Guild Wars 2

Assuming we don’t see any “sneak nerfs,” this isn’t bad:

Mesmer:
-Null Field: Reduced the recharge to 40 seconds.
-Signet of Domination: Increased the stun duration to 3 seconds.

Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/july-23-content-release-notes/

What about:
-Time Warp being affected by Glamour Traits? I mean, seriously, it operates like an Ethereal Field for Combo Finishers, why is this functionality left out?
-An inverse Time Warp. They want us to manipulate time, fine. I want to slow some poor fools down. Call it Chronal Breakdown, or some such.
-A GW2 variant of Illusionary Weaponry. Could be very interesting … give us that almost Psylocke effect. Also goes with all the purple.
-Blinding Befuddlement un-nerfed. That change was foolish and entirely unnecessary.
-Most folk’ll probably hate this one, but it could be worked out: Since 3/4 of Shatters apply some form of ‘special effect,’ why not drop base Mind Wrack DPS a certain amount, but have it apply Torment to even things out?

The Mystic Toilet not remembering recipes – sucks eggs having to rekey a recipe for improved siege for 5+ minutes straight.

Honestly, that’s merely a necessary counter to the fact that most other loot is like 90% blue and 5% green. I’d argue that the Bonus Chests aren’t unbalancing a thing, due to that loot-drop ratio. Now, if we had a slightly less “Diablo-esque” droprate, then those Bonus Chests could be comfortably removed. As it is, ANet speaks of not wanting the
game to be “grindy” but the existence of such a droprate + plus the Diminishing Returns system bloody well promote grinding. As for ectos, those have fluctuated
throughout the game’s uptime, and will undoubtably continue to do so.

JETWING.2759:

I take down veteran monster and his minions when i yet was lv5 Mesmer, just spamming, shattering and restarting the cicle while i self deal more and more dmg and escape with stealth or teleport :/

Just no exists class useless in PvE.

I have 5 Professions at 80, and have managed similar tricks on any of them. That’s more knowing your position relative to the enemy, and keeping an eye on your Health.
The rest is mere kiting. Stealth hasn’t reset enemy aggro in months, which makes it merely a prolonging of your demise, than an auto-reset button. Teleports are another
“prolong your demise” tactic. No amount of teleport saves yer kitten from multi-cc/knockdown tactics.

JETWING.2759:

Mesmer… Just OP.

- Insane raw dmg with Sword/Pistol and/or GS.
- Insane condition spamm and dmg with phantasm, clones, retaliation, shatter and Staff.
- Insane sustain with phantasm, clones, instant cast and defensive-offensive heal, teleport, invul, stealth, cc all time…

No more coments…

Let’s address this point-by-point, shall we?

-Sword: recently brought down in power, by the changes to Blurred Frenzy. Illusionary Leakitten till a LoS Nightmare, and flubs more than it works. Auto-chain has been modified, as well. Pistol does have nice damge/CC, but -even traited- is a slower weapon to get off of C/D. GS is good range and single-target DPS, but that’s its design and its AoE aspects are correspondingly limited.

-Condition Damage and Sustain from Phant-spec are still more than counterable by AoE damage. Mesmer C.Dmg is limited in type/application besides Bleeds, and that trick requires a dedication to Dueling for Precision.

Retaliation ate a 33% decrease in effectiveness for any Profession what uses it, and Phantasmal Retaliation got its duration decreased from unlimited to 5 seconds.

Shatter requires -at base- 30 Illusions and 10 Domination for its full offensive might, let alone 20 Dueling to make it spammable. So, your Build now only has 10 Traits to put elsewhere.

Staff is unpredictable in its effects, look at Winds of Chaos/Chaos Armour/Chaos Storm for confirmation. In addition, CA was altered last “major” patch, was it not?

-You’ve never run Phant spec, have you? The Regen is not that high, tbh. And when ANet – months ago- dropped the duration of Illusionary Membrane, the Regen/Prot combo took a serious beating.
Teleports are limited, in scope and in cooldown time.
Invuln timing took a hit with the change to Blurred Frenzy, and that presumes that every Mesmer runs MH Sword.
CC is not nearly as all-encompassing as you think, and also just got dropped a bit, by way of the Into the Void change.
Stealth is not perma-stealth by any means, and requires a 30 trait investment to make the best use of. Also limited by both cooldown time and by Revealed.

In general:
8/10 for trolling effort, 1/10 for execution.

Problem is, Zelulose: Most Phant-mesmers, especially after the rework of Illusionist’s Celerity, aren’t going any further into Domination than it takes to get Empowered Illusions. Two logical -and not ridiculous- ways to deal with that issue are:

1.) Since EI is a leftover from Beta, when Clones did actual damage of their own, remove EI completely. However, this could somewhat backfire, by limiting potential
Build variety. Which leads to my second -arguably better- suggestion…

2.) Stop Empowered Illusions from stacking damage with Phantasmal Strength. This would bring P-Mesmer down a “reasonable” notch in “OPness,” while allowing variation in how one makes a Phantasm Build.

As much as I hate to admit it: since Condition/Confusion have gotten slapped -due to QQ-, and IC was moved (arguably too far up the chain, I still think 15 -or better yet- 20 would’ve done the job, and promoted variation), if Phantasm is going to get shafted, at least do it in a way that is less heavy-handed then past Mesmer nerfbatting.

They -like any corp- cannot completely remove all instances/methods of hacking.
The problem with The Return of Orbs is simple: as before, nothing stops the #1 Server in your fight-trinity from stockpiling the blasted things for themselves. As such, whatever buffs they grant -even combined- need to be minor.

Imagine:
I’m the first place server in your matchup. Now, not only can I abuse the hells out of the Siege Bros. to gank a tower off of your guys for pretty much free … now I also
gain another significant gameplay advantage, just for the lulz. No fun, right?

As much as I liked Orbs, truth is: as we are now, they’re not at all needed. We have enough issues with the base mechanics of WvW that reinforce the “numbers over all”
aspect. Let’s recap:
1.) Coverage is king.
2.) More WXP for attack > defense
3.) An absolute dearth of Badges/WXP for Support-oriented players.
4.) That accursed player AoE cap. Seriously, even 10-15 would be better than this 5 crap. Meh. Just add a setting to Options to finetune how much Attack Bling you
funnel to your Client, TYVM.

Before we do that, I’d at least hope they fix how either set looks with other types of Armour in general. ATM, you can’t even bother with the Gauntlets on most Medium/Light sets, since the armguard portion’ll be covered by your shirt/coat sleeves.

Otherwise, I do like your ideas.

Another day, another desire to nerf Mesmers. Meh.

I have a better idea. Namely, that folk as a whole quit worrying about Class “X” being “OP,” and worry more about countering the aspects what tick you off. Seriously, it’s getting silly. As is, Mesmers eat enough nerfage from PvPers complaining about the
Profession’s mechanics. Meanwhile, have half the folk what hate Mesmers so much fought -iunno- a really swank bunker Guardian? Let me tell you, I’ll fight a Shatter AND a Phantasm Mesmer, at the same bleeding TIME before that matchup.

And you know what? I don’t make suggestions about “Hey, these bunkery, uber-healin’
mofos torque me off … let’s change up how their abilities work!” I wouldn’t. Why?
Simply put, I’m old enough to remember what game “balance” used to represent.
Namely, that all characters/classes/weapons do not need to exist in a state of
“equality” for a game to be both good and fun to play.

What the “Nerf what kills ME!” crowd doesn’t frigging get, is that if we applied this logic to other types of gaming, you’d have absolutely. no. differentiation. at. ALL.
None! Imagine playing -say- Tekken, and Heihachi plays exactly like Yoshimitsu.
Would you enjoy this, or would it be … boring. as. HELL? I know which answer I’d give.

TL;DR:
There’s balancing things that need a looksee, and just screwing a specific class or skillset into the bloody ground. Let’s stop confusing concept #1 for #2, please.

TheKidHenry.5732:

@Advent
I’m running a condition spec in tpvp, and am switching over to WvW and PvE (though probably running more support or pure dps in pve) and was wondering how you got your condition damage so high? I have full exotic rabid gear (though not runed yet) and all rare rabid accessories (not enough money for exotic/ascended yet). What am I missing, I can’t seem to raise my condition damage much higher than 900 or 1k.

Thanks!

For my straight condi-spec:

Besides the Exotic/3 Ascended pieces, I run full Superior Runes of the Undead. Ironically, I could probably push to or a bit past 1600 Malice, but all of my weapons are Rampager specced (For the extra bit of Precision to increase Sharper Images procs).
Also, my current spec is 0/20/30/0/20, and Chaos 25 (Chaotic Transference) applies 5% of Toughness as additional Malice. This stacks with an additional 5% transferred from the Runes of the Undead.

I also keep a secondary set, for more of a hybrid Condi/ Phant or Shatter skillset. That set replaces the armour with a combo of Knight/Soldier (Sup. Runes of the Air). Toughness stays about the same, but my Malice drops to around 950-ish. Although, I gain more Health and Attack.

A good way to get your Exotic Trinkets, is to hit up the Temple of Dwayna. All Exotic Rabid Trinkets are available there for Karma. It’s how I snagged mine for this alt and for my Necro/Engineer.

Malegryne
Paranormal Research Division [PRD]
Ferg! (What, there’re other servers?)

Full Condispec, Ascended Amulet/Rings

For now:
Staff: Zenith … ’tis Teh Smexxy.
GS: Kyrnswarden – I eventually want Vision of the Mists, tbh.
Sword (MH) – Warden
Sword (OH) – Glyphic … eventually Nightmare.
Sceptre – Oikomene
Pistol – Zenith
Torch – Molten
Focus – Toy Bell skin. Looking at Bloodseeker or Anomaly.
Spear – Gungnir
Trident – Steamfire

RE: Warriors
TBH, what Warriors need is a bit more sustain. Their DPS is doin’ well enough, and they can be specced for some serious runspeed. Not quite Guard level tankosity, but something more than they currently possess.

1.) More Pistol love.
2.) Fix pathing bugs. Although, that goes for any Profession in the bloody game. ANet, I don’t mind LoS as a concept, but you lads and ladies need to finetune the implementation thereof. Thanks.

I’ll stick by my guns on this one – tested with Centaur and Air – TC will stack, if you drop it, then trigger the Rune-heal. But, yes, that is an unnecessarily gimmicky way to get decent OOC speed. You’d think that with as much as Mesmers get nerfed, ANet’d finally see their way towards a remedy for this issue. OTOH, it does seem like SoI is triggering OOC Swiftness more often than when I last bothered using a slot for it.

Well, I may finally get to do something I’ve wanted to do since I 80’ed my Mesmer. Namely, take on one of the baddest mindshredders around. ’Sup, Andro … ye beast

Be glad they dropped the mob-spawn in Orr. Back when I did it on my main, you never got a break from the locals tryin to eat yer face. As for drops, drops tend to be meh in any zone.

What do I want? Patched class bugs, before anything. Then we can talk about adding new stuff. Preferably skills/traits reminiscent of the original incarnation of Mesmer.

Mist Y.5214:

Advent.6193:

I understand why one can’t salvage the buggers

excellent, please explain? I suppose you also know why we can’t salvage backpieces (or search for them on the TP)?

You can’t salvage things like Karma EQ or the Invader/WvW stuff because ANet doesn’t want folk to “profit” from Karma. As for backpieces, try searching for Spineguard – that’ll give you some green/yellow options.

Good idea. I understand why one can’t salvage the buggers, but being able to put a set your main is no longer using on an alt, instead of merely deleting the whole set, would rock. The same should also be applied to WvW Armour/Weapons, since they use the same binding pattern.

Deserter.4370:

Man, intall Windows 7… windows 8 is bad for gw2…

Its a combo of:
1.) The “Metro” UI – I stopped counting how many times an errant pointer movement swaps my game screen back to the bloody desktop. 8.1 is supposedly going to pop a fix on that.
2.) Windows 8 does seem to bash your RAM more than its predecessor.

As for the OP: I hate to say it, but with what most places charge for an E-series machine, you really should’ve put out the extra ~$100 for an A8. Have one myself, and can go up to 35-40 FPS at times on Medium settings. Just leave Shadows/Reflections on Low – those boys eat a decent chunk of yer FPS.
Also, Lion’s Arch and WvW tend to crush your framerate down, so keep an eye out, and tweak when necessary.

This subject comes up relatively often. As always, I agree with it … as an OOC function.

Heh … I’d have to say Engi. Thief has nice options, but Engi has some nasty CC/Conditions to toss out, with the right spec. I’m currently running around with Rabid/Carrion gear, and having a blast. Just need to work on my Traits/Utils a bit more.

OTOH, my Thief’s an Evasion spec … does well enough in most fights, but dies fast when outnumbered. Even with ~2800 Armour/17k Health. The problem there is that Thief is very limited on defensive Boons, especially Stability. One would think ANet wants all Thieves to run perma-stealth Zerker sets, or something …

Currently at 95%, with a Condi or half-Condi spec. Got burned out on it for a while, but thinking of doing the last bit I need (mainly Harathi/Field of Ruin, methinks). It’s easier to do the WvW part now, with random server colours. I took months to get a few Green locations, beforehand.

Why not a small firestorm, reminiscent of that used by Ascalonian Mages? Except Smexxy Mesmer Purple™.

Goodness … and 0/0/30/10/30’s not even one of the Profession’s “Attacker” specs. I’d love to see what happens if the OP fights a Triforce or straight Condi-tank build …

Certainly. Make it happen, ANet. Quaggans would like you for it.

That would be a hell of an idea.

Keep also in mind, that – thanks to a mass QQ about the subject – Blurred Frenzy is no longer an Invulnerability move, it is now Evade. Illusionary Leap is NOTORIOUSLY buggy, and the pathing will fail abysmally over so much as a stray blade of grass in the way. Let alone if you’re fighting on uneven ground, GL to you.

Also, I find it quite funny that Mesmer is called imbalanced and OP. Considering that certain Guardian specs (AH or Monk’s Focus Triple-Meditation, for example) are pretty blasted hard for almost ANY Profession to take down …

With that said, I’ve thought for months that Guard MH Sword should have at least one tweak. Considering the animation of Zealot’s Defense, those projectiles should
strike targets in a line.

Mesmer stealth is also lower duration -by far- than what a Thief can pull off. As for Phant spec: they’re harsh in a 1v1, but quickly lose effectiveness in 1vMultiple.

The T8 Bros, again. Welcome back to the Ghetto, Big Bro.

Pocachubbz.1928:

Non of them were uplvled and yes I play thief. Your telling me an elementalist, a ranger and a mesmer from FC can’t kill a thief whose playing aggressively to kill them. Class doesn’t even really matter, it depends on how well you play your class. Not what class you play. I c. Wheres all that skill and strategy that you were talking about.

3 FC vs 1 GoM and FC run’s away.

clap clap clap clap clap such good skills…

Because -of course- every player on every server in GW2 is on the exact same skill level? Honestly, I’m more than a bit sodded off by all the crap-talk in here. On all sides.
Can we not have a reasonably polite matchup, for foo’s sake? We all know our server’s respective strengths and weaknesses. There is zero percent need for any of us to frigging crow about it, one way or the other.
Kill or be killed, by any cost. That’s the hand ANet’s coding and class design have handed us. Time to play it.

Here we go again. Another non-Mesmer saying we’re bloody spoiled. Here’s the deal, Ryan: A lot of Mesmers are all about tossing the Curse of Portalbotting out to some other Profession or two. You know why? We’re sick of bugged Traits and/or constant Nerfs, being excused by others as “Well, you guys have Portal and Time Warp, teehee!”

It’s gotten bloody old. Fix what’s hellaciously broken, quit tossing out wholesale Nerfbat what nukes entire class specs. Use. Bloody. Competence! At this point, the massive amount of group utility is one of this Prof’s saving graces. Go figure, how many times has Portal been nerfed again? Veil’s down to 2 sec. from 4. Quickness as a whole got slapped, and every user of the ability sans Mesmers got a duration increase to level out their Quickness ability’s effectiveness being cut in half.

When did it happen? “It” being this current-day gamer mindset that every class has to be roughly equivalent in abilities, in order for a game to be “balanced?” Some classes will be better at certain things. And that’s fine. We should attempt to bloody well
keep each class different in form and function, especially in a game that -ostensibly- is not balanced around 1v1, but small-to-large groups.

My APU does fine in more GPU-heavy titles, tbh. I’d go A8 or 10 over 6, though. Not much of a price hike, but you’ll gain more overall CPU-side performance (via extra cores) and a better GPU. As a comparision, my last system was the old (Llano series) A6-3420m. I’ve gained noticeable improvements in games like Dragon Age or Skyrim with the current (Trinity series) A8-4500M. Also, going quad over dualcore is something of a “future proofing” method for mobile gaming. More games these days are starting to faff about with multi-threaded coding.
(Truth is, in either of our cases, no APU is going to beat out a top-end i7/Nvidia combo. Although, AMD does make improvements on each successive generation of APUs. They just have nowhere near the kind of money to throw at R&D as Intel or Nvidia) /shrug

You’re running a GPU with dedicated video memory and a slightly better CPU than I am, but this game can be a little more harsh on CPU. Especially in -say- WvW. For reference:
Asus K55N A8-4500M (Radeon HD 7640G), 4 gb ram.

Overall, you should pack slightly higher FPS compared to my current system. Game’s definately playable on low-medium settings, though. I tend to hit 35-40 in open world content/uncrowded areas, ~20-25 in most WvW scraps.

With that said – as much a rabid AMD fan as I am – if money’s not an issue, you could try for an i5/Nvidia combo, or preferably i7/Nvidia.

Blaine Tog.8304:

My Necro’s name is already perfect: The Lady of Pain. I grabbed it day 1 of GW1 and resurrected The Lady for GW2 on release.

Do I smell a Planescape reference? If so, then you’re tied with “Gir Dhuumsong” for Internet Win. Variantly, if she’s The Lady from Glen Cook’s Black Company books, that is also Win.
As for myself, I went with my usual “Human” Necromancer (or Undead-type) name: Sigil Fane. Although, in retrospect, I wonder if anyone went with the name Gerrald Tarrant …

1. Replace Vuln on Staff. At this point, probably with Chill or low % procced Torment.

2. Give IMage a Level of Kickarse. Hell, a few levels. Probably up his attack speed significantly/change Retal for Prot or Aegis.

YMMV

mugen.4763:

Mesmers are still strong actually. But I don’t wanna grind another set of ascended gear each time they decide to nerf the living kitten out of builds only to make a couple of builds viable, there by forcing me into a playstyle I don’t necessarily enjoy playing.

QFT.
I mean, hells, had I sensed the oncoming Nerfageddon on this class … I’d have emulated another of our profession what ground all his Trinkets as Divinity spec.
At least THOSE are pretty much nerf-proofed. The only “good” part in my case is that I can still use Rabid spec for most build options.

I’m calling it now:
Next nerf (7/29/2013, IIRC) will be either:
-PU boons (less uptime, more likely)
-DE placement (from 20 → 30 Dueling. Still “grabbable,” but yer making a sacrifice in other build areas.)

After all, Mesmers are only allowed to be Shatter or Phant, it seems. OTOH, we’ll probably see some “improvement” for Mantras again. I swear, they shoulda just converted the GW1 Mesmer abilities over, instead of tying the majority of our CC/DPS/Conditions into the “Illusion” mechanic. Oh, right – that’d still be Nerf City. /shrug

They’re an addiction. I started the game with mainly Sylvari … but man, Asura emotes/dance/animations, and the “smartmouthed hypergenius” bit … needless to say, too much fun. Now, out of my 8 alts – 5 are plants or genuses, and I wish I had at least one more slot for the true Ultimate Being: an Asura Mesmer.

You could try a Zerker/Valk/Cavalier comboed Staff Ele. You’d get decent Health/Armour, Crit Dmg/Power from all EQ slots, and -with a heavy Air spec- enough Precision to crit a decent amount of the time.
You’d also still be able to buff yourself and your team, or heal a reasonable amount. Especially with something like 0/20/0/20/30 and Evasive Arcana for water dodging.

Detharos.3157:

I wonder what level AR will stabilize when the free-fall fluctuations are past and the player-base presumably re-motivates and re-organizes. (Again I haven’t had much chance to get on this week so I’m going by pure assumption that it hasn’t yet due to the volatile nature of free-fall and its effect on morale and all that.)

I’d have to go with medium-range T7. From what I’ve run into, it’s not a lack of skill with AR, it’s their coverage. Their overall numbers seem to be less than a high T7/low T6 server, but definitely more than -say- us or ET. But that’s just my opinion.

soulsuke.7913:

Actually… I have good news!
The multiple cpus patch alone doesn’t solve all our issues, but using LD_PRELOAD=“libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1” and __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 along with it, I actually get decent fps in open world and dungeons! It still isn’t as good as on Windows, but it’s a start!

Interesting. How well does this function in a WvW situation? I was originally eating 10-15 fps in open world. Being able to do 15 in a zerg-scrap might be worth another attempt.

Myst.5783:

…or maybe no one is taking WvW serious right now. Many are taking advantage of the karma train and leveling alts(lots of PvErs too I assume). We don’t need to put out effort as of now, since we have the numbers. Seriously, when was the last time GoM has got a match that required us to work? Its something the server needs, we need a good shock to get everyone’s head back in the game. Unfortunately Anet refuses to give it to us.

You know, those words are quite familiar. Sorrow’s Furnace kinda familiar. And we know how long it took for them to get away from dealing with Fergworld. Guess you’re the new high-pop Glicko Ghetto guys? Honestly, I’d like to see you lot versus DH and perhaps IoJ – might be enough numbers between ’em to be the “shock” yer needin?

ExTribble.7108:

I don’t have any specifics, but after playing/seeing GW2 on several different machines, CPU is much more important than graphics. My mom’s old Q6600 (2.4GHz quad core) with an ATI4000 series card (weaker end, forgot the exact #) runs GW2 better than my current desktop with an overclocked 1055t (3.5GHz six core) and a nvidia 560TI.

That’s not saying you shouldn’t have a dedicated graphics card, but don’t skimp on the CPU or you’ll struggle playing the game on the higher settings.

Quite true. I also suggested a dedicated GPU for one major reason. Our OP may want a box to play GW2, but who knows if that’s the only game (s)he ever plays. Past that, you’re definitely right about this specific game being more of a CPU-trasher than GPU.
From my last box to this one, I’ve noticed some fps gain. And I gained more in CPU than in GPU, respectively.

Detharos.3157:

Sororita.3465:

Detharos.3157:

Yeah, but with how well things were going the past weeks I thought FC and GoM were nearing the stage where we were ready to start doing Cyb0rZ. It’d be a shame to suffer a set-back!

NO! WE WILL NEVER BE THAT!

You have big bro and twin bro and we HAVE NSP AND BIRD MIST! WE SHALL NEVER BE SEPARATED!

We can make this work. The more the merrier, they do say!

Mmmmm …. polyserveramory! =)

I’m running an Asus K55N (with the AMD A8-4500 APU). This box only ran me a bit over $400. However, my graphics settings tend toward the medium side of the equation, with low WvW specs. I range about 35-40 fps on a good run, down to ~20 in a zerg/lagged down.

Whatever you snag, just make sure to have either a Radeon or Nvidia GPU. Intel HD
sets are pretty meh, tbh. The only problem is that anything Intel and/or Nvidia equipped is going to run you more than an AMD lappy. Anywhere from $100-200 higher, in general.

What’s your OS, runewolf? I’ve run GW2 on Windows 7/8 and Linux (all 64-bit). I’ve only encountered FPS that low under Linux recently. Another question is (assuming 64-bit Windows) how much paging memory do you have set. For reference, I’m running the game on:

Asus K55N
AMD A8-4500 APU (graphics portion’s AMD Radeon HD 7640G) CPU clock speed’s 1.9 GHz (2.8 for Turbo Core)
Altec Lansing speakers
4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz RAM (jumping to 8GB, once the second stick arrives)
8-10 GB paging memory

The major issue I could guess is probably the difference in our respective RAM.
Past that, AMD’s Turbo Core is less finely controlled than Intel Turbo Boost. In general, I should not -logically- have that much better FPS on a laptop than you get from -I would assume- a desktop system.

As an aside to my original post in this thread: Go figure …. I eventually did get Win8 to play well with Manjaro. Was a total skeeze, though.
[I blame a combo of: UEFI and a BIOS what doesn’t allow anything but W8 to be booted in UEFI Mode. Had to nuke W8 down to 1 partition, gdisk the GPT partition table to MBR, testdisk said partition back to normal, then install the Linux side BIOS-style. Hello, kludgefest.]

As for the overall dev luck. As others have mentioned, it’s arguable that most of the heavy lifting is already done. Mac’s “WINE” is close enough to standard, that one could
almost completely port the functionality directly from Mac > Linux.

Past that, our main issue’d be optimizations. As is, GW2 is not terribly well optimized for multiple CPUs, so we’re taking the main hit on one core. This bites for anyone running dual or above. Let alone if we’re considering Intel v. AMD systems.
[Although this may have been somewhat sneak-patched recently, since I’m seeing more FPS this week than in the rest of the month since I snagged this new comp. We’ll see also how much I gain from going from 4 > 8 Gb RAM, later in the week … hurry up, Amazon ]