Guild Wars 2

If you end up giving up on Blackgate, Crystal Desert is an amazing server!

Koronin.6785:

It’s probably best to wait until you’ve obtained a lot of charges as you will typically replace your armor every 5 levels.

YEAH, good point. If you’re not yet level 80, try not to worry about fashion before then. You’ll outlevel your armor quickly and it’s not worth it. You’ll be 80 in no time anyway.

BiggieJohn.7061:

so I just fill out a map in exploration and I get a charge?

Yes. Rarely you’ll get a black lion key instead of a charge, but if you do that’s nothing to be upset about. In my experience, the keys are rare – it’s almost always a charge.

The 26th day of the login rewards gives you 3 transmutation charges as well.

PvP probably provides the most for the time investment.

Outfits are able to be used indefinitely. You use them from the “outfits” tab in your hero panel. Are you sure you didn’t buy an armor skin?

Transmutation charges are fairly easy to come by, if you did buy an armor skin. They drop from dailies, map completion, and PvP reward tracks.

They’re only available from the collections guy if you’ve completed the achievement. This is to allow players to purchase duplicates of the achievement rewards.

Hi, I’m Hip Hop Hamster. I’m that player that links a huge stack of spoons every time someone complains about the spoons. And then I talk about how much I love them, because I do! The spoons are hilarious, please leave the spoons alone!

I doubt they’re ruining the loot. You get an exotic every time you do Teq. An overwhelming majority of the time, you get a spoon, Bone Fragment of Tequatl, or a Superior Rune of the Sunless. They are all “worthless” in terms of monetary value.

Once in a while, I get an exotic or an ascended box in addition to one of the three worthless exos that drop, so I don’t think they’re using the same loot table.

I’ve run GW2 with Wine on Archlinux (x86-64) by flagging -dx9single. I dual boot though, so Wine is using the files direct from the Windows registry (Win7 if it matters to you).

I hover around 60 fps when playing on Windows, and around 30 fps on Linux. If I encounter a zerg, it drops even further on Linux. This is using max graphics settings, so it gets a little better if I drop reflections, textures and shadows. I have no idea why this happens on Linux and I’ve been unable to fix it, so I prefer to play GW2 on Windows because of this.

I would also love it if Linux were officially supported.

Golemancer runes are also worth looking at if precision runes interest you, though I wouldn’t use 6 under any circumstances. Those runes give a great benefit to both precision and ferocity, but the 6th rune’s golem is annoying.

Personally, I wouldn’t worry about precision too much. Use sigil of intelligence and you’ll crit times 3 every 9 seconds, assuming you’re switching kits at least that often.

Rangerdeity.5847:

WvW is GWEN
Guardian
Warriot
Elementalist
Necro

PvP honestly your fine with anything other than a necro they just get countered so easy its not worth it but most common are engi and thief warrior and guard are still very common too

Necro isn’t the easiest class to play in PvP. They do have terrible mobility. As someone that’s played a lot of rabid engineer though, I disagree that engineer is a hard counter to them. Necros with consume conditions can wreck almost any condition spec when they’re played well. Corrupt boon is also very strong in team fights. They have high vitality, and great area denial. Very useful in PvP, imo.

Aside from engineer, I roam on ranger in WvW a lot. I’ve had a lot of fun roaming as a mesmer and thief as well. Is GWEN primarily referring to zerging?

pdavis.8031:

I found that going cleric warrior, (shout heals/banner regen, and full points into healing) one can stay alive pretty well, but don’t think you are going to kill anyone.

Yeah. This game is balanced with PvP in mind, and I happen to agree with that strategy. Healing power vs. other players can be very strong. I can 1vX forever on a cleric’s warrior with healing signet and shouts. I won’t go down, but neither will any of my enemies. Builds like that are useful for bunkers (holding points) but I need my team to show up at some point to actually take anyone down. My damage output is so low that they can always outheal it. And that’s balanced. I shouldn’t be able to outheal damage from 3 players and still do enough damage to take them down.

People tend to stay away from healing power because damage mitigation can be handled in other ways. Dodging and other evasive skills, defensive boons, interrupting and blinding enemies and stealth are all good way to negate damage, and those ways don’t require gearing for a specific stat.

The way HP scales is not well understood. 1000 stat points invested in healing power may not cause heals to heal for that much more – and I suspect this is because healing can be very strong in the right circumstances. The way buffs (including passive healing) are spread can also be an issue. Your passive heals, like an elementalist’s dagger 5 in water attunement can affect up to 5 people people. If you’re doing large open world content and you’re in a party, and all stacked together, your heal will affect your whole party. But without grouping and stacking, it’s difficult or impossible to heal the person who needs it most.

Sacrificing damage output in PvE sucks, because you aren’t credited for participation in events for healing. I think this is unfortunate. Someone specced for healing power might actually be a huge help in keeping people vertical, but as a result not do enough damage to the target to receive credit for the event or kill.

Support skills that require sacrificing damage output for utility aren’t used much in PvE, but they often are in PvP and WvW. Healing power isn’t without its place, it just isn’t often in dungeons or open world content.

This video: http://youtu.be/aRnw05Boi8I sums it up pretty well, if you want to further explore the topic.

eta: The stat options for healing power do suck. We’ve gotten a couple more in the past year, so maybe that trend will continue. In PvE, I do use healing power sometimes. On elementalist, I’ve found the “sweet spots” for healing power effectiveness even multiples of 100 (200, 400, 600, 800). More than 800 seems to give me very little benefit. I use a berserker’s/assassin’s hybrid for armor, and celestial trinkets. The celestial trinkets give me just over 200 healing power, which is nice from a utility standpoint. I’m doing world completion on that character and running into low level squishies all the time. I wouldn’t take it into dungeons though, save for maybe higher level fractals.

I’m not saying it happens often, but pugs like red team do win sometimes. When I get put it matches like this on red’s side, I feel like we’re at a huge disadvantage. Play like you have a mountain to climb and it might pay off.

Did you communicate with your time (nicely) about not rushing far into two cele bunkers? What map was this on?

If you really want to solo the door guard, it can be done. I recommend lots of blinds and condi removal. Stealth helps too.

Here’s a video of a thief doing it:
http://youtu.be/Ynf92VRaROs
He doesn’t use blinds, but keeps the guy crippled and kites him.

I’ve only done it on engineer. Door guard is a surprising difficult solo encounter. c:

Pikka.6023:

Personally, I think it’s too extreme to have a combat design where a maximum damage attack versus a minimum defense opponent can do more than 1/2 health in one hit, especially since there are so many ways to set up big hits that players can’t actively counter. It’s a design problem. The extremes need better limits.

But how do you determine what “more than 1/2 health” is? If you get one shot by an 11k eviscerate, you aren’t using defensive stats. High risk, high reward. The risk being you’re able to be one shot, since you’re gearing for damage output alone. Someone using Soldier’s for instance may not lose half their health to that at all.

Eviscerate can be countered, btw. Dodging, blocking, interrupting, blind, stealth, etc.

eta:

Tom Gore.4035:

Exactly what happened to OP. As you can see he was hit by shield bash just before the evis. You can do that in sPvP too. You either avoid the shield bash or you better hope you’ve got your stunbreaker ready. In a ranger’s case, that would be LR, which the OP hadn’t even slotted (lol).

Yeah, OP, you need a stunbreak. If you use LR after you’re stunned with shield bash (assuming you can’t dodge it), you’ll break stun, leap backwards, and avoid most (if not all) the burst damage coming your way.

BlackBeard.2873:

(with that nice, FREE, 7-8s burn buried deep in there)

How is the burning “free” when the engineer has to go at least 4 deep in a purely offensive traitline to have it?

Darkness.9732:

yes guys I know you play warrior and you defend your class i can understand it. But I’ m talking about F skills. An F skill can’ t do so much damage. But if we want to accept that amount of damage at least they should boost other classes F skills damage.

If your “F” skills were buffed, ranger would be OP. You do have skills that hit for the same amount of damage as eviscerate (from a glass cannon warrior), provided you trait for maximum damage and make use of offensive boons. Burst skills aren’t the same keybind for every profession. The “F” skills you’re talking about are profession specific skills. Yours happens to be a pet’s attack, warriors have burst adrenaline skills. Thieves steal, engineers have utility dependent “toolbelt” skills. The strength of these skills is balanced against your entire skillset, as well as the entire skillset of other professions.

This doesn’t mean “lucky accounts are a thing.” This means your guildie is representative of an outlier. Nothing more.

Zaxares.5419:

I support it in theory, but it would be very hard to police, and somewhat open to abuse too. What’s to stop angry players from mass reporting some poor newbie who stumbled into Unranked and is doing all the classic mistakes like double-capping, zerging, or getting into pointless fights while all 3 points are capped?

The entire report system is open to abuse though. I’m more talking about egregious instances of someone repeatedly refusing the play. I assume Anet takes reports with a grain of salt anyway, unless the reported offense is clear and quite terrible.

You make a good point that newbies are going to make a ton of idiotic mistakes. I’m sure someone would report them too, but playing badly shouldn’t be a violation of any rule. If someone is new that will be obvious to whoever reviews reports.

I see a lot of blatant trolling sometimes though. Like “yes, I’m fighting in the street and not capping points, because you’re all scrubs and it’s not worth it to even try with this kitten team.” I think that’s an obvious problem, whereas someone who’s new or otherwise confused probably isn’t going to offensively mouth off about it.

Buran.3796:

In example: yesterady in one of my matches, playing as a meditation guardian in Niflhel, I did stay on close over the whole match, keeping our base. I got like 25 points due scoring the area and two succesfull defends (few kills). We won by a landslide (by more than 300 points), but for most of the match my role was just to stay alone, on close, doing nothing, scoring nothing to myself, despite the point I keep on guard was scoring for my team the whole match.

Bunkers are an example of why points scored shouldn’t have anything to do with it. Holding and defending a point is legit. Rushing far and dying over and over can even be legit (think of the poor noobs) – it depends on intention. Which admittedly is difficult or even impossible to prove if they don’t say anything.

What I’m primarily suggesting is a report option for situations that are clear BS. As mentioned above, people who insult their team based on composition alone, and refuse to play because of that. Terrible team comp in soloQ isn’t the fault of the team. Sometimes those terrible comps even win, but not if one or two people on the team just flat out refuse to try, and make that very clear with what they say in chat.

Shadowmoon.7986:

AR needs to be removed from fractals, or the cost of fine infusions needs to be lowered.

All the AR you need is available for fractal relics though. I wouldn’t call their lack of a +5 stat “subpar.” +5 is doing very little for you anyway.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Make those zerks work for their win with weak heal that will leave no room for mistakes.

I agree, because that’s how it already is. Berserker’s gear leaves no room for mistakes. People survive encounters as glass cannons because they’re familiar with the fight mechanics and know when to dodge. Healing might allow one mistake, but one more means dead.

Vert.5041:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

Vert, I respectfully disagree with you. Especially for a new or returning player, the meta doesn’t matter that much. And the meta is constantly changing. And metabattle is often out of date or lacking pertinent information.

For instance, I’ve been playing engi for a long time. I remember when nobody wanted me in a dungeon party, because “engi lacks DPS.” And then DnT stated that they don’t, and now people welcome engi in speedruns. But know what? Nothing’s changed. Engi’s always been good in dungeons! Nothing against DnT btw, I like them a lot. Just saying you don’t need someone to tell you that you’re good to be good!

In PvE, absolutely any profession is fine. In casual PvP, absolutely any profession is fine. The coolest part about this game to me is the skill ceiling. Some professions are easy to learn and very hard to master. Most, even. Play what you find fun, and eventually all that time having fun will add up to being very good with that character.

Guardians are getting a new weapon with the expansion pack. At least one, I’m not sure if more will follow. Your suggestion is cool, but I think that would be very hard to balance. Hopefully whatever new skills guardian gets will be cool!

MKJO.8970:

I’m by the way annoyed that i cant fight with my mace in PvP or WvW, since it’s against the META..

You can fight with your mace anywhere you want to. When I play guard in PvP, I use mace sometimes because it’s fun. Your build doesn’t have to be meta to be good, or fun to play.

Engineer. I have all 8 professions and like them all. I have more hours played on engineer than on all my other characters combined though.

XacTactX.6709:

Solo pugging unranked is terrible right now because of all the new players that got GW2 for $10.

I’ve had some great times in Unranked since the sale with a team of 3-4. Sometimes our soloQ team member(s) know what they’re doing, and sometimes they’re new. If they’re new, we help them out, as a team. And they get to learn some map based and profession based strategy.

If you’re able to assemble a full team, you’ll have a better chance at winning in Unranked. But if you have a partial team or soloQ, you have a great opportunity to be cool to the newbies and help them out.

We’ve all been new before. Hotjoin/practice might have been okay for learning at some point, but it isn’t now. I remember using hotjoin to learn the layout of the maps, but it was constant zerging and abuse of the autobalance mechanics and not at all fun. Unranked is structured enough for a new player to actually learn something useful.

Absinth.6917:

Wah the fuk hoo.

lol, watch the video and see what strategy she’s talking about.

This would be nice. /salute or /bow works well for some situations though.

Mine is Accountancy wp in Rata Sum.

OP, all the professions are great. If you can’t decide where to start, I recommend reading about each profession’s skills and watching some youtube of gameplay. None of the professions are stuck in a support role; they can all be played various ways.

As for ranger, the pet AI has some problems, yes. But the pet doesn’t do all the work. Rangers can be a lot of things – they can use melee, focus on support or cc, buff allies (and themselves) for increased damage. They’re pretty versatile, as are all the professions.

The first character I made was a thief, followed by mesmer. I had a terrible computer and terrible lag, so those weren’t fun for me at the time. I rolled a ranger and was pretty happy with that. Once I got a better rig, I revisited thief and mesmer and loved them. Ranger has a low skill floor (meaning I could play it and stay alive with terrible FPS), but it’s capable of very intricate combat.

I main engineer these days, but I have all the professions and they’re all great.

There have been a lot of issues following the matchmaking changes – people intentionally leaving matches, refusing the play and going afk at base (sometimes rather vocally), intentionally helping the enemy team gain points, etc. For most people, respect for your team and Dishonor are enough to dissuade them from this kind of behavior, but it still happens enough for PvPers to feel let down and disenchanted.

Most of this is already covered in the rules of conduct:

While participating in Plaver-vs-Player (PvP) gameplay, you will not participate in any form of match manipulation. Match manipulation is defined as any action taken to fix or manipulate the outcome of a match or alter or manipulate the rankings or ratings of the ladder. This also includes disrupting other people’s game experience by not actively participating in matches in good faith, a.k.a leeching.

but I think it may be time for an addendum or revision, as well as a report option for violation of the PvP sportsmanship clause. I have faith that a solution to these problems is in the works somewhere, but until that happens, players need to be able to take some kind of action against it.

Our report options are only “botting, inappropriate character name, spamming, verbal abuse, scamming, selling gold, LFG system abuse.” Match manipulation doesn’t fit into any of these categories, and is a poor description for most unsportsmanlike behavior anyway. I know Anet’s been hard at work and probably doesn’t need more work, but this intermediary fix seems simple.

Anet, if you’re reading, can we have this? Would you be able to follow up on this type of report? Could we maybe have a small description section as well, so players can let you know what’s wrong? Players, would you use this and do you feel it would help you?

Ranger day = wall of reflection day.

Ashen.2907:

Now you cannot get dyes as a drop, they are tied to either a few through level up rewards or cash shop purchases.

You can buy them with laurels as well (5 laurels for one unidentified dye).

A side effect of making dyes account wide was their decrease in value – a few rare ones are still quite expensive, but you can amass a nice selection of dyes without a large investment these days. Many are below 1s on the TP.

Mikali.9651:

I actually like her! Her energy is amazing!

Yeah, her enthusiasm is really cute.

This would be great. Armor is already stat-selectable when it’s obtained via the PvP reward tracks. Offering the same from a vendor doesn’t seem like a complicated task.

Both sound points, OP. I hope these are implemented.

+1

GhOst.4019:

Also, isn’t only 1 stack of each? lol.
It’s not like they are dropping a condi bomb on you

8 seconds of torment and poison (especially when someone’s trying to burst you down) can be game changing. It inhibits your ability to both move (safely anyway) and heal. One stack of bleed, not so much. But it’ll likely be the condition removed with a condi removal skill, not the torment or poison.

I’m not arguing that’s is OP at all, just stating that it’s a powerful rune, especially for builds with decent condi duration. Perhaps underused, at least imo. It can’t be dodged, true. But it only has a 360 unit range. If you anticipate an elite will be used, such as when a ranger’s rapid fire is off CD, moving out of the way during their cast may save you from the condi. As will knocking them back or otherwise interrupting them.

Donari.5237:

Almost never! I think the Spinal Blade backpacks can’t be upgraded if you change their looks. At least their tooltip warns of that.

Yep. See below. I did this intentionally as this was the last version of the backpiece I wanted. Since I changed the skin, it says “Transmuted,” as well as “Cannot be used in the Mystic Forge if transmuted.” I lack the ingredients to confirm this, but the tool tip is pretty specific.

They drop (rarely) from Trick or Treat bags. If you happen to be loaded and very impatient, you could buy some or farm them with maize balm. Would be very expensive though, and reliant on RNG.

If I can only choose two, I choose

http://youtu.be/C2wJS3zRx1I

and Crush by Pendulum – because my pug won vs. a premade to that song the other day. It’ll be lucky until something terrible happens while it’s playing, lol.

http://youtu.be/8mYd2X_9rrs

Thanks for all the awesome song recommendations, I always love finding new music to listen to!

I really like what Anet has done with the game so far. Obviously not everything, but most of it. I love the LS, I love the festivals (even the repeats). I love being able to play a condition damage build in PvE and feel useful for once in the new zones. I like how they’ve been introducing new content fairly consistently even without a boxed expansion. I doubt I’ll be disappointed. People understandably use the forums to vent sometimes, but I doubt there will be a mass exodus if it’s not a “real” xpac or a new playable race. If it’s this much hype and it’s taken this long to produce, I’m betting at least part of it is cool, even if you’re a real pessimist.

Forgot to mention, OP. Do you have your dodge set to the default keybind (double tap a movement key)? The default keybind is terrible. It creates choppy and slow dodges, in my opinion. If you haven’t rebound it to a more convenient single key, try that. I have mine bound to shift, but any key that’s easy to reach for you will work better than the default.

timmyf.1490:

Yeah, the proper way to approach this would be like so:

As far as social mores go, you’re correct. However, English may not be OP’s first language. OP could also be very young, or just tired. It’s impossible to know on the internet. There are countless times I’ve said something that could have been worded better, and I assume that’s the case for everyone. We do our best. c:

How’s your ping, OP? And your FPS? High ping/low FPS can make dodging very hard to time.

Do you have AOE indicators enabled? I think they are by default, but could you have disabled them by accident? You should see red circles on the ground, followed by damage in the marked area if they’re enabled.

What profession do you play? It’s true that some attacks are unblockable, but they’re often able to be reflected. How you’d reflect something is profession specific, so I’ll be happy to help you figure it out if I know what direction to take.

It’s funny, because I’m leveling a thief as well. How far above your level did you go? I’m interested to see exactly where this level-gap nerf takes place.

Mine’s level 35 right now, so I headed to Bloodtide Coast to check it out. The first mobs I encountered there were level 45 drakes – so I smacked them around. Took me forever to kill even one, and I drew a whole horde of them from quite some distance. All my blows were glancing, and interestingly, my conditions didn’t even tick. They weren’t even applied, until I disengaged. Weird, huh?

First picture shows the aggro range. If I take one step forward, they aggro. Seems far to me, to draw aggro from a drake. Second picture is the mass bleed tick after I used SR and ran, since I was hurt. ;__;

Those were the days! Queensdale and Metrica Province were happening places. Still are, but not to the same degree.

You’re probably right. Getting pwned by a level 15 spider as a level 10 character is confusing to new players. xD

Jana.6831:

But why did they change that? So people won’t call their 80’s friends to help them leveling?

I’m not sure. I suspect it may be to maintain population in lower level zones/tailor the NPE, but my suspicions are rarely correct.

winterlove.6834:

can accended weapons be bought or obtained another way

They can drop. Very very rarely, and you don’t get to choose the stats you get. Other than that, crafting is the only option for weapons right now.

CMM.6712:

Stop trying to take away one of my favorite rewards, thanks.

They’re one of my favorites as well. There are so many uses for them. No complaints about the number of these I get.

Jana.6831:

You get more exp when killing higher levels and when I started to play it also said “more loot”

This was changed. :c

A few levels higher, idk, the XP may be slightly higher than what you gain from killing mobs your exact level. A significant level discrepancy these days = less XP, glancing blows, more aggro. No benefit.

You’ll still be level 10, and you will get reduced XP from kills. You’ll also draw aggro from a wider radius. Scaling only works one way (down) in most cases. General PvE is “most cases.” Some seasonal areas will scale you up to 80, as well as WvW. Going into zones much higher than your level isn’t worth it.

Aside from your first 5 skills, you have skills on every other weapon (different ones). As well as utilities and trait points to spend as you level. There’s progression up until level 80 (and as much progression past that as you want to master, I suppose).

zengara.8301:

I am more or less trying to get into gw2 slowly, what I have noticed, is that many people see zerker as a problem, I kinda do too, mainly because the whole “only zerker” thing in dungeon runs.

OP, you see so many “zerker only” ads in LFG because they take longer to fill than others. Plenty of people open LFG for dungeons with no specific gear requirements.

When I open an LFG for “P1, speedrun,” it takes much longer to fill than “P1, everyone welcome.” So a lot of the time I do the latter, since I’d rather complete the dungeon more slowly and actually be playing than waiting around for my group to fill.

It’s not berserker’s gear that’s the problem – it’s bad attitudes, on both sides of the fence. Not everyone who gears/traits for max damage in PvE is an elitist or a jerk. A very very small minority of people are like that.

If you want to do a specific dungeon and all the groups in LFG are requesting gear you don’t use, open your own! Some of the people who join might even be using berserker’s gear, and they might be really cool and helpful to someone who’s learning.