Guild Wars 2

OP I used to think it was the case. After soloing my last 7 elite specs the reality is you don’t need to join a HP train. In fact HP trains can slow you down with people being slow or if you have already done certain HPs. I was intimated at first, then once I did 1-2 more I realized it’s quite simple.

What I did was learn every HP locations for VB+AB – use youtube or dulfy they hand feed it for you. VB only has THREE champions that need a group—the 4th champion @ the lower level is soloable by any specs—and some specs like minionmancer can solo everything. So 8/11 HPs in VB are just “walk up to them”. Then the other 3, if you call out on the map you are doing them or just wait a few minutes there’s always 1-2 people who need them or 1 person who will help.

Then in AB there’s 4/11 HPs that are gimmies. The rest are champs and AB is always swarming with people, I just start up a HP like arrowhead, type in map chat, people come and join. If you want to go to TD, there 3/11 HPs that gimmies/walk up to. Depending how much you did of AB you now have your elite spec.

And also please remember, if you want to spare 1.5hours doing the DS meta, you have 7/7 HPs that are gimmies/walk up to – granted 1 if you don’t have leyline you can’t get it unless you look up the climbing path or get a mesmar portal. So 6/7 60 HP right there.

It’s extremely easy, roughly a few hours for each elite spec. Once you know where to go – that’s the only thing you have to put effort in, then all your alts will just be a breeze. And develop a system for example you just did Golem hp? You can glide down to the cliff HP that’s just north.

Another TIP, if you’re unlucky and one champ you can’t get people, move on to one of the many gimmies/walk up to HPs. Once you learn everything and develop a proper route your alts will be a breeze.

It’s fine because once we have multiple elite specs you still can only pick one. In fact, having 2-3 elite specs strong will promote more build diversity. You just see it as a problem now because there’s only ONE elite spec that has some power creep. It will get better as they introduced more, and it will make the xpacs more exciting than just having everything bland and exactly the same.

One thing I agree on is the weapon tied to the elite spec. For example I love my DH can use a LB but if future elite specs I prefer, then I can’t use my bow. But I doubt that will change so I am just going to live with it.

I personally just went about leveling every profession, it makes you understand the game a lot better and the leveling process is really fast/smooth. Looking at your list, maybe a ranger/druid will be a change of pace. While condi druid is the meta for top tier, power is still viable for lower tier stuff.

Don’t listen to the negative comments. I wish I had bought HOT sooner but it was $50 minimum. It’s only $30 now. It’s a game changer, and right now HOT maps are bustling 24/7 and it’s the perfect time to get all your masteries done, farm boxes, get easy hero points, prepare yourself for next expansion. There’s also lots of gold to be made in HOT maps when you get bored of always farming SW.

$30 is a steal,and your PVP experience will improve 10 fold with the strong elite specs. PVP isn’t dead, during seasons queues are like 1-3min max, and WVW usually always has a zerg or roam group. Yeah there are issues with PVP but every MMO has this, but this game has a massive population, easily top 5 MMO populations.

The new xpac would most likely not come out until the end of the year, that’s a long time to not be enjoying HOT before it may become a bit more quite when the xpac hits. $30 is a no brainer, just buy it if you enjoy this game because HOT makes it a lot more better.

Awesome, welcome to GW2! Yes, it’s very active and there’s always something to do when you reach 80. In fact, you won’t have enough hours in the day if you really get into it. Definitely get map completion on ONE character, you will learn a lot about the areas as well.

Argh, I really hope it’s equal or close to DH. People saying “power you can play DH” but if the new elite specs are the new god mode specs then there’s no option. Not a fan condi guardian type builds, but I am sure other would be. Also to have Guardians finally have a long power range weapon was a blessing, I’d hate to see DH just be irrelevant, hopefully both elite specs for ALL professions are very close to each other in output and one doesn’t powercreep the other by a lot.

Growing desolate? No matter what time I log in, every meta gets 1-2 full maps, and every LW3 zone has map chat and heaps of people farming currency. I am not sure when you play, but HOT+LW3 maps are bustling 24/7 for me. Then when I take a break to check tp etc, LA and mists always have people. I am pretty impressed with the population TBH.

The gameplay and feel of your attacks is very important. I would sacrifice a bit of damage any day if it meant for faster, fluid gameplay with less telegraphed moves.

SaltAndLight.4652:

Nerfing the Illusionary Reversion trait is really a reduction to sustain in PvP as mesmers use their shatters not only for damage, but also it’s their main form of condi cleanse and a secondary form of healing with Healing Prism and Restorative Illusion traits in the Inspiration line.

Shatter damage was buffed in part to make up for the loss of clone creation. Healing and condition removal was not.

From my experience so far after the patch, it’s not a minor nerf.

With all of the AoE, illusions don’t last very long. It’s much harder to trigger this trait now.

Exactly, getting off 2 illusions without a swap and having options, and building up that sustain. Now with how easily illusions can die, if one is destroyed early you have to wait or weapon swap right away. All the openers have changed, the WHOLE playstyle of chrono is different. Maintaining 3 instead of 2 is gigantic. On top of that, like you said, the cleanses, healing consistency all gone but for me the actual gameplay and consistence of clones which made me love this spec is gone. That whole trait was nearly carrying the whole spec. Sure it’s still fine, but the playstyle is just back to what it was like before chrono.

Will feel slower with moderate pings now on top for sure.

Pretty brutal so many rounds of nerfs now and before.

Wow this talent made chrono so fun and addressed the annoying clone consistency. This is a pretty big nerf for pve and pvp. Now many situations you need to weapon swap sooner, it totally changes your openers and rotation in many situation.

I am sorry but HOT is bustling with activity. You need to press Y and use the LFG tool, load up a site with event timers and 15-30min decide where you want to go. Get into a game and the map will always fill up.

There’s meta/hp train games 24/7 in HOT areas, I’ve played all types of hours too, there’s always something. Just try use the LFG tool more and if you get into an overflow map, start taxing too and ask others, you can fill it up.

I know it won’t happen but if mesmar ever got a Longbow elite spec then I’d probably never stop playing it.

I have a core frontliner build for WVW but since I bought HOT, the dream of having my guardian use a LB was too strong. I am playing DH for every mode now, but I have the gear set-up for frontliner to swap. For now, the flavor of DH isn’t going away any time soon. If I could use a bow outside of the elite spec I would. It makes it so much easier now especially tagging in metas and more fun in fights having a power 2h range options.

I personally feel legendary armor should have been something you definitely don’t want to hide or transmute over. The heavy armor looks ok, the rest are so spiky for some reason, makes like someone said you feel like a cactus. xd There’s outfits that look a lot more “legendary”. I think the visual should have superseded animations. Given all the time, the armor should pop out and make you stop in your track just like when you first saw someone running through LA with Twilight.

But, I’ll probably never be able to make it anyway, and some may like that spiky look, but overall the consensus seems pretty obvious for me. I do like the idea of having legendary armor, and the stat/rune benefit. Maybe in the future they can release more, I mean these don’t have to be the only ones.

I am hoping the next expansion still has challenging maps in terms of the actual mobs, events etc but not a layout that has navigation frustration. The new LW episode has a map that is like this.

Alt accounts and win sharing has a big impact. The ease of alt accounts and like you said, how people will just instant quit/give up against a counter team or top player(s) and it doesn’t affect them.

It could be worse, out of all the MMOs – especially the big ones – GW2 still has the best PVP model/skill ceiling.

A good cheaper option that’s still solid is just using soldiers, GS for #3 mobility and some damage in smaller fights and staff as main support. Sigils and runes are flexible with cheap options. Overall you will contribute quite a lot. Hammer is also good but I prefer GS.

I got home, logged on for my dailies, checked the shop, “Crystalline Dragon Wings”. Before I could finishing reading it I was buying it. Anyone else happy it came back relatively soon? It’s the one backpack/glider that my brain says: “Take it, take it now”. And… they flap.

I went with the Asura, small and sneaky type but I acknowledge human female really suit it well.

My only problem with WVW is that it ‘s population is either awesome and you have leaders and trains or you go in and there’s no-one and you can’t really play. I have to try sync my gaming hours to try play when most Americans are on, but it can be frustrating when I want to get a good 2-3 hours of WVW in but there’s nothing happening and I end up logging out of WVW.

But when you get a good time and people are all on, it’s great.

I feel happy for those who got rare loot and I am interesting in seeing what dropped. OP you can easily change the chat panel during world boss kills etc and blocked everyone out. MMOs at core are about loot and character progression, sharing with other people. Otherwise you might as well play single player RPGs like Skyrim.

It’s interesting you feel angry and the urge to swear at people being happy and sharing their lucky loot drop, there’s some other underlining issues perhaps but regardless most people are curious and happy to have loot linked – loot that warrants linking of course and not random stuff.

I really want to buy it, but on sale, due to currency exchange rates and my countries weakening dollar the xpac is the price of a full AAA game, even more. I returned after a long break, farmed some gold, only about 30 levels off having every profession maxed, filled my favorites with exos, doing my dailies, playing spvp and WVW if I catch a good train but now I feel completely blocked if I don’t get HoT. I am still hoping for a mid April sale.

I feel PVP is incredibly accessible, even with it’s downsides it’s quite fluid to get into, but PVE outside of the world just seems completely shut down.

So in short, I haven’t bought it because I bought the full game and feel like I am rebuying the original at that price, but I WILL buy it once it’s on the 50% sale.

Thanks for the support retail link. I had a look there’s just 1 store, they are doing a HoTx2 bundle, I think single I could save $10 if I go there and pick it up, so yeah a small saving. I guess they might not have a sale this April, I’ll wait a couple days then I might just bite the bullet and buy it all at once via official site.

Yeah it won’t let you buy it, it’s greyed out “you need HOT”. Hence my predicament. Basically to get the glider I have to pay 50% more on HOT because SAB will definitely be over before the sale.

…but that cloud glider… holy moly. I usually try not to fall for skin purchases in games but this thing is outrageously awesome. However, it would mean I’d have to buy hot @ 50% more the price, and I am sure the glider will disapear after the super adventure is over while the sale is most likely mid April.

Argh what do I do. xd I’d instant buy it if I didn’t need HOT to purchase and wait but now I am tingling.

Actually longer queue times the higher you go is a natural order for many PVP systems. It’s not fun for such mismatches especially duo vs full public. That’s the price you pay for success—well it should be—being in a small % in a top bracket you need to find players similar, maybe slightly lesser rating to somewhat help with queue times, but not a massive gap were you just stomp the other team.

I found a solution, it’s the only one have if I find myself caught out by this invisible assailant. Pop everything you can to get away and hope you get near your zerg in time.

Politics over a pixel pet? It’s a fish out of water, so it’s floppy. If I need meat or XP, I go out and slaughter a whole herd of Dolyaks. Do I shed a tear? No because it’s a game. Does that make me hate animals? I won’t even justify that with answer because it’s so absurd.

Stop the madness, political correctness is ruining most of our society, let’s have it away from games where we can escape the nightmare. If somehow the animation triggers you, then don’t buy it.

I mean there’s a game where a bunch of people complained one characters bum was too sexy, and it was changed, this sort of precedent is ludicrous, it’s a fantasy world online, it’s fiction, it’s a separate world not bound—well sadly it shouldn’t—by our real-life politics.

Ok so if it’s not announced 7-10 days before April 1st it will be later. At this point I am so thirsty for HOT, but I could spend that extra $25 savings on gems for more character slots; however I don’t know how much I can wait lol. I was unsure if I was going to permanently return during the last sale, wish I had just bought it. Oh well, for now I wait a few more weeks.

Rather than make a new thread, how early do they announce an upcoming HOT 50% sale? Everyone is saying April, will it be April 1st and will they let us know beforehand? I am definitely going to be buying it.

Sadly you have to buy the “original” again but wait for the sale. I am in the same boat as you, next month the standard and deluxe version should be 50% off, I’ll be grabbing the standard for $25.

Don’t wait and hope for the next xpac to have hot free, that’s still awhile away and HOT power creep is quite significant, hence why I am definitely buying it.

Ah that would explain why some threads they got 2. So basically I am paying $25 for 4000 gems given if I was going to by the deluxe edition as a minimum. Food for thought I guess, I am definitely going to buy something, maybe the 4k gems isn’t 50% value since Ultimate won’t receive the 50% sale and the price difference will be $50 instead of $25. So you’re essentially paying $50 for 4K gems if you buy the Ultimate during the deluxe/standard sale, which then if I am wrong 4k/800×10 = $50 so you’re not saving anything unless you buy it during non-sale periods. Sorry if that sounds convoluted, because I am thinking of just buying the standard for $25 during the sale now given that logic and using in game gems/gold to just slowly build up my character slots, maybe buy 1600 gems.

Does the ultimate edition give 2 extra character slots of you bought the original? I am getting conflicting feedback outside. I figured Deluxe isn’t worth it because the 1 extra slot is worth $10 and you pay $25 more, the other bonuses I am not fussed about.

However my dilema is that I do want 9-10 characters slots, 1 for each profession and a duplicate of my favorite profession as another race. Ultimate gives 50% off those 4000 gems, which I’d use to get 9+ slots and some bank space.

Also, when the April sale begins—I am assuming that’s still coming—is there any chance of the ultimate going cheaper or is it too much value to qualify? Because if not, I thinking of biting the bullet and getting the ultimate edition because for $125 I am set for bank/character slots+hot, and never have to buy anything until the next expansion. $125 is roughly the US conversion, I mean that’s a lot of money but I’d waste more buying gems after I purchased the standard edition.

Thanks.

It would be fine if there was race changes, but such a move when you can’t change your race would be hard on those who specifically chose sylvari for that very reason. I agree with your sentiment of racials and luckily they are usually all bad or disabled in other modes. The fairest option would be all to be disabled, but people won’t be happy about that either. I think overall the racial importance is pretty balanced, some other MMOs it makes or break nearly every build.

Don’t you get 6 skins with eternity anyway? So why not I guess. I think the GS is the most iconic weapon next to the staff for MMORPGS. They made eternity look even better, I think both Sunlight and Twilight are gorgeous too.

Sorry I can’t see half the thread, someone just used their new glider. ^-

I was running along then I saw this massive celestial flying creature. I dive to the ground, “HOLY COW A SECRET WORLD BOSS!” then I saw it was a glider. :O

Thief with a bad team basically is just running around trying to sneak a decap and +1 situation, it’s actually a horrible experience. Most complaints are from WVW, duels and roamers, not realizing in team play thiefs are horrible if you team isn’t even remotely co-ordinated or have a support. Much easier to queue as other professions to carry a team than thief.

I had one game, 2 thiefs on our team, well you can guess if we won or not. If that was 2 DHs though? A good thief takes quite a lot of skill if you minus the whole ghost build people using in WVW.

Misplaced anger can cloud judgement of what’s balanced.

I definitely picked an unfortunate time to return, reading/watching about Season 5 which I missed out on. Now shards are nerfed and it requires PVE aspects like 500 crafting and more costs. I will still PVP but I think there will be a lot less PVEers engaging pvp—which is probably why the incentive was added—thus leading to longer queues. Maybe a more middle ground can be met? Otherwise I can see why people are not happy if they have to play more and get less than they did before.

drunkenpilot.9837:

Wait, you can only get one backpack skin per account?

So… that stinks. I had assumed that we would at some point get access to the additional backpack skins, either through a fifth year birthday present or some other avenue.

I now regret having chosen the Grove Hydria. I picked it because at the time it meshed well with my character’s appearance, but I should’ve chosen the Rata Sum Apparatus. Soon after selecting it I changed the look of that character and no longer use the Hydria.

I understand that it’s my mistake for not doing my due diligence and researching the skins more thoroughly, but being that it was a birthday present I had naively assumed we would eventually be able to get all five skins unlocked.

I really hope we get another chance at earning those extra skins.

Funny story—-well I guess funny—but I was undecided between the norn backpack which was auto awesome for any large character, the rata sum one which was the “safest” and the grove.

In the end the grove unique animation and glow made me select it. Then I saw it sort of hang out oddly when you’re unsheathed and I instantly regreted my decision wishing I had picked the Rata one. Oh well.

I picked charred and abyss black and saved the others for the future. I was surprised that some were still 600g+ each.

I haven’t been able to get a popular non HOT world boss kill since my return, sadly it’s a timezone issue mainly. All I know is way back there would be massive groups every spawn. Teq seems to be the only one you see in LFG but whenever you join there’s never enough.

Thanks for the response. I will have to download a CPU temperature application to just monitor the temps after a few hours of gameplay.

Hi everyone. I have a new system, so there’s no faults, maleware, it’s all fresh. 16gb ddr4, I5-7500 @ 3.4ghz, 6gb 1060 GTX, running Windows 10.

Now the game runs smooth, that’s not the issue but my CPU is still under so much strain. I monitor my task manager and in populated areas, world boss fights, Lion’s arch, etc my CPU usage climbs from 5% to 75-80%, this is also while running @ native res vertical sync, 60fps. I turn all settings to medium—which was annoying because I want to have it all maxed—then I went to 30fps. 30fps takes away about 20% cpu usage but then I am thinking why am I playing @ 30 fps on a proper gaming rig?

Anyway, I am not sure what to do. My frames are smooth but the sound of my CPU being @ 75-80% is not healthy. Any ideas or settings that may be why? I run no anti-aliasing, turned off all special effects. All other games average around 25-35% @ 60 fps which is normal usage but for some reason GW2 is needs double. It seems my only solution is to run it @ 30fps and be around 45% usage, but 30 fps is horrible and noticeable.

Thank you.

Because you run the risk of other famous “companies” who every few months make radical changes and all they do is swing from one side all the way to the other, meanwhile everyone feels detached from their characters because everything is so volatile and unreliable. I’d rather wait longer and not have the whole “if this strong let’s nerf it so it’s useless” approach ruining many MMOs.

I think they really want to get the next expansion done nearly perfectly and not rush it. GW3 from my educated guesses is something waaaaaaaaaay into the future 2020+ minimum at best.

I was going to buy it when I saw it was 50% off, I was a bit too late since I was ordering a new PC. I am a bit hesitant now but they say it happens a lot during the year and the next sale should be April. So I am just getting all other slots to 80 and if by April I am still having fun I will definitely buy it during the 50% sale.

To be honest not having gliding and the elite specializations is a little frustrating, I might cave in before April who knows, but that’s pretty expensive to pay if you just want those 2 aspects. I kind of want all classes 80 but then I would have to pay quite a bit for 4 more slots, then you slowly start to see all the $$$ starting to add up fast.

Yeah, I was somewhat thinking that, and as it is I have way too many boosters and randoms stuff taking up precious bank space. I’ll miss out on 2 expensive/rare dyes each year but I don’t need them all and they are BoA. With 8 already I picked abyss and charred, saving the others until I can make my mind up. I love the ruby red and that really expensive bright purple but they aren’t a part of the year dye award just yet.