Guild Wars 2

What really needs to go is the name “beastmode”. I’m not a 19 year old frat boy playing the game while hitting a beer bong and watching youtube pranks on my iPhone.

The game has changed enormously since launch, but in awesome ways. Just start playing and you’ll find lots of QoL improvements. For example there is now a wardrobe system so you can look however you want, many builds are exponentially more viable or optimal (condis were MAJORLY improved) and so on. You don’t need to know anything to start playing, it’s just better sort of behind the scenes.

It does such a disservice to ourselves to keep the old 33% of our damage myth going. That’s how you get bad players complaining they were “killed by AI”.

Maybe back in 2012 it was somewhere close 33%. I think it was WondrousWall that took the time to do the math for various builds. For raid condi ranger I don’t think the pet’s damage was even in double digits.

SB has perma swiftness with the trait.

Edit: Actually after looking at the weapon (I don’t use it much) you don’t even need the trait to get perma swiftness.

Agree with Squee, there are enough spiders in a LOT of games. I once saw someone claim they were afraid of spiders in Diablo 2, and you literally can’t even make it out of beginner mode without accessing a cave full of nothing but spiders.

I mean almost everyone is slightly squirmish around spiders unless you’re a biologist, suck it up. That’s the point. Do you think you want to see a kitten zombie in your living room?

That GM is complete garbage compared to druid CA, we need the other traits to even have a conversation. Anything else is a waste of time.

If Soulbeast does like 100 times more damage then ok. But we don’t know that.

Where are you guys getting traits from? All I’ve seen was the 3 GMs from Peachy’s crappy video.

mistsim.2748:

https://youtu.be/nqj-yOPEudA?t=2120

One of the GM traits literally gives you a second life if you’re in beastmode when you get downed. looks like an incredibly powerful elite spec overall. as per usual ANet antics, there will be no reason to roll with any GM other than Eternal Bond in pvp.

That’s tough to judge. Is that GM better than having access to CA? It’s basically just a second, weak heal at an opportune time. Need to check out the rest of that video assuming she scrolls over the other traits. Edit: She does not.

NemesiS.6749:

Again i think no one show soulbeast because rangers, as always, have been thrown under the bus. I want to see a detailed soulbeast video but my hopes have been dying down. Seen all the others specializations soulbeast have nothing special really, the damage must be amazing or something because as of now its probably the worse of them all.

That was 100% the impression I got from the amount of time they spent on it in the announcement. It felt like… I don’t know, Ventari at HoT launch or something, just something no one knew what to do with and was utterly awful so let’s not focus too much on it. No news is bad news when you’re trying to sell a product!

“Hey no pets anymore, pet class! Lol!!! Now on to Mirage!”

Any single character you put it on. It’s just one tool.

Khenzy.9348:

The Soulbeast is designed as an evasive melee condition spec.

That’s pretty much the antithesis of druid, which was mostly power, healing, and range. I think that’s a good thing… could perhaps see some trap play (??) or just different gameplay. I think a lot of us are sick of staff healing in PvP.

EnderzShadow.2506:

Fluffball.8307:

He specifically opens that video with “turn this off if you’re a ranger, I don’t care about rangers and didn’t look at the elite spec with my time.”

Am I missing something?

When did he say that?

6:45

“I did play some elite specs, but not all of them, so any ranger fans… you guys may as well just leave now.”

Everything you wrote is correct. It’s one, account bound tool.

If you want a recommendation, it’s worth it for your main. I personally just use cheap mithril stuff on all my other characters. If you get really into an alt, just swap it over.

Buying equipment with money in this game is never cost efficient.

Gems are for frivolous items and various account upgrades, money is for expacs.

He specifically opens that video with “turn this off if you’re a ranger, I don’t care about rangers and didn’t look at the elite spec with my time.”

Am I missing something?

Khisanth.2948:

LB ranger also gets its own very special brand of hate from all the people that screw up the use of LB4 all the time -_-

I usually use sword/axe on my ranger, so when someone (just as often any of the other classes with launches, but it all gets blamed on “ranger”) knocks a enemy out of everyone’s AoE, I grab it and yank it right back into the AoE.

Substance E.4852:

Call lightning is likely a skill of one of the new plant pets since I believe one of them was an elementalist in Nightfall.

Ya that’s probably stormseed, they were air spike eles. That gives me hope the Iboga will be a “mesmer” which introduces some cool (and better yet, useful) ideas for a pet.

That scary thing Zalani posted were actually mesmers in GW1. It will be interesting to see what kind of skills they give it. Hopefully not just typical chomps, but something mesmery would be awesome…. interrupts, some sort of hex, boon removal, etc.

The stormseeds were air elementalists with incredible spike damage.

Both of those sound like potentially sidestepping the typical pet AI problems. Can’t casually walk away from a lightning strike like you can a porcine charging the wrong direction.

Those plants don’t have roots, they’re from GW1 and quite mobile. The stormseeds even fly.

No need to wait for anything, the expac will just give you more options.

Ranger OR druid can be played with a bow, and it’s extremely, extremely strong in open world stuff.

But more importantly, every profession has a viable ranged option.

Unless you want to do raids, that’s about all you need to know. Raids use more specific builds and LB ranger isn’t used there, for example.

I may be biased but it felt like they spent a good amount of time describing all the other especs, and just flew through ranger in seconds. I wanted to be excited but I didn’t get a chance.

I thought some of the other professions looked cooler and more in line with how I play ranger. The ele one looked neat.

Twitch automatically saves recent broadcasts temporarily I think, but I am completely sure this video will be a piece of cake to find. Anet is going to want to make it easy, they’ll probably even have a link to the saved video on their front page.

I’m sure my client is the exception, that seems like the most likely scenario.

SoS helps you push through that choke point. I typically will run out of combat if at all possible and swap utilities to what I need at that moment. If you’re waiting for siege to take down the inner gate, and the keep or SMC is defended, probly switch to SoS.

Or better yet, take both SoS and SoR because they’re both awesome.

Ya I definitely did not succeed on the second puzzle, was just trying to not die while I read a book to my kid. The boss attacked me before the book was over.

I finished the first puzzle in like 3 moves, but I can’t imagine that would set up some different scenario for the 2nd puzzle. It had to have just been a time limit.

I’m not here to argue, just saying literally millions of kids played with this game in the past. I don’t care if anyone succeeded or struggled.

The percentage of people with severe enough disabilities that this is even worth mentioning for a simple puzzle has got to be numbered in the dozens rather than millions. I’m not saying it wasn’t horrible for you or whatever, I’m just talking about the normal experience.

Also since I was caring for an infant for the 2nd puzzle, I know for a fact that solving it isn’t even a requirement. After I randomly clicked enough times, the game progressed without me doing anything that required intelligence or experience. All you have to do is fail for 5 minutes and everything is fine anyway.

I’m not assuming anyone’s age, I’m telling you these games were commonplace before the internet ruined all childhoods.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

In short, it’s nice that this is easy for you; your brain is built to solve puzzles like this.

I don’t think my brain is, I just grew up with these kinds of puzzles. We did stuff instead of screwing around on facebook for 14 hours straight. I’m sure the devs that made this played these games as little kids as well.

If someone suffered with this, it was probably a good learning experience for their brain.

This is a classic children’s game. Anyone getting frustrated is baffling to me; it’s like they never had a childhood. I had about 13 different versions of this as various board games and what not.

I didn’t see any threads about this. I just did it and it’s immediately my single favorite JP in the game. The past half dozen or so “JPs” added have been just mechanical nonsense that have no concept of ‘fun’ associated, only relief that they’re over.

This new JP is amazing! I would gladly do it more than once. As someone slightly scared of heights it really got me going with a pleasant adrenaline dump as well.

She was using a GW1 build, so I doubt it’s referencing anything in the future.

I didn’t notice it, but from you picture I assume it’s the aspects giving off the aura.

Well to ask the obvious, have you hit F11 to bring up the controls options? You can set the interface size and define your keys to do whatever you want.

You massive inexperience is showing (again) andy, if you think condi ranger hasn’t been meta or nearly meta in WvW since launch. It was the meta in PvP for much longer than power was, as well. Keep living in your own little world, buddy.

anduriell.6280:

Also it was another times where the trailblazer \ dire wasn’t abused so much

Dire/Trailblazer/Tanky condi wasn’t used a month ago?? It’s been used for 5 years on ranger. Why do you constantly just make up ridiculous things with no basis in reality? Almost every post you do is full of complete misrepresentations of truth that were created inside your weird head.

A lot of open world players have no idea what condis do.

They both work really well, especially in WvW. The movement is crazy, so it’s excellent for roaming when you have a lot of population you might need to avoid, like zergs and guild groups all over the place. It’s basically the same build, staff for survival and the other weapon for bursting.

Usually people recommend a longbow ranger or any type of necro but especially a minion necro if you want to faceroll the open world.

AliamRationem.5172:

I don’t want to assume you’re like the others, though. Why don’t we define what your priorities are so we can better determine what you mean when you say you “solo” in full glass? What do you solo? Can you solo something difficult? How about the mushroom emperor or mushroom queen in TD? Can you solo those in full glass? How about something a little easier like the inquisitor HP or the chak champion in the southern part of AB? I’m probably not “elite”, but I can solo those in celestial and definitely not in full glass. What about you?

Yes, I can solo just about anything in the game in full glass on any of the professions I’m halfway decent at, including the open world bosses like mushroom emperor, all the HoT HPs except 1 or 2, like the triple frog champ one. The game is intended and designed to be completed by making appropriate uses of dodges and utilities/traits, even weapon skills.

While I’m technically in several guilds, I play solo 99% of the time in WvW and PvE. If you can’t do that, then it’s worth attempting to get better by slowly switching out your tanky gear with glassier gear (if you want to improve, if you’re happy the way you play then you do you, it’s just a game.) In the mean time, stop being snarky to me.

Edit: Just a little anecdote, I once stumbled across a group of players attempting to kill Varre the Underhanded in Kessex Hills. They were dying over and over and over again because they were trying to just tank his outrageously high damage. It’s basically not possible to rez people at this fight, so I let the blob of them die and then easily soloed him because I understand how his attacks work. No amount of tankiness is going to make this fight easy (or even survivable, I’m not sure if you can take his hits in tanky armor or not?), but in full glass understanding the attacks, the fight is trivially easy.

mrstealth.6701:

As someone that plays with action camera most of the time, targeting allies in the middle of a fight is not something that usually happens.

They aren’t targetable no matter what mode you’re in. You just need to figure it out and hit F.

To what end? If you are scared of them don’t fight them. If you need what they’re protecting, they’re not particularly hard to kill they just take a few seconds longer.

Why are people talking about jumping puzzles everywhere. I did the whole episode and didn’t do a single JP… I’ve seen this complaint a bunch of times but haven’t found a reason for it. You don’t have to do a JP if it exists on a map.

You can dodge the arm attacks. I accidentally got the thing down to about 70% health before I realized you could interact with the visions.

BTW I am not mad about this, it was EXCEEDINGLY obvious there was a secondary mechanic, the boss text and the achievement even told you so. I just didn’t think enough to hit F. It’s my own fault I didn’t find it for a few minutes, and it’s your fault as well if you didn’t find it.

zealex.9410:

I wonder why do we have ferocious dignity and charm options for.

It’s little wonder we don’t anymore. Your only choice is to watch the PC interact for the most part, just like you would Lara Croft or whatever.

Sicarine.3985:

It’s a GOOD episode, just not from the perspective of how the player character acts, behaves, or speaks.

That’s always going to be an issue because GW2’s PC has her own personality, not your own. She is not you, and it’s not a RPG.

In my case, I was like “kitten you don’t tell me what to do” so it actually worked well for me.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

A) you are assuming a condi thief and b) no, because the fight actively breaks the thief’s core mechanic by suddenly giving every skill a long cooldown. Thief skills are individually less damaging than others due to how much they can spam with no CDs. Suddenly add CDs to a thief and damage, whether power or condi, goes through the floor, to say nothing of survivability.

I’m guessing this in response to me suggesting condi for fearless. I’m not assuming anything, I’m just suggesting my immediate thought on how to complete the achievement.

Apply a condi burst and just run around easily surviving in condi gear, not attacking. Rinse and repeat for like 20 minutes. I accidentally got the thing down to 70-some percent health using rapid attacks like RF and auto attack before I realized you could interact with other mechanics, so condi on any class I would assume will fairly easily kill it. Just my guess.

I think this was pretty heavy on the GW1 hype. As a GW1 player it was pretty awesome, but I imagine we’re a minority. Actually this whole season has been some pretty serious GW1 hype.

What are you even talking about? I finished everything on the first try without struggling on anything, I legit have no idea how you struggled with “puzzles”. Do you mean you couldn’t figure out how to avoid AoE? If that’s the case, it’s sort of … pathetic to ask for a change.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Once again too many of the achievements are designed to need huge toughness. Characters with less, especially thieves who depend on ability chaining and single engages, are virtually unable to complete achieves like Fearless, as their core class mechanic is nerfed too hard by the design of the challenge. The punishes people who took less durable classes as their main story completion character (most people have only 1).

I have not attempted fearless yet other than the too many minutes or so before I figured out what to do, but can’t you just condi it to death? I didn’t have any trouble surviving on a full glass ranger with a dead pet, so I doubt a dire thief is hard.

I am incredibly impressed with the combat in this episode. We’ve gotten to a point where it’s sort of not possible to make more difficult combat via just damage or health numbers without being incredibly annoying and tedious, but this episode made combat more interesting. I enjoy having to think about multiple things at the same time while still not just being randomly killed by some overpowered boss attack.

Dancing around on the floor while fighting, paying attention to secondary and even tertiary mechanics all at the same time, heavy use of breakbars… even chasing open world bosses through mesmer portals or using new glider skills to approach them. All great stuff. My favorite combat to date.

You might even try paladins. The difference between marauder and paladin in terms of damage is surprisingly small, but the survivability difference is noticeable.