deathstar Blasters, most bosses). Chests suck.

Sry , but to me you re plain lazy & an elitist

Dogblaster.6713:

@Wethospu – People complaining explorable dungeons are hard with pugs are just joke, ive done many dungeons with pugs and manage to complete them. Other thing is, designer already stated that explorables are ment for coordinated groups of good players, not for pugs.

Are you saying PuGs can’t be co-ordinated or good at the game? Nothing about a PuG says anything about player skill. I’ve seen several people who normally run in guild groups who are pretty bad at the game, they just relied on certain things being done in a certain way to get through content, as soon as you take their crutch away (their normal group) they become terribad and can barely walk.

What does co-ordination mean as an indicator of challenge or difficulty? Does it mean someone in the group has to learn the encounter and instruct everyone else on what they’ve learned because knowledge of the dungeon is more important than active player skill? That’s the current standard I’ve seen in dungeons and something these videos will help out with. I haven’t seen much in the way of encounters requiring people to pull off certain roles and make others aware of their roles and communicate changed conditions. Certainly nothing that a PuG can’t do given the right instructions.

Be careful with using exploits in this videos. They will be brought to the developer’s attention and will be removed from the game. This will result in your videos becoming quickly outdated.

I normally just lurk these forums, but you should all actually be glad that a designer actually chose to respond and investigate your skill issues and read your feedback. Yet some of you chose to berate them. Try running an elementalist. Try reading their forums. Until then — be considerate, be fair.

Hello everyone,

This is my first attempt at a comprehensive and approachable guide for beginners (and curious veterans) to the Guardian class. Guild Wars 2 is a brand new game, and the meta-game is still in its infancy. Many of us are struggling to understand the principles of this game while shedding ourselves of the pre-conceived expectations cultivated by years of playing WoW. There is no trinity, no concept of DPS, no tank-and-spank, no backline healbotting and no “pure support role,” and so we’re all in one way or another learning to play all over again.

This guide will attempt to accomplish the following:

• Introduce new players to the mechanics of the class
• Talk about the fundamentals of every weapon option
• Offer an overview of the utilities
• Discuss trait synergies and the philosophy behind creating a build
• Encourage experimentation and promote some of GW2’s new mechanics
• Debunk myths, misconceptions and misinformation that’s been floating around

This guide will not do any of the following:

• Teach you how to be a healbot
• Teach you how to be a tank
• Teach you how to be DPS
• Tell you exactly how to play
• Teach you PVP (It’s just not the aim of this guide, nothing against PVP at all)
• Cover advanced or high-level concepts including deep theorycraft

So, here we go!

It’s ANet’s Fault: A Compendium on Complaining On The Forums
Inviable: Why This Class Is Broken And Why You Should Reroll
Schadenfreude: Slaughtering Necromancers And Feeling Good About it
The Light And How to Swing It: By Uther Pendragon

Guardian 101 – A Guide For Beginners

“Blade with whom I have lived, blade with whom I now die: serve right and justice one last time; seek one last heart of evil; still one last life of pain. Cut well, old friend. Then, farewell.”

Good Reasons To Play A Guardian:

• You want to play an aggressive, armored class that can support your allies while bringing the hurt on your enemies.
• You want a good mix of magic and melee, and a class that combines armor and weaponry with flashy spell effects.
• You’re a pyromaniac and like the thought of engulfing your enemies in blue flame.
• You’re a pyromaniac and like the thought of engulfing yourself in blue flame.
• You think bows and rifles are for sissies.
• You want to be just like Logan Thackeray—good, because we have an ability for that. It’s called “RETREAT!”. Seriously, it’s a Shout.

Bad Reasons To Play A Guardian:

• You want to play a passive healer.
• You want to soak up damage like a meatshield.
• You hate dodging.
• You’re a masochistic thief that wants to play the profession that just broke your back in sPVP. Yeah, I went there.
• You’re expecting Hammer of Justice and Divine Shield all over again.
• You read somewhere on the forums that Guardians are totally OP Easymode OMG.
• You think Countess Anise has a thing for Guardians. Seriously, give up. You’ve got no chance.
• Queen Jennah on the other hand…

The Guardian is a defensive soldier. A heavily armored combatant whose playstyle focuses on contending with enemies while supporting one’s allies with robust boon application, heals and shields. Guardians are remarkably versatile, capable of adhering to a broad range of playstyles—spreading conditions, dealing sudden bursts of damage, being an immovable wall—but a few basic principles define the core of every Guardian’s playstyle:

• Force Multipliers: Guardians are designed to be good at this. We can routinely and sustainably improve our allies. Our Virtues allow us to sacrifice personal benefits for powerful boons applies to all nearby allies. Our symbols, shouts, meditations, consecrations and traits let us strengthen our allies while going toe to toe with our enemies.

• Close to Mid Range: Guardians do have limited long range options, but nearly all of our action is going to happen on the front line. We are built for the frontline. If you are not engaging your enemy, if you are not swinging your weapon, if you are not dodging out of blows and smashing something pointy and/or smashy in your enemy’s face, you’re doing something wrong.

@ WBL. Ele’s have the absolute worst downed state. You done goofed

ele 1 – bad damage, stacks vuln
ele 2 – immobilize which is useless because you’re generally already ontop of them
ele 3 – vapor form. This was what was screwing you. After 8 seconds of being downed, the ele can turn into vapor, making them immune to physical damage. For a few seconds at least. After it ends they go back to being downed, but with an extra point of downed penalty. After 3 uses if they havent rallied it straight kills them. You also cant rally while inside vapor form

The thing to realize is that they have literally NO way to stop you stomping them for those 8 seconds. At all. ele is the only class that doesnt immediately have access to a skill that prevents stomping. All you had to do was press F once and he was dead for good.

As far as things go, warriors honestly have a pretty strong downed. You can stop a stomp, and even get back up again for a short period of time, which is usually enough to reach a safe area, or help your team out (and possibly even revive yourself) while the chance may be low, you can trait to put it to 100%. Which is far better than most classes.

sure it’s no guardian, but it’s certainly better than ele, or ranger o.o

Hi, OP.

Ele is amazing. Anyone telling you otherwise is either bad or didn’t do their homework.

I currently roll two builds. First one is for general solo PvE. Full “Carrion” armour and jewellery set, along with carrion weapons. The set gives condition damage > power = vitality. Traits are 0/0/10/30/30. I usually run earth’s embrace for earth trait, cleansing wave, cantrip mastery, cleansing water for water traits, and elemental attunement and evasive arcana for arcane traits. For the second arcane trait, select the weapon you have equipped (windborne dagger/vigorous scepter/blasting staff).

With ~20k HP, PvE is easy peasy, you can take plenty of hits, same in small scale pvp (wvw roaming or spvp). You will be permanently dealing upwards of 1000 dps in condition damage alone (if the enemy is removing them, you’re on a much shorter cooldown), with some extra damage from all the power on your gear. D/D and S/D is great in this build, but fire staff DPS is a bit lacking, due to not enough burning effects, but in a good group that uses the fields you put down, it’s still not bad at all. The amount of healing and condition removal you can do in dungeons is great, too, thanks to water fields + evasive arcana. Rolling into a water field while attuned to water should heal for ~3k+ from the blast and evasive arcana effect alone.

The second build I use is strictly for group PvE/dynamic events and large scale WvW battles. It’s a 30/20/0/0/20 build with a full set of (lol blue) berserker gear. Traits are pretty simplistic, more damage, even more damage against people under 25%, free might stacks every fire spell you cast, blasting staff, etc. I don’t remember all of them right now.

It deals insane amounts of damage in fire with any weapon set, but is very squishy. Not that it matters, you have plebs… err non-elementalists to act as meat shield. 1200 range should mean you don’t even get shot at in zergs, and meteor shower can extend this range ever further, thanks to it’s huge aoe. Combine the range with frozen ground from water and the crippling line thingy from earth for ultimate lols.

Staff auto-attacks and lava font will crit for ~2k+, meteors will hit for 3k+, clearing any and every enemy you come across in short order. Just stand inside your team’s zerg and spam meteors and lavafonts, while autoattacking during cooldowns. Infinite kills for free. Use fire signet for more crit, mist form for escaping tight spots and arcane wave as a blast finisher for stacking even more might with your eruption+lava font combo.

These are two, pretty straightforward builds. They’re both very easy to use, and work very well in their intended roles.

I have a level 80 ranger … before people wonder, the shortbow NEEDED a nerf.

Probably 90% of ALL bots are RANGERS using SHORTBOW. Why do you think that is? There are literally PACKS of them running in every zone. Why? Because it was TOO GOOD. When it is so good that it becomes the bot standard you had better expect the balance bat to fall your way.

Be honest … DPS wise you could easily get away with a Bear and skill 1 (auto attack) and do nothing else and down almost anything. Oh no we might have to work 2-5 into the rotation now. Anyone crying about a nerf should be forced to play an Ele for a month for perspective.