Guild Wars 2

phyrr.4750:

Hexalot.8194:

AH HA !!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/its-the-final-countdown/

“Our journey is nearly over—very soon, you will be gliding through the jungle canopy, battling to level 100 in fractals, building a guild hall with your friends, overcoming challenges in the jungle to unlock your elite specialization, competing with your friends and guildmates to get to the top of our new minigame adventure leaderboards”

Well there you have it folks. Looks like the elite specs are going to be unlocked via “challenges” in the new map.

This is what i always wanted! Although, they could mean new Hero challenges, lol. But i hope it’s another type of challenge.

Sometimes when it sounds like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it just may be… :-)

AH HA !!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/its-the-final-countdown/

“Our journey is nearly over—very soon, you will be gliding through the jungle canopy, battling to level 100 in fractals, building a guild hall with your friends, overcoming challenges in the jungle to unlock your elite specialization, competing with your friends and guildmates to get to the top of our new minigame adventure leaderboards”

Well there you have it folks. Looks like the elite specs are going to be unlocked via “challenges” in the new map.

Dinks.2478:

People need to calm down, its not that hard. I have one of each class with 214 hero points, it took me like 2 weeks to get every class like that. While you’re all on the forums complaining you could easily spend the next 2 weeks preparing instead. Or you can spend the next 2 weeks complaining and have to do it at launch.

Calm down ?

Heh… I’m over here sharpening my pitch fork right now in anticipation of what Anet might do come launch. Fairly sure I’m not the only one. :-)

Crimson Clouds.4853:

It could change, yes.

Personally… I doubt it will.

And I personally doubt that Anet will be willing to face the coming kitten storm in asking players to grind 170 hero points to unlock an elite specialization, and then do it for each of their alts . We’ve already seen them back down over much less.

mulzi.8273:

Hexalot.8194:

Bah !!

As long as the Silver Wastes chest train keeps chugging along pumping out gold like there is no tomorrow, they can nerf salvaging/dungeons to the ground for all we care !!

Unless I am missing something here, SW will be indirectly nerfed into oblivion. About 75%+ of the money made with SWs are from salvaging the crap in the chests. Depending on the salvaging nerf, it will decimate Sws farming and make it a huge waste of time. For those that played GW1, the best comparision were the dunes farming, when Anet decided that those critters wouldnt drop anything anymore..

I really wish they would have announce this earlier. Being mainly a solo player, they completely and utterly just said ‘get out, we don’t want you playing our game.’ Salvaging mats is the only real way to make money if your not into dungeons/raids/fractals.

Really ?

Then I guess I’m not doing it right then because I never bother with salvaging anything but yellows (green and blues that don’t sell on the TP I just end up NPCing) for the Ectos. Still make more money there on a per hour basis than anywhere else I can think of, LOL.

Bah !!

As long as the Silver Wastes chest train keeps chugging along pumping out gold like there is no tomorrow, they can nerf salvaging/dungeons to the ground for all we care !!

Orangensaft.7139:

consider that you need ~50% world completition anyway if you want to play a character effectively (being able to do all dungeons with contested WPs too and being able to reach EVERY guildmission spot isntantly…)

you will have to explore most of the Map Zones to some parts anyway… Points of Interest and Vistas are a matter of seconds just like WPs are and there are quite a few Heartquests that can be done very very fast too…
sometimes you can wait to do it and see if a certain event that makes the Heartquest completition very easy pops up…

in the end you just have some more tedious Heartquests left and that is not hard to finish then^^

I aldo recommend everyone to do 100% world completition at least once!
and search in every corner … funny minievents or beautiful scenery can await you in some more or less hidden locations^^
Minidungeons and Jumping Puzzles that you find on your way are a really cool thing to do especially when you discover them on your own

Good God… no.

Never done world completion and fairly certain I never will (unless forced to by ANET). I tend to spend 90% of my time in WvW and to be honest, the only reason I’m even in the open world right now is to grind hero points in a last minute ditch to be able to open the elite specs on as many of my characters as I can on launch day.

PyrateSilly.4710:

We only have 2 weeks until the expansion releases. How much more do you want to know and not have the option to discover on your own?

Well for starters how many Hero Points are necessary for opening elite specs. And No I do not want to wait til launch to find out the magic number.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Hexalot.8194:

AsiraasiB.7165:

annnnnd this is why I’m a norn necro… snow Leopard for dash and stealth lol .. I don’t use my elites much on necro anyway…..

kitten … I insta-leveled a human necro recently because I wanted to play Reaper, but completely forgot about the norn racial. LOL… makes me want to delete it and raise another one. Four minute cool down is a bit much though.

4 minutes is pretty harsh, but then again, it’s basically a guaranteed disengage, and WvW is a game played out over days rather than minutes. You can run back to a friendly tower and go take a bathroom break or something.

Ya… I’m actually seriously considering it. In addition to stealth, a 1600 range dash on a 10 sec cd is pretty insane.

AsiraasiB.7165:

annnnnd this is why I’m a norn necro… snow Leopard for dash and stealth lol .. I don’t use my elites much on necro anyway…..

kitten … I insta-leveled a human necro recently because I wanted to play Reaper, but completely forgot about the norn racial. LOL… makes me want to delete it and raise another one. Four minute cool down is a bit much though.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I mean, it is only really a convenience issue, greatsword 3 and sword 2 both have good gap closers, and in PvP and WvW nobody slots the speed traits anyway because they arent useful in combat

If you’re talking about other classes this is clearly false since every Necro that I know of slots the passive speed trait while running with dagger and same for Warriors and their 25% running speed while holding melee weapon. I also know that one of the big selling points in the Mesmer elite spec as well (making it a virtual must have) is the new passive speed trait.

Welcome to the world of the Necro where you are not meant to escape. Reaper shroud does provide a sort of leap, but it’s not going to allow you to outrun the zerg. :-)

Xyonon.3987:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhF6kZTolGsxGwmGgeTs8LYxHxo4VkKL8FCWQJtAwHA-TxRBABXt%2Fge6bsU9HsU+toSQCOlCA8kCIEgitA-e

have fun with nearly 50k HP AND being “zerker” :P

21% base crit out of shroud ?

LOL… no just no.

ronpierce.2760:

Hexalot.8194:

Pelopidas.2140:

Yeah it did against vulnerable foes. Now that axe got a 10% buff, life blast with axe+unholy fervor should be doing more damage than life blast with staff. Haven’t tested it though, so.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t one-handed weapons do only 50% of the damage of a two-handed one when equipped in DS ?

I’m going by the fact that one-handed weapons only have half the stats of a two-handed one, of course.

It’s not a matter of stats on the 1h. The 1h+oh stats are the same as a two hand’s total stats. Not to mentioned you completely factored out all the stats on armor, hehe.

The thing that makes LB hit less with 1h versus 2h is that 2h weapons have a higher weapon strength, which is the base for damage coefficients. A coefficient goes further with a higher base damage weapon.

For instance, a Exotic dagger has a weapon strength of 924-981 while a 2h has a strength of 985-1,111. So the difference is there, but its not as big as you’d think. The numerical gap increases with damage multipliers too.

Ok… got it. :-)

Pelopidas.2140:

Yeah it did against vulnerable foes. Now that axe got a 10% buff, life blast with axe+unholy fervor should be doing more damage than life blast with staff. Haven’t tested it though, so.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t one-handed weapons do only 50% of the damage of a two-handed one when equipped in DS ?

I’m going by the fact that one-handed weapons only have half the stats of a two-handed one, of course.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Hexalot.8194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

Come Reaper, the same is true with axe. Hitting 50% crit chance from gear is fairly simple. Decimate Defenses will take it from there and actually synergizes with axe.

Ah… but what about might stacking on life blast via Reapers Might trait ?

As of right now, no way to get might on axe skills. ;-)

Life blast still wins by a land slide.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

In actual practice, the above isn’t true. If traited correctly, you can currently achieve 100% crit rate with life blast, which means its actual DPS will always be much higher than anything Axe can do.

meow one twenty.4376:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Hexalot.8194:

Varonth.5830:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Here’s the issue with the Axe autoattack: there’s very little counterplay to it, less so now that the range has been increased. This means the damage can’t be too high or it becomes incredibly obnoxious. Without having done extensive testing, I’d estimate 10% is probably on the high end of balance-able. If Anet wants to improve the Axe further (and I suspect they probably should), they’ll need to give it something other than just additional damage.

Mesmer greatsword autoattack would like to have a word with you.

Great sword auto attack range is virtually point blank though.

Mesmer GS aa is 1200 range and scales by the further they are the more damage it deals.

And hits more targets.

Any serious mesmer would tell you though that the GS auto attack damage is crap… even at max range. Mesmer GS really shines because of mirror blade and the iBerserker phantasm. Oh and of course it’s knock back skill.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Hexalot.8194:

Varonth.5830:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Here’s the issue with the Axe autoattack: there’s very little counterplay to it, less so now that the range has been increased. This means the damage can’t be too high or it becomes incredibly obnoxious. Without having done extensive testing, I’d estimate 10% is probably on the high end of balance-able. If Anet wants to improve the Axe further (and I suspect they probably should), they’ll need to give it something other than just additional damage.

Mesmer greatsword autoattack would like to have a word with you.

Great sword auto attack range is virtually point blank though.

Mesmer GS aa is 1200 range and scales by the further they are the more damage it deals.

The wiki is off by a mile then…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dusk_Strike

Edit… LOL we are talking about mesmer here. mix up sorry.

Varonth.5830:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Here’s the issue with the Axe autoattack: there’s very little counterplay to it, less so now that the range has been increased. This means the damage can’t be too high or it becomes incredibly obnoxious. Without having done extensive testing, I’d estimate 10% is probably on the high end of balance-able. If Anet wants to improve the Axe further (and I suspect they probably should), they’ll need to give it something other than just additional damage.

Mesmer greatsword autoattack would like to have a word with you.

Great sword auto attack range is virtually point blank though.

mistsim.2748:

druids will be able to crank out 10k+ damage over a 2s cast with Natural Convergence, in addition to slowing and immobilizing foes, cleansing condis, and throwing out huge aoe heals. this becomes a 1s channel with quickness.

Tidal Surge will also likely get an aoe debuff or dps component to it. we’ll have to see how quickly we can fill our celestial energy bar. but so far, this such a cool variation of the Deathshroud. I like it, but it begs the question…did they run out of ideas?

Meh… you’re comparing Druid’s elite to Necro’s old core spec. Compare it’s damage to Reaper Shroud and then get back to us.

Lily.1935:

Hexalot.8194:

Holl.3109:

Full valkyrie is quite bad for pvp/wvw since you rely on traits for ctit% soooo much.
For PvE it doesn’t really matter…

With upcoming Reaper being able to stack crit based on vuln on enemy (and this is outside of shroud), I think valks will indeed be a valid alternative for Necros.

the issue isn’t valkyrie’s lack of precision or the reliance on traits. Its its lack of recovery that hurts it. Any heal you want to use, any heal used on you is less effective because of your high health pool. Compared to a similar set with toughness rather than vitality, the toughness set has easier recovery. Now, Vitality does scale with both power and condition damage while toughness only scales with power. However, when trying to recover high vitality compared to high toughness, vitality has a much harder time recovering than toughness. And since condition damage isn’t very common in PvE, the extra health is really more a hindrance.

Also, I’ve been testing full valkyrie in the beta weekends. It still has greater survivability than berserker or sinister. But its weaknesses make me suggest mixing it with cavalier so recovery isn’t so kitten you. or you could mix it with clerics if you don’t care about the crit loss.

Oh sorry… I was looking at it more from a www/pvp perspective where having a large health pool is more important for mitigating bursts than toughness. And of course the necro shroud’s life force is dependent on the size of it’s health pool too.

Holl.3109:

Full valkyrie is quite bad for pvp/wvw since you rely on traits for ctit% soooo much.
For PvE it doesn’t really matter…

With upcoming Reaper being able to stack crit based on vuln on enemy (and this is outside of shroud), I think valks will indeed be a valid alternative for Necros.

Senario.2038:

Xillllix.3485:

Jekkt.6045:

oh and mesmer can instaburst more or less everything.

Yet manages to not get balanced at all. I’ll never understand Anet’s reasoning to allow classes to insta-kill other classes from stealth.

They are in love with Mesmer currently. Sadly I do not trust many company’s attempts at “balance” because more often than not they don’t do a good job of it.

Have any of you guys even READ the balance preview notes?

They just swung the nerf bat at PU Mesmers, reducing stealth duration by 50%.

StinVec.3621:

Ehecatl.9172:

To StinVec.

Remember that in SPVP all pets are automatically unlocked for all rangers, even the Hall of Monuments pets that you are suppose to unlock from GW1. It seems probable that the HoT exclusive pets will be available in SPVP but if you want them in the rest of the game you need to buy the game and go tame them just like everyone else.

Ah, that’s a very good point. Thank you for reminding me of that being the case for pets in PvP, Ehecatl.

I suppose saying the new pets are available to all rangers is not incorrect as they are available to non-HoT rangers, but only in PvP. Makes sense. I didn’t think of that.

If that is exactly the case, I hope I do not need to start mentally placing an asterisk next to information like this that they release – kind of like:
“And this is for all* rangers, not just the druid.”

• HoT pets only available in PvP for rangers on accounts that do not own HoT

Maybe I’m just sensitive to the words being used in these information dumps and I shouldn’t be surprised to see everything new as requiring HoT, even new ranger pets that we have been begging for several years to get. :\

I interpreted it to mean you didn’t need to acquire the druid elite specialization to get the new pets… but that needing the expansion to get them was a given.

gavyne.6847:

Sviel.7493:

I was eating dinner

The spaghetti was not worth missing this, not at all

Where can I watch it? Can someone summarize?

-Commanders can set squads to be open, closed, or invite only.

-50 players in the squad.

-Squad UI adjustable, you can drag players from one group to another, it’ll show player classes and their hp.

-Squad UI shows the supply count total as well as supply count in each groups.

I can see a number of guilds (you know, the ones that don’t like to run with random pugs) being extremely happy right now.

panda the chop chop.4712:

at least with dash you can run away from druid

Based on the video, Druids get what looks like some kind of 900 range leap or something.

rapthorne.7345:

I’m glad we will finally have a dedicated healer. As much as I enjoy GW2, the trinity is something I’ve sorely missed, and is almost essential in providing meaningful group content

Oh so we’re back to… “group ready to go… looking for healer”… are we ?

SkiTz.4590:

Hexalot.8194:

wolfgang.3471:

So, Rubi asks " we have seen the ranger forums and ranger is not in a good place – what do you think about this"

WHY IS THIS NOT BEING SAID FOR THIEF WTF

Haven’t you been following the elite spec reveals ?

Ruby currently loves her thief and is very forthright about it.

Rubi – god bless her soul – is about as casual of a player as you can get.

You think she dwells deep into the root of the problem and look at systematically like some of the serious thief mains? no, she logins and just plays around, has fun, which means, in her eyes, thief is fine. You ask any casual player, they will say “yea i love my class, its awesome! theres nothing wrong with it at all!”

You can do that in this game so long as you don’t care about being competitive .

I 100 percent agree. My main point was that if you’re looking for an advocate to talk about all that’s wrong with the class… Ruby’s not your gal.

wolfgang.3471:

So, Rubi asks " we have seen the ranger forums and ranger is not in a good place – what do you think about this"

WHY IS THIS NOT BEING SAID FOR THIEF WTF

Haven’t you been following the elite spec reveals ?

Ruby currently loves her thief and is very forthright about it.

zatara.2590:

Just saw the end, and he said he sees druid being very strong in WvW “being able to sustain against a whole zerg” ……………………w t f……..no other words

That’s misleading. Druid won’t sustain himself against the Zerg (he’ll get melted like everyone else no matter what how powerful his heals), but that he’ll be able to sustain his “team mates” against a zerg. Basically doing the Guard’s job but even better.

Thief gets short straw ?

Dragon hunters would beg to disagree…

I find Rangers boring but LOL… I’m going to roll one for that flying flame breathing fire dragon pet alone…

Coulter.2315:

So when they forced you to level 9 characters to 80 was that cruel too? Its part of the game.

What are you on about ?

ANET hasn’t forced anybody into leveling anything. In case you missed it, getting experience scrolls has been made easier than ever and together with the 20 lvl booster, has virtually eliminated the grind of leveling an alt. Oh… and they are part of the game too.

Ross Biddle.2367:

In no particular order

Energy
Speed
Generosity
Paralyzation
Doom
Hydro
Intelligence
Force
Accuracy
Impact
Geomancy
Bursting
Rage
Battle
Might

are all options that can be used on various classes and builds to good effect.

One of Fire/Air I like because it can be used to track stealthed targets, particularly for cleaving when downed and invis (if you don’t have some other on hit boon/effect/animation proc)

No Bloodlust ? :-)

I often wonder why so many people look down on this particular sigil… especially in WvW where 25 stacks are so easy to maintain with aoe skills.

style.6173:

I’d say it will be much more of an accomplishment if JQ is still top 3 next year. With the new system of not being able to buy guilds, it makes it tough to replenish as people leave.

Example: Look at TC. They likely won’t be back to top 3 permanently. Why? As soon as they played a week in T2, a lot of their bandwagon guilds jumped to other T2 servers. No way to get new guilds with the full status.

Well TC had a good run in T1 but it appears they have now gone back to their roots in T2 (remember… TC really only got “promoted” due to the implosion of SoR).

Nike.2631:

Isarii.2804:

It’s baffling. Between Longbow and having to kite people into traps, it makes absolutely no sense that Dragonhunter doesn’t have access to a 25% movement speed increase.

It’s less baffling when you keep in mind all the cripple the DH is doing.
x1 speed vs x.5 beats x1.25 speed vs. x1.

Sorry but that explanation doesn’t hold water. Necros have plenty of access to BOTH chill and cripple yet Anet still gives then access to running speed both as a trait and utility skill. Lack of improved running speed or reliable swiftness in general is the number one reason I retired my Guardian. I guess I just got tired of being tethered to travellers runes just to improve my quality of life.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Super special premier of swimsuits and/or customizable underwear.

giovr.6538:

Sylent.3165:

No one knows. Reddit posts are actually 100% guess. Until anet releases the information it will be a mystery. I can say 100 just because it’s a number I find to actually be fair.

More than guess is data mining, meaning that at that date in the datas inside the game that was the actual amunt of points, seems 100% guessing ’cause developers from anet can always change their mind before releasing some new content.

And they have changed their minds on hero points already. Originally to unlock all the core specs in the last major update you needed to be lvl 80 plus have at least 65 hero points. At the last minute they changed their minds and just had the core specs unlock at lvl 80 alone.

So basically everyone should just take whatever “data mined” info is dug up with the proverbial pinch of salt.

This again ?

Don’t like food ?

Then stick to spvp. Problem solved.

X T D.6458:

I would like to say thank you to FA and SoS for the many great fights they have given us this week, considering the tough situation they have been in for a long time now (Ive been there I know its rough). Many of us have consistently commented on the nice fights you have given us, and we were happy to see you had people actually show up this week to put up fights, defend etc. Good luck to both your servers and hope to see you both rebuild

-Hugs from BG

I would like to echo these sentiments as well. During NA time you guys have certainly come out in your numbers.

I personally wouldn’t hate having to spend another week in Tier 2 if it came to that due to RNG roll, but I guess you guys probably want to see the back of us by now. :-)

“Cloaking Waters

Availability: Castle
The fountains in the castle’s courtyard grant stealth to allies."

Wait What ?

HaHa ! Yak’s Bend is getting bent over in the latest score. :-D

Raven.9603:

Wryscher.1432:

Jay.7546:

Natto.5819:

Tyaen.5148:

If you mean close in PPT, sure.

That’s only because Maguuma doesn’t play for points. If we did, we would be fighting in Tier 1. We are humble players that pay with honor. If we don’t control ourself and hold back, all servers would cry at our power level.

Isn’t WvW about PPT? How do you tell people not in your guild to hold off? Do you pull punches and not run all out when fighting? Not sure how all that works. When I’m on I play to win. I play to cap and back cap and if I see another server I fight them but I don’t do it at the cost of our teams PPT. I don’t spawn camp, drop siege on dead soldiers, laugh, emote whatever, nor do I run away from a fight. But PPT is what its all about and fights while achieving it. No?

When you run the Zerg you can control the ppt you get. To a certain extent. T3 likes to think if itself as the fight tier. Guilds have a habit of just knocking holes in sm to bring out whoever has it and then just running around the hole fighting whoever shows up.
Or taking a tower and then just squating in it untill people show up to take it back. Heck I’ve seen blobs that could easily have taken everything we owned, open a fully upgraded tower we owned and then just stand outside waiting. When we wouldn’t come out they just left back to their side.

So it isn’t really about not playing to win, they play to win the fights, just not the ppt. Since none of them want to move up, winning over all by a large margin would be bad.

Although with the new transfers coming in there do seem to be more people showing up doing the ppt thing.

The new transfers are GvG guilds who fled the T2 that T1 ruined by stacking YB.

The GvG guilds mostly dont ppt: they roam around open field areas in big zergs and fight other GvG zergs. The ppt zergs leave them alone.

It is pretty confusing for people who dont know the GvG guild tags, what they’re doing, why they dont want to be followed, or why they will stand outside Bay and not help take or defend it, and when the map queus up for a quick keep blitz, it can get a little frustrating that ~30 people arent helping out. they generally try to avoid active maps though.

The Guild Halls in upcoming HOT should take care of the last part of your post as the GVGers will now have their own little piece of the Mists to PVP each other to their heart’s content without queuing up the border lands for people who really want to ppt.

Sicarius.4639:

myself.2143:

Yeah, Rangers were in a good place when you could run a longbow build that hammered out 25k dmg rapid fires, but since the trait overhaul in preparation to HoT, that’s no longer possible so folks are going back to the older, less effective builds.

I could get 12-15k on squishy if every single shot landed, didn’t get any dodges, misses, blocked, out of range etc in full zerk. What were you running for that?!

He never could, it was a gross exaggeration (unless he was aiming at an up-level or something like that).

Eh… the game just went F2P… give it a week or so for all those free players to hit 60+ and start joining WvW populations. You would be surprised how quickly population issues become a thing of the past.

T2: thus far reads: BG 59K, SOS 21K, FA 20k … which is expected I guess. Some good fun open field fights though. :-)

Clownmug.8357:

Tempest got shafted.

By a staff !

Tarkan.5609:

Hexalot.8194:

Shame indeed. LOL at Vault skill hitting for 6K while using Marauder armor.

Easy to evade and while under the effect of +10% dmg tho :P
Still a nice skill though

Easy to evade if the thief is coming from 900 yds out but not so easy if you’re point blank and stunned/immobilized or knocked down. :-)

Shame indeed. LOL at Vault skill hitting for 6K while using Marauder armor.