Guild Wars 2

The one to Rule.2593:

Condi dps = sinister engi hands down
Power dps = Revenant/ Elementalist
Boonstrip = reaper or mesmer, probably mesmer because Chronomancer is OP as hell and alacrity is amazing

cc utility Not sure, but I know rangers are the kings of cc hands down but this can be filled by multiple roles

I’m almost positive we will have to have a PS warrior as well

Agreed with this, except that I’m not sold on ranger for CC…
They have a lot of soft CC, but not much in terms of stuns/dazes/etc. A Scrapper may be a strong choice for this with the right build, but not sure.

And yea, I think PS war points out that you’ll also want a damage support role in the form of a PS war and a druid (Frost Spirit, Spotter, Glyph of Empowerment…).

Consdering that there’s still the 5 target limit, you may even want 2 of these for your group. A ‘perfect’ group may be something like this:

1 – Vipers Engi
2 – Revenant
3 – PS War
4 – Druid
5 – Chronomancer

6 – Vipers Engi
2 – Elementalist (power DPS)
3 – PS War
4 – Druid
6 – Chronomancer

I could see Reaper being put somewhere in there and maybe even Dragonhunter/Guardian, but sadly I think it will be hard to justify a thief as ideal for any role unless there are fights that just require a ton of mobility (as it stands, an engi could probably cover stealth well enough on their own).

ArchonWing.9480:

Nerfs are fine, but not splitting changes across the game modes isn’t very cool. And I was trying to unlock scrapper. :S

So, you’re not going to unlock scrapper based on this? This was a shave on a skill that’s still very strong. Seems a bit extreme to make a decision on unlocking the elite from this alone, lol.

So much ad hominem going on here.

Anyone care to actually point out any flaw in the argument against the Minstrel amulet or should we all just keep conspiring against other people with vague threats of bias?

edit Jeeze…no wonder high end players rarely post here. People really do want to keep this as the crying grounds for people who want excuses for their own failures.

This vid’s almost a year old, but so much of the advice here is still true (just don’t try to 1 v 1 mesmers anymore, lol).

lilz shorty.1879:

Dahkeus.8243:

lilz shorty.1879:

Chaith.8256:

glaphen.5230:

The vitality does not increase sustain in the slightest. The 5.5k healths only benefits are once a fight, possible burst protection if currently above normal max health and they can’t take it away during the CC, increased downed health but weaker to healing skills while downed, Necromancer life force. Could be a problem of too many bruisers that can’t actually burst quickly and the meta didn’t adapt.

You say vitality does not increase sustain in the slightest, this is true, but only in a picky and disingenuous way. When I say ‘increases sustain’ I mean increases their up-time to stay alive on point under high pressure. This is because your personal survivability increases by decreasing the threat of getting caught out by immobilize, condition overload, multiple attackers.

If you survive that immobilize combo and get to your next heal rotation, you’ve added an insane amount of up-time on that point, against enemies exhausted of their cooldowns. Essentially the holes in your defensive cooldown rotation where you’re vulnerable to being downed get erased. Plug the holes, survive indefinitely against things which you never could survive with a much lower health pool.

Other builds are forced to give up the point and kite in order to cope with this extra pressure, to allow their actual sustain to work properly.

I encourage you to play Clerics Bunker Guardian (No vitality stat) without Force of Will, and then enjoy then toggle Force of Will on, and tell me how your life changes with 3,000 more health to buffer all those defensive cooldowns.

All I see is you really complaining about bunker classes being bunker/support when that is what they are supposed to do. Hybrid classes shouldn’t be able to do 75% of what they’ve been doing for the last year and a half, yet you have the audacity to complain about bunkers being bunkery?

Lmao? I can’t believe this. They give support classes to help sustain themselves in this power creep and you QQ. Have you seen scrapper sustain? I have no words for this.

That last statement made me laugh irl.

Your statement makes me laugh irl. The fact you can’t understand that scrapper sustain is beyond crazy yet he complains about a bunker being bunky is ludicrous.

Ok, that’s not what I’m laughing about. I’m laughing because you’re asking one of the most prominent engineer players in high end tournaments if he’s seen Scrapper sustain.

And yes, engi sustain was in need of adjustment, which even Chaith has acknowledged (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Adaptive-Armor-and-HGH-just-nerfed/first#post5689548).

For open world, shredder is not bad for comboing with lightning field for vulnerability (high health mobs) or a fire field (AoE or low hp mobs). It’s not exactly astounding or anything though.

Outside of that, Sneak Gyro is the only other one I’ve found worth using anywhere.

Rezzet.3614:

Dahkeus.8243:

I honestly think Scrapper is a lot of fun. Most gyros still need a lot of work, but I’ve been having fun with Shredder gyro in open world PvE and the stealth gyro is really handy as well.

Function Gyro also still needs a bit of work, but it has saved the day in a good number of situations, which is pretty awesome.

Fun i admit that it is but it is seriously lacking in pvp performance when you compare it to reaper or dragonhunter wich seem to require no skill at all Compared To scrapper

It’s actually really beastly with the right build. That’s pretty much why it got nerfed already.

Hey, welcome to GW2!

1) Guardian is generally a pretty good class for someone new to GW2. If you don’t have the expansion, a burn guard or meditation build are probably good options. There aren’t many builds that are pure ranged, but these builds are a mix of ranged and melee options. Below are some links to these builds.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Meditation_DPS_Variant
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Burst_Burning

If you do have the expansion, then Dragonhunter is also a great option (not 100% on the exact build since I haven’t played this a ton and the expac has only been out a week).

If you don’t like Guardian, then Necro may also be a good option as it’s also pretty straight forward and has good ranged options.

2) You can start PvP as soon as you get past the tutorial section at level 2, I believe, by going to the portal in Lion’s Arch, but you’ll get an icon on your screen to go direction to the PvP area when you hit level 20 (it’s a crossed sword icon at the top left in grey).

3) Take your time and experiment around. Don’t worry too much about winning or losing while you get used to the combat. A lot of builds will seem ridiculously overpowered until you figure out how they work and can avoid or shut down their strengths.

Also, one small tip is that in Conquest, all points capture at the same rate, whether you have 1 person or multiple people on them at the same time. Because of this, if someone is standing on a point to capture it and no one else is around, it doesn’t do anything to stand on the point with them.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

edit Totally spaced on it, but longbow ranger is also a great suggestion and you won’t need the expac for that build either. Here’s a link to a common build:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Power_Survival

lilz shorty.1879:

Chaith.8256:

glaphen.5230:

The vitality does not increase sustain in the slightest. The 5.5k healths only benefits are once a fight, possible burst protection if currently above normal max health and they can’t take it away during the CC, increased downed health but weaker to healing skills while downed, Necromancer life force. Could be a problem of too many bruisers that can’t actually burst quickly and the meta didn’t adapt.

You say vitality does not increase sustain in the slightest, this is true, but only in a picky and disingenuous way. When I say ‘increases sustain’ I mean increases their up-time to stay alive on point under high pressure. This is because your personal survivability increases by decreasing the threat of getting caught out by immobilize, condition overload, multiple attackers.

If you survive that immobilize combo and get to your next heal rotation, you’ve added an insane amount of up-time on that point, against enemies exhausted of their cooldowns. Essentially the holes in your defensive cooldown rotation where you’re vulnerable to being downed get erased. Plug the holes, survive indefinitely against things which you never could survive with a much lower health pool.

Other builds are forced to give up the point and kite in order to cope with this extra pressure, to allow their actual sustain to work properly.

I encourage you to play Clerics Bunker Guardian (No vitality stat) without Force of Will, and then enjoy then toggle Force of Will on, and tell me how your life changes with 3,000 more health to buffer all those defensive cooldowns.

All I see is you really complaining about bunker classes being bunker/support when that is what they are supposed to do. Hybrid classes shouldn’t be able to do 75% of what they’ve been doing for the last year and a half, yet you have the audacity to complain about bunkers being bunkery?

Lmao? I can’t believe this. They give support classes to help sustain themselves in this power creep and you QQ. Have you seen scrapper sustain? I have no words for this.

That last statement made me laugh irl.

posthumecaver.6473:

Dahkeus.8243:

I find it interesting that so many people here think they have more experience and insight into PvP than Chaith, who was on the winning team of the World Tournament Series…

I am also not quite sure that Chaith neutral in the subject, he plays a Hybrid with Soldier Amulet engi, it is his best interest that this amulet disappears otherwise he will have to play much more offensive (high reward/high risk) build to kill them.

Lets look to their team composition

Toker – Thief / Revenant -Glass
Phanta – normally Cele – Ele but played Revenant lately but I will accept him as Hybrid also
Nosc – Cele Necro – Hybrid
Chaith – Soldier Engi – Hybrid
Wakkey – Cele Ele – Hybrid

So their whole composition based on Hybrids and you are telling me his opinions are neutral?

Well, considering that this isn’t what they’ve always played, I’d say yes. Chaith may play soldier in tourneys (and cele scrapper since the patch), but he also often plays glassy builds like marauder grenade and Static Discharge when he streams, so I can’t in good faith say that I think he just wants to support a meta that encourages him to only play tanky/hybrid builds.

wasichu.7524:

I remember when the first guild wars Nightfall expansion came out we got a whole new continent to explore and quest (ELONA) which had 4 regions with multiple sub-regions.
We got new PVP environments, (2) new classes to play and race. A true expansion.

For the cost of the vastness of guildwars 2 we bought HoT. Which included one new class, no new race, for PVP there is supposed to be the new Battle of Champion’s Dusk don’t know much about it if that’s live for all to play yet or not.

In guild wars 1 Maguuma was huge with places like bloodstone fen and reed bog, we only got 3 sub-regions in maguuma, are more regions to unlock in soon weeks to come?

I just feel shortchanged

You really must not understand everything that’s in this expansion.

I’ve been playing the Guild Wars series before the first expansion in GW1 and none of their expansions has really matched this one. You may have seen more land space in the expanded contents of GW1, but they didn’t have nearly as much in any of those maps as we have in these new zones.

I honestly think Scrapper is a lot of fun. Most gyros still need a lot of work, but I’ve been having fun with Shredder gyro in open world PvE and the stealth gyro is really handy as well.

Function Gyro also still needs a bit of work, but it has saved the day in a good number of situations, which is pretty awesome.

Haralin.1473:

Maybe another stealth nerf

Sounds more like a stealth buff to me. ~.^

BlinkTwice.7932:

Is it so bad to for once be a tanky engie than doesnt hit like i have straw as a weapon? I understand nerfing it to a degree, but 60? It might as well not even be a grandmaster anymore.

I finally JUST settled on a build and now I have to find something else. hgh i didnt care too much about but man…AA didnt need that bad of a nerf imo

Yes, yes it is a bad thing to be tanky and have high damage.

Because when you can run a build that is tanky AND can do high damage, it negates the value of any glassy high damage build and any tanky, low damage build. We’ve seen this before with the last meta where a team could rock there way through tournaments with 4 eles on their team since they would all go D/D celestial.

When there’s no tradeoff in the strengths of a build, the number of viable builds drops drastically and gameplay becomes very homogeneous very quickly.

Or, ya know, buy the expansion and enjoy the fact that the game is getting some new, original builds to shake up the meta…

I find it interesting that so many people here think they have more experience and insight into PvP than Chaith, who was on the winning team of the World Tournament Series…

Yea, I honestly don’t know what this game would do without Dulfy.net. That site is so awesome.

To Dulfy and everyone who supports that website: Thank you!

The latest DnT guide for condi engies puts Viper above Sinister:

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/15457607-dnt-engineer-build-102615

Ricky Rouse.1583:

HGH Now grants only 15s of might instead of 20

Adaptive Armor grants 60 toughness per stack, instead of 100 (Now the exact same as Corruptor’s Fervor at max stacks)

This really came out of nowhere, is there any reason as to why?

It didn’t really come out of nowhere. These two skills pretty much made engineers the new DD eles in PvP, but no class should be able to tank like a bunker while hitting like a truck.

I love my engi, but this was a fair change.

RunicAura.9860:

blast gyro is not a minion. Is a limited use missile who can’t fly over obstacles needs flat ground to be used. honestly the only thing i use it for is breaking a bar which it is simi decent at. The stun break is the only other good thing.

Irenio developed the skill. I’m pretty sure that means he gets to decide whether it’s a minion or not. =P

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Player minions don’t carry over their player’s critical chance; phantasms are a special case.

Ahh..ok. Well…any chance you can adjust this guy to either do high non-critical damage or increase the critical damage another way? Because if not, I think that’s the final nail in the coffin for any chance of using this little guy for anything beyond the lolz.

Yea, it’s crappy, but quitting over something like this? Really?

You know another option is to just realize that people with massive Mastery numbers wasted their time farming mobs in old content while you explored the new awesomeness of the expansion and realize that you’re the true winner.

Ok, so HoT isn’t DLC. It’s an expansion, which as with every MMO, that pretty much means that it’s a core part of the game and the base game is more of a demo for people trying out the game for the first time than a really viable stand alone option.

Does that mean that the profession imbalances are ok? No, but that’s kinda expected when there’s a radical change to skills and abilities and that will be sorted out in time. However, don’t expect the game to be balanced around people who won’t buy the expansion.

According to the post on Death and Taxes, you’ll want to aim for full Viper gear with Runes of the Berserker.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/15457607-dnt-engineer-build-specialization-update

As long as there’s a cd on that skill, I’ll never touch that trait. It’s just too unreliable.

Goosekilla.2796:

In pve, the fire field might be worth taking over slick shoes if your group is having trouble stacking might. In pvp it’s not even close; slick shoes are wayy better for the build.

It’s a PvP build…if you want a build for PvE, you’d probably want to change a lot more than just adding a fire field.

I didn’t read your post, but your topic is already a spoiler….

kittening thanks…

Yea, I don’t think GW2 is for you…

Would be awesome, but probably a bit too late for this.

hackks.3687:

What build are these scrappers using to be so OP?

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Scrapper_-_Celestial_Hammer

HGH keeps it loaded with damage and scrapper traits keep it very tanky.

By in large, I’m happy with Scrapper, but here’s the points of criticism I have:

• Function Gyro is killed too easily
• Function Gyro is too hard to target on downed allies
• Medic Gyro is still too slow and is still outclassed by healing turret in just about every scenario
• Blast Gyro dies too easily and is just too unreliable. The cooldown and damage aren’t enough to offset this.
• Bypass Coating really doesn’t need a cast time.

My suggestion: Move the stunbreak from Blast Gyro’s toolbelt to Purge Gyro’s toolbelt. Without this change, I don’t expect to see anything except for maybe Sneak gyro used in PvP.

vespers.1759:

NikeEU.7690:

The relevance is you’re either going to buy the expansion (and thus alleviating your problem faster the sooner you break down and do it) or you’re going to quit (and thus alleviating your problem the sooner you break down and do it) and regardless of which you opt to do, we will all be spared having to read more posts like this.

Oh i understood what you said, but it isn’t relevant to the fact that Anet has adopted kittenty tactics to sell their expansion. One would think if they were confident in the expansions content they wouldn’t need to try and force people to do it.

As for quitting obviously people have to buy expansions to enjoy a game throughout its life cycle… that’s pretty obvious since all new content will be in expansions. That being said, I think i have a right to call them out when they make dumb decisions in the hope of having them reversed, and you can feel free to not comment on threads you disagree with.

I may buy the expansion on sale if they add enough to make it worth it to me or i might not given how disgusted i am with the tactics they used in HoT. Quitting the game is obviously not a solution for someone that likes the game and wants to see it be better than it is, but i’m not going to bend over and stretch open my kitten to be penetrated as you clearly have if i disagree with the direction they’re taking the game.

Ok…you just don’t get it. They’re not trying to ‘force’ people to buy the expansion, but they’re also not going to try to pander to people who won’t support their game either. Heart of Thorns is released and as with every other MMO out there, the game will now be primarily balanced around customers who have purchased the expansion.

If ANet was trying to force players to upgrade, they’d just prevent people from logging in until they bought the expansion. THAT’s forcing a purchase.

You’re getting to play the base game completely for free on servers that are being supported by players who bought the expansion and are paying the bills. If ANet has to make a choice between making players like you happy and making the paying customers happy…guess who wins out.

Davi.4920:

How do I even use the little guy? Is it an additional button? Or am I right in saying it doesn’t work on npcs?

The function gyro works on downed enemies or downed friendly players. Since NPCs don’t go into the downed state (they go directly to defeated), you can’t use this on them.

To use the Function gyro, you just target the ally or enemy in downed state and press F. You’ll see a ‘Press F’ thing on your screen, similar to if you were going to rally/stomp yourself if the function gyro is available. You can also tell if it’s available or on cd by the red gyro flying over your shoulder.

REGGADO.1237:

In this game defense and armor stats are just useless. If you want to be tanky, then make your build with dodges/invurl/blocks and blinds/heavy cc.

True in PvE, false in PvP.

vespers.1759:

NikeEU.7690:

Who are these bizarre people who LOVE guild wars 2 enough to complain about content they don’t have access to on the forums, but DON’T LOVE it enough to save up $60 to buy an expansion they had 10 months advanced notice of? That’s 20 cents a day roughly speaking. If you can’t save that up I wonder how you pay your utility bills and ISP.

Nobody is complaining about content they don’t have access to. If they want to lock people out of the new content they are perfectly entitled to do so and I would have zero issue with it.

Don’t want to let me into the new maps? Fine. Don’t want to let me run fracts past 50? Fine. Don’t want to let me go to the guild hall? Fine.

But nerfing things that have been in the game for the sole purpose of trying to force an expansion purchase? That’s just slimy.

also idk why everyone indists on insinuating that people that didn’t buy are poor. It has nothing to do with the cost of the expansion (although it really does have about $20 worth of content), and everything to do with being against kittenty business practices.

I didn’t buy the expansion because it’s in my opinion a kittenty expansion that doesn’t deserve kitten price tag whether I can easily afford it or not.

They balanced the game for paying customers. This may seem radical to you, but people who keep the game running are more important than people who don’t pitch in at all.

They didn’t make these changes just to pick on poor little ol’ you. They made these changes because the vast majority of the playerbase will be playing on the expansion and providing the best experience possible to the loyal, paying customers is what they need to do in order to keep the company running and to be able to continue to provide new, high quality content.

Zodryn.4216:

I waited 10 hours in a queue to play Archeage. Disconnects were common, and forced another multi-hour queue to get back in. HoT is great.

I have a feeling there’s plenty of people here who have never had to wait on a queue to log into a MMO before. =P

BeardRex.6739:

I’d like to see a discussion about if it would be OP or not for all gyros to have insanely increased speed, like superspeed level speed. (except blast and shredder of course).

This doesn’t fix pathing issues, but at least they’ll keep up on simple terrain.

I honestly don’t see why this isn’t the case. If they can’t prevent the delay from between when you move and when the gyro starts to move or from when the gyro catches up to you, then I don’t think there would be anything OP about a super speed gyro, although it may look a bit awkward.

1) Sentence breaks are good. Line breaks are also very good.

2) There is no meta yet. An entire xpac full of new builds just dropped less than a week ago.

Here’s a quick explanation why. Let’s imagine for a second that they didn’t nerf dungeons. This means that ANet would have 2 choices:

1) They do nothing. In this case, players are incentivized to farm dungeons since they provide so much gold and XP. While some players would enjoy this, most would feel like they were being pushed to farm old content, despite a new expansion being made available.

2) They make HoT content reward better than dungeons. This would be the economic equivalent of power creep and would result in inflation.

Nerfing dungeon rewards allow devs to incentivize new, fresh content to players while avoiding inflation to the economy.

captainteemo.6537:

I was looking to extra my old infusion out of my back piece (a +10) just so I can upgrade it to progress further. I’m confused why the ability to salvage ascended items is available to all players, but the “Infusion Extraction Device” sold for 20s needs to be positioned on the little island only available to HoT players?

I suppose as a non-HoT player I have access to the gem store upgrade extractor. But, it seems heavily biased the new (yet generally still old fractals with just higher scaling and a re balancing of instabilities) fractals become so difficult for old players, and HoT paid players get all the nice new advantages to make life a lot easier for them to progress.

Production is limited for ArenaNet when customers don’t pay, so why shouldn’t your play potential be limited when you don’t pay as well?

Welcome to life. If you want nice things, ya gotta pay for them. You have two choices: Lower your standards or increase your value to the world around you.

Hell no. Players should be rewarded for active play. Turret engi before the turret nerf was evidence of how bad passive effects from AI were to the game.

Atlas.4509:

How does Radiant Fire work when you don’t have a torch equipped?

It just…does?

There’s no torch really involved in the animation. You just get blue flames around you and apply burning to nearby enemies.

edit Note from the wiki: Zealot’s Flame will trigger regardless of weapon used. However, when wielding a torch, you will gain access to the Zealot’s Fire sequence skill as if you had cast Zealot’s Flame from the skill bar. The two versions of the skill use separate cooldown timers, making it possible to use the sequence skill twice in quick succession.

If you don’t have the skin showing on your backpiece, apply the skin and talk to the vendor.

If you do have it showing, un-equip your backpiece then re-equip it.

The Christopher.7961:

I agree.

Getting to 400 leatherworking isn’t terribly difficult, but when I already have a 500 leatherworker on a different character, I feel it to be redundant to take my Ranger/Druid and replace either my jewelcrafting or huntsman crafting (or buy the crafting expander) with leatherworking to make the rune.

Yea, I got really confused on this too. I think they should have made a pop-up similar to the ones you get when you level up that explain how to get the recipes.

I didn’t even notice anything telling me about a recipe being unlocked and I capped out two character’s specializations already.

I do and it’s been awesome. The mobs are perfect and I love the challenge.

Megaservers are having issues with not enough players, but that’s being addressed.

The V.8759:

I tested it around 40 times, it critted 7 times. Bringing it down to about 17% crit chance. It is not a reliable testing tho, should be done about 200 times at least.

Oh, weird. Yea, I thought I remembered them saying that it wouldn’t crit on the Twitch reveal stream, but I guess maybe it can crit now and is bugged.

rennlc.7346:

Roarkin.1068:

So first let me state I play a thief, far from the best but certainly ahead of the curve. I know the tricks of the class and what it can do.

So my question is, has anyone noticed thieves shadowstep stomping a teleported away enemy with almost godly reflexes.

I have had this happen from two different thieves on two different occasions in sPvP. I Always time my shadow escape for the very last possible second, and on these occasions these people shadow stepped to me so fast to not interrupt their stomp i couldnt believe it.

Now perhaps they are god tier players but it just felt fishy. Anyone else notice anything like this?

How to do this easily:

1) Down a Thief
2) Stealth yourself
3) Wait 2 seconds before beginning stomp
4) Prepare to shadowstep to where the Thief teleports. You will likely have almost 2 seconds to do so before your stomp finishes.

If there is a curve, we are too biased to correctly determine where we are on it. There is no God tier. There are only players who are much more experienced and practiced than yourself.

^ Also a great way to land stomps vs mesmers.

Killyox.3950:

But… blast gyro doesn’t crit.

I totally forgot about that…and I think they left this off the tooltip…

But sadly, this thing just doesn’t really hit that hard because of this.

I tried this skill for a while and it just gets obstructed or killed early way too easily to justify the mediocre damage and cooldown.

Anecdotal evidence from people tracking a rare drop item over the period of less than a weak is bound to provide lots of inaccurate information and it wouldn’t surprise me to see people state that the rate of drop is lower, even if it hadn’t changed.

I think a dev needs to step into this one and set the record straight…

ANet isn’t catering to people who refuse to buy their game?!? It’s almost as if they’re trying to earn money! As if there’s some sort of expenses they need to cover or something! You’re right, this is ridiculous!

/sarcasm