Guild Wars 2

Lionaeron.5724:

but he said it was divided, so in fact this is worst than original MMO’s RNG’s where you actually get to vote on good drops and share amongst yourselves evenly.

No. It means you get full loot. If they kill it as well, the game counts it as two kills, with two loots, each player getting one kill’s worth. If three kill one target, the game counts it as killing three, etc.

And gamblers fallacy means that they’re not stealing from you, as each loot roll is independant of other loot rolls.

Honestly. People are getting all bent out of shape over little things that even the developer admits they intend to fix.

It’s a fun game, though like most MMO’s, you want to play with a few friends so you get where you want to go quicker.

Lionaeron.5724:

AnemoneMeer.7182:

Artemis Noir.3804:

Indeed. It is also worth noting that grouping always seems to result in a much higher loot count.

Much higher is a severe understatement.

As each player has an independant loot table, a full group gets 5x the loot, albeit divided among five people.

Now, if said five people are friends working together on, say, ascended back items for everyone, we can assume that they will chip in towards eachother’s goals, speeding it up for everyone.

So if someone loots a precursor off a mob i helped kill and i didn’t get one that means they stole my loot?

No. It means even if you killed it alone, you wouldn’t have got the precursor.

Artemis Noir.3804:

Indeed. It is also worth noting that grouping always seems to result in a much higher loot count.

Much higher is a severe understatement.

As each player has an independant loot table, a full group gets 5x the loot, albeit divided among five people.

Now, if said five people are friends working together on, say, ascended back items for everyone, we can assume that they will chip in towards eachother’s goals, speeding it up for everyone.

It’s not just TA, and don’t exactly go pugging TA, you get it done a ton faster with a group willing to cordinate and use tactics. TA has aloooot of profit, but it’s pretty good at cleaning up pugs on the first boss alone.

Given so many people complain about it being difficult to earn gold without grinding like mad, I thought I would post some of the ways I earned a Triforge pendant and a Breath of Jormag without burning myself out or using methods that ANet are going to nerf.

1: Omnomberry bars. Seriously. Buy them. You should always have a stack on hand, and pop one when you’re doing any form of activity that will result in a high kill count.

2: Twilight Arbor. Getting a group for this that can actually fight might be a pain, but grab a few friends, and you’ll all get rich pretty quick. Save the Onyx Cores you get from it, and synth them into Onyx Lodestone. You have a pretty decent chance of getting a core or two every run, and lodestone’s aren’t that rare if you use an Omnom. Seriously, I cannot stress Twilight Arbor enough. A single good run can get you 3g, and you’re relying on the chests, not the clears. I’ve made 5g on a run where I lucked out, and said profit is entirely due to what players have done to the market.

3: Ascalon Catacombs full kill runs. Most of the champion mobs in AC drop 5s+. With an Omnomberry bar, this goes up to 7s+, meaning that it pays for itself. There’s no lodestones here, so alot of the profit is in the ending clear.

4: Exchanging dungeon tokens for tier 2 sigils/runes. Mostly a luck method, but you should be able to rapidly get a collection of t2 runes/sigils, which you mix together in the forge. 25% chance to make over a gold, for only 200 dungeon tokens. Given you make over 200 dungeon tokens for just running all three paths and killing everything, and can luck out and score like 5 gold, you’ve got no real risk to this method.

5: Southsun kill squads. Just make laps around the island in magic find gear. You’ve got an entire island dedicated to just Bloods/Scales, and on a decent drop rate. Bring a few friends to kill quickly, and you can make some decent income. Even just one friend really speeds this up though.

6: Claw of Jormag farming. Again, bring friends. Focus on the adds on all phases of the fight, pitching in when the dragon is stunned. You get a very constant flow of loot, and even the tiny ice elementals that self destruct are worth money and have a chance at Corrupted Lodestones.

Basically, grab friends, and work together. People are always complaining GW2 doesn’t encourage social play, but you actually make a TON more gold by playing with friends and doing group content.

kersh.2735:

xiv.7136:

Honestly, if you’re skilled and able to juggle a lot of abilities, dagger/dagger elementalist.

Fantastic and fun class, with a ton of tricks and incredibly strong in PVE/PVP/WVW.

If you’re unskilled, warrior will suit fine, it’s very basic and predictable but easy to understand and play at average level.

Ah, thank you Elementalist it is.

Don’t be so quick. Mesmer is also capable of juggling abilities and functions, though less in terms of cooldowns, and more in terms of having a large list of utilities designed for specific tasks, as well as constantly having to adjust and keep tabs on how many illusions you have in play, and their individual weapons or phantasmal abilities.

Engineer as well can juggle alot of abilities and styles based on the situation, from bomb melee combat medic styles to rifle trickery, to grenadier, all in the middle of the fight proper, and a ability kit that changes much more with your choices than any other class, as each utility and your heal also add an additional skill, or entire set of skills atop just them.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Implying you even need teamwork to complete dungeons in this game. You sit behind a wall or pillar to Line of sight mobs then spam PBAoE/AoE support and damage. GG you won GW2 dungeons.

There’s obviously exceptions, mostly bosses, but the majority of dungeons just comprise of balling up with the enemies on top of you. Trinity wouldn’t be that horrible, in a lot of cases it would probably result in slower runs anyway.

Funny, I run groups with actual teamwork instead of a strong focus on rushing and exploiting and just spamming our skills to get out of corners. We actually tend to build around eachother.

We tend to die less and have more fun than just about any group I’ve seen, even with some of us having crap gear and “sub-optimal” builds.

Warrior Healer sounds about your speed then. You mix it with croud control to constantly top people’s healthbars up while doing your best to keep enemies off of them. And you’re free to use whatever weapons you like and pace or burst your heals as you see fit.

Honestly, it depends on what you want, and what style you want it in. I can help if you give me a concept.

I’m a mesmer personally. Hilariously warrior feels too squishy to me by comparison. But pretty much every class brings something to the table, even ranger (It’s called healing spring in their case)

Welcome to forums. Were the forum a christian forum that required proof you went to church that week to even log in, it would be a forum dedicated to promoting satanism and raging against the pastors.

I personally enjoy the game, though I tend to prefer playing with friends as I get alot more done that way.

I found one on my 80 mesmer from a level 7 wolf in queensdale.

I’d put their drop chance on par with getting a precursor.

I’m aware it’s overpowered as all hell as is. It’s more to illustrate how the class is supposed to work in theory, as opposed to being remotely balanced. I picked out the various slots on various weapons that would illustrate what you could do with the various perks, so I tended towards skill 5 and auto attacks to show it, not towards the middle of the bar skills that are used for utility purposes.

I’m not in a good position to balance every little thing. I don’t have access to the hard data ANet does, and I haven’t logged the 100 hours of every class that I’m sure the PvP balance team has.

and F4 Is Purge weapon. No cooldown, but the skills are balanced around having three empowerments on at a time, and do not fade. The idea is that skilled players will mix their empowerments around while mid combat, quickly purging and empowering themselves to react to the flow of combat, while newer players will keep one empowerment set on at a time. Quickly dumping their empowerments and going one earth two death to fire off Lightning Rail three times.

Three slots. You can go one of each for a balanced setup, or heavier into one than the others.

You basically NEED Earth empowerments to get decent sized AoE’s off of anything. The only way you’re buffing is with a Chaos empowerment. And you’re definately not reaching max damage without Death empowerment. The idea is to swap around as the situation demands, and never feel pinned into just one.

Likewise. If you run three chaos, you will buff a ton, but your buffs will only hit a tiny area. If you run three death, your attacks may be extremely lethal, but you’ve got no utility to them outside of heal blocking, and no radius, making the longer ones easy to dodge. If you run three earth, you’ll hit a large area, and be able to keep hitting, but it won’t have too much bite.

Moderation, and swapping to fit the situation is the name of the game.

Aberrant.6749:

Right now if you’re planning on doing PvP vs anyone of skill don’t play a mesmer. If you’re planning on doing PvE there are other classes that can do what a mesmer does… but better.

Illusions won’t appear if you are blind, if they block, or if they dodge at the time of the illusion creation. Baddies don’t know how to abuse this imbalance in game rules and will just get confused by your clones… you can kill those players with any class.

Say somehow you do manage get a phantom off without being blinded/blocked… they have a long delay before they attack… long enough for them to be killed before they do damage. Say they don’t kill it right away… they can then dodge the attack of the phantom itself… and this doesn’t even consider the current damage bugs or any of the other 20+ bugs that plague the mesmer class.

This is why mesmers suck in PvP. I have yet to die in a 1v1 vs a mesmer since they put this in the game. Not ONE… and I’m far from pro. In a 1v2 I thank god that it’s only a mesmer I have to deal with in addition to that other person.

PvE Mesmer has mid dps and doesn’t do anything that another class can’t do better other than a group haste on a very long cooldown (which is really nice tbh). Oh wait… I was wrong… they do confusion better… too bad that sucks hardcore in PvE…

IMO wait to roll a mesmer to see what they do in this next major patch… actually… wait to roll ANYTHING until after this next patch. Whatever you choose now might be nerfed into the ground or have a massive bug which kittens the class.

Null field. Illusion of life (Warbanner is an elite, comes out MUCH slower, and is done in melee.). CC immunity chipping. Tanking boss instant kills (I can stand on Kholer and melee him through the spin. Survive Howling King’s scream while being directly in the path. And that’s just a small portion). Timewarp. Mind Stab (Both). Blink rezzing. 100% Vigor uptime. Mimic/Echo. Phantasmal defender tricks.

We have ALOT more going for us than simply shatter builds.

Focus is focused on large, destructive spells at the cost of mobility.

4: Dragon’s Breath. Channels a destructive cone infront of the Dragonknight, doing large amounts of damage, though the cone cannot be aimed once used. Each empowerment of Earth widens and extends the cone. Each empowerment of death adds 1s poison to each hit of the cone. Each empowerment of Chaos adds 1s vigor to each hit of the cone to an ally.

5: Primordial Fury. The Dragonknight throws their hands to the side, forming a field of fire around them that burns enemies. This ability can be pressed again to detonate the field in a blast of fire, knocking enemies out of the field and delivering heavy damage. Has a warm-up period before activating the field. Dragonknight cannot move or attack during the cast. Blast gains in power the longer the field is active. Each empowerment of earth increases the width of the field. Each empowerment of death applies increased damage and leeching to the blast. Each empowerment of chaos causes the field to grant 1 stack of 2s might and 1 stack of 2s fury to allies within the field on each tick of damage.

Rifle is focused on magical shots. It is slow to fire in all cases, but potent, delivering a mixture of AoE damage and single target damage, through magical ground targeted effects and direct shots.

1. Pyre Shot. Fires a blast of fire at the target. Each empowerment of earth adds a blast radius to the shot. Each empowerment of death adds to the damage of the shot. Each empowerment of chaos makes the shot bounce once within 300 range of the target.

5. Lightning Rail. Focuses a charged shot while aimed at a location. When target location is selected, fires a shot with it’s damage based on charge time, hitting instantly. Each empowerment of earth adds to the blast radius. Each empowerment of death adds an additional shot, though the charge is reset after each shot. Each empowerment of chaos adds 2s weakness and 4s vigor to allies and enemies struck by the shot.
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Longbow is quick to fire, focused on dispatching single targets with a hail of strikes.
(no moves yet)

This class is my effort at a sort of magic knight that can vill various roles through destructive power, as opposed to defensive strength. It relies on it’s power with stronger, if slower attacks than other similar classes, and its empowerments to tailor it’s attacks to fit the situation.

It is NOT a dark class, dispite the name. It is not evil, sinister, or in posession of dark glows. The necromancer still fills that role. Though it is destructive, it is more a fusion of Warrior and Elementalist design styles, with bright displays of destruction backed by martial prowess.

Thoughts, move suggestions, refinements are all appreciated.

Hammer focuses on overwhelming power and force. Its attacks splinter the earth and scatter enemies. (Just an idea of how it’s movelist works, not a full movelist)

1. Scatter Dust. A hammer strike to the ground, cracking the ground around the Dragonknight. AoE range is small. AoE extends for each empowerment of Earth. 1s Bleed for each empowerment of death. AoE 1 might 3s for each empowerment of Chaos.

- Shatter Stone. A second follow up hammer strike to the ground, with a slightly wider AoE than Scatter Dust. AoE extends for each empowerment of Earth. 1s Bleed for each empowerment of death. AoE Fury 1s for each empowerment of Chaos.

-Sunder Earth. A final devastating hammer strike to the ground, causing spikes to strike upwards from the ground (Risen knight attack). AoE extends for each empowerment of earth. 2s poison for each empowerment of death. 1 3s might and 1s fury for each empowerment of Chaos.

2. Dragon’s Talon. A strike to the ground that sends out a forward wave of earth. Each empowerment of Earth increases the range of the projectile. Each empowerment of death increases the projectile’s damage. Each empowerment of chaos adds 1s weakness to enemies hit.

5: Piercing Roar. The Dragonknight slams their hammer into the ground, the handle facing straight up into the sky, throwing their hands back as they release a burst of energy, knocking enemies to the ground around them. Each empowerment of earth increases the knockdown slightly. Each empowerment of death adds bonus damage and leeches it for the Dragonknight. Each empowerment of Chaos adds 5s weakness and 5s retaliation AoE to the effect.

Greatsword focuses on delivering magic imbued single target damage. The sword is treated as a magical catalyst of destruction. (No spinning attacks here)

1. Divide. Brings the blade down on the enemy from directly above, a crack of lightning following in it’s wake. Each empowerment of earth adds a 1s slow to the strike. Each empowerment of death adds a slight leech effect to the strike. Each empowerment of chaos adds might to the user, either 2, 4, or 6seconds long, but always one stack.

- Disperse. The Dragonknight brings the blade back up into the air, cutting upwards through their target with lightning following in its wake once again. Each empowerment of earth adds a 1s slow to the strike. Each empowerment of death adds a slight leech effect to the strike. Each empowerment of chaos adds might to the user, either 2, 4, or 6seconds long, but always one stack.

- Decimate. The Dragonknight impales the target with their blade, a final blast of lightning striking the target along with its strike. Each empowerment of earth adds a 2s burn to the target. Each empowerment of death adds health leeching and damage, much more than the previous two strikes. Each empowerment of chaos purges one boon from the target. (Yes, it can purge 3 boons, but you’re going full support setup with a weapon that won’t buff your allies, and is melee)

2. Entropic Flare. Drive your weapon into the ground, before bringing it upwards in a long crecent slash, a blast of death and fire erupting under the target (Still a melee attack, it will simply attempt to track left to right in a cone to make up for the lack of AoE). Each empowerment of Earth adds 2s burning. Each empowerment of Death adds direct damage. Each empowerment of Chaos adds 0.25s Daze to the target.

Mace focuses on disabling and weakening the enemy.

(No moves designed yet)

Axe focuses on rapidly attacking the enemy with a flurry of strikes, applying conditions and effects to spare.

3: Havoc Spread. Throws an axe that bleeds the target. Each empowerment of earth widens the cone, from one axe to three, to five, to seven, though the damage remains the same. Each empowerment of death adds an additional bleed. Each empowerment of chaos makes the axe apply one 4s might to allies in the cone.

Yes, yes, I know most everyone has probably thought “Lets have a dark, dragon power using class…” this is only half that.

Skippable plot stuff.

With the pact forces of Tyria having slain the first of the Elder Dragons, laying the risen dead of Orr to rest, they had earned themselves a moment of respite, however brief. Though the methods and motives differ between the Vigil, the Durmand Priory, and the Order of Whispers, one thing was agreed upon: The dragons power was far beyond that of magic, rivaling even the six gods themself.

With the Priory’s studies into the Sons of Svanir, the Branded, and the deceased corpse of the elder dragon Zhaitan, they developed an understanding of how these powers are tapped into by the dragons vile minions. The Order of Whispers, with spies among the Sons of Svanir dragon cult, learned how they controlled and channeled these powers. And the Vigil’s strongest warriors, in their moment of repose, practiced turning these powers against the dragons themself.

Through study, training, and the theft of knowledge, the Dragonknight style was devised, using elemental might in accord with physical power. Treating massive weapons as catalysts for the dragons might while leaving their flesh and minds clear to fight. The men and women who take up this style are valiant of heart, and steadfast, using their destructive might to protect those around them and lay low those before them.

The Dragonknight uses Axes, Maces, Focuses, Greatswords, Hammers, Rifles, and Longbows. Mace is mainhand only. Axes are either hand, and Focus is offhand only.

It’s profession mechanic is Draconic Might. A resource that is built up by focusing using the profession skills “Empower: Earth.” “Empower: Death” “Empower: Chaos”.

There are three slots on the Dragonknight’s Draconic Might gauge. Each can be filled by one empowerment charge. These charges alter how the Dragonknight’s skills work, without changing the fundamentals. Basically, if you were to throw an axe, with Death, it would sink itself into the target, bleeding them. With Chaos, it would gain a single bounce. And with Earth, the axe would apply a brief slow. These are not expended buffs, but small augments to the Dragonknight’s skills that alter the way it’s weapon skills work. As there are three empowerment slots, you can use one of each empowerment, or multiple. There is also a fourth skill “Purge Weapon” Which enables you to set new empowerments.

Earth focuses on area of effect destruction, sundering the ground and spreading fire and ice. Though it’s focus is on stone and rock, it is more focused on representing terrestrial elements and conditions, the fire and the world’s core, and the ice at it’s tips, as well as the land itself. It tends towards AoE and control in equal measure, instead of damage, making attacks hit multiple targets, increasing Area of Effect ranges, or slows and chills. Some skills also gain burning.

Death focuses on it’s namesake. Death empowerment is aimed at bringing an end to enemies, and playing off their own weakness. It contains a few leeching bonuses to weapons, but mostly focuses on bringing a painful end to a single target. It’s mainstays are poison, bleeding, execute style damage increase, and occasionally leeching.

Chaos focuses on support, be it through weakening the enemy or strengthening allies, as well as causing attacks to bounce from target to target. It’s generally aimed at retaliation, might, fury, weakness, daze, and confusion, with empowered ranged attacks often gaining a bouncing shot at reduced damage to spread the effect around.

These empowerments can be stacked as the player chooses. Adding additional empowerments does not add additional effects to abilities, but simply increases the effects of the empowerment.

If you fire a longbow arrow with one earth, one death, and one chaos empowerment, it will inflict a 1s burn, a 2s bleed, and a 1s confusion, as well as bounce to one extra target, doing half damage, but inflicting one of each again. If it was done with two earth, one death, it would infict a 2s burn, and a 2s bleed. Three earth = 3s burn. The ability to swap it around is to allow players to customise their abilities to fit the situation, without changing how the attacks handle.

Personally, I’d suggest a Sword/Sword/ Greatsword build for levelling. Focused on mixed clone/phantasm tactics (Treating phantasms as one or two off attackers to be shattered as needed).

If you take blink and put at least 20 points into dueling, you’re light on your feet with strong clones who stack bleeds and can throw a mirror blade, go into melee for the AoE, rolling as needed, shatter, knockback wave on the GS, and swap to kiting tactics while riding out sword cooldowns, then go right back into melee.

You have enough defensive cooldowns to go straight through three boss attacks, before dodge rolls, which due to 100% vigor and greatsword hitting and critting three times per auto, are ALWAYS up.

I personally find that outside of either sPvP (Burst it down ASAP is the rule of the game, ergo, shatters), or champions (Spam phantasms in most cases, as they attack slow), a versatile mesmer who can think on their feet and use their full toolkit, is a strong mesmer.

Greatsword + Dueling creates a very powerful vigor generator that can give you 9 stacks of might the moment you decide to move into melee engagements, while slowing enemies and stripping their buffs so you can get into melee, and comes with a knockback wave.

Sceptre is… suprisingly viable in a shatter/on clone death melee build that relies entirely on clones to do damage. Other than that, do not touch it, it has only one role, and that role isn’t perfomed well unless very specific traits and utilities are taken (Think of it as a double melee mindwrack tool and nothing more).

Sword is a beautiful melee weapon with absolutly no shortage of applications, from champion slaying, to AoE, to simply staying alive. Honestly, one of your weapon sets should always be Sword/X

Pistol offhand, while popular as hell, is a little iffy in my eyes. Duelists have no self preservation instinct, and while strong phantasms while specced into dueling, a skilled player can easily trick it into missing every shot or only use one dodge roll and a little footwork to avoid everything. Stacks bleeds expertly though. It’s stunshot, while good against players, is lacking against champions and bosses, and the bouncing quality can get the attention of more monsters than you intended.

Sword offhand balances a decent, survivable, if not particularly deadly phantasm with an extra block that can protect you from burst combos, champions, or anything inbetween. And it cancels into blurred frenzy. Personally, I prefer it for the survival ability it grants, but you won’t be outdpsing a pistol offhand.

Torch offhand is for running away or abusing player culling in WvW. It’s actual combat application is pretty non-existant.

Focus offhand is for mobility and control. Swiftness (our only real source). A group pull (Mass scorpion wire at less range basically). And a VERY heavy bleed stacking phantasm that does low damage, but destroys and can be specced to reflect projectiles. It’s good, even if its damage is unreliable/low.

Staff is RNG, but potent. Chaos storm is our best AoE by far, and it stacks a ton of debuffs. Or it can go power for champion slaying by having Illusionary warlocks bursting for obscene numbers. Regardless, it’s a safe, slow burn killing weapon. The RNG is somewhat limited, but still a factor.

Regardless, keep in mind, a good mesmer, is a versatile mesmer. I know alot of builds go one way or the other, into one particular hole, but ALOT of mesmer’s kit is designed around being changed to fit the situation. Mimic/Echo has let me almost one-shot warriors with their own killshot, then recast mirror blade out of it to finish the job. Decoy + Distortion has let me kill people in the middle of WvW zergs who went down from my own feedback bubble. Null field has made condition builds entirely useless. The various mantras have helped me shave off enemy CC immunity, stop bull rush warriors dead in their tracks, escape CC, or even added a little extra oomph to a full shatter build (Not much, but an extra 2k during blurred frenzy is something when added atop a mirror blade into mirror image into shatter, illusionary leap, swap, blurred frenzy combo)

Change your skills and tactics to fit the situation and twist it to your advantage. You’re not a one-trick pony, you’re an every trick in the book horse.

Null field only rips them off one at a time, and does so in pulses. It’s still incredibly powerful though.

Grab a spear. You don’t really need trident if it’s PvE.

Focus on deploying your phantasms, and otherwise on timing your auto attacks so you start striking right after the enemy swings (timing the third strike to their attack animation, you can repeatedly queue and cancel it with moving, but you don’t get the evade.)

You can easily burst 16k+ with three spear phantasms out. Ignoring your actual damage. WITHOUT ZERKS GEAR.

Mesmer + three spear phants can easily get absolutly insane numbers.

Just off the top of my head.

Time Warp. Doubles the DPS of you, and the rest of your party. Also doubles Rez speed. I’ve seen it turn around countless bad situations.

Illusion of Life. Quick resurrect for 15 seconds, or until a party member scores a kill. If it fails, they go down again one downed penalty tier higher. In other words, it can save people on the brink of death, and if they fail to get a kill, they’re still down with more health than before.

Null field. Where do I even begin? Combo field. Strips buffs. strips debuffs. AoE. Decent cooldown. Null field is an outright AMAZING ability for dungeons and WvW.

Decoy + Distortion Shatter combo. Secures kills in WvW better than most anything. You can leap off a wall, then pop distortion when it ends, and get a stomp kill.

Feedback. Get a few mesmers with this in WvW and watch the magic. Also counts as a combo field on the rebound, confusing targets for shooting at you.

Portal. It’s portal. That’s all that needs to be said.

Blurred frenzy + Illusionary riposte combo. You can stand on top of MANY bosses in dungeons, and just ignore whatever attacks they use on you. Mix with Knights gear and blood sigils and you can generally outlast whatever you’re fighting.

Spatial Surge + on crit Sigil (I like blood personally). Three chances to proc your sigil. One attack.

Mind Stab (Both). Buff removal on an auto attack and AoE buff removal at range.

That’s just a few that I like. Mesmer has no shortage of great support options, outperforming anyone. We’re not really DPS, and shouldn’t focus on numbers.

The general rule of thumb for a First Order Optimal Strategy is it has to be something that becomes weak or useless in a higher skill environment. The mesmer GS isn’t this.

Mesmer GS has the most AoE potential of every mesmer weapon in the game. This alone qualifies it as filling a specific niche, but to take the argument against it being one one step further…

sPvP is done in teams of 8v8 or 5v5. Three points in play. Assuming a 5v5 game, and a bunker player or two on each team, you will generally see 4v4 or 3v3 in mid, or similar, based on the map and the events (not always, but we’re using an idealised situation to demonstrate something). Rarely will these players be bunched tight enough for Mind Stab to land reliable multi-target hits, leaving it as a single target attack… and it’s not that great at that, but was never meant to be. This leaves Mirror blade and iZerk. Mirror blade is still an amazing ability that hits hard and makes the mesmer hit harder. this just leaves iZerk. Zerk, even ignoring AoE, hits decently hard, and slows the target, letting the mesmer or mesmer’s ally’s close into melee.

iZerk is the ONLY ranged slow in the mesmer’s entire arsenal. Ill leap is unreliable, cannot be used as an initiate, and is only a 600 range skill.

The bug removes the damage, and the slow, preventing GS user mesmers from gap closing into mirror blade, to Ill leap/swap/blurred frenzy. Or any number of chasing/kiting tactics.

A FOO strategy (Such as chun-li kick spam. Ragna Inferno divider spam. Command grab spam of any form.) Is one that, while easy to do, does NOT produce results on par to something else. Mesmer GS DOES produce results on par, and that compliment other weapons such as sword, that rely on getting in close to the target.

What is a FOO strategy is warrior 100b combos that use a full set of utilities to perform. Or Pistol Whip spam with quickness. Neither of these produce results against skilled players, or effects that cannot be reproduced better by other options.

Inflated gold, people who are rich get richer. People who are not rich get very little out of it.

Precursor farmers can basically put their gold in, wait two months, and make more than anyone can farm.

I’m sitting at over 200g in item value alone, and 50g on hand. I’ve never farmed Plinx.

There are plenty of good ways to generate money if you have friends. Twilight Arbor lodestone farming is good profit to risk and you can run it in under 30 min, with over a gold of profit with a little luck, and Ascalon Catacombs is also great profit, lower, but less risk.

TwiliteGarden.5384:

AnemoneMeer.7182:

Yeah, you’re missing something.

Your gear is downscaled based on its level relative to yours. So your non-level 9 gear is being scaled down well below level 6. Due to being a low level, you’re probably not keeping up on your gear, and thus some of it is probably worth as much as a level 1 piece.

It’s a quirk in the system, but it’s what’s killing you more than likely. Of course, gear on the trading post is nearly free, so you should be able to keep up on your gear.

That’s assuming I even know enough to buy things on the TP.

Press O. Trading post tab. level 9 to 9. Search, grab what you like for what slots you need to fill.

Honestly, ignoring fractals and the drama around it, dungeons all pay out about the same reward, and there’s at least 20 explorable paths.

20 different things you can do for dungeons at any one time (at 80), and at the minimum, 3 if you want to work towards a specific type of armor.

Not really much of a grind if you have a bunch of places you can go to get to the same thing at about the same speed.

Yeah, you’re missing something.

Your gear is downscaled based on its level relative to yours. So your non-level 9 gear is being scaled down well below level 6. Due to being a low level, you’re probably not keeping up on your gear, and thus some of it is probably worth as much as a level 1 piece.

It’s a quirk in the system, but it’s what’s killing you more than likely. Of course, gear on the trading post is nearly free, so you should be able to keep up on your gear.

Because ALOT of our strongest traits are gained from the level 40 trait tome.

Clone on dodge. Clones cause bleeds on crit. Additional projectile bounce, just to name three.

Michael.6849:

In Europe there’s a 6 month window to get your refund, I made the window, but because of processing they made me miss it, they could have just refunded me on my credit card account as they did for my second account.

To post a hypothetical. I vacation in europe, buy a car while there, then the day before I leave, I demand a refund.

I used the car. The car was useful to me. It did what it was supposed to do. But I haven’t used it enough to not get the refund. Is it right for me to get a refund?

Even if GW2 messed up (See: Ascended gear, which I do agree was a mistake to be fractals only, but they ARE changing that), you already played it, and got what you wanted from it when you bought it. The changes made do not take away from the fact it did what you wanted it to do when you bought it, and you did play it. Were they to refund it now, they would have given you time on the servers, and however many hours of entertainment free.

If you played and didn’t like the game when you bought it, you deserve a refund, if you played, then it got changed after a while, you still got what you paid for when you paid for it, and do not deserve a refund. Six months is far too long for electronics, as many are outright outdated within six months, or the servers are dead, etc, etc, etc.

Did you play the game? Did you enjoy the time you did play?

If so, you’re not really entitled to a refund. Sorry, but it’s true.

Toughness = armor. It’s effectively a one to one between toughness, and armor gained from tougness. The actual split is because some traits/food buffs go off of toughness, but not armor.

Yup. I even log on daily to get the extra karma from my daily, because I know I’ll get progress towards my legendary if I ever go for it just by playing for a few minutes.

And it’s easy to run a tutorial service at the same time while I finish off my daily in queensdale.

Even a few minutes gets you somewhere.

I have about a 55% crit chance before my sigil of accuracy kicks in, and about.. 10% crit damage myself, and I honestly can’t see the point in putting more into crit damage.

My high crit feeds into an insane (90% usually) vigor uptime, and constant self heals through blood sigils (which damage the target on proc as well according to tests). Meanwhile, I have a massive toughness pool, so said heals feed into survivability, while I still dodge around alot.

As a mesmer, said dodges generate more clones, which I then detonate with mind wrack, or feed into chipping CC immunity or still more damage immunity. And the increased damage resistance lets me fight in melee constantly, where I am more likely to take damage, which is healed, while taking advantage of the AoE of melee (3x chance to proc the heal makes it very likely in group fights.)

Were I to go crit damage, I would not be able to stay in melee as long, as my armor would be less than half of what it is now, which would significantly lower the value of health from each heal I trigger. My shatters would also be less reliable.

Likewise, condition damage builds love precision for earth sigils, but hate crit damage, as it works off of power.

LATVIAN.7853:

Ye standing up and fighting champs isnt very smart and I doubt even a guardian will last without having to kite alot.

The thing that sways me a bit to warrior’s side is that guardians LACK ranged dps because not always are you going to be running into a fight meleeing.
However i LOVE the guardians survivability and ability to take damage.

Scept is still there if you MUST engage at range, but yeah, honestly, if you want to be able to fight at a distance, you want a warrior.

LATVIAN.7853:

soo when it comes to killing bosses and champions which would be more effective?

Tossup again.

Neither have the CC to really control the boss.

Warrior can’t exactly mitigate the hits as well, but in skilled hands, can kite and dodge as well as melee. Their ability to apply alot of swiftness to themself lets them generally stay out of arms reach for alot longer, and attack when they have their survival tools up

Guardian can’t really range it as effectively, but their ability to effectively ignore hits come into play in melee, given champions shred you in a few hits, but don’t eat your defensive cooldowns much, if any faster. Focus offhand iirc gives you a shield that stops the next three attacks, letting you buy alot of time for your other cooldowns to come up again.

Warrior will kill it faster 1v1 though, but if you really want to 1v1 champs, I’d honestly suggest a mesmer. You can displace alot of aggro with clones, and generally run like hell without getting caught. Or abuse Blurred frenzy’s tiny cooldown. They suck against groups due to sub-par and backloaded AoE, but their 1v1 survival is beyond anything else.

Yup. No use for them now.

LATVIAN.7853:

hmm
so warriors have the potential to kill alot faster while being abl to heal themselves too.
Guardians can absorb alot of damage but dont have that much dps

Well ill try make my decision thanks

The DPS gap isn’t as big as you’d think, but it’s still there.

The big gap is ranged DPS. Melee, guardians can keep up in sustained damage, but warrior has some massive openers (100 blades/Evis both mulch healthbars)

Guardian zone locking may not work well on champions, but champions as a whole need all the CC you can throw at them to get stunned anyway. Warrior has a few massive stuns usually, that only take off one point each. However, for encounters with groups, be it players, or anything else that isn’t CC immune, they can pull it into a nice tight ball for AoE death, then follow up with a hammer to keep them in the ball.

Guardian can be specced to passively grant a regen that stacks with normal regen to everyone around them. This is suprisingly potent in practice.

LATVIAN.7853:

so which class would you recommend overall since you have quite alot of experiance from what i can see

I honestly can’t.

I don’t play either. I just dungeon with two masterful players, one a warrior, one a guardian, and both of them are pretty much equally awesome, in different ways.

It all comes down to how you play.

LATVIAN.7853:

ye im also wondering about pvp because i heard in pvp guardians are very useful especially in WvWvW

Warriors can basically give 100% swiftness uptime and quite a few heals via shouts.

Or just, you know, gut people. Also alot of stuns as I said.

While guardians can keep people from retreating into safe havens with their space control abilities. Ring of Warding + Null field from a mesmer + line of warding after can generally keep anyone who tries to leave the fortress unable to return.

Shiren.9532:

Which is why so many people can’t understand why a stat increase on items was needed when progression could be given in the form of agony resist for specific content.

Even if you like this benefit, agony does go against the spirit of skill beats content. Systems like this are gear beats content and a lot of people dislike that.

Alas, if skill can beat everything on its own, people don’t tend to feel progression.

Even Dark Souls has a large amount of vertical progression, and skill can beat ANYTHING in that game.

LATVIAN.7853:

which one would be a more tankier class in dungeons?

Honestly, it’s impossible to say.

Warriors can easily pack four heals into their ten skill slots if they spec for a shout build, 3 of those heals being AoE, and then add naturally top of the line health and armor to the mix, and they can generally take insane amounts of abuse before actually going down. They’re going to take hits, but they don’t really need more than their dodge rolls to stay up

Guardians on the other hand have a massive array of defensive cooldowns and options that leads to them, in good hands, rarely even taking hits. And passive regen to help crawl back from those that do get through. They can’t take a punch half as well, but they take punches less than half as often.

It’s a tie and comes down to playstyle. In PvP though, guardians are tankier as they can easily put all the enemies skills on cooldown before they start taking significant hits, which shuts down many classes.

nachtnebel.9168:

There is not a big difference between the Guardian and the Warrior, both professions are way superior to all the others in most aspects of the game. The Guardian offers more support and some unique abilities, the Warrior does more dps and has larger base HP pool.

There’s actually alot of difference in how they handle a situation.

Warriors lack the ability to force enemies to be in specific places at specific times. Guardians lack the hard stuns to keep an enemy from fighting back for long enough to put them down.

Warriors can easily open and poke from a distance. Guardians are nearly required to get in close to do good damage.

Warriors rely heavily on passive mitigation from their massive health/armor pools. Guardians rely more on active mitigation spaced out so their natural regen and cooldowns are getting proper use.

Alright, break down for them.

Warrior gives far more offensive buffs, though can also make a great condition cleanser. It also packs alot of power, but isn’t as able to fully use it. Hard stuns are their CC of choice.

Guardian is far more defensive. They’re quite capable of self condition cleansing, and have a super-shout that pulls ALL allied conditions to them, and regardless of if it pulls them in, gives them every buff in the book. Their CC of choice is a collection of pulls and knockdown fields, focusing HEAVILY on controlling space.

A warrior can kill groups faster with moves like 100 blades, and various AoE’s. Generally, they have more effective AoE damage, though less lingering, and more immediate.

Guardians kill a bit slower, with a greater AoE focus on lingering fields, but have the tools to keep enemies in these fields.

Warriors transition very well to distance combat, with some immensly powerful ranged attacks.

Guardians lack in ranged combat, but have all kinds of unique tools to survive in melee, ranging from self heal on auto attacks, to mobility skills like the odd teleport.

Warriors tend to self combo only with fire fields. This leads to burning damage in all cases

Guardians tend to self combo only with light fields. this leads to retaliation, and iirc, condition removal.

If you want a ranged/melee capable offense specialist with a array of options to help the group fight at its fullest, go Warrior.

If you want a melee zone control specialist with an array of options to keep allies fighting constantly, go guardian.

Also, Guardian/warrior have amazing melee synergy together. If both go Hammer/Greatsword, they can play off eachother fully, leading to insane damage.

Please stop spamming.

Better method. AC explorable. Omnom bars. No youtube link, much gold.

Guardian if you want to be effective solo/groups for little effort. Bad range, but your simple existance can be turned into a constant group buff.

Warrior can also be an awesome support/solo character, but guardian has more built in team utility and control options, while warrior has more damage and durability naturally. Really, it’s a toss up between them if you want the most output for your input.

Opposite that, though no less effective is probably mesmer and necromancer. Both require alot of effort, but bring alot to the table that other classes don’t.

Radiance was tied to gear and stat progression proper. You NEEDED more radiance to get higher stats. If Radiance was a self contained “You need more radiance to get more radiance” loop where all other stats remain constant, it becomes a vertical progression without influencing any other part of the game. Ergo, it is good.

Spectral Agony (Mursaat/jade monsters in proph campaign of GW1 had this), was a case of, at first, needing to do the same long quest six times, where at first entire sections of the map could instant kill you. There was no progression really, you got it, and then that was it, and until you got it, it was a pain.

This can easily generate a self contained loop of progression, with a steady ramp up of difficulty, and of agony resist requirement. Balanced properly, having the agony resist to do one dungeon shows you’ve done the previous dungeon, and your stats outside of it never move.

Having additional stats on infusions, as of now, isn’t a bad thing. Making those stats scale at ALL from what we can get when they’re first released IS. Same with making them difficult for people to get.

…you know, I don’t really get why people state the same point over and over instead of checking if anyone else said anything along the same lines.

TL:DR. Agony resist gating with any other stat gains being gated = bad (radiance). Agony resist requring repeating the same content endlessly = bad (Infusions in GW1.)
Agony resist gating with no other stat gains outside of it earned by progression through content = good.

Shanna.4762:

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

That was tied to gear progression though. If they seperate agony progression from actual stat progression, it works perfectly. If they mix them, it’s obnoxious.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

But like many things in this game… it’s great on paper and theory, but it’s execution is severely flawed.

If they handle it right, it’s not flawed.

Lets say, for introducing ascended gear, mid december, they add all of the current ascended gear to karma vendors and whatnot, then release a new set (Earrings, perhaps), and repeat this exact process, every patch opening up one more slot, and making the previously opened slot effortless to get.

If they repeate this, the gap between a fully geared player, and a casual is effectively a single item, that the casual will just get at the start of the next patch. Grind and progression for those who need it, while the casual is just right behind them.

As the title says, I think Agony itself is rather brilliant. It creates vertical progression endlessly without stat progression.

As it stands, ArenaNet could add endless dungeons and simply gate them by agony resist required. The hardcore PvE players get their vertical progression though more and more agony resist, which makes them better at these dungeons, while it does literally nothing for WvW, or world PvE.

Provided they handle it right, it’s effectively endless vertical progression, without any form of significant power creep.