Guild Wars 2

Ragnar.4257:

You know that scepter #2 is on a 6 second cooldown right?

12k torment damage on a 6 second cooldown? You really think that’s balanced? (and it actually goes up to 15k if you factor in weapon and guard stacks).

4 things:
- To have 6s of CD you need to take the scepter trait, which is inferior to Ineptitude.
- It’s a reactive skill, so to activate it needs participation of the enemy to activate it.
- Torment damage can be reduced to half if the enemy is not moving.
- You negate the damage by cleansing it.

So in the end, the skill damage is proportional to the enemy’s lack of awareness and lack of control of the fight.
So, if someone is receiving the 12k of damage it’s because he deserves it.

Skrotomo.2568:

Dunno what kind of engine it might need but something needs tweaking, me or it

I have virtually 2 identical CPUs with 2 differences between them, here are the specs:

• i7 4790k
• 16Gb RAM Corsair Pro 1800
• ASUS Z97 PRO acwi
• PC1 – GTX 970 + 27" Samsung 1920×1080 @ 60Hz refresh LED monitor
• PC1 running Win 10 Clean install, DX 12
• PC2 – R9 390 + 27" BENQ 2560×1440 @ 144Hz refresh LED monitor
• PC2 running Win 10 upgraded from 8.1, DX 12

Here’s the interesting thing with identical in-game graphics settings, all at highest:
*PC1 = 87 FPS
*PC2 = 63 FPS from 56 FPS when running Win 8.1 & DX 11

So, where’s the crazy promised increases with DX12 and why does the PC with the R9 390 card running 30% lower FPS?

I dropped the resolution from 2560 to 1920 on PC2 but no change from 63 FPS, I don’t get it.
If I change rendering on PC2 from Supersample to Subsample then I get an increase to 76 FPS but still…….

Is my R9 390 broken or AMD drivers broken (yup installed the latest)? It should be running like a GTX 980.

/scratches head

Without pics of ingame settings, cpu-z and gpu-z while playing it’s impossible to try to find whats happening.
But probably it might be 2 things:
- Residual things from w8.1 that are affecting the performance.
- Since the game is running at dx9 and it’s quite old now, the benefits from the 390 over 290 doesn’t affect the performance.

Or it might be a problem with Nvidia drivers. There’s tons of people having issues. It has nothing to do with dx9.

Hero.3527:

Having a dire or even a rabids set i dont find fun, i like builds that do dmg (such as beserker etc) Idk how people find it fun to be a tanky lil guy and being able to make 100 mistakes and still win just because their dire condi or whatever, its not enjoyable.
- Whenever i see a mesmer i think kittens more dire trash, and when i see a shatter mesmer i am legitimately surprised because non condi mesmers are so rare.

Condi shatter builds can be one of a hell of fun, they’re not inherently boring. You can melt people in seconds and they allow to face outnumbered fights, which requires tons of skill and are more stressful than duels with a power burst build.
They can also do tons of damage also, just they do it in a different way (more over time than instant bursts). However, you can still see 4k confusion + 3k torment + 1k bleeding + 700 burning in a second.

All this “condi builds are boring cause they’re easy” is just a nonsense idea of people who think their skill is elevated to the heaven because playing squishy power builds proclaims you as a skilled player.
There’s a reason why condi builds in pvp don’t work. Players there put their arrogance behind and let the clearance and smartness bright, by taking condi removal and not playing squishy builds when not needed.
Meanwhile, WvW is full of ganking zerker builds that die in a second from condies. Then they yell at you about noobing with condi builds, or come here to the forums to ask for nerfs…

Engelsstaub.4356:

i7-3630QM, Win 8.1, Radeon 7970M

Character limit/quality: medium
Shadows: off
Rest: highest, don’t affect the framerate
Result: 15 is the lowest in huge zergs, 20-30 is typical during fights

The main problem is that GW2 is still DX9.

DX11 was the first to introduce some kind of support for multi-core rendering. Some games (many Cryengine 3 titles) can even utilize HT in i7’s.
DX12 will push it even further and make even more improvement.

But we can’t expect GW2 gaining support for either.
Imho it made no sense of Anet to do so since DX11 cards have been around for so long that if someone has such old hardware his computer won’t run GW2 properly anyway. Such old computers serve people mainly for web browsing and watching films. Putting DX11 support in min requirements wouldn’t harm the population.

If CU renders 180 players at 60fps it MUST be using DX11+.

You’re worng. Devs have said API is not the issue, but the game engine and the amount of work the cpu has to do.
The only way to fix it would be to add the multithreading to the game engine, so the heavy threads could use more than one thread of the cpu.

Btw, it’s pointless to talk about other games, since their amount of stress in cpu is miles behind of what gw2 can put.

Try this while having gw2 opened:
- Open the Resource monitor.
- Go to Network tab.
- Click Gw2.exe and open the tab below called Network activity.
- What you need is the address.

- Open the console cmd (Press Windows button+R and write cmd).
- Write the command ping + one of address you found before (ex: ping 64.25.47.119). This will call and connect to that address and the game will end the download.

Happened to me just a moment ago and it fixed. Probably the ports got closed and the game is not connecting to the anet servers.

Well, you cannot expect 60fps anywhere since this is a mmo, there’s a lot of work done in cpu and it’s very variable (note that for every player you see in your screen your cpu has to do its maths).
No matter what cpu you have, there’ll always be framerate deeps in very populated places.

But there’s still things to do to improve the framerate:
- Make sure the gpu is running at pcie 3.0 x16 (you can check it with gpu-z).
- You should have fast memory (2800MHz should be the minimum considered for skylake).
- Overclock as much as you can the cpu (also the cache). 4.2MHz is a very light OC when these chips can go to 4.7 very easily.
- Put character quantity limit to “Medium”, enable “Effect LOD”, play with Unlimited framerate, and disable Reflections, Shadows and High Res Texture Characters.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Do you have a link to a damage break down of some sort that is evidence to claiming that mesmer’s are the lowest damage in the game?

Perhaps your support in zergs is low, mine isn’t. I am constantly asked for Mass invis, portals, veils, or feedbacks, and portals.

I haven’t said mesmer don’t have damage, but do to its nature, it doesn’t work in pve neither in zergs.

For zerguing is well known how low the damage is. I am myself one of the fewest who has tried to maximize the damage there, but even being able to reach high numbers (5-6.5k), they were still lower than what the rest of the ranged could get (6-8k) and much fewer in terms of amount of it (I could get 8-10 big numbers in a charge while necros were getting 12-14 with a single well…).
Chronomancer will shorten the difference, but it won’t be enough. Necros and eles have way more AoE skills and they’re not capped with the small+big design from mesmers wells.

The problem of mesmer support is it’s very situational. Veil is only used in the beggining of charges and portal only in specific moments. In comparison, waters and condi cleansings are dropped constantly, so their effect is much bigger and relevant than yours.
And the rest is what I said, secondary: A Feedback here or not isn’t crucial, some boons copied doesn’t have a big impact and MI is only suitable for focus party, but outside it loses the beauty (personally I always ran Time Warp over MI).
Then you can build around support with mantras, but anything would be suboptimal compared to pure damage+situational support, basically because the extra support you could add is somehow wasted with the ranged (that doesn’t need it) or to put it into the melee you’re taking too much risks for being a light armor class.

About pve, here is an outdated dps calculator from last year that it has been true until last 23th June:
http://tinyurl.com/o9wfm29
Note that mesmer damage is counted with 3 illusions, but the reality shows that the average over time will be around 2 illusions, so you ended up having 60-70%% the damage of the maxed DPS and even lower than ranger and necro, which are also considered low damage professions in pve.

DeWolfe.2174:

Tongku.5326:

sat there with 6 stacks of confusion

That’s all you got on him, 6??? Mesmer’s are capable of opening from stealth with 18 stacks of confusion and 12ish stacks of Torment. On top of that add in the extreme DPS burst rotation, plus stealth, and that’s why Mesmer’s are OP atm. The Dev’s need to play World vs World a lot more to see how broken some builds are. Balancing around sPvP, then PvE, and not include WvW is silliness.

You went a little bit extreme there. Those 18 stacks of confusion and 12 of torment need a long build up, 2 full illusion shatters and land all confusing images, which mean the enemy is bad as hell.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I agree to an extent. It lacks in group support to an extent. It is great for reflects, mass invis, portal, and what not for large groups. it is great to get into back lines and take out water fields spammers and ranged DPS.

Personally, I feel too many people have a misconception of what support in a large scale fight really means. If someone thinks support in a large scale fight is restricted to being able to spam shouts or water fields, then I feel they are selling the force short with short sighted perspective.

I was talking the lack in general, not just support. Damage of mesmers in both pve and zergs is one of the lowest in the game. Talking about support, only in pve will be average with Chronomancer (mainly quickness, alacrity and reflects), but in zergs the support is very low, what you said is partially wrong.

Yes, there is more support than healing and condi cleansing, but the problem is nearly all support you actually need. Anything else is just and add, but your zerg won’t win because 3/4 guys get 1s of distortion here, 3/4 others get 2 of alacrity, 5 others get 2s of superspeed…
In the end, what really matters are mobility and recover. It’s not about if it’s all the support or not, but if it’s effective or not.
Same thing could be applied with berserker stat vs others in dungeons.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I agree, to an extent. I hopped on my Mesmer and ran the stealth spam PU condi build that everyone is roaming with. It is simply fairly OP. There is only so much L2P you can do, if a build is a bit too strong, and it is a bit too strong. There have been times were eles builds were OP, engineer had builds that were OP (more so in PvP though), warrior had OP builds, and so on. Right now, you can suggest L2P until the cows come home, the Mesmer has some OP builds.

PU condi shatter mesmer can be killed, I’ve killed some in my non PU condi shatter, funny don’t? Yes, it’s a very powerful build, but only at duels or solo roaming. Outside that its performance decrease dramatically.
Devs don’t balance in every game mode separately, they balance across all or if some skills or traits bring something they don’t desire.

In the end it really is a matter of l2p issue. But not l2p of outskilling the other, but more a l2p of bringing in the table something better or knowing how to deal with it.
If people were more smart, PU-perplexity-full dire or PU mantra burst mesmers wouldn’t be the meta, since they’re subpar compared to other mesmer builds better rounded, that actually can beat both before.
But instead, a lot of people put in WvW maps the build they think it will be good, not the best, fail miserably (since that build is far from being successful for roaming) and come here to the forums whining about how the rest of the people, who really understand the roaming and are prepared to success in it, are destroying them.

Random.4691:

For now, once hot is released those Mesmer wells will give them a much bigger role in large scale wvw.

I’ve tried the new wells and they’ll improve mesmer damage, but we still won’t be at the level of AoE damage of eles and necros. More than 3 mesmers in a group of 20 won’t be needed, which is what you already have in the actual compositions.

Chronomancer is a very good option for both ways to deal damage. The only thing is with condi builds you’re more limited when choosing traits, since Slow condition negates the effect of confusion, the extra critical chance is less effective, and Chronophantasma has less effect with phantasms not doing the same damage as power ones.

Personally I’ll take it for both condi shatter roaming and power zerg builds.

In Spanish WvW is called MvM (Mundo vs Mundo), so both are correct.

About mesmers… this profession excels in roaming, but lacks in pve and large scale fights.

And for what you write, it’s clearly a l2p issue. In what world would you be able to kill such an unique profession like mesmer without even know what it’s played and its strengths and weaknesses?

The only real solution is to upgrade the cpu to an intel.
Your cpu is not powerful enough to play at large scale fights, there’s nothing you can do.

For the moment put Character limits to lowest and enable Effects LOD.

You need to look for every core usage, not overall cpu. Gw2 uses all cores, but what it’s important is single core performance, which FX line lack tremendously.
Then don’t bother about gpu utilization, it doesn’t show if the gpu is bottlenecking. The game will use all the gpu if possible or needed.

Add about gpus, R9 270, R9 370, GTX 950, GTX 660ti… are what you need to max the game at 1080p and a good framerate in non-cpu intensive areas.

Some more footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKPxDNHjE84

I’ve been theroycrafting for a long time, but yesterday was my first day of testing. Chronomancer adds some really nice things.
I still think the best way is to focus on damage. Well of Calamity can do insane damage when damage optimization.
Gravity Well pulls are really good and it still does some damage.
Chronophantasma can bump quite a lot the damage if one controls iZerker rotation and shatter it, plus Protected Phantasms help to make this more reliable.
Continuum Split could be insane when one is able to master it.
And alacrity helps to have everything earlier, so you end up having more damage.

Got some footage I still have to upload.

Kelthien.8593:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Shield 5 = raid-wide quickness. Think they might like that?

Quickness is great, for sure. Interrupts are starting to win them over as well. I think it’s an education game at the moment. You’re absolutely right that shield is awesome. The stun wave alone provides an insane amount of control with so many synergies.

Honestly… I think we’d be in a MUCH better place in WvW if another class could provide raid stealth and/or reliable ranged pulls. Getting locked in to Veil and focus limits our choices significantly. I don’t mind running them… but I’d like to swap out of them when I’m in the mood without crippling a group.

I don’t find that much of a trouble.
- Veil is just one utility, and now with the CD reduction or PU buff is better than before.
- About focus, it’s been a long time since it lost its beauty. Pulls are very RNG, easy avoidable and slow to apply. Torch first and now shield are better options, both add other options more useful than what brings focus.

Chronomancer add really nice things. Well of Calamity will be a must (kitten how hard it hits!!!), Gravity Well is way better with pulls than that float which did something fancy but pretty useless, Chronophantasma+iZerker+Protected Phantasms add quite a lot more damage, alacrity helps a lot, and Tides of Times is a blase, full of options and truly an insane skill when mastered.

Just did some raids yesterday after 6 months without playing seriously, and I already saw ticks from +5k damage, self-made bombs, and more options than what I used to have before the break.
Only left is to get used to this pirate-ship meta…

There has been a lot of problems with W10 and Nvidia drivers. Try several, also quite old, from last year and look if you still have such problems.

You might want to overclock that cpu to 4.0 or 4.2, and put shadows to high, reflections to terrain and sky, character model limit to medium and have effect LOD enabled (these are the most taxing cpu settings)

- Take z97 MB instead of that h97 if you take an unlocked cpu and you’ll be able to overclock it. If you don’t plan to, save money and take the i5 4690 non K.
- Take a much cheaper PSU, that’s a completely overkill one only needed for SLI/Crossfire (which I don’t recommend). I have the Corsair RM550 and is more than enough.
- Take the GTX 960 so you will be able to max the game without problems.
- I don’t see a cpu cooler, which is fundamental since the stock one is crap. Take a 212 evo or a Cryorig H5.
- Take faster RAM, it will add few more fps since this game is so cpu instensive.

You have a very low end laptop which is not able to run the game properly.
That cpu is a mobile one and barely pass the minimum requirement of single core performance for GW2. It’s even worse than sandy bridge mobile cpu (Which I have in a laptop and only plays the game at 30fps in lowest settings in LA).
Also the gpus are quite entry level. On par with gt 555m and intel igpu HD5100. In this level you can only play the game at lowest settings.
Despite having 2 gpus, I think only 1 can work, since both are different chips and cannot be crossfired.

Nvidia screwed the game with the drivers in W10. Try a quite old driver previous to W10, I don’t remember which one it is, but people who have solved it tell they lose dx12 to fix it.

Here with AMD and latest drivers and not a single issue.

TheHeretic.3529:

Ansau.7326:

- Put Reflections to “Terrain & Sky”.
- Put Shadows to “High”.
- Put both Character Limits to “High”.

This is not correct.

If you want a better framerate, then set
Reflections to NONE
Shadows to NONE
Character Model Limit to LOW

In an open area, you can set them higher. If you’re in a populated zone, then it’s going to hurt. The only thing I change is Character Model Limit to High when I go to WvW, and that’s just to make sure I can see everyone.

What I’m saying is true, you’re just killing the settings to get better framerate, sacrificing graphics, which is not my intention. With my options there’s still a gain, but killing them doesn’t improve that much the framerate for what you’re sacrificing.

One of the reasons devs introduced the new FOV was to do this, since before only zoomboters and people who know the trick with windowed mode could do it. Now everybody can take advantage of this method.

Embrace it, this behavior with the AC is here to stay (it’s not an exploit).

You shouldn’t use any graphic auto-setting for gw2, since some graphic options are very cpu taxing and kill a lot the framerate.

- Put Reflections to “Terrain & Sky”.
- Put Shadows to “High”.
- Put both Character Limits to “High”.
- Enable “Effects LOD”.
- Disable “High Res Character textures”.
- Disable “Vsync”.

Also try to play with only 1 gpu and make sure it’s running at x16. Since gw2 is so cpu taxing, pcie speed can improve a little bit.

Menaka.5092:

I have some footage of Chronomancer in zergs and it’s a lot less effective than you can think.

Wells are sluggish and underwhelming, tides of time is short range and very slow moving, continuum shift is very hard to use in an environment where you basically don’t have illusions…

Right now I’m planning on sitting on my current raid build (domi/chaos/inspiration) for WvW if we won’t see major changes to chrono before the release.

Well, Chronomancer is not that good for you because the build itself is not the best.

- Staff instead of GS throws away a lot of offensive.
- Only using MW makes you less effective.
- I don’t see you using Dueling, so less options.
- Not taking well of calamity, so even less damage.
- Bad stat choice with cele.
- No power stacks from sigil.
- Conservative playstyle.
- No izerker+Protected Phantasms+Cronophantasma.

Basically, you don’t get the crucial offensive things because you think a semi-support mesmer is worth, which is not.

Draw calls in gw2 is not an issue. It barely gets 4500 is heavy situations, and to hit 5500 you need extremely populated situations with all UI possible open.

Whoever says gw2 is a p2w game, has never played a truly p2w grindy game.

Devata.6589:

Vadar.3254:

The thing I want to know is, why do people want directx 10, 11 or 12?, I am not being sarcastic, I genuinely would like to know, what are your reasons for it. There seems to be a lot of people that talk about directx without really understanding what it is and how it affects a game engine and the development of a game.

Performance increase. While most games are GPU heavy, GW2 is CPU heavy. My 2500k has trouble getting high frame-rate and then the GPU does not matter much (using a 460 or a 970).

Making use of DirectX 12 and better use of the multiple cores (partly what DirectX 12 can help with as it does not only reduces the calls going to the GPU, but can also split them over multiple cores) could mean a big increase in performance. The other way of getting better performance would be OCing the CPU or / and buying a newer / more expensive CPU while that would then only be useful for a few games, because as said, most games are GPU heavy. Meaning it would be a pretty heavy investment compared for what you get for it, and when buying a new GPU you will also have to buy a new motherboard. Not to mention the power-consumption when OCing the CPU.

So for customers, GW2 updating to DirectX 12 (in combination with a few other improvements) would be the best way to get a performance increase.

Now some people say that GW2 is a MMORPG so it’s fine to have lower FPS, but also think about using a VR set. Then you would need 90FPS for best result (on the current generation) or minimum 75FPS. Talking about that, when looking at the system requirements OR gives, it’s a GTX970 and an i5-4590. If I would put a 970 in my system would be close to that, the 2500k just performers a little under the 4590, a small OC on the 2500k, should put the performance on about the requirements for the OR, a system that is considered ‘heavy’, however performance in GW2 would still be pretty bad.

Like somebody said very well on reddit about this. “The problem won’t be that game will look lets say poor in two years, the real problem it will look poor, and it will run just as crappy as it does now, while games looking 4x times better will run at least 2x times better than GW2.”

The only problem is a newer API wouldn’t bring a big performance improvement, said by some of us here and confirmed by devs.

If people knew how truly dx12 works and what does and what does not, and how little would be the impact in gw2, this thread wouldn’t exist.
But you prefer to read something and assume all the world…

Do you have high res character textures enabled?

The g3258 will be enough to run the game perfectly. Just OC it and enjoy a smooth experience.

The i5 is only needed if you plan to record game footage or doing some multitasking.

If I had the pc I would show like 20 reviews showing the improvement over generations and how affect in cpu based games.

But the smartphone is one of a hell to do it. You can check Anandtech, tomshardware, hardware canucks, pclab, pchardwaregames, tweakdown, overclock3d, 3dguru, hardocp, kitguru, hexus, compubase…

Just because you dont believe it doesn’t mean its true. Skylake is noticeable more powerful than sandy bridge and cpu based games, like gw2, see a big improvement.
Some tests:
Arma 3, 10fps more http://m.pclab.pl/art65154-26.html
Bf4 mp 40fps more http://m.pclab.pl/art65154-27.html

Rampage.7145:

Ok no this is not true most of those becnhmarks use newer instruction sets, which makes new processors better, faster and efficient (due having new instruction sets compared to old ones), When games start taking advantage of this then yes u will see better performnce. Old games (like gw2) will hardly use these so basically they will perform the same on an old i7 2600k than on a new i7 6700k. Notice these benches are also made at stock clock speeds and the new i7 has a base clock of 4.2ghz compared to 3.8ghz from the old one. When u overclock both the new will get to 4.7 or close to that as maximum Oc while the old one will get 4.8-4.9.

U can see all the gaming benches and even on CPU starved games like atila total war u will see indentical performance on both CPUs. The reasson for this is Intel hvn’t improved IPC since sandy days, they only added tricks and gimmicks to their new procesors but they hvn’t done anything groundbreaking yet to make em really faster. Sure the new i7 will feel a bit faster during general usage, but for gaming, hell no untill the games start taking advantage of newer technologies.

I would advice you to just keep your i7 2600k untill it dies or they release faster processors (for real). If you use you PC for video editing, rendering or other professional stuff where u can take advantage of new instruction sets to do things faster, then definitelly go get the new i7 6700k right away cuz DDR4 PCIe 4.0 M.2 USB 3.0 are worthly platform upgrades u wanna have to be more productive. If you only game then u will notice no difference whatsoever between the old i7 2600k and newer processors (at least on current games it may change for future games).

How wrong you are here. Reviews show a good improvement in CPU based games, you need to check again those reviews.
Newer cpus not only have more instructions sets, but also more ipc, more fpu or faster ones, faster memory, pcie 3.0… Over sandy bridge.

Yesterday did a small test and in karka queen I was getting 22-30fps with everything maxed, and in jormag it didn’t fall below 30fps with a bit less people.
I5 4690k oc to 4.4ghz, 8gb ram 2400mhz cl10 and r9 285.

- The 6700k OC to 4.6 or 4.7 (which seems to be easy) will be around 30% more powerful than your overclocked 2600k.
- Z170 has pcie 3.0 while yours has 2.0. This will add around 5fps more.
- Your ddr3 ram will probably be 1333 or 1600 at most. ddr4 will start at 2133, but I suggest to get 2666, 2800 or 3000. This will add another 5fps more.

For gw2 it is a good upgrade.

It seems there’s a problem with Nvidia drivers, gw2 and w10.
This guy has tried the drivers 347.88 and the problem kinda fixes for him: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Windows-10-massive-performance-loss/first#post5348293

And again, try to play with single gu at x16. Force in the bios to only work the first pcie.

Just a question Liam, which browser do you use, and which extensions do you have?

@JediYoda.1275 I wasn’t responding you, but to OP.

Seems the problem is only with Nvidia. I just upgraded to W10 and gained 4-5fps with my r9 285.

Have you installed the Windows10 version of the drivers? This means you select W10 in the OS when you download the drivers.

Free update is free update, no trial, full version, support until 2020 and extended until 2025…
I don’t understand why people believe more opinions in internet than official statements.

Official price for WIndows 10 pro 64 bits is 199$ (174€). In Spain you can buy it for 165€ (http://www.pccomponentes.com/microsoft_windows_10_pro_64bits.html), and in Germany for 155€ (http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B010S3VOEO/ref=s9_simh_gw_p65_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3JWKAKR8XB7XF&pf_rd_s=desktop-1&pf_rd_r=1Z4VABVJYR62C4EN0PFY&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=585296347&pf_rd_i=desktop).

All this nonsense about the key? Windows 10 allows you to do a security backup, restore, get back top the previous SO for the first month and change the key of the product.

And put in your head Gw2 will not move to Vulkan or dx12. Devs have said there are no plans to upgrade, and the API is not the most restrictive part of the rendering, which means upgrading to a newer API wouldn’t add a meaningful performance improvements.

Windows 10 pro costs 180€, 280€ is the usb version. Also, all W7 and W8 (8.1) can upgrade for free. After that you can do a clean install. So grab any hard disk that has a previous Windows version and upgrade it for free.
Price is not an excuse.

Disabling upgrades can become a big problem, specially for this new version and the the new way of how in the future the SO will get the new things. Is the obvious way.

Vulkan is yet to be seen how used it will be. It may become very famous, or as much forget as OpenGL. Devs have the same choice than you, and if they mostly choose dx12 (which is the most probable case) then you’ll be able to choose dx12 with all games, or vulkan with no games.

The last part is kinda false, you can postpone the upgrades with the pro version, even program them. The only thing you cannot do is to choose what do you want or don’t want to upgrade.

Lian Olsam.9541:

You cant disable some stuff on home edition, and something in the pro version too, isnt about knowledge on OS…

Btw gw2 have the best graphic u can find in any mmo even with dx11, the real improvement with an highter dx or vulkan is the optimization on draw call but ofc u also need an 64bit client…

Btw i dont think they will upgrade this on gw2, and onestly i dont care too much because i think is more important if/when they will make a new engine they will not do that on dx12, because win 10 is the worst os made by microsoft, no privacy, no a complete control on your pc, i dont like it, and with vulkan intead of dx the game should be compatible also with linux.

Seriously, the amount of saltiness and misinformation in you is beyond the normal.

Home edition is for people that don’t know advanced things about computers and SO. Some things are locked because without the knowledge of it people end up not upgrading their SO, have problems with connecting to internet, don’t have a proper and updated antivirus… Also it doesn’t bring some features that could cause problems, like dual boot, remote desktop, bitlocker…
Someone pro should not be looking for the Home edition.

What are the things locked in the pro version? I’ve seen a few posts about some assumptions in 8chan forums made by anonymous and they are all full of misinformation, lack of understanding and self-made theories.

About draw calls, you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Gw2 is not even able to max the limit of draw calls of DX9.

They won’t uy would put the most used API, and if that’s dx12, then it would have it.pgrade their game engine, but if they do, the

Vulkan is yet to be seen how good it is. What we only know is one of its devs said Vulkan “might” be better than dx12.

And W10 is the best SO made by MS ever, and possibly the best ever made. But here we have some fanboy anti MS thinking W10 is bad due to imaginary lack of privacy (while all his life might be in Google’s or Apple’s servers) and the lack of control (when he doesn’t even know what you can and cannot do).

Disable high res character texture and vsync and low character limit to high.
Use single gpu, and make sure is running at x16 by bios. And enable hypethreading.

agentpepe.2436:

I see. I was actually taking laptops into consideration because of portability but I guess a desktop would be the only way.

Can you guys give an opinion about this rig?

Intel Core i5 4460 3.20GHz
4GB
GTX560

The gpu wont allow you to play it maxed, but the cpu will be able to handle wvw stuff at medium quite easily.

Put screenshots of cpu-z, gpu-z and graphics settings while ingame.

Don’t upgrade, its essentially the same gpu.

If you want to improve the performance and keep it budget, the only way is to move to a desktop. Haswell i3, motherboard b85, gtx 750ti/r9 260x, 4gb ram, 1tb hdd and a 1080p monitor should be around 500-600 bucks.

I would forget about laptops because the decents start at 700. Lower ones have Intel igou and gt 820m which are pretty much the same as those 620m 720m.

Gw2 barely exceeds 4.5k draw calls, and getting beyond 5.5k is quite difficult. Dx12 here would do very little.
Gw2 is not multithreaded (which is the only way to solve perfprmance issues), but it runs a lot of threads across all cores. Tge problem comes with the main thread, where most calculations are done, and thats why better single core performance is needed. Multithreading would solve the problems spreadind this thread across multiple cores.
APIs have little to do with all this work, since gpu is not involved. APIs only administrate the gpu work in the cpu. Since gpu work in gw2 is rather small (a 270 can already max the game) dx9 limitations are not catched and moving to a newer one is basically to have access to more graphic tehnologies.

Done some tests:
AO improvements are noticiable, but the performance hit seems quite irregular, being quite big (8-12fps) during the day and very small (1-3) during the night.

SMAA High is definitely the best. SMAA low improves a lot the edges without blurring the image and the performance hit is really small. But High improves where Low doesn’t and performance hit is less than 1fps.
Also it works with SweetFX (in my case Lumasharpen and Cineon DPX).

Could not test the new lighting option in my laptop.

No, it’s the step that tells everyone dx11/12 won’t come.
HBAO is not needed with the ambient occlusion they just added. and TXAA is not needed when they added SMAA that’s better and works in all gpus.
Other possible technologies would only mean much higher specs needed to run the game, since the way it’s dsigned, the gpu work also affects cpu.

And finally, WoW is the worst example. That game had horrible cartoonish graphics when it was launched and even now, gw1 has more detailed world than it.
The day WoW catches gw2 graphics then we will talk.

Thanks anet, specially for the SMAA. FXAA was such a horrible implementation it made the game look so horrible.
Also nice to see new graphic things added like ambient occlusion.

Next thing I think would be needed is to increase the texture quality in some walls or buildings.

Arricson Krei.9560:

Changes I think would be fit, in addition to the previously made comments:

1. Phase Retreat can not be cast while under the effects of cc, while dodging, or while performing an action. Like The Prestige, it has no cast time, but you can’t cast The Prestige while cc’d, dodging, or using Blurred Frenzy and I think the change would be appropriate to the 10s recharge blink.
2. Power Lock can’t be cast while under the effects of cc. It would retain the instant cast time like all mantras, but can’t be used while cc’d. It seems a little stupid to be able to daze (or even stun when traited with Confounding Suggestions) somebody while cc’d. Can be used while dodging and while performing an action, however. All other mantras would remain untouched.
3. Mirror Blade can be blocked. I have zero clue why there’s a Unblockable slapped onto this trait. Yields too much damage at too high of a range. If it can be blocked, it’s fine.
4. Mind Stab. Cut the damage and scaling by 33-50%. Add a new function: If you remove a boon, deal 50-100% more damage, respectively. So right now it does 314(0.850), after the change; of, let’s say, 50% cut and 100% more damage on boon reap; it’ll do 157(0.425) without the boon reap, and 2*(157(0.425)). The before and after results don’t change the overall damage if a boon is removed, but do provide a small barrier to bursting someone with this skill.
5. Remove blind and aegis from chaos armor and Chaos Storm. RNG shouldn’t reward one with such powerful de/buffs. Replace with 3 stacks vulnerability/weakness and might, respectively.
6. ICD on Blinding Dissipation. Make a significantly large ICD if implementing this effect: Blind your illusions’ targets and foes around you when you use a shatter skill. (Would reward positioning illusions, may also need to reduce the blind duration by 1 or 2s). Consider eliminating this trait. It’s too good of a seemingly free handout when shattering without the intention of blinding foes.
7. Revert Illusionary Persona baseline. I feel like this nerf would be too much, but it needs to be accessible. Right now, Chaos and Inspiration seem to be the dominating trait lines alongside Dueling/Domination. Placing IP in the Grandmaster slot of Illusions, and sending Malicious Sorcery somewhere else seems fair.

Quantitatively, these changes seem like a lot, but implementing these changes would put Mesmers closer with the rest of the classes. They have too much going for them right now and that’s because of their design and freebies.

1. Phase Retreat is a teleport skill, and because of that, it can be activated while using other skills, just like all other teleport skills in the game. If you want to change it, you will change all these skills: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Teleport

2. If you change that you will have to change all mantras, which negates the puropus of this type of skills: High cast time to have instant sequence skills.

3. Mesmer is the profession with the least amount of unblockable skills, with just 4 and 3 being control based. Eliminating the unblockable part of Mirror Blade would put the mesmer in a clear disadvantage of being the only class without an unblockable damage skill.

4. Mind Stab is more than find as it is. In fact, before it was buffed to actual state it was a useless skill. There was also an official debate in this forum about the changes.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Discussion-Mind-Stab-Rework/first

5. Chaos Storm is OK how it is. Staff is all about RNG, autoattack, chaos storm and armor have huge RNG on them.
Making Chaos Storm less RNG would make it way more predictable, and the defition of “Chaos” would be somewhat lost. Also it could become extremely OP with and AoE pulsing daze or a completely useless skill.

6. iCD is not what BD needs. What it needs is to not to proc. when dodging, blocking or evading. The CD of BD is already determinated by shatters. And blinding on illusions is bad as hell, since you cannot determinate their position.
In the point 4 you are willing for less RNG, and here you put the most RNG possible thing on mesmers.

7. IP being baseline is a must. Mesmers are so crippled without it, that to understand it you would need to add trigger chance to attunements swap, no initiative recharge through time, Death Shroud not having a separated health pool, rangers stuck with only 1 uncontrolled pet…
IP is a fundamental thing for this profession. The reason why DE was so important before patch was we needed tons of clones production to make sure we had the tools to make shatters 100% reliable.
Making it choosable again would turn shatter builds obligated to take it, and all others to forget about shatter mechanic.

These changes would put mesmers in a horrible position, going back pre-patch where shatter builds were the only thing good for competitive.