Guild Wars 2

The problem is the subject. ArenaNet doesn’t need to implement a DPS meter. What they need is a better combat log – some stuff isn’t even displayed. Then they could maybe show other group members in the log. With the log in order, they only need to support writing it to a text file, which should be trivial. Altogether, that allows for external analysis tools without getting their hands dirty.

As for the currently available tools, only the one that pulls the log from memory is technically against the rules. The only risk in using it however is trusting a executable. ArenaNet doesn’t actually ban for trivial things like that.

If you restart the story, you forget the recipe and lose access to its components. You have to replay the story from the first step to the point where you make the elixir again.

fourhim.3584:

One last question. I’m still in level 39 rare berzerker gear right now. Will I run into trouble in the higher level zones using just level 39 gear?

Shouldn’t be a problem. Personally, I always play like that, only equipping whatever zerker gear the journey provided. I usually hit 80 with a mix of level 50-70 gear for example, then play through the story for level 70-80 rare weapons/armor (no accessories or upgrades), and continue all the way through HoT. It is of course faster to level while geared out, but if you find that you can’t handle leveling like that, be prepared to die in HoT, especially as a zerker elementalist where some enemies will nearly 1 shot you.

Bind AoE loot to a F# key and macro it.

They need to first improve the combat log. Some types of damage aren’t even displayed. Once the log is in order, they simply need to support writing it to a text file, which can then be used to make external utilities.

Unfortunately, if ArenaNet does ever implement a DPS meter themselves, it’ll probably be locked behind a guild upgrade or something and be as simplistic as the training area. Imagine if open world bosses showed a scoreboard at the end like certain other MMOs. 90% of the participants would probably have less than half the damage of the top.

Shylock.4653:

Really???

Bitterfrost Frontier has only 2 waypoints, bad means of map traversal and an isolated southeastern area.

They’re toning down waypoints in favor of adding ways to travel around faster. They’ll probably add another method of travel with the next expansion, in the same way HoT added gliders. The problem with having too many waypoints is that they make the world feel smaller and emptier while making it easy to miss everything in between.

The downside of reinstalling is that it’s going to cost ~25 GB while having no benefit. Copying just saves times. It doesn’t matter either way as both will have the same outcome.

Removing AP would create too much of a mess. They’d do the opposite and boost everyone’s AP to the daily cap. They’d also need to grant all historical achievements.

The trick with achievements however is that overall, they don’t matter. Most can be cheated anyways. You need to look at specific achievements instead, like 8 lights Liadri, whereas someone with just the regular achievement probably exploited it.

Deleting your local settings (%appdata%/Guild Wars 2/Local.dat) will have more of an impact than re-installing. Local.dat may bloat over time and increase load times.

Re-installing vs copying, the only difference is that you’ll lose any data that isn’t currently in the game, so Gw2.dat will be a few GB smaller depending on what you’ve been around for. Performance-wise, there’s practically no difference (0.0000001%). If you’re looking to optimize, either copying or re-installing to a freshly formatted drive and not using it for anything else during the process would be better than using the drive as is. Defragging the drive will generally have the same effect, but not always.

Manasa Devi.7958:

I’m still wondering why I don’t get an elixir when I finish making an elixir.

You didn’t have a container to cook it in, so you ate all the ingredients and used yourself.

Who knows why they didn’t just make it a useable item. They were probably rushing to finish and didn’t want to create a new item. They obviously didn’t put a lot of thought into it with the daily reset considering some people will make the elixir just prior to it.

It’s not breaking any rules. If ArenaNet wanted to stop it, they’d simply cut the positional information while in certain areas. If they did that however, people would just read the information directly from memory, which is how the better DPS meter works, though doing so is against the rules.

Jinroh.4251:

Wait we can have addons in the game now?! Since when?! o.0

It’s not an addon like you’d seen in other MMOs. It’s a program that displays on top of GW2.

Saxon.8507:

In my opinion, a personal story is personal, not a group story.

So… you want the support NPCs removed so the story is all about you doing the stuff solo?

Saxon.8507:

I just can’t relate to a dead character moving around like a risen.

You want a hardcore mode where your character is deleted? Technically, you’re only knocked out when you go down.

Vayne.8563:

While it’s true some encounters do require huge numbers of people, this isn’t one of them. In fact, more people can make this fight harder if they don’t know what to do.

This is why events should display their scaling / intended scale. Many people think solo content is group content and group content is zerg content, then think everything is easy while they’ve never actually played it as intended. It doesn’t help that that ArenaNet rewards that behavior. When they see a low population, they assume failure and are either hesitant or don’t bother. “Taxi in more people or we’ll fail” is something I’ve seen many times for events I’ve either done solo or with a fraction of what we already have. However, those could just be the leechers wanting a effortless ride.

Vayne.8563:

A lot of fights are easier when people try not to DPS everything down.

As an example, the sloth queen in ember bay will fail if everyone just does DPS. Didn’t expect that did you? Most people probably think she’s easy as they effortlessly zerg her, but have you ever tried her with ~3 people post-buff to see the actual encounter? Either everyone there needs to be pro zerkers or nobody can DPS since her phases are based on her health. You need to wait out the food deliveries to put her to sleep, or you’ll fail.

Only your hardware related settings are stored locally, such as graphic and sound settings, and are found under %appdata%/Guild Wars 2. If you’re only adding a drive and not changing the OS, they’ll still be there.

GW2 doesn’t actually need to be installed, so you can simply move your old GW2 folder to the new drive, Gw2.exe and Gw2.dat specifically.

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

“I’m going to have to run around making another elixir if I want to do that.”

((opens Final Fantasy launcher instead))

The elixir takes about 10 minutes to make from scratch. Take 3 eggs to the warmer just like you did in the story and gather 10 berries from the north side while AoEing down icebrood for suet and to complete the grawl heart for the firestone.

Alternatively, you don’t need the elixir, but this will be far easier to do on certain professions or with help. Take a torch with you for the sprint and use the tube, the same one used to get the mastery point. When the tube flings you and you’re directly over the switch, glide to interrupt it, then fall down to the switch, gliding at the last second to break the fall. You have no time to waste. Activate the switch and lean glide down to the waterfall as far as you can, falling the rest of the way and gliding to break the fall. On the ground, use the torch sprint the rest of the way. You’ll barely make it, so a profession capable of moving while downed will make it a little easier. If you can get someone else to press the switch, you can simply fall to the waterfall and walk in. If you casually try this by yourself, you’ll likely fail, so making the elixir would be faster.

If you think the stats were changed, compared them to the wiki (attribute bonuses at 80). Look at the Major x2 Minor x2 column. An Ascended Maurader chest for example should be 121, 121, 67, 67.

WvW bonuses do apply to PvE.

Celtic Lady.3729:

How do I get 100% map completion for all my alts without doing the story?

By taking the thermal tube, the same one used to get the mastery point, then freezing to death.

Free players have limitations. Wait until they reveal the next expansion and include HoT for free, assuming they keep their 1 box plan. Wonder what they’re going to try this time to counter the backlash. They should have charged for season 3 and included a season’s pass with HoT.

I doubt they’d do it, but you could try contacting support to see if they would be willing to swap the names of those characters.

For comparison, a total makeover kit in WoW costs $15 and includes a name change, or the name by itself is $10. GW2 is basically the same price, except you can pay in gold.

If the character you’re on has completed episode 7, seeds of truth, you should be able to find it at the Priory Historian (camp resolve entrance) on the first page in between the other ascended items. I just tried it with a character that hadn’t touched season 2, then completed only episode 7. If your story journal has S02E07 marked as complete, maybe your account is bugged, so contact support.

maddoctor.2738:

But if you already restarted it… there is no way to get the elixir unless you use a new character.

If you restarted the story, you have to keep playing it up to the point where you make the elixir again.

The problem is, scaling isn’t fair. If they’re going to let zergs trivialize everything, they should let everyone do so. It’s possible to do the Gerent with only 3-5 players per lane (minimum scaling), but the catch is, they’ll need to know how to play and it’s going to take far more effort for the same rewards. Why bother when you can just taxi to an easy mode map to AFK and win. If scaling was actually fair however, the zerg would always fail – see shatterer’s pre-nerf break bar.

The split meta design was originally done to counter zergs in active maps, but it’s devastating for everyone else. Silverwastes was eventually nerfed to compensate for its dying population, so HoT will likely also be nerfed with the next expansion. If they’re going to keep doing this, they should split these events from the map and have them in their own area. At least then they could scale events for exact numbers, limiting the population to something like 20-50. Alternatively, they could keep it as is and make actual overflows, where all instances are linked together as if they were a single map.

Your drive may be failing and will get worse over time. You may want to check it for additional errors (right click the drive > properties > tools > error checking) and use a disk utility to check the error counts.

What probably happened was it was trying to read a bad sector on the disk. Hardware failures like that will cause Windows to freeze because it’s waiting for a response. Eventually the read would have timed out (~2 minutes), allowing Windows to resume. When the read failed, that sector of the disk would have been marked as bad, essentially cutting a piece out of GW2’s data. GW2 would have detected that, resulting in a repair operation.

Personally, I’d rather have waypoints like this. It makes no sense that waypoints are in random places, especially hostile places. If vines could destroy them, surely something else could, thus waypoints should only exist near settlements. Instead of all those waypoints, they should bring back shrines, allowing you to respawn at either the nearest or last seen. Then they could add event-specific shrines with auto revivals (at bosses).

Doam.8305:

Amnoon Oasis and thus Crystal Desert.

Probably because of that, more so considering ArenaNet said they had a 6 month cycle.

Animations are based on skeletons, so anything with a humanoid skeleton is already set. It’s why they could do the Kodan and why they can’t do something like a Quaggan. Tengu is the most likely at this point.

Adding another race would be very expensive, though it could be greatly reduced by sharing features of an existing race, mainly the voice. For the personal story, I doubt they’d have one, at least not a full one. They’d probably start at 80 and have a single chapter introduction, then would jump straight into the shared story of the expansion.

Skyrox.4852:

I don’t know if this was just mac, but I could face the camera in any direction and press w and I would walk that way. I cannot do this anymore. But thanks for the advice

There are two ways to rotate the camera, one with left click, the other with right. If free camera is enabled and you left click, your character will move in the position they’re facing. Regardless of the setting, if you right click, your character will move in the direction of the camera.

If you’re using an apple mouse, ensure that the buttons are actually left and right click.

It won’t be unlocked until the event chain in the area is completed.

The boss can be difficult for melee-only, but you really shouldn’t have a problem as a staff elementalist.

The troll shouldn’t be hitting you at all. Simply stay at range and watch for it to throw its swarm. When it does, move to the side so the incoming puddle doesn’t hit you. If you were already moving, change your direction so it’s thrown away from you. With the 3rd one (usually), distance yourself from them, since it’s probably going to point at you next, causing the puddles to chase you. When that happens, simply keep moving to outrun them.

For the floor AoE, simply watch the path it’s taking. It gives you like a 3 second warning with the marks on the floor before it pops. Wait in line for the next to pop, then just run into it. Alternatively, it takes about 1 second for the line to progress, so simply dodge it.

Laken.9018:

It takes two fireballs to do 1% damage as I’m a staff ele. That means need to land 200 hits without making a single mistake to assure victory

Good thing that lava font and meteor shower are worth like 50 fireballs then. I recall it taking around 3 or 4 minutes for a zerker staff elementalist.

Use burning retreat as another evade or to further distance yourself from the swarms.

LilShippo.5194:

So in the “My Story” adventure you get to understand that theres an army of Undead controlled by a Dragon. in HoT you get to learn that the slyvari/plant characters are controlled by a Dragon.

Wait until you figure out that all of the dragons have an army of their own and are capable of corrupting/controlling others.

Dueling in PvE was something they were thinking about at one point, but it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever do it. It’s simply not an important feature. Polymock (minipet battles) would likely happen first, but I doubt it’ll ever happen either. Costume brawl, custom arenas and guild arenas are the alternatives.

nottsgman.8206:

you still both see the yellow dot on the map.

If you just turn on invisible, it’ll stay. You’ll need to leave and come back or waypoint for it to update.

GW1 only has basic authentication, which is why you can login without issue.

If you’re being asked every time, either you’re not choosing to remember your IP, or your IP is wildly changing each time.

If you’ve friended them and they’ve friended you, they can see through the invisible status. Blocking them will prevent that, as well as hiding your guild location.

The living world was designed to play out in pseudo real time, with the story being dated and seasons playing out over the course of a year. Considering that, season 3 will likely only have around 6 episodes. 2 years is fairly average for an expansion release cycle, so they’ll likely reveal the next one around then, then take a 3-6 month break.

You can manually try a different auth server:

NA:
Gw2.exe -authsrv 64.25.38.171
… or 64.25.38.54, 64.25.38.172, 64.25.38.51, 64.25.38.205

EU:
Gw2.exe -authsrv 206.127.159.108
… or 206.127.146.73, 206.127.159.77, 206.127.146.74, 206.127.159.109, 206.127.159.107

Considering you can access the forums, there’s likely nothing wrong with your connection to the NA datacenter. They were under a DDoS attack a few days ago and did “accidentally” ban the IPs of some countries, so perhaps your IP was banned. Only support could help you in that case, but to work around the problem, you could use a VPN.

To rule out any software conflicts, open (WinKey+R) msconfig and under the boot tab select safe boot and network. Click OK and reboot. In safe mode, run Gw2.exe directly and try to login. Open msconfig again and uncheck safe boot to return to Windows.

Try running “Gw2.exe -log” and logging in, then open %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/Gw2.log. It might give more details on the reason.

Knowing the exact range is already possible by using the positional data GW2 provides for mumble. There are already apps/overlays to solve this problem.

Adding a range indicator themselves would probably require a lot of work. They’d have a much easier time not putting the skill on cooldown if its fails the range check, but then they’d need to implement a way to cancel the portal.

They always patch in the morning (pacific time), so approximately in 8-12 hours.

It was once possible to track all events using the API, but that was lost when they implemented megaservers. There is currently no way to see them, but you can see the nearest one to you by limiting the content guide to events, which requires 100% map completion.

You can find timers for world bosses because those events occur at fixed times.

zealex.9410:

“oh these chaos glose look nice i wonder if i should put money to buy them ?”
“nope why would you do taht just go farm tarrir 4-5 times and you will have the gold”

Unless you’re the type that needs to buy everything, it’s always been easy to acquire the gold for gems by simply playing the game. As people continue to farm AB, the value of materials will diminish and as they exchange gold for gems, the amount of gold required will increase. If it takes you 4-5 times now, it’ll eventually take you 8-10 times and so on. Meanwhile, gems become harder to reach for everyone else and overall increases the likelihood of spending money. Keep in mind that most people aren’t farming, so it’ll probably work out in ArenaNet’s favor.

The problem is, people would ignore the mechanics, then whine about the encounter taking too long. Either way, they should simply give it a time limit which enrages the boss.

BrotatoChipps.9158:

They are of no use, and serve no purpose outside of that specific area, and therefore are not truly “lumped in” with other HOT content.

Once you unlock all masteries in a region, you regain the ability to obtain spirit shards for leveling within that region. Most people aren’t going to raid, so they’ll never see that in HoT. If raiding was separated into its own region however (HoT, Tyria, Raids), they would.

I wouldn’t count on seeing it changed however because it’ll soon be forgotten, maybe even abandoned with the next expansion.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The only way to make things clearer in the description would be to state, “this is an upgrade to core accounts; the base Heart of Thorns expansion can only be purchased with cash”

People don’t read descriptions. They need to change the name, like Heroic Pack. If they kept the name, they need to put the HoT upgrade right next to it, but locked like the other HoT items, though it’d likely be the same problem as they ignore it.

You could try an enhancer like sweetfx, gemfx or reshade to compensate, but if you try to look hard enough, you’re going to notice the stretch when compared to a smaller monitor.

The bigger the monitor, the more the screen is going to be stretched to fill it and the worse it’s going to look. You could try increasing the resolution if supported. 2560×1440 is 27".

MMO PvP has never gone well. People want to be able to jump right in to it, and MMOs simply don’t support that. Just the idea of it being an MMO will turn people away, because MMOs in the past have been about grinding PvE for gear to roll people in PvP. They’d probably have better luck selling SPvP entirely separate as its own game (not even titled GW, but rather something like heroes of tyria), more so if they dropped gear and builds and instead relied on preset heroes. Note what all of the popular PvP games have in common.

ArenaNet was originally about team combat and they’ve always wanted to get into esports, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were thinking about a MOBA; GW2’s combat setup was based on it. However, ArenaNet is usually against stuff like that because they want to be different from everyone else.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Why would the Raid Team lie about it? If one doesn’t believe what the Devs state, why bother? There would be absolutely no use seeking or perusing any kind of information.

When they revealed the size of the raid team, they were being a little misleading. The core raid team may be small, but they’re not the only ones working on raids. Shared developers, like artists, modelers, effects, sound, programmers, etc, also work on them. It doesn’t really matter, but they could potentially be pulling extra resources from other projects, the more popular likely getting priority.

Unlike most other MMOs, ArenaNet expects you to actually pay attention. If you actually listen and look around, everything should become quite clear. The shadows for example, Kasmeer tells you they’re attracted to the fire, and if you watch them, the shadows die to the fire while putting them out.

If you found the dragon hard, I’m guessing you haven’t played through HoT. People call GW2 easy, primarily because they just zerg it, but its solo content is far from the casualness of other MMOs.

Amon.5042:

should there be more in the future

There already is – season 3. There has also been similar complaints about it, as it featured a short figure it out tutorial where the NPCs only hint at what to do.

Raiding in MMOs is known for its gear grind. ArenaNet couldn’t do that, so they offered legendary armor instead. I wouldn’t count on seeing it elsewhere because it’s needed to coax people into raiding. By the 3rd expansion however, it should be old news, so they might offer another set, assuming they don’t keep releasing them with raids.

SPvP will likely be the next to see legendary armor, but as a tournament reward. I wouldn’t count on WvWing getting any because it’s meant to be a casual playground for PvErs to get into PvP rather than for hardcore WvW.

In the past, a suggestion has been to add the swapping feature to ascended. It could happen one day, but certainly not until a full set of legendary gear has been released.

It seems people are confused. It is possible to buy HoT in-game through the gem store for real money. You can also buy a deluxe upgrade for gems in the gem store, but you can only see the HoT deluxe upgrade if you already own HoT.

Assuming you purchased HoT, as shown below, it’ll take around 4 days to fully unlock. Also, exit the game and log back in.

GW1 account management was merged with GW2 a while ago, so if you need to modify an unlinked GW1 account, it’s done so through account.guildwars2.com with your GW1 credentials.

If your accounts are linked, are you forgetting the character name? GW1 requires a character name from the GW1 account to login.