Guild Wars 2

messiah.1908:

so you basically saying its luck
cause when i soloq i get better allies which where better then the enemy we faced
when i teamq i had bad luck cause we match versus better enemies
or the system gives you better chance when you playing alone versus in a team

so it has nothing to my own mmr or experience and i cant assume i was being carried or carry

The system uses your mmr to make your team. If you have a high MMR, when soloq you’ll be paired with people that also has high MMR. This allows you to ramp up easily, as most of the times you’ll play against teams with average-low MMR.

When you team up with 4-5 people, this rule stop working. Now you have more chances the team you’re facing also has high MMR (you’re not longer in the high MMR club), making those face rolling matches you had when you were soloqing a mirage. Or probably, those people you team up with were simply bad players.

For months only? BB was nightcapping even before you started to play this game…

By the same way, let’s nerf morningcapping from kartoffenside…

TorquedSoul.8097:

It does appear that they play a little later into the night (about 4 hours) than the other top tier servers in EU. You can see their activity on page 7 of this report.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uamfenexf9zbh5j/2016-02-20_2-1.report.pdf?dl=0

WoW, congratulations for such insane work!! Do you do this every week for all matchups?

There’re some things wrong.
First, show Gpu-z, not cpu-z.
Then, that bus speed is not that right. It should be 200MHz. You might have something tweaked in the bios.
Also, those 5.5GB of RAM used are insane. Show manager task while gaming. I suppose you have tons of unnecessary software going on.
It also seems you have memory leakage, as in only 90s you’re using 400MB more.

Straegen.2938:

Skills like Meteor Shower can hit nearly 75 players and Static Field is not limited to the number of players it can effect. In fact there is no way to dodge or block through a Static Field. It also has a larger radius than the tool tip.

Meteor Shower can hit so many people because the attack consists on several bombs, each one can hit up to 3 targets. So it has a limitation as other skills.

Static Field, like many other skills, can affect a limitless amount of players because there’s not any area effect involved, but a line (note that Static Field effect happens at the border, but it does nothing if the player moves inside it).
Veil, Line of Warding, Ring of Warding, Hunter’s Ward, Temporal Curtain, Unsteady Ground… They al are line effects which can affect limitless amount of players.

And here you’re admitting I’m right. The issue with meteor shower is the fact that has tons of mini attacks, not that the radius is too large.
Also, the issue with Static Field comes from a mechanic of its unblockable fact and a mechanic of evade, not that it has a larger radius than what it should be.

Ergo, the issue with ranged AoE skills is their effects are too powerful and not they’re too big.

All my ideas, quotes and arguments are based on what you have answered to my posts. I’m not looking at old posts or quoting things not related. You say A, I say B. Don’t try to invent argument B comes from the idea Z you posted in the page 999 where you were referring to the argument Y that did player C…

Then you still keep doing the same mistakes.
- People don’t play at nights because they’re worse or because they’re afraid of fights. PEOPLE PLAY WHENEVER THEY WANT OR THEY CAN.
I can tell you Baruch has such strong nighcapping because cultural reasons. It’s the way spaniards are. We go to sleep much later than other europeans. So stop making the false presumption people play at night because they’re bad. How utterly ridiculous…

- WvW is a 24 hour competition. After so many posts and even you saying it, you still don’t realise what’s the meaning of a 24 hour competition and what implications it has. Don’t you realise talking about sleeping times in a 24 hour competition makes no sense?

And, taking your last paragraph, I sleep from 1-2am until 8-9am. I play mostly from 10pm until I go to sleep.
There’s not a single solid argument that stands you taking a tower in the afternoon should be more valid than me at that time.

About personal reward, you didn’t read what I said. You talk about gvg, and that’s what I’ve said…
Personal reward doesn’t matter when WvW can involve hundreds of people over 7 days. Have you been in a top server in it’s glorious days? Do you know the insanity of a reunion of 250 people deciding democratically a server decision?
Have you ever been in a server that has two public tags with +50 people in each one, plus 6-8 guilds each one running numbers of 15-25?
Where’s the importance of personal reward in these situations? Because this is WvW.

PD: Anything can be compared, and are good if you understand what it is comparing. You can and cannot compare a human and a dog. Both are animals, so they share basic needs. Dogs cannot think, so they cannot be compared.
Don’t tell anyone his argument is not valid if you don’t understand it.

zengara.8301:

Hate to repeat myself, so I will just copy/paste my previous comment-

“As I said…….The personal reward gained is the same, there will be no altering in personal reward in anyway, the only thing that will be changed is the reward gained at night which only makes sense since the majority of the players are not even there…………………..
unless if you are selfish and want to win based on the idea that players are not even in the game?
Like it does not even make sense at all, how can it in anyway be selfish to make it fair based on when people are playing a game specially when time they are playing is more or less the same,
This arguement is so flawed all around, and clearly a way to hide a secret agenda……here let me show you how it is flawed in everyway.
-You can turn it around and ask if night time players are better than day time
-You can explain that the servers have a max of 3-4 hours time zone
-You can explain that servers do and have only been able to even be in top tier because of this abuse of system in WvW which is a major part of the game and therefor shady…
-You can explain that the point system does not affect personal reward in anyway, but the server in total and therefor having a night time based on time in the different regions should not only be acceptable but also should be expected……specially when it is such a huge part of the game, like a majority of the players watch it on twitch when WvW is on, even more than E-Sports
-Oooooor we can remove the BS and just say that a majority of the servers do not even know how to fight and rely completely on other players not even being there, and therefor have this ridiculous answer as a agenda to hide the fact that they would not reach any high tier in a normal fight?
I hate to repeat myself, but is there something I have missed, beside the idea of some one should be less worth because points that isnt even directed towards them?”

First, you keep focusing this as a personal reward issue. And here you fail again. Most people playing WvW play for the general-server reward. Public commanders put the tag to gather all people in maps and try to do something worth. Roamers take camps and towers to help the server.
You’re wrong if you think nightcappers are running all maps to obtain gold, items or WvW levels.

But more important, you still don’t acknowledge what means a 24 hours competition. I’ll give you an example.
A football match lasts for 90 minutes, and a goal done in the first minutes is worth the same than a goal scored in the minute 64.
If you plan to modify the value of the scored gained in WvW depending on when it is obtained, then you’re destroying the 24 hour competition fact.
It is clear your problem is not with nightcappers, but the fact that WvW is a 24 hour competition.

- Player individual skill doesn’t matter in WvW. It does in PvP, duels, GvG, or hardcore pve raids, but when we’re talking about WvW as a server battle, then it doesn’t.
Things like coverage capacity, organization, motivation, having good commanders, dedication in tiring tasks… are what decides who’s the winner.

- If a server has only 3-4 hours of coverage, then it’s his problem. If a lot servers have that kind of problem, then it becomes a population imbalance issue, something well known and a thing not related to nightcappers, neither any of your complaints.
If your intention was to point to that direction, then you haven’t explained yourself well.

- Well, servers that have been on top have been there because they had more coverage than the other servers. It seems you’re the one failing to understand how WvW works, and try to point it as an unfair way, when it is the supposed way to be.

- In fact, that’s one of the beauties of WvW. The unpredictability of a 24 hour matchup, where you don’t control the opponents forces. You can find yourself in a hurry because the enemy server did a alarm clock and started to play at 6am when you were sleeping. Then your server has to counter that.
Do you find it unfair or boring? Well, sorry but we all can assume WvW is not for you.

zengara.8301:

how can it in anyway be selfish to make it fair based on when people are playing a game specially when time they are playing is more or less the same

This sentence doesn’t make sense at all. First it is wrongly structured. But also, it is based without the basic fact of WvW, being a 24 hour competition.
Servers are faced for 168 hours. It’s a matchup that lasts that long. Not having players for hours is your problem (or a problem of your server).
Your reasoning is dull. Takinga gain the footbal example, it’s like if the football manager of a football team called BLACK was whining the WHITE team that it shouldn’t win because some of the players of team BLACK felt tired and retired at half match. It’s his problem if his team is playing with only 8 players.

As a spanish player and a player of pretty much the most historically nightcapper server in EU, Baruch Bay, I can say any change to diminish the score gained in a specific timezone only hurts all population, making WvW unsatisfying and worthless for a lot of people, and cheesy and dull for the rest, putting those in the false presumption they win because they are better, when the reality is they win because the system is corrupted to make them win.

Make sure the gpu is working at x16 pcie speed. You can check with GPU-Z

Mystletainn.6285:

Gaile Gray.6029:

• “Does this program allow someone to play faster, better, longer, or more accurately than someone who doesn’t use it?”

By definition, then if I used a 3rd party program that helped reduce eyestrain because of eye problems so I could get two to three hours of gameplay instead of 20 to 30 minutes, then I could get banned because without the program I wouldn’t be able to play as long?

Or if I used sweetFX or other graphics enhancing mods so I had a reason (the pretty graphics) to come back and play longer, more hours, and run around even though there’s barely anything being added otherwise, or if I used a keyboard that required a 3rd party program and has custom keybindings so that I get less hand strain playing engineer, I’m clearly advantaged to having more hours than other engineers, so that’s bad? Should I stop using this keyboard and get carpel tunnel doing condi engi rotations in raids?

Faster is taking less time to cover same distance, or to complete an action.
Longer is more distance using the same skills.
Better means having more stats than normally, making passive things they should not be.
Accurately mean with more precision than a human being can do.

SweetFX and other similar softwares don’t do anything that improves the gameplay.

What it needs to be nerfed is the damage or the effect, not the radius.

A 1200 range skill locking 5 enemies or doing +10k damage is the problem, not reaching a big area.

And here we are, another guy thinking his time is is more important than anyone else.
The world doesn’t stop whenever you sleep, neither does WvW.
Face it, WvW is a 24h competition.

Basically you’re cpu bottlenecked. Try to disable High res character textures, shadows, reflections, put Character limit to low, and enable effect LOD.

Voramoz.6790:

What about musical instruments? I cannot quote the post but I belive ANet pushed out policy stating macro’ed music is not a competitive advantage and therefore Okay. Same question would apply to account multiboxing with music.

Getting an advantage over other players, macros and actively playing in multiboxing are related to gameplay situations.
They don’t consider playing a musical instrument as gameplay so, in this situation, policy related to third party software is not applied.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/audio/Sad-truth-of-playing-the-ingame-instruments/first#post4546267

Gameplay situations are tided to content or combat, and playing musical instruments is not content per se, neither it involves combat.
Another story would be, for example, a competition based on playing musical instruments that rewarded the winner. In this case, the 3rd party software policy would be valid.

Fay.2357:

Ansau.7326:

I also got feared and attacked with Unrelenting Assault (#3 sword revenant) while using BF.

Fear procced from nightmare runes will pierce evade. Any sort of on-hit event will go through evades.

A passive skill carrying a bad player countering and active skill from a good player.
Anet style…

I also got feared and attacked with Unrelenting Assault (#3 sword revenant) while using BF.

Seriously guys, it’s much simpler that what you think. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel and apply the logic.

Macros
A single action must be activated by a single keystroke, so that means that any key (any amount of keys related to a keystroke) cannot activate 2 actions.
Double clicks requires 2 clicks, so automating this actions in a single button is bannable.
Opening 134 bags requires 134 double clicks, 268 buttons pressed. Anything less than those 268 button activations is bannable.
Dodge+jump requires 2 button activations. Linking that to only 1 button is bannable.
Other combos, like back+Phase Retreat+back, behave the same (3 buttons for phase retreat combo).
Software aside, it doesn’t matter if it’s a mouse or keyboard software or a autoclicker. If one keystroke is registered and more than 1 actions are performed, then it’s bannable.

Autorun and other ingame features
As these actions are available for all players, they don’t give an advantage over others, so they’re not bannable.
Autorun as itself is an action. Autorunning for a second or for 3 hours count as a single action.
Pressing continuously a key can count as multiple keystrokes, as mice and keyboards send information continuously.

Multi Boxing and active playing
Playing actively means it is you who activates the actions, not a software. If you have a client in the background and you press 1 button to do an action it is fine.
If you have 2 clients, you can press to buttons to move both players, but not one.

General 3rd party software
Taken from rules, it is not allowed:
- software that reads areas of computer memory or storage devices related to the Game.
- software that intercepts or otherwise collects data from or through the Game
- software that redirects communications from any Game or Service
ftware not provided by ArenaNet which creates or maintains any communication to the Game or Service, including but not limited to any software that emulates the Game or any part thereof as well as any server that emulates the Service or any part thereof

Basically, if the DPSmeter does anything from above, it is bannable. Also, it is to emulate the game using software not provided by anet (meaning the game can only be exectued through any of the game clients provided in the official anet web).

It happened a similar thing to me yesterday, and 3 times.
- In the morning, I got against a guy, and next 2 consecutive with him. First lost, but it was close. Second and third we destroyed the enemy.
- Then, in the afternoon I got with a duo twice and a consecutive third against them. First 2 we lost, and third they won.
- But even more, I later got with another duo twice consecutive, losing both matchups.
The amount of consecutive fights you get paired with some people is unreasonable.

Then there’s the fact that your overall performance doesn’t mean anything in pips. You can play an excellent match, but as your teammates play horribly you still lose a pip. You can be horrible, but as you’re carried by some duo or pro player in your team you get a pip….

I think the main issue with mesmer and condi removal is that to get access to it, we need to sacrifice something, be it an entire line, be it utilities, be it secondary weapon and sigils.
On the other hand, pretty much all other professions have condi removal built in specific skills or traits that are far less punishing.
Mesmer is the only profession with only 1 trait with passive condi counter, and in form of condi duration reduction of only movement restricting conditions.
The healing (another way to counter condis) in mesmer is pretty much bottom line. Even with Inspiration line it is nowhere near what some other professions can achieve.

DeceiverX.8361:

Backstab Cooldown via animations to gain stealth/revealed (minimum 3.5-4.25/4.5-5.25s, minimum 6 initiative, degen rate sustained use implies 25% increased cooldown per use up to 7.25s minimum based on D/D max pre-casting). Only Blinding Powder utility can reduce this to a true 3s/4s cooldown every 40s.

True Shot (DH) 4s – higher damage than backstab.

Traited GF war (4.25) – higher damage than backstab, identical cooldown in sPvP.

Coalescence of Ruin (Rev) (4s) – higher damage than backstab.

Maul (ranger) – still 6-8k burst depending on build, cooldown reduced to < 5s.

Dragon’s Tooth – similar damage to backstab, 6s CD un-traited.

Death Shroud AA chain (traited DPH Spite ‘n’ Might core power necro) – easy 6-8k hits via might stacking (got mine to 14-16k in WvW) – 1s cast/CD.

Gravedigger – up to 1.25s CD depending on reset proc. Traited < 6s.

There are a lot of skills that can easily burst for substantial damage on similarly-low cooldowns. I’m not understanding the explicit thief hate in your post, Ansau.

And then there are all of the brief multi-hit skills which do even more damage like RF, blurred frenzy, Unload, UA, ZD, wrath, everything on scrapper, death’s charge, soul spiral, volley, MR, grenade engi, life transfer, GC… just to name a few.

First, my focus on thieves is because in this thread there’s a lot of mesmer whining coming from thief main players.

But second, while it is true other professions also have 1 button=insane burst skills, it is also true thief is the king here. Not only because they can have access to a lot of these skills, also because they can spam them, as those don’t have CD, but even more, because a lot of them have little to no animation or they’re masked by stealth or in the overall fast, evasive and unpredictable thief animation (compare them to izerker, blurred frenzy, Dragon Tooth, animations)
Backstab, Heartseeker, Shadow Strike, Unload, Sneak Attack, Vault, Weakening Charge, Pistol Whip, Flanking Strike, Shadow shot…

And third, it’s not my problem thieves have several builds that are not healthy for the game. Builds that exploit some mechanics (stealth, evades, combat mobility, condi burst) to a point it becomes frustrating, as other professions have to use it more wisely, while thieves can abuse them by spamming.

Saying that, I don’t find thieves harder to play against as other professions, like scrappers, reapers or revs (which have their kind of annoyance as mesmer mechanics are much less effective).
The thing is, by analysing the fights, I realise the success of a thief comes more from the performance of the build than the player’s gameplay. A skill doing insane amount of damage or the spamming of evasive skills is what gives thieves the winning a lot of times.

The only thing thieves have a right to complain is in the role they’re performing, because they don’t have anything more than single target damage.

+1
These daycappers keep playing when I’m out, working and enjoying the life. How unfair is this, the lazy people sleeping tons of hours and wasting their life in this game get more than those of us who work hard and getting less hours of sleep to play a little bit.

Condi mesmer is cancer for this game, but:
- Thieves with their perma evade aren’t.
- Thieves with their spammy 6-10k damage skills aren’t.
- Thieves with their condi trap stealth builds aren’t.
- Necros with 50k health pool and +10 stacks of poison, chill and bleeding aren’t.
- Engis with their ridiculous amount of passive things and skill spamming aren’t.
- Auramancers with their ridiculous amount of healing, plus tons of damage reductions and skill spamming aren’t.
- Trap guard with their invisible burst aren’t.
- Druids with their perma healing aren’t.

Get over it. Nowadays condi mesmer is far from being OP, neither is more cancer than tons of builds out there. It is only OKish for dueling, but fails when more people is involved.
And still people hate it because they aren’t skill enough to know how to deal with confusion or torment…

F5, Portal, F4…? Seriously those things are OP, skills with 75-90s of CD are OP?
Please, give me a skill of 5s CD that bursts 6-8k damage in a single hit, totally balanced…

You’ll have a lot of troubles running the game.

The cpu will easily get thermal throttling and it will be bounching from 1.3GHz (which is not enough for the game) and the turbo frecuencies, bringing a lot of chopiness. Also it can get to the point to shut down.

And the gpu is only entry level, good enough to run the game a 720p or 900p at minimum.

Necro: 1 button and you apply most condis. Chain some skills and you’ll become an AoE condi fest.
Mesmer: 1 button and you apply 1-2 stacks of torment or confusion. Need to chain several skills to make confusion or torment worth.

Nightmare.1234:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/jyjMCcs.jpg[/img]

here what mine looks like but it all looks normal to me

this must be a wide spread issue a lot of people are posting about massive ping spikes and really low fps. starting think it at Anets end server/client side

Well your issue is the cpu speed. That fx 6300 at only 2GHz is not normal. It should be working at 3.5-4.1GHz.

Make sure the gpu is working at x16

rchu.8945:

wonder if Lord Helseth trashed his build:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TkmLgzsxbo

haha.

OMG, luckily for him helseth will be out for the next week.

Been using staff for a while and I don’t find it that bad. In fact, I prefer it over GS when roaming.
AA is still good in power builds. You have a bit of condi pressure enemies don’t pay attention, and you can stack some might iWarlock or an income bursts will love.
Phase retreat + MW. Sweet unpredictable burst.
Phantasm hits really hard. As the animation is the same as AA, people tend to not evade it, it’s not like izerker.
Chaos armor and chaos storm bring you a lot of boons. CD’s are high, but with alacrity and staff trait they become much more smaller.

Tried the build in 3 matchups:
- 1st with your version of the video. Cool, but far from good and it cannot be considered as a bunker build. When pressured by only 2 or a thief you suffer a lot, much more than what you could be with the older bunker mesmer build.
Also, the MoP casting is really overwhelming. It puts you afk for so much time during the fight that makes it not worth to take it.

- 2nd: dropped MoP and took Portal. Here is where I confirm how bad is MoP+Restorative Mantra in PvP. I can survive pretty much the same, because I now can use the shatters for their purpose, and my playstyle is more mindgaming and skilled rather than spammy. Also, the extra healing from MoP is not missed, now I can play actively and evade the damage I was taking while casting MoP.
Build still feels too squishy to be considered as a bunker build, dying quite easily when facing a 1vs2.

- 3rd: I get an easy matchup (the one from the photo). Still got killed in a 2vs3 in middle and had a hard time in a 2vs2.

Starting to getting a better idea of the possibilities of the build. It is clearly a jack of all traits, master of none, quite good for unranked against bad people, but not enough when you face more skilled people who are running meta builds and they know what they’re doing.
A bit of damage here, a bit of support there and a bit of tankiness elsewhere. But you get killed quite easily if focused, and you aren’t able to put enough pressure to make enemies to back off.

I also can understand why you think it is better than it actually is. Bunker/support builds tend to give you the false idea that you did a lot in the matchup. You get a very high personal score and the statistics are insanse. But it can mean nothing. Stats are not that important, but gameplay does.

Biklen.5490:

This means nothing to me coming from a player who is theory battling in his head and not in the game.

If you have tryed the build that is one thing..;But being a warrior in your mind is another thing.

Everybody always wants to compare pro players on every build…But last season i used a zerker ranger to get to legendary…

It killed all the pro builds that the pros put out…

How is that possible?…Hmm…Maybe Guild Wars 2 has other working builds other than META?….NOOOOO WAY.

You’re so good at guessing you should never try the magician career. But I don’t mind to try this build during next week and show you why it is not good.

Btw, this META vs non META discussion is a bit ridiculous. There’s not a system to pair you with meta builds or non-meta ones, so trying to play sPvP (at any level) without having the meta builds in mind is a bit naive.
It’s not like if you don’t run a meta build you cannot play. But if only 1 or 2 enemies run meta builds your options are pretty much non-existent.

Funny you say this build is for those who want to go away from shatters, and yet you need to spam them to make the MoP casting more safe and make the build work…

Sorry, but this build doesn’t work outside beginners in unranked, no matter what you think or what you’ve tested. You’re free meal for thieves, reapers and scrappers. It doesn’t matter how much can you heal, 3-4 hits and you’re dead.

Mesmer needs a damage bump all across weapons and traits.
GS autoattacks are a joke, F2 is a joke, #2 GS was nerfed for no reason, torch is garbage, small pulses from Calamity hit similar than staff AA, scepter is still too much underwhelming, sword AA need a small bump, no good utility for damage, lack of burning adjustment with the change, removal of second stack of torment in shatter…
Then pair it with very low might stacking and pretty much no damage modifiers, and you have the answer.

Meanwhile, the rest of professions can do 4-6k with just pressing 1 button, and if they press 2-3 be prepared for 10-12k damage incoming…

Straegen.2938:

Dusty Moon.4382:

It takes a redo of their game engine and that takes time.

It does not require a redo only an optimization of the API usage. They could add in some new routines which might be intensive but an initial move with optimization to DX11 is not a particularly large task for a gaming company.

I don’t think this would help much though. Their main bottleneck on the client seems to be tied to a main thread that is bound by network traffic. I wouldn’t say this is poor coding since MMO systems are very complex but certainly could use a redesign/rewrite which may indeed be a monumental task given their architecture.

API is the least of the troubles in this game.
Insane amount of calculations done in one or two threads is what is crushing the performance.

This is pretty much what I would consider the basic for zerguing: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8+Glph1fCEgClojqePL0D9MACMA-w

You can do interesting things in zergs with a chronomancer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTvC5aMHrSM

i5 4690k oced to 4.6GHz and i7 5775c ocd to 4.2GHz, plus r9 285. Playing around 35-45fps during heavy WvW blob fights.
You need fast single core performance. Also, reducing some heavy cpu settings will help. Reflections and Shadows disabled, Effect LOD enabled, and Character model limit to “Low” or “Medium” bring a huge bump.

64bit client is here to solve crashing issues, but it is not supposed to bring more performance.

I will explain you why most of what you’ve said is wrong, as you don’t know how gw2 behaves (which isn’t the same to what most games do). First, bringing other games in this matter is clueless, you cannot extrapolate the things that happen there to gw2.

Gw2 has 2 main threads where all the calculations happen. The faster you can render them the better framerate you have. This is a purely cpu thing and the main way to get better performance in gw2 is to have better single core performance. This is specially important in cities and big scale fights, like WvW or world bosses, or the places he did the tests.
About graphics, the game doesn’t need that much gpu power. Using DX9, which is old and doesn’t have all the graphic features you could find in any modern game, any mid-end modern gpu will have enough raw power to handle gw2 at max settings.
But there’s another issue. DX9 doesn’t have multithreading for the gpu rendering thread. Having higher graphic settings will also stress more the cpu.

And here is where we can come to the conclusion that gpu power has little to do in this game, once you have reach the minimum needed, of course. That’s why SLI/Crossfire see so little benefit in this game. Is not they’re not well implemented, it’s because you cannot take advantage of them since they’re no longer the bottleneck.
But even at 4k they’re not a bottleneck. A single GTX 960 or r9 380 can handle this game at 4k at 35-45fps. So a 290Xfire or 970SLI, despite having 2.5-3 times more the gpu power, will see small improvements at best.

Talking about pcie speed: Yes, pcie speed matters in gw2. As the game does so many things in the cpu, they’ve to travel to the gpu to be rendered, so pcie is important. You can test on your own. Pcie 3.0 x16 and x8 are very similar, but you still find some improvement with x16.
Here are some tests I did last year:
- x16 had 110fps underwater, 70’s in empty map, 50’s in more heavy graphic situation and 23-24 in heavy cpu situation.
-x8 had 100 fps underwater, 60’s in empty map, 46 in more heavy graphic situation and 22-23 fps in heavy cpu situation.
- x4 had 77fps underwater, 45’s in empty map, 36 in more graphic situation and 20-21 in heavy cpu situation.
So yeah, my knowledge doesn’t come from forums, but in-game testing.

So now we go to OP tests. Respecting 680 sli, he got worse performance with 290 crossfire and a bit better with 970 sli.
290 xfire worse performance could be related to less polished drivers, or it could be pcie bandwidth related, as hawaii uses xdma xfire. In a game such gw2, where pcie bandwidth is used so much, xdma crossfire is limited, specially in his configuration where he uses 2.0 x8, which has the same bandwidth as 3.0 x4, clearlry not enough for Gw2.
About 970 sli, we go back to the point of cpu bottleneck. A single gx 680 is more than enough for Gw2, even at 1440p, hence 680 sli is overkill, hence 970 sli is ridiculous overkill. The game isn’t gpu intensive enough to push a 970 sli not even at 4k.

On the other side, he is cpu bottlenecked. Changing the resolution doesn’t free the cpu from its work. The cpu has to do the same work in 720p than in 4k, thus he sees so little changes despite the gpu configuration and resolution he uses.
The fact I pointed those settings is because they put a lot of work on the cpu. Regardless the graphic settings, resolution or gpu setup, the cpu will still have to do a lot of work and the game will be cpu bottlenecked. And a lot of work is keeping all cores of a 4690k oced to 4.6GHz to 75-90% of usage. That’s a lot of work, A LOT.
In the end, FoV got him such the biggest improvement. Reducing FoV removes part of the work from the cpu. Gw2 rendrs what you see in your screen. That’s why when you face a blob fight you get crap performance, but if you turn the camera you will get an instant fps boost and yet the fight is still happening on your back.

To conclude, there are multiple reason why SLI/Crossfire do not add meaningful advantages in Gw2:
- If you already have a more than enough gpu power to do the work to a point where the gpu is not the bottleneck, adding more gpu power will have little to no advantages. That’s also the reason why when he uses a single gpu he sees so little framerate drop. Such single gpu has already enough gpu power for this game.
- He is clearly cpu bottlenecked, and probably pcie too. Not only because his single core performance is quite average nowadays with such cpu and overclock, but also because the platform is old and he loses some of the performance here and there: Pcie speed, ram speed, memory latencies…
- The fact he uses very cpu stressful settings makes the benefits of multiple gpu setups even less visible. The cpu work doesn’t disappear, it’s still there despite the resolution or gpu setup used.

Conceding all these facts, the opinions of people in this thread are valid, and there’s no need to be so rude and presumptuous to say nothing but diminishing what others have said.
The changes and introduction of new graphic settings could be another reason. But if we pay more attention, they have only added SMAA, AO and light adaptation. These are not heavy graphic settings, even all together, they don’t affect more than 2-3fps. The other thing they did is to disable High res textures for low end cpu. How a texture setting is disabled by the quality of cpu? Because the understanding of all what I’ve said before. High res textures an put a lot of work in the rendering thread, punishing the cpu.

The problem is in the way you entered this thread and how you have reacted. I can understand all these is just too much for you, but at least make us the favour to stop diminishing others opinion.

For the OP, if you want to get higher framerate the best thing you can do is to move to a newer platform and get the best single core performance you can.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Since the knights prefer to lie and ask for sources. Here ya go straight from ANetJohan

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

“As for DX9 and 32bit: Moving off of DX9 wouldn’t buy us a whole lot performance wise, as all interaction with DirectX is happening on the render thread, which is generally not the bottleneck. Moving from 32-bit to 64-bit also does not really buy us a lot performance-wise. There are some optimizations the compiler is able to do with 64-bit that it can’t do otherwise, but the actual FPS gain is minimal at best.”

So yeah he mostly down plays FPS gains but I consider a crash a major hinder to FPS my self. Since a crash basically equals 0 frames being displayed. There is a lot more that he says and I recommend the read

Did devs and your “white knights” said 64bit client wouldn’t increase performance? Yes
Did 64bit client increase performance? No.
So where devs and those “white knights” right? Yes.

Did devs and your “white knights” said 64bit client would fix crash issues? Yes.
Did 64bit client solved crashes? Yes.
So where devs and those “white knights” right? Yes.

Sigue aullando.

Your cpu cache is running at only 800MHz when it should be at 3300-3500MHz. Better enter to the bios and check vring ratio.

Tomshardware is not a valid test because 2 main reasons:
1- “A singe player running through a pve map with very few other players on screen, and no real time fps monitor”. Yes, what you said is what Tomshardware did, a 20s test in a pve map (Norn starting area) without players around.
2- The test was done when the game was released. That’s +3.5 years in which the game has seen a major expansion upgrade, the inclusion of 64bit client, new graphic settings, removal of culling with the inclusion of character limit settings, plus 2 weekly upgrades over these years. There’s no way the behavior from then is similar to now.

Btw, that video was just an example of what you can find on youtube. People with good cpus get very good framerate and vice versa, regardless the gpu they have.

Rule number 1 when commenting about performance in Gw2:
- Nothing applied to general gaming works here, so any link that is not properly tested in Gw2 cannot be considered as valid.

Rule number 2 when commenting about performance in Gw2:
- Gw2 has its own performance rules, so to make a statement valid you need proper ingame testing.

Getting a gtx 970 or r9 390 is the worst he could do, regardless his budget. An i3 + MB + gpu of 150-200 bucks would bring WAY more performance, because that fx at only 3.3GHz is a bottleneck no matter what gpu you put.

Also, that testing from tomshardware cannot be considered as valid nowadays. GPU tests were done with the beta client and, since then, the game has seen a lot of performance improvements and more graphic settings added. The CPU tests cannot be considered as valid neither, as they were done in a pve map were there was no cpu stress work.

Here is the performance of a r7 260x in ultra at the new HoT maps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk4-lwjFRSQ

If you want to get better performance you’ll need a completely new computer. Both the cpu and the gpu are not god enough for your expectations 1440p at ultra 60fps, even there’s no computer which can guarantee 60fps anywhere, the game is not optimally coded to do that.

A good start would be:
- Haswell i5 4690k
- Z97
- R9 380/GTX 960
You can keep the RAM and the ssd.

Then you could go for skylake and get fast ddr4, or wait for the new Zen or Kaby Lake platform.

onevstheworld.2419:

OP, do you have a budget? It would be a lot easier if we had an idea how much you have to work with. Unless you’re made of money… then let me be the first to recommend this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI

Also, are you comfortable meddling with the innards of your PC? If so, it’ll open up options compared to someone who isn’t.

Anyway to answer your question:
GPU – This is your priority. The top R7 card is a merely adequate card for 1080p gaming, and you’re using it to drive a screen with twice the pixel count. You may be OK with a AMD R9 380X or nVidia GTX 960 if you run low/med settings, but I’ll agree with the other posters that a 390 or 970 should be your minimum if you can afford it. Also check if your power supply meets the minimum requirement for whatever card you upgrade to. My guess is anything greater than 500W is probably OK.

CPU – you don’t need to change this… it’s equivalent to a lower end i5 which is plenty for games (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html). Most modern games scale better with GPUs than CPUs… unless you have something really slow a la Pentium G-series. As mentioned above, 65 degrees should not throttle, plus modern CPUs throttle to keep themselves safe, so you could just let it run at whatever temp it will let you to get the most out of it. See below
Again, already mentioned is changing your heatsink, which I concur… I would recommend staying away from water cooling. I know I’m making many assumptions, but your comments suggest you didn’t build your own PC, and I would be very surprised if a PC sold with a R7 card would have a case that can easily mount a radiator. What you could do is add more cooling fans if your case has extra vents, and also re-routing it’s internal cables to ensure optimal airflow… even more important now that you’re gonna put a toasty new GPU into it.

RAM – you’ve got enough

SSD – you’re good too… great to decrease loading screens, but doesn’t improve FPS per se

Btw, once you do upgrade, you’ll be surprised how much prettier high settings are compared to medium

Edit: Apologies… after some googling, it seems that the 61C is AMD’s max temp for your CPU… it’s GPUs are the ones that exceed 80C safely. (http://products.amd.com/en-us/search/CPU/AMD-FX-Series/AMD-FX-8-Core-Black-Edition/FX-8150/84) That could be caused by an incorrectly mounted heat sink, or poor quality thermal compound. An easy fix is to get a good quality thermal compund and use it to remount your existing heat sink (or if your heat sink is stock, replace it… it noisy and nasty anyway). I would still get a new GPU though… going from 3.3 to 3.7 GHz won’t add much to your FPS.

Sorry to say it, but most of what you said is worng, and the opposite OP should do to increase performance.

Cpu: That AMD is incredibly bad for Gw2. Not only it has a terrible single core performance, he also has to run it at low speed to avoid thermal throttling.
Single core performance is the most important thing to improve for Gw2, it affects enormously the performance.

Gpu: Even a r7 250 can run this game at medium 1080p. Gw2 graphic demands are really low. You say a 380 is not enough for 1080p, yet with my 285 I can play at 1440p 60fps…

The bad performance on those fights is not related to dx9, but the game engine doing all the stuff happening is one or two threads, obliterating any cpu out there.

Multithreading of those threads is the answer.

Btw, dx12 has another issue, only is supported in w10. Its implementation it would only affect a small part of the playerbase.

Hollywood.2407:

Once again people seem to read a title and a last sentence, and nothing else.

Cable already addressed these points and nothing presented explains why on the SAME platform with BETTER graphics cards, the game is marginally improved and in some aspects arguably worse.

Quit regurgitating knee jerk responses.

We are all waiting your opinion about this matter.

What I’ve said makes perfect sense:
- He’s using settings very cpu taxing, which affect a lot the overall performance and minimize the impact of better gpu setup.
- If the game is cpu bottlenecked, getting a better gpu setup doesn’t improve things. You’re still cpu bottlenecked. SLI doesn’t scale that much because the same reason. As much gpus as you may have, they will still have to wait the cpu to render all his work. And if the computer keeps being cpu bottlenecked, a more powerful gpu setup will have less usage than the previous.
- With his cpu, each gpu is working on pcie 2.0 x8, which has the same bandwidth of 3.0 x4. Gw2 is very sensible about pcie speed.

Another story is you’re unable to understand it…

Hollywood.2407:

Once again people seem to read a title and a last sentence, and nothing else.

Cable already addressed these points and nothing presented explains why on the SAME platform with BETTER graphics cards, the game is marginally improved and in some aspects arguably worse.

Quit regurgitating knee jerk responses.

We are all waiting your opinion about this matter.

What I’ve said makes perfect sense:
- He’s using settings very cpu taxing, which affect a lot the overall performance and minimize the impact of better gpu setup.
- If the game is cpu bottlenecked, getting a better gpu setup doesn’t improve things. You’re still cpu bottlenecked. SLI doesn’t scale that much because the same reason. As much gpus as you may have, they will still have to wait the cpu to render all his work. And if the computer keeps being cpu bottlenecked, a more powerful gpu setup will have less usage than the previous.
- With his cpu, each gpu is working on pcie 2.0 x8, which has the same bandwidth of 3.0 x4. Gw2 is very sensible about pcie speed.

Just because it is mine it doesn’t make it less valuable than others. At least I bring own experience and personal testing, not a text I’ve read from some random guys.
The fact you don’t find it worth doesn’t mean it isn’t. In fact, it’s the most detailed comparison existing on the internet. But you insist on taking it personal… So good luck, the evidence is there.

About Tomshardware’s test, it’s still not relevant nowadays. Not the proper testing, in a pve map, and too close to release, anet didn’t do all the optimization in the first month and then forgot about it…
Just the first fact is enough to make the test invalid no matter how the game changes.

While it is true Gw2 has 2 main threads, it is also true it has tons of others that still require quite amount of core usage, like you can see in my photos. Also, even threads are placed in different cores, if a 4690k oced to 4.5GHz is being used so much for long periods of times (like here https://youtu.be/3XSvcnLcmwI?t=216) it means it is happing more than just 2 threads, and even a cpu with such high IPC struggles.
So yes, overclocking an intel cpu is also profitable. Intel cpus are still not good enough to run this game perfectly at stock speeds.

Then, you should avoid quoting things I’ve never said:
“You insisted that intel benefit more from amd overclocking”. I’ve never said this. Reread my posts twice and you will never see a sentence or an idea pointing to that direction. What I’ve said is that overclocking in intel sees benefits, just like amd, in response of one of your false statements: “A overclocked intel will not have significant gain in terms of performance”.
From a 22% overclock in Intel I’m seeing 12-18% more performance. Of course people in AMD can see more performance, but I’d also have done if I did a test 3GHz vs 4.5GHz. The thing is with intel I’m taking advantage of 55-80% of the theoretical improvement of the overclock.
This shows how personal you took it, failing at such basic point: never think in absolute results, but relative to another thing or their maximum potential.

“It bothers me that you state the IPC improvement over a few gens, not just one gen” Don’t cook the sentences in your flavour. You said since 2012 there’s no architecture improvements, yet they exist, a Haswell processor plays gw2 better than a SB, and a skylake even better.
But this is not about if a newer intel cpu plays it better than a older. The thing is the methodology used in that test doesn’t show the reality, as the conditions were not the ideal, not in the place tested (not cpu stressful) neither in the time (remember it was done before worldwide launch 28th August 2012, and the game perform much better in the same hardware than before).
You can see it in this 2 videos. First is from second beta, 2-4 months before the test you psted, and the second is from mid 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UHpPVhc-NE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfL0myRvDGM
In the second I get better performance in a blob vs blob than in the first with some dudes hitting a door.

As you can see, you failed to understand my objection. It is not about intel vs amd IPC, it is not about thread management, it is not about architecture over generations, it is not about SMT vs CMT (which cannot be compared directly as one is a technology and the other is an architecture design, a CMT cpu could possibly have SMT if implemented).
It is about you saying false statements and me fixing you, like:
- A overclocked intel will not have significant gain in terms of performance. Wrong and I’ve proved, again think in a relative perspective 12-18% out of 22% OC.
- Intel is capable of processing all of gw2’s data, any further increase of speed will make little gain. The statement is not wrong, but the assumption intel is capable of procssing all gw2 data.
- The game is not multi core optimized so it will never use more than 2 full cores. One thing is the game and another one the main threads, the game can use more than 2 threads.
- Likewise, since 2012, there isn’t any major changes to the CPU architecture thus all in all, the article will continue to be relevant. Like I said before the issue is not in the correlation of performance, but the inadequate methods of the test.
You should have stayed with my first quoting to you, and yet you brought amd vs intel ipc, thread management and other things to the discussion that, while they are true, they are not related to the fact:

A overclocked intel will not have significant gain in terms of performance.

Intel has a higher IPC compared to AMD thus if the current intel is capable of processing all of gw2’s data, any further increase of speed will make little gain.

These statements are false.

PD: You should never assume the knowledge of the other people. That makes you ridiculous and presumptuous.

SkyShroud.2865:

There was a guy in another thread uses the same argument like your’s, citing dated article without any substantial technical arguments. Allow me to tell you why the article continue to be relevant despite being dated. Even if anet did any forms of optimization to the engine, that level of optimization does not exceed the 2 cores limitation. As long as that optimization does not exceed the 2 cores limitation, it will continue to be related to single core performance. As long it is related to single core performance, IPC will continue to be relevant. Likewise, since 2012, there isn’t any major changes to the CPU architecture thus all in all, the article will continue to be relevant.

You further claim that PCI-E (you didn’t state what version) is crucial to gw2, if you are comparing PCI-E 1.0 and 4.0, I really don’t know what to say.

Regardless, even if you lack the technical understanding, the link to that forum I have provided already explained what is IPC and how IPC matters to gaming performance but I guess you totally do not bother reading it while continue to insist overclocking intel processor will result in greater gain than amd’s.

Don’t embarrass yourself further.

And here is where you fail miserably.
The 2 core limitation is not true. The game can stress all cores of a 4690k oced to 4.5GHz to 70-90%.
And yes, since 2012, anet has done some optimization, as Johan said here (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n). They try to take away thing from the main thread and in 3 years they’ve done some work, which makes that test irrelevant, as back then a lot more was going on the main thread than now, aka

About pcie speed, no you don’t have to go to pcie 1.0. At 3.0, there’s still an improvement from x8 to x16, and moving 3.0 x4 there’s a huge drop of performance.
I did some test last year:
- x16 had 110fps underwater, 70’s in empty map, 50’s in more heavy graphic situation and 23-24 in heavy cpu situation.
-x8 had 100 fps underwater, 60’s in empty map, 46 in more heavy graphic situation and 22-23 fps in heavy cpu situation.
- x4 had 77fps underwater, 45’s in empty map, 36 in more graphic situation and 20-21 in heavy cpu situation.
Last week I could experience again the effect of pcie speed. Took off the gpu to clean it and I didn’t put it right, opened GW2 and I was getting 30-35 fps in LA. Looked at pcie speed and it was 3.0 x4. Reseated the gpu and getting 50-55fps when working at x16.

The funny thing is all your arguments are based in tests showing nothing relevant. Really a general guide talking about how intel is better at ipc than AMD? Isn’t that obvious? Why saying intel has better ipc than amd makes the overclocking in intel irrelevant?
I told you that gw2 performance test was not valid and I gave you 2 solid arguments (lack of optimization and test done in a pve map where the cpu is not stressed). Then you tell me about no architecture improvements, where from Sandy Bridge to Skylake there’s about a 25% improvement in the IPC, plus faster RAM speeds and lower overall latencies.
Still you haven’t said anything worth to prove your points, or to make mines unvalid.

Here you have more proves why you’re wrong.
I did some tests last year. I’l show you how core speed affect the framerate in gw2 while in citadel. On the left there’s all the tests of a 4690k at 4.4GHz and on the right at 3.6GHz. So a 22% increase of core frecuency gives me a 12-18% more framerate. And this is without an optimized system, as ram was at 1600, pcie at x8 and gpu at stock.

SkyShroud.2865:

I have an intel and amd machine, of course, just saying it without any established reviewers benchmark test is pointless so here the link.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-7.html

A thread in the tech forums, a simple 1 minute google.
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?90486-Intel-vs-AMD-(CPU)-in-2015

A test done in 2012, when the game was not even released worldwide, doesn’t say anything. Specially since back then the game has seen quite amount of optimization improvements. And even more when this test is done in a pve map, the Norn staring map. This test is unvalid.
Then you show a general basic guide telling us even less. Like I could take it seriously when it tells us an i3 is just a tad better than a FX 4000, and the reality shows in several games an i3 can smash a FX8000.
Another example is pcie bandwidth, where several reviews show it doesn’t matter that much, and yet in gw2 it is crucial.

Anything found on internet cannot be extrapolated in gw2, unless tested specifically in the game with the proper methods.

SkyShroud.2865:

A overclocked intel will not have significant gain in terms of performance.

Intel has a higher IPC compared to AMD thus if the current intel is capable of processing all of gw2’s data, any further increase of speed will make little gain.

These statements are false.

vesica tempestas.1563:

No what? I was referring to network issues in wvw and cities you just repeated what I said.. On your local pc if your not cpu or gfx capped or running out of memory then that’s not the problem (which is what the OP was referring to)

I said network issues are only related to experienced lag and ping, not framerate. That’s determined by your computer specs.

PD: It is impossible not to be capped by the cpu in this game. It doesn’t exist such a cpu.

No, the game is limited by the game engine rendered in your computer. That’s why a guy with an overclocked intel can get way better performance than a guy with a AMD FX.
If it would be a network issue, everyone would see the same performance regardless the specs.
But I can corfirm that faster core frequency, faster RAM speed and lower latencies, and more pcie bandwidth improves the performance.

The only thing related to network issues is lag in situations with massive amount of data going on, like 3 blobs fighting in EB or the laser event in the desert borderlands.