Guild Wars 2

I’ll let you in on a little secret, A-net is a company and companies want to make money and they will aslong as we love to buy what they have to offer.

The Wardrope System, you honestly expected them to give up on one of their better markets (Transmutation Crystals) by introducing it? They’d be fools to do so. 25 Transmutation Charges is currently sitting around 60g, or less than 10 euros, which I find far from a rip-off, Crystals were more expensive aswell. Now there’s the added luxery you don’t have to 1. Lose an old skin you might want to use again. 2. Buy a new stat-item to store the old skin in case you change your mind.

3. No longer wasting storage space for those old skins which means you are less likely to need to buy more bank tabs.

Lastly; there is no need to transmute anything to play the game in every aspect.

Accountbound Dyes, another improved design. If they hadn’t reduced the dye drops in one way or another the dye market would completely implode. Things haven’t changed much, if you really want a dye you’re still best of buying them colour of the TP and now you only have to do it once, rather than multiple times around characters. Surely it’s sad to see they’re only available in the Gemstore now, but the alternatives were reducing the droprate, I doubt people would have preferred that.

Megaservers, should they not have introduced it because it can save them money? How does that make sense? Megaservers will allow people who enjoy open-world PvE to play together instead of the oh-so-complained-about empty maps everywhere and is a good step forward for any MMO, for both the company and the player. I’m not the biggest fan of a Megaserver, but the fact A-net can make money out of it doesn’t bother me at all.

And for Carzors point of the LA-convenience, that’s exactly what it is, convenience. I can still go to any of the Major Cities (I’m a big fan of Rata Sum) for any of the things that used to be in LA, for the Mystic Forge I quickly hope into PvP or the Vigil Keep, so I once again don’t see the issue with them offering those Airship passes. I still get the exact same services, I just have to walk a tiny bit further. Now if they locked the Mystic Forge, Laurel Vendors and Crafting stations behind a gem-store purchase with no other way of accessing them, we’d have a point.

In short:
Do you like the Wardrope System?
Do you like the Account-wide Dyes?
Do you like Megaservers?

If any of these questions answer yes, then A-net did their job, as a company they provided you with a product you enjoy and in return they make money from it. I’m in no way assuming A-nets Gemstore is perfect, but so far I’ve found it very convenient because it’s not 1. Pay to win, it’s all convenience and skins. 2. Gold > Gem, allowing me to have access to everything ingame without having to pay a penny more than I’d want to.

maxinion.8396:

Put the stacking sigil on your underwater weapon— this works. Make sure it’s of the same type as your main stacking sigil, and note you can’t double stack anymore with d/f or s/f or whatever. So just stack with one of those, get to full stacks, and replace it— the underwater weapon should hold it.

Ok, I tried it on a low-level alt, something must have been out of place. Thank you.

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

I’m still running all the numbers for the builds now that Sigil of Strength and Runes of Strength got buffed, but my initial recommendations for builds are…

http://youtu.be/OmMN1UH6ymo

Dagger/Focus

• Main sigils for night are Night/Force in groups that max might, Night/Strength otherwise
• Main sigils for day are Force/Strength or Force/Accuracy
• Runes are still Scholar’s
• For Assassin’s armor, use precision/ferocity food
• For other armor, use power/precision food
• Stack bloodlust

Scepter-Hammer

• Main sigils for night are Night/Force
• Main sigils for day are Force/Accuracy or Force/Battle
• Runes are Strength, but Scholar’s is still competitive
• Use power/ferocity food
• Stack bloodlust unless you have 0 points in air

Staff

• Main sigils for night are Night/Force
• Main sigils for day are Force/Accuracy
• Runes are Scholar’s
• Use precision/ferocity or power/precision food
• Stack bloodlust if you have 6 points in air, perception if you have 2 or fewer points, and whichever at 4 points.

I’ll work on full updates to all the builds over the next week or so.

I’m really enjoying the Dagger mainhand changes, I hope the math will also be favourable for D/F and not just my feeling about it. Looking forward to your updated guides and thank you for all the work you and your friends do for the PvE-community!

Just one question to anyone who can answer it: How do you stack bloodlust/perception now-a-days? Whenever I unequip the stacking weapon I lose my stacks like intended, I couldn’t work around it with a Sigil on my underwater weapons, besides that I can’t think of any other work-around.

If so would you recommend Night/Force + Force/Accuracy or Night/Bloodlust + Force/Bloodlust?

A new grandmaster-trait for every trait-line, for every class. They can be viewed in traits and unlocked either at the trainers (3g 20skillpoints) or by doing Gates of Arah, Temple of Lyss and Grenth, Karka Queen or Ship of Sorrows (hovering over the locked trait will explain which on for which trait.)

Not a good change in my opinion. I do think a simplified system was in order, I love being able to respec whenever (greatly helps people trying out builds) but it’s a shame it came with such a late and slow character progression.

Before the update I felt every single level made some difference. When I’d finally be able to get master and grandmaster traits, oh the joy!

Now people have to wait until level 30 to spend any trait-points and won’t even be able to access any of the grandmaster traits until level 80. (Unless I missunderstand?) This leaves people with very little room to try out different traits before chosing the build they want to gear around.

I also think the prices of the traits are a bit much, new players are likely still unlocking utilities by the time they hit 80 and 3g is quite a bit for a new player aswell. But I suppose this motivates people to explorer rather than just buy it.

My thoughts are similar as they used to be for any class. I think it’s still very close to Soldier’s survivability and damage-wise, but if you use either a lot of Condition-damage, Healing-power or combination of the both it might be beneficial. I wish I was a math-guru. Luckily for another class I enjoy someone did all the work for me: Elementalist, Celestial vs Soldier post-patch

For Guardian, I’m likely not going to run Celestial.

Any armor you’ve got equiped, in your PvP-locker or salvage will be added to your Wardrope and can be transmuted onto any of your toons.

You’ll likely have a lot of relogging to do until all your toons skins are unlocked. Unless you started playing today I highly doubt that’s the only skin you’ve got.

So they increased all champions spawn times? Guess they really wanted to make sure they killed it instead of just making the rewards a bit less. I must say I’m surprised.

Guess EotM will become a lot more popular now, only train I can think of that people might still do. :p

As long as mechanics require nothing a DPS can’t fulfill, I fear you’re wrong.

I’ve given up on them ‘fixing’ this (I assume it’s broken atleast, I mean why else not give it an infusion recipe?) but like Charming Rogue I’m simply going to craft Light of Dwanya for a WvW-set and transmute the skin onto an infuseable PvE-set backpiece.

It’s quite an oversight though.

As long as it’s not for commercial purposes there’s nothing wrong with it.

The rise in gemprice simply reflects inflation in the game (something they already try to reduce with all the things mentioned by Zaxares) and I don’t really see it as a bad thing; I can earn more gold than I could if I’d played when the game got released, I got to pay a bit more gold for gems, where-as it helps A-net when gems for money becomes more attractive.

I doubt it will become 1:1 and if it does, kitten gold got easy to earn.

@ Aiden there’re no reason to react so strongly. All he mentioned was that people are chosing the more economical way and that he doesn’t expect Anet to improve their quality of life if Gem:Gold goes out of their favour, he never said there’s anything wrong with the system.

Assuming meta-builds:
I think you should look into Guardian, Warrior, Thief or Mesmer. It’s difficult to really determine what you’ll enjoy, but the way I’ve experienced the classes those fit your questions:
- PvE-orientated, including dungeons, Guardian, Warrior, Thief, Mesmer all fall in the PuG-desired classes (though PuGs can dislike Thiefs,) Warrior and Thief are also beloved in more orginized groups. Guardians and Mesmer are more Fractal-orientated (in organized groups, PuG-dungeons will love them aswell.)
- Melee or Range is fine, good thing it is, no class is currently best played at range, you’ll miss out on party buffs and usually the DPS is lower.
- Iffy on pets, well avoid Ranger at all cost and you’re fine. Other ‘pets’ (phantasms, illusions, minions) are either unbeloved or require little attention (besides the initial timing on the Mesmer’s iWarden.)
- Not overly complicated but not easy either, difficult to judge. I don’t think any class is really complicated, but Elementalist and Engineer can feel overwhelming due to 4 ‘weaponsets’ instead of just 2 (Attunements/kits.) Warrior can be percieved as really easy, so that might be a miss for you. Thief and Guardian are the class you’ll non-stop learn new tricks on to perform better, but are an addition to the team even when you’ve just got the basics down.
-Survivability, Warrior and Necromancer are likely the most dureable classes (Warrior has hight health and HP, Necromancer has Death Shroud and high HP) with Elementalist being on the squishy-side.

It’s not a choice anyone can make for you, just decide what’s the most important to you:
- The looks, which you seem to want on your Thief.
- People seeing you own a Legendary, which means you’ll want Twillight to get it out of your storage whenever you play Warrior, Guardian or Mesmer.
If it’s none of these, I’d suggest selling it and using the money to get all your toons something nice, whether it’s Ascended for the stats or another skin you like.

There will most definitly either be copyright issues or atleast a hurt artist if they take too much inspiration from other sources, unless ofcourse they make a contest like they did for gw1 where the winning piece becomes an item ingame. Nonetheless I do agree they should attempt to keep a steady flow of armors incoming in the game especially due to the more or less horizontal progression, a new cultural tier wouldn’t hurt since many armors feel like they were designed for humans only. I do however understand introducing a new piece of gear requires a lot of design and programming.

So far I’ve been pleased and disappointed, but mainly pleased. The phoenix armor is a wonderful example of an unique well-designed set, where-as I was very disappointed with the Flamekissed being a reskin. I would rather wait a few months for a new set, than having a slightly reskinned version of every single piece out there which some games tend to do with their cashshop.

I just wanted to make you aware about these guides by Obal – Guardian and DEKeyz – Elementalist

Both guides have helped me on any class I play even though they’re aimed at Elementalist and Guardian-only since they made me aware of what a group needed for survivability (Stability, Reflects, Condi-cleanse aren’t just tied to one class.) If you pick Mesmer or Thief I recommend searching either the Forums or Youtube to learn Portal or Stealth-parts, which are unique to the class.

Have a lot of fun in Fractals and the game!

PS: If full-Zerker scares you there’s no harm in taking a few Knight pieces to have a little bit more toughness in the early levels, try to always stay right outside of your comfort-zone to become a better player though. But with the current mechanics it’s hard to argue with Zerker being superior to about anything.

That’s a lot of text to explain the easiest and most mind-numbing activity in the game. Goodjob on writing a guide though. I would personally have included Bandit, whether your server does it or not. Going Troll > Bandit > Oak > Spider > Boar will yield more bags/hour (due to the ~5-6 minute wait at Boar) without adding any Waypoint-costs. I tend to guest to Desolation during my daily just to get a server that’s smart enough to not skip it.

The runes say: 3/5% chance to gain might for 20s when hit. (cooldown: 5s) which means it will trigger when you (or your pet if Ranger) receive a hit from an enemy. These runes can be changed completely, but in their current state and if their mechanics stay unchanged (so when you recieve a hit, the effect will trigger) this won’t affect Zerkers much, or PvE-content at all, since the encounters allow you to avoid most damage.

I highly doubt even if they made it a 100% chance to trigger it would have any effect on the PvE-community (where Zerker is currently the meta) since it’s not difficult for a 5-man group to stack up to 25 Might. (1 Firefield, 1-2 Blast-finishers per person every 24 seconds is not difficult at all) other Runes will most likely still be more favourable. The WvW/PvP-community how-ever it might effect in some way, but with all the incoming changes it’s almost impossible to predict.

Sigils do proc on hits you deliver, currently they proc on critical hits, which I believe they intent to change to a chance to proc on any hit, whether it’s a critical hit or not. This will make them more viable to people who don’t focus on Percision much. Which will make it easier to stack Might on yourself (unless you already had a 100% critical chance,) but I doubt the meta will take them over Sigil of Night (10% damage increase) or Sigil of Force (5% damage increase)

I’d recommend Desolation for PvE. When something isn’t active on my server it’s always the very first I guest to and I’ve never been disappointed. I doubt you can really pick a bad server though due to the ability to guest to other eu-servers, except for WvW ofcourse which you don’t care for.

Don’t completely count on the Mega-Servers yet, it won’t be until later this year (atleast that’s the estimated time) until there’re introduced on all the maps rather than just major cities and 1-15 zones.

I’d not get a Legendary if it wasn’t for the looks. Ascended isn’t anywhere near the price-range a Legendary is, where-as it offers plenty:

Stats:
Chances you’ll eventually (through balancing, changes etc) use every single stat-combination on a certain weapon possible is very low, some weapons are just more designed towards a certain goal than another. I personally find the stat-swapping slightly overrated aswell since I often find myself desire a different sigil when I desire different stats.

Convenience:
Bank-space doesn’t quite make up for the ~2000g difference either. Somewhere on the forums there’s some calculations, but I doubt 20 bankslots vs 1 bankslot would cost more than ~15g.

Last-tier:
This is a decent reason to get a Legendary for any other reason than their looks/brag-rights. How-ever by the time they do introduce a new tier (if they will ofcourse) Ascended will most likely be a lot easier to obtain and the new tier will be similar to what Ascended is right now price-wise rather than a Legendary, otherwise you’ll slowly build up a wall new players can’t get over, which can demotivate them. You will how-ever have the new tier straight away which is a sweet luxery.

You only get the bonus chest containing 40 tokens and 1-3g once per day, so ye, I also chose to do paths only once a day. You still get some rewards from running a path twice (20 tokens, bit a silver from drops/end-chest and a lot of experience) but I find it more profitable to do a lot of different quick paths.

I did rush a toon to 80 by doing AC over and over, once I hit the right level I farmed SE p1 and after CoF p1, but it was only efficient because I had 4 amazingly lovely people coming along to rush me to 80 and thus Fractals. About a level per run. Money-wise it wasn’t worth it.

For WvW Necromancers are in a decent position. They dish out pretty good AoE-damage and provide some vital aspects to a zerg in the form of Boon-stripping (Well of Corruption) Blind/Chill (Plague Form and Well of Darkness with the Chilling Darkness trait) some CC with Fear (Deathshroud/Staff) AoE for keeping people away from the walls (Marks) and for your personal gain, are amazing at tagging and very survivable. They do lack a reliable source of Stability so try and team up with a Guardian for some priority on their Stability.

In Dungeons they currently fall outside of the meta; they have very few blast-finishers and are one of the few classes that lack a cleave. Their DPS is good, but so does every class and sadly Necromancer doesn’t bring something special to the Dungeons in their current state. This doesn’t mean every single group rejects Necromancers, but there are a few that demand Warrior, Elementalist, Mesmer or Guardian only.

Jerus.4350:

Eles are great for AC, nothing else really necessary, though I do like a guard for the final fights, p1 Purging Flames + absolute resolution, I can get 3 nearly instant cures if people screw up and get confusion. And p3 the stability is very nice.

I still always like the Ele, Mes, Guard, War, Thief setup, balanced and ready for anything.

I’m quite concerned with what kind of machine people play GW2 if they can’t avoid the Howler’s Breathlazerthing. If you get KD’d by little Gravelings, something is terrible wrong with either your teams positioning or your DPS and simply getting hit by it will most likely burn through a zerker ele. For p3, doesn’t he die in about the very first Fiercy Rush?

I agree with Spoj, FGS burns those bosses so fast. Slightly more serious I’d say Warrior (Banners are just too strong, especially Discipline, Vulnerability is sweet aswell) and Thief (Strong, efficient Spiderpull, quick movement on p1 Scepter Pieces and traps before Kohler, over-all good DPS) and fill the rest with Elementalist for more DPS. Provides plenty of Swiftness for the skipping aswell.

But any team can clear AC and should be able to clear it in a reasonable time. I do find it nice to see there’re still people that believe Tanks/Healers actually help the group, especially if they stay away from ‘zerker only’ groups.

RedCobra.7693:

ps: you wouldnt be complaining if you got 2 tickets, double standards

^ this:

I got 2 Black Lion Tickets from 1 chest, the only Black Lion Tickets I ever had. So I don’t see the problem…

Item 1: Roll dice
Item 2: Roll dice
Item 3: Roll dice

Certain things just have a more likely chance to drop. I’d consider 2 Transmutation Crystals a lucky result personally, tonics, ye, no-one likes them.

Horsemanwar.1758:

i have Master Crafter title and with all mine 7 characters of lv 80 i get still xp so if it’s account bound then is that not problem at all

You do realise he talks about leveling a cheap craft (cooking, artifice, jeweler) from 0-400 over and over on different alts to get the easiest 7 levels/each of your life right?

I agree with Wanze, just like I did about a week ago when this same topic was posted. There’re very little downsides to crafting being account-bound. Everything you craft is either Accountbound or can be traded. The achievement is account-bound so it doesn’t hurt achievement-hunters. There’re even some upsides: You can only hold up to 2 crafts at a time, meaning alts can save you a lot of hazzle and silver if you’re an active crafter this is very helpful. You can level through crafts if you’d like (I love this option.) Where-as I see very little downsides, you made me aware to one. Someone deleted a toon (why?) instead of getting a new character slot and thus lost his craft…

Let’s face it, if 400g would guarantee you to get Dawn or Dusk, why are they worth 800g and not 400g?

I’d be happy for all those people got did get lucky, if they hadn’t, prices would be even worse. TP <3

Confirming the stats will become account-bound as I stated in my first reply:

“In the upcoming April feature build, we will be converting all legendary and ascended equipment to be account-based. This means ascended equipment will always remain account-bound and will not soulbind to a character when equipped. Legendary weapons will continue to be tradeable until equipped, at which point they will become account-bound (rather than soulbound). As part of this change, we will convert all the existing ascended and legendary equipment that is soulbound to be account-bound instead.”
Taken from Feature Patch; Accountbound

Armors bind based on their stats, which are Ascended as stated in the openers post and title, so they will be accountbound. The issue will be that Norn Cultural Armor is (or should) only be equipable by Norn.

StinVec.3621:

Pokecenter.3548:

…

I just saw on other post that Anet doesn’t ‘tolerate’ ‘Bank Guilds’ so i’m afraid that the mega-server add could impact it somehow, let’s say, by deleting the 1man guilds or something..

…

I would very much like to know who said that and where. If it wasn’t a dev, then they are wrong and just spewing uninformed and baseless speculation to induce undue fear and concern (intentionally or unintentionally).

When the account wallet was being implemented, dev’s actually encouraged players to make a personal guild for storage and more specifically for setting gold aside from their wallet due to the “bank-bank” no longer having the ability to keep gold stored as a safety precaution to prevent accidentally spending more than was intended due to always having all your coin on you.

If it was a dev stating that ANet doesn’t “tolerate bank guilds” then I want to know who it was so we can bring this matter of their changing their stance on “personal” guilds up for serious discussion and to cite the devs of the past who encouraged it.

I can’t find the post anymore, but I do remember it. It was from a player that was concerned that it might be against any rules, rather than stating it. His concern came from the fact Anet doesn’t restore any lost items from a guildbank, be it through hacking or players fault (e.g. server swapping before emptying the bank.) If someone does have the actual thread, that’d be great.

@ OP
TL;DR: You earn ~59 Fractal Relics per full run. Considerable rewards are the Fractal Ascended Backpiece requiring 1850 tokens (+other materials) or Ascended Rings (10 Prisitine Relics each, which otherwise trade for 15 Fractal Relics/each.)

Long version:
The Fractal Relics depend on the level of Fractal done:
1x Pristine Fractal Relic per daily which can be consumed for 15 Fractal Relics
20-40 Fractal Relics per daily, based on the Fractal’s level-tier.
4x 5-14 Fractal Relics at the end of each individual level, based on the Fractal level (5 Relics at 1-5, 6 Relics at 6-10, 7 Relics at 11-15 etc.)

So say you farm level 6 Fractals, which are rather easy, you’ll gain: 15+24+20=59 Fractal Relics per run, per day. (Every tier has it’s own daily chest if you feel like farming more.)

Common ways to spend Fractal Relics:
Prisitine Fractal Relics (10) trade for an Ascended Ring with stats of choice.
Fractal Relics (1350) trade for an Exotic Backitem without an upgrade slot (aka don’t get this unless you plan to make it Ascended) which can be upgraded to Ascended which will require another 500 Fractal Relics and another 500 Fractal Relics if you intend to infuse the backpiece (this goes for any Ascended backpiece) along with some other materials.
Other ways can be found on BUY-4373 wikipage

There’re a few differences. Lower level characters can’t get higher quality bags (exotics mainly) and the quality of the bag determins the tier of materials you get from them. (Exotic contains T5 and T6 materials, T6 go for ~40s each)

It can read it on the wiki at Rarity I’ve seen this to be true by opening the championbags from dungeons on a 44-63 Character (Linen level-range) how important that is to you, only you can decide. Some lower level non-salvage materials are worth quite a penny aswell, so I’d just keep on using your low-level toon and gain the experience. But if money is your goal, Exotic bags are what you should aim for.

TL;DR:
- Armor/Weapon level (and thus materials) are determinded by the level of the opener.
- Non-salvage T6 materials (Ancient Bone, etc.) are determinded by quality and only a toon above level 55 can get exotic quality bags.

It’d be nice to have a developper reply, but I don’t see how this violates anything in their terms of agreement. The guildbank is earned just like in a guild (buy some influence with gold is still somewhat earned) It simply comes with some risks: Guildbanks don’t transfer server with you, nor will the items be restored like your inventory in case something bad happens. (Hack.)

I really hope they’ll be put back in the Gemstore so you can pick them up. I’m sorry you missed them.

PvE:
1. Guardian (Heal for everyone)
2. Ranger (pet-ressurect)
3. Elementalist (invul + reposition + longer time to wait out a rally)
4. Thief (Reposition + Stealth not bad)
5. Warrior (deserves number 1 if you have Warbanner and your party almost wiped)
6. Mesmer (the Phantasm gave me a few rallies, the random location got me killed more)
7. Necromancer
8. Engineer

PvP Elementalist downed > rest.

One huge downside. Overflows everywhere since it’s the new LA. I also wonder how it compares to FGS-Farm where the bosses and mobs around them also have a change for t6 materials. Not to mention Champs/Hour. Likely not worth the research since so little people still do it and the coin being reduced.

@ point 6: Buy the 18-slot bags if you don’t want to invest in 20 slots, bags don’t bind (except the one you start of with or account-bound from events (wintersday) or Digital Deluxe (Mithril Storage Box)) meaning you’ll make a minimal loss if the prices stay steady because you can simply resell.

@ point 8: I find the cheapest (if you don’t care about the bags effect, which for plain storage shouldn’t matter) 20-slot bag (150 Fractal Relics) from BUY-4373 a decent price, would definitly consider getting those. How-ever there’re no other options (Glory Vendor used to be an option) as far as I’m away similar to this one.

Suggestion: Can’t you make another Guild Stash + Treasure Trove? You can be in up to 5(?) Guilds at the same time, surely you got another spot to save?

I’d never be in your situation I fear, 12 characters, I’m not a hoarder, nor a dedicated power-trader. So we can’t go to the ’what’d you do’ though it would likely be a second Guild cost/slot-wise. Especially with the Wardrope coming out, giving me tons of gear I can just delete which I otherwise kept for the skin.

I’m shocked people would pay that much for a +2 slot increase. But what am I saying, I would spoil my main that much if I could pick one. Narrowed it down to 8 toons, oh kitten.

Ye, I like them. RNG is a smart marketing trick, loads of people will try their luck and get less out of it than they invested, a few get lucky. They’ll try again because ‘today is their day!’ lose some more money, spend some more. Viva Las Vegas. It’s smart and aslong as the skins aren’t bound and my selfishness doesn’t get harmed, I say good for them.

It keeps them motivated to design new skins, so far I’ve loved my of them:
Dreamwhistle, Aetherized Pistol, Lovestruck, 50% of the Tormented Weapons, 75% of the Halloween Weapons, 50% of the Zodiac Weapons, most Winterday weapons, I know most people like Fused Weapons. All in all good designs.

I haven’t encountered enough cashshops to say this is normal, but from what I’ve experienced most cashshops have a similar item.

I like the idea, like I do everytime it gets suggested. I am a bit worried about the reward balance vs making it worth doing. That could be quite challanging to set up. Otherwise people would get their title and shoo, but that’s an issue with most aspects of PvE. It’s also not as different as the other suggestions as you think. It’s exactly like GW1, hence I doubt it will be more than dreaming. They took the name, but wanted a completely new game, that much is clean enough.

Shyhalu.4891:

How much does this cost approximately?

http://www.gw2crafts.net/total.html

I’d try to level in an envoirment you enjoy.
- Do you enjoy WvW? Join an Edge of the Mist zerg (easily nets me a couple a levels a night due to how many events you do.) Or even a good WvW-zerg (less rewarding in my experience, but if you enjoy it, nice!)
- Do you enjoy Dungeons? Set up low-level Dungeon groups with your guild (or do them on your 80 and relog at the end, make sure you didn’t open.) You can try this with PuGs aswell.
- Definitly do the cheap crafts, almost anyone can make 3g quicker than 7 levels, so definitly do cooking, food also can be nice whilst leveling. For me it’s also been worthwhile to do Artificer and Jewelcrafting aswell. The more expensive ones are worth it if you haven’t got them covered yet. Only you can decide when it’s worth it or not. 1-400 gives 7 levels, 400-500 the other 3. Crafting Boosters increase the crafting experience, not the actual experience, but thus reduces the materials needed and thus the price.

If neither of this is your thing, you will be stuck with a mix of Exploration and Personal story I fear. What-ever you do, I do recommend running around to get vital waypoints. Dungeon Entrances, World Bosses, Guild-mission area’s and such. Warrior is one of the fastest classes with perma-swiftness (Warhorn + Signet of Fury, once traited) and loads of ‘Leaps’ (Bull’s Charge (900) Savage Leap (600) Whirlwild Attack (450) and Rush (1200)) making it a worthwhile time-investment for just the XP aswell. Never ignore Mobility, I often sacrifice a few traits, or weapons or utilities to get around quicker. Warrior has the best options in my opinion.

It greatly helps to unlock damage-increasing abilities and trait towards damage to make everything go a bit faster. +10 Power runes (6 different ones) greatly help aswell for that few copper. Remember to use Cheap Food and Oils/Stones for the experience bonus aswell. Rice Balls are 49 Karma for 25x 10 Minutes of food and most low-level Oils/Stones are cheap since people used them to level their craft. +20% experience per kill is worth a few copper, any bonusses they give like power is nice aswell.

I’m leveling my second Warrior currently and I ran 2 set-ups depending on level:
The early levels with points in Strenght until the new Manual. Bulls Charge for Mobility, same as the weapons, Signet with the Arms trait for damage. Since what-ever you do, 50% of the time you’re moving around. (That should not yet have Signet of Fury unlocked, my bad.)
The midlevels Remember to pick up your Banner after combat for Inspire and Sprint. More focussed on Damage than just mobility. I kept a Warhorn if I needed to move around a lot. As you see I sacrficed mobility for more Damage, I felt mobs survived a bit longer and maps got more filled with them. For Edge of the Mist I still ran Sword/Warhorn for the mobility since I wanted a Hammer for Earthshaker in PvP-fights.

WilnerGW.3275:

Hey guys,

I’m in doubt about playing a ranged class, i would like to hear your opinion about wich one would better:

-Rifle/LBow Warrior
-LBow/SBow Ranger
-Pistol-Pistol-/Sbow Thief

Any1 experienced in any of this builds, could tell me wich one is more viable to play.

If you want to consider some comment about any meele weapon of those profesions, feel free to say.

I like to play everything:PVE, SPvP, WvW

Thanks;

Rifle / Longbow Warrior – I wouldn’t even try it if you plan doing anything else than Open-World PvE. People will hate you for using a strong class so inefficiently.
Lbow/Sbow Ranger – Though Longbow #2 + #5 and then swap the Shortbow for a stronger auto-attack is relatively decent, it doesn’t compare at all to what a Sword/Warhorn can do. Once again, be ready to get on people’s nerves.
Pistol/Pistol + Shortbow Thief – Once again, very poor options for the class. Pistol off-hand is only strong for #5, which only helps your party if you’re with them, which will be melee-range. Shortbow is amazing because of it’s mobility and blast-finishers, but besides that, no, no, no. As for the Richotte arguement, it’s a 50% chance where-as Shortbow does the same, 100% chance (slightly slower attackspeed though) along with the helpful Blast-finishers and mobility. Even then in PvE Swords cleave > either of them, it can be used as S/P for perma-blind aswell. Be a team-player.

In PvE:
Range in this game is generally not a good idea. Most classes perform a lot better at melee-range and even if their ranged-options are decent (Grenade-Engineer and Staff-elementalist) they’re still much better of staying in 600 range of the team and thus enemy in order to receive and apply buffs. Not to mention how you’re missing out on quite a bit of the fun. Spamming 1-2-3-4-5 as Engi or 2-1111-2 as Staff-Elementalist whilst having to not think at all about dodging, cleansing or well… anything to support your group.

In WvW:
You can be a bit of a backline-character, even then I’d like to stress Grenade-Engineer and Staff-Elementalist are your best bet. You will how-ever once again miss out on a lot of buffs, healing and in the case of WvW, personal meatshields. (AoE has a 5 person limit so stacking is very common.)

In PvP:
It heavily depends on the build, but you won’t be very diverse if you insist on being a ranged character. No-one in this game is designed to be a dedicated range.

If you really insist on playing ranged. Like suggested, go Grenade-Engineer or Staff-Elementalist. Be ready to not be able to be a teamplayer due to the way support is applied and thus maybe run into a few unfriendly folk. That’s sadly how the game is designed. Melee has all the benefits, Ranged how-ever is beyond easy, you will hardly get hit since 4 other people are tanking for you and the boss has to walk to you, you can’t apply any buffs/cleanse/protection to the group, so no need to worry about it either.

aarrgghhh.6309:

You are both missing the point completely.

How can we acquire prec’s currently?

1. Random drop (insane odds)
2. Gamble and sacrifice time and gold into Mystic Forge (insane odds)
3. REAL MONEY (I’m not broke. But I’m also not interested in buying virtual currency for items that affect performance in-game. I have bought 3 skin sets with $$$, black lion keys, and a booster with $$$.
4. GRIND the ANTI-FUN boss chains in FG/QD, GRIND events over multiple servers for peanuts, or GRIND on the TB with a lot of time and marginal profit.

You guys really think this is a GOOD SYSTEM? You think it’s LEGENDARY?

Do you think it’s fun?

This sums up literally everything. I have good news for you, skins don’t affect your game-play at all! Yes, sit down, take a deep breath and stop worrying, you don’t need this item after all, there’s no reason to panic. Keep breathing, in… and out… Now aren’t we relieved?

By the way if BiS-gear is your way of winning the game there’s Ascended Gear. About 200-300g per weapon (and some Skillpoints/Karma/Ascended Materials) and 400-600g per set of gear and voila, you have Best in Slot. Say worst case, you’re light armor, use 4 different weapons and 2 underwater weapons, that’s still ‘only’ 2100g, way cheaper than a Legendary on average, which is only 1 single weapon.

Legendaries have been introduced for those people who do want a grind, who do need a carrot to chase after. The idea was that it involves doing every aspect of the game (Dungeons, Badges, Exploration and loads of time spend playing the game to receive the Materials.) But due to the Trading Post that idea is a bit blurred because it’s more beneficial to buy everything. If you don’t like this, why would you even want a Legendary? The only thing that sets them appart is that they’ll be Best in Slot forever, is that worth ~3000g to you?

So yes, I’m fine with the system. Luck will always be a major factor in every single game MMO. (Why? Because RNG makes sure things drop, but are still special, it also gives your average Joe a chance to be rich rather than just those who excel at trading or have plenty of time, which leads to people having hope rather than ‘give up’ on a game since their goal is unreachable.)

I’m quite good at having horrible luck and I love Guild Wars 2 for that reason, and many others. I don’t need to be lucky to progress unlike in other MMO’s, it’s all skins I don’t need. I still want plenty of them, but I get them when playing the game has given me enough gold to do so, I don’t have to get lucky. I play the typical raid-progression MMO with my boyfriend and it’s a bit depressing how in guilds we often end up having all the drops go to me after about 8 raids since everyone but me already has it anyway, in PuGs this simply means I have to do tons and tons of (time-gated) raids before I can progress to the next difficulty, by that time I usually have seen the raids enough to not care for Nightmare Mode at all, so ye… I love Guild Wars 2 because Luck is a bonus, not a must.

But ye… I would be more interested in Legendaries if they were more than a grind, maybe the new ones will be! (As if…)

It helps to say if you’re NA or EU due to how guesting works. Goodluck on your map completion!

Yes, Armor is 3 pieces; the Skin (Norn-only) the Stats (Ascended PTV gear) and the Rune. Once you get rid of the skin, any non-norn will also be able to equip it, assuming they both have the same armor-type aswell (Light/Medium/Heavy.)

I’d pick your class based on how much you enjoy them in your favourite game-mode. Engineer (and Elementalist) both take some times to get used to, Engineer took me longer than Elementalist. If you enjoy Engineer go for it full-out; research builds, practice rotations, watch skilled players play the class etc. I can’t speak for sPvP since I kinda suck at it, but from reading the complaints people currently feel Engineers are in a better place than Elementalist. So it might just be skill/set-up related.

For WvW they both have their places. Engineer is relatively popular with healing bombs for some team-support and Grenades for some damage. Ofcourse they’re plenty more viable builds, just giving an example. They make good roamers aswell, condi-perplex, surely there’s a guide somewhere. (Note: Perplex might get changed the 15th, I don’t know.) Elementalist has 2 pretty decent roaming builds (I’m only familiar with D/D myself) and for zerging you’re basicly stuck to Staff, which means you won’t be juggling Elements as much (you go to Fire when offensive, Water whilst recovering from a push, Earth/Air for Control.) But a lot of people feel it isn’t rewarding enough, I personally love my Elementalist in WvW though.

In PvE Elementalists are likely the squishiest class you’re going to find. Low HP, low Armor, but they’re also one of the highest DPS-classes and provide good offensive support (so does an Engineer, but Elementalist also have their conjures so ye, they’re more ‘meta’ than Engineer) Where-as Engineer will have a bit of an easier time staying alive with similar damage. But I wouldn’t base your class-choice on your least favourite game-mode, even though you have to get through it for WvW.

I love it! Nice job.

Why are your complaining when you have 38 AR which is plenty for 10 more fractals-levels or so. AR-table. Due to the Fractal cap you never need to be lucky to progress, you have to work hard and less hard if you get lucky (aka infused rings, infuse materials or even better, an ascended chest with the stats you like.)

Anyway you have 2 ways to go:
Farm the gold (and materials) to craft Ascended Weapons and Armor, I’d prioritize Weapons for a damage increase due to your current AR, but if your goal is your total AR armor will be considerable cheaper per point of AR. Staff made you sound like an Elementalist to me, if you are and only play with Staff I’d recommend Weapon first for +10 AR and the damage increase. Any other class needs to make 2-4 weapons in order to benefit from +10 AR without sacrificing usefulness, aka weapon-swap. Not to mention swapping between Ranged and Melee for certain bosses. Oh and underwater (only an issue if you melee Jelly)

Farm Fractals 20+ and indeed, get lucky in the Shards of Crystallized Mist Essence and use the Mystic Forge to turn them into the lower tiers. 1 Shard of Crystallized Mist Essence = 5 Glod of Coagulated Mist Essence or 10 “Vial of Condensed Mist Essence”: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Condensed_Mists_Essence which means 2 Shard drops per infusion unless my sleepiness has completly annihilated my math. Don’t bother farming the lower tiers (unless you do it for the Daily Chest ofcourse.) PS: You can only infuse your Rings (which can drop, but you’d need to get immensly lucky to get the ring you want) and the Backpiece. So that’s ~4 more Shards. You might even get that before you can’t progress with your current AR.

Actually there is a 3rd way which is buying a more expensive Agony Infusion for your backpiece.

If you only PvP just trade them for T6 crafting bags. Currently dyes are at 34s 50c and dropping, you get 2 per Laurel (so around 70s) where-as most T6 crafting materials are currently in between 35s-40s with the exception of Crystalline Dust (slightly less than 20s each) which leads to ~60s-1g20s per Laurel, so unless your luck is consistently so poor you get Crystalline Dust, it’s a bit more profitable.

It’s worth considering saving a few (~40-100) in case you ever decide to start doing PvE or WvW, though Ascended is only needed for Fractals.

Dungeons are your best bet if you’re enjoying them. Plenty of paths that are popular and fun to keep you entertained for a day (AC 1-3, CM 1-3, TA up/fwd, SE 1 +3, CoF p1, CoE p1-3, HotW p1 (if you know troll) Arah p2) and still a few others worth doing if you want a change. Solo-running Arah can be fun and challanging aswell assuming you enjoy those sort of challanging, selling certain paths can be an easy 20-30g depending on supply/demand. (Difficult to tie a time to it, but 1h runs are do-able.)

Making some smart investments along the side won’t hurt either and cost little time assuming you know how to spot them. (I tend to read update notes and that way it’s usually easy enough to predict, to play it safe use Carpboys suggestion, but beware, be patient they generally go: ~70g at release > drops to ~50g > become more tickets > people panic sell since they’re still dropping (think ~40g) > ~3 months later it settles > profit.)

Everything else is rather boring, think Championtrains and Nodefarm. I only do Dungeons lately (I do how-ever sell my materials, unless I can turn them into something worth more) and I’m getting by fine.

Black Lion Salvage kits aren’t worth buying ever since Gems have become so expensive in my opinion. The ones I get for drops I also only use for Exotics with a Sigil/Rune worth equally or more than the Exotic itself. For the ~0.2 more Ecto you get on average it’s not worth it, nor any of the rare sigils/runes.

I get them very rarely but it gets me through my ecto/dark matter needs.

It gives you a single skin which you then put on an armor-type and it says that armor-type. How-ever with the 15th update April it’s been said that skins that aren’t specificly tied to an armor-type will become available for all armor-types in the Wardrope.

Can’t find the quote though, so wait for someone to confirm.

Edge of the Mist gave me loads of Karma, it’s basicly a Champ-train on EU servers. Wouldn’t know if it’s the best though. I did a lot of low-level Fractals when I needed Obsi shards due to the ~6k Karma at the end and tokens for the Shards. Few of my guildies did Queensdale Champ-farm on 80s for their Obsidian Shards.

These are all the ones I can think of, hopefully someone has a more solid option.