Guild Wars 2

I don’t think any profession can carry a group like a good healer or tank from the trinity based MMOs.

Guardian’s have these specific weaknesses to help balance out our strengths. We’re very immobile, lack real ranged potential, and don’t have many ways to stop people from running from us.

The problem has to do with itemization and the amount of traits. At lvl 80 you have a huge amount of itemization available to you and having that extra 30-50 traits makes a BIG difference on your strength in the dungeons.

The dungeons are do-able at the lvls listed, but it’s significantly more difficult than at 80. Like I did AC EM when I was lvl 35~ when the game came out and it was extremely difficult and I died maybe 6 times my first time, but then I did it at 80 and it was faceroll easy.

Scootabuser.4915:

DancingPenguins.9875:

ComeAndSee.1356:

On my Guardian in PvE I always choose two utility skills and I adjust them accordingly to the encounter because I have like 6 to choose from.

On my Thief I have only one “support utility” (Shadow Refuge) and I always have it because it’s useful as an aggro drop or for getting an extra back stab in.

You can’t force my Thief to take support skills they don’t have. LOL

Blind Powder, Smoke Screen, Venoms, traps.

Calitropes
Scorpion Wire
Tanking ranged mobs with OP daggerstorm…

Scorpion wire is only clutch in TA. :P I always run Caltropes though because they’re good for the bleed damage. Venom’s stink.

These skills that are aren’t even REMOTELY on the same level as my Guardian’s Wall of Reflection, Shield of the Avenger, Sanctuary, Shouts, AOE cleanses, tankiness, and group healing for PvE.

I’m not saying anything bad about my Thief because my Thief does 4x the amount of damage my Guardian does.

Naekuh.7925:

are u aware how difficult it is for a lvl10 to get out to CoF?

It’s actually not difficult at all.

I ran my Mesmer (and Thief) both up there when they were lvl 20-ish. Just stay on the road and you won’t aggro anything.

Being able to reflect the bombs before made him way easier than the Ice guy. You could make him nuke himself for 100k++ which took off a decent chunk of his HP.

Please make them buyable with Pristine tokens. I have almost 20 and I’ve seen people with 50++. =/

On my Guardian in PvE I always choose two utility skills and I adjust them accordingly to the encounter because I have like 6 to choose from.

On my Thief I have only one “support utility” (Shadow Refuge) and I always have it because it’s useful as an aggro drop or for getting an extra back stab in.

You can’t force my Thief to take support skills they don’t have. LOL

Vox Hollow.2736:

@ ComeandSee

Oh. I just didn’t believe you’d meant it the way it sounded.

God forbid we don’t have at least 2 people watching the party menu like a hawk at all times, least somebody get the idea kicking back in a lawnchair and sipping a martini while other people are working unawares is not only acceptable but encouraged.

You know, doing a bad thing is still a bad thing, even if you don’t get caught.

I think people just want to complain about nothing.

I stay on my 80 character and ride it out from the beginning to the very end ON MY LVL 80 until the boss is @ 15%~ HP and we’re talking AC, TA, and COF where the bosses are faceroll easy.

So I’m there for 19 minutes and 45 seconds and relog at the final 15 seconds. That is 98.75% of the dungeon. So you’re really telling me that you’ll make a big stink and kick me because of that? No — you don’t care. I’ve done this 20+ times and haven’t had a single complaint about relogging the final percentage of the boss, but I’ve seen people complain about people logging on their low lvl alts to do the final boss from beginning to end.

If I logged off before the fight and flipped out the lawn chair and made you guys do 100% of the work on the final boss while I’m afk than that is worthy of being kicked.

Each race gets 3 or 5 unique racial skills, but none are really that overpowering that picking a race makes a huge difference.

If anyone knows Dwarf Priest from Vanilla WoW you know what I’m talking about.

I haven’t been gibbed by a Thief lately on my Guardian.

How to instant gib:

• Activate Signet of Power
• Have lots of Might stacks or Vulns on your target.
• Full glass cannon. +5% damage on targets from behind, 5% increased dagger damage trait, make sure target has condition for 10% more damage, and have more than 6 initiative for 10% extra dmg.
• Get lucky RNG and crit every time.
• Have 20% increased damage trait on targets below 50%.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@ ComeandSee
Without mentioning the asking part in your process explaination, your post probably isn’t reading quite how you expected it to.

Not really understanding what you’re trying to ask me, but no — I never asked the groups and haven’t had a single complaint (ever) or been kicked.

Most likely they’re a low level with zero armor.

Boonprot.6274:

I’m not a big fan of the Celestial line of stats because they’re so unfocused. When you make a build, you don’t toss a few points into everything to get the “best of all worlds,” now do you? No, you focus the build around 3 or 4 trait lines in order to hit certain key synergistic traits. Would you not want, then, to have a gear loadout that is equally focused? I should hope so. If you are interested in this amulet purely for the ability to use it with a large blanket of builds, then I still think you’re wrong. You should have different gear sets for different builds, if it is warranted. Not one set for all builds. Your character ends up being suboptimal in all ways.

Lastly, the Celestial items do indeed have more stat points than the regular items, but it’s absolutely irrelevant. 10 extra points distributed into 8 different stats has an influence so minimal that it is essentially nil.

Well, on my Guardian I like them (I have 2 celestial rings + 1 earring) because I stack primarily +healing, +toughness, and +power and there aren’t any ascended +healing rings. It helps give me some DPS stats AND they’re the only pieces that have vitality, toughness, and +healing all in one.

So I lose 30 toughness and 40-50 healing and gain +40 vitality, 5% crit damage, and precision which I don’t have. It’s a balanced tradeoff.

AcidicVision.5498:

I’ve never seen anyone try this and not get kicked. Even if the party leader said it was ok, they are booted while logging for asking a stupid question.

I did this 6 times yesterday (Did AC twice before and pre-reset in 2 separate groups) and didn’t get booted once. I have a raid hard-drive setup so my load times are under 10 seconds.

I (on my main) help the party clear the entire dungeon and then on the final boss at about 10-15% I relog, get on my alt, and zone in, and in the span of 20 seconds the boss is dead. Half the time I’m zoning in when the cinematic is just playing or about to play.

The simple fact is; nobody cares if you’re a good player and aren’t being obnoxious like logging off @ 80% or right before the fight and expecting the group to carry you throughout the entire fight.

Also, DONT do it if you’re the instance host or you’ll kick everyone out. I did this before and I felt bad and gave everyone 50 silver for their lost time.

Well, for me (Support Guardian), this amulet and the other all-stater amulet available from Laurel vendor are the only ones with +healing on it. =/

The mace is a great weapon. It’s auto-attack is a little slow, but you can hit up to 3 targets.

#2. Is one of the best heals in game. It scales very pleasantly with AH, Writ, and +Healing. Also, it does reasonable damage to enemies.

#3. This is a clutch ability in PvE and PvP if you line it up perfectly against big hits.

This fight is cake. I’ve one shot on both my Thief and Guardian the last times I’ve done it.

My Guardian handles it like a champ. I have everyone sit behind me and I can aggro all the mobs without a problem.

I have almost an entire bank “bag” full with Fractal rings I have no use for.

I’ve given up hope on getting the weapons. I haven’t gotten one in almost 2 months.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I don’t have a hugh problem with this, but to say this is not an exploit is ridiculous.

You are exploiting the system to get rewards/xp for a character who did not put in the necessary work/time to receive the rewards.

I understand this is how the system currently works, but this is not what was intended by the designers. You are using a flaw in the design to gain benefit.

If you are going to do it, whatever. Just don’t try to sit over there and think that you are not exploiting. That is ridiculous.

I don’t see how it is an “exploit”. Leveling is just the carrot on the stick grind to get you to the endgame and I fail to see how finding a way to make it easier to get from 0-80 is even remotely cheating.

Also, when you relog you lose the drops from the last boss.

Couldn’t wait for the WvW patch next month to see what changes they bring?

Zerging has its own advantages and disadvantages.

I’m always an advocate of dividing large groups into two smaller, more mobile groups that work together in order to strike the flanks of their opponents. It’s the most effective way to crush Zergs.

Over the years I’ve steadily seen the amount of female players grow substantially on the MMO market and many of them are some of the best players I have ever played with. In the guilds VOIP I play with we have two female commanders and they are very tactically proficient.

Basically we need to get out of the old 90’s mentality that video games are for boys.

Awesome.6120:

Bringing an alt in for the first time that day also gives you another 60 tokens rather than 20 if you’re doing a path for the 2nd time on your main.

I thought that was tied to the account?

I did this to power level my Thief (and now my Mesmer). I don’t log off @ 60% though. I log off @ 10-20% (depends on how fast the boss is dying) and I don’t leave the group hanging before I do it.

I’ve done it maybe 20 times so far? Haven’t had a complaint yet. I’ve seen other people do it, but all of them log off when the boss is @ 80%! That’s being a kitten.

If you aren’t doing it, you should! I do all of AC, COF, TA, and some times other dungeons and can get 8-10 levels in a few hours on top of tokens that I can throw at my alt as soon as I hit 80 and then do class quests.

So TLDR; you do 95% of the dungeon on your main and log off before the boss dies. I don’t see anything wrong with it!

If you have a “Tank” for the waves of adds parts its very easy — a lot easier than how it was with VEteran mobs.

So far I’ve only completed two paths of Arah (with a guild in their Ventrilo) and by far this is the most ridiculous dungeon in game in length and difficulty in terms of the poultry rewards given. I would expect with the dungeons being so difficult and long you would be handed Ascended gear.

• Every path takes too kitten long! The first time I ran Path 3 I thought the Lupicus guy was the last boss because he took so long to kill (took us like a half hour in wipes) only to be slapped in the face that you’re not even done!

• Dwayna in path 4 requires more coordination and DPS stacking than any other fight in game. Literally 3 of us in the group (I was on my Guardian, tank spec) had to relog on our DPS alts (my Thief) and go re-trait max DPS just to finish this boss in one attempt. What a joke.

• Too much trash — that is just skipped. Half of the dungeon is spent dodging trash and the other half is spent on the boss fights.

• 60 badges and a couple of blues for each path — that’s it. Talk about NO satisfaction. At least with Fractal’s when you start getting Rings, tokens, and weapons you feel like your time was well spent.

• You can literally do ALL THE PATHS in AC, Path 1 + 2 CoF, and maybe all of TA (not all at once, just one complete dungeon) in the length of time it takes to finish an Arah’s path. Fractal’s usually takes 30-80 minutes depending on if you get lucky. Arah feels like a 2 hour grind fest.

Honestly this dungeon is way too hard and time consuming for the little rewards given.

I don’t have any problems with confusion on my Guardian because I remove two debuffs every 10 seconds.

Arah in general is way too overtuned in terms of the crappy rewards given. Seriously, all of the boss fights take longer than complementing any other dungeon in-game. FOTM at 35+ is face roll compared to it.

With Arah being so hard I would expected Ascended gear to drop from it.

Wethospu.6437:

Tigerlily.3765:

—
The sparks have pathing issues and aggro on people trying to fight the boss.
—

You acknowledge your problem. Why didn’t you do something about it?

It’s not a pathing issue — they aggro the person with the highness toughness nearby.

Writ of Merciful is only good with the Mace IMHO. If you trait for longer duration symbols your Symbol of Faith lasts 6 seconds so Writ + mace regen = lots of healing.

Sigil of Fire is better though because it AOE splashes and you’re in melee range if your using sword + pistol.

Leveling a mesmer right now really is helping me get down to killing them in WvW on my Thief and Guardian. I can spot the clones easy now and most of them don’t know what to do once I’m on top of them.

I just started leveling a Mesmer today. Currently only lvl 22, but I have all the weapon skills unlocked.

I don’t like the Scepter at all compared to my Guardian’s. It just attacks too slow and it’s damage isn’t that impressive.

I’m been running around with the Greatsword and Staff and both weapons synergize very well IMHO. Tried the Sword + every off-hand and I’m too squishy right now to be using it.

The only thing that SUCKS is the lack of run speed boosts so you basically have to use a focus offhand in WvW. >_<

I have a Thief and Guardian and they’re two very unique and specialized classes.

I’ve leveled a Warrior to 20 and DPS wise with Greatsword they aren’t as fun as Guardian’s to level.

The Blizzard should hopefully bring out the JQ PvPers this weekend. :P

Great fight this week. SoR and SoS put on some amazing resistance during the weekend + early week.

I have an 80 Thief and 80 Guardian (just started leveling a Mesmer).

Dungeon wise, there’s nothing special that Thief’s bring. Yeah, we got Shadow Refuge, but it’s only useful for saving a downed person (which an Ash legion key can do). We’re just straight up DPS — which isn’t a bad thing because we can do a lot. We don’t have much in terms of group buffs or anything.

My 80 Guardian on the other hand has HUGE group support. In FOTM if there’s 2-3 Guardian’s in the group we can trivialize many of the fights or make them significantly easier!!

The problem isn’t with Thiefs, but stacking Guardians and Warriors makes a lot of the boss fights in FOTM trivial at best. Literally 2-3 Guardian’s on certain fights can chain abilities so the boss does 0 damage to you.

SoR came in hard, but now they’re starting to wane.

Burl.9567:

Tammuz.7361:

Fuzzion about sums it up. But id go a bit further and say they got until the beta test of ESO, if they fail by that point, people gonna be playing the beta test and not caring at all about GW2.

These last couple weeks have turned quite a few people off of the game and I know quite a few others are on the breaking point of walking away. This news isn’t going to help at all.

And they will all come back once the patch hits. This happens in every MMO I’ve played.

new Content <- everyone’s pounding away
3-6 months later <- everyone’s getting burned out and stops logging in.
new Content <- repeat.

Also, I’m not sure why people are saying culling is worse. It’s much better than it was before.

me im not.9357:

Im on SOS, here in Tier 1, most of our ques are less than 10 mins. Ive noticed most of the people complaining are also only queing for EB, which can have longer que times during peek times—- give your borderlands a try. Still having problems? Then your server is probably overly populated. Give another server a try.

The problem isn’t with the queues, but rather the significantly reduced limit on the amount of players on a map. It’s one thing to wait an hour in queue, but to wait an hour in a queue to be outmanned or have 30 players on the map isn’t right.

Shoo.9016:

So, we got wall of silence there. Again.
It seems strange that ANet cannot say smth like “Ok, people, its just a bug, we are trying to fix it”, or “Nope, its not a bug, we are just milking you on transfers”.

The silence is a very BAD thing. I would think they would learn from Bioware’s mistakes with SWTOR about being silent on issues players wants answers on because it blows up in their face and makes people quit.

It isn’t worth going 30 deep into the Virtue tree. Every 10 points is only an extra 1s on most boons versus passive + 100/+ 100 of a specific stat you need in the other trees.

Unfortunately it feels mandatory that you have to go 30 deep into Valor and Honor. Both trees are very well balanced on their stats and traits.

Stand your ground is your stun-break slash stability when you have lots of CC’s being thrown around. The retaliation is also nice.

Hold the line is your mini-group heal slash protection buff. Use it when you’re expecting big damage to come in or cycle it between other cooldowns to maximize your defenses.

Save yourselves is a jack of all and has the most uses. Use it to redirect debuffs to your party to yourself because you have lots of cleanses to get rid of them. Other uses include being used as a temporary DPS boost, stun break, extra protection between other CD’s, or a way to run away.

Warlord.9074:

Regardless its coming down to best over all coverage, and team work.

It’s coming down to who’s guild can get the most players on the map.

Literally I watch guilds get 30-50 of their members on the map (while the other-side only has 15 guild members because the rest are stuck in queue and the rest are militia who aren’t on VOIP) and just completely dominate the battlefield.

It’s getting frustrating when you sit in queue for an hour and it’s like you’re out manned on the field. Your zerg is maybe 20 people and the enemy has double it.

Also, it’s basically impossible to defend two different points now. Before you could have the “mega zerg” roaming the map and still have 20-30 extra players that could help defend points.

Numbers matter A LOT more than it use to especially if they’re in a guild.

I’m not sick of the same match up, but this week has been horrible with the bugs .

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

I’m tired of fighting JQ at this point not going to lie. While we fight our hearts out against guilds we once fought on other servers and have good fights, we go to sleep and wake up to +400 PPT and fully upgraded keeps from Euro Prime time. I know a lot of us try so hard to prevent this from happening but there is nothing we can do. VoTF and our other Euros fight a very hard battle and I have much respect for them. I hope SOS doesn’t get burnt out and that’s why I wish to get away from JQ even if it is just for one week. Even though I always play to win or by PPT, if we continuously get matched with JQs 24/7 coverage and all matches end the same way with a false sense of competitiveness on the weekends and a complete face kitten during our coverage hole, I’m just going to start playing to kill people and hope I don’t get burnt out.

on a Side not, Good fights out there. I see a lot of improvements on all sides of the table. a lot of three way battles on SOS BL. This match-up has been awesome so far.

This is what happens when you make WvW a 24/7 event. You and your guild may give your 110% during 5-8 hours a night, but in reality you’re only covering a 1/3rd of the daily spectrum.

Right now WvW isn’t won by skills or numbers, but who has the best coverage and that’s what sucks about it.

The lack of response by Anet is starting to remind me of Bioware with SWTOR. =/

Sanctuary won’t register unless you move around inside of it when you drop it.

I’ve literally had this happen many times where I drop a sanctuary on top of myself, get rooted, and then get nuked down because the game doesn’t register me inside of the sanctuary.

So when you drop your sanctuary, make sure to move around inside of it or the game doesn’t think you’re in it.

Any tank built class works good as a Commander. I always target enemy commanders and some of them just WON’T DIE.