Guild Wars 2

Alesana.1390:

There is no end to my game. I’m rushing to the beginning of it, especially after I rerolled my elementalist because it couldn’t do what I wanted and don’t care to “take my time to enjoy the view” with a new character. So I’m sorry if I don’t want to waste 20 minutes collecting plants for some stupid heart.
And I know very well what it is to make a game into a job, but GW2 isn’t it. I’m quite detached from it as it is, but it’s pretty lame to force me into even more breaks, putting me into DR mode for an entire day or more.

This is not WoW. You don’t unlock new content by being 80 and wearing all Epics Exotics, you only make the content you could see at 30/40/50/60/70 easier. I don’t PvP a lot, but I think the playing field is even more level there. GW2 isn’t made to let you slaughter noobs or mobs that you vastly outgear.

I get your drive to reach the top, I used to play that way too, until I got “old”. But you say you’re racing for the beginning. It’s not the beginning. When you reach 80, max out your professions, deck out your character in Exotics… There’s nothing to actually do with them except strut through town to show off. Sure, you could run (more) dungeons, but why do that if you already have equally strong gear?

I’d rather try all the content on my way up and when I find something too hard for my current level skip it and come back later. I poke around in all corners of a map to find events I can trigger so that I can do them on my own or with a few others at most.
Yeah, I level slowly since you get almost no reward for spending 15 minutes killing a champion mob by yourself. I don’t care. It was fun and I know that by the time I get to 80, the zones there will be less buggy and more fun than they are now.

It’s the same on Far Shiverpeaks.

I played each role of the trinity in wow, since I got bored playing only one all the time. But the time investment to keep up two or three sets of competitive gear was just too much for me. Plus, always being asked to switch to tanking because I could and the others couldn’t (or hadn’t invested the time) seriously dampened the fun I had.

I love how GW2 makes you play all three roles in one fight, focusing as much on defense as doing damage. I’m not quite so happy that kiting seems to trump defenses all the time, or how that gives an edge to ranged classes.

My Guardian has more blocks and blinds than any other class, but it’s designed to not work 100% time, otherwise it would be tanking. So at some point the boss is going take 90% of my HP in one shot and I have to run until he loses interest. Then I’m completely out of the game until I can heal to least 91% HP, so I won’t get one-shot. That takes a long time, since I’m not supposed to heal up all the damage in real time because that’d be a healer.
Meanwhile, a ranger is happily circlestrafing the boss, doing solid damage, avoiding the red circles just by running and never having to heal.

Server: Far Shiverpeaks
Guild: The Lonely Heroes [Hero]

I’m leader but have no permissions other than edit ranks and can’t queue upgrades or do anything.

If you look around on this forum you’ll find more detailed info, but I’ve had good results from the following (in that order):

Radiance – 5 points for blinds – 10 points for vulnerability when applying blinds
Virtues – 5 points for boons from using virtues
Honor – 10 points for 20% shorter cd on shouts

When you reach level 40 and use the manual to reset and unlock up to 20 in a trait,
go for Radiance 15 first, then 5 Virtues again. Constantly renewing Virtue of Justice is awesome.
After that, I’m still going with 10 honor for the shout cd reduction and always have “Retreat!” and “Save yourselves!” on your bar. They’re great for soloing and exploring.

Dawthus.4630:

Can’t remember the name of the zone, bot standing there swinging; 2 players came around the corner kiting a champion troll over to the bot, got it to engage and slaughter the bot-er. Is it bad I was cheering for the Troll?

Now that is a great example of quite literally trolling the gold sellers!

I do have an alt parked near a TP so I can pick up money and items and mail them or put them in the bank, but since you can buy and sell from anywhere, the benefit isn’t nearly as big as in that other game.

It’s good great to hear what ANet is doing about the bots, though I was never doubting a lot of work was being done behind the scenes.

What I wonder is will you also take action against gold buyers? They are the root of the problem after all. I would think a clear warning and round of bans would hit RMT much harder than only hitting the sellers, who will continue as long as it’s profitable.

When people realize there’s a serious risk to their own accounts they might think twice before buying gold, since the thought that all the gold they buy comes from hacked accounts apparently is not enough.

Yeah, 1-15 is for playing around and trying out all your weapons. Every time you get to a new level range ANet forces you to step up your game.

Btw, the greatsword is still very useful! You just need to work a bit more on the defense. I’d suggest traiting at least 5 points in Radiance to get the AoE blind from Virtue of Justice (and up to 15 when you reach level 40). This is a great defensive tool if you use it after the blind from Leap of Faith runs out.

There are also two shouts that make life easier:
- “Save yourselves!” loads you up with buffs and has no downside when soloing.
- “Retreat!” is great for when you bit off more than you can chew.

Latinkuro.9420:

- skills that cause burning also have an upfront damage component to them.
- mob tagging is not about who hits it 1st rather how much damage you have done to qualify for the loot table. (not 100% sure as to the minimum dmg % needed to qualify for loot table though)
- say you have 20 burn dmg per tick and someone arrives with 40 dmg per tick what happens now is the burn duration of both is added but the dmg is not, your burn would continue to burn at 20 dmg per tick and transition into the 40dmg per tick obviously the higher dmg burn takes priority and would burn 1st, but yours is not lost at all well unless the mob died before yours was in effect, which still leaves the upfront damage from the skill to be counted towards the loot table anyway.

Hope that shines some light into it for you.

It does, thank you. If the 40 dmg in your example takes priority and a single guardian (or elementalist I’m sure) can keep it going indefinitely, my 20 dmg is never going to get processed before the mob dies. My burns would only ever apply the upfront damage, making a power/direct damage build more useful.

As a guardian, your survival depends as much on not getting hit as on your armor. Carefully time your blinds, blocks and dodges and you can down a veteran without getting hit. at all.

My favorite for taking on veterans is sword + focus. It goes something like this:

Open with flashing blade = blind
When blind icon disappears → Virtue of Justice (traited to blind) = blind
When blind disappears again → Shield of Wrath = up to 3 blocks
When shield explodes → Ray of Judgement = blind
When blind disappears → Flashing blade again, etc

This is without dodging or even using up your passive Aegis.

Those come into play when you face multiple mobs. You control the flow of combat. Flashing blade to the ranged mob, blinding them. When the melee mob arrives hit Virtue of Justice to blind them all, use the Shield of Wrath and switch to Greatsword to unleash whirling wrath and as soon as it finishes use Leap of Faith to jump on top of the group, blinding them all again.

I’m playing a Guardian at level 40 now, and when soloing I can pretty much burn enemies for the duration of the fight since burning keeps adding duration.

Now in events I noticed the burn doesn’t seem to do damage or tag mobs. I read on the forum that a mob can only have one stack of burning and all players add duration.

My question is, how is the damage prioritized and tagged?
- If I am the first to apply burning, do other players just extend my stack and not get credit?
- Does a new, stronger burn overwrite my burn or does it wait until mine runs out?

I’m basically wondering whether there’s any point to gearing for condition damage if I cannot get credit when A.) I’m not the first one to hit a mob or B.) a downscaled lvl 80 in Exotic gear arrives with higher CD and overwrites or delays my burning damage.

I think you can escape by going back to the character selection screen. When you click play again, you end up on the world map at the entrance to the instance.

Well, I tried again and this time I came prepared. Either the higher level armor or the tactics made a huge difference, since I didn’t have any problems at all this round.

Here’s some helpful tips:

1. Turn on auto-attack (ctrl + rightclick) on skill #2. This allows you to stay at range, kite and spam chain lightning until everything is dead.

2. Use skill #4 to gain distance again if mobs get into melee range. Don’t use #3, it takes a little longer than the Risen brute’s own knockdown, always leaving you biting the dust.

3. Unlike its much better Guardian version, skill #5 doesn’t work while moving. It’s most effective when surrounded by mobs, but since they kd you, use it only if you have a stability skill or escape ready. You really only need #2, but this can speed things up a little.

4. Bring utility skills to support a ranged playing style. I took mostly shouts, including the very useful “Retreat!”

Yeah, your mighty greatsword is actually a magic gun, mesmer style :-P.

Thanks for the cliff-jumping tip, Zenyatoo.

I haven’t had time to try again yet, but with better preparation it should be doable. I did notice I was still running around in level 16-20 armor at lvl 40, I was destroying everything so I never checked. It also didn’t help that I traited everything to improve my active Virtues and suddenly can’t use them. Now that I know what to expect, I’ll get this done tonight.

That still doesn’t change the fact that it’s not fun at all to be forced to use a supposedly powerful weapon only to find out it can barely scratch a zombie.

I’m having a terrible time in the Flower of Death mission (where you join the Vigil to kill Mazdak).

Not only does my Guardian suddenly lose access to her Virtues (they’re gone from the UI, reported as a bug), but the supposedly superior weapon you wield in the mission is completely useless.

The damage is pitiful, the skills have no synergy (or defense for that matter) and the cooldowns are such that you always get knocked and locked down by the risen brutes inbetween your own knockdowns.

The first part is no problem since the Vigil NPCs actually do most of the work, but when I have to go up the hill to confront Mazdak, my heroic companions and I can barely keep up with the single(!) spawns running down the hill..

On my own I can’t even kill a single risen thrall before the next one arrives…

Does anyone have a way to get rid of the weapon or otherwise make it through?

Edit: I’m starting to wonder if downscaling is causing problems here. I’m 40, down to 28, and I wonder if Caladbolg is actually a lvl 28 weapon getting downscaled by 12 levels.

I’m almost up to 40 now and after a slow start am enjoying the guardian very much.
The key is to be flexible. Swap weapons, a lot. Swap skills before you rush into a DE or a cave full of baddies.

I find sword + focus to be nice for exploration, you have so many blinds and blocks you can kill even veterans without getting hit yourself, letting you dictate what happens. A spirit weapon for distracting extra mobs is nice, but I do fine without. “Save yourselves!” is a great shout for solo play, giving you lots of buffs while getting no conditions.

The greatsword is my favorite for DEs, jumping in the middle of the spawned groups and unleashing hell just feels awesome. Shouts and consecrations are very nice here too.

For champion fights, I usually switch back to sword + focus, dishing out lots of blinds helps. If the boss hates melee too much, I switch to scepter, though only if I really have to. Also, “Retreat!” is a nice shout to use just before a big AoE, you can save lots of people from being one-shot, even if the swiftness is wasted.

In fact, “Retreat!” is the utility that always finds a spot on my bar, it’s just too useful when out in the world.

LoboKendo.8492:

That kind of defeats the purpose the choosing the option in your story.

As a Guard, I chose the Helmet. But wait, here’s the stuff you didn’t choose any way.

That kind of ruins it. :\

I would prefer that you can only get the one you chose at creation, but I can imagine there might be nothing in the merchant code to allow that. In that case I’d rather have the choice of all three than nothing at all.

I’ve been faithfully transmuting my guardian’s shoulderpiece too everytime I’ve gotten a better one, but on my thief alt I accidentally vendored the hood while trying out one with different stats.

I’m not going to bother support with it, having seen their answer that they can’t restore single items. But I would love to be able to fix it myself at a merchant.

As the title implies I’d love to see a vendor that sells you the starter item you chose during character creation, so that you can use it to apply the skin to higher level items if you lost the original.

The choice is already stored in the character, so it shouldn’t be hard to filter the available item. If that’s not possible, maybe sell all three choices for your class.

Well, I can see the good side: putting a cost on the waypoints makes people run around more, making the world feel more alive plus triggering more DEs. Also, it will create a barrier against hundreds of people porting in whenever someone announces a boss/event. With the cost attached, people are more likely to weigh it against the odds the bos swill be dead when they arrive.

None of those apply to the capital cities though. They feel more alive when people visit easily instead of only at the end of the day to craft and pick up trade stuff.

I was going to post the same suggestion, so agree completely.

Thanks for the Mists shortcut btw, I hadn’t tried any PvP yet, so didn’t know!

I agree completely. Dynamic Events are fun now if there are only 2-3 players and your support makes the difference between winning and losing, but as soon as the zerg arrives, you have to focus singlymindedly on reaching and tagging the mobs in the 3 seconds that they’re alive.
I carry a staff on my Guardian for reasons mentioned above, though I like it the least of all weapon choices. On my Engi I spam grenades and get 5 times the loot I got using any other weapon.

While I like the idea scaling up the difficulty of an event after its won, I agree with previous posts that it would most likely lead to settling of the chain into two events, one still easy to win and one that’s regularly lost.

There are two things I think would make DEs more dynamic:

1. Random difficulty

At the start of every event, a random bonus factor is rolled that the enemy mobs get. (Both in numbers and strength) While it should give average results most of the time, there can be peaks that greatly increase the difficulty, leading to the losing chain of events.

2. Killer mobs that spawn to counter the zerg

If the number of players in the event reaches certain thresholds, the spawns include new veteran enemies specifically designed to face the zerg.
Abilities like constant retaliation, AoE control, immunity to X, etc would let them disrupt the players that just stand still and AoE the boss/horde.

I was doing the Sylvari PS step “Mirror, Mirror” and the 2nd wave of destroyers made quick work of the golems and NPC allies. I barely escaped, healed and made my way back to the group of bodies to revive them.

As soon as I revived one NPC, it charged into the group of destroyers some distance away and died almost instantly, forcing me to abandon reviving another NPC and run away again.

It’s frustrating that the NPCs are so aggressive, attacking even when out of aggro range of the mobs. Having them either follow you or decreasing their aggro ranges to match that of the mobs would improve this a lot.

I assume this is the quest/step “Mirror, Mirror”, I also found this one to be much harder than the previous ones with my Guardian. Having no escape options like Mist Form, I found it was impossible to kill the destroyers if the NPCs and Golems were all down, so it was all or nothing.
I finally managed it by filling my bars with all the spirit weapons I had unlocked, letting them do the killing while I focused on defense and control.