Guild Wars 2

Time gates reduce grinding.

If Anet doesnt want a certain item to be gained easily, they can either lock it behind a time gate or behind a massive grind/RNG.

I take time gates over grind and rng any day.

Beldin.5498:

BrotherBelial.3094:

You are an unlucky one. Every map I get on is a normal do the events, not seen a chests farm map in ages.

On my maps there are no chest farmers, but i also never see people doing events.
Only when the map is at 90%+ suddenly they all appear out of nowhere.

Problem are not the chests but the whole shuttle mechanisms.

Every time I want to do the event, I simply start a taxi.

Yes it takes a little longer if its a new map without progress, but it works every time 100%.

Taxi people, communicate in chat to coordinate stuff like asking which fortress needs help, etc. Explain bosses before the events start and you will always get your stuff done.

I’d love if fractal skins dont drop directly.
Just drop a fracftal weapon box that allows to pick a skin.

That would still make them somewhat rare, but you’d actually be happy to get a box rather than mace skin #23 while you farm for the sword.

But then again Anet really loves RNG so I dont see that happening.

“2k gold cheap at xxx.com”

No thanks.

WvW is still crap, pvp is stil weird, pve wont get any new content.

Wait for HoT and dont ask here, just check some HoT reviews for a more objective impression.

You cant change from b2p to subs.

Thats not how this industry works.

And yes 90% of the GW2 players most likely wouldnt have picked up the game if it had a sub. I guess there would be quite a few willing to pay a sub since they are used to the game now. But It’d still be a minority.

And as I said, it is 100% impossible to change an MMO from b2p to a sub.
Doesnt matter who you are, this will kill a game overnight.

Its quite simple:

Yes the most efficient way of running content is Berserker/Assassin.
Yes thats not terribly interesting for some.

But there is absolutely nothing stopping you from running Cleric Guardians, Magi Eles, Soldier Thiefs or whatever you want.

I do not join any metazerk or AP based group, mostly on principle actually.
But I have no problem running dungeons or Fractals with whatever build I like.

Conditions are different, they dont play into the Zerk only debate because conditions are just another form of damage. I am pretty sure Anet wont fix conditions to be honest. They had 3 years and they havent done anything about it.
Even if they would fix them now, it would make Anet look like an incredibly incompetent company.

I personally think Anet doesnt care about conditions.
Its completely impossible for them not to be able to come up with a solution for 3 years if they even care a little bit.

Its mostly because Engi were supposed to be a heavy armor class early on.
This would have meant the only open combination would be medium armor high hp.

Instead we have 2 medium armor medium hp classes and I dont see Anet caring to balance around arbitrary concepts when they threw them out of the window pre release.

Bosses with faster, but weaker attack dont just nerf dodging.

They also nerf blocks that block only a limited number of attacks like Aegis, Arcane Shield or the Guard Focus block.

Pugging with a premade party is always dangerous.

If I see my party is premade I wont even talk to them because I know they will kick me instantly if I do as much as asking for banners or reflections, etc.

Which is not the way it should be, but in my experience premades can bully others easily and get away with it.

Its not like there is more magic for every dragon that dies.

There are only less magic users/customers.

There was a phase where magic was abundant, yet the dragons slept.
Once the dragons are gone its going to be like that again.

To be honest though, I doubt Anet has a world building concept as backround for their future story work.
They will just make it up as they go.
The GW2 story is much more character than world focused/driven anyway.

Anet should have used the chance of April first and removed all aoe target limits for one day.

Zerg free wvw ftw.

jessiejay.3625:

Go assassin stats, signet of fury, superior rune of rage for 100% fury uptime to drop for great justice into something else, omnomberry ghost for precision and stealing health on crit hits, maintenance oil for precision, will be best for a PS Build. I survive from hp steals, healing signet, and being light on my feet. Even if you did soldier stats,it is still a deadly environment.

Dont underestimate the power of hp steal in crits. Sometimes i can gain 253 per 1-2 seconds. With stated above set up im 101.7% crit chance to make 25 might in 2 seconds on a mob.

The rune also has 5% dmg always as lonng as you have fury up, granted from GS burst skill. Yes above 66% crit is overkill but i maintain party might stacks with no guard nor ele.

P.S. be careful not to fully advertise this build. Id hate for it to get nerfed lol.

This looks good, especially because I really dont want to spend 50-60g on Hoelbrak/Strengh runes.

The utilities would be FGJ, a banner and Fury Signet I guess?

Players will feel super dumb once they notice they need to pay to keep playing.

Its also bad to make S2 chapter 1 free without making S1 playable again.

If anything Anet should create something to recap the events of season 1 ingame.
A trailer, video, something like that.

Lets say a 5-10 minutes long detailed recap trailer of what happened after Zaitans defeat. This should be automatically added as personal story element after Arah.

This would hook people up to buy LS2.

So I thought about finally fixing my Warrior and giving her a useful build.

Since I mostly play Warrior because its somewhat easy and I plan to pug higher level Fractals with her I thought about getting a bit more tanky.

Now here is the problem: I wanted to go for a PS build with Knight gear.
The gear itself should be fine for the build since it has as much crit as Zerk, but I wonder:

Does the Armor actually make enough of a difference to survive longer in Fractals?

laokoko.7403:

I’m a bad player so I range.

It gets annoying playing with other melee pretend to be though

If you die melee, it’s not because other people is ranging. You are just not as good as you think you are.

I don’t mind people melee and die. But it get annoying when the person die complain about other people ranging.

This is wrong.

Melee depends a lot on dps. Most builds have limited tools to survive in melee.
So if you want melee and your ranger insists on using his LB at max range, you might actually die because your melee squad ran out of cooldowns before the boss ran out of HP thanks to your ranger ruining your dps.

Then again both the melee and the range guys are at fault.
But its not like you can go “not my problem” if your group dies because of (your) low dps.

RoseofGilead.8907:

You’ll never be able to go into a lowbie zone and one-shot everything in sight; that’s not how this game works, and it won’t change.

Yes this is how the game works.

Scaling or not, a properly equipped lvl 80 character will oneshot mobs in the starter zone.

But the game overall doesnt get easier, higher level zones are typically more challenging.

Silk, Mihtrill and Elder Wood are worth quite a bit so sell them for cash.

Leather is garbage, either pray for another Anet economy kittenup like they did with silk or sell it to NPCs.

I am/were in a similar situation like you.
I stopped playing shortly after the Mad King Thorn event and came back recently.

I personally wouldn’t recommend coming back at the moment, especially if you left because of living story being inaccessible.

There is basically no new content at all in the game compared to pre LS GW2.

LS season 1 is unavailable and most likely will be unavailable for quite some time.
LS season 2 needs to be bought with gems and is heavily based on characters introduced in season 1.
The trait fiasco makes creating new characters intensely frustrating and despite over half a year of complains Anet still hasn’t changed it.
They plan on fixing it but talk is cheap.

The only new content are 2 maps that actually arent bad, but are nothing special either and have been turned into grind fests anyway.

I personally would wait for HoT, then get some actual info about it from neutral sources and decide based of that. There wont be any new content until HoT anyway so you don miss anything.
Overall GW2 is probably worse than it was 2 years ago, especially if you care about the story.

uknortherner.2670:

Test.8734:

uknortherner.2670:

Get over it and stop presuming you speak for everybody.

He never said he speaks for everybody. He did say a lot of people are bothered by this year’s April Fools, which is obviously true, considering the huge forum outcry. Or are you going to pretend the massive amount of posts complaining never happened?

A “huge” outcry by professional moaners and attention seekers who represent probably 1% of the total GW2 population? Sorry, but the forums are not representative of the community at large and I’ve seen no complaints in-game about this April Fools joke.

Regardless of whether or not what op says is true, that is simply a k..o argument that could be used to shut down any sort of justified critique.

Now here’s the deal. I have actually seen people complaining ingame, they managed to tell me how to get rid of the hat as well (use a tonic/transformation)
Mind you that was right after it started last night. I sure as hell wont play while this kitten is forced onto everybody.

And nobody minds the joke itself, people just want to disable it because it gets old really fast.

I havent seen any other company come up with something as boring and as forced as well. Its really weird that Anet insults its customers like that.

Yeah this kitten means no GW2 for me today.

Its funny for about a minute before it gets super annoying.
Hell its not very creative either, just random kitten.

KotCR.6024:

Sorin.4310:

There isn’t a specialization as effective as damage, but I’m not sure there can be. Without the original trinity, most of the focus has to be DPS. How could a control build compete with DPS? And I don’t mean within the possible control in the game. I mean how could you change control to be as effective as DPS?

Isn’t this why we are getting the break-bar with HoT though?
The idea being that you can just sit there and have everyone DPS, but that it’s actually faster and more efficient (and therefore, optimal), to knock out the break-bar first, and then kill it.

For example, when the break-bar cracks, the boss takes 50% more damage. So you could just have a full team of ‘zerkers whacking away, but it’d be much faster (and therefore more efficient) to have one guy specced not ‘zerker, but mass CC in order to crack that break-bar as often as possible. The result being 4x ’zerkers and 1x CC’er clears the content faster and more efficiently than 5x ’zerkers would.

Support is a bit trickier to address, but then, as others have pointed out, we sorta already have that a functional, efficient, and at times, optimal, role in a dungeon team via might/vulnerability stacking, reflects, stat boosts, and stealth fields.

Please explain how Zerker gear reduces your CC.

Because I can totally run a hammer or mace with Zerk gear, and why wouldnt I?
You cant increase your CC with items.

You have to make a difference between build and gear.

Most current meta builds for pve are actually support builds.

You have stuff like PS Warriors, Thieves for stealth skips, Guards with reflections and endless blocks, Rangers with Forst Spirit and Spotter, etc.

The point is: utility doesnt scale with stats.
So while there are lots of support builds used, they dont need any specific items and usually go damage because, well why not?

Also: you can always make your own group with your own rules.
Even if I am really tired of borderline kittened noobs I do not run/join Zerk only or AP gated parties.

fear.1429:

Awsome thank you!

Is the pve immersive? Like less of a tremendous grind?

You dont need to farm potions for dungeons or stuff like that.
Its also releatively easy to get good items and doing the story will give you enough items to level properly except for the 64-79 level range where story and levelup items are worthless garbage.
But once you are 80 you’ll spend your time grinding skins.

A waste of resources for a gimmick few people will notice.

Steam is always more expensive than other sites.

There is literally no point of buying a game directly from Steam unless its on sale.

Celestial can be decent for certain builds in fractals and even dungeons.

Especially Guards can use it very well imo.

Test.8734:

ArenaNet’s excuse, often regurgitated, was that they need to make money somehow, considering how much content we got for free. Now that they are boxing the Living World Season 3 and calling it an “expansion”, that excuse has become invalid, but that won’t stop ArenaNet from trying to milk money as much as possible. They may not even have that many choices, considering how much they invested in the underperforming China release.

This is something that most people forget.

Living Story is not free content if its gated behind any sort of condition.

I started again back in December last year after quitting shortly after release and I dont get kitten for free. Its pretty hilarious if people tell me how much free stuff this game has, because for me GW2 has less updates than every other MMO I ever played.

Brother Grimm.5176:

1. Anet has provided FREE content updates up to the point of the HoT expansion (and beyond that expansion). Arguments have been made that the introduction of an expansion (Heart of Thorns) is changing this point (PAYING for content) but it remains to be seen if the “price is right”.

1. While some argue the (previous FREE) content provided is lacking or sparce or not what players really want, it IS FREE to anyone that purchased the game (some timed log in requirements have been made to unlock certain content).

The game is based on these facts and while you don’t have to like the economic model your choices are to accept it or play something else.

1. Since all LS content is time locked, people that buy the game after the content was released or didnt log in do not get any free content at all. Especially since the 2 feature packs since released arent any more content than what other MMOs just patch in for free anyway.

2. Post HoT updates arent “free” if they only update hoT content. After all you have to buy that content first to get the “free” updates that build upon this content.

The point is that Anet makes money every time you want to change your skins.
Yeah sure you get some for free, but those are more like freebees from the drug dealer.

Once you are hooked up, you will buy them to sustain your habits.

Hell no.
It would only lead to people being bullied for playing how they want.

carabidus.6214:

Victuswolf.5286:

There are a significant amount of bosses, events and champions in this game where going into Melee range is suicide, counter productive and offers ZERO advantage but PLENTY of disadvantages.

Because bosses deal out ridiculous amounts of damage in melee, any player who chooses to go all melee (i.e. equipping both weapon sets – warrior, guardian) AND wears heavy armor should receive less damage while in melee range only. Justification: these classes are close-quarters specialists and should be encouraged to melee.

Engagement range has absolutely nothing to do with armor class/weight.

The game is balanced around the fact that melee weapon have 2-3 times as much dps as ranged weapons because they are a higher risk.

That is your reward for going melee, insane dps that no ranged weapon will ever achieve.

The disadvantage of ranged weapon is getting your head bashed in by mobile melee weapons because they do more damage.

If you use 2 sets of high mobility melee weapons, you will beat dual ranged setups in a lot of situations. For example Sword/Shield+ GS on Warriors has like 4 gap closers.

DiogoSilva.7089:

There’s something that I didn’t quite understand in the article. Will Dry Top/ Silverwastes be changed in any way, or will they remain the same as they are currently?

They will be changed.

Which is good, opening the bonus chests is way to annoying considering how much you get.

Who cares about Legendaries.

The new map reward system is so much more important.

Hell this will make Legendaries a realistic goal rather than something absurd that nerds spend years on grinding for. On top of actually fixing the super inconvenient system used to hand out rewards in SW while also improving all maps with a nice new reward system.

Tree.3916:

If you are in a guild, doing guild missions is the easiest way to getting ascended trinkets (earrings, rings, and necklace). I mention this over the other gear because trinkets have the highest stat distribution of any other item in the game.

The easiest way to get them is to buy them for Laurels.
You dont need to do anything for those.

@op
GW2 is a bit weird when it comes to casual players.

It is fundamentally an incredibly casual game, but there are few lategame goals that are realistic for casuals.

For the most part you will be farming for skins.
Ascended weapons are quite possible too.

But ascended armor and Legendaries are flat out impossible for casual players to “farm”.
You might actually get them some day, but it will take months at least for ascended armor and possibly years for legendaries if you play casually.

Teq is in a good position difficulty and mechanics wise.
He doesnt drop kitten most of the time, so there is no reason to rework the fight to make it harder.

The other dragons could really use an update tho, especially the kitten shatterer who is so easy that you basically cant get the achievement anymore.

Rangers are a somewhat selfish class.
You also wont be using your longbow in any half decent group unless you are trolling.

Rangers basically offer 2 things to groups: Spotter and Frost Spirit.
Both of these increase dps.

Guardians mostly offer defensive utility, but have a lot more things from reflections to buffs and ridiculous amounts of aoe aegis blocks.
Guardian dps are mediocre, but especially GS has absurdly large aoe.

Guardian ranged weapons (its basically only the scepter) suck a bit, while Rangers shouldnt be using ranged weapons most of the time, but if they do Longbow is actually a very nice weapon.

To be honest, all you will get here are links to meta build and advice to run like Soldier or Knight gear if you die with Zerk.

All things considered you should just take a look at your traits and try to find something that will help you more directly. That might be different than what the guides say but those guides arent worth much, especially if you are new to the class.

Randulf.7614:

But keeping them there makes them money. More money realistically because you open the item up to wider audience

“I can buy it later, its not like its going anywhere”
vs
“Oh kitten this might not be in the store for months if I dont get it right now”

Just run a few regular dungeon to get used to the build before you go into fractals.

If you have to buy a completely new set of gear just to learn how to play your class its going to take forever.

Scholar if you only run perfectly organised groups.

Pack, Ogre or Ranger if you dont.

Magnnus.5169:

This is pretty much how most games do it. ANet made a conscious decision to tie changing your appearance to gems, and it’s one of their biggest money makers. While it could be nice, I doubt it will happen.

It wouldnt be hard to charge gems for every custom outfit that you want to create/save.

It could be slightly less than what gemstore outfits cost, say 600 gems per outfit saved.

And weight arguments are silly in the light of clearly weighted outfits like Ceremonial Plate, Shadow Assassin or Ancestral.

There is no need to craft anything but ascended and possibly jewelry.

You will get a full set of rare gear from the story, and you can buy exotic armor for Karma and dungeon tokens.

The only thing that isnt easily handed out is quality jewelry.

Its not worth processing all Dragonite Ore into Ingots.

Every Ingot eats 15s of reagents which doesnt sound like its much, but if you consider the amounts of ore to process, it end up costing a ton of money.

Only process as much ascended materials as you need, maybe get a small reserve and delete the rest.

Sube Dai.8496:

Conncept.7638:

robotosis.4872:

zerker all day errday

I take the mordrem husks down twice as fast than any zerker with my dire elementalist, especially those ridiculously tanky slingers and smashers. They just have too much armor for power to be effective, it’s kind of become condi builds ‘thing’ in the SW, like tanks dealing with the wolves that attack too often for dodge to be sufficient defense or the AoE spammers that go after the menders. Though admittedly zerker is most affective at nearly everything else, and most of the games content still has no ‘thing’ for condi builds to do at all, let alone be effective at.

Until just one other person in condition gear shows up, and overwrites all your damage…

You non-zerkers really need to read up on how conditions work…

And thats already a problem for fort defenses with only a hand full of people.

Once you get to bosses condi build are about as useful as full Nomad gear.

Though the amount of people that said they run condi here would explain why sometimes even the easiest bosses fail on full maps.

I am absolutely certain that it wont be any less than 30 bucks, with 40 being more realistic.

Its quite simple: everybody that is willing to spend 30 will buy it for 40 as well.
So it will sell for 40+, because Anet knows that people will buy it regardless of how much they whine about it.

And the irony is that everybody thats going buying it for 40+ is the reason its not cheaper.

Most people buying games just have no idea of how market mechanisms work.
They just buy stuff thats obviously overpriced and then complain that it was overpriced, but without learning anything from it.

ProtoGunner.4953:

One thing that really bugs me are rangers with Point Blank Shot and Mesmers with Illusionary Wave. They just hit those on cooldown, completely mindless without any sense, kicking them out of ice bow AoE and 100b etc. What the hell do they think, really… I mean you just have to SEE it that it is maybe a bad idea just to use those skills.

This was one of the main reasons to switch to Ranger for me.

There are too many fools that make SW seriously hard for melee classes by spaming their knockbacks for no actual reason.

And I am not the only one, recently there are increasingly more Rangers in SW.

Berserker gear all the way.
I’m kittening terrible at this game, but I had no issue playing my full zerk Guard in SW.

If anything Engis suck there because of the sorta mediocre damage.
Shouldn’t be that much of a problem since Engis are great for groups and virtually everything is done in groups anyway.

I currently run a Zerk Ranger because I got tired of having to use the crappy Guardian Scepter a lot because so many bosses are fought at range.

If you play 10-19 Fractals without AR and die it is your fault.
Just dont play those until you get AR and you’ll be fine.

Its actually quite easy to get quick AR by just buying ascended rings and simple infusions from the fractal trader.

Stacking might with the Guard staff is also terrible.

The irony is that Warriors are actually more of a support class than Guards in the current meta. So good luck switching to Warrior.

Just learn English.
Its one of the easier languages to learn and it might actually help you career wise.

Education doesn’t hurt.