Guild Wars 2

I mainly PvE, but I run SB & Dual-Axe with Fire/Frost Traps and LF, and River Drake, and I just annihilate groups of mobs (can’t really be done with squishy gear, though, you need to take some hits).

Throw down traps, follow your Drake in with #4 to open (find the best line on the way in), wait for Area Might (now that tail swipe is fixed), pop #5 for whirl combo + melee pain, fire off the Drake’s lightning attack, LF out, and clean up with Auto Attack if anything’s still standing.

It wouldn’t work nearly as well in PvP/WvW, but it’s a great PvE build, especially for when you can round up a bunch of mobs into a group.

Sure, and we can solve world hunger by letting famine pick off all the people in need, but it’s not ultimately a helpful concept, is it?

Thanks for sticking to the letter of ‘not for “They suck so bad”’ comments, if not the spirit, anyway.

I think most of us can agree to the statement “Spirits need improvement” (the majority of that most might also flat out agree “they suck”, but that’s not the point here). So I’d like to just accept that fact and move on. Let’s also accept that we probably won’t see adjustments on these for a month, two, maybe more.

This thread is not for “They suck so bad” comments – go find a complaint thread and put those there.

So given all that, the question I pose is:

How can we use Spirits right now, in their present form?

I’d like to see a commentary that ranges across:
- Usefulness (Which Spirit buffs/abilities do you like? Why?)
- Synergy (What other skills/traits really help to make a Spirit a bit more viable? Think outside the box, not just the more health/movement/etc.)
- Strategy (What kind of placement/timing/purpose might you use a Spirit for?)
- Context (Second to strategy, different uses for PvE, WvW, sPvP?)

Personally, I don’t use them, but I’d kind of like to try it out (at work through the week, and just moved, so I don’t really have a lot of time to do so atm), and I thought that a number of the smart people around here might have some ideas to toss around about how to do so.

I like the consistency with which people ignore other influences… like the fact that GW2’s economy is relatively young, and there is a daily increase in the amount of available wealth in the system (I’d love to see hard numbers on that, but it’s safe to assume).

The youth of the economy suggests that we will continue to see basic inflationary increases in the cost of “staple” items, probably at higher rates than you might think, until the volume of wealth generated daily represents a smaller portion of the total wealth in the system. Somebody in another thread rightly pointed out that at launch, a few gold was heaps… now 100g is not nearly so far out of reach.

There is of course some additional volatility caused by speculators, and the odd “manipulator” (which is really just monopolized speculation usually, I’d guess), but there’s nothing inherently wrong with that and it’s something that anybody can do anyway with the right capital.

The bigger concerns are false supply generated by bots, but as long as ANet continues to stay on top of that (and hopefully improve prevention), I’d hope the supply volumes would level off to a more appropriate value. The bad news is that prices will go up, but the good news is that with less volume, it’s a lot easier for regular players to impact the market.

Yep. Quite easy in fact.

I would rather see a boost to our range with the longbow (beyond traiting, a base 1300 yards would be great) than an increase to damage. I think that’s a more versatile avenue of “unparalleled archery” than just damage can do, as it increases control as well as damage (indirectly via reduction of incoming damage by kiting and consequently less time/slots blown healing/popping protective skills).

Player down should reset all pets’ stacks imo… I think that would be a nice perk/incentive to trying harder to avoid the downed state.

“To see if it’s worth it” sort of suggests that you haven’t logged in for a while… is that the case?

If so you’ll have a pile of cumulative patch content to pull down from previous minor patches, I would assume, which would result in more data.

I don’t think Ranger Pets should get flat reduction. What I wouldn’t mind seeing is a Trait that would have a pet dodge when you dodged, or something that would enable a controllable pet dodge, or at least a much more responsive “Return to Me”.

Other battle companions (minions, spirit weaps, etc.) that don’t have a control mechanism should get reduced AoE damage, however.

I like how everybody jumps on this like it’s ABSOLUTELY ZOMG GOTTA BE NINJA NERF.

Or… maybe…

When they say they can’t release patch notes until the release, they actually mean it, and there was something that they wanted to do here, but weren’t able to finalize. Perhaps unfortunately they didn’t fully remove some pieces from the patch set, resulting in this halfway state.

Mistakes happen. Obviously, in some form or another, this was one. They’ll fix it. Be patient.

Orion Templar.4589:

Agreed on Master’s Bond. I really would like to see Master’s Bond not reset on pet swap. It should only reset when either the player or the pet is downed. To me it should be similar to sigil of bloodlust where swapping does not reset the counter. Just because a pet is swapped he should not lose his stat buff since he is not dead/downed. It’s especially annoying if you run/swim through a patch of water for two seconds and lose the bond stack.

I think the happy medium here would be to remember stacks individually on Pets, and wipe it if they are moved out of the Pet Management selection or downed. You’d have to build stacks separately on each pet, but you wouldn’t have to lose that effort everytime you wanted to switch pets, which is generally pretty often and usually for a variety of reasons.

It could just have been a thematic decision (granted, a poor one). You’re more likely to need to huck a trap in a “Skirmish”. If you are practicing “Wilderness Survival”, I envision a scenario where you have more time to lay down your trap, so it’s less important to be able to do so at range.

Weak, I know, but I thought I’d give it a try!

You could just test all this stuff yourself. The onus doesn’t really need to be on ANet to provide that information – experimentation & stat determination are actually things that some people enjoy doing, so why take it away from them?

Go get 700 healing. Jump off a cliff. Heal yourself. Then bump up to 800 and try it again. Note the difference.

Then you’ll know what 800 Healing actually does

P.S. – Less glibly, part of the reason I think is that different skills, or types of skills, have different coefficients, so for something like Healing you can’t really flat-out say “This will give you 800 more health per heal”.

Sigil Text: “Your next attack after swapping to this weapon while in combat steals some health.”

“Next Attack” means it still effectively has a counter, even though that counter is just one. It just means that if that attack is mitigated by the target in any way that is not just a Miss, it will still reduce the counter by 1, but not actually apply the effect (I assume).

I’m heavily biased towards Rangers (always have been, since I started playing RPGs), so that would be my recommendation. I’ll say that the AoE lack can be resolved in a few ways:

1) Run an Axe/Axe weapon set – it’s an effective multi-target auto-attack, and the off-hand skills are very nice as well. I usually open with a Bow, and switch to the Axes if there are a lot of targets, or if I get hemmed into melee range.

2) River Drake. You have to pay attention to which way the little guy is facing, and where the enemies move during his cast, but if you can connect with the lightning breath attack, it’s a boatload of damage across all the targets near his nose.

3) Run a longbow, and get the trap-hucking trait in Skirmishing. Send your pet in, huck a frost trap to keep them from being able to redirect at you, and then pop Barrage.

You’re wandering a little bit from your own declarations here, so I’m not entirely sure where your motivation lies:

Ruruuiye.8912:

The problem with the market being inflated (whether by people dumping gems into gold and inflating the supply of currency or by manipulation) is not that someone won’t get their Legendaries in four months instead of six, it’s the rise of prices in ordinary items for casual and beginning players.

Ruruuiye.8912

My proposal would be: “Be prepared, in the intermediate future, to lengthen or do away with the leash between Rare (yellow) equipment and ectoplasms.”

There’s two problems with your points here… the first is that Rare items are intended to be, by definition, Rare. The degree to which that is the case is somewhat modified by the sheer quantity of players rolling the loot table at any given time (and then selling them), but on an individual drop basis, they are rare. Consequently, that moves them out of the “Ordinary items for casual & beginning players” category.

Furthermore, as an example, after getting 1 toon to 80, that’s the only one I have Rares on; I’m levelling up my other 4 toons together in chunks of 5 levels. I haven’t seen a Rare drop yet on any of them, but that’s ok, because (in PvE anyway) I’m more than capable enough in the greens I craft from all my drops. So again, Rares aren’t ordinary for beginners.

The second problem is that your solution to what seemed like a complaint of broad reference to the entire market really only addresses one specific item – ectos. New players aren’t looking for ectos. If somebody’s first exposure to the TP is trying to find ectos, they weren’t paying attention, and deserve whatever overpayment they make. Really, it just sounds like you want cheaper ectos, not like you’re offering a solution to “Market Manipulation”.

Just for the sake of argument… what would you actually do to fight “market manipulation” (a generally vague term, to begin with), and what would you do to ensure that said “solutions” are beneficial? What’s the proper metric to say “Yes, this is now an optimal system”?

Don’t forget crafting. It can provide a much-needed XP boost if you stay on top of it, and help you keep your gear relatively decent (though you may not always be able to make all the pieces you want from drops alone).

I would recommend a Necro, since you’re coming from a (presumably) long Warrior/Guardian leadup. Necro has the highest native health pool for clothies, and a more accessible baseline (imo) survivability as you’re levelling up.

Since you’ll probably have a significant melee habit to transition out of, I’d say Necro gives you the best bang for your buck when you forget you were supposed to stand back. :p

Having levelled all 5 races to at least level 40 so far, I can tell you that I found the human starting zone (Queensdale – extra odd, as it’s the only 1-17 starter zone) to be generally the worst for keeping up to speed with Personal Story levels. My human was a Mesmer, and I didn’t feel like I was having any harder a time finding events than the other races, but for whatever reason I was always a level or two behind.

It did take me a little while to get into my Necro. Some research into the builds & skills available might help pique your fancy, but honestly, you might just like another starting zone more (Sylvari probably had my favourite starter zone, but I found the Asura dialogue to be miles ahead in entertainment value… lippy little buggers).

Edit: Crafting does make a significant contribution if you stay on top of it, I’ve found, too.

I decided pretty quickly I didn’t like how much left-hand movement was required to hit the rest of the skills, but I also like having the full six-button movement setup (‘cause sometimes I’ll be trying to eat while I travel, etc.). So:

Movement: W/S/Q/E
Turn: A/D/Mouse
Jump: Space
Dodge: Mouse 4/Mouse 5
Weapon Skills: 1-5
Weapon Swap: F
Heal: H
Utility: R/V/G + Elite: X
Profession Skills: Alt + 1-4
Action: T

I use both my side-mouse buttons for Dodge because their positioning is a little awkward… but I can’t complain too much since I scored it at work when somebody got canned and left it behind.

Have you tried repairing your game?

If your connection really is super slow, maybe something got borked during the last update and a repair will fix it. I would hope the update would handle that at the time, so maybe something else did it too.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments#-repair

Mist Form works well for an Ele too. You might try using leap abilities of other classes too (Guardian Greatsword… 3 i think? for instance), but I don’t know for sure if those would work.

Make Scepter #1 a physical projectile.

They’re woefully lacking, and it opens up the option to flesh out #1 via the rest of your build with combo fields (or allies’) and not just having it do it on its own.

Well, no, if you want to get technical like that, what he really said was:

CrimsonTiger.8914:

A $20 value. If I log in right now and want to purchase the upgrade for my existing account, it costs 2000 gems. 1600 gems is the $20 mark, so 2000 gems would be $25. (yay maths)

He doesn’t actually say he wants to purchase it with money: “It costs 2000 gems”

Then he goes on to point out that 2000 gems would be $25, which is true if you want to pay cash, but he’s ignoring the fact that gems are not solely cash-dependant (for him; they are for somebody), which is my point: nobody is forced to shell out $25 directly for the upgrade. There are alternatives.

Actually, your argument isn’t quite accurate anyway… upgrading your game to Deluxe costs some combination of people $25. It might cost you $25. It might also cost you $0.

Gems are the relevant currency, and $ is not the only way to get Gems.

It’s entirely possible that ANet has had this deal in mind since launch, and has waited for a certain threshold of active gold in the game before offering it.

Tallis.5607:

It is the flat tax that account for it.

You got to see it like this…

- When you convert 100g into gems, you only get 85g ‘worth of gems’: the sell fee is 15%. Even though you do not see it as a buy, the seller only gets 85g.

- Say the convertio was 1 gold = 100 gems.

- When you sell 8,500 gems, you should get 85g. But there again is a 15% fee, so you only get 72.25g.

=> if you buy gems for 100g and resell them immediatly, you only get 72.25 gold.

This means that the price of gems has to go up with 38% (72.25 to 100) before you make a profit reselling.

Your math is correct, but you’re not actually answering his concern: the flat tax rate should always mean that the resale value should always go up if the purchase cost goes up – not necessarily into profit.I

If you buy 100 @ 1g, you can then (in theory) sell at 85s. If the cost of 100 rises to 1g10s, you should then be able to sell for 93.5s. You’re still not profiting, but you’re getting a better return than you were.

So it is indeed strange that, if there is a flat tax, the purchase price has gone up but his resale value has gone down.

Maybe there are incremental tax rate bumps at certain price ranges? Tax the rich and all.

SOCIALISM!

Ponts.9516:

Also remember the QZ that comes from pet swap buffs pets too. If you are quick enough you can cut a pretty big portion of the charge time off with swapping and instantly hitting f2.

This isn’t really viable, imo. I’ve noticed (at least since last patch, honestly I didn’t pay attention before that) that trying to chain together a swap to Drake + Drake F2 (At least with River Drake) fails most of the time… the Drake seems to come out facing you rather than the enemy, and if you don’t wait for it to pick up the target, the F2 skill just misses and goes on cooldown.

There’s probably a few dissenters, but I just wanted to say that I am really impressed with how well the Jumping Puzzles have been put together. I’ve done about 10 so far, and with the bulk of them, I feel as satisfied completing them as I might if I had gone out to buy a game solely made about that kind of movement puzzling.

To see the kind of depth of required movement, the variety of “live” obstacles, and the artwork alongside it all wrapped up as a sideshow in an MMO of all places is… mind-blowing.

Great work.