Guild Wars 2

RlyOsim.2497:

hey

for each level you complete fractals in you get a pristine relic:

1-10
11-20
21-30
31-40

so you could get 4 a day, if youre a boss

You could get five. Max fractal level is 50.

Run dungeons; while waiting for LFG to fill, mine rich ore veins in the locations that don’t move, gather perm spinach, strawberries, etc. Champ farm is very bad gold/hr relative to gathering mats at concentrated locations. It’s more for karma really.

It wouldn’t take more than 2 months. 1 and a half, probably.

I assume you’re talking ingame, mind. Batdogi’s method is better, if any methods are acceptable.

Psst. Bearbow has its uses. The shortbow does incredible amounts of bleed damage, and the bear having very high base toughness draws aggro so you can easily stay in its back arc and stack MOAR bleeds. Though in dungeons, the bear is usually not as useful as the Lashtail Devourer, which adds MOAR bleed and also has a superhigh bleed spec. Unless your party’s condi cleansers fail and you already used up your Healing Spring, in which case the Brown Bear’s F2 becomes useful.

Now if you were a power spec and using a longbow from 1200 range, then that would be a problem. Out of range of might, not really taking your share of aggro/damage, breaking the melee stack pattern for CoE bosses, etc etc etc. Don’t hate on condi shortbows.

Btw, the Axe/whatever + Shortbow combination is best used at sub 100 unit ranges so all five poison arrows/all five bleed axes can hit. They’re not melee weapons but sure as heck do much better in melee than further away. The only case in which this build fails is for the singular fight in TA F/F where you have to hit the rangers in perm projectile nullification bubbles. Any condi ranger will have to carry a backup sword if ever running that dungeon.

Also, boonstacking eles is the best build for map exploration. 21+ might on demand, perm swiftness, and very high damage multiplier Lightning Hammer on demand are no joke.

8. 4 have optimised builds already, the other 4 it’s still pretty hard to find a workable optimised build.

I don’t get the people who complain about a lack of skills in the game but don’t also own all 8 classes. If you’ve world explored all 8 chars however, then they’ve earned the right to complain about that… but that’s not true the vast majority of the time.

The mesmer and ele will get one ascended chestpiece each, then the guardian will get full ascended Sentinel since its price is also so high it doesn’t feel like too much of a difference to up that to ascended.

I intend to eventually get full ascended for all slots for all characters by 2015.

Danikat.8537:

Fortunately I also enjoy builds that are more challenging (not because they’re weaker but because they require more effort to make them work). I was actually disappointed when first Oblivion and then Skyrim to an even greater extent made my hybrid stealth spellsword khajiit build easier to make and play than in Morrowind, after I spent ages getting the hang of it.

I used a khajiit with a shield and heavy armor, and punched everything to death. No spells, no weapons. Just armor, smithing and enchanting. It also enforced no lockpicking, no murder, no pickpocketing.

Because of how the level scales in Skyrim, I was actually very much stronger than most other builds. It ended with punching Alduin to death.

I’ve played several other builds, but nothing was as viscerally appealing as punching things to death, so I’ve never killed him again since.

Shouts were used of course, because we’re forced to use them to progress the storyline.

Back to topic, a ranger friend of mine gave me a few builds that average at about 4000 direct damage per second under perfect conditions (max range, 25 might, 25 vulnerability).

It doesn’t even come close to 5000 direct+condition damage per second under nearly any conditions… (potentially breaching 7000 dps under perfect conditions) though I was kind of surprised that it could be played like that.

Kudzu.

That’s the only legendary I’d even think of buying.

Ranger shortbow, shoot from back.

Falunel.7645:

You can see this same effect with rangers- though their max-DPS-if-all-conditions-are-met is lower than a warrior’s, they provide a partywide precision boost and a partywide raw damage boost of 7%, making it more desirable to run a ranger instead of another warrior. Like with eles, though, the skill floor for ranger is higher than that of warriors.

Actually their max dps if all conditions are met is greater than a warrior’s. Condition rangers are ridiculously powerful.

Power rangers (LOL) on the other hand, are EXTREMELY weak due to low power multipliers on their skills.

Aside from that, the rest of your post is more or less correct, and it’s unfortunate that more people don’t know it.

A maximal dps PvE group consists of an Celestial elementalist (lightning hammer and FGS compulsory), an Assassin phantasm mesmer (Time Warp compulsory), a Berserker warrior (1x power banner compulsory), a Carrion/Rampager conditioner ranger (ability to maintain 25 bleeds alone compulsory) and a Soldier/Valkyrie/Berserker dps-specced guardian (Justice is Blind, Renewed Justice compulsory).

In this group you have perm burn, perm 25 vulnerability, perm 25 might, perm 25 bleed, perm poison, perm regen, +170 power/condition damage from the warrior banner, +150 precision from the ranger, +7% damage from the ranger, quickness for use against bosses from the mesmer, perm blind, 3 players with projectile nullification/reflection abilities, perm protection, perm regen, perm retaliation and perm swiftness, a reasonable uptime of fury, and a reasonable uptime of Confusion. The mesmer is also capable of switching into boonstripping mode, which can almost permanently keep boons off rebooning bosses at a cost to personal dps (CoE golem, HoTW p1 boss etc).

The phantasm mesmer does 4500 ish dps, the ranger 5000 ish, the guardian 3500 ish (but does this in AoE and also draws aggro for everyone else), the warrior 4000 ish and the elementalist 4000 ish (lightning hammer mode) to 8000 ish (only when Fiery Greatsword is summoned, and under stacking conditions) – all these are when they work alone. In a group like this where the boons and conditions are not duplicated, each of their dps values is anywhere from 30%-50% higher (mesmer benefits the most, elementalist benefits the least). Overall it’s about 27,000+ damage per second for the group, with spikes of >35,000 possible during a Time Warp.

Conditioner ranger can be swapped for Dire necro for a slight decrease in dps.

Engineers (haven’t found a very effective dps build yet), and thieves (good against single targets, weak against many targets; any stealthing functions can be replaced by the mesmer’s veil and Portal, defensive abilities subpar relative to all other classes because its survivability is based on Stealth, a mechanic generally quite irrelevant to PvE bosses which can AoE everything) can do dungeons, but are suboptimal for completion speeds. I’m waiting for Anet to buff these two classes, but in such a way that it doesn’t send PvP balance off kilter again.

Remember however that whether the player is good or not, and whether the build is good or not plays a very large role in whether the overall thing works. This ‘dream team’ requires 5 elite players, the chances of which getting in a PuG group by chance is very small. People usually prefer to add warriors instead since the class takes little skill to do well – a 5 warrior team can already do 20,000 dps between them, and people like these aren’t hard to find. And they usually prefer to avoid rangers because for some odd reason the average ranger can’t do their job.

Two options.

1. Look for a moving blue icon on the map. That’s a Commander. Where there is a Commander there’s at least one player, and usually a lot more than just one… ;-0
2. Use map chat on the borderland/eternal battlegrounds. Worst case, nobody responds.

By the way, if you have the Outnumbered buff, it’s more likely than not that you’re alone, or very close to being alone. If you don’t have it, it’s certain that someone is on that map.

MasatoInohara.8697:

For pvp , which better? Warrior or Thief?

Depends on what you’re fighting. Scissors paper stone, etc.

Many weapons + Good survivability + Good dps – Versatile = Warrior (Generally you won’t be thinking of anything but dps)
Many ‘weapons’ + Versatile + Good survivability – Good dps = Engineer
Good survivability + Good dps – Many weapons – Versatile = Ranger

Warrior seems to be the best match.

The higher tier servers have nearly nonstop coverage. Mid tiers have two versions – those with round the clock coverage but smaller zergs, and those with large zergs and time gaps where everyone’s sleeping.

Don’t guess. Guest.

Exotic – Buy off TP. Fastest way, often cheaper. Exotic backpieces – Orr temple karma vendors that only show up after the temple is Open (ie no swords).
Ascended – Get 500 in Artificer and Tailor, make your weapons and armor yourself. Material recipes you’ll unlock while levelling. Inscription/Insignia recipes you’ll have to buy for 21,000 karma at the profession vendor. Weapon/Armor recipes you’ll have to buy for 3 gold 5 laurels at the same vendor. Ascended accessories can be bought for laurels at any PvE laurel vendor, or badges of honor and fewer laurels at the WvW laurel vendor. Rings you can also get using Pristine Fractal relics by completing 20 days’ worth of fractal dailies. Accessories you can also get using Guild Commendations – of which you can get 6 a week doing guild missions. Ascended backpieces are through three sources – the Dwayna/Grenth recipes (@#$% expensive), the mystic forge (use wiki for combinations, expensive) and using normal fractal relics – though not every combination is available in the third option.

Thief is most hated in WvW for being ‘OP’. It’s more or less the strongest 1v1 class in a WvW 1v1 roaming context… and herein lies the problem.

People don’t generally cry about a class when it’s a 5v5 fight and one side loses. They don’t know which player was the one that decided the game, or if it was the overall team effort that did. They don’t cry about guardians in a 80 man zerg, they cry about the zerg numbers.

So when people must complain about something, it will be in a 1v1 context. And since that’s where the thief’s abilities are best applied… the result is obvious.

===

Ranger is most hated in PvE because of two problems.

1. The average ranger player is incompetent at being a ranger.
2. The average non-ranger player is incompetent at being a ranger.

Therefore, the overall perception is that the class is underpowered, which is made worse by the generally bad skill level of its players. This is extremely misleading.

Rangers are built, class-mechanic wise, to deal both condition and direct damage simultaneously. They are not built to specialise in one or another. The average player is not capable of thinking in both direct and condition terms at the same time. The most effective damage-based builds must run Rampager or Carrion. And the number of builds that follow this rule in existence is single digit, and they are all not in the current ranger meta.

A properly specced damage ranger has 5000 damage per second before the effects of might, and is played like a thief, without stealth, with a pet. It outdamages all other builds except a particular dps-focused mesmer variety, but does almost the same damage as that at a much higher potential range. The disadvantage is that to achieve this it uses max bleed and poison under ~ 1500 condition damage conditions, so you can have only one of this kind of ranger or a necro in a party. The moment you have two, things start to become far less efficient since only one of them will have their damage properly registered.

The support ranger is also feasible, of which one of the builds is in the current ranger meta. Spirits are used liberally in this, and the ranger’s job in this context is to buff others and keep others alive. However, this build is pointless in the overly easy PvE backdrop, and only really comes into its element in WvW.

If compared to a necro in terms of overall dps against a single target, the ranger is greater. If compared to a necro in terms of overall survivability, the ranger is greater. If compared to a necro in terms of overall dps against very large numbers of targets, the necro is greater.

In summary, the ranger class is hated in PvE because people don’t know how to use it.

===

The most hated in sPvP is the ele, for two reasons again.

1. It’s the hardest class in the game to play by a wide margin. Most of its users suck at it.
2. It’s very badly balanced for sPvP as the class revolves around booning and AoE damage. In an environment where boons can be easily removed or even stolen, this role is invalidated. In an environment where people don’t ever bunch up, AoE is weakened. Builds that do not boon do not play to the class’s niche, and therefore are weak. A non-boon damage based FA elementalist will never match a warrior of equal skill, because the class was not originally designed with that in mind. An AoE elementalist generally never hits enough targets to be worth the party’s while.

Now, OP, do you want to be hated in WvW, PvE or sPvP?

All combos in the game are made of two parts; the combo field and the combo finisher. All effects are calculated based on the stats of the person who uses the finisher. The field or finisher identity of a skill is always given in the skill tooltip.

Heartseeker is your leap. I can’t remember what the smoke field is called. Blinding powder? Anyway, pistol 5.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMUQNAnYVjEVB2FWKWs2Bi1DCt/BxeYoEtoXB0nyMuyaMA-jgCBYfIIhDakWAgKYRjZoFRjtsuIasKmYKYER12dAGxMa1SBsoyK-e

Damage per second (bleed) = 2932.5
Damage per second (poison) = 233.6
Damage per second (direct – 2600 armor target) = 862 (after crit, before fury, before might)
Damage per second (pet) = 272 (before might trait effects)
Stable dps = 4300.

Damage per attack used (confusion 3stack) = 532. Proc rate: 3 stacks every 15 seconds, lasts for 10.5 seconds.
Damage per attack used (confusion 5stack) = 886. Proc rate: 5 stacks every 10 seconds, lasts for 21 seconds (But only two ways to use this is to devourer-swap and to use Shortbow 5, so doing this reliably every 10 seconds is difficult.)

Confusion causes skill lockdown. If the opponent attempts to cleanse bleeds/poison they take the confusion hit, then take more bleeds. If they don’t attempt to cleanse bleeds, 4300 damage per second, of which 3166 damage per second is unblockable because it’s condition damage which cannot be mitigated by armor, and will hit through invuln once it has already been applied.

Overall in PvE content we’re talking >5000 damage per second before might effects. The bad news is that because the condition damage on this is so high, it will definitely overwrite any other condition user in the party. Therefore, the use of this ranger automatically invalidates any necro in the party.

Numbers will be smaller for opponents with condition auto cleanse, larger if might, permfury available, 2600 defense, etc are taken into account.

Note also that this works better for solo contexts like world exploration or WvW roaming. If using it in a group context, remove the signet of stone and replace it with Frost Spirit. And trait vigorous spirits instead of buffing your pet with Master’s Bond, as the 7% damage to the group becomes way more significant than the additional pet stats.

As a S/F PvE elementalist, very much – enough to spec 190% boon duration. But if we’re talking D/D PvP, boon duration is not a good idea. Condition duration, condition damage would do better, because having your boons nulled or stolen is Not Funny.

If you’re using a staff ele against a PU mesmer in a one on one scenario against a player of equal skill, you will lose.

The staff ele was not designed with one on one in mind. The PU mesmer almost specialises in it.

Essentially, you’re hoping your opponent is bad.

Rather than ask you to reroll/change weapon, you should probably change target and hit someone else. Or bring someone else from your team with you to kill the mesmer.

Your objective in PvP is to win by point captures, not by challenging people to 1v1 enforced fights.

For PvE specifically, elementalist.

Why:

1. You can stack 25 might on your whole party. Alone. That’s a 30-40% increase in damage per person. That means you add about 1.5 players’ worth of damage to others before even considering your own damage output.
2. You can cleanse 2 conditions from your whole party, and 10 from yourself, in rapid succession. You also have 3-4 sources of heal of which two are AoE, and can not only give regen, but also Soothing Mist, a regen-equivalent skill buff to your party, that stacks with regen. That makes you one of the better healers in the game, behind only the Guardian and Ranger.
3. You can run nearly permanent protection, regen on your party, permanent 25 might and vigor on your party, and 25% uptime fury on yourself. That makes you the best boon support build in the game.
4. You can swift your whole party for 1 minute 10 seconds, every 30 seconds.
5. Now considering your own damage output, you can match a berserker warrior’s damage output with only celestial gear because of the very high damage multiplier on Lightning Hammers. And unlike them, your skill rotation permanently blinds your targets – which makes your whole party effectively invulnerable to all groups of veteran and below monsters. Against the Nightmare Tree in one of the dungeons, permablind allows you to solo the boss in melee range, where no other class possibly can.
6. You can summon the Fiery Greatsword, whose 3 and 4 skills do the highest damage per second possible. in a stacking environment, your damage under 25 might conditions can equal your entire party’s damage added together.
7. In certain builds, you have invulnerability skills, allowing you to melee fractal bosses that even Guardians cannot fight reliably.
8. You can summon the frost bow. This makes Ascalonian Catacombs explorable modes laughably easy.

It’s gotten to the point that I’m developing all 7 other characters for WvW because of how insanely strong the PvE elementalist is.

But the elementalist is conversely weak in PvP because:

1. Boons are strippable and stealable.
2. Players’ behaviour is much harder to anticipate than PvE bosses. You can’t exactly evade every single major attack by players, though you can do that in PvE quite easily.
3. You have next to no control skills. This is irrelevant in PvE because champions+ have a bad defiance mechanic that makes control useless there anyway, and veterans- die so fast to your insane DPS that controlling them is a waste of time.
4. Mobs do stupid things like stand in the same spot meleeing you when you have invuln on, allowing you to drop ridiculous loads of damage on their heads. Players aren’t half this stupid.

Problems with the elementalist as a PvE choice:

1. Very high skill floor.

===

The classes are designed differently, each class has a niche in which it does better than all other classes at. It just so happens that the entirety of PvE fits into the elementalist’s niche, but WvW functions become way more varied. Attempting to create a build for a class that does not fulfill the specialty of the class results in a build that is inferior to a build for the class that fulfills that function especially well. For instance, if you’re trying to create a guardian that can roam alone in WvW, there wouldn’t be an end to the complaints you’d eventually have against permastealth thieves, because that’s where their element is. If you’re trying to lead a zerg in WvW, guardians will forever seem overpowered and engineers will forever look like kittens (aside from the fact that charr engineers are, in fact, overgrown kittens).

The majority of class vs class comparisons on the forum is about people trying to fit classes into roles the classes are not good at, and complaining about how overpowered those classes which do that role best are.

Because if you were to judge all animals by how far they could reach, the t-rex is forever a failure.

Current meta cheese is permastealth D/P|Shortbow. It’s not 1v3, it’s actually 1v1 three times, as the stealth mechanic allows for them to engage the enemy one at a time.

As for stealth, leap + smoke = stealth. Blast + smoke = area stealth.

Main two problems with Rangers I’ve seen so far are:

1. Most ranger players left are quite bad. There are a few good ones, but too few. Some seem to have the idea that the class is just based on staying at 1200 range and spidering/longbowing from there without ever doing any weapon changes. Many others play a ranger like a weakened warrior for not bothering to ever find out what the pet mechanic is for. This gives a falsely bad impression of rangers as a class to people, leading to the meta where rangers are kicked from dungeons. Non-permastealth thieves suffer from the exact same problem – which makes the meta think that only permastealth is viable.

I’ve had a dungeon once where we had me in my elementalist form and 4 rangers. 3 of them were good, the 4th was kind of a liability. But the dungeon didn’t take any longer to complete than with warrior-stacked parties, and it was CoE.

2. Pet AI is bad. Really.

The main problem with class discussions is that per discussion, half the population seems to play the class, and half the population plays against that class, but has no personal experience playing the class itself. That leads to bad balance fixes, because the opinions on both sides of the fence are misinformed.

To have an accurate opinion on rangers you need to both play a ranger and play against rangers in other classes.

I’m not sure where you’re getting statistics on players leaving the game, probably anecdotal hyperbole.

But yes, the borders haven’t expanded in a while.

Static would be a better word. Neither expanding nor diminishing seem to be accurate.

fadeaway.2807:

See the problem?

No, because the toughness of enemy mobs, their total amount of HP and the amount of damage they do are progressively lower the lower levelled a map you go.

Damage = Power * Weapon damage * Skill multiplier / Armor of target

Have you attempted to kill a moa in multiple areas and note the amount of time it takes to down one?

If anything, they die the fastest in Queensdale.

The problem with your calculations is that you’re completely ignoring the mob side of the equation.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

Put together a list of underpopulated worlds, such as Kaineng, and not only make transferring to those worlds free for a time, but offer incentives to make players want to switch over. Long-duration boosters mailed to everyone on a low-pop server after the transfer period, big infusions of influence for any guild who moves the bulk of its players over, things that people actually want.

Only way to convince players who otherwise lucked out/paid the price to move already to go and try to address world imbalances. Telling me I’m only charged ten bucks instead of twenty-five if I decide to move to Kaineng is pretty much the worst possible way in the entirety of the Internet to get me to switch to Kaineng.

Best thing I’ve read all day. Now if Anet would read and implement it…

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

Basically any of the servers in this list should give you a diversity of gameplay. Though I heard Fort Aspenwood also has queue problems because of a mysterious spike in world transfers just before the league.

I’m biased towards CD because I’m here, of course. But if you want to be accurate, you should probably guest all of these worlds and see what people are like in map chat/LA. Different people prefer different types of people, and the general mentality of players differs per world.

For instance, one of CD’s not so good mentalities is the tendency to completely give up when we’re ranked third in a week of WvW within the first day, and PvE the rest of the week away. It’s like they decide whether or not they want to try depending on the results of the first day’s battle.

Dragonbrand has an abnormally high completion rate of pre-events for dungeons, temples and the like, I often find myself guesting there to open dungeons for LFG. If you like doing group events it’s probably the best among the silver tier for that.

Northern Shiverpeaks ‘always’ trebs SMC from the northern keep when they have it, in EBG. This is especially visible given how very few other worlds do the same thing.

EBay has very large zergs, if you like that sort of gameplay. But somewhat fewer roamers.

IoJ has a lot of WvW roamers and not many zergs.

If you’re a new player though, I’d caution against judging elementalists too harshly at the start.

The skill floor for it is so high that if you’re not used to the core game mechanics yet, you’ll almost certainly be spending all your time on the floor, especially in a PvP environment. It will be almost certainly not fun for nearly anyone if it’s the first thing they try.

But after a while, because of the same reason of having ridiculously involved gameplay, it’s also one of the more fun classes around for me.

To duplicate that feeling on a guardian I had to underlevel my equipment by 10+. XD

There are only two things I am unhappy about.

1. The inability of NA players to guest to EU, and EU players to guest to NA. As it is, if you have an EU friend, someone must pay for a transfer for you to play together. That’s bad policy.

2. The fact that almost every single world costs 1800 gems to transfer to, even worlds that feel relatively dead. I am ok with this server transfer cost for Tarnished Coast, but transferring to a midactive server like CD should not cost that much.

I suppose there are three things that may lead to this very wide difference in opinion:

1. The kind of previous experience you have with grind, and negated max-tier equipment.

It took me a year and 2 months to max-lvl (99, btw) everything in RuneScape, and in that time I still didn’t have enough money to afford the BIS melee gear (lvl 80). Not to mention, there are three sets of BIS depending on your combat style.

Then recently they created level 90 equipment…

Not that that was the first time they did that. The lvl 80 gear invalidated the previous lvl 70 gear tier, etc etc. Every time a release like that happened, players lost hundreds of gold.

And I am one of the fastest people to ever max-lvl RuneScape without using any form of money trade. Back then, money trading for ingame currency was illegal – there was no official channel to do so. Most players, after spending 2-3 years at it, are barely level 80 everything, and the scale is exponential.

After getting used to that, this is a cakewalk. Especially given how much more fun the combat here is.

I can’t comment on what WoW would be like since by the time I got to try it, the game has become so ridiculously boring that I quit in less than a day. Even Ragnarok Online 2 occupied me for longer.

2&3. The economy between lvl 80 and pre-lvl 80 in GW2 is leagues apart, and the difference in resource-earning efficiency between players in lvl 80 is also leagues apart.

It took me 30 levels to earn my first gold, spending all my mats on crafting. It now takes 10 minutes via harvesting permanent locations for rich ore veins – which I don’t need to use to level crafting anymore. All of that goes directly into cost reduction for ascended gear, making it a cakewalk. Especially with multiple alts – each which can harvest the rich ore veins once.

Dungeons are fast as well, especially CoFp1. There is no such equivalent for a lower levelled player. And the more you uplevel your gear and abilities, the faster a dungeon run becomes, making gold per hour even greater.

To a player who’s only been around for a month, seeing a 500 gold price tag plus timegated resources plus the cost of levelling that craft in the first place looks truly ridiculous. But once you get used to gold farming at high speeds, it looks more reasonable, and the main problem now becomes the enforced timegate (because skipping the timegate by buying Damask is really, really expensive).

Furthermore, new characters don’t only need to pay for ascended, but also for 500 in the crafting stats; existing high level characters can sell all of the non tier 6 mats they have, and all the food mats… which generates more gold. This also leads to another major difference in perception.

P.S Zudet, you are correct though, in that my viewpoint does not take into account the previous situation. Still, I’d view the reduction in required effort to be a Good Thing, as long as Anet doesn’t magic up another +5% tier, call it Resplendent, and invalidate the entire Ascended tier with that.

However, we’re not talking 500 of each ascended tier resource every 9 days. To achieve the full set in 32 days, you require 1000 for weapons and 1800 for armor, or 2800. 2800/32 is 87.5 of each per day.

That requires only 5 dungeon runs to get for the empyreal crystals. This takes about 2 hours, if you run CoFp1,2 CoEp1,2,3.
Only 5-6 world bosses to get for the dragonite. This takes 1 hour.

To farm enough mats to get 12.5 gold per day… the dungeons already give you about 7 gold after taking into account the tokens that can be converted to ecto. 5.5 more gold at 1 gold/10 minutes takes another hour. This will definitely unlock your daily laurel as well.

And the chests you get from the above will give you double the amount of bloodstone you need. I’ve so much additional bloodstone dust lying around I was happy when Anet finally created Toxic consumables as a way which I can actually use them up with.

To get full ascended everything in 32 days, all you need is a level 80 character in a guild with missions available, and to play 4 hours a day.

To kit out all 8 classes with full asc requires 8 months from this point on. Given not everyone plays for that long, we should be seeing most efficient players having ascendeds on all slots on all characters by new year 2015, assuming current prices persist. And this is through playing alone.

People who know how to work the market have multiple legendaries by now, and wonder what this whole controversy is about. Remember that each legendary costs enough, when sold, to kit 4 characters in full ascended everything.

It doesn’t even cost that much…

Try making an ascended light armor chest armor….

My problem is more how you can cc and even down a thief/mesmer and it still remains stealthed.

If either cc or downing destealths, I’m happy enough. No need to make damage destealth.

Wait till you do the Risen Priestess of Dwayna.

The colours… oh the colours…

He IS in a guild… with only him.

In any case yeah, the main soloable one is guild rushes. Which really isn’t hard. Just don’t be stingy on your waypointing.

Also, eles have an advantage here. Mine for instance can Swift for 1 minute 10 seconds rapidly – which is carried over when I start a guild rush, allowing me to Swift through the whole thing. If you know the locations of the traps, it’s trivial to complete it 15 times within the limit alone with permaswift. But you don’t even need to make it 15 times. You only need to get there once.

Unless it’s southsun. That one’s a bit of a pain even with permswift.

Aoe heal/tank Guard and cc-lock Warriors are the vanguard.

Supporting roles are the staff berserker elementalists, the grenadier berserker rifle engineers, the full condition necros, the healer/tank rangers, the portal/proj reflect mesmers.

Thieves don’t have much of a role in zergs other than stealth-stomping due to the obscene amount of AoE spam around. They’ll usually contribute more to the WvW effort by soloing camps, killing yaks, killing roamers and guarding yaks – for which few other classes are as good as the thief.

Eles aim for large concentrations of people to reduce their HP fast, and aim freezing AoE on the opposing vanguard. The warriors aim for the other vanguard – charging through, hopefully knocking down as many of them in the process as possible, and then killing the squishy classes following behind. The guardians keep the warriors alive while they charge through a whole zerg. The engis pick off the lower HP ones, and knockback those who try to res the downed. The rangers keep the warriors off the squishier classes, and necros plain annoy everyone in the entire zerg with random multiple conditions. Mesmers usually portalbomb in the vanguard and drop reflection fields on any group of players holding ranged weapons.

Based on your description you’ll probably want an engi or ele. Trouble is, both of these roles are also very hard to play (especially the ele).

Jade Quarry is also very RP.

TC, Blackgate allows you to roflstomp your WvW matchups in the rare moment you actually get it.

Personally, Crystal Desert is not bad. There’s enough people to run world bosses with and the occasional zerg, but few enough that I’ve never been placed into a queue for WvW, and few enough that I can flip camps solo and keeps 4-5man against the kind of worlds we’re matched against.

You can Command, you can follow, you can solo, you can raid, you can troll… all possibilities are open; if you’re good enough, you can create a legend of your own. Not quite possible in larger worlds.

Of course, for smaller worlds, you might not even have enough people for PvE events, and you pretty much have to solo camps for WvW since you wouldn’t quite have a zerg at all. And then you wouldn’t ever be able to get map completion because your world will never take Stonemist Castle.

Middle is best, imo.

I use the Razer Orbweaver. Attunement switch is easy when using the thumbstick to do it, because I never jump and attunement switch at the same time anyway.

Btw keyboard users, he’s right.

Best three healing classes are the Ranger, Guardian and Elementalist, but only in very specific builds.

The problem here is that ‘tons of AoE damage’ + ‘good in dungeons’ = Elementalist, but it’s anything but ‘med survivability’.

Guardians also do quite some AoE damage, but reliably only in melee range. It’s high survivability and good in dungeons, but its mobility is crud.

‘Nice mobility’ + "good in dungeons’ = Warrior, but because it’s basically ‘spam skill 2’, ‘very fun to play’ is questionable.

There isn’t a class that does all 4 of what you want.

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

I don’t suppose you would be willing to share your build with the rest of us?

Linked it in the sig, together with the other finalised builds. Bear in mind its survivability is too high for it to be efficient in PvE, it’s meant specifically as a WvW commander build.

I haven’t decided on endgame builds for the other 5 classes yet.

morrolan.9608:

Good luck getting 10,000 silk scrap in 32 days.

What do you think the 400 gold price tag is for, buying cookies?

It gets the hammer out faster, though both have more or less equal might potential before the random ish effect of Fire Shield. The focus version also always works, whereas the dagger version is prone to interrupts.

Focus
-1s Dragon’s Tooth begins channel, Flamewall begins channel.
0s Flamewall procs, Dragon’s Tooth hits (3 might), Phoenix leaves caster.
1/4s Phoenix hits (3 might) Fire Shield activated (? might depending on enemy), dodge starts, attune to earth (3 might from sigil).
1.25s Dodge ends in Earth attunement (3 might), Magnetic wave hits (3 might), Arcane Wave hits (3 might), Begin channeling Lightning Hammer, Proc Invuln.
2.25s Lightning Hammer fully summoned.
5.25s Final Hit of the first Lightning Hammer combo (3 might).

Might Total: 21-25 might (depending on how many enemies hit you) in just over 5 seconds. 2.5+s grace period, exceeding which the Lightning Hammer’s 3rd hit of might will not proc.

Defensive: You are exposed for the initial one second until earth dodge starts. Thereafter, you’re covered by dodge, invuln, then the Blind from lightning hammer.

Dagger
-1s Dragon’s Tooth begins channel.
-1/4s Ring of Fire begins channel.
0s (Assuming perfect timing on your Ring of Fire) Ring of fire procs at the same time Dragon’s tooth hits (3 might). Phoenix leaves caster, dodge starts, attune to earth (3 might from sigil).
1/4s Phoenix hits (3 might).
1s Earth attune dodge hits (3 might), Arcane wave hits (3 might), begin Earthquake channel.
1.75s Earthquake hits (3 might). Begin Churning earth channel.
5s Churning earth hits (3 might).

Might Total: 21 might in five seconds, you have only one second margin of error or the Churning earth will not hit before the Ring of Fire fades. Also, because Earthquake has a 45 second cooldown, your second combo will only proc 18 might. Given Lightning Hammer is only useable every 60 seconds, you will hammer with 21 might half the time and hammer with 18 might half the time.

Defensive: You are exposed for the initial one second, covered by dodge for one second, then exposed for the next 4 seconds channeling interruptible skills, followed by one more interruptible second channelling your lightning hammer, then another 3 seconds until your first blind hits.

As for controlling Fire Wall, remember that it’s always cast at a 90 degree angle relative to the line between you and the cast point. Nowadays I use instacast, rather than the versions that show you where the AoE field is, because I’m familiar enough with how to position the Wall such that the Dragon Tooth never misses, after doing this for a very long time.

If you are hit 4 times at 1 second intervals after Fire Shield is activated, the Focus version is the only way in the game for one character to activate 25 might within 5.5 seconds. It also requires Arcane wave as a utility, together with Evasive Arcana.

In any case I find it strange your Arcana stat is zero if you’re intending to mightstack. Without sufficient boon duration, might stacks only last for 20 seconds by default, before dropping back to zero. This is in addition to the fact that you’re losing out on 3 stacks from Evasive Arcana, which also Cripples in the way Churning Earth does, without the channeling time.

At present, the build I’m running, at 190% BD, makes it last for 38, so I can comfortably run the might stack rotation every 30 seconds (cooldown limited by Arcane Wave) and be guaranteed permanent 25 might. Do that twice, 60 seconds have elapsed, by which the next set of lightning hammer summons is available to keep this going infinitely.

S/F to stack might in a shorter period of time; also, the invuln, if chained into an Arcane Shield, gives you several seconds in which you can Lightning Hammer anything without fear of taking damage; Fire Aura if procced immediately after Phoenix but before the earth dodge combination attack will allow you to burn enemies and stack even more might while in the Invuln Lightning Hammer state.

When I’m in damage mode I use the Hammer anyway. When I’m not using the Hammer, I’m using the utility skills Water 3, Water 4, Water 5, Air 4, Air 5 and Earth 3. Fire 2,3,4 are reserved for initial mightstacking, Earth 4, 5 are reserved for initial mightstacking. If I had to drop my Lightning Hammer prematurely to save my party with Air 4, interrupt attacks with Water 5/Air 4, save myself with Earth 5 or to heal with Water 3, my backup DPS plan is Air 1 against groups (channel against the furthest target, it’ll pierce and damage all enemies on the way to it) with Air 2, and timing Air 3 for blinding the target before it attacks. If I have to drop the hammer against a single target (happens for CoEp1, after using Hammer 3), I’ll usually spend the remainder of the time cycling Shatterstone to vuln the target so the party members with less sad DPS on their autoattacks will do more damage.

The only situation so far in which I cannot use the Hammer at all is in the Molten Boss Fractal; I’ve attempted Invuln Hammering before, but it turns out it’s better to reserve the Invuln for cases where teammies fall/where you’re about to get killed, and just damage from range instead.

PvP/WvW is a different beast, but I can’t see any way in which a dungeon/fractal/world boss scepter ele can possibly be more efficient with the dagger offhand than with the focus offhand when Lightning Hammers will be your main source of damage anyway.

Now if we’re talking Dagger mainhand instead, I wouldn’t take a focus offhand – dual daggers do better for that type of build.

Met some rather nice people. Aside from just guilds, some people I met when pugging can be nice. I now run fractals semi-permanently with a formerly pug friend (from another world, too). Also, we meet some interesting people in the open world when forming parties with people near the same heart. One result of that is that my guild (who chats in between PvEing, sometimes PvE together, often WvW together, sometimes dung together and sometimes world boss together) is now a member of a network of guilds all based on the same world.

Overall yes, it’s a bit sad, but there is still a nice experience to be found for those willing to look. Say hi to everyone when you get to a new map, say hi to pugs you run dungeons with. Those who respond can be friends.

The point of writing is to be read. The point of reading is to learn.

The only forums with a clear purpose at present are Players Helping Players, where what you write will be read by, and will help, someone…

And the class forums, where some people will occasionally create builds, from which you can learn certain ideas they have to apply into your own; where you may do the same for others.

What are you doing to get 2 weeks per piece on average?

The slowest asc armor at present takes 32 days for a full set, or about 5 days per piece.
The slowest asc weapon at present takes 9 days for one weapon.
Rings you get at a rate of about 3-4 pristine relics a day, or 1 per 5 days.
Only accessories take 2 weeks to get with 6 commendations/week.
Amulet takes 3 weeks to get from daily laurels.

Combining all of these speeds, because you can do all of them at the same time, it takes 32 days to get full ascended WITHOUT buying ascended mats from anyone else. That’s way shorter than 8 weeks. The lack of content I understand and agree with, but I don’t get your point about this being worse than WoW.

The combined cost of full ascended everything stands at about 400 gold, of which 100 of it comes from the backpiece alone in order to get certain stats that can’t be selected on the Fractal capacitor. That can be achieved, if you’re not grinding TOO hard, in 40 days, and can be achieved in less for someone who either 1. plays the market or 2. plays every fast dungeon path every day.

Almost 250 of them now. I’d be happy even if I could convert at a 100:1 rate just so I get to use them up.

Karmic is the best at present because of how nerfed the karma gain has become.

I see. So it’s hot Charr and Asura action.

Actually there IS a colour coding. Past a certain point where the game designers believe it to be impossible for you to kill something, the level is colour coded purple. Not the name, the level. Then it follows the usual colour progression.

Necro isn’t hard to start out with. Elementalist is very hard to master, new player or not, so it isn’t exactly for everyone.

You can join each other’s personal stories as well. It won’t progress your own story, but you get to play together. The other person just has to be in the same party and on the same map, and then accept the instance invitation when the person with the story triggers it.

There’s too much to say to teach the game in full, but some of the links already posted contain much of the most important stuff. Depositing collectibles saves your inv space; carry Crude Salvage Kits as far as possible and break down everything that neither of you wants to use – the remaining materials you can deposit into collectibles. Once the collectibles reach a stack of 250 or you reach a bank or crafting station, withdraw them and sell them on the trading post by right clicking if you’re not intending to craft with them.

Aside from the personal story, GW2 doesn’t have much by the way of traditional quests that you might be used to. The replacement are the dynamic events (orange circles/stars on map) and hearts, which you can start doing even without talking to the ‘quest originator NPC’.

And don’t feel obliged to follow hearts everywhere either. Going off the beaten track sometimes, you might discover a jumping puzzle by chance. There are four jumping puzzles in the Sylvari starting area. ;-)

GW2 is about cooperation, exploration and helping NPCs in need.