Guild Wars 2

haviz.1340:

I keep hearing that nothing but dps matters. In that case, why would you ever bring a guardian or a mesmer? Just run with eles, one war and thieves.

Every class can bring awesome DPS. But support is nice too, especially if it helps apply more DPS more easily.

“Zerker meta” is about gear choices, not class performance.

And for PvE there is only one choice.

Oh my, that’s a deal-breaker.

That said, both Sigil of Fire and Air seem over-hyped. Their damage is lackluster compared to most other Sigils. The only real benefit they offer is added burst. But DPS wise they are terrible choices.

Sigil of Fire hits for about 650-800 on a Medium target Golem.

Sigil of Air about 1100-1400, which makes it significantly better.

But both are still outperformed by the +5% damage increase that affects every attack of yours.

Obviously each class has strengths and weaknesses.

Thieves and Engineers are awesome roamers but less desirable in other aspects of WvW.

Overall I’d vote for Warriors and Elementalists being the overall “best” WvW classes. Both can be highly mobile for roaming, both have a role in zerg fights and both can be a great asset in smaller scale fights as well.

I agree to an extent, especially due to Initiative.

But “weapon specialist” is a niche that Warriors have occupied. It’s just one of those class-defining differences. 10 seconds swap-time is base-line, so it’s not like we’re being handed the short end of a stick.

I’m not sure if it would increase the skill-cap though. Short weapon-swap times make a class very forgiving. Switching weapons should be a brief commitment. When a Warrior switches to Longbow for example it’s barely enough time to capitalize on Whirling Axe before he switches back again.

fadeaway.2807:

“the 125 Precision as a final bonus, equates to 6% Precision. Assuming you are not already at 100% Precision this should equal the 7% flat damage bonus as long as your Critical Damage modifier is above ~215%. "

I don’t think you understand how damage modifiers work in this game. They are multiplicative. So that 7% actually ends up being more like 11%+.

I have 200% crit damage and 74% crit chance with fury before runes.
That’s 1.74x base damage.
I also have 10% damage from zeal2, 5% damage from zeal7, 10% from radiance, 5% from virtues, 10% from potions, 5% from force. That’s 54% more damage in total.

1.74 * 1.54 = 2.679x base damage.

With 125 more precision from Pack runes (crit chance goes up to 80%):
1.8x base damage.
1.8 * 1.54 = 2.772x base damage.

Even if I only consider the 7% damage modifier from the strength runes, the formula becomes this:
1.74 * 1.648 = 2.867x base damage.

So Strength already has Pack beaten for damage without considering the 45% longer might duration and proc. The Pack proc is pointless because your elementalist should provide perma fury. You don’t even need to be a might stacking class for runes of strength to outclass runes of the pack, you only need 1 single might boon.

Finally it’s “when struck”. You don’t really want to be taking any hits in a high level fractal. Archdiviner for example will just oneshot you.

Runes of Scholar are even better dps if you can maintain the 90% hp. I’ve found that Runes of Strength need to give you on average ~5 stacks of might more than normal to yield the same level of dps, which I find unlikely.

Well your Ferocity is below the threshold I pointed out.

Take 225% Crit-Damage x 0.74 = 1.925 times base-damage.

And 1.925 × 1.54 = 2,9645 times base-damage.

You maths seems awfully complex for something so straight forward. A 7% flat increase should affect you identically, regardless of build (as long as it’s a power build).

In order for Precision to win out, 6% Critical Strike chance have to beat out 7% raw DPS. And 7/6 = 1,16 so Precision wins out once you have more than 216,6% Critical Damage.

DonQuack.9025:

So youre telling me I want to get hit…. :P

Considering the 4-piece bonus on the Runes of Strength is procced by being hit I consider that a moot point.

I think it’s fairly likely to be hit once every 20 seconds in any given fight. But getting hit every 5 seconds, as the Runes of Strength would ask for, is a tall order unless you’re stacking.

Ferocity increased the damage in low level dungeons by a huge amount. That reinfirced the Zerker-meta.

But frankly, the Zerker meta was never a stat-balancing issue in the first place. It was a game-design issue. Nothing but DPS matters for dungeons and nothing about that has changed.

So neither has the “Zerker meta”.

I know that Superior Runes of Strength are all the craze right now for PvE.

(1): +25 Power
(2): +10% Might Duration
(3): +50 Power
(4): 15% Might duration; 25% chance when struck to gain Might for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 5s)
(5): +100 Power
(6): +20% Might duration; +7% damage while under the effects of Might.

They add 45% Might duration, which, if you’re a Might stacking class, adds quite a bit of DPS overall. On top of that you get the 7% static bonus damage while under the effect of Might. No doubt this is a first-class choice for classes capable of reliably stacking and maintaining Might.

But not all classes are capable of doing that. Some can’t procc Might reliably, don’t want to use a Sigil of Battle or just want an alternative set.

Well I present you with Superior Runes of the Pack:

(1): +25 Power
(2): +10% Swiftness Duration
(3): +50 Power
(4): 25% chance when struck to grant nearby allies Might, Fury and Swiftness for 10s (Cooldown: 20s).
(5): +100 Power
(6): +20% Swiftness Duration; +125 Precision

Ok, so why might this be better?

First off, the Power bonus is identical on both sets and will be ignored for the rest of the argument, as will be Swiftness duration since….well it’s Swiftness.

Second, the 125 Precision as a final bonus, equates to 6% Precision. Assuming you are not already at 100% Precision this should equal the 7% flat damage bonus as long as your Critical Damage modifier is above ~215%. For most classes in Berserker gear this is the case, as Berserker gear typically leaves you with 225% Critical Damage modifier.

So, assuming you are full Zerker, have >215% Critical Damage and are below the Precision cap then 125 Precision should beat our the 7% static increase offered by the Runes of Strength.

So now it comes down to the 4-piece bonus.

The Strength bonus adds a few personal Might stacks on a very generous cooldown and should amount to a few extra Might stacks throughout any given fight.

However the Runes of the Pack also add Might, Fury and Swiftness to the entire group, on a 20 second cooldown. This includes all Phantasms, Pets and other arbitrary creatures or allies you might have. Having two people with this Rune-set in your group should basically ensure perma Fury, perma Swiftness and a few added Might stacks in any given fight.

And this perma Fury especially may allow you to spec out of other sources of Fury in your trait-line and invest those points elsewhere. Mesmers can skip Phantasmal Fury for example or Thieves could skip Thrill of the Crime since now they essentially have the same as a passive procc.

So I’m not claiming this rune set will outperform Runes of Strength on a spreadsheet, especially against a Might stacking class. But I do claim it holds it’s own as a very competitive DPS Rune-set, especially in group situations.

I’m going to toss in Superior Rune of the Pack as a budget alternative.

(1): +25 Power
(2): +10% Swiftness Duration
(3): +50 Power
(4): 25% chance when struck to grant nearby allies Might, Fury and Swiftness for 10s. (Cooldown: 20s)
(5): +100 Power
(6): +20% Swiftness Duration; +125 Precision

We all know that Mesmers really appreciate a little extra Swiftness and the bonus Might and Fury are easy to procc in most encounters. It also counts for the entire party, possibly even for your Phantasms. The 125 Precision is nice too and applies to them as well.

Dahkeus.8243:

Dee Jay.2460:

“hard” is a very misleading word.

No class is “hard” to play in GW2.

Yea, it was just a matter of time until one of these people popped in here to say this.

Every time someone asks about the relatively difficulty of a profession in a game, there’s always at least one guy who has to boast about how “every class is easy” and that it’s not hard, you just have to [insert game mechanic here].

There will probably be the inevitable defensive reply to this, but don’t bother. This kinda stuff pops up on forums for every game, no matter how complex or simple the mechanics.

It’s because “hard” and “easy” are relative terms.

And if you’ve come from MMOs with 60+ abilities, traits and skill combinations then yes, Guild Wars 2 is “easy”.

That’s not to say GW2 takes no skill. It does. It’s just that “class control”, an attribute typically associated with “skill”, isn’t a big part of it. “Situational awarness” etc. more so, but that’s not class-specific.

“hard” is a very misleading word.

No class is “hard” to play in GW2. The limited number of utilities and skills ensures that.

Class control is rarely an issue.

However the Thief class is “unforgiving”.

That means, unlike for example with a Warrior, if you suck on a Thief you will be nigh useless to your team. A bad Warrior might still be more than a rally-bot to the enemy but a bad Thief…no.

This is due to the “hit and run” nature of most Thief builds. A Thief glass-cannon must rely on situational awareness, dodges and Shadowsteps to survive, all which require player attentiveness.

This is what sets Thieves apart from other classes, some more than others.

They fixed the population issue for PvE by introducing megaservers. So you can’t claim they are ignorant of the problem.

It’s just that a solution for WvW will require a more intricate solution, which is surely “work in progress”.

Even ANet has to admit that WvW is too reliant on coverage to ensure any real competition. The scoring system is flawed and the population differences on server too severe to ensure fun and exciting matches.

I’m sure at some point, especially if the game continues to bleed population (as any MMO does while it ages), ANet will give up the static server system we have currently.

Instead I imagine they will group you up into different leagues of some sort with each league having a similar population.

You’ll probably be able to stick with your guild and friends if you join the same league but servers as entities are slowly going to disappear.

Thieves don’t really excel at anything.

The reason they receive so much more hate is because of stealth, which makes them extremely hard to kill. If Thieves just died like any other class would in a similar situation people would be much less hateful towards them.

It’s just that ANet, in their limited wisdom, has created the single worst stealth mechanic in any MMO I have witnessed. Even MMOs with perma-stealth had more compelling counter-play to stealth.

But in GW2 you can spam stealth almost ad infinitum, as long as you’re in combat, while blinding and healing yourself in the process. Stealth doesn’t limit the Thief in any way, it has no opportunity cost. In fact the exact opposite is the case. Stealth enpowers the Thief so it’s always a good idea to use it.

Stealth in GW2 is a great example of poor game design and the fact that it remains unchanged, even 2 years into the game, shows that ANet don’t really have anyone who really grasps this type of problem.

Gandara turned any “competitive” spirit in Silver League into a farce. Biggest joke since Desolation in Season 1.

So really, no surprises anywhere. All servers performed as expected, which was to be expected, because PPT is the worst scoring metric for WvW I have ever witnessed.

Happen to me today as well, just 10 minutes ago, during a regular CoF path 1 run.

I couldn’t loot any of the 4 chests I should normally be able to. I could see them on the mini map, but there was no visual entity of them in the actual game world. It affected some of my group mates as well, but not all of them.

Annoying to say the least.

Taygus.4571:

“last night” differs depending on where you are, you sure you didnt do it after reset?

Yes, absolutely.

Looking at the achievement it would be impossible to do some without the other.

My theory is:

A) This is somehow a bug tied to be re-downloading the gw2.dat file.

B) This is some sort of “fix” because the daily was reset twice on patch-night and I might have done it twice that night.

I logged in today (after redownloading the gw2.dat, thanks reddit -_-) only to find that my daily had already been completed for whatever reason.

I’m absolutely confident I didn’t do it last night and it only did 5 while the other 5 are still at 0.

What’s this about?

I guess your previous experiences depend on your previous server. If you were from Desolation you’re probably not noticing the upsides.

If you’re from Underworld of Vabbi however you may well enjoy the new player activity.

While in general I’m supportive of the idea it does need a little fine-tuning. Languages especially need to be unified. There’s no reason to bunch French, English, German and Spanish players together when those servers should have sufficiently large communities in themselves.

I’m also not sure if I really appreciate every event being turned into a massive zerg-fest but I imagine that will calm down over time.

Hi, I grew up my Mesmer as a PvE alt to gain insight into their class mechanics and feel a bit more useful than just bringing raw DPS.

I’ve grown really fond of the Mesmer though, especially because of reflects. I never noticed any mechanic that somehow tied these reflects to critical strike chance but was recently informed that there is such a thing, which is why many Mesmers look to attain 100% critical strike chance.

So what exactly is this mechanic that makes 100% crit-chance so important to a Mesmer?

This was going to be an obvious development.

ANet could have mitigated it by at least nerfing the + Condition Duration food…..but no, now we have to endure months of stupid and mindless condition spam again.

Yeah I never figured this trait could be all that great. Most 5-point minor traits add 10% DPS with a very forgiving conditional. I don’t see how and 8% increase that can’t even be maintained that much could be all that useful except for PvE D/D builds.

Sure, it might be better than many other Deadly Arts traits but given how crap most of them are, that’s hardly a feat.

Crit-Damage was down-scaled in a weird way before the patch despite being a fixed percentage.

Now it works just like Precision, meaning you should have roughly the same crit-damage at every level. In practice this means your crit-damage in AC might have gone from 30% to 75%. That’s quite significant.

If you’re at the point where you’re killing 3 enemies every 5 seconds you’ve already won the fight.

Even 18 months into the game I still think downed-state is the worst thing in Guild Wars 2. I’ve gotten used to it, I can deal with it, but I just hate the game-play it encourages and the game-dynamic it rewards.

It’s the single worst thing about this game.

If you need a more detailed explanation feel free to browse my extensive posting history on this matter.

I can understand wanting to limit the amount of achievement points attainable from dailies.

I also don’t mind the reduction of dailies in general, but I feel like it was handled poorly.

1. Stuff like the daily activities are gone which means less people will participate in them and progressing through those achievements will take longer.

2. Stupid dailies like 25 Underwater Kills or eating 25 food items still remain, despite offering no compelling game-play whatsoever.

I’m ok with pruning the dailies, but do it in the right places.

Nobody goes 5 vs. 1 without a problem.

It’s easy to find good clips if you have hours of footage to go through. That’s why everyone can look good in youtube video.

WvW also is a different matter from sPvP and requires a slightly different skill-set.

Unlike WvW it’s more difficult for personal skill to shine through in an sPvP match since it’s much more of a team-effort and depends a lot more on group dynamics.

I’ve heard of Sizer and Caed, they seem to be at the top of their game when it comes to sPvP. Can’t comment on anyone else though.

Same here.

I did CoF Story Mode some time this morning, followed by a quick path 1 run. CoF unlocked the progression path just fine.

This afternoon I also did Story Mode Arah and at the end it did not unlock anything. Not sure what the issue is, but maybe it’s somehow tied to just being rewarded once for each dungeon? Idk…

On a similar note, when I first entered the Mist my PvP locker started unlocking the skins. However I jumped into an sPvP match before it had finished which halted the process. Are my sPvP skins all unlocked or did it somehow stop prematurely?

Imo Engineers are the most overpowered class in the game and have been so for a while now. They just flew under the radar for a long time because the class itself was unpopular and took a little more finesse to master compared to your average Warrior.

But it’s a pretty broken class without any real counters. I’m not just talking about sPvP here which they have already turned into a mockery but WvW as well. I have mutiple classes and multiple builds and NONE of them can deal with an Engineer.

Engineers can do stuff no other class can or should be able to do. Their condition damage and their ability to kite people while CCing them is just a broken concept. It needs some serious revision.

A lot of their power though is derived from their ability to spam conditions without limit. If conditions ever are adjusted in a way, it should help keep Engineers in line.

The 10k hits were a bit stupid, I’m not gonna lie. It scaled extremely well and hit for 5-6k even on Soldier builds.

But the 15% nerf combined with the Ferocity nerf is a little much, I agree, and a little uncalled for. They should have waited to see how Ferocity played out before going through with it.

We’ve had multiple threads about exactly this issue a number of times even weeks before the patch. But ANet has chosen to ignore the issue. They must find condition spam really engaging.

The kicker is that the 40% condition duration is so massively overpowered, even when compared to other level 80 condition foods. I mean your normal level 80 food might add 15% Poison duration or 15% Burn duration. This food adds almost thrice that and applies its bonus to ALL conditions.

It’s ridiculous.

1. No hard-rezzing in combat.

2. Slower revives in general.

3. 1 kill – 1 rally.

4. Only melee weapons can damage gates.

We’ve been preaching this for years.

You can still do it…for profit.

I’m more saddened my the removal of Daily Activities since that really will impact the number of people playing them.

Stacking Power is always going to be more effective than stacking Ferocity.

I went to Southsun cove just before and after the patch to record my Backstabs.

I run Runes of Strength just fyi.

My average Backstab against a level 80 Karka went from 5100 down to about 4600. So roughly a 10% drop in actual Backstab damage. This was with the buffed Runes of Strength but no new Sigils added (not that they’d affect the results).

It depends:

I’ve found that Thieves, depending on build and play-style, do well against some classes, but are nigh useless against others.

We almost hard-counter Hammer Warriors for example if we manage to kite their Berserker Stance but have a much harder time once they equip Longbows.

We also do very well against many Mesmer builds (except PU), Ranger builds (except the Bunker type) and a series of other classes as well.

But there’s a limit to what you can do with any given build. No build is a “one-size fits all”. All have their strengths and their weaknesses. I guess this is working as intended but it also means there’s a limit to what skill can achieve in this game.

I think MMO developers and publishers tend to give up on marketing their product about 6 months after release and just rely on word-of-mouth to market the game while working on retaining the player-base they have built over that time.

That’s a fair way to go about things, but I agree it might not be ideal.

MMOs are evolving products and as such they change over time. That’s a big part of what keeps me engaged as a player. But MMOs need to sell that change to new potential customers, which they rarely do.

I can understand that Guild Wars 2 might not be given much attention at this point because NC Soft, their publisher, is more focused on marketing Wildstar. But it would be a shame for the attention given to Wildstar to come at the expense of Guild Wars 2, which after tomorrow’s patch, has quite a lot going for it.

I haven’t seen a S/D Thief in weeks.

The ones I did meet essentially took the sPvP evade-spam build into WvW, with moderate success. S/D is good in duels but it lacks the burst needed to secure kills and the stealth to avoid them.

a t s e.9614:

Play a thief people will send you hate mails.

I call it “fanmail”.

I have no doubt that there is a significant russian player-base in GW2.

But given how accustomed russians are to playing on international servers the question is “how many more players could ANet get from translating the game into russian?”.

I would wager that most russian players who want to play Guild Wars 2 already do. Russia also has a strong F2P market so it’s questionable if a B2P game like GW2 could gain much traction there.

But this is something for analysts to sort out, people who have actual numbers.

If it’s just about duels, S/D works reasonably well. The constant evades make it hard for the Engineer to apply any pressure and the Pain Response helps against his Burn spam.

But it won’t be a quick fight and is not tactically viable in a TeamQ game. You are probably better off doing something else with your time like spaming Pistol Whip at people trying to revive their team-mates.

Put something like a Necro or Ranger on close and then come in with some quicky burst and finish off the Engineer before moving out again.

I have observed this since….well since I’ve bought the game. At first I thought it might have to do with my Wireless connection or my slightly rather worn keyboard.

But after moving flats and having access to a solid landline and with a new mechanical keyboard at my disposal I’m still seeing it happen.

Quite simply, sometimes skills just don’t trigger when you press the buttons. It’s like the button-press just doesn’t register for some reason. This doesn’t happen constantly, but often enough to be more than just random flukes.

I admit I notice it more often in WvW than elsewhere but that#s because that’s where I spend most of my time. But this is not due to lag as it happens both in PvE, sPvP and during low-pop hours.

It happens with all sorts of skills, on all classes. Instant skills, channeled skills, utility skills or weapons skills. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the button you pressed just does not register with the game.

It’s really frustrating trying to finish a Guardian, activate Dolyak Signet while doing so, and then still get knocked-back because somehow the skill did not trigger.

What happens most frequently though is that a finisher won’t start when pressing the F-button. My character will stand there, the prompt will say press F to finish, I press it….and nothing happens.

I really don’t know what else to say. I can’t recognize any pattern or any correlation to in-game events. It seems to happen to all buttons, in all situations, on all types of occasions. It’s like the game “swallows” player input at times and I don’t know why.

Thief Community: We need some condition removal outside of stealth so we aren’t forced to run Lyssa Runes or Shadow Arts.

ANet: Ok, here have some passive healing on Crits. -_-

Yeah, ANets dealing with Skyhammer is pretty embarrassing. I will gladly return to SoloQ once they remove it.

You must be new to PvP in general. If insulting your attacker was a little simpler in WvW you hear it all the time.

EOTM is to WvW what Skyhammer is to sPvP.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see. The text could be interpreted either way.

But currently swapping weapons completely changes your weapon (including stats) so it makes sense to assume the sigil-stacks will go as well.

Anyway, it’s just a few more days.

zwierz.9012:

Heh, I guess I’ll have to stop using build up sigils then, kind of sucks, but then again, I’ll have a free sigil slot!

Why? They will become easier to stack in WvW and will still offer the best DPS increase. 250 Power is roughly 10% more DPS for Power builds and I imagine the same applies to Condition damage and other Sigils. 250 Precision are 12% Crit-chance, much more than anything comparable.

It just means you will want to equip that sigil at all times instead of having a dedicated stacking weapon.

I assume it means in order to have the stacks, you need to wield the weapon. We will have to wait and see if this applies to alternative weapons sets as well but I assume so.

Stacking Sigils will probably still be the best DPS Sigils, but with the caveat for needing stacks. Still I imagine these Sigils will remain as popular as ever, maybe even more so than before.

Today I returned to Arah for the first time in a long time.

My guildies are pretty casual and wanted to take it slowly and cautiously so we ended up killing a lot of the trash that most people skip.

The thing was though, even with a Magic Find booster active almost none of the trash mobs dropped any loot. Nothing, nada.

Not even a green or blue item, let alone a bag.

You can’t fault people for skipping if the trash-mobs don’t even have loot tables.

In PvE I think it works to an extent.

With most encounters you have the choice of doing it slow with ranged DPS, or with more risky, but faster melee DPS. Lupicus is a great example of this. You can melee him if you know how and it will make the fight much faster, but most pugs and inexperienced players will find the ranged approach more accessible.

So in general I think it works, but once you get to specifics it really falls apart.

Mob-targeting is too erratic and random, their attacks against melees barely visible a lot of the time. Stacking is an issue and being able to ignore or power through boss mechanics with raw DPS.

It’s ok for the game to ask a bit more of melee players in return for their higher DPS. But in GW2 the trade-off is completely borked and is either too easy or involved instant-gibs and opaque mechanics.

PvP and WvW is another matter entirely. I’d say here the major problem is that a lot of spells and ranged attacks are poorly telegraphed or even animated, compared to their melee counterparts. A lot of spells are nothing more than a casual wave of the hand in terms of animations and nothing as obvious or “in your face” as say…100 Blades.