Guild Wars 2

Rabid condi necro. Power necros don’t cleave. You’d never match a Warrior or even a DPS-specced guardian on that route, why not do something else they can’t do? Also, conditions go through defense, and some fractal opponents have quite high defense.

Also, condition overwriting is not that bad in fractals because nearly nobody uses condition builds anymore in high level fractals in the current Warrior/Mesmer meta.

Those traits work based on your current attunement, not the attunement you’re in when summoning a weapon.

FGS gives excellent mobility and the best damage in the game by a wide margin.

If any class has problems with Elites, it’s the Engineers… that mortar skill is just… ugh.

Burning doesn’t stack well with Condition damage at all. That build will have an increase in damage but no change in survivability by changing Dire (CTV) to Soldier (PTV).

Hobby Dungeon Explorer on very fast paths, maybe.

Other than that, not really, no.

Dusty Moon.4382:

I thought games were supposed to be fun?

People who say what is the point are making the game a job not fun. Isn’t that what we all play games for, escapism and fun?

Some people play it to gain success in a world not tied to the massive problems the real world possesses. To this crowd, ‘fun’ isn’t a consideration, the success within the game is their reason to go on. One would imagine that if there was no way to succeed and validate themselves, it wouldn’t be very fulfilling.

Heian Alien.

Just a side note.

You can already replace any sigil in any weapon. Just double click a sigil, select the weapon and agree to override the existing sigil.

I don’t know if they’ll auto-upgrade any current weapons with new ‘free’ sigils or not, but you can always place whatever sigils you want in whatever weapon you want.

Sounds good.

And I’m a guy.

But I like my women pretty. ^^

64 I think. Though there really isn’t a reason to use more than 40 (one per race per class).

If you want to I suppose there isn’t actually a drawback aside from it being impossible to transfer account bound items.

… why not just get more character slots with gems?

You can convert ingame gold to gems and buy the slots directly for free. And this way the achievement points, etc are all shared.

I’d disagree that trains require the same minimum amount of skill as a speed clear, but we’re talking between ‘none’ and ‘very little’ here. Not to mean that champ train runners are all bad because invariably there will be a few that carry the kill, and a heck lot who ride on their coattails. But you take that player riding on the coattail and stick him in a speedclear, and it’ll be cleared… without speed.

And it’s pretty much impossible to disagree with the other point. Being able to stop and start as you want is not a luxury you have in dungeons, and I would like to convey to all potential dungeon runners that one, if not the ONLY requirement of a dungeon run, is that you complete it, ESPECIALLY if you open the dungeon. There are the elitists who would press-gang people to use meta builds, but it’s not really ‘necessary’ – however, closing a dung mid-run because you have something random in real life is completely unacceptable.

Rewards are different though. In terms of gold, dungeons with good parties give more because of the token-ecto conversion everyone always seems to forget. Champion trains give more bloodstone dust which can be useful if making toxic consumables, and more skill points per hour for all your mystic forging needs. But champion training gives much more flexibility, and while I don’t actually do it at all, it doesn’t mean the champ train is necessarily a bad thing.

If it works, have fun with it.

Like I said, I don’t want to repeat the rotation. All of the might stacking skills have very high power multipliers – and actually double the DPS of the Lightning Hammer phase. It took me 3 long essays on the Elementalist subforums to explain why the greater power multiplier of the rotation plus the derived power from Might will eclipse the 2-1-1-1 damage rotation’s power multiplier and its power. And in spite of that, what I got as a response was ‘Tldr, staff is better’ from 3 different users.

Repeat this in the Warrior, Guardian, Ranger, Thief, Necromancer, Mesmer class forums, repeat the response. I’ve made about 30-40 builds so far over the classes, narrowed it down to 11 ish which optimise the class mechanics and characteristics, and actively use 8 of them. The Guard I use for instance is nowhere near good for damage but is optimised for AoE heal support, even though I made an alternate max-dps build Guardian that is also not the current dps Guardian meta. I just don’t use it because it’s inferior to the max dps Warrior I do use – which is, again, not the current dps Warrior meta.

Atm, it’s a Boon Elementalist (Fractals), Cleave dps Warrior (Dungs), full-crit Mesmer (Dungs/WvW), max heal/damage reduction Guardian (WvW), full AoE condi Necro (WvW), full single-target AoE condi Ranger (Dungs), AoE dps Engineer (WvW, champion soloing) and max Burst dps Thief (Dungs/WvW). All of these are the best at what they specialise in, and all of them are not accepted by any meta players.

I don’t want to do that again, I’m sure you can understand why. If you disagree, please go ahead, I’m happy to ‘lose’ a discussion in exchange for not spending any more effort.

And yes, my current build is not full dps by any stretch. It still contributes more damage to the party than a 8200 dps zerkwar would, but it’s unquestionably inferior to what would happen if I did try to spec for damage.

For PvE applications, yes.

The far more common Fresh Air build is superior in PvP and WvW applications due to the inherent impossibility of landing the 6.5 second combo chain on a human target, but it has inferior dps to a zerker 30-0-10-0-30 in PvE applications per player, not to mention after taking into account party-buffing Fury and Might effects.

And the staff fire 2-1-1-1-2-1-1-1 build is just bad. Easy to use, but bad.

If you don’t agree please do the calculations yourself or simply disagree, as I’ve already typed out the entire rotation chain at least twice in the class forums and I’m very, very sick of doing this.

For direct I’d still use sword. The Cleaves already hit three targets. The axe also hits three targets. The sword has a multiplier of 2/1.8 seconds. The axe has a multiplier of 0.5/1 second. It’s slightly more than double the damage for the same stat levels. Only reasons I use Axes is the Bleed awesomeness of Splitblade (up to 15 bleed procs on one use) and the complete lack of any other condition damage applying weapon.

If using Sword/Warhorn note that Warhorn skill 4 plus Rampage as One elite will give your pet a very high instant might stack (SEVENTEEN stacks).

Frankly, I wish there was a dagger mainhand weapon that could grant 1 bleed stack on each auto attack hit, even if it doesn’t Cleave.

Altoholics would also make multiple.

At the moment the only people not benefiting from setting all Legendaries to unbound state on patch and granting the skin only on account binding on first equip are people with Legendaries, but not duplicates. People who don’t have Legendaries should want this change (or simply not care) since the insta-flood of people selling duplicates would reduce Legendary prices, making them more easily available. People who have duplicate Legendaries obviously benefit. But people with exactly one Legendary: they’d want the duplicate users to be stuck with them so that their exclusivity is not nerfed.

In terms of the overall most efficient method of maximising happiness, Anet should unbind all Legendaries on the update, and only grant Legendary skin unlocks the moment a player equips it – players with duplicates can then simply sell the others. Allowing Legendary swapping is not reasonable because some (the aquatics) are far less difficult to get than others (the Dusk, Dawn or Bolt).

The benefit to those with multiple legendaries, the benefit to players without legendaries from the supply increase, and the benefit to the economy by gold-sinking 15% of the cost of each legendary in Trading Post transaction fees should greatly outweigh the cost of pride to the players with one of each legendary.

I speak of course of the mythical ‘rational human’ which may or may not exist.

Unlikely. They would have announced it.

The main marketing purpose of the feature patch plus sale in the first place is as a direct competitor to the newly released The Elder Scrolls Online – they need to prevent player egress, and hopefully get a few new ones.

Adding something as substantial as a whole new race with all the racial quests… that would make it so much easier to interest the players so they bet on GW2 rather than hopping on TESO.

P.S. No way in hell I’m giving up GW2 time to play that…

Think it’s tied to the account. Best to wait for a seconder though.

Not that much. Might adds 875 power, so the results are actually quite good – 2620 power with 123% critdmg% and 32% critrate (52% during the higher multiplier hits since I make sure the Dragon’s Tooth, Arcane Wave, Magnetic Wave, Churning Earth and Phoenix all hit under the effects of the attunement swap 3.5 second Fury).

The sacrifice I make in my build is to make it Celestial as opposed to Berserker, rather than the runing/traits. A Berserker specced version would do about 30-40% more damage on the whole.

S/F Fury Zerker is the max possible DPS in the game, maintains 100% 25 AoE might uptime and adds 100% AoE fury uptime. That is, 30(II VI XI)-0-10(VI)-0-30(II VIII XI). But it’s too glassy and heals too little, so it places a certain amount of trust in the ability of party members that I personally lack for PuGs. ;-) At last count, I still know of exactly zero players that run that, though. Even though its personal dps is equal to a maxed berserker warrior, and when adding the party fury and might effects, it actually contributes 2.5x damage of one of those to the party. My current version only contributes about 1.8 zerk warriors’ worth.

It also wouldn’t do well in Fractals, though it’d definitely speedrun easier dungeons better.

That’s why you should get two computers and push keys on both. ;-)

D/D is still good for PvP content.

For PvE use S/F or S/D.

To OP.

Don’t care too much about this. Anet’s rolling out megaservers that will make this eventually irrelevant as it will merge people together regardless of home world.

Decide based on WvW.

https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/wvw

If you intend to make a bigger impact, join the low-rank servers. If you intend to ride on the coattails of others, join the high-rank servers. If you want to learn from a few others then make an impact of your own, join a medium-rank server.

Anet will take care of PvE.

Yuno AoE-loot? ;-)

Thaddeus.4891:

WoW. S/F Ele are great, but I think you make them look better than they are.

25 Perma Might??? That might don’t come all from 1 S/F Ele that’s for sure.

Dragontooth, Pheonix, Magnetic Wave, Arcane Brilliance, Arcane Wave and Comet can give 18 stack of Might for 20 second. Its powerful, but that’s far from 25 perma might.

Like a Warrior, ele are there for DPS and party buffing. They won’t be saviour to a party in difficulty. In fractal, I’ll will be cautious if I don’t have any Guardian, Thief or Mesmer in my group. But i’ll never say, oh kitten we need at least 1 Ele guys.

Don’t get me wrong, i play S/F Ele for a large part of my PvE, but in fractal they won’t make as much difference. Keep in mind that we are talking about a guys that want to go to level 30 in fractal. He probably have a limited experience in there. He need a profession that will make his run easier, not faster.

No, you underestimate a S/F. Though that literally happens all the time.

Dragon Tooth, Phoenix, Arcane Wave, Magnetic Wave, Churning Earth (elemental attunement earth dodge), Lightning hammer 3rd hit.

The progression takes 6.5 seconds to execute and will net 18 might AoE for 20 seconds. I also possess the 3 might on weaponswap sigil that gives me another 3 might. Lastly fire attunement itself is 1 AoE might for 15 seconds.

With 195% boon duration, this becomes 18 might AoE for 39 seconds plus 1 might AoE for 29 seconds every 9 seconds (practically you only do this twice within the 30 second rotation though). This progression can be performed every 30 seconds (arcane wave’s CD) for 25.4 AoE might/second before adding the 3 might on weaponswap sigil’s effects. Every 3 lightning hammer attacks is a blast finisher, so any additional fire fields your party provides simply makes it easier to guarantee nonstop 25.

The elementalist is the only class that can solo provide perm 25 might.

The 195% boon duration also adds very high uptime on protection, regen and swiftness – which usually add up to 100% on all 4 boons when you add in the random boon procs from other party members, which need not even include a guardian.

I did a level 38 fractal with PuGs before with 25 agony resistance on the Elementalist and didn’t get downed. It’s VERY strong.

In uncat, if you draw aggro by running first, you can completely nullify harpy Launch with Swirling Winds, Magnetic Wave (which will be part of your rotation anyway), permblind from the Lightning Hammer and invulnerability from Arcane Shield/Obsidian Skin.

And for the swamp fractal, by doing the Lightning Hammer skill 5 – Arcane Wave – Phoenix – Magnetic Wave rotation, on a max-boon duration setup you’d end up with 1 minute 20 seconds swiftness. You can reliably take the longest distance wisp and always get back in time. Any immobs you can clear instantly with water attune and skill 6, any knockdowns you can clear with Arcane Shield (it’s a stunbreak).

This is post-nerf, at any rate. Previously the build had higher DPS by being 0-15-10-15-30, but since Anet moved Cleansing Wave up to a Master trait, it was forced to change to 0-10-10-20-30.

You’re not at the point where you can choose a faction permanently yet. If you are, Eir will explicitly tell you so.

If anything at least do CoFp1 once per day. I haven’t yet met a party bad enough to fail it, and most at least clear it in a moderately reasonable timing.

Ranger and necro perform best in condition damage applications. If looking to do direct damage go for the mesmer. There are people who like to do certain things with just one profession, but if you already have 6 characters I doubt you’re one of them.

Rangers who don’t think about their pets fail.

Necromancers who don’t think about death shroud fail.

The rest, you can probably figure out/already know.

Banners don’t give ‘full’ swiftness, and it takes time to drop it.

25% perm run speed on melee weapon use is FAR better, and doesn’t take a slot on your utility bar.

Elementalists summon two weapons at a time, they’re guaranteed one weapon.

Banners are for group use. If soloing, signets always give a better return on investment for buff/time. If only the user could pick it up this would be an issue, as there are a few rare multiple-banner builds for warriors which depend on party members helping to move all 3/4 banners from one fight to the next.

The only problem I have is when someone takes my 2nd lightning hammer in a dungeon, because it results in a reduction of DPS to the party for 15 seconds, which sabotages everyone with a slightly slower completion time. Telling people about it after the first time they do it usually solves the situation, since most people have no idea how a S/F LH build even functions, they can’t really be blamed for doing it.

Calm down.

I’ve 400 standard trans stones and 80 trans crystals I bought with gems (because trans stones don’t work on lvl 80 gear).

Still not complaining. It’s an addition of 133 useable trans charges, and my trans crystals still do exactly what I bought them for.

I doubt any of the people complaining will have anywhere near the same number of trans-crystals to feel as if they’d be entitled to some form of refund.

Swords are the best direct damage option. Shortbows are the best condition damage option.

Normally people will use Sword/Dagger + Longbow on direct builds or Shortbow + Axe/Dagger on the MUCH RARER condition builds. Long range is often a bad thing in dungeons and whatnot because you’re out of range of the party’s buffs, and they are out of range of your buffs; also, unequal aggro sharing via range also means they take your share of damage as well. In direct mode players spend almost all their time in S/D, while in condition builds players will swap to use skills off cooldown if being aggroed, or camp SB and backshot targets nonstop if not being aggroed. Since both maxed options include a bow, I suppose we still end up using them…

Also, don’t forget to choose a good pet. Their damage does not depend on your stats – which gives pure condition damage rangers a direct damage option via the cats, and pure direct damage rangers a condition damage option via the devourers.

Your spirits don’t inflict conditions, you do. The spirit gives you (and nearby party members) a buff that increases your abilities – e.g. the Sun Spirit makes your (and your pets and party members) inflict Burning.

If the Burning is inflicted by your cat, your armor will not affect the Burning. But if the Burning is inflicted by you, your armor will affect the Burning. If your party members inflict the Burning, their armor will affect the Burning.

Danikat.8537:

IMO GW2 has the friendliest community of any MMO I’ve tried.

QFT.

With the exception of say, soloing Arah…

You can usually get a harder challenge by soloing world bosses/certain champions for now. Probably no longer possible once megaserver launches though.

Macros are for nubs.

Real men play 2 elementalists at the same time and make them combo off each other’s fields.

They said so, yes. But we’ll have to playtest it to know if it really works…

Hunt world bosses off cooldown?

Clear maps?

Drop in starter zones and offer to help new players with whatever they need?

World vs World?

Buy crystalline dust… what?

Do the world bosses, they will always drop rares in the daily account chest and very often 1-2 rares in the daily character chest (and if you’re an altoholic like me, you can do the boss once per character – I do this a lot to get more dragonite from Golem Mark II).

Salvage rares (40s) with mystic kits, get 0-3 ecto (40s ea).

Salvage ecto with mystic kits, get 1-5 crystalline dust (20s ea).

PROMOTE PROMOTE PROMOTE XD

P.S. Salvaging ectoplasm has an ESPECIALLY high rate of dropping luck items.

50 potent blood (1.25 gold) + 1 powerful blood (40 s) + 5 crystalline dust (1 g) + 5 philo stones (0.5 SP) – total, 2.65g cost + 0.5 SP.

Result – 5 (2g) -12 (4.8g) powerful blood.

Go figure.

Then save up all the t6 mats you make in preparation for the Gifts of Magic/Might.

Meow.

I feed my excess crystalline dust, together with the gold and crystals from dungeons, bloodstone dust from chests and dragonite, farm the rest of the mats from nodes and spam-create ascendeds while doing this.

There is… mystic forging the lowest level runes/sigils can get you a profit on the mid-level runes/sigils. And you’ll get a LOT of those by using green salvage kits on masterworks.

It’s profitable because it takes so much invo space people would rather just NPC the things. The return rate is 1/5 forges. Each random forge uses 4 items – but if it fails, returns you 1, so you’re practically looking at a 1/16 (because the last one isn’t exactly returned – it’s promoted) exchange rate on promotion. Look at the item prices for yourself and decide. If the result prices on average are more than 16 times the price of the lower-rank components, it’s profitable.

Mystic forging masterworks used to be profitable back in the day when rares were 30 silver and masterworks were like 80 copper, before the whole luck thing came about. No longer. It’s probably partially my fault, but that’s a long story.

Don’t mystic-forge rares because the average price of rares is 40 silver ish now and exotics are on average about 2 gold, even after accounting for the higher priced ones. To break even they need to be worth 7 gold or more ON AVERAGE.

Mystic forging exotics is for those who want legendaries. At any rate where a precursor chance is arbitrarily set to ‘x’, the rate of legendary promotion from rares is 1/4x, while the rate of legendary promotion from exotics is x. Since cheap exotics are available for 1 gold or so…

You do the math.

Mystic Forging Corrupted, Molten, Charged and I think Onyx cores into lodestones is also generally profitable and also one of the only ways to really use the skill points the game will spam you with later on.

S/F Elementalist. By a VERY far margin.

It can solo Mai Trin. In addition to doing a heck load other crazy team-carrying that no other class can manage.

Damage wise, 25-perm might on the full party alone already raises their damage more more than any other character can contribute; FGS in the right situations turns bosses/champions into a cakewalk; projectile nullification/reflection abilities only the mesmer and Guardian can match; the highest active personal defense of any class (perm protection, 2 invulnerability skills, perm AoE blind and perm vigor) plus AoE healing and condition removal abilities other classes can only dream of having.. a single skilled elementalist can guarantee success more or less regardless of the player skill of the rest of the party. In every other case, at high level fractals you’d have to somehow bet on the team having at least 2 other competent players… which may not always happen in a PuG. To say it’s overpowered in PvE applications is a complete understatement.

Guardian is a distant second. A skilled condition ranger is likely third, but the chances of finding one of those these days…

Ascended Fractal Capacitors?
Obsidian shards?

Don’t forget the bloodstone dust you only get at level 80 that is needed for ascended crafting.

At very high levels, it becomes the new limiting factor as to how fast you can make ascended equipment for your characters.

It’s hard to resist the urge to troll when you read a thread like this, is it not?

Resists

PvP you say.

Ele: Scepter, because that’s a PvE thing.
Mesmer: Scepter, because it’s always useless other than for skill 3.
Guardian: Scepter, because it can’t hit the targets for nuts. Not bad in PvE though.
Warrior: Offhand warhorn. Nearly everything else has its uses.
Necro: Axe mainhand. It seems to be created to troll players really.
Ranger: Longbow. Also weak in PvE.
Engineer: Flamethrower kit. Tool kit. Also useless in PvE.
Thief: Mainhand pistol. Incidentally also nearly useless in PvE.

If I had a gold for everyone I see in WvW who stops attacking the moment a thief goes into stealth…

A maxed direct damage warrior does 8073.5 dps before buffs from party members.
A maxed bleed-spec (3000 condi damage stat in the most extreme builds possible) warrior does 4800 dps max via bleed before buffs from party members. Adding direct component and miscellaneous conditions (I’m looking at you, Rune of Perplexity) they cannot breach 6000 no matter what.
Direct damage has no cap, condition damage does have a stack limit.
Direct already has a great damage advantage in return for sacrificing survivability while Dire-specced condition builds have less damage for much more survivability.
People who can’t calculate should not attempt to balance the game.
[/thread]

P.S. The warrior’s Deep Cuts IS OP beyond a doubt, looking at the duration increase relative to any other rune or any trait in any other class for conditions. That trait can be nerfed to 20% if you want.

Phantasm sword-mesmers can kill thieves. Phantasms target-lock, and the swordsmen jump away after each hit so the stealth AoE blind is useless.

Every time they destealth they take an instant 8000-14000 damage without the mesmer actually doing anything else. Stealth also does not break the phantasm interrupt-cast.

The one-hit wonder elementalist build can kill anything if you don’t avoid its attack. It’s pretty much a guaranteed 24,000+ damage on zerk thieves. Elementalists with any survivability stat however, have no chance. But those die to everything else in a 1v1 of equal skill anyway so it’s more an issue of Elementalists being weak in 1v1 pvp content.

Condition rangers can kill thieves; the backstab does negligible damage against full Dire. Power rangers are just asking to die. To pretty much anything.

Necros can Fear thieves out of stealth and condition-blast it to death before its Revealed status can fade.

Bomb engineers kill them very easily because approaching a bomb engineer to melee it is asking for death in 3 seconds.

Warriors can kill thieves if they spot them first, and then use Kill Shot for a guaranteed one shot kill if the thief doesn’t evade. If the Kill Shot fails, the warrior dies unless the thief is really, really bad.

Of course, thieves can kill other thieves.

In short: Only guardians can’t. There are guardians the thieves can’t kill but those can’t kill the thieves either; it’s a permanent stalemate.

The thing about thieves is not that they’re necessarily that strong in 1v1, but that using stealth they can force a 1v1 even when outnumbered all the time. Against players who don’t know how to counter stealth, it’s a death sentence. If a group has 4 warriors then without a doubt all 4 will die one by one unless the thief fails.

There are hackers of course. And yes, you can’t kill them, of course. That has nothing to do with the class though…

Just about a month in timegated resources and 600-800 gold for a full set of Ascended from scratch. Not too bad.

Then there’s legendaries, which will cost 2000 gold in resources and the precursor for one weapon alone… ;-)

All weapons of the same tier and stat type have equal power, generally. Ascended is 5-10% stronger than Exotic. Legendary is Ascended strength, but with the ability to change stats at will.

To change the zerk meta the following are necessary:

1. Increase in damage output of mobs.
2. Reduction in HP of mobs.
3. Increase in defense of mobs.
4. Objects can take condition damage.
5. Bleed can stack beyond 25 (preferably 75 or 100), burn can stack up to 25, poison can stack up to 25.
6. Healing power scales better with healing skills (greater multiplier).

Only 4 is optional.

Simply nerfing critdmg% doesn’t do it.