Guild Wars 2

I posted more fully in the PvP forum about my noob-to-PvP Stronghold experience. Here I’ll add something, though. After reading the above comments I have to agree the guards are rather squishy. As in, I was on a support guardian that does double digit dps when dungeon group mates are clocking in 40K crits, and I killed the guards solo with relative ease.

It could be they can’t buff the guards up too much given how much there is for the five players to do, but if I found them to be minimal obstacles anyone running something more dps’y than a wet noodle might not notice them beyond a slightly stubbed toe.

Silverwastes does not count. What you want to do is compare the wiki maps that show white-bordered areas zone by zone with your own map, or else get together with someone who has all the areas (I do, I could help, especially if you have voice chat) and just list them off for each zone.

This latter method is how I was clued in to the last Maguuma thing I needed, that long cave in northeast Sparkfly. It didn’t look fogged on my map, it was just a brown mountain terrain area, but it counted once I went inside!

For the latter, that’s a tooltip cleanup I’d guess.

For the former, there’s a workaround: put all the items in your inventory on an alt, then either zone out and back or log out to character select and back. They should then combine in your bags, you can put them in the bank, and future acquisitions of that item type will stack as they should.

I can’t begin to suggest improvements. I had time to play exactly one match of Stronghold, and it was my first sPvP match ever. Maaaaybe I did the clock tower one in beta? I don’t remember. But definitely this was my first in the live game.

So my feedback will come from the point of view of an almost total neophyte. I say almost because I did watch live streams from the cons and I paid close attention to Friday’s stream about Stronghold, so I was aware of the overall strategy. My expectation was that I would die the moment an enemy player came at me, however, as I’ve never done well in PvP in any game save by sheer luck. I was on Mumble with two friends on my team; however, we didn’t do very much coordination beyond noting who was running to get a hero.

I chose to run my support guardian, and set her build to the same I use in PvE. Minimal dps, maximum absorption/boons/heals. I figured if that didn’t work out well, I could reset her to something tailored to the mode. It worked marvelously. I escorted breakers and archers and heroes, pinned down and blinded players while my team murdered them — I even got several rainbow unicorn finishers off — and I never went down once. I almost got the killing stomp on the Lord, too, but someone or something knocked me away at the last half a second so a teammate did it.

I chalk up the win to the other side being more clueless than me, likely with so many people trying it out because it’s new, but winning that strongly did make a good first impression for me as to the gameplay I would prefer closer matches as a rule. This, though, was a good introduction.

Even if one player cursed out my friend as she kill-stomped him, for no reason I could see, and told her to L2P. This confused me, since he was the one losing the fight …

Oh thanks! So filmers just need to stash it in a corner near the film location, or drop another box if they’ve moved on. Or, well, relog.

I think it’s great it doesn’t affect others. I can imagine some nice machinima filmed in this effect.

Now, I wasn’t able to turn it off and the “transformed” had no time limit showing. Logging to character select and back in turned it off.

Oh, huh, as an NA player I don’t run into language variations. What’s IME?

Your screenshot cuts off the part of the mail that says it came from another player. It’s really easy to tell it’s a scam, thanks to that alone, never mind the grammar errors or the ridiculously non-GW2 “GM” name.

That’s … odd. I just checked and I don’t get an “A.”

Speculation: Have you done Stronghold during this beta? I have not. But I almost wonder if that A will indicate guild Alliance chat in HoT and you somehow got some bleed-over …?

I haven’t applied the new styles yet but at least in preview they definitely have some physics. Hopefully enough to counter the bizarreness of the male human ponytail.

Does anyone with high graphics have a video of the new hairstyles in motion?

No tutorial or warning? They streamed a strategy guide to the map on Friday (I don’t even PvP and I knew about it and watched it). They announced it was coming in a blog and in emails. People on the forums commented about it, both positively and negatively based on how much they’d prefer other information to come out.

I wanted to try it out, as a complete nonPvPer (I can upload an image of my 0 matches played screen if you like, along with my /age …). I especially wanted to try when it’s brand new content everyone’s just figuring out; I just didn’t have guildies available to walk me through it — enjoying new stuff and being completely clueless if attacked are two different things — and I have limited time Tuesday afternoons.

To me one of the great joys of gaming is figuring out new content as a team. I really enjoyed chewing glass on WoW raids (my guild was friendly and laughed together about mistakes instead of going postal). Today is a great chance to do that!

You can also buy a gem card and send your friend the code, though that may be many more gems than needed for just one item.

I’d wait at least 15 minutes in between, maybe even 30. Sure you might miss some people that aren’t in the map for long, or who were busy fighting and missed a post, but if your goal is 100% coverage you should be using forum sections anyway so anyone looking for a guild can find your listing at their leisure.

I speak as someone who only joins guilds with friends who RP and doesn’t really want to see more guild spam than actual conversation in Map Though I do enjoy the cleverly humorous listings so long as they don’t fill my screen.

Also — pay attention to what else is going on in map chat. If there’s a strong discussion on a focused topic, or if you’re in a map doing daily events with people calling out event locations, it would be polite to withhold advertisements so people can see the more immediately important information being presented.

Probably people have to playtest on machines isolated from the internet and thus must physically go into the ANet building.

I know that my hopes of doing some sort of game job (I am not so very far from Zenimax) were dashed once I learned that I couldn’t telework (not so far still equals hellacious traffic making for a possible two hour one way trip). They just can’t let game dev data get out, secrecy is paramount. The mad amount of hours required was another problem, too

I’d love that one. At least today’s kit includes something thematically similar, if not quite as glamorous.

Everyone in LA Map agrees the TP is down. It’s loaded very oddly, clicking on the trade button brings up Gem Exchange, there are large shadowy black numbers scattered in the window, etc.
/checks
Ahah, now the Down For Maintenance Quaggan has arrived.

I didn’t screenie every hair, as I figure Dulfy will do that, but I wanted to share the ones that struck me most. None of the male Norn ones really did, nor the female Charr (lots of odd draping of dreads for the latter). I include the male charr because it’s one where accessory color affects the hair itself, in this case the tips. Female Asura is the same, all the little color lines in the hair come from the accessory color choice. Norn female gets two pics because I find both highly striking; third choice there is a pixie cut.

Sylvari male and female share a couple of styles (short draped thorny vines or another variant of gnarled wooden backwards growth) so I am showing the two gender-distinct ones. Male one colors the leaves to match the skin, the blossom color is determined by hair color choice. Similarly in female, hair color blends with skin color.

It begins just under 3 hours from now, and then goes for 24 hours.

Guardian survives like nobody’s business if built with that in mind. It has a huge bag of tricks to block, absorb, deflect, to hold fast against knockback, to heal — even downed a Guardian is one of the better ones at holding out long enough to rally. My non-dps Guardian? Before I swapped to Mesmer for dungeons, she often was the last one standing in a fight, even solo-finished end bosses (slowly, and if they were low enough on health not to mean everyone getting bored in their dirt nap) rather than everyone having to restart the fight.

The low hp pool means nothing when you can refresh it almost at will, when you don’t avoid having it reduced in the first place.

#Guardianlover

It’s all in what you enjoy. I have two 80 warriors and two 80 guardians. The first warrior bored me to tears (she had fun RP but GS/Rifle was a yawnfest in combat). The second was more fun (longbow/varying mix of swords and axes) and has had zero RP beyond a few sentences waiting for a Kessex boss to spawn. Both my guardians remain engaging, have strong RP plots, and are fun to dive into combat on. One is pure support, her dps is double digits sometimes, but she keeps everyone else alive and hurting things. The other is dps-oriented and slugs it out quite well; he’s one of my three alts I do LS on so as to have him as an option for the achieves.

If you agree with most players that dps is king, you’ll want warrior (and a well-played warrior with banners and such can be effective support as well). If you’re willing to do less dps in order to really buff up your friends, guardian is the way to go. I suggest you try some of both to see which keeps you having fun in combat the most, then focus in on that one.

A question no one’s posed is: do you want the skins? I made Light chest and legs because I wanted the outfit. My necromancer is sporting them even though I can’t do any loot-filled activities due to her bags being filled with garments ….

Keep in mind that Ele has the steepest learning curve of all the professions and is incredibly squishy. If you feel frustrated playing it after a bit, roll something else and compare.

Also while we can give you all sorts of suggestions (me, I say Mesmer and Guardian are the most fun and all three Medium armor ones the least fun), in the end there’s enough variation that each choice comes down to personal preference. You have five slots, test out several professions (I think you can still go to the PvP lobby area to try out a level 80 with all traits without having to actually level to 80 first). I know that before beta I was sure Guardian would be the most boring thing ever, as I really don’t enjoy WoW Paladins. Huh, turned out the GW2 version is really fun for me!

Between Necro and Ele, I’d suggest Necro as being simpler to figure out unless you are confident you can pick up the skills quickly, as some can. It’s not like you can’t quickly catch up on other professions as the mood takes you, leveling here is far smoother and faster than in WoW. I think people are advising you based on what’s handy to play come end game, and forgetting that you are coming in without the intuitive game skill responses long time players have built up.

So play anything, really. Play several anythings. Don’t commit resources such as extra bag slots until you know an alt is a keeper, because you can delete and reroll, or even buy more slots (up to 64 total) so as to play all the variety you wish.

It depends on what you want to do and how quickly you can pick up dodging skills — unlike WoW, you want to keep moving while you fire off abilities, and dodge the big attacks.

Everyone will advocate for some professions and against others. I think there’s a consensus that Thieves are best for PvP and WvW as they are a bit squishy for PVE and don’t do as much party support and buffing, that Rangers and Necromancers won’t be welcome in dungeon PuGs, and that Warriors do the highest dps. All dependent on individual build and skill of course.

What did you find most fun in WoW? We can suggest things of that general flavor. Keep in mind there are no dedicated tanks or healers in GW2, every profession can do it all and you can’t really hold aggro or heal other players on a sustained basis.

Odd, the link works just fine for me. Here’s the text of the post, though:

“Thanks for the nice comments guys.

Here are some “behind the scenes” facts about this cinematic:

The cinematic was built as a prototype for the new video playback technology.

It was made over a year ago, and we planned to launch it with the original Fractal release. Unfortunately, the tech didn’t get implemented in time and we missed the release window. It was decided that we sit on the cinematic trailer until there was a big update to the Fractals.

The 3D character models are (pre)rendered in-engine with our model viewer and matched up with cameras in Maya and After Effects.

While I have special place in my heart for the original GW2 in-engine cinematics (such as the Dugneon Catacombs flashback…a cinematic that I reworked 4 times over the course of development) These new types of pre-rendered videos allow us to work faster, increase the quality, and they perform better on more peoples machines.

There are some pretty exciting cinematics coming in the future…I hope you guys will receive them as well as the Fractals piece.

Thanks again!

(edited about a year ago by Matthew Oswald.3082)"

SeanJ.1024:

I just picked this game up for $15.00 (deluxe kit)!
I played WoW for 8.5-9 years, then Swtor on and off for a few, so here I am. I have never tried GW games. I was a closed beta tester for BW specifically, for their Star Wars mmorpg(I tested 6 builds over a 5 month period). I guess with college and all the studying for my recent Certifications, I haven’t had ANY time to get into my games on Steam, or a new MMORPG for that matter.
Can we use add-ons in this game?
Anyway some starting tips would be great, I don’t know anyone who plays this game, so any advice would be kindly re-guarded.
Thanks
Sean

Addons: Don’t. Until you really know what you’re doing and understand the ok-overlays that Overwolf provides vs. the pretty-much-everything-else-except-music-macros, don’t risk a ban. GW2 is dead set against mods that give a player any game play advantage. They’re fine with you using a gaming mouse, though, so long as one button press equals one game action.

Tips on the game itself: Check the sticky at the top of Players Helping Players titled something like “OMG If You Only Knew This” for lots of tips and tricks. Some may be outdated now but they will teach you a great deal of the game.

When you have a specific question about what something is or does, you can type /wiki (subject of question) in your chat window and your browser will open with that wiki page. E.g. /wiki minor rune of the citadel. You can also ask in map chat — and btw you can set up new tabs with a custom set of channels so your needed info doesn’t spam right out of sight.

Have fun! Explore! Don’t panic if combat feels difficult at first, once you get the hang of moving and dodging while firing off your skills (for me I had to get a Razer HEX to make that possible), you’ll get nicely engaged in the fights.

I just did a SW round and listed a few things for sale when it was done (a couple of yellows, some mithril, some runes/sigils). I had no issues. (I am NA TC if that makes any difference).

The Oumphalos Chamber is where the Pale Tree Avatar hangs out. Top of the grove, take a seed pod elevator to get into the instance.

Here’s what a dev had to say about the Fractals trailer when it was released:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/fractured/Best-trailer-ever/first#post3227234

Afaik the in-game cutscenes are done by in-house programming.

I don’t believe it is. You have to do the LS chapter to unlock the boxes at the vendor. I know that sometimes shoulder and glove boxes will drop from SW chests, but I believe the only source of the leggings (for example) is the LS, since the vendor won’t sell them until you unlock them in the LS.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Priory_Historian_%28Bandit_Crest_Collector%29#vendor3

There’s an important social aspect of guilds: RP. Guild chat and sites make it easier to track interweaving plots. Guilds have “themes” as to why the characters are together in the world. They could be a Charr military unit, a Sylvari gathering, a rag-tag group of mercenaries, a Norn household, an Asura krewe, an entertainment troupe, a noble House, etc etc etc.

At that point the nameplate means more than “people to do a dungeon with.” It unites personalities and enriches creative game play immensely.

The reason no one’s mentioned race is that no race has a mobility boost. Other than some “flavor” racial skills, deliberately weaker than profession skills, all races have the same access to all abilities.

But you will feel like you’re running faster on an Asura than a Norn, thanks to the animations inherent in having them cover the same amount of ground in the same amount of time despite the leg-length difference.

But we know that nothing good can come of cooking with bloodstone dust. And that other legion … I don’t mind a bit of blackening but ashes in my food, no thanks.

Danikat.8537:

(Also I think you mean “pointing out it’s flaws”. Pointing out it’s floors would simply be pointing to the surfaces we walk on in-game.)

Aieee! You correct one thing and wreck another! “Pointing out its flaws” would be correct. “It’s flaws” isn’t correct, unless you further change it to “pointing out it’s flawed,” as “it’s” = “it is,” not a possessive.

I can’t say I’d leave the game. I have never had an issue paying subs even on games I’ve been away from for months, ah the joys of a good income, so sub/no-sub has never been a deciding factor in my MMO choices. But I’m sure enough people would leave — and demand refunds — that adding a sub would be financial suicide for GW2.

And when all my friends were gone, well. Yeah. Then I’d leave.

Wellllll … it’s likely that as of the end of August (my speculated HoT release date), you’ll be able to embark on a journey to craft the precursors. Or you’ll discover that one of the new legendaries moves you more than a giant glowing color-shifting surfboard.

So maybe you should make the generic Gifts that apply to all current legendaries, and hold off on GS-specific ones until you know more about what’s coming in the expansion.

Take a gander at http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com — their guild section is full of RP guilds recruiting, with descriptions of themes and level of RP desired.

They probably do a google search for a topic, then pay no attention to the age of the post and just blithely click the “yes please necro this” button.

I suppose I’m expecting a lot of that communicative flavor to return once we’re in feedback beta. Much of what you mention was fixed quickly between beta weekends (not the sylvari, that was before the first BWE, though as I recall we couldn’t make and play sylvari until a later beta event).

They did say that one reason they can’t give us a release date is because it will depend on beta feedback and the scope of changes they need to make after they get that feedback.

So while I’m sad we’ve not gotten much in the way of truly new information for a couple of weeks, I still have hope the information floodgates will open reasonably soon.

You can preview it with dyes. Use the item code available from Dulfy, open the TP, pick dyes, preview them.

Or is this a suggestion for a change to the Gem Store UI to put in an integrated dye preview? Since that would make it appropriate to this thread (and also be a good idea).

There’s also the Carapace armor that needs LS completion to unlock, and the glowing blue version of Carapace, Luminescent, that needs LS achieves on top of completion. Also you need to do LS to get the starter bits to make Mawdrey, an ascended back piece that consumes bloodstone dust and gives back some low-value items. But nothing that you must have in order to do maps or crafting; those can all be gained just by playing the new maps.

Though if you missed Scarlet’s attack on LA you will have a hard time getting the mats needed for the Spinal Blades backpiece which can be promoted step by step to an ascended version.

One seasonal thing you can still get is a relatively cheap 20 slot bag. Candy corn is on the TP, combine it into cobs and pay 3 cobs per bag at the vendor near the destroyed LA lion fountain. It ends up being just a few gold per bag, I think.

Someone who has no max level character won’t be given a level 80 daily to do. It’s based on the highest character on the account. Also you don’t have to do the dailies, any of them (I’m a bit hypocritical on that, as I’ve done them every day without fail since the change, except for last night when I could have sworn I’d done them the night before and logged in 10 minutes before reset to find out I hadn’t, oy vey). You get the rewards for logging in, and a few bennies in the daily reward chests along with 10 ap if you do 3 dailies.

For a much lengthier and more detailed discussion, you may want to look at
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-New-Dailies-Feedback-welcome/first
This thread is likely to get merged into that anyway.

I have four sylvari, all 80’s, three of them with a lot of RP already invested and one fully caught up on LS. So I won’t roll one especially for HoT ….

… unless I go with a Sylvari Revenant. I have a tentative RP design for him/her, though I’m waiting for a little more info on the lore of how Revenants come to Tyria. It could be “there is no lore, they’ve been here all along /RETCON” and I’ll be cool with that, but I want the official line before I design something that turns out to be non-canon.

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

Were are the god kitten devs….

In addition to what others have stated above, I’ll point out that this line right here just about guarantees no dev will ever say word one in your thread. Check out the forum stickies on “constructive feedback” and such to see why.

Palador.2170:

Have you checked out the Zephyrite Color Swatches in the gemstore? Most of the non-BL dyes can be obtained this way, I think only the pure blacks and whites are not there.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyrite_Color_Swatch:_Blue
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyrite_Color_Swatch:_Green
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyrite_Color_Swatch:_Red
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyrite_Color_Swatch:_Yellow

Please note that when you use one, you actually get to select the color it gives you, it’s not random.

Careful with that, though. I recall when those came out people did a price comparison and the Color Swatch effectively cost more than the TP price of the most expensive dye you could get from the Swatch. Moreover, it cost enough more that you could get all the dyes it offered, including the most expensive, for not much more than you paid for the Swatch.

I’m not sure what that means, Nyx, as most people in SW are actively controlling their characters, one key press at a time.

Poliator.7021:

Very nice post to see here.

I agree with most of things you said. Although I’d say that they should leave Conquest maps as they are right now (they are not bad, it’s a Conquest game mode and they fulfill their purpose). With this, I’m not saying they can grab a major idea from any current Conquest map and do a new Stronghold map.

Donari.5237:

I’m no PvPer but the Ready Up has done a superb job of explaining Stronghold objectives and strategies.

I’d say the only unclear thing to me is the hero spawn: Can either side spawn a hero at either point when the three minute point comes, or can you only spawn the hero on your side when it’s up?

Glad you like it! We need to grow sPvP population for it get better.

Regarding your question: as far as I understand, every three minutes a Hero will spawn on either side (north or south). When the 12 minute mark gets, the first Hero may be able to channel on north side or south side, it’s random. Then when the 9 minute mark gets, the second Hero will be able to channel on north side or south side, random again.

This is, at least, how I understanded it works. Anyways, you can watch some actual Stronghold gameplay on Youtube, so there you should have a good view of when they spawn, where, etc… Hope I helped you.

Thanks! As I understood the stream commentary, it’s random which spot gets the first hero, but thereafter it alternates between the two spots. My question is, if I am on the team attacking from east to west (hence the south lane), and the spawn is in the north lane, can I channel the spawn or can only those on the other team? I.e., the hero heads towards the tower lord as the stream explained, but can the hero go either direction from the spawn based on who summoned him/her? Or must the team wait for the chance to summon the hero dedicated to their side?

Neural, the contractors are long gone, there is no one to work on the forums. To redo the forums, ANet would have to contract for a complete from-the-ground-up new code.

I don’t think “disaster” is quite right. The search function is a failure, true, but the forums are easy and fast to navigate and the conversations are easy to follow. There’s not a lot of wasted space on images and post frames. If/when they do replace the forums my hope is that the “feel” will be the same with a bit more functionality under the hood.

I’m no PvPer but the Ready Up has done a superb job of explaining Stronghold objectives and strategies.

I’d say the only unclear thing to me is the hero spawn: Can either side spawn a hero at either point when the three minute point comes, or can you only spawn the hero on your side when it’s up?

It depends on what lighting effect you want and whether you want just the character pictured, or want a scenic setting. DR in daylight offers a lot of plain stone walls to stand against, facing many directions so you can deal with the sun angle.

Most of Kryta has pretty green foliage and blue skies and a “natural” sunlit look. Check up by the treehouse in Shaemoor for a quiet nook with a variety of views, or the various levels of the monastery in Queensdale. The grotto in the Grove is exquisitely lovely with its shafts of light; same with the Oumphalos Chamber and its stained glass. You can also get some pretty effects in the Seraph HQ, Throne Room, and chapel in DR (all north end of the park).

For more autumnal views, try any of the many ridges in Fields of Ruin. For wintry ones, Lornar’s and Timberline offer spectacular vistas.

And there’s one glorious spot in Orr, in Malchior’s north of Pagga’s, on the Pyrite Peninsula. I love that gold ball of light! Just make sure there aren’t inquest and/or elementals attacking just when you head for your photo shoot.

Chrispy didn’t say it was true, s/he just posited it as one possibility and set it as “unlikely” compared to his/her first option.

I believe that’s a different comparison, MrPersons. Hovering over any item, even those linked by other players, will give you the locked/unlocked comment in the tooltip since it’s checking that one item against your account.

Having to check every single item on sale on the TP against your account before it can load would probably slow things down to an untenable level.