Guild Wars 2

Before anybody starts going off on it, the coming (very hopefully retroactive) achievements giving laurels will only lessen the pain. Achievements are not unlimited and many players will find that the laurels earned from achievements will likely quickly run out.

I’m now looking for a guild that is better suited than my current tiny guild of 4 to 5 active players, who only has 2 other talented players. Doing the Guild Missions will be out of the question here. It’s likely that unless I really like the guild or unless I can convince my friends to join me in the new guild, I will leave the guild once my needs have been satisfied.

GW2 has always been a selfishness-endorsing game in its design. Players can help to kill anything and get equal reward. Professions are self-contained and aren’t naturally “paired” with another profession. There’s very little that encourages strong teams aside from challenging content. So what if I join a guild purely for my own benefit? It’s not like I’m leeching life out of the guild by doing it. So long as I bring my A-game, so long as I join in pursue the same goals as the guildmates, why am I becoming a “leech”?

Bans aren’t handled on a purely report-based system. Even if attention is called to him through a number of reports, his play activity should be analysed and bots play very differently than humans. He’s in no danger of being banned.

As for why people report him… People are simple and willing to go along with the group.

Colossus Rumblus was always more ranged friendly because it allowed for more space to move around in (the density of AoE decreases as distance from the boss increases), but if what you’re saying it true it looks like AC Path 3 will be another path that nobody does.

I can only agree with this. I wasn’t really okay with Ascended Rings only being available with Fractals of the Mist but I did Fractals because getting them was on me and four other people who had the same goals as me. But now I must rely on having a competent and large guild in order to maintain my BiS status. I assumed that Guild Wars 2, with having professions that are viable without help from other players and combat systems that allow anybody to join and everybody to profit, would be above gating gear accessibility. But I guess after Fractals and this Guild Mission business, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Class balance: Ranger gets left in the dust again
Dungeon balance: It’s clear that dungeons are less about bosses and more about hordes of elite mobs that everybody hates fighting.
Dailies: Fun.
Living Story: New content is nice but nothing seems very alive about the content.
Equipment balance: More horrible time-gated content).
Misc. item balance: They nerfed Pies without tackling the bigger problem behind it and I’ll miss having Ash Kits to fall back on.
Guild missions and guild changes: Hasa diga eebowai.
Bug fixes: Hahahahahahahaha. Never going to happen.

I can confirm this. Very disappointing.

Oreoz.2573:

That’s seriously their answer? Adds?

So much for revamping the boss fights to make them more interesting.

Adds aren’t interesting. They’re annoying.

And lolz, people pulled him down the stairs BECAUSE of his adds.

Now skipping him won’t become common. It’s gonna become tradition. lol

This post needs to stapled to the desk of every person who touches dungeons at ANet.

Because if they did, all the WvW kids would whine about having to do dungeons.

1-5 for 1-5
Z for 6 (but honestly I just press 6 most of the time. Long fingers.)
(X for back mirror)
C for 7
Mouse 4 for 8
Mouse 5 for 9
Shift+1 for 0

Keep in mind that the game uses an anti-grinding system that makes drops from enemies plummet after killing that enemy for more than 30 minutes. As Ilithis said, you’re better off farming TA.

I doubt it. It would probably create issues with continuity and your place in the storyline.

Go to each area in the game (including the Chantry of Secrets) and see if you had opened up every map completion chest. Multiple times I’ve heard of cases where missing opening one of these resulted in the World Completion chest not appearing until after the missing chest was open.

He also gave GW2 his game of the year award and the Angry Army guild he started is still active.

Increasing Scepter orb speed by 10%-20% would be appreciated. I’d be more appreciative if Smite worked better though. In my opinion, it should really be Symbol of Smite that works like our other symbols and grants Vigor or Might.

I think the Greatsword is somewhat overrated. I think it’s probably our best weapon if we want to be offensive, but I believe the Hammer but pretty close to being an equal anyway.
• 1 skills. Greatsword is pretty quick and gives some steady might if the main combo is repeated. Hammer is slower but offers Symbol of Protection at the end. Greatsword wins in solo play but Hammer wins in dungeon play (especially if used with bigger symbols and you have a melee heavy group).
• 2 skill. Why I think the Greatsword is overrated. Whirling Wrath is pretty good but I don’t think it competes with Mighty Blow. The numbers of Whirling Wrath are bigger obviously, but that’s not considering the longer cooldown and execution time. With half the cast time, much quicker execution time allowing more flexibility and speed, easy 5k crits, a small leap so you’ll be rare to miss, and the quickest blast finisher in the game, I think Hammer wins hands down here.
• 3 skill. A matter of taste. Greatsword has a great leap here, blinds on hit and does a bigger than normal hit. Hammer has a slightly more range and less accuracy line of immobilization here that does a standard hit in damage to everything hit. Same cooldown too. From experience, immobilizers are more useful in dungeons than in solo play so I’m going to go with Hammer here. Greatsword is more useful in solo play though.
• 4 skill. Greatsword’s Symbol of Wrath does good damage and applies Retaliation however Retaliation is probably the weakest PvE boon because it does little against the sheer bulk of many mobs. Hammer’s Banish on the other hand can be used as an interrupt or a repositioner for getting a frustrating mob away or for getting a boss into a corner. However, it is somewhat unreliable depending on terrain, has 5 more seconds in the cooldown, and the damage is notably lower. Hammer and Greatsword are tied here in my opinion and which one is best depends on the situation.
• 5 skills. Binding Blade wins. I don’t even need to make an argument here.

I believe it’s close, but in the end I’ll go with the Hammer unless what I’m fighting doesn’t fight back or I just really need Binding Blade.

kiba.2768:

i agree with everyone here that says precursors should be equipped as a MANDATORY aspect of acquiring a legendary. if i were a dev, i would require players to earn 100,000 kills on the precursor that’s going to turn into a legendary, with a limit of 100 kills a day maximum. that time gated content will ensure that even casuals can reach 100 kills a day and prevent nolifers from reaching a legendary faster than anyone else just because they can play 8+ hours a day.

100,000 kills on 100 kills a day would take 1,000 days—or 2.7 years—to achieve. That’s on par with the absurd WvW achievements. Time gated content is fine when its a matter of a month or two. Not years. I once joked that I’d get a college degree alongside a Legendary. I didn’t mean it literally.

I’ve gotten 2 Abyss Dyes and a White Dye. As a rule, I always identify, usually immediately.

I received one rare while doing all of the Jumping Puzzles. I also think I’ve gotten a rare out of the Obsidian Sanctum Jumping Puzzle.

We can say from the Grenth buff a while ago, their balance is a very hard thing to do. Overshoot and the difficulty becomes too great and unskilled, uncoordinated players can’t manage it even with big numbers, undershoot and the difficultly becomes a walk in the park. While I’m not against balancing it as best as possible, I’d rather see balancing that undershoots the difficulty rather than overshoots it.

Or you could just learn to adapt the characters around one keymap (like the rest of us) instead of demanding that the developers waste time change things up between each character.

As someone with an Elementalist and an Engineer at level 80 with similar play times logged on each one, I can say that not having access to weapon swapping isn’t an issue for either class.

However, Engineers need to be able to keep a weapon kit in their second weapon slot with the standard 10 second cooldown attached. Having to sacrifice utility skills just for quick weapon swapping is one of the biggest issues the Engineer has and if you can’t see that you clearly are not a kit using Engineer. Most Engineer builds that rely on kits have to make sacrifices such as boons and stunbreakers in order to just have all the tools available to be “versatile”.

Your ideas are awful. I’d rather be forced to get 5 Precursors than have to play more WvW beyond the 500 Badges to get my Legendary or be forced to get a Commander scout badge that I’d hate to have attached to my character. Not to mention the requirement you listed more or less remove the hardest parts of the grind making Legendaries much more approachable and not nearly as rare and legendary.

SWG is dead because the gameplay turned to crap and it simply ran its course as an MMO. Player housing in it, on the other hand, was orgasmic. You could decorate anything, make beautiful designs as you had full access to placing anything anywhere, you had very good control over the lighting, there was a very lenient allocation of items you could place, and it allowed for some brilliantly creative designs such as replicating a giant Millenium Falcon in your home or completely revamping how the house design looked by simply placing furniture in the right place with lots of practice.

If you were to go find the best of the player housing in SWG, I’m not pulling your leg if I were to tell you it should be considered the gold standard for MMO housing.

In the choice between a level 38 Thief with the appropriate gear and stats for the level and a level 80 Thief with appropriate gear and stats for the level, I’m going to choose the level 80 thief ten out of ten times for multiple reasons:
• Rare and exotic gear are unavailable at level 38 and thus total armor rating and stat benefits are notably lower
• At level 38, armor only grants 2 different stats instead of 3. This makes a huge difference between what a player can and can’t do. This is probably the biggest thing. I’m more than happy to run AC with players level 65 and up but before you get the third stat, you’re lacking.
• At level 80, a player has access to all their traits and trait-related stats giving an advantage over the level 38 player. For some professions such as Elementalist and Mesmer, not having access to those traits is very crippling.
• At earlier levels, players tend to have less grasp on how to play as a certain profession. The difference in how I play dungeons as Elementalist, Engineer or Guardian differ wildly from when I started dungeons on those professions compared to how I perform in dungeons now. Even if you have experience doing AC, you have less experience as a profession and that makes a big difference. That’s not mentioning that the Thief is one of the more delicate classes to play a Dungeon with.

But more than anything, unless I’m grouping with friends or guildmates, I’m doing dungeons for myself. I’m not running a twink charity as a player and experience has taught me that more often than not lower level player in an exploring dungeon do not perform well. I want a group that can go in, do the content well, and make good time doing it. That doesn’t mean I’m not having fun or I’m an elitist, it simply means I have standards that, mind you, I find to be very realistic when taking the above factors into consideration.

tl;dr: Why would I invite you, a subpar twink, when I can probably find a level 80 who can probably surpass you in every way.

Healing power as it is can not be utilized in place of toughness or vitality for staying alive. Healing power scales terribly across the board (for example, you need 100 Healing Power to increase the Altruistic Healing heal by 1 hp) and takes the place of stats that can be considered far more useful (100 Vitality on the other hand increases your HP by 1000 and 100 Precision increases your critical change by almost 5%).

For above, neither the Shield or the Focus has fantastic recharge times, but one thing people forget about the shield is that is has 61 toughness built in that the Focus and Torch lack. The shield also having a party-wide protection that can be used to counter spike damage and an excellent crowd control for scattering or interrupting and projectile defense + a heal for a moment. For me, it’s always been the shield hands down.

For OP, my walking around weapon set is Hammer and Mace/Shield when doing anything that does not require using range, in which case I’ll switch the Mace for the Scepter. Both weapons make the best use of Writ of Exaltation, the Hammer is good when above 50% health for higher damage, constant blast finishers (area retaliation with the Symbol of Protection or might with a fire field), and keeping your target where you want them (3 of the 5 skills are dedicated controllers), not to mention Writ of Exaltation on another melee ranger lets every other melee ranger fighter maintain easy protection. When my health takes a dip below 50%, I switch out to the Mace/Shield. I tend to immediately pull out Symbol of Faith or Protector’s Strike. After that, I balance out attacking, boons, etc. until either I can switch switch back to Hammer if I need to stop people from running away or until Signet of Resolve is recharged so I can heal. In combination of this and some mediocre skill, I’m almost always in melee range and rarely if ever go down when I’m with my Necromancer and Thief friend.

While the Staff is great for spiking damage and healing, as I tend to spend most fights working around taking damage I find that I rarely have a moment to use Empower. I very rarely use it in WvW unless I need Swiftness.

Unrelated to what the OP asked, but I use Meditation in WvW. Judge’s Intervention is amazing for closing the gap since I don’t use range weapons (usually following with a Mighty Blow on the Hammer or a Protector’s Strike on the Mace), Smite Condition is great when paired with Purity and the Signet of Resolve for keeping conditions off you because of the short CD when specced is great, Contemplation of Purity is amazing whenever I manage to get blanketed with conditions (though I’ve been switching it out for WoR more and more lately). Combine those with the Meditation Mastery and Monk’s Focus and you have a Guardian that can be very hard to stop in small skirmishes.

His behavior after the tree climbing glitch was fixed has become very odd. He no longer coordinates his attacks correctly much of the time (I’ve seen him moving one way but hitting people he’s running away from with his normal attack), does very odd things while in stealth (such as teleporting), and what was once a fair opportunity to dodge his big agony hit has become very frustrating as he now seems to charge the attack while in stealth instead of immediately after breaking it (culling issue?).

Reach level 40 Fractals (which will go up as more Ascended gear is released making advancement reasonable) and complete 500 Fractals sounds like a player is a pretty good “Fractals of the Mist Master”.

I’ve completed half of the Uncategorized Fractal, all of the Swamp Fractal and then all of Jade Maw with only 2 people at level 26 scale. Thinking about that, I’m so glad people dropping doesn’t screw me over in Fractals anymore.

Human female Guardian
Human male Engineer
Slyvari female Necromancer
Charr male Warrior
Norn male Ranger
Asura female Elementalist

Very, very nice. The only thing I found odd was the choice of using 10 Zeal and Shattered Aegis for the fight. I’ve personally never found either one to be more useful than 10 more points in Radiance (Powerful Blades), Honor (Empowering Might), or Zeal (one of the Virtue buffs) but you’re clearly a better Guardian than I so I will withhold such judgments.

marnick.4305:

GoZero.9708:

If he doesn’t want the Colossus, he could donate it to the making me a very happy person fund. I’m in the same boat as OP. I’ve had my gifts for the Juggernaut since December except the Precursor continues to grow out of reach because its rising price rapidly exceeds my profit from doing dungeons and trying to have fun. Perhaps I should just start turning the TP like all the other gold hoarders?

You say that as if it were easy. If it’s that easy, why aren’t you doing it? (answer: it’s pretty darn difficult to make any money purely with the TP)

I’ve done it before and made about 10g in an afternoon, but it’s not the reason why I play the freaking game. I shouldn’t have to resort to making money through the sleaziest “legitimate” way possible to be able to get a single piece of my Legendary when I got every other piece of it through making money on dungeon running and lucky drops. But since hurrdurr Precursors are designed to be rare I guess my options are running slim if I want to get my Colossus in less than 3 times the time it took me to get the other 3 gifts.

Apolyon.6937:

You can set targets for the materials, because even if they are rare, it is possible to get them, but the precursor is just pure luck. Counting all my guildies and friends, I’ve only seen two precursors (I’m in 5 guilds), one guildie got the colossus from the Karka chest (he doesn’t even want it), and one friend got Dawn on his first try with exotic GS’s in the MF. And most of us have been playing the game since the first day.

If he doesn’t want the Colossus, he could donate it to the making me a very happy person fund. I’m in the same boat as OP. I’ve had my gifts for the Juggernaut since December except the Precursor continues to grow out of reach because its rising price rapidly exceeds my profit from doing dungeons and trying to have fun. Perhaps I should just start turning the TP like all the other gold hoarders?

Keiran here is building rams because rams, according to Mike Ferguson, do not share the “total siege weapons build” count but have their only exclusive ram counter. He builds at most 5 in two supply camps per map meaning that the number of possible rams drops from 100 to 90. While obviously people repeating his behavior will cause a problem, Keiran alone is not because no map, no matter what wild accusation you make, is going to use up 90 rams at once. It’s absolutely not griefing. Griefing is a deliberate irritation against other players, but for Keiran the irritation is simply a side effect of bad game design that you all have your panties in a knot over.

As far as “going against the spirit of the achievement” (which I find absolutely comical because there’s no kittening way you’re going to get that achievement through normal play), “taking up a queue spot” (there are usually 10 or more useless players running the Jumping Puzzle at any given time just for the 500 Badges for the Legendary), and “interrupting WvW for your selfish crap” (if you think the difference of one person in ZERG VS. ZERG is going to change rather or not your server wins, you are completely delusional), you just need to get over it.

Animando.7956:

Isn’t supply required to upgrade camp?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Camp#Upgrades

Not to mention if someone (or a full guild) comes by and wants to refill his supplies he can’t. Or if a tower is beeing attacked the door cannot be repaired by players.

Now I don’t think you can be reported for that but is this achievement worthwhile?

Supplies never run out at camps unless a zerg pops by and whisk it all away and even then the supplies is only gone for a few minutes.

I’m pretty sure you’re not breaking any rules so just ignore them. Being reported by a bunch of scrubs isn’t going to get you banned and nothing you do is really going to make them stop. If you see people yelling at you over it, just pop them into the Block list and continue on your work. I’m more interesting in seeing somebody achieve a WvW title than seeing XXXXXXX server win or lose WvW for the 5th week in a row.

Valynaard.8475:

My level 55 thief got kicked out of AC groups 5 times today, within 15 minutes due to “you’re not level 80”.. and yes, of course the idea is not good, it was born due to my anger…

Being level 80 isn’t as big of a deal as being talented.

It’s appreciated. Hopefully they’ll fix not being able to preview the Juggernaut and a few other weapons too.

I know what you mean OP. While you weren’t delicate in crafting your point, it is becoming an issue. I farm CoF on my Engi and will get kicked from most groups on the premise of being an Engineer despite having only a bit less sustained damage of a Warrior thanks to Berserker Grenades and all the spike damage of a Thief. People don’t know what a good Engineer is capable of because they think we all stand 30 feet away throwing grenades for entire fights or just stand still shooting off a Flamethrower. A good Engineer skill cycle (I usually go with Pry Bar > Throw Wrench + SD > Point-blank Jump Shot > Point-blank Blunderbuss > Net Shot > Point-blank Grenade Barrage) can down anything and a good Engineer can pull it all off quicker than a Warrior can do the entirety of Hundred Blades. My Grenade Barrage can one-hit a Flame Acolyte during the timed event in CoF Path 1 and then I can immediately Jump Shot + Surprise Shot + Static Discharge + Pry Bar another Acolyte before most classes can down a single one.

But alas, Warrior has the reputation as “da best” and that won’t be changed any time soon. Take solace in the fact that if you’re a good Engineer you’re paving the way for people to be more accepting of Engineers in the long run.

Slaugh Burntfur: Slaugh sounds a bit wishy-washy for a Charr name but Burntfur is decent, especially with your story. 7/10.

Singed Beardrage. Singed is a friend of mine and Beardrage is just a joke we came up with.

I just hit level 40 and I’m a bit lost. I don’t know much about Necromancer and it’s not very straight forward to figure out by just looking at traits, weapon skills, utility skills, and such. I’ve been using Staff/Dagger&Focus up until now but I’m starting to feel like it’s not going to be the best way to keep going. So I have a few questions:
• Does condition damage start doing notable damage by 40? I’m most interested in a the Conditionmancer but I’m not sure when to start trying for it. I’m also open to the power burst build and the other notable one that I can’t name right now.
• What traits and trait lines do you think will be best for this area? Up until now I just put everything in Death Magic and Blood Magic because they benefited my weapon skills the best.
• I’m mostly a PvE/Dungeon player (dungeon master with 2 characters at 30+ Fractals). What build do you think works best in PvE and Dungeons?
• I rather like Staff more than anything. Is this viable for any build or am I going to be limited to the one-handed weapons?

Any input, even unrelated to my questions, will be appreciated.

I love having the ability to put the target on a certain enemy or thing when working with groups, especially in WvW and dungeons. It always struck me as odd that I lack the ability to target something when not in a group. It’s not just for calling attention to something. If I’m without a party, in WvW I can use it to keep track of someone I’m chasing and trying to kill even if it’s in a big skirmish because of how big and noticeable the target is. Hell, sometimes in WvW I invite a friend into my party with no intention of joining me simply because it gives me the ability to mark targets. In addition, being able to target something in PvE (say a champion sized like all other mobs) allows me to quickly switch my current focus to them to check their health in the midst of an event. It’s a big shame that I can’t do these things because I don’t have a party.

It’s fair play except for the coliseum that comes after the dark room. The game gives you the stealth for the sake of getting by campers but you cannot navigate the dark room while stealth unless you use a siege weapon while stealthed and navigate with the ground target or have a ton of experience so you can do it without seeing the ground. As a result you come out of the dark room completely exposed to hordes of campers who love that area to pick off lonesome innocents and the best part is that even if you manage to survive the camping, the coliseum part of the jumping puzzle is impossible to complete while in-combat without the help of swiftness/movement utilities. Since it’s really friggin tough to drop combat in WvW if it gets trigger while an invader is nearby changing to something that grants swiftness, you’re 100% SOL if that situation.

Doomguard.5094:

Mounts should be like the flying broom is now, no extra speed and no available skills. Purely cosmetic.

Agree with this 150%.

As a main Guardian, I can tell you that the moment our Spirit Weapons gained the ability to be killed by normal damage was the moment they became useless.

Ragion.2831:

Did you already forget that the game is supposed to rely on the player’s skill not the toon?

But the classes are far from balanced. Compare any Warrior to any Ranger on pure output and you’ll see that. Sure a skilled Ranger can beat a stock Warrior, but in the same way a skilled Warrior can beat a skilled Ranger as the former simply has more advantage due to the Warrior having superior damage values and utility skills.

I’ve noticed this too. I ran a stop watch when fighting her last night. While it wasn’t started precisely in time with the Sparks lining up since I was on Spark wrangling, I got everything from 15 seconds to 25 seconds. And even then when trying to do a full reset, sometimes she’d randomly come out of stealth with only 80% health.

Luckily I managed to beat Simin today. 3 HB Warriors, 1 Guardian on Tear duty, 1 100nade Engineer. It was glorious. We were all going for Dungeon Master and we did it.

I’ve always considered Tears of Dwayna spawns to be produced in real time every time a player on another instance fighting Simin fails to kill her before she starts healing.

I’m all for applying reviving dead players to the Signets in PvE only. Signet of Mercy is almost useless because with the Runes of Mercy on my Guardian, it’s incredibly unlikely that it takes me more than 5 seconds to revive somebody that’s not under fire (Signet of Mercy takes 3.75 seconds to cast) and doing that doesn’t apply a 3 minute cooldown to one of my utilities.

I have a Guardian for doing most of the dungeon and a very high damage Engineer for doing Simin. I’m on an NA server. Send me a message if you’re interested.