Guild Wars 2

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this.

I mean people trying this are likely to have played the game significantly anyway, so they’ve already invested time into the game.

Grinding in conventional PvE for the 50th time does get tedious after a while.

The biggest challenge in this mission, and the boss fight, is staying awake long enough to complete it.

The boss is just ridiculously annoying. Hits like a little girl and runs away like one, while making stun fields every split second.

It’s a horrendously boring and irritating boss fight.

Great for the community?

I hope that Queen Jennah finally reveals himself to be King Jennah and that he is going to make Trahearne the King of Kryta. He then marries Logan.

Trahearne however, executes anyone who poses a potential threat to the throne, including Jennah and Logan. Then he begins rewriting history, with photoshopped paintings showing that it was really him that defeated the Lich, Shiro and stopped Abaddon’s release. He then organises the King Trahearne Jubilee, where everyone has to take part, otherwise they are executed. A Kryta-wide ban on the Blacklion Trading Post is also announced. Asura gates also become heavily regulated.

Then he announces that Skritt/human relationships are legal.

Long live King Trahearne!!

Thanks for the advice guys!

In a few weeks time, I’m sure I’ll be back to my messy hoarding ways though :P

There should definitely be Charr bikinis/swim suits.
That would be cool.

(The owl in the picture amuses me)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Ahh….storage, often a problem. You can look up the contents of each chest on the wiki if you are curious.

Thanks
Kinda why I was curious as to whether the contents would possibly be reduced/nerfed in the future

You’re right though, I’ll aim to open them asap.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t think the loot from the range of chests most people have attained so far will be changed, though rewards from chests past 25,000 AP might be different.

Just curious, why are postponing opening your chests?

Am I right in thinking that you get quite a lot of stuff? I’m a bit of a hoarder so I need to clear out space for the contents lol. Otherwise I’d have to destroy most of the contents of the chest.

This is my own problem and I should deffo open them that’s for sure. If there were ever a nerf, I’d blame myself. However, I’m still a tad curious

Hello

Just a very simple question and I certainly don’t intend it to be inflammatory or cynical. Not sure if this is the right place to post either but:

Will achievement chest loot ever be changed in the future? I’ve not opened any of my chests yet, and I am worried that loot might be stealth nerfed in the future without warning.

That’s all.

Thanks very much for your time

hedix.1986:

Aiglos.2907:

Then the quaggan becomes human. However, a caveat is that she must kiss someone out of true love for it to remain permanent. She’s then spotted by Lord Faren, and then some stuff happens, and there is an invisible barrier around the lake and then they get married.

Can we please have this as the official Living Story, ktnxbai!
“I wanna be
where the players are
I wanna see ’em
farming, zerging!” (?!?)

Also, maybe Queen Jennah is in fact the Krait Witch, could explain why she is always BAREFOOT – she just loves looking at her feet…
Exhibit A(?):

I want this so badly! I’d do all the script writing and everything. You could write the song lyrics.

To be honest, I’m not sure why this wasn’t the main plot idea. Screw the dragons and Orr, the Little Quaggan-maid is where it’s at.

With regards to ‘Queen’ Jennah, I always assumed it was because she’s actually a man in disguise, and can’t find shoes big enough for his feet.

Was this near the lake where that krait blood witch spawns?
Everyone always ignores the poor kitten because she’s just really annoying to kill with her multiple boyfriend krait.

Maybe she’s like… invoked a ritual? There could be a quaggan who really wants to live on land, but her father tells her not to trust the humans. So she’s goes to see the blood witch, and the blood witch is like

‘I can turn you into a human, but I need your father’s trident’.

Then the quaggan becomes human. However, a caveat is that she must kiss someone out of true love for it to remain permanent. She’s then spotted by Lord Faren, and then some stuff happens, and there is an invisible barrier around the lake and then they get married.

They expanded the radius for some of the sealed off POIs and I think moved a vista slightly so that you could still get map completion? Someone linked to the relevant thread above.

Also, yeah there’s no need to say mean (non-constructive) things, it’s not nice
Something awesome is going to happen there.

Ellisande.5218:

Eddie Royale.9605:

Ellisande.5218:

Eddie Royale.9605:

it’d be rather silly to have a lesser developed character that you’re not really interested in to die and serve as a major motive for your character to want to kill Zhaitan.

Oh you mean like every character in Act 3/4 who gets introduced and then killed at the end of the same quest or the quest right after?

I don’t really consider most of them to characters that serve as a MAJOR motive for you wanting to kill Zhaitan, just standard causalities of war that is supposed to show that The Pact are putting their lives at risk to fight Zhaitan.

If the story was well written, we would have wanted to kill Zhaitain long before the Battle of Claw Island because presumeably that’s the entire impetus behind all the actions actually leading up to claw island.

And the mentor character never really feels like she/he is killed by Zhaitain, rather she/he feels like she/he committed suicide just for the heck of it. I don’t feel angry at Zhaitain for Sieran’s death, I instead feel angry at the writers for making Sieran decide to commit pointless suicide when she could have very easily just come with the rest of us as we fled claw island cause let’s face it, the only thing that was really holding back the undead was that incredibly stout door. Sieran wouldn’t have even been able to provide 5 seconds of distraction given the large number of undead all trying to pile through that door to get to the rest of us.

She probably used the ‘OP’ tornado ele elite skill :P
Or she could have been using a bunker build or something lol.

In all seriousness, totally agree. The door did all the work! It was such a contrived death for all three of them. I would have preferred it if we saw a cutscene of the three mentors kicking kitten, or going off in a blaze of glory. Instead it was kind of
‘Imma die now, bye’.

Anyway back on topic, it’s just really annoying how inconsistent Trahearne is. Ultimately, it’s just bad story design.

(I still appreciate the hard work and awesomeness of the staff though <3)

Oniyui.8279:

I’ll just reiterate what was said a little earlier that this would have been much more useful if it were just a replacement for the 5 point trait that has virtually no impact. Having a defensive on-attunement effect at 5 and offensive on-attunement effect at 15 for all 4 elements would shore up those weak minor traits. (Yes, that is a suggestion to rework all 4 elements’ minor traits)

---

Additional way to rework our talents

~Combine our 20% reduced weapon skill recharge trait with the passive buff to the broad passive damage buff from that attunement. This would make sense in line with other professions’ traits that have a 20% reduced recharge to a specific weapon skill in addition to another minor effect. 20% reduced recharge to water weapon skills and additional damage when health is above threshold, 20% reduced recharge earth weapon skills and additional damage when within 600 yards, Bolt to the Heart + Aeromancer’s Alacrity, Pyromancer’s Alacrity + Ember’s Might… freeing up 4 more talent options. .

Yay I’d love for our 20% reduction traits to have an additional minor effect, that would be cool

Anyway, as someone else said, this could be in the 5 point minor trait maybe?
Otherwise, it’s a pretty poor major trait…

I appreciate the good intentions though <3

I think people don’t tend to read stickies… well if there are so many stickied posts it’s a bit easy to overlook, especially if it’s sandwiched in the middle of others…. at least I wouldn’t read them unless I were very bored

Maybe there is a special way to make the title of this thread in a different colour, like blue, or bright purple? If I saw a blue or purple post, I’d click on it in like… 3 seconds and may even read the contents! It could then be stickied succesfully.

Or it could be given a title like:
’Here’s how to claim your free kittens in GW2’
Followed by the request.

Slightly devious, but it might help.

ThiBash.5634:

With the buff on burning speed and the superspeed on One with Air, staff eles can now properly disengage! Gust an enemy (use chill/static field/shockwave/whatever to actually hit them), switch to fire and roll backwards. Turn around and run away! Easy right? Well, not easy maybe but at least it’s possible.

With regards to gust, can you use it fast enough and switch back to burning retreat within 1.5 seconds?

Not trying to disagree with you lol, just curious.

EDIT: ah just noticed you said it’s difficult, but possible. Cool

I always thought that if they introduced more weapon options, torch offhand and sword mainhand would fit best.

I’d like torch to be a good ranged offensive complement to the scepter, since OH dagger is a mixed bag and the focus is very defensive.

It doesn’t overlap with any of the conjures (i.e. axe, bow, hammer, shield and greatsword) too.

Earth is great! Along with swirling winds.

Anyway I have completely random/awful suggestions:

Water
Freezing Gust: Chill target foe and nearby foes. If target foe is vulnerable, that target is frozen (i.e. frost bow #5 skill).
Comet: Maybe just up the damage slightly. If target foe is frozen, that foe takes an additional x damage.

I guess the idea would be to improve the cc of the focus, and allow for a spike with comet depending on the additional damage. I think it’d make using the weapon a bit more ‘fun’ with a justifiable reward if you can satisfy the conditions on the skills. Otherwise, I’d like water to have some form of healing skill.

Fire
Flame wall: Maybe just give it a secondary activated ability that causes damage and blow out on a critical hit or something. Or allow it to inflict torment? Cleanse conditions? Anything to make the skill more interesting or at the very least, make it a bad idea to run through the giant flaming wall lol.
Fire Shield: Errm… condition cleanse? Immunity to burning? Damage reduction….
I dunno. Just anything.

Finally Gale: Could add a secondary activated ability that allows you to leap to target knocked down foe or something and grants swiftness?

These are really awful suggestions, but yeah. I reckon fire, water and gale need adjusting or complete reworking.

I agree with the enemy combat. Perhaps it could be ‘improved’ in higher level areas, where mobs attack slightly faster and have more interesting skills, but without stupidly overpowered attacks. Ideally everything would be universally improved, but yes, I think it’s a bit late for that now.

However, I think mob density is high enough to balance out any improvements made to allied NPCs anyway. Ideally I would have liked both to have been more interesting… but yeah

Ultimately I feel that people with massive amounts of karma are saying
“Oh this change is fine, I have 6 billion karma. Tis fine to nerf now trololol”

Right now, it just seems that Anet want the level of grind increased. Many players are now well established and this change has almost zero effect on them. I do feel quite lucky since I’m in a position where I do have enough karma to be getting on with. I just feel that this change is much more harmful to newer players and really, it just makes things tougher for them. Their pace of progression is slowed down, but mine isn’t really affected.

I really like the concept! I think it seems really cool, but yeah I guess you’d need to think about how newbies would cope with it. It could also cause quite a bit of disruption to players if not advertised in advance.

I suppose you could get around it with your ‘mentor’ sending you a message a few days in advance suggesting that mobs appear to be massing on the border. There may be an imminent attack on ‘x city’.

“Be there at 7pm sharp. Bring popcorn. Don’t be late now

Logan
xxx"

Something like that I guess?

Just a simple suggestion really, which I imagine would be very difficult in practice

Anyway, I am almost certain that NPCs and mobs have signed a universal ‘turn based combat treaty’, where essentially, each person exchanges hits in the politest manner possible. This happens until one person (usually an allied NPC) dies. Occasionally the monster will throw out a ‘death cloud of doom’ (either poison, fire, weird darkness thing). That tends to be the most exciting that NPC combat gets.

More interesting NPC skill sets
I just wish that named/important NPCs were a bit more dynamic in combat? This becomes apparent in the personal story, where your allies are basically a bunch of little kids punching, scratching and using pea shooters on mobs. I don’t expect unnamed/generic characters to have extensive skill sets, but it’d be nice to see people like Magister Sieran going beyond vapour blade, mixing it up with dodge rolls etc. Self heals would be good! I would love to see an allied NPC heal themself with a proper healing skill- I think the Lionguard do? Or even give them unique skills! I think this just makes combat seem more interesting.

Ability to avoid DoT AoE
Also, it would be really nice to see a similar thing to GW1 where mobs/NPCs were capable of moving out of dot aoe spells. It would be very nice to see allied NPCs that could actually free themselves from impending doom, by sidestepping an inch. Event failure, often tends to be scaled up mobs casting their death clouds of doom in a focused spot, normally where allied NPCs are standing. This results in their death. It results in really contrived gameplay, where people actually have to stand on spawn spots to make sure death cloud mobs are killed before they do anything. It would just be really nice if these allied NPCs were more than deadweight (literally).

Improved ability to resurrect
At the same time, could you potentially give all guards/generic NPCs an ability to rez characters within a certain range? Sometimes I’ve died next to a guard and they’ve pretty much just stood on my corpse. Other times, I have been really impressed that an NPC managed to rez me from death. Moments like this really make the game quite immersive.

Summary
-Give important NPCs a useful skillset and an ability to use them
-Allow allied NPCs to recognise they are standing in something which will kill them, and have them move accordingly.
-Improve NPC ability to resurrect people.
-I didn’t mention this above but maybe give resurrected NPCs a health boost in personal stories or something. Normally, all important allied NPCs are dead, but there’s no point in bringing them back up because they’d just get one shotted by a cliff bat or something.

Otherwise, I do enjoy the game
Thank you very much for your awesomeness.

Bright.9160:

Copestetic.5174:

Don’t feel like you have to skip content just because you may run into some kitten 14-year old who runs a cookie-cutter build and plays 15 hours a day since he/she’s home-schooled. Do it! More often than not, I miss a dodge by double-tapping WASD, which is why I bound Dodge to the “F” key. Zoom all the way out, and watch for the animations to their one-hit KO’s/insane damage skills, then just hit that auto-dodge button.

It’s funny how you feel the need to demonize the people that are simply better than you.

Aww I don’t think it was demonising. I think it was a nice supportive message, using an exaggerated example to instil confidence (much appreciated btw ).

Regardless, I do feel that ‘difficulty’ in PvE is generally mediated by ‘one hit kill moves’.

Well worded points!
I completely agree and I had to log in just to say well done

Particularly the part about being competent in GW1 and not doing so well in this game

I still enjoy it! However, I just feel that I have really poor reflexes, which kind of rules me out of competitive environments or dungeons. I’m reluctant to try these because ultimately, I’m just going to be flamed to death lol.

I’d just like to point out a few crazy things in this personal story mission (which is irritatingly long and dragged out by pointless insect respawns in the connecting cave).

No issues with the first and second tower. This was great

However, I noticed that on the approach to the final tower, the allied npc pathing became increasingly erratic (i.e. moving back and forth repeatedly). Ultimately, Tonn blew up the final tower before the mobs were cleared. Triggered ‘clear the beach’ stage. Unfortunately, I noticed that all my other allies were running back and forth at the top of the hill, so we both died.

I returned (as the Risen requested). Allies were now engaged, with the exception of the Pack Bull, who was stuck at the top of the hill. I noticed that non-krait mobs were multiplying and infinitely spawning (they were definitely spawning more than the wiki would suggest). My mesmer illusions also bugged out at this stage (all my illusions just stood still). Luckily, the Pack Bull came to my rescue by tanking the mobs. I managed to kill all the krait, which triggered the end of the mission, despite there being several Risen mobs still alive. Anyway, mission was very annoying due to the repeated non-krait Risen spawning.

So crazy mesmer bug aside, I’ll summarise the issues, because I’ve reread my post and the text has almost zero cohesion.

- Erratic NPC pathing on approach to the final tower.
- More mobs spawning than intended. Mission only concluded when all krait were killed- despite there being 4 other Risen on screen.

(Level 78 Mesmer. Human. Vigil)

Also, please give my regards to the Pack Bull for his resilience. Also, please give hugs to the staff, if they’re able to understand anything I’ve written. Thank you

“Elementalist”/“elementalist” in the Elementalist forum comes up with 0 results for me.
Surprisingly, “nerf”, in the same forum, comes up with 0 results also :P

I am sure this has been reported already, so apologies if so.

Basically there have been a few occasions where, upon opening a chest, I’ve phased inside it and become stuck in the ground. My camera then kind of faces out of the chest and I can’t move. Occasionally, I’ve been able to free myself, but on others I’ve had to waypoint out (as normally combat has ended by that time).

I’ve only personally experienced this with bonus chests in Champ’s Pavilion.

So.. I think that’s it

I can confirm that I have been able to access the Champ’s Pavillion (my actual home server), despite having previous issues.

So in my case, the situation is ‘resolved’.

Yes! I second Gandara in terms of having nice people.

Recently, I accidentally disrupted a Queensdale zerg farm and rather than have death threats made against me, the zerg said:
“Please could you wait for everyone next time?”

It was lovely how civil they were about it.

Normally, I find most zones occupied to a reasonable extent too.

StinVec.3621:

I’m thinking there may be an issue to where the game is having a problem putting you into an overflow server while attempting to log in on the character in the Pavilion. If someone ports down to the Pavilion and they are placed into an overflow server, then it usually does that just fine. But when you left your character in the Pavilion, upon logging back into them, if your server Pavilion was full then it’d try to place you into an overflow server at the same time as logging your character in…but it might be having an issue with doing that.

Possibly related is, do you remember if your character was in an overflow server at the time you last logged out and left them there in the Pavilion? Or were you in your own server’s Pavilion?

If you can, try to log in on the stuck character during hours where fewer players may be online so it won’t be attempting to put you into an overflow server. If it is an overflow issue, then you may not be able to log into them unless it can put you into your own server’s Pavilion, instead of it trying to force you into an overflow server while logging the character in.

I’ll also try to think of some other workaround to get you in again.

I was definitely in overflow and your post seems quite logical
I’ll probably give it another shot at a non-peak time and hopefully it’ll be resolved.

(Thank you for the helpful reply!)

I’m having a similar issue.

Every time I try to load my Mesmer in the Champ Pavilion, the game hangs on the loading screen. Eventually I get a ‘cannot connect to server’ message or something along those lines and the game logs me out.

All my characters not in the Champ Pavilion load perfectly fine.

I loved this quest!
Really quite sad

I remember it giving a ‘huge’ amount of experience points… until Factions came out lol.

I’m 90% sure that she’s actually a man disguised as a woman using mesmer magic.
Unfortunately, the enchantment has been persistent for so long, it’s caused his brain to deteriorate so his mind has become warped.

I think this would explain the design of the watchknights. Obviously, he’s designed the watchknights to have ‘feminine’ bodies, because it’s something that he doesn’t possess. It’s how he ultimately desires to look, but can only achieve that through enchantments and building these things.

Do we even know if Queen Jennah is a woman? She could actually be King Jennah, and has been disguising herself with mesmer magic for an extended period of time.

She’s not had any children has she? I think now I know why.

She’ll disenchant herself during the Queen’s speech and reveal the manliest of manly forms. Logan will be devastated at first, but then realise that love conquers all. Plus, he admires King Jennah’s buff body, so they get married.

To ensure continuity in personal story missions, he will still appear as Queen Jennah.

(Sorry if I spoiled the surprise guys)

Korval.3751:

Aiglos.2907:

I hope she gives Trahearne an award for his contributions to Tyria.

He’ll win the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Leading Role. :<

I thought his performance was a bit wooden to be honest
cough cough

I hope she gives Trahearne an award for his contributions to Tyria.

Or maybe she’s going to announce that Countess Anise and herself have been in a secret relationship?

Yeah I destroyed mine because I figured they’d be useless… A bit sad to lose a few gold.
It’s very annoying, but nothing that will stop me playing or anything.

I don’t think it was a wise choice to make them ‘sellable’. Everyone that voted has ended up with useless buttons, which I’m now afraid to destroy in case they make those worth money…

For people that don’t think it’s a large amount of money lost, I do agree with that relatively speaking. However, for some players, that kind of money is actually pretty significant.

It’s a mild annoyance. I think for future situations, they should probably just ‘seize’ items that won’t ever be used again. Frees up inventory space and people won’t feel the need to hoard them.

I think it could just be coincidence.

I do happen to know that the Champion Wasp Queen in Queensdale bears a massive grudge against me. She could be mobbed by 1000s of allied players, but she will ultimately make a bee line for me and with every ounce of her being, aim to destroy me. I tend to be standing the furthest away and she still comes at me. Every time. Without fail :’(

I think the focus might shine in environments where you’re going to get hit hard and it’s OK to be defensive, I imagine competitive environments and dungeons. I think there are some excellent skills (earth line!!).

However, there are several pretty poor skills: gale, freezing gust, flame wall and fire aura- (although the effect isn’t too bad). These particular skills are unjustifiably restricted by possessing both (arguably) weak effects and extremely long cool downs for their functionality. I feel that this is a problem with the focus. I am put off from using it because it has too many poor skills.

Really, my gripe with the focus is that it is pretty awful in general PvE compared with literally everything else. Some points I suppose are:

-Lack of mobility. Could be mitigated by signet of air I suppose, or certain air traits and GoEH, but no movement skills or swiftness otherwise. It is tedious for me to bring.

-Too defensive for general PvE. I personally feel that the best defensive strategy in general PvE is just to kill quickly. Mob damage tends to be low, meaning that the defensive nature of the focus is just overkill. Ultimately, you’re gaining nothing from being defensive against a mob because they’re generally too weak to pose any threat. So I think it’s just inefficient to bring. Plus it feels soooooooooo slow.

-Awful skills. I mentioned that some skills had weak effects. They might be useful in the competitive environments? However, they’re trash in general PvE. Monsters just die too quickly, and even quicker if you take literally anything else, with almost no risk to you.

In this environment, it’s better just to kill quickly. The only reason I’d use the focus skills is just… to feel like I’m doing something a bit different? Honestly though, it’s a waste of a mouse click in my opinion. 99% of the time, you’re better off not taking it, otherwise you’re just burdening yourself with weak skills for general PvE. OH dagger offers much more in my opinion.

Also synergy! I personally feel that the dagger has much better synergy with the scepter. Maybe in the future, we need a new main hand weapon that fits better with the focus perhaps? I can’t speak for dagger/focus, but I have seen some really cool videos of it in WvWvW.

In conclusion, just fix the weak skills and I’ll be happy.

Leo G.4501:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Maybe they forgot Arcane Shield exists or something – also the Earth Shield thingy which I thought was just urban legend. I mean won’t these make more sense as stunbreakers and can possibly finally be of use when they become stunbreakers? Shield? SHIELD??? Defensive utility skills? Defense?? Anyone??? I’m crying right now. T___T

My guess is they didn’t want to keep defensive stunbreakers as your only stun breakers.

If you want defensive stunbreakers, use mist form and armor of earth.

That said, I still feel the changes to the current cantrips seem a bit lacking. Lower cooldowns are nice but they feel like a waste of a utility slot (talking cleansing fire and lightning flash).

Personally would have preferred Arcane Power and Signet of Earth to become the stunbreakers.

I suppose this is a good point too
Admittedly, I just associate stun breakers with defensive skills.

silvos.3092:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Whoever thought about making GoEP a stunbreaker is seriously trolling. Using GoEP earlier in a fight to provide an offensive buff before engaging and on the other hand trying to save the skill for it’s stun break while being harassed in battle is like.. I have no words for it.. sorry..

That’s called strategic choice and versatility…You guys don’t understand about sacrificing one effect for the other? That’s all it’s about…You’ll never be able to get 100% of that skill but you’ll always be able to get something from it… It’s not a 0/1 skill but a 0.5/0.5 one… That’s all…

Also that skill is already quite good when you’re used to it and will just be perfect in a glyph oriented build…

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Maybe they forgot Arcane Shield exists or something – also the Earth Shield thingy which I thought was just urban legend. I mean won’t these make more sense as stunbreakers and can possibly finally be of use when they become stunbreakers? Shield? SHIELD??? Defensive utility skills? Defense?? Anyone??? I’m crying right now. T___T

If I personally consider arcane skills don’t need break stun effects you got the point with the earth shield….the big thing missing in this patch (if the leaked note are real…) are the conjurations…

I understand your point and I think it’s something important for other skills. Knowing when to use a skill for maximum efficiency is good strategy. Also, I think signets highlight the ‘sacrificing one effect for the other’ point. In this case, you choose between whether the passive or active buff would be more beneficial. However, you need to consider that GoEP was originally an ‘offensive’ skill. The whole point of this particular skill was to pop it just before entering combat. The strategy in this case was to supplement your attack skills. If you took this skill, you wanted it for offense! The stun break just doesn’t synergise with the offensive nature of skill (and flavour wise, it just doesn’t sit with me).

The problem I have, is that the stun break has been taken from skills where it actually synergised with the effect, if that makes sense? I think there are several scenarios.

-One of is that people continue to pop it before combat, ignoring the stun break. In this case, the stun break has been rendered useless.
-Another is that people actively use this skill as a stun break. If the purpose of the stun break was to get the heck out of combat, then this skill has effectively been wasted. You’ve lost time on the glyph’s effect.
-Another is that you use the stun break to maintain offensive momentum. In this case, it isn’t bad.

I just feel that the original conception of the skill was to be offensive and trying to use it as a stun break is just a waste of skill slot. I think a stun break may have been more useful on arcane shield, because I just think it synergises more.

I’ll reiterate, I think knowing when to use a skill is important, BUT this skill is just meant to be an offensive buff! Stun break has no place on it.

In general PvE play it’s awful. The skills are way too defensively orientated….

Really, (in PvE) I want mobility and the ability to kill quickly. Focus brings neither of these to general PvE. Instead it brings long cooldown defensive and single target cc skills, which are pretty poor in this format. It brings no benefit in an area where mobs would die quickly anyway and aoe would be more valued. It feels like I’m pulling teeth when using the focus for sure.

However, I think the focus is pretty cool in dungeons where the mobs last long enough for these skills to make a difference. I think it also has interesting use in WvW?

I don’t think there’s anything explicitly ‘wrong’, maybe inefficient?

I would say that for a staff ele in general pve, staying in fire is pretty effective. However this will often depend on how you are traited and the situation at hand.

Definitely no need to go all crazy attunement swap on a Moa. Most mobs are just fodder for lava font. They melt pretty easily and it saves my attunements. I only tend to swap against more challenging things. Risen will probably see an attunement cycle, although depending on how lazy I am I may just lava font them to death since most monsters have pretty poor pathing and it’s easy to keep them in there.

In group play however, I’ll break out the combo fields perhaps to give the illusion that I’m contributing to the group- and to not seem selfish. Unfortunately, most people really don’t know how to use combo fields effectively though, so often I’m just finishing my own with arcane wave or eruption. Situations like that can definitely benefit from attunement swapping. Same applies for tougher monsters, where cc and weakness may last long enough to actually be noticeable.

In other modes of play, I’m sure you’ll need to take full advantage of the skills at hand. In PvE though, you (well, myself at least) just want to kill things fast. I think trying to break out cc, weakness etc can be useful against tougher monsters, but if weaker monsters die in 3 hits anyway, I’d rather just kill quickly and move on.

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

Hmm. Any tips on doing this with a Sylvari Engineer? We don’t have pets or other summons (other than an Elite racial, which is the only thing to really compete with Supply Drop).

Otherwise I’ll finish the re-gearing I had in progress (newly minted 80, first character :-) and consider a re-trait toward more Vit/Tough. And can you res while under Elixir S effect?

Elixir U gives quickness I think? So use that to res Mira. Before that I’d probably set up a few turrets as a distraction. They may not last long, but it should be enough time to make enough progress with the res bar so that if you do die, you can respawn and res her without an issue.

or maybe use one of those blindness bombs if you get swarmed… mm

Anyway, after the res, just run straight back to the fort. Do not fight anything.
Speak to that guy. Blow up the ship. There is almost no pressure here

I think you then run back to that guy again. You’ll be asked to light the beacon. I don’t know the best option that engineers have for movement, but you can use the swiftness skill in the medkit and run to the tower. Light it, get back to the centre asap without stopping to fight. You will only encounter an issue if you stop to fight en route.

Take a bit of time to position yourself near allied npcs. Then hold out I guess.

Also take a look at the engineer forum for trait/build advice I guess before you change your specs.

Hello

I wasn’t sure whether to put this in the Personal Story where it’s perhaps more apt, but I guess it can apply to PvE areas.

Something that really irritates me is when a Seraph Guard, or a potentially competent combatant gets swatted like a fly. Obviously, I don’t want NPCs suddenly rising up and winning all the battles for you- I don’t necessarily think their damage needs increasing. However I would like them to survive the occasional scrapes and blows though and not just be ‘revive fodder’.

In a personal story, this is quite irritating. Especially because the companion NPC has such poor combat AI anyway. To be fair, I haven’t struggled with too many of the personal stories due to weak NPCs. I think the only ones that I struggled with for this reason specifically is the Skritt branch of personal story quests.

In general PvE, perhaps it could scale depending on how many players there are? For example in a ‘defend x point from risen waves!’ event, the NPCs pretty much lay down and die. So all mobs pretty much head straight for you. So one idea could be if you are the only person at such an event, the NPCs become slightly more resistant to damage? I guess you would also need to consider that some events are designed for groups of players and not really meant to be soloed. So this is just a suggestion.

I can imagine that NPCs are always going to die- and that things will often be in favour of the monsters, because that does keep events interesting and ticking over appropriately when noone is there to protect them. I just think that maybe the generic guards/combat NPCs should put up a bit more of a fight.

Villagers etc can stay the same. They have no business surviving- I mean in a prolonged fight anyway.

Oh! and can we perhaps let certain generic NPCs and guards revive us if we’re dead? Sometimes I’ll die, and a villager will just stand over and laugh at me

Yay Mr Jeff hugs

In the first instance I went throughout the swamp and I’m pretty sure I killed every last risen. So I’m not so sure about that.

On the second and third attempt, I didn’t do this. I did however kill the nearby mobs until there nothing in the immediate vicinity.

I did a fourth attempt and I heard new dialogue after the ‘exploding risen’ mob wave. Something about the NPC Sarrena saying ‘Hiroki will see us through!’.

Shortly after the next wave the objective updated and I could complete the quest

I am almost certain that the spawns stopped in the first 3 instances though. Thanks very much for your time!

I didn’t have a problem on my thief- who was approximately the same level as the quest I believe. Perhaps a bit lower. I’m glad the waves were toned down to two though!

With regards to Doc Howler, from what I remember, she didn’t hit very hard at all? So this is definitely not skills on my part, because she barely did any damage- at least during my experience. I think I used shortbow and pistol/dagger. Cloak and dagger was quite useful for avoiding damage…

Having said that, my gear was also level appropriate, so do make sure you have level appropriate armour and weaponry. This could be the issue.

You could get condition damage on your ring?
I wanted that for my Mesmer lol. I’ll need to check if the ring issue has occurred for me.

With regards to the dead ends, yes I personally was going to avoid them. Out of morbid curiosity I went down one to see what would happen. I got kicked too

Also yes for the teleporting shark. I got slaughtered in the water, and upon respawning I got a small fright after seeing several crazy ghost/shark things fly up through the ground and make a beeline straight for me. I took great pleasure in killing them on land though lol.

I think that’s normal

Hey guys! I know that there was a post in the bugs forum about… 2 months ago concerning Brute Force I believe.

The issue is that there is an objective in the quest where you find the survivors, and then have to hold out against several risen waves and ‘defeat the undead attackers’. Unfortunately after a few waves the mobs stop spawning and there is no updated objective. It simply remains at ‘defeat the undead attackers’. According to wiki at this point the objective should update, but it doesn’t

One of the suggested workarounds was to quit the mission and re-enter the instance. Although I have done this 3 times and it’s not worked.

It’s on my level 21 Engineer, and I notice it happened on the first two occasions after the exploding risen mob wave put me into downed state. Don’t know if that’s related, because on the third attempt I killed them and the mobs still stopped spawning. The objective didn’t update.

I had the chance to redo this mission recently. I found Mira dead right next to a massive respawning bunch of risen. This was the most difficult part, so I had to use quickness and try to revive her with ‘pet’ distractions. I died here but most of her bar was full, so I managed to get her and then just ran straight back to the Fort. I don’t think mobs target her again. She also didn’t fight until later in the story.

After this, the mission is not difficult provided that you follow the objective exactly i.e. never stop to fight unless the objective explicitly says ‘defend x point’ or ‘hold out’ etc. If it says ‘light the beacon’ just literally run straight to the beacon, light it and bail out as fast you can

Most of this mission is about movement, so use passive movement buffs or swiftness.