Guild Wars 2

Don’t do it. It’s a noob trap designed to remove all your gold.

Everything you craft sells for less than the cost of materials because the XP gain is worth more to people than the product. It’s an inverted market.

It’s better to just sell all materials and salvage items (at the best price you can get)

Go into WvW and join the zerg there (look for the blue commander icon on the map)
Makes sure your gear is reasonably current though.
Hot tip: You can buy WvW/PvE gear for karma from the vendors in the battlegrounds and WvW will net you a shed-load of karma.

DO NOT CRAFT. It will eat all your money. You’ll need a lot of gold at end game.
Don’t salvage either – it’s better to sell everything on the TP. (Match highest seller button is your friend).
Repeat: Sell everything. You can always buy it back later – probably cheaper.

Race makes no difference.

Ele is quite powerful but takes skill to play to it’s full potential. You have to learn to swap attunements constantly to keep up the most effective rotations.

try this guide for suggestions:-
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-the-D-D-ele-7-15-13/first

@OP
You did nothing wrong.

You found a way in – that’s OK. You didn’t use any hack or glitch to do it, you just kept trying till you found a spot where the ‘wall’ was climbable. Pat on the back for that.
You killed the merchants – who cares? Nobody uses them and they’ll respawn in a couple of minutes. Nobody bothered to stop you – they were probably just laughing. They could easily have killed you since they would be invulnerable.

You took off your clothes – I don’t think that offended any laws, secular or ecclesiastic. Then you got one-shotted by an LD – working as intended.

I think they probably do care but can’t actually do much about it.

A hack is something you add into the software on your own PC. Anet has no way to stop you doing that.
They might be able to detect it and ban you but obviously they can’t be sure and don’t want to risk upsetting genuine customers.

I love the argument over fine detail of whether rank ‘a’ is a better name than rank ‘b’ when it’s perfectly clear that whoever wrote out the list in the first place had zero interest in the matter.

It’s like those interminable arguments over the precise theological meaning of the image of Christ that someone found on a slice of toast.

Thrumdi.9216:

And as always with poor design in all avenues of life, it is the average person who misses out. Buffs on demand are only available to organized guilds whose commanders assign classes, and can call for fields and combos. With this system, PUGs just can’t do it, even though it is supposed to be a casual game.

Just recently my server has had some notable success getting PUG groups onto TS where the Commander (usually a guild commander on a break) has been able to use the proper tactics with a full zerg to great effect.

Of course, we still had a lot of loose people running about making a bit of a mess but on the whole the buffing, stacking and coordinated veiling went quite well.

This discussion should really be moved into the PvE forum.

You don’t need to buy arrowcarts.
Blueprints drop quite frequently from lords and champions.

The point about arrowcarts is not that you can get a lot of XP or loot from using one. It’s that you can slow, cripple bleed and kill dozens of the enemy during an attack and maybe win the fight.

It’s called having fun.

Mark my words. It won’t stop there. This is just a test to see if the idea of a free trial nets any fish.

There’s a strong possibility of Anet repeating the offer periodically.

I hate to say I told you so.

But:-
I just went into WvW today and we’ve got huge quantities of siege built inside store depots in the keep and in all of our towers. It’s placed where it can’t be of any use to anyone (even to hit our own doors).
It’s clearly been placed by someone intent on wasting as much supply as possible and pushing us up to the siege limit everywhere.

So, I told you so.

Guardian.

I play both Ele and Guardian. Can’t speak for Warrior really.

Staff ele has the tagging ability but is fragile and boring to play if you like to get into the action.
Guardian is tanky, has good survivability in a zerg and lots of tagging ability. It usually gets first crack at the enemies, spearheading the attack.

Both ele and guardian are poor solo classes, expect to die a lot trying to join the main zerg.

Dictionary definitions

Cynicism
Doubtful as to whether something is worthwhile.
e.g. ‘Gold, laurels, game stuff in general is worth kitten’ = Cynicism

Pessimism
A state of mind in which one anticipates undesirable outcomes.
e.g. ‘I won’t get a legendary no matter how hard I try’= Pessimism.

You can call cheese chalk if you like. It doesn’t make it true no matter how you argue.

alexjolly.1463:

The pessimistic attitude makes me wonder.

You mean cynical.

You can’t talk about support classes in this game really because each class is capable of being traited to lean towards solo or group play.

Having said that, Guardian and staff Ele are the two main classes in WvW because they complement each other nicely. Throw in a few Necros and a Mesmer and you’ve got a nice little team.

You could write your request on a piece of paper and put it up the chimney. That’s the traditional method.

What’s the point of transforming one useless currency (laurels) into another (gold) or even a third (T6 mats).

When you quit the game it will all just vanish into electronic limbo.

Yeah – Cat Tonics I guess.

I only play WvW.
I don’t give a kitten about Legendaries, the Magic Toilet or Transmutation.

I’ve got over 250 gold in my wallet right now and there’s nothing I need/want to buy with it.
In the end, it’s just the same as karma. It’s worth nothing.

Look – a carrot! Run fast and catch it!

Never really thought about it – but – yes, I quite like the rain.

The snow is horrible though – I hate having my vision obscured like that. It’s already bad a lot of the time because of overdone weapon particle effects. The snow just makes me want to leave.

It could be worse though – imagine fog – or as it used to be called, culling.

I’m posting this here because there isn’t a Piken forum that’s generally read and anyway, what I want to say really applies to all servers.

We have a strong reluctance to use the voice comms in WvW – TS in our case and I want to bring that out in the open because it’s a problem.
Truth is, we need TS because the text chat system is awkward to use when you’re doing anything other than running in a straight line. Plus, it’s slow at best.

On the other hand, nobody wants to get on a voice channel with a bunch of complete strangers and listen to some kitten adolescent abusing everyone at the top of his squeaky voice.
Then again, a lot of us are naturally ‘shy’ (Maybe that’s why we play video games ) Whatever. Lots of reasons for NOT getting on TS.

Well, on Piken at least, it isn’t like that. I haven’t heard anyone abusing – and I don’t think it would be tolerated for an instant. The commanders who do use TS are generally mature, reasonable people who don’t get carried away with their own importance. In fact it’s the one’s who don’t use TS that seem to be most likely to make nasty comments in chat.
Special mention to our Russian commanders – who’s laid-back delivery and occasional Rushglish phrases are an absolute delight to listen to. (We often just leave the TS channel open after I log off just to hear them talking – My wife loves the sound)

Anyway, beside the point – which is please, if you haven’t already, please give TS a try. You don’t have to speak and you can turn it off if anything offends you.
You’ll find that the information you get about what is happening will double your awareness, save you from a lot of avoidable deaths and I promise you, increase your enjoyment of the game tenfold.

ts3-pikensquare.eu

Shoe.5821:

you can get a lot of bags from hitting enemies

You might get lucky and hit someone who is killed by another player soon enough to get you a tag reward. Your chances of actually killing someone with treb fire are zero unless he’s afk. I suspect NPCs regen health like other mobs – otherwise you’d be able to clear a Lord’s room.

On the odd occasion when I’ve felt like a break, I’ve spent a while trebbing down a wall. Idk how long it takes – feels like 10 minutes at least, I’ve picked up maybe one or two bags per session.

I know that I can pick up 5-10 bags per skirmish in the sort of action that you get around a tower. Probably get 20 on average assaulting a tower plus the chest from the Lord – always worth a few silver now.

From the notes:-

1/ Increased the damage of trebuchet skills.
2/ Disease Cloud from cow ammo now drains supply from enemy players.
3/ Increased the radius of trebuchet skills.
4/ New skill: Healing Oasis—Fires a shot that heals allies and creates a water combo field.
5/ Basic shots that hit enemy supply depots will now destroy some of the objective’s supply.

Notice that there is no option to increase range. Tbh, that’s the only option I can see that might induce anyone to invest in this line.

Bear in mind that you get virtually no reward for trebbing other than the satisfaction of helping your team-mates gain a load of WXP when they storm the breach you made.
A range increase would have made your skill almost indispensable – making you a very popular bunny at least. But without that, I just see it as a pointless investment.

Of course, as ever, I’m open to argument. Hit me!

Many of us find PvE to be mechanical and pointless. A minor improvement on FPS games at best.
There’s little challenge in it, the scenarios presented are childish (teenage at best) and the grind-and-reward system would be insulting to the intelligence of a flatworm.

As far as I’m concerned PvE is a training and test area where I can try out game mechanics in peace (open world PvP? – no thank you!)

Unfortunately, there are a lot of children who play this game (shock, horror) and the PvE stuff appeals to many of them. I dare say there’s a population of adults in there too. It takes all sorts.
So every time Anet add a new ‘shiny thing’ they will all go running to grab their ‘unique’ digital copy.

Well, that’s the price you pay for being able to WvW. Like it or not the flatworms provide the bulk of the development cash.
Don’t be mad, because without the PvE market, you wouldn’t have this game at all. There simply aren’t enough ‘hard’ WvW enthusiasts to provide the cash needed to compete in the game market.

But I do feel your pain.

I have no idea what this means.

‘Break through a keep’ – I guess he means ‘break into a keep.’ OK – got that.
‘Build 5 trebs on the outer depot.’ – The store depot? – I’m not sure if you can place that many so close – but, OK
‘Spam 2’ – Shoot in random directions? pretty sure he doesn’t mean that. Ignore and continue.

Then something about not needing to wait for the enemy to build siege on the inner (keep, I guess). That makes no sense at all. Why would you?

Who are you to question the gods?

DevonCarver.5370:

This is the type of upgrade to the system we will likely be making, but it is not a short-term project. We feel commanders aren’t getting enough mileage out of the system as it is now and we’d like to make it much, much more robust.

Whatever the reason, as it stands, the ‘commander’ is simply a mobile map-marker that gives a rallying point for the players.
The party/ squad system is largely ignored by players who for the most part are simply unaware of it. The player-commander thus has no extra tools for communication, no ability to set objectives no options for discipline. He can’t even offer any reward if you join his party.

Imagine (say) Wellington or Napoleon simply having a big blue hat on his head, no lieutenants, no NCOs, no sergeants, not even a horse, just the hat.
Worse, a hat you can buy in the local market for seventeen times less than the cost of a fancy sword.

Anything, absolutely anything would be an improvement. A commander chat channel, squads with sub squads, different markers for multiple commanders. All of these things are a obvious, simple additions that would at least help. I can think of a dozen more off the top of my head, anyone could.

We’ve been begging for something for months. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect first time out of the gate. Anything, anything, anything is better than nothing.

I’m pretty sure it’s just giving the same old 150 – First thing I looked at.

There doesn’t seem to be any significant change. I just finished an evenings play with roughly one level gain – about what I would expect.

What a fuss about nothing.

You’re talking about WoW.

It’s horrible. High level characters lurk in the starter zones and at any travel choke point or resource node, just waiting for a low-level character to wander by trying to play the game. Then they kill them.

You can’t do anything without the constant risk that just when you’ve beaten a mob down almost to stomping (and you’re at half health) someone will pop out and send you back to the graveyard.

I’d rather have something warn me when food is running out – a nice, big, flashing WARNING – EAT SOMETHING.

I think it’s a hangover from an earlier plan to have RP style gatherings in town that died.

A second armour slot would be nice but I’d prefer a second weapon set. Both would be wonderful.

That would be an ecumenical matter.

No. I’m saying that the vast majority will never be able to work for Anet because they won’t get the job, no matter how qualified or how often they apply, beg, plead, threaten or cajole.

Right now, you see the job market as an orchard full of trees with ripe plums hanging from the branches. You just have to reach out and pluck whichever one takes your fancy?

‘Look out kid – they keep it all hid’ – Bob Dylan.

I’m genuinely sorry. That’s what we call youthful optimism. Eventually, real life will knock it out of you.

We don’t get to do something because it looks like a fun or even useful thing to do. Most people have to actually struggle to stay alive and feed themselves and their family.
I know you don’t believe that, yet. But you will.

That’s just a taunt.

Many of the people playing this game are professional geeks of one type or another who would LOVE the opportunity to work in this field. Few will ever get the chance.

It’s economics, not motivation that decides such matters.

bradderzh.2378:

And the argument about having armies of ac’s protecting the trebs is quite silly. If you are prepared to sit on an AC and defend a treb for the good of the server, you are doing something just as boring as manning the treb itself.

Who said anything about it being kitten ring?
That was just a (somewhat hyperbolic) prediction of a possible outcome from the change proposed. The point being that it would ultimately be more boring.

Edit: You gotta love the adult filter – figure it out yourself!

Banquetto.9521:

Tulki.1458:

If I take my level 80 engineer into the same area wearing starter gear..

Stopped reading there.

The scaling system is intended to work for real gameplay, i.e. real characters with real gear.

If you attempt to deliberately break it by using gear 79 levels under-level, obviously you’re going to get ridiculous results. You should think yourself lucky that your level 80 wasn’t doing negative damage.

This ^^

I can’t imagine that Anet ever thought for a moment someone would seriously try something so mind-blowingly bizzare and post the results as a serious study of game mechanics.

I’m sure there’s a good reason why the OP posted that question.
I’m dying to hear it.

A glass canon Ele has no place in WvW. That’s literally a snowflake in hell.

This guide is primarily d/d but the general remarks apply to any build.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-Mastering-
the-D-D-ele-7-15-13/page/1

You can get decent WvW-oriented PVT armour from the vendors in WvW for karma at low level and badges at 80.

Oh, We haven’t given up.

We know half-a-dozen piken are a match for 20 glass-cannon uplevels any day.
We get most of our jollies from zerg-busting and the actual scoresheet doesn’t mean a lot to us.

Still, it would be nice to be able to show what we can do when we have numbers up.

Treb autofire could be a game-breaker.
You think golem armies are bad?

I see every safe spot like SM 3rd floor stuffed with trebs and guarded by entrenched armies of AC. Every tower for miles around blasted into rubble and a massive, massive zerg rolling round taking each unprotected Lord’s Room and moving on to the next. Win trading on a huge scale.

I honestly don’t get the question. I’m sure there’s something missing.

I’ve played both Ele and Guardian (and thief) all the way to 80 and I don’t think there was ever a point where I felt I was unable to cope with normal play.
Admittedly, if you bite off more than you can chew you get splatted – but that’s a given.

A lot of good advice has been given above. You seriously need to look at your gear. Blue is NOT good enough. Correct traiting is vital. There are plenty of good guides in the forum for you to take advantage of. Duo play is advanced – learn to handle yourself solo first.

My personal preference having played both is dagger/dagger for Ele. and sword/focus + greatsword for Guardian (Except in WvW where the rules change. Both go staff and Guardian can also have a greatsword or hammer)

Speaking of which, you should take a look at WvW. Apart from anything else you can get some excellent karma gear from the vendors.

Of course, if you’ve really decided to chicken out, less than a day after posting – well…

I don’t think I’ve heard anyone complain that fortitude gives a massive advantage.

Of the lines currently available and in general play it’s clearly the best option if you have the points to spend. Everything else is situational and mostly minor.
The only other things worth looking at (imo) are the basic treb and AC range increases.

Still ain’t fair that the operator gets no reward. Should at least get a chest when the Lord dies.

P.S. That actually happened to me t’other day. I was mortaring WC from Green keep and hit the Lord’s room a few times. When the cap happened, I got a chest!

The new matchup system puts servers of significantly different WvW populations against each other.

Sometimes, the difference is very wide, in which case the server with the larger population naturally dominates quite rapidly.
This causes the borderline players of the dominating server to leap on the bandwagon and join in a killing spree, while the rats of the weaker server leave the sinking ship.

Result – the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker.
It’s now possible to tell in a matter of a couple of hours which side you’re on and decide to stay or leave.

cranked.3812:

knives.6345:

Contiguous.1345:

It’s a game – it’s supposed to be fun.

Why do so many people have the urge to turn it into a job?

Because farming could be their idea of fun.

Of course everyone has their own idea of “fun”, but I can’t believe that even half the people doing it actually find it fun. People do it for money.

The thing that attracted me to this game after grinding through WoW for way too long was the fact that I can play this game without the farming grind.
All the gear that requires ‘grinding’ is just cosmetic. Beads and mirrors for the natives.

Providing you’re reasonably careful with the stuff, what you pick up along the way is more than enough to get workmanlike kit for your level, including endgame.

If you want the geegaws like e.g. Legendaries? Well, Barabbas said it, easier to just buy gems and convert to gold. A Legendary would cost you a few days wages.

It took me ages to kit my Ele out in Ascended gear and to be honest it made kitten-all difference. (No way am I doing PvE)

I haven’t bothered with the Guardian I rolled last – got about 100+ laurels in the bag from dailies but I’m sticking with the exotics.

Well, sorry RS and VZ but you won’t get much of a fight from Piken this week.

It seems our zerg has melted to a handful of sad creatures standing around EB hoping a Commander might dare to light up. It’s (6pm Saturday in the UK – peak time)
There’s a similar handful on a couple of the borderlands making a half-hearted attempt at a camp or tower.
I wouldn’t worry about them. Just go ahead and have fun.

Wouldn’t we all be a lot happier if these kittening PvE toys were shifted out of WvW?