Guild Wars 2

Bleeds on a power weapon are not invaluable.

Put them on the ranger sword on the other hand with cripple and poison, and make the sword more consistent with gap closers from auto and monarch’s leap, that would be better. For a 900 range condi weapon there’s the shortbow. Why have the axe for this?

Imagine if Splitbalde was the sword #2 skill and it still chained into Monarch’s Leap as normal. A 5 bleed shotgun chaining into a leap forward.

Imagine that Hornet’s Sting was the axe #2 and it didn’t chain into anything; it was a straight jump-back for a 900 range weapon so you could keep your distance.

Ranger has 2 main hand weapons. Imagine if the sword had a straight condi focus and the axe a straight power focus – no messing about.

The story behind this post is all about Splitblade. I wondered why it’s on my axe at all after the similar greatsword skill (Maul) went on its own evolution from a condi skill on a power weapon to a power skill on a power weapon. That move made sense, and it means that axe and sword are also open to refinement towards strong roles like power for this and condi for that.

Think a bit more about Splitblade-> Monarch’s Leap on a sword/dagger or sword/torch ranger. That would be a really solid melee condi option. Add in a shortbow and perhaps some traps and that’s a spec with a strong focus.

How about an axe/warhorn or axe/axe ranger with Hornet’s Sting as skill #2. A clear mid-range focus on power skills, pets and boons. With clear power alternatives for melee (greatsword) and long range (longbow), Hornet’s Sting on axe would add a gap-opener to help the ranger stay at their ideal range.

It all makes sense. Axe and sword need these changes.

(PS: if anyone does end up crying “nerf splitblade!” when it’s on the sword #2, well, let’s cross that bridge when we get there.)

I was having a spring clean of my screenshots, sorting them into years and I found this.

This is from the first day of SAB, April 1st 2013. Anyone want to share something else from the original release?

Just tried on my necromancer in PvE-land. Mini no longer counts. Flesh Golem does.

Mesmer is using Traveler runes anyway. My thief however might be sad.

edit: thief is a bit sad. Rune bonus applies if a creature is summoned (thief, snow wurm, mistfire wolf etc.)

Nice!

I wonder what the healing output of Mantra of Pain on auto-cast is if it’s traited with Restorative Mantras?

I do actually do this but I’ve never run the maths on it. I get big green numbers in open world pve and that’s good enough for me.

They already offer a unique mechanic. I use mantras all the time, traited for a 3rd charge, heal on charge and depending on my weapons I’ll take the 20% cooldown reduction too.

I’m more than happy with the current implementation.

I’m reminded of a shop in the Final Fantasy 7 town of Mideel. Inside the shop, there is a locked door and if you fool with it the owner catches you and you basically act innocent.

Now, outside the shop you can find an old key between some floorboards in the walkway. It might fit that locked door, right? So you take the key and try it in the lock, but the key breaks and the owner catches you again. Sheepishly, you try to explain that you were messing with the door to see what lies beyond.

At this the shop owner laughs and there is a 4th wall moment with the level designer, who speaks through the shop owner. He says that there is nothing behind the door, that it exists only create an illusion of a bigger world, that it is there to make people wonder what is behind it. The world would feel smaller if the door were not there, even though in fact the world is not any bigger for its existance.

Isgarren’s tower is the same as the door. It exists to make people wonder what’s inside.

I jumped and hit F for that one. It is a bit odd that you don’t need a mastery ability to get there.

Once you get the glider unlocked you can go to the waypoint in the demo and glide to another one, and that really does need a mastery ability.

I found the initial confusion to be brief. The “unlock and then grind” quickly becomes a familiar system and I really don’t have a problem with it.

I played both sessions from start to end, so 4 hours with a break. I chose to play mesmer.

The content is certainly evolving well and the main demo area is bigger than people realise once verticality is taken into account. Pocket Raptors are cute and explorers are going to love the map.

I managed to get to 2 Maguuma Mastery Orbs and channel them for mastery points. These are going to be a lot of fun… I used the glider to get to one, and beyond the orb itself leads outside the demo area into the Itzel Grounds, which I managed to reveal with a bit more gliding.

Masteries

I’m only going to have a first impression once, so here we are…

• The masteries window was initially hard to find, but once tipped off by map chat that it existed is in a logical place.
• Activating my first mastery and having xp flow to it was more difficult than it needed to be. I placed my first point in the Mushroom mastery, but I didn’t realise I needed to tick a box as well to “equip” the mastery line. The first line a player puts a point into should probably auto-equip.
• I didn’t initially notice the Glider line, as I had to scroll down to reveal it. I did that by accident. Maybe it’s not an issue.
• After learning my first mastery ability (unlock+xp gain both done), the system felt intuitive and easy to use.

Abilities are fun. Overall I’m liking the mastery system and looking forward to the rest.

Adventure

I had quite a few goes at getting the gold reward but I’m not quite there yet. Think I had 82/100 at one point. Other than being rather good fun(! It’s own reward in my opinion), it’s a mysterious activity.

Dynamic Events

The only one I want to bring up is the bonus after killing off the five Burrowers (enemy spawners), which I didn’t see get completed once. There is a strict time limit and the 5 tentrils you have to kill are not marked on the radar… very tough! Otherwise, a nice cycle of events.

Map

Just a tease for other players… I took this screenie of my map showing some currently out-of-bounds areas.

I still have a melandru set and saffron bread but I’ve not actually found the need to use them yet. At least I’m ready I guess, just in case.

I’ve made over 100 ascended items (60+ weapons, 40+ armour parts) and I’m perfectly happy with what components I can buy versus what I have to grind out myself.

I’m also happy about the “I made this!” factor, that people who have this stuff make a personal time investment in the actual manufacture of their gear.

To get that final bit of polish on a character, there should be some emotional investment. More than anything that means spending time.

You should see what it does to the chickens in Ebonhawk.

(run for your life!)

Now would be a good time to get rid of the unlock order and let guilds unlock the activities they want to do first, first.

ArenaNet should let guilds choose the unlock order on the whim of their membership. No harm in that at all.

Now maybe in the beginning there was a good reason for a strict order, but I don’t see it any more. It should go.

I don’t see why rerolls won’t be possible. There’s a beta character slot, if you want to try out a variety of classes that can only benefit the test. I’m probably going to start with a mesmer, and I’m sure I’ll try out a few other classes in that slot if I have the time.

Similar issue, also resolved with a machine restart.

Great addition! Well done Anet.

Also yes, wouldn’t mind dye collections.

Some of the comedy gold is quite well hidden away…

In Master Blackforge’s Steading in Hoelbrak, a conversation goes like this:

Axes are fun.
Somone should build a cannon that shoots axes.
Yeah! Or a bomb full of axes that fly out when it explodes.
You could shoot that bomb out of a cannon.
Magnificent! We should think of more ideas and write them down. These are great.

Nice tip about getting all 3 procs. That’s a lot of burning

I agree that the shield is bad.

I posted an idea for a new skill 4 here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Bring-back-Pulsing-Blade-Turn/first#post4747766

And as for skill 5, I’d like to see this being usable on the run so you can cover allies while on the move as a group. I was comparing this skill with Refraction (trident 4)… that skill might be a bit silly on land, but if Shield of Absorption was between that and where it is now it would be better. Perhaps 6s duration with 25s cooldown.

Archon – Longbow.

Main reason being the Bow of Truth being the only spirit weapon we can’t wield, plus the lack of a martial ranged weapon. Imagine if you will, an arch-angel in plate armed with a greatbow. Boom.

Wow, what is pulsing blade turn?

Ex-DAoC players will be very familiar with this skill type. It’s an aegis that is refreshed at a regular interval, primarily used to defend allies from incoming attacks.

Why should a guardian block attacks aimed at allies anyway? Oh wait.

Right. I was just looking at a piece of profession art and thought it ironic that the guardian is represented by the shield and mace. The mace can block an attack but the shield is a pretty bad weapon for negating attacks aimed at allies, or even yourself.

GW1 had a warrior skill called Protector’s Defense, and I thought GW2 could bring back a similar skill on the guardian shield on slot #4. This would be called Symbol of Aegis.

The basic symbol would last 3s with a 20s cooldown and apply aegis for 1s on creation and 3 further times on each pulse on up to 5 allies. Like other symbols it would tick for damage and be a light field.

Existing traits in Honor and Valor would allow the duration to be extended to 5s and the cooldown reduced to 16s, radius increased and pulse healing added like any other symbol.

Think about this symbol in conjunction with existing main-hand weapons: mace, sword, scepter. Defend your allies while using any of these weapons!

This is to do with items like the Mysterious Seed, Ley Line Infused Stone, Vial of Sacred Glacial Water and Pile of Phantasmal Residue which I deleted on every single one of my characters some time ago, before Pristine Fractal Relics were easier for me to get.

The TL;DR of this is I’d like to see a vendor with these items available for those of us who can’t just run an alt through the story to re-aquire them, to make Mawdrey and Mawdrey II.

And now the longer version…

When Mawdrey first appeared I was very excited to collect these items and run around cultivating the little guy. But then disaster – you needed Pristine Fractal Relics! Horror. Total deal breaker at the time. Time to ragequit this otherwise very enjoyable quest because somebody, somewhere, decided to strongarm players into Fractals… no thanks. I’ll just pass.

Some time later the dailies changed and it became possible, occasionally, to solo a single fractal for 1 Pristine Relic. Indeed I now have 9. Which means I can make Mawdrey… except I deleted all the 1-time rewards 8 times over, for each of my 8 characters. I’m probably not the only person to do this and not have any alts who can just go get the items.

So now I’m thinking well, why not have an NPC is the Priory, say, who can check if I’ve done a particular story step and offer a second chance. I mean seriously, I never thought I’d see those Prisine Fractal Relics, ever.

I propose: put the auto-revive buff on the target, not the caster.

In response to the balance changes I’d like to put this change forward, seeing as the fire attunement effect on this skill is problematic.

The current problem for the caster is, if you are likely to be downed it’s during the cast. If you survive the cast you are likely not going to be downed in the 15s of the buff, and you wouldn’t want to deliberately take advantage of the auto-rez because you’d face losing stacks etc.

I’m most actively using this skill in the Silverwastes to rez keep lords, either in water for a full heal or earth for multi-target rez if there’s a few other npcs obscuring the corpse, rarely the air version to pull the body out of danger but never the fire version.

If the fire version puts the auto-rez buff on the target then they get a 15s grace period in which they will get a second rez if they are quickly downed again. That seems like a decent option to have, competing with the other attunement effects.

The joy of clones..! I managed to make a group photo all by myself in the House of Riannoc. It’s so pretty. Also… new costume! I had the original version of this on my GW1 characters so it was basically an impulse purchase. Did you know the original version had big black wings? I’m hoping they might get added as a back item or something.

Happy Hallowe’en

The guardian is possibly at their weakest when… on their own, without weapon heals, surrounded by dredge!

On the other hand it seems you can’t go wrong with a staff, in a group. Even naked and without traits.

The guardian does come across as a class that has to comprimise in ways that frustrate me, as I play classes that don’t make such comprimises. But then the guardian has all these mechanics that allow me to play in a whole new way, ironically as a powerful attack and counter-attack oriented character that “tanks” poorly… and I always thought tanking was what guardians were supposed to be good at.

So the role I settled on was more of a zealot than a priest, but yeah I still get some healing/rezzing powers too.

For support I’m actually digging the mantra/phantasm mesmer with 3-use mantras, mantra cooldown, mantras heal and mender’s purity… and I still get to wear mainly knight’s/zerker’s because healing power just isn’t needed on that (PvE/WvW).

I mention this because this was the role I traditionally associated with my guardian but I gave up on it when I felt like my mesmer was blowing it out of the water because she also had boon strips and great damage options on top of the support, access to stealth and reflects all on the same bar.

What the guardian was doing better was combining hard control options (greatsword pull, wards, immobilise) with area damage. Two-handed options are especially strong.

You want Vials of Condensed Mists Essence? No problem! Do the start of the grawl fractal and farm those guys.

As you said you were learning I’d say take a carrion devourer (tanky, ranged) and a river drake (cleaving melee attack, lightning breath).

Skills wise I’d default to Troll Unguent, Signet of the Wild, Signet of the Hunt, Lightning Reflexes and Rampage as One. My weapon preference is greatsword/longbow but use whatever you’re comfortable with. I often just camp greatsword unless absolutely have to shoot something.

Beyond the grawl fractal you can just go exploring the other fractals on your own. There’s no pressure by yourself. I know the underwater fractal can be easily soloed at level 1 difficulty since I’ve done it and so have some of my guildies… same goes for uncategorised fractal (the one with the harpies and the mad asura golemancer guy), I’ve done that solo on my ranger too. But really, if you’re just interested in vials then farm some easy mobs at the start of a fractal and then bail out / restart when they’re dead.

One of the things I love seeing in-game is norn paintings. Sometimes you can find this art on the internet in their original form but there’s this one that I have only ever found in the Fawcett’s Bounty treasure ship.

So the picture in question is this norn female in the round frame. I’ve looked around for it without success. Has anyone else seen it anywhere else in-game or elsewhere?

A selection of my professions right now

Wolfie enters the Matrix.

I didn’t play the gauntlet last year but heard people raving about it, especially Liadri so this year it was a must attend.

I got my first Liadri kill on engie before I started looking how other people were doing it, after which I repeated the feat on my warrior and mesmer. Really happy to do it on mesmer since she was the character that had done all the other bosses up to Liadri.

8 Orb Liadri was on my engie, as was High Stakes Gambler, Meatless Murder and regular Liadri. All other achievements were done by my mesmer.

Imo the title should be for 8 orbs and the mini for the regular kill. Waaay too many people in LA with the title. I’d really like to separate the regular killers from the 8 orbs ones because THAT’s the one I want to show off

It appears that +% boon duration (all boons) and +% boon duration (specific boon) are now additive instead of multiplicative. This means your boons don’t last as long if you used to mix the two.

This is going by the tooltips.

This issue is likely to apply to many classes looking to boost a specific boon, but I’m just going to deal with the ranger and Nature’s Bounty in this post, and how that trait synergises with others.

I was fairly certain that pre-patch Rejuvenation and Oakheart Salve were providing 8s of regen with a 20% all boon bonus (from 4 Nature Magic, or 20 in old money) and a 33% regen bonus because these used to multiply:

5s base * 1.2 (all boon bonus) = 6s.

6s * 1.33 (nature’s bounty) = 8s.

Post patch the tooltip reads 7 3/4s, which suggests the bonuses are added now for a 53% bonus:

5s base * 1.53 (combined) = 7.65s.

What this means for Nature’s Bounty is that it is providing only 1 extra tick of regen healing instead of 2. Its effectiveness with Rejuvenation and Oakheart salve has been halved.

Restoring it to provide the second extra tick would require Nature’s Bounty to give +40% regeneration instead of +33%. Either that or the player is forced to go all the way to 6 Nature Magic or look to runes, but my personal example is 4 Nature Magic with Melandru Runes and they don’t have a boon focus.

So the balance question becomes, should Nature’s Bounty give 1 extra tick of regen or 2 with a 4 point Nature Magic investment. I thought it used to give 2, so I took the trait. But if it only gives 1 now, I would have to be desperate.

I support bannering npcs! It’s fun and tactical. The slot you put the rez in is a tactical choice that involves a sacrifice. For my warrior it means no Snow Leopard escape option, which significantly increases my mortality risk in the field, but maybe I’ll get a key rez off in exchange.

It’s all about breaking out of immobilize before the melee train arrives xD

I’m surprised the guardian’s not been mentioned more. Guardian staff aka the “loot stick” is a staple PvE/WvW weapon that can be paired with sceptre and focus/torch for a 100% ranged character that can bring all sorts of utilities and buffs for team play. If in doubt, go triple shout!

Hehehe, I spotted myself a few times running about, that was so much fun! A shout out to everyone who was there – a day of bobble-headed legends!!!

This has been asked for since beta phase, at least. It would be most welcome in the feature patch.

The halo is really weak-looking, like a piece of plastic tubing.

To me it looks like something’s missing on the shader, it’s missing bloom or high dynamic range or something to make it flare up like it’s a circle of light, like this:

(screenshots are just something I had to hand… maybe someone has the GW1 halo screenshotted?)

Great links Carlos, interesting read!

My guardian in a place of tranquility…

Overall for Living Story, I liked it.

I’ve gone down the formulaic route of expansions many times in many previous games. I was ready for a fresh kind of content delivery, and ArenaNet delivered.

I encourage the devs to keep exploring these fresh ideas and to not to be afraid of making the occasional mistake. It’s what makes GW2 stand out from everything else!

It makes changing characters in the airship very inconvenient.

Every time I change I load into the airship, get kicked, then have to load back in – that’s 3 loading screens.

Then I change back to my other character and go through another 3 loading screens.

I do my mystic forging on 1 character and different crafts on other characters… you know it’s actually been less hassle to use Rata Sum and just nip into the mists for mystic forging than use the gold ticket.

Even if we get white ticket refugees who never leave the airship, the auto-kicking is making my gold ticket too annoying to use. The auto-kick needs to be removed.

Asura don’t know how to throw a good moot :/

The spoiler tag is there for a reason. If you don’t want the story spoiled, look away.

So first, a short story.

After stomping Scarlet that first time, I noticed that 3 control panels behind her corpse become open to examination… there is a hint to come back as an engineer to understand things more fully.

So I come back on my engineer, and then I look again at these control panels…

Scarlet’s motive for everything is in the screenshot.

While appearance might be a way to tell humans apart, the same isn’t true of the norn. They’re all just norn.

Norn have light and dark skin for the same reasons they have light and dark hair. First, they’re not human. And second, just because.

Trying to find another reason is a waste of time! This is a fantasy world and anything goes. Like, how will this chainmail bikini actually protect me from a rampaging dragon?!

Just accept it and enjoy the game

My engineer’s look.

Combining the two is also possible..!

This concerns Tactics traits at 5, 15 and 25 points.

Enough has been said about the current versions with their focus on rezzing, so I’d like to move ahead and propose a new set centred around combos.

5 “Thrill Seeker” : Combos give adrenaline.

Gain a strike of adrenaline when you combo. 1s cooldown.

15 “On A Roll” : Combos give endurance

Gain 10% adrenaline when you combo. 1s cooldown.

25 “Battle Synergy”: Combos heal

Heal for ?? when you combo. ?? cooldown.

Notes

As it stands Tactics has something of a focus on the Longbow, Warhorn and banners, which are all combo-friendly weapons. I’d like the Tactics minor traits to encourage warrior players to make use of combos and be rewarded for doing so, and to abandon the current focus on revival (for which we have the Warbanner).

Specific Game Mode: WvW

Proposal Overview

“Inactive” pets evade attacks.

Goal of Proposal

An active mechanic for the ranger to save their pet from incredible damage and cc in zerg warfare, especially in those “double-dodge” situations in which the player is concentrating on survival.

Proposal Functionality

Setting the pet to “Avoid Combat” allows the pet to constantly evade attacks, as long as it does not use skills.

Using F3, “Return to Me”, also allows the pet to constantly evade attacks as long as it does not use skills.

In either case, evasion comes to an end if the pet

• is told to attack a target using F1
• begins to use its F2 skill
• responds to a pet shout such as “Guard” or “Search and Rescue”
• is told to use Lick Wounds
• … or in other words, is doing anything other than following the ranger.

If the pet loses its evade state because of some action, and then it returns to being inactive, then it will regain its evade state.

If the ranger is in combat when they use F3 “Return to Me” or “Avoid Combat”, then pet skills F1, F2 and Guard should incur a short cooldown (perhaps 1 to 5s) before they can be activated (see associated risks)

Associated Risks

There should be a delay after putting the pet into its evade state for it to be able to attack again. The reason being, it should not be possible to abuse the evade mechanic to twitch evade an enemy attack only to immediately have the pet go on the offensive again. If the pet is told to evade, the player should have to commit the pet to being offline for a period in return for it surviving.

Notes

May also be useful in dungeons.

My ranger’s been getting a lot of love lately with ascending her gear, and then I got inspired by the Zodiac set… that got pasted over an old exotic set in need of a revamp. Result!

Both of my weapons there are Skybringer and Eir’s Longbow, which I’ve transmuted over Zojja’s weapons to ascend them.

The first set of armour there is a Krytan / T3 mix, which is mostly ascended Soldier’s / Melandru with just the gloves and shoulders left to upgrade. It’s my main set and I’m super happy with the way midnight red and iron work on leather. The other colours are midnight fire and mithril.

The second set of armour is the new Zodiac with the helm and shoulders hidden. Those parts do actually look good and I posted some pics in the black lion subforum with those parts on! This was an old underwater set of Cleric’s / Water that I revamped. The colours I picked were sunset, autumn, butter, white gold and moss.

The helm is hidden and it has midnight yew and mithril on it… I have to say the whole set is really fun to dye! There are sooo many good options