Guild Wars 2

I see no mention of Scholar in this thread.

~_~.

Basically Centaur, Air, Scholar, Ruby Orb x6 for cheap players, Divinity.

Divinity is the general/hybrid defense variant that maintains crit damage.

Centaur is pure runfastlol.

Air is good for tank reactive damage, because the proc is good.

Scholar kittens out the most damages, especially when you’re not getting hit (e.g. Air runes wouldn’t help too much).

Edit: Ruby Orbs are good all around, but slightly weaker. Also much cheaper, so.

Slamz.5376:

Usual MMORPG developer thinking:
“Let’s make this character bound so that our players can have fun developing many characters through this system.”

Actual player thinking:
“I’m bored of this class. I think I’ll level up something new. Wait. It’s going to take me 6 months now to get to where my main is and while I’m doing this my main is going to fall behind. That’s not fun and I’m tired of my main. I quit.”

Every.
Game.
Ever.

This, every time. Whatever happened to powerleveling a char to max in 4-8 hours? Ugh.

samski.5194:

I havent had a chance to test this yet, just out of curiosity have you tested it ? Boons are meant to stack in duration but the focus swiftness doesnt stack if you already have swiftness applied, same with the guardian staff swiftness, perhaps it is the same here.

No need to test it. All boons that are supposed to stack in duration actually do stack in duration unless it’s Focus4 or the Guardian symbol. This is because ANet doesn’t want a player to run through those swiftness fields rapidly to stack 5 minutes of swiftness in 3 seconds. But, those are exceptions.

Incidentally I do clearly recall getting more than 1 application of swiftness from Chaos Storm and the durations stacking appropriately. I’ve also used CS to apply the swiftness after I had swiftness from Curtain.

Note: if you time / place it well, you can get 2 ticks of Chaos Storm on you while moving in a straight line (forward). Spent a lot of time doing that wayyyyy back when I used Staff in WvW.

Pyroatheist.9031:

@EasymodeX: I presume you are referring to my [] quite honestly gorgeous post

Heh, I was speaking in general but was inspired by your post. Ironically, I posted mine before yours was removed; I gave it an 80% chance of getting modded.

ANet’s pretty tryhard.

2 7 4 7 3 F1 7

Full Berserker + Scholar + 30/30 pew pew pew.

I remember back in the day on other forums where we could freely flame posters and point out their logical/analytical errors while entertaining ourselves with indirect insults about the person’s mental capacity, getting a good all-around chuckle and making it blatantly clear to the laymen that the poster was out of their mind.

But now we’re limited to highlighting boring and tedious things like:

Each boon just refreshes back to 3.5secs

this being incorrect, since the boons stack in duration.

A proper evaluation would include the rock dog damage with the caveat that it would get 1-shot in random PvE dungeons.

The original post is still skewed with bad crit damage baseline numbers, though.

Phira.3970:

Edit: And why I used this stat in the other thread was to show that even with +100% crit. chance and a base of 150% crit dmg, +dmg% almost always is more important to trait for.

As a sidenote, this statement is illogical. If you wanted to demonstrate that %dmg was better than other stats, you would use a high crit damage value to enhance precision, or you would have compared both high and low crit damage scenarios.

Either way, base crit damage is a joke. No one has base crit damage unless you’re playing some sort of tank/heal/support build.

1. That linked thread is pretty embarassing to read through.

2. That aside, you should also evaluate runes of air that proc lightning strike when hit. Assuming you get attacked with any vague regularity, it’s pretty potent. That would be more relevant to PvP and probably for sturdier builds. However, it’s still a good point of comparison.

3.

The base stat that I will assume for calculation purposes will be 3000 power, 75% crit. chance, and 150% base crit. dmg. Note that these rankings may not apply to you since what’s best for you depends on your base stats.

Don’t know why you’re using 50% crit damage in your evaluations. That’s default naked no-Berserker crit damage. You should be using a 1.5-1.6x multiplier in the formula (2.5-2.6x crit damage) for glass cannon builds. Although Warrior builds have slightly less I guess. Still 1.3-1.5x, not 0.5×. You’re basically underrating precision, overrating power, and slightly overrating crit damage from runes.

4. Too many parentheses.

raptor.1064:

Ethics.4519:

It’s capped because Anet said the servers have to keep track and store every single duration on every mob in every zone. They have to keep track of the damage and duration of all of these.

People already complain about lag now, could you imagine how bad it would be in WvW or dragon events with necros putting 200+ bleed stacks on something.

badly coding your game is not a valid excuse

^

This. Pretty much the same discussion as culling. Every other MMORPG in the past 15 years has dealt with the issue more effectively for the players than GW2.

BrimstoneAshe.5043:

I’ve only been playing GW2 for a few of months and going from rare to exotic was by no means a simple process for me when I first hit 80. There’s a significant amount of time or money one has to invest to go from Rare > Exotic. So I don’t see why you were cool with that and not cool with Ascended except that the ways you get ascended don’t appeal to you.

Personally, the $ grind to get exotic gear kitten es me off. The first set is a pain, but tolerable.

It’s a huge and painful grind to get multiple sets to support multiple specs though. Especially for odd stats like Rabid that aren’t craftable. Gear roadblocks basically reduce my gametime by 50% because I’m not willing to grind the kitten out of PvE in order to support different builds.

critickitten.1498:

You’re welcome to believe that differences in skill will help make up for that gap. And I’ll agree with you to some extent, because it’s a fair point. I’ll even go so far as to say that you don’t have to be decked in full Exotic gear, much less full Ascended, at this point in the game. Again, fair point.

You need max gear to compete with skilled max-gear opponents in WvW.

Keke.

The point is that after dropping a load of gold for the vanity (which is lame, but legit), it’s insulting that the items have crappy stats on top. There’s no call for it. ANet already gets to drain your $ by a huge chunk. No reason to make the items have kittenty stats. They may as well be white items.

A random iMage idea:

Leave iMage’s actions alone at the current power level. Perhaps reduce the retal duration slightly.

Decrease the base iMage cooldown to ~10-16s. This means 8-12.8s with Illu5. With the Torch trait on top, that’s 6-9.6s.

In other words, adjust the cooldown to make it a Big Clone, which is what it currently is.

Edit:

That or throw on random chill/weakness, lulz.

Aegis.9724:

I hope he comes back in the expansion as a villain. Being able to kill him would be a BIG selling point for many people, including me.

^^^ This ^^^

Would 100% buy an expansion where you can kill Trahearne. Bonus points for killing in an ignominious fashion.

Because it takes focused mind power to stab the GS into the ground. Hence the ‘stop running’ part.

You know, it’s kind of hard to move while sticking your sword into the ground.

I agree with most of the Trahearne-bashing in this thread. My interpretation of Trahearne-bad:

Trahearne appears on stage in a big flash, out of nowhere. There’s no platform for his character, no buildup, no context, no articulated history. He magically appears with expert knowledge, then transforms into a chosen warrior, master ritualist, and super leader almost instantaneously (insert random overblown insecurity that Only You Can Therapy). Oh, I forgot he’s also a necro summoner. I guess that’s a subset of his master ritualist aspect.

If a character plays a major role, they need a major backstory — at least one more interesting than “I was a scholar, now I am MEGAFATHER cause the treegod told me so”.

In terms of activity, Trahearne does nothing and you do everything (and he’s the holy warrior with excalibur).

In terms of story, Trahearne goes from “zero to hero” like a horribad fairy tale for 4-year-olds. And fairy tales have more believable character growth.

Relating to your character, Trahearne is “INSTANT FRIENDSHIP” out of nowhere (more disbelief). And then your role is now therapist? kitten, ANet should have written in a third character to play foil (PERHAPS A MEMBER OF DESTINY’S EDGE).

In sum, Trahearne is just horribly conceived. The most unbelievable character imaginable — he’s a walking deus ex machina, AND he does that while “stealing” your story. WTF.

1. I crit the GS AA for 2.5-4k on targets in WvW. If it did more damage it would be overpowered.

2. The GS clones hit triple for SI procs.

3. Mirror Blade gives you a 3-9% (spec and situation dependent) direct damage boost, along with doing very solid damage. The cast time is really kitten fast. It’s also the lowest cooldown clone generator a Mesmer has as a weapon skill. It also gives you Might just because. Last, with good timing it almost always hits your targets 2 times, dealing more damage than the AA.

4. Mind Stab does as much damage as an AA, in an AOE. Bonus boon strip. If there are too many enemies for reliable Mirror Blade hammering, then Mind Stab finds its purpose for raw damage if not the boon stripping.

5. iBerserker too good, as stated. It actually hits its targets reliably, unlike iWarden. The cripple additionally enables you, the player, to follow up effectively.

6. Staff is a tank weapon. This is common knowledge. If you need more tank, go Staff. Switching from Staff to GS in a power-based shatter build basically increases your total damage output by 50%.

The only weapon that’s notably unattractive atm is Scepter, and it’s not too far off from ok. Torch is bugged, but ok, although iMage will always welcome a tweak upward.

GS is fine for shatter builds. It basically does more damage than alternatives and generates clones faster. It also has the highest synergy with SI, on par with Pistol.

People smoking some strong stuff.

You’re already short on illusion generation. Nerfing staff cooldowns seems counterproductive.

warspite.2735:

On the topic of performance in WAR… the Fort fights in the first 6 months of the game were not even playable. “lag” doesn’t even begin to describe having your character respond every 15-20 seconds and Mythic claimed they weren’t even aware of these problems when they first started… meaning they hadn’t even play-tested a fort siege with anything close to real numbers of participants.

Fort fights in the first 6 months had 200 players in sight range. Over a hundred players within bow shot.

Also, GW2 has already had incidents of skills being delayed 10-15 seconds.

Just saying.

zamalek.2154:

Culling probably can’t be eliminated. It’s a game of numbers that is stacked against the developers; simply sending the positions of all the players on the map would likely blow the pipe.

No offense, but you don’t know what you’re talking about there. Other MMORPGs have maintained several hundred players on-screen without issues. WAR and DAOC had to exceed 300-500 players in close proximity to start crashing things (although lag would occur with fewer than those numbers).

There’s virtually no way a single borderland or EB could tank using hardware and systems 5-10 years more advanced than those games with only ~150 people in the area.

If that does happen, then ANet’s technical competence is a joke.

Sidenote: Based on my recollections of JQ v. SBI v. ET and HOD v. JQ v. SBI in T1, the borderlands do hit excessive lag with >150 people in close proximity. So yeah, ANet has their work cut out for them. Hopefully they’ve worked out what they needed to and the removal of culling will not result in tons of excessive lag.

Timze.7980:

Could we expect to get better fps too?

Pretty much no.

Culling improves performance by processing less stuff that needs to be drawn (primarily), drawing less (primarily), and requiring less network traffic (secondary).

No culling = your PC will be working harder on several fronts. In some network conditions you may experience more frequent “rubberbanding” or other incidents of latency/packetloss.

You know most thieves don’t know if they are culling to the person or not.

Pretty sure most thieves will immediately notice a change in the flow of combat ifwhen culling is actually removed, and will trend to respond with build changes, accordingly.

I think what they are trying to do is allow people to “self cull” to achieve a balance between lag and ability to see.
Just my guess at the reason for it.

Yes, this option is usually called draw distance or “x number of players drawn” or some such in most games (e.g. every other MMO released in the past decade). There are also typically settings to “dumb-down” animations and other tweaks available. Animation Level-of-Detail for example.

Just sounds tedious on paper.

Look at the link and “fill” your item slots with % stats (Zerk/Valk) starting with the low ratios, and fill your item slots with raw stats (Knight’s) starting with the high ratios. That’s all it is, basically.

The inconsistent Knight’s stats on jewelry is a random piece of complexity ANet left in the game due to bad QA. Doesn’t make a huge difference, but is tedious if you want 100% min/max.

Isaac.6041:

The Green team is the winner 16 out of 17 matches this week.

Working as intended: the server with stronger WvW capacity won last week, and then won this week. This means the brackets are mostly accurate.

Good thread.

This thread is silly.

The reality is as follows:

1. Culling is fixable.

2. Fixing culling requires (a) an expansion / optimization of ANet’s networking.

3. Fixing culling requires (b) ANet to allow clients to draw things faster. Players’ PCs can already handle kittentons of people drawing quickly. The engine itself slows this down to present a more consistent experience for players with crappy PCs.

ANet must accept that players with kittenty PCs won’t be able to draw 200 people instantly, or all of them, or add some band-aid adjustment to the engine to differentiate the behavior for playeres with poor PCs.

Bottom line is that once ANet accepts #3 or throws in draw limitations (like every other MMORPG release in the last decade), as well as puts up $ for more bandwidth / network optimization, they can easily remove the “culling problem” entirely.

Last I heard, they were supposed to remove it with the March patch which means ANet has done / is ready to do the above. No idea what this thread is about really.

Generally speaking you might be able to squeeze out about 20-35 raw stat points (probably more Precision).

Not a major difference, but /shrug. Only key point is to allocate the Exquisite Jewels in accessories properly. Everything else is small-ish.

Like I said, I’ve witnessed up to 2.5-3 seconds. I wouldn’t be surprised at 4. I consider ~2 seconds to be more common overall.

And more importantly, it’s not really PC dependent, although it can be in extreme cases.

In terms of testing, it would be entertaining but I am too busy with IRL stuff this week.

Hard to tell. The most I’ve personally witnessed that I can virtually guarantee fit the “they hit something, dropping out of stealth and still not rendering” (because they were attacking me) was ~3 seconds with about 8 people and 4 NPCs in the area.

There are a lot of subtleties that can cause variation however — for example, a thief can CND someone (where you can assume a 3s stealth then ??? culling-based fade-in) and they take 5-7 seconds to appear. However, they could have used Blinding Powder during the CND to extend the stealth, and it would be difficult to detect as they’re moving (e.g. you’re not hit by the blind).

Berserker and Celestial are both legit depending on what you want to do.

If you have any intent of spread stats for slightly better durability / survivability / flexibility, then the Celestial amulet is a good slot to do it in (as opposed to … runes, or something). If you ever consider dropping 1 slot of Zerk gear for Knight’s or something with hybrid durability … then swapping the amulet for a Celestial is probably a better choice.

If you don’t give a kitten and want bigger numbers, then stick with Zerk. (<— this is what I do).

Hotcake.2137:

2. Here’s the best gear set up I can recommend to maximize damage and survivability: Knights exotic armor with Ruby Orbs (Ruby Orbs are better than Divinity Runes), Berserker D/P with Sigil of Force and Sigil of Air, Shortbow with Sigil of Fire. Also get a cheap Pistol or Dagger and slot Sigil of Bloodlust. When you enter WvW, equip that weapon and build to at least 15 stacks for the bonus power, then swap back to your Berserker weapon. Lastly get full Valkyrie Jewelry.

This item spread is not quite correct.

Use Valk exquisite jewels and other crit% gear in the order listed in the table: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature#Comparison_of_numeric_vs._percentage_attributes

Low ratios = use crit% gear (Valk/Zerk), high ratios = use “stat” gear (Knights).

Based on your recommendation above, you would be looking at approximately:

Knight’s Jewelry with Valkyrie Exquisite Jewels

[sidenote: I think Knight’s jewelry had a stat swap from armor, so you may want to use Valk Earring + Amulet + Exquisite Jewels, but use Knight’s Rings, and then drop Berserker Boots/Gloves for Knight’s]

Berserker Boots/Shoulder/Gloves

Knight’s Chest/Leg/Helm

Cygnus.6903:

You use Hidden Killer instead of Executioner. Doesn’t this dampen your damage a LOT? I mean, you already have 62% crit (82% when you get your target to 50% due to the fury trait). Is using HK over Exec really worth that increase in crit chance just for backstab?

If you use Hidden Killer and then optimize for stealth attacks, you can viably drop some precision to pick up other stats (like Vit/Tough). You could also re-allocate precision pumps to power which is a good gain, but those trades are rare (only available for Sigil stack trading and food trades, really).

For raw damage when you have a high crit rate already, or when you’re not heavily focused on stealth attacks, then Executioner is better.

dank.3680:

On top of that my Phantasmal Duelist no longer makes any sound.

This is a good thing.

Laika.8795:

Now you’re discussing zerg culling behavior, which is neither here nor there. A single thief, which is Columba’s chief source of baby tears, will never take that kind of time to render unless you’re on a dial up playing on your 10 year old computer. Which he’s confirmed that he is not.

A single thief will average about 1 second of missed visibility, 1.5 tops.

It’s not completely related to “TEH ZERG”. Simply being in an active WvW zone seems to have a pretty direct impact, as opposed to, say, sPvP.

I’ve seen several situations where a thief has taken ~2-4 seconds to re-appear and there were only a few players in clipping. Your personal internet connection and PC specs have little to do with it. It’s an engine issue and a lot of it is server-side decision making.

It’s simply not uncommon for thieves to exceed their revealed debuff with culling in a WvW zone — at least, in T1 or T2. I imagine T7 and T8 probably see less impact from the culling at all times, but I can only speculate since I’ve never been on those servers. Of course, histrionics are not necessary, but it’s the reality of playing against stealth in the current state of WvW.

Best part is that invulnerability already exists in the game and seems to work quite reliably (e.g. the blue icon invuln buff for logging in or event scripted mobs, or even copying a kitten Distortion or Evade or Dodge from players).

Ohwell.

Hehe. It’s pretty funny to consider how ANet can’t make invulnerable supervisors invulnerable for a set duration.

Seems shoddy.

If it were fun then we’d have way too many people afking on keep walls.

Takes me about 8 consecutive sPvP games before I remember how to sPvP after I break from it for a long time. Maybe ~3-4 games if I’ve done sPvP recently.

Different paradigm.

sPvP is kind of boring though. It’s more focused on a few specific things … emphasis on “few”.

^

You realize you can get the sword trait as the 10 point trait, and DE as the 20 point trait, right?

Thing is, I’m pretty sure the camp supervisors have 5-capped AOEs (I vaguely recall general random/common instances of not getting decked for 10k or whatever while standing in melee with a ton of other people). So I’m also thinking Jormag and such, but that seems pretty fringe.

march is your month, you think so? i mean, hope so?

No. I have 0 “faith” in Anet to make any meaningful changes or improvements to WvW. I fully expect them to continue with the gearflation for the elitist PvE kitten crowd in order to WoW-ify the game as a whole in a bid for more playerbase and cash shop.

The most likely change I see made to WvW is along the lines of “super siege” available via the cash shop.

I only play WvW inasmuch as I find it fun. I’ve been playing less and less for various reasons, most stemming from the fact that I can’t use different builds because of gear lock. E.g. I can’t easily get other sets of gears because they’re all reliant on big $ or PvE grind. The result is that I’m stuck with the same/similar build basically ad nauseam.

I expect to completely stop playing GW2 in a few patches due to this, and other games being released. That or just take an 8 month hiatus then come back for like 2 days, realize that everyone out-stats me by 15% because of full ascended (or ascended2 gear by that time), then leave immediately after estimating the months of grinding (PvE or WvW) I would need to do to get gear parity before I can play the game.

Avatar.1923:

you guys “only” do wvwvw?

Yes.

I have done:

1. Personal story quests.
2. One story mode dungeon once since beta. (sidenote: it was annoying, resulted in trash loot, took too long to get to, took too long to complete, was mostly boring aside from the 45 seconds of voiceovers, although Eir was in there to ogle)
3. One brief stint of crafting (for gear for WvW — bad idea, should have just found a crafter).
4. Miscellaneous Snow Troll grinding back in the day (for gear for WvW).
5. Some random sPvP for kittens and giggles.
6. Rest of my time in WvW. E.g. 95% of my game time.

PvE was a useless waste of time / content / energy / pixels / electrons. The story quest was entertaining because of voiceovers and overall story (until Trahearne, but I still finished it because I started it; kitten Trahearne btw).

There’s a joke thread on the WvW boards of “You are a WvWer if”, and the responses was along the lines of “have 200+ hours played with 30% map completion, no fractal tokens, bought gems to upgrade keeps because you run out of gold, etc”. Have all the steps of your monthly completed, but 0 dungeons, so you will never complete the monthly.

Yep.

captaincrunch.6731:

EasymodeX.4062:

Vayne.8563:

I’d hate this, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m doing everything in the game with rare and exotic gear. I don’t need ascended to do anything. If it takes a long time, how does it actually change the game for me.

See, in other games, you NEED to have X to complete Y. If you don’t have certain gear levels in Rift, you’re not allowed to queue for specific dungeons. Here, I don’t have that problem.

You need ascended gear to beat an equally skilled player in WvW who has ascended gear.

Hell, you need ascended gear to fight them evenly.

Surprise surprise.

The difference is small enough that that isn’t the case at all. You’d have a point if you were referring to the gap between masterworks and exotics, but not exotics and ascended. The difference is too miniscule to make a realistic impact.

The difference across a full set of ascended versus exotic is about 10-20% total DPS for a DPS set of gear, depending on how the exact stats pan out for the unreleased gear slots.

That is pretty significant.

Mimic also blocks for the remaining duration after the copy. It’s a much more singularly potent defensive button than Feedback. It’s also on a lower cooldown.

Trick is that the blocking effect is significantly more useful in general than the copy/reflect component, so you typically want to reliably get past the copy part to get to the block part.

The problem with Sword bleed builds is that players decide not to utilize any power gear (or gear with even condition + power spreads).

They tend to stick with Rabid.

The fundamental issue, in retrospect, is that Carrion has Vit, and there is no Condition Damage + Power + Toughness gear.

Rampager is a “meh” alternative (0 defensive stats), also precision-focused. The sPvP version of Rampager has exceptionally low condition damage as well.

TLDR: Sword builds are nice with condition + power. But gear doesn’t support condition + power very well.

Now have Torch as a more attractive option. Condition buffed np. Don’t we all just love a good 7-8s burn, oh yes we do yes we do.

I like the 25 sword change.

IMO, it works like this:

1. Swords on the map are good for complete 100% casual random players that want to look for some action. A 25-player fight is a good destination for that player.

2. For all other players, get some scouting and communication. This newly invigorated “FOG OF WAR” simply means WvW can be much more interesting now.

Vayne.8563:

I’d hate this, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m doing everything in the game with rare and exotic gear. I don’t need ascended to do anything. If it takes a long time, how does it actually change the game for me.

See, in other games, you NEED to have X to complete Y. If you don’t have certain gear levels in Rift, you’re not allowed to queue for specific dungeons. Here, I don’t have that problem.

You need ascended gear to beat an equally skilled player in WvW who has ascended gear.

Hell, you need ascended gear to fight them evenly.

Surprise surprise.

Yeah didn’t think so. Trying to figure out a read on the Ret change in terms of where the hell it would apply with uncapped AOEs being abused with massive Ret damage. Perhaps some world PvE encounters.

If the food buff makes or breaks builds, then the food buff is broken.

End of story.