Guild Wars 2

Dream patch = new elite skill that removes pet from play and buffs the ranger 30-40% in all areas.

Conditions are the bane of guardians? You’ll have to explain that one to me. Even jus a set of soldier runes that removes conditions on shouts should cover it nicely.

The reason why there are so many zergs these days has nothing to do with pve. The reason people zerg is because its bloody effective. The current mechanics of wvw rewaard greater numbers and population more than anything else. Its been well establised in many other posts.

And there’s the problem. How do you set up the game in such a way that doesn’t favor zergs but is still balanced?

I’m still very new to mesmer, and even I know that trying to flee from a thief is just asking to get killed. Either fight or die.

I was in almost the exact same boat as you. Had an engi, but switched to mesmer.

The two biggest things I will say that you should be aware of are this:

Mesmers are slower than engis. Mesmers are the only class without a reliable full time speed increase. So get used to feeling like you’re moving in slow motion. At higher levels you can equip runes to give you swiftness upon healing, and stack with the focuss ability to jury rig full time swiftness. But that’s it.

This coincides with my second point. Mesmers are a class that don’t come into their full power until very late in the levelling process. That means you’re going to feel very weak much longer than other classes. I didn’t peronally feel very strong until after lvl 60, and some people say mesmer is weak until you have lvl 80 and gear to work with.

But stick with it and you’ll end up with a very rewarding class.

Vodka.3958:

Actually we have way less numbers than SoR & JQ do now. But look at how close Blackgate comes to competing with these two overly stacked servers.

I almost spit out my drink.

If SoR is so stacked, how come I keep seeing that outmanned buff from time to time?

Most important question: How do mesmers deal with running so kitten slow while levelling? Focus is the only option still?

I’m watching this video…..and I realize I have no idea what you’re doing at any point. rofl! kitten you mesmers.

Question: Why isn’t there an elite skill that removes the pet and buffs the ranger somehow?

All I know is that after coming back to GW2 after a 3month break, SoR went from being ranked in the middle of the pack to being in tier 1. It’s been a bit of a shock to me, but I’ve been playing steadily for around 3-4 weeks now, and every time I’m in WvW we have to fight tooth and nail for every scrap of territory we can get.

As far as I can tell, there is no mass conspiracy to double team anyone. JQ doesn’t need to ally with either of the other servers since they have so many people and so much coverage of all hours. I don’t know why anyone would think otherwise except for using it as an excuse.

BG seems to attack anyone anywhere as far as I can tell. I haven’t been able to figure out if they have any strategy or not.

My home server of SoR struggles during the off hours(which I primarily play) and we often have the outmanned buff. In the three weeks that I’ve been back in GW2 I’ve never once heard or seen any indication of some kind of conspiracy or team up to keep BG down.

We do often attack BG while I’m on, but that’s because we often simply can’t handle the sheer zerg power of JQ. Whatever we take gets zerged back down within minutes. It’s like punching water, or digging in loose sand.

People are just reading more into the situation than is actually there. The simple truth is that JQs numbers dictate the flow of every battle, every week. Until Anet comes up with a scoring system that scales based on population instead of absolute numbers, whatever server has the most people will always win, and always unbalance the three-way dynamic of WvW.

Disconnected from the EB map, kicked back to the PvE world. When I tried to rejoin the EB map I get the message:

The game client is unable to gain access to the log-in server at this time. This is most commonly caused by firewall or router settings, security applications, or connecting through a campus network. For additional support, please visit……. (support website)

(Code=19:9:17:3164:101)

All other WvW maps are accessible, as is the rest of the game. It’s only the EB that’s down.

This happened around a minute after JQ took Stonemist. Through massive circumstantial evidence and overall biased against JQ, I blame them for this crash.

I guess I’m just wondering how you’re going to keep up conditions when faced with the DaPhoenix D/D elem build which is so popular these days. Condition removal in so many forms.

When attuning to water(10 second cooldown)
When dodge rolling in water attunement(10 second cooldown)
Skill 5 when in water(40second cooldown)
Whenever the elem gains regen, which means….
Whenever the elem uses a cantrip(mistform/lightning flash 45 and 75 second cooldown respectively)
A second condition when attuning to water.

Which doesn’t even take into consideration the actual heal skill the elem chooses, which if it’s ether renewal is another several conditions, and is only a 15 second cooldown.

If the elem plays even halfway smart and uses escape manouvers to stay away from you or block LoS til cooldowns reset, a majority of your condition damage is going to be mitigated.

Which is not to say that you won’t hurt the elem. But at the same time the elem is mitigating your condition damage, he’s also hitting you right back.

Exactly, Zerk. Completely stock, no overclocking, the game runs fine in WvW on medium settings. I’m a bit of an oldschool FPS player, so I have no problems what so ever with turning down things like shaders or shadows to get more FPS.

Also, from what I understand WvW doesn’t run perfectly for anyone on any machine. I’m perfectly happy with the performance of the phenom II BE so far. I suppose my experience is colored by the crap way my machine ran before now, but meh. To each his own.

Just a somewhat late update. I went with the Phenom II black edition. Game runs smoothly with just that single upgrade. But kitten the stock fan is loud!

I very much look forward to seeing some footage of group vs group fights using this build. It seems like a great build for skirmishing, but I wonder how it performs in large scale zerg on zerg.

Ah, I see what you meant: stacking condition damage instead of duration on your gear is the most effective way of fighting elems. I interpreted your post to mean that damage from conditions ‘destroys’ them in general. Which didn’t make sense given how much condition remove elems have.

Also, very likely you would wreck me in a duel. I generally play in a guild group in WvW. I’m of the mind that WvW is not about 1v1 fights, and build accordingly. My tactics for a 1v1 fight include running, or more often baiting them back to my group and destroying them.

I’m still a little skeptical, but not unconvinced. Can you elaborate on the strategy a little more? I know that engis can apply quite a lot of different conditions in various ways. “Just keep the poison up” seems a little vague. How would you go about it? I’m genuinely interested.

Israel.7056:

Eliteseraph.4970:

It’s impressive, and I love that it’s not D/D. But really, 1v1 fights in WvW? It’s a nice display of what the build is capable of, but if you’re going to show off solo ability, then lets see some 1vGroup.

I don’t think it’s really much of a 1vx sorta build.

Well, then I have to wonder really what the point of making a build for 1v1 is when going into WvW where most of your fights are NOT going to be 1v1. Sure, you can find those kinds of fights if you go out of your way to look for them, especially if you troll around in the JPs. But even then you’re going to often run across small groups of 2 or 3. What then?

Like I said, it’s a very good showcase of what the build can do, but anyone can make a highlight reel if they spend enough time and cut enough footage. Vids like this give a very misleading view of what actually goes on in WvW.

Alright, sounds good. Thanks for the info!

I read up a little bit, and some people were claiming that switching from one kit directly to another kit wasn’t triggering weapon swap effects. They had to go from the kit back to the weapon, then to another kit for it to work. Is this a common bug? Or maybe something that’s been fixed?

Also…..boo to the giant hobo-pack. What is my stuffed char pack supposed to think?

It’s impressive, and I love that it’s not D/D. But really, 1v1 fights in WvW? It’s a nice display of what the build is capable of, but if you’re going to show off solo ability, then lets see some 1vGroup.

Bear with me here, the last time I tried playing engi was something like 6 months ago.

How do weapon swap runes on weapons work with kits?

Do engineers get the benefits of the stats/runes on their weapons when they’re using a kit?

Do kits still replace the backpack graphic of whatever you’re actually wearing?

Punkins.2087:

.

Condition damage destroys Eles.. just keep the poison up.

Wut? You do realize that D/D ele removes conditions better than just about anything short of a guardian, right?

There are some misunderstandings about some of the things that eles are capable of in the post below. I’m no expert, but I’ll attempt to clarify:

Oxstar.7643:

Ezeriel.9574:

…and check this out, if I dodge roll I heal myself again, and cure another condition!!!

Yeah, and I can drop three healing units one condition remove unit and one fury+swiftness unit from one skill without any traits.

The healing units and other stuff require many keystrokes and can easily be missed in the mess of combat, while the ele dodge roll is a single keypress that doesn’t require targetting, and also evades due to the dodge roll.

Oxstar.7643:

Ezeriel.9574:

And when I cast my #1 water skill, I heal the melee guys for like 3-4 times more than I could do with those healing bombs.. gawd. how lame was that? I can do this from range!

Yes but your damage will suck pretty dang hardcore until the 25 or so seconds that you need to attune back are up.

Not really. Attunement cooldown is pretty kitten low, and there are 4 elements each on their own CD. Any ele that just sits in a single attunement instead of constantly swapping is doing it wrong. That’s not the fault of the class. Actual damage comparisons between bombs and various other ele weapons is beyond the scope of the discussion, however.

Oxstar.7643:

Ezeriel.9574:

…and I have these things called signets. Every time I cast a spell, one of them heals me! And I don’t even have to deploy it, or worry about range, this thing just goes with me where ever I go. …and I have another one, and every ten seconds, it cures a condition!

Pretty small healing I have to say, with ONE kit I can set up a fire combo field, knockback a horde of foes, blind the same horde, do some great aoe damage, and set more people on fire faster than you can.

Again, the ele does it automatically, in the course of normal play. Also, despite being individually small heals, the heal procs many many times. Often the ele is getting a ‘cast’ several times per second due to the nature of the timing on some abilities and passive trait combos.

The rest of your comparison was apples to oranges. I’m not sure what your point was there…..

Oxstar.7643:

Ezeriel.9574:

Ha-hahah… things are just so much better now. I’m like a new man!!!

Yes, a new man who couldn’t do it. Congratulations on trying, congratulations on not being a successful engineer, it’s a hard class to master indeed, and those of us who do kick a lot of butt.

The same can easily be said of any class. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss a player simply because he left a class he was bad at for a class that ended up working much better for him.

Both engi and ele are extremely versitile classes. Ele has attunements for various situations, and provides many useful buffs to themselves and their group. Engi has kits for various situations, and provides many useful buffs to themselves and their group. The ele is a bit more effective in a more focused scope, while the engi definitely has the edge in versatility.

I doubt anyone could make an effective argument for either class being better than the other outside of extremely limited situations that favor one or the other.

It would be very cool to see the contrast in style between D\D and S\D from te same person. Looking forward to it.

Enjoyable vid. Another example of how a good player can take a class to the max. But at the same time, I wonder how many cuts had to be done to make this highlight reel. There’s no doubt you have a pretty high level of skill, but not even the best player gets away with the stuff in this vid every time.

What fights do you find most challenging? I may have missed it in there somewhere, but I didn’t see any fights against even a single mesmer. Would like to see some skills shown against them too.

But overall an amazing display of using the Elem correctly in small scale fights.

Joukehainen.5148:

No, they’re not “hard” to play, they’re overly squishy and have poor sustain while soloing compared to the other classes. My elementalist is the one I dread levelling and have left at around 47 bc it’s just so annoying to have such little sustain and weak or slow attacks.

My necro in comparison just rofled his away across Tyria..

That sounds more like your inability to play the class well than anything else. I’ve had the exact opposite experience. My elem is more effective than any of the other classes I’ve played, being able to take on larger groups of enemies, and down veterans faster, and get from point to point quicker.

BenL.5312:

In fact, objectively speaking, JQ’s response is a testimony to how strong your server is and the other servers recognize that fact. That is a compliment.

Keep this classy guys. Cheers

Absolutely!

I find myself getting annoyed when I’m up late night after work(3-4am Pacific time) and I see most of the map covered by JQ orBG. Losing all the ground you fought hard for during the primetime sucks, especially when you know it’s not due to a lack of skill or effort, but simple population.

But that’s no call to start lobbing accusations and insults. The fact that the three servers have held their spots in T1 for so long is a testament to the dedication and skill of ALL of them.

Leuca.5732:

At least 25 in Water Magic and 30 in Arcana and you’re pretty much set. I put knight’s stats on my ele for more critical hits+toughness since healing is already crazy good on s/d. Scepter of Bloodlust and Dagger of either Energy or Battle; your preference.

Not exactly ‘detailed’, but I think I get the general idea. Thanks!

emikochan.8504:

If only we could get more performance in pve by playing perfectly. the automatic/manual analogy would be great if that was the case.

Well, quite honestly, you can get more performance by playing perfectly. Unfortunately PvE is much more predictable than PvP, so the effective difference between the manual and automatic transmission is less noticeable. Its far easier for a more simple class to perform extremely well in PvE, since you’re only fighting mindless NPCs.

The analogy mostly applies to PvP, where personal player skill can make a tremendous difference on the outcome of a fight.

Mostly I was just trying to emphasize that elementalist is a class that has a higher degree of potential, but only if a person is able to master the additional complexity of the class to make use of it.

Why should it be retroactive? It’s a completely new system that EVERYONE will have to deal with. Having it be retroactive would not reflect skill and progress in a game effected by the new system. Combined with the removal of culling and other changes, previous accomplishments in WvW wouldn’t be an accurate measure under the new dynamic of the game.

As for the past 7 months meaning jack? What do you call all the fun, the badges, the loot, and the personal skill, experience, and teamwork/guild/server building in WvW?

People get too fixated on collecting Achievements, and forgot that there’s more to games than just collecting little gold stars on your report card.

Apologies for the low graphics settings. My computer sucks.

Leuca.5732:

Or just run bunker specced s/d and stack 25 might on your entire team. You’ll heal their bars more than their own healing skills and they’ll simply melt everything for you. Your own damage will be great too once you get your stacks going.

I’d be interested in seeing a detailed breakdown of that build, with gear. Is there a quick link to it, or can you post it here?

All I have to say is: kitten BG. Way to push hard for first place!

I know we here on SoR tried to make a fight of it early, but I don’t know what you guys did to get such a massive turnout of WvW players. Will be very interesting to see how close the final score between JQ and BG is.

Standard WASD for movement with mouselook, but A and D are rebound to strafe. Keyboard turning is bad, IMHO.

I use 1,2,3,4 for my first few abilities, fifth ability is Q, heal is E.

My slot skills are bound to mouse 4, 5, and middle mouse.

Elite is Z.

Attunements are F1 through F4.

This keeps all my abilities within easy reach of each of my fingers. No modifier keys to hit, and all done on a simple 5 button mouse. No $100 mouse or crazy gaming keyboard required.

I’d like to find a better way to switch attuments, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything that was more comfortable than the F-keys.

Asura here. All my toons are. Mainly because asura are freakin hilarious in almost every aspect, from their dialogue to their animations. The emotes are especially funny.
It really helps keep me from getting too serious about the game, and focused on having fun instead.

But also because sometimes ikittenerg it can be much harder for an enemy to click a smaller target if they can’t tab to me. It’s a tiny advantage that probably only works against bads, but there it is.

Easy to play? Yes, sure…..once you understand how the class works, and IF you’re able to reach a point where it becomes natural to swap between all four attunements and track the cooldowns in your head, to use the ability you need when you need it, without having to stop and think about it.

To use a driving analogy: It’s like the difference between an automatic and manual transmission vehicle.

Most classes are like the automatic. Not having to worry about the clutch and shifting, and the RPM of the engine allows them to better focus on other aspects of driving, therefore increasing their overall effectiveness with the vehicle.

The elem is the manual transmission: If you’re able to master the clutch, up-shifting, down-shifting, keeping track of RPMs, etc, you can actually get just a little bit more performance out of the vehicle, even if it otherwise has identical stats to its automatic counterpart. But if you screw up, you’re going to burn the clutch, shift into the wrong gear, or shift at the wrong time or RPM, and end up worse off.

Easy to learn to reach this level of playing the elem? That’s the crux of the matter. For some this will be easy, and feels natural the entire time; from the moment they start playing the class. For others it’s not natural at all, but they can train themselves over time until it does become second nature. And for still others, it just never clicks, ever.

This is true for most classes since they all offer different playstyles, but I think the Elem profession has this problem at a higher magnitude. I think this is why you get such polarized statements like the one from the OP, while others disagree completely.

Well, out of all the possible nerfs/buffs they could have done, this one actually directly effects the play of the elementalist the least. Note that I said “directly”. With all the fear of taking huge hits from the nerf bat to D/D builds, this change puts the burden of using the extra damage on the other players attacking you.

Depending on how it’s implemented, of course. If it’s just a buff that’s always on whenever you’re attacking someone with boons, then that’s a bad change. If it’s something that has to be traited, skilled, or geared for, then that’s a bit different.

Honestly it’s still way too early to get up in arms about it until we see how it’s implemented.

I guess I’m a little confused by the entire thing. Rather than making an entirely new mechanic and meta, wouldn’t it be simpler to just re-balance existing boons to bring them in line?

Forgive me for being a bit slow here, but I’m not sure what I’m looking at with the first link, zerk.

The second appears to be the same phenom ii black that I noted earlier.

EDIT: Sorry, figured it out, but was on my phone so I couldn’t edit. I just need to make sure to get the 125w instead of the 140w, which doesn’t appear to be supported.

I’ll be honest, the idea was to upgrade the system for as cheaply as possible. Sadly, I think it’s just a little too out of date to upgrade with much effect. Even the 650ti uses PCI-E 3.0, which I don’t think is supported by the board, and the best processor available is the one I posted above.

What gets me is that the game runs almost perfectly on default settings when just running around in PvE, sPVP, or dungeons. sits right around 50fps. It’s only when I get into the large zerg battles in WvW that things get dicey. I’ve read that Anet doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong on their end, and players saying that it’s their refusal to optimize for current hardware.

I’m a little hesitant to buy and build a completely new system just to find out that performance in WvW doesn’t really increase that much. I’m not unwilling to turn the settings down to minimum to play in WvW, if that’s what it takes. To paraphrase the Architect, “There are levels of FPS I’m willing to accept.”

Thanks for the reply!

The main thing I’m concerned about is getting a better CPU, then having it not be compatible with my MB. A quick google search of the board turns up that it uses “Socket AM3” processors. A quick wiki of that turns up that it includes Phenom II, Athlon II, Sempron, and Opteron.

As far as I can tell, the Phenom II range of processors are the most powerful. Another quick google/amazon search turns up a AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition as what appears to be the best bang for my buck. But this is still only a 3.4Ghz quad core.

Additionally, I’m not familiar enough with the tech to know if it’s actually compatible with my board. It LOOKS right, though.

Alright tech guru and master types, I need your advice. Here is what I am using currently to play GW2. The game runs just fine in almost every situation except for large zerg battles, where my FPS consistently drops to around 5.

I’ve been told that upgrading my processor is the main way to easily and cheaply bump up the performance on my current rig. But if I need to, I’m not completely against replacing almost the entire rig: MB, vid card, ram, CPU, everything.

Win7 Ultimate
Gigabyte GA-880GM-D2H Motherboard
AMD Athlon II X2 255 Processor 3.10 GHz
8gb DDR3 RAM
Nvidia GeForce GTS 450
onboard sound
2TB SATA HDD

I realize this is kind of a barebones description of my machine. I’m tech savvy enough to know things in general terms, and take apart and assemble the components of a PC, but not tech savvy enough to know what is optimal.

So…..opinions? I’m aware that a lot of my machine is out of date. When I built it originally it wasn’t meant to be cutting edge even then. Basically it’s a gaming rig on a budget. But since I’m looking to get competitive in WvW, I need to upgrade badly.

daphoenix.4283:

-Get used to swapping attunements regularly, do NOT stick to one / two attunements while PvEing. Keeping swapping skills frequently

Absolutely THIS!

I’m only just starting to learn Elementalist after a 3 month break from GW2, so I’m by no means any kind of expert. At first I couldn’t get my head around the class at all. I kept trying to sit in one element and blast away at stuff like I would any other class. I kept trying to theorycraft and see how to make a single element my focus, with maybe a secondary.

But after reading this guide I started by just kind of spamming abilities at random, then switching attunements at random as well. Slowly I started to get a hang of it.

I’m still learning, but already I can feel the versatility. The more I swap attunements in combat, the better I get at knowing which to use when. I can very easily see how after levelling to 80 and putting in some time in PVP that this playstyle will become second nature.

For the people who are complaining about how the class or the build sucks, all I can say is to try and stick with it. Already at level 20 I can see the potential of the D/D playstyle. I can’t wait to see what it’s like with full gear and traits.

I was mostly enjoying finishing off my ranger to 80 over the last couple weeks. I stopped once I dinged 80 because I knew there wasn’t a whole lot of point in playing and gearing out the character with big changed on the horizon to improve the class. I was ok with this because I anticipated being able to drop some serious level cap time into the character after the patch.

And then I saw the patch notes and all desire to continue playing GW2 left me. I’m not even interested in the holiday events. I’ve seen this kind of thing in so many other MMOs. The devs promise or hint that things will be fixed, and claim that they listen to their players about problems, but then turn around and do something that makes absolutely no sense at all.

Players HATE this kind of thing. It literally drives them to play other games. I don’t know what the game developers are thinking. I don’t know what the person in charge of the ranger class is thinking. But I DO know that this kind of behavior by game designers and developers isn’t acceptable.

There are so many other game releases going on this month and next month before Christmas. Now is NOT the time you want to be letting your players down, because they WILL drop your game and move on to something better.

Why does one team get an automatic advantage with a horde of bleeding sharks just because they’ve already won control of an area? What possible justification can be given for allowing one side that’s already succeeded to get an large advantage to help them keep the point?

This sort of map mechanic makes sense in a WvW situation where there’s often NPCs to help players out who take the time to complete whatever objective is necessary to turn them into allies. But in an sPVP match this kind of thing has no place.

Cannons require a player to man them. Trebs require a player to man them. Sharks require…..?

SB+Axe/Horn

I just really like the speed increase and buffs from the horn. I could wish they laster longer, but stacked with “Rampage as One” it’s usually long enough to take care of whatever needs to be done.

I would like to try Sword+torch for melee, but sword is very crap, as most rangers already know. Hopefully the ranger update will address this so we have more options.

Sanctum of Rall

I sent a bug report in, so hopefully a GM will get back to me, but I’m not holding my breath. Probably end up having to farm like crazy.

I tried that. Didn’t work.

This is probably one of the most frustrating things I’ve encountered in the game as of yet. I’m going for map completion, and I have everything else in the zone. But because I’ve only found 1 Dwarven Key, I could only get to 1 of the 2 tombs with POI. I’ve been running around killing everything in the zone for hours and can not get another key to drop.

Also, I tried spamming in chat to see if anyone else has a key. It appears that either I’m the only one in the zone, or everyone is being mysteriously quiet.

Checked the TP as well, can’t buy or sell them as I think they’re soulbound items.

Is this intended? To lock map completion behind a door that requires what appears to be a magnificently low droprate item?

Someone help me out here?

It’s a simple fix, IMHO. Just make a bracket of tournaments that ONLY allows solo queuing. No premades allowed. No grouping before the match allowed.

Doesn’t seem like it would even be all that hard to implement.

People are upset because they’re passionate about the game (which is awesome) and they want it to live up to its full potential.
I don’t take negative posts personally. Rather, I try to put myself in their shoes, listen to what they’re really trying to say (once you get past the rage), and try to find a way to fix the cited issues, if I think they’re good for the game.

That’s a little hard to do when you have overzealous forum mods that delete and infract every post that even has the word “anet” in it, even if it’s normal discussion and NOT raging or angry/disrespectful.

Still, I appreciate that the devs even read some of this stuff. I’ve said it hundreds of times, but communication with your players is the key to a successful game, even if all that communication is “We’ve read what you guys are saying. We don’t agree or disagree at this point, but we wanted to let you know that we ARE paying attention.”

The WoW style stonewall approach is just going to foster more anger, imho.