Guild Wars 2

Hey, welcome back! That are very good questions and you sure are the first person in this entire forum who asks this*.

There has not been much of a good change to the engineer, a few minor nerfs and a few joke-boosts like a slight damage increase for the rocket-boots and a damage swap for the jump shot (launch <-> landing). If you play meta and want equality to other classes, you will be disappointed. Engineers received one purity-of-purpose update, which removed the stun ability from exploding gyros.

Warrior, revenant and thief are still powerful and doing well. Phalanx strength is still vital and facet of nature are somehow still essential for certain game types.

Guardian was boosted a little, making it one of the easier classes atm. Tempest received a nerf, which pushed it from the throne of max-dps. The landing was pretty rough and some of the players have not recovered until today. Balancing is always a pain. There is no way to satisfy everyone. So ANet did some pvp-only adjustments recently.

If you enjoy meta/zerk play, there is a website that provides you with further information called metabattle.com. If not, stick with the engineer, it is still fun to play.

At the moment, the Tarir meta event is a good way to farm money, just search the forums for “multiloot” but it will be nerfed in a few days. Silverwastes farming still is a thing. The new LS maps work with a new currency, unbound magic, which can be traded for lootbags, materials can be sold for good prices. That method was already drastically nerfed, but still works ok. Fractals are still a thing and Raids ofcourse.

^_^ me want this. This is a very nice idea and would look totally hillarious, like our dear flamethrower. If any dev reads this, please make it come true. Or make it the 2nd elite spec.

Endless Soul.5178:

For me it’s a physical reaction. My body can’t take it with my condition. The last time I had to PvP for my guild (there were only a handful of us on, and we needed this one PvP mission to level up the guild and they begged me to join them) I came away with fast breathing and shaking hands. I thought I was having another crisis.

Years ago I played other games where you shoot each other down in airplanes with no problems. Now, my body rejects it all.

Don’t get old kids!

I feel with you. But I have that problem since I started gaming. Once the opponent is a human being, my body goes crazy. Shaking hands what makes typing/character control impossible. If I force myself to fight, I am like petrified for a few minutes. I do my WvWvW dailies against npcs, and once I come across another player I either run or sit down and wait till he kills me.

wrong profession?

http://i.imgur.com/3uI8OZe.jpg

Where to start?
- legendaries
—> wolrd completion
—> material gathering
—> dungeons
- fractals
- dungeons
- worldbosses
- sub bosses with extremely rare drops
- key farming for bl-chests/skins
- home instance completion
- mini collection
- raids
- mystic toilet for gamble or recipes
- join a guild, people you enjoy to hang out with or just for technical benefits (e.g. raids, fractals, wvwvw, pvp, being special)
- building a guildhall
- decorating a guildhall
- ascended gear
- legendary backpacks/armor
- achievements in general
- jumping puzzles / treasure hunting
- getting all possible ranger pets
- getting all possible skins
- design, equip and dye a fabulous character
- participate in meta events
- lore
- pick a class you enjoy to play and design own builds
- participate in player-made challenges or create some yourselves
- explore the world beyond map completion
- try to understand how the game and its mechanics work
- find and report bugs
- make some new friends
- jump/run arround in large circles for an hour or two, while you have a nice discussion with a person you like
- participate in activities
- participate in festivals and enjoy them once the grinding is done for you
- help newbies
- take a padawan, teach him all you know, get betrayed by him and promise yourselves not to do so again
- take another padawan, because this one is different from the last
- become an expert in jumping puzzles, make a mesmer and offer people help with their achievements
- become an expert in dungeons/fractals/raids and also offer help to people or ask for money
- farm gold
- tarir-master-grinder achievement … “golden child”
- exchange gold for gems and buy whatever you desire
- treasure hunter achievement
… etc.

happy new year and gl finding a motivation

Hi,

here are the good news: there is nothing wrong with your vision or your feelings.

The possibilities for the function gyro are just very few, to say the least. For the fact that this used to be our elite-mechanic, compared to the others, it more looks like the good old bunny out of the hat magic-trick. Not really useful, but the audience will be surprised how you did that ^^.

Try to keep a little distance to your allies and teach yourselves to use the function gyro before you start moving. I also use the function gyro to balance my priorities or to make an ally survive a lethal aoe. As I said above the possibilities are limited. :S

I’m using the racial skills quite often, I also try to persuade people to use them. Always with the same result: “it is not meta so scrap it!” Those are my experiences so far:

human
- engineer is just a huge wow-effect (not the game). You gain access to a very powerful healing-skill with an OK cooldown. It is not the best, but a good alternative to the boring healing-turret 101. The utility skills are good to cleanse conditions and the toolbelt (F1-F3) skills turn out to be area-versions of the skills with way lower cooldowns. Also the animations are pretty cool if you want to point certain things out.
- necromancer can use the Reaper of Grenth, which surprisingly works with the traits Bitter Chill and Deadly Chill.
- every class can use the Hounds of Balthazar elite skill until they reach level 80. Having two aggressive add which deal good damage and tank quite well is pretty nice for most hero-challenges in core tyria and even some in HoT territory.

sylvari
- take root works with many classes. It is a cheap way to have an invincibility-skill. It makes you immobile, but it can save your life a lot of times. I’ve been using it on my guardian to compare it with the Renewed Focus.

norn
- bear transformation is excellent to eat a load of damage without dying. I saw people using it in the heat room of the Thaumanova Fractal. I also remember quite funny build for WvWvW where a guy used to get 90k hp for the duration of the transformation.

charr
- warrior can make use of battle roar in the early leveling stages. Although the cooldown is longer than For Great Justice, it can be used in combination to quickly buff up a group of people when you do not have access to all skills/traits yet.
- other damage based classes and support classes can also make use of battle roar.
- engineer can use the hidden pistol, which also has a nice toolbelt skill. It looks like the unload from the thief. Looks pretty cool, but is not much effective thou :S.
- some condition builds, ofc no metas, use the shrapnel mine utility.
- Although the Atillery Barrage got me for a while, I found alternatives for it. Cast time is too long, cooldown is way too long. And the damage is sadly not even close to the Elementalists’ meteor shower.
- similar to the hounds of balthazar of humans, the call warband also grants you access to two npc companions which attack automatically and take a lot of damage.
- the charrzooka is just epic. Sadly the duration is so short. It is not a quite effective elite skill, but a lot of fun to use. And it grants you access to a leap skill, if your class does not have one. Aiming is a bit weird thou.

Asura
- necromancer and engineer can use the radiation field as a conditon source.
- the elite golems are nice helpers and compared to most other companions of that powerlevel, they have a lower cooldown. Only one at a time.

Hello,

same as with the previous years, I’m about to send ~ 100 game mails within the next 72 hours. XMas presents. The mails will mostly contain the same text and the same attachments. Due to the anti-spam mechanic, this will keep me busy for a long time.

So I have two requests for the GMs:
- Please do not ban me for sending xmas mails. I’m not a goldseller, hacker, bot-user or scammer.
- Please do not ban me for my account name. I know what I look like. I got that name from a very weird situation and if I ever get the opportunity to change it, I will do it. But for the moment, I’m stuck with HnRkLnXqZ.

Merry christmas to all of you and happy hollidays!

PS: Other people with the same issue, feel free to post in here as well.

I’m a huge fan of the old video-games. I grew up with NES and SNES and loved RPGs and Jump&Runs equally. I always enjoyed the idea of selecting a personal difficulty level, to make the game either easier or more challenging. GW2 still is a videogame and I truly beleive we do have the three difficulty levels – easy, medium and hard.

Easy
That is basically what the OP called “noob builds.” Most people call them metas. Predefined setups of character-class, equipment, passives and skills with recommended rotations. The least ammount of flexibilty and free will, for the highest efficiency and the lowest chance of failure and defeat. As in the old games, the easy mode only grants you access to the basics. A narrowed view of what is possible. You get an idea of the whole thing, but nothing more. A demo if you say so.

Medium
This allows you to select between most classes, pick up an own setup, create own gear with unique stats and use a lot more passives and skills than on easy mode. As with the other games, there is ofcourse a greater chance of defeat and failure. But you have access to a big part of the game. Also as in the old games, playing on medium requires experience and some detailed knowledge. Or you die a lot. You may never be as quick as on easy. Still you do rely on common sense, calculate your stats and make your decisions upon your own feeling of what is good or not. Some possibilities are still locked as they look just horribly stupid, even to you.

Hard
This grants you access to everything. You can use every class, every skill, every piece of gear you like and give a kitten about efficienty. Sadly this mode grants you access to the largest pool of failures and defeats. People who play on hard, often use additional handicaps, like playing without runes, or ignoring the recommended group size. You can play as a pink rabbit armed with a toothpick and a voodoo-doll, soloing arah 4. But wether you survive depends on your skill alone.

-
Just choose your difficulty level wisely and keep in mind on what scale the others play. So you won’t have a reason to complain. (this is my opinion)

I use a gaming mouse, but it is totally the wrong one for GW2. It is a madcatz rat 5, originally designed for shooters. Compared to the naga’s keypad it has only three extra buttons which I use for 1 utility skill (thumper turret), weaponswap and the elite motar. I do not use grenades or macros.

The engineer feels easier to control for me, but I’m not useless if the mouse is broken. It just spares some time and wristpain.

There only exist a few weapons & skills which sort of behave like the FT. Most attack which go through walls and obstacles have a lock-mechanism which cuts the damage siginificantly within the first 2-3 seconds. This issue is quite old and never gets touched, although it is quite imbalanced. Maybe the FT is broken or barely functions as long as you leave everything as it is? We have other skills/kits of the engineer where I assume a similar situation. It works, as long as noone lays a hand on it.

We have seen how much ANet, the devs really care about us in the first place. So I would not focus on any complaints about the FT the grenades or other engineer skills. Instead, I would focus on the retaliation buff itself.

In my opinion, retaliation needs to be buffed. It really should come up with the promise given in the tooltip text. Instead of giving static damage, it should reflect a percentage of damage depending of the stats of the source. Once retaliation becomes powerful, the duration will be cut significantly and the sources to get it will be reduced to a minimum. We would have maximum duration times as with the resistance buff or even less and the entire problem would be solved.

So yes, I think it would be a lot easier to persuade the devs to turn retaliation into something powerful than taking a look on the engineer stuff.

I sometimes feel the urge to use this phrase, but mostly the “go back to [game]”
It only happens with a special sort of players, a minority ofcourse. Our community is great, everyone is awesome (no sarcasm).

Last evening I had another approach with one of those special people. It always goes after the same routine:
The first thing they say after their name is from what game they come from. From their understanding, this information raises their rank from a newbie to a wise-elder instantly. After a little chatter they start questioning why GW2 not has certain features, features their other MMORPG has. A few sentences later they start to complain, that GW2 is stupid because certain things do not work as in the other MMORPG. After some reasoning and some explanations and friendly calming words, they continue. They point out GW2 is really bad and ANet should really take a look at that one MMORPG which does so many things right. That is usually the 4th or 5th time I kindly mention that this is GW2 and we are what we are because we are not a clone of another certain MMORPG. After a little silence we usually get to player-housing and mounts and that GW2 totally needs both of them, because that other MMORPG has it and it works so great there. At this point I already start breathing slowly and forcing myself to stay calm and answer in an appropriate non-offensive way. After another attempt of persuading, explaning and reasoning they do somehow understand that GW2 is not that certain MMORPG they come from. But on the other hand they really do not care and tell me another time that GW2 is really bad and it should have all the things they complained about earlier, or it will die within 2 weeks.

And that, well that is usually the point where I lose my countenance and tell them to go back to that certain MMORPG. I feel bad for doing so, but my patience has limits. I am not a jedi or a monk. Any suggestions how to overcome such great ignorance in a more peaceful way?

There is another possible source of problem. The superior rune of scavenging.

If you ever try the treasure hunter collection for real, you will come to this rune more than once. There are a few collectibles which are aquired by charging superior runes of scavenging at certain places of power (normally it should work only at one spot per item).

The places of power always look a bit like a cheap copy/paste job, so probably … they used one of the special places of power source-code for the ones in maguuma. Would make sense, as these are also designed to create quatz and 1 different item.

So if you want to give it another try, remove any runes of scavenging out of your inventory. I hope I’m wrong.

Sadly we do make the same mistakes over and over. About two years ago I’ve been at the exact same situation. Back then we did not have durids, so I compared my healing with guardians and elementalists. Same result, siginifcantly lower healing output and the constant feeling of weakening my group.

Do the math and you will realize the big problem behind the healing engineer. To make it short, our skills scale horribly with healingpower. Nearly every other class out there has better scaling.

Then I tried out different stat experiments for more than a year. Until I reached the point where I literally ignored the healingpower-stat at all. My healing output is not that much weaker than before, but my damage output and survivability increased a lot.

I want to play engineer on support, I want to heal my group. But despite of combos and regeneration spams and condition removes, I can play a regular engineer. Every stat-point put into healingpower is mostly wasted :S. Due to the low scaling, you need to sacrifice way too many points to get any good result. Compared to other classes, it is a waste.

drunkenpilot.9837:

If you have some other ideas on ways to spice this challenge up, or if you have some other unique challenges you’ve read about or come up with, post them here. I’m curious to see if anyone has tried some really wacky things and found something they had a lot of fun with.

I’m doing another challenge, for the third time now. Traveling the world, on a lowlevel character. Basically you start right after the tutorial and try to reach the highlevel zones of tyria. Orr, FGS, Heart of Maguuma. Once you are there, you pick an impossible to reach location and try to reach it. Like the gates of Arah in Orr, or the falls in AB. You can pick whatever class you want, even thief. The challenge is over once you reached level 40. You can kill what you want and use HPs as you please. Traits and Skills are allowed, also gliding. You will die a lot.

I created that challenge long ago, because I wanted to “farm” silver doubloons. So I needed access to as many jumping puzzles as possible. Some in the highlevel zones are quite easy to complete, but hard to reach. So I picked my jumper-character and started running. It is quite surprising how far you can get. And since we have the mastery system, players will think your low green number next to the name is your mastery rank and not your actual level.

Sill enjoy it a lot, and will do it again.

In my opinion, there are four categories:

I. allowed, tolerated and recommended
Those are violations of game mechanics which exist for a long time. They are commonly used and sometimes recommended in public. Noone marks them as exploits, as they are part of the game. Some are better known, some are “secrets.”

examples:
- dash jump, which increases everyones maximum jump distance and makes some JPs easier. Although all jumping puzzles are designed to be done without any speed/jump improvements.
- jump/leap-canceling, which is used for aiming leaps or interrupting a leap at all. The engineer exlexir gun users learn it from scratch and other classes use it as well.
- level 2 weaponswap option
- environmental weapons

II. pikaboo
Those are bugs which exist in the game, but the creators are actually too busy to fix them. They are not causing any real damage to anyone or anything. If you use them and do not get caught, all is fine. If you use them too often and get caught, you may face a punishment.

examples:
- void jumping, long range teleport, climbing objects
- cheating the megaserver, leaping vertical/diagonal,
- using a mesmer to exploit mastery-locks
… etc.

III. not allowed
Those exploits do harm to the game, the economy or the community. Frequently reported on first sight. Some of these also land on the “not enough time to fix it now”-list. But that does not mean the use is legal until it gets fixed.

examples:
- increasing certain boon durations,
- walk through solid walls, walk through invisible walls,
- bugging npcs/mobs into walls or to trigger certain events

IV. goodbye customer
The exploits which are openly marked as banable-offenses. If you use that, you get baned for sure.

examples:
- third party software use
- automated gameplay
- item duplication
- goldsellers

So, back to the OPs question I would say category I can be seen as skill. Category II can be seen as skill and cheating, depending how frequently those exploits are used. Category III and IV are cheating for sure. (imho)

I mostly agree with lordbachus. Depending on how good you know your kits and skills, you should be able to create your own roatations while in combat. Using standard, pre-defined rotations locks away flexibility. Few hours ago I’ve given the new nightmare fractal a try and the first legendary was quite challenging. However due to my experience and knowledge about my class, I was able to create some working rotations while in combat. I also learned its mechanics that way. This is how I like to play the engineer and the game itself. Not reading a stupid pre-written guide made by a beta-tester and a dev to assure you do not run into any try&error situations at all. Just enter the combat and experience, learn and adapt what is necessary for victory.

I have to admit that I have a few rotations, for healing and might stacking. But those work with the thumper turret. Also I do not use the healing turret. Although I may play my engineer wrong in your opinion, I still love it ^^.

You just bought the game and want to focus on endgame content? Are you sure about that? The game is quite huge and the non-endgame stuff is pretty amazing, fascinating and entertaining.

Just pick a class which looks interesting, create a character which looks awesome and travel tyria the old way. Start from level 1 in the tutorial and end up with level 80 after exploring the world and learning the mechanics over time. Once your first character is maxed and your personal story is complete, you should be experienced enough to go deeper into the game and have a look into the endgame. – that is my oldfashioned opinion

But if it is your wish to play the endgame from the start, good luck and enjoy your time in GW2.

When using certain termal tubes on the new map, I run into the same error over and over. I enter a termal tube and instantly die on impact with the ground. It happens not always, but way too often.

Bought the first two tiers last night, it worked back then. Today I came back, and the buff was gone. Here is a screenshot that proves I bought the other tiers already, but as you see on the buff-list, the icon is not there. I do not get any mana-potions anyway.

I actually learned three important lessons in GW2.

1. Konwledge is power. Sharing power is difficult. If you do not have a fancy name or a popular youtube channel, you get ignored. If people see you as an idiot, you can move freely.

2. There is no way to not-offend people in this game. It is not worth to try. Live your life as you feel comfortable and accept some people dissagree and instantly block you on sight.

3. A look into the future does not help you change it. You are falling down and just see where and when you land. You cannot change anything. You can only plan the actions after your landing.

Just gave it a first try. Yikes! I’m impressed. I only play pve and use some different armor stats and runes. But I end up with the same ammount of might stacks as if I use the FT, which is arround 22. In addition I have some very nice buffs and I havent seen a condition causing real damage so far.

I know a few situations this will come in very handy. Thank you!

Few days ago I gave up another attempt on an Akuma cosplay. Some things just don’t work in gw2 – yet. The youtube video of the first one, shows a lot of action but hardly any good perspective of the full body.

As you want a character with tattoos on his arms, norn would be the race of choice. There are a few tattoos which work on the arms and those can be dyed. The beard could be a bit difficult, as the make-over kits do not offer custom beards. So i would go for a bald head, and probably the last beard in the list. Haircolor blond ofcourse.

The armor really looks like leather and not like heavy. But I’ve got a few ideas:
a.) Heritage Set
but only using the chest [&CicDAAA=], the pants [&Ch0DAAA=] and the shoes [&CiEDAAA=]. Sadly it is a Hall of Monuments armor, so I assume you cannot access that skin :S.
b.) Melitia Scale Combo
using Melitia Breatplate [&Cl0DAAA=], Heavy Plate Legguards [&CmEDAAA=] and Scale Boots [&CuMAAAA=]. This version looks much like chainmail, but if you use dark/black dyes on the chain parts, it may look good as well. Tattoos are partially visible and it looks a bit like a military coat.
c.) Rampart Set
using Rampart Chest [&CgkFAAA=], Leggins [&CvoEAAA=] and boots [&CggFAAA=]. This combo covers your arms completely, which means no tattoos. But you can dye the arm parts seperately and make them look like skin. Then the chest would look like a no-arm piece. Sadly this is a Gemstore skin :S.

Medium armor is mostly a no-go for one tiny little reason: TRENCHCOATS !!!! We literally do not have any armor pice which ends at the belt.

I have to admit, after ~ 1 hour I finally found the perfect skin, but I doubt you will like the idea. It uses Leystone Vestments [&CiEZAAA=], Ascalonian Performer Pants [&CmYCAAA=] and Aurora Shoes [&CsADAAA=]. Yup, it is a light armor. As you want to go for a character which (according to the video) looks like a rambo-replica this could be really difficult. You could go for a mesmer, with an offhand pistol and a sword in one configuration. The pistol would at least come up with the post-apocalyptic theme. You can also go for an elementalist, there are tank/berzerker builds out there which support every possible playstyle.

Note: I did a few look-a-like characters myself. Normally when I see I do not find the proper skins, I just scrap the idea and wait for another inspiration. What Ani above wrote about that heavy armor guy looks pretty amazing. If you really only have those two options, go for that and scrap the blonde-rambo ^^.

Looks interesting enough to give it a try. I was looking for a decent condition remover for a while. I just have one tiny little question about your build:

Traits => Tools => Streamlined kits O_O?

I don’t see any kits in your build. Does this trait work with elexirs as well?

Ok, I won’t quote the obvious again. Let’s just say op did not look careful enough. However depending on your personal opinion, it can be a little annoying when you constantly see women in underwear. There are two very cool ways to solve it easily:

1. Move your base to Rata Sum. It is the most efficient built city in GW2, with closest range to all banks, tp, crafting stations. It is also a futuristic architecture and the inhabitants are Asura <3. It is quite hard to tell if you see a male or a female asura if you are not familiar with them. Even if the armor reveals a lot, you literally see nothing but cuteness.

2. Option Menue => Graphics Options => Advanced Settings => Character Model Quality set to “Lowest”
This will cause all players on screen to wear the basic armor sets. The legendary weapons and special backpacks still remain, but everything that could probably offend a person vanishes. It just looks very boring and even a place like Lion’s Arch feels like a city full of NPCs only.

If you read through this sub forum, you may find several pve-builds which work pretty good. For example:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Any-Engineer-PvE-Build

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Power-or-Condi-Engi-PVE-Open-map-etc

about mastery farming:
- halloween food for a straight bonus of + 25 % exp on kills
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piece_of_Candy_Corn_Almond_Brittle
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sharpening_Skull
(+ 48 % magic find as a bonus)
- get an exp booster and head for organized maps with large events with many mobs at once. Once the killstreak is charged to maximum, your exp loot is extreme.
- if you are in a guild with a guild hall, visit the tavern and get the Guild XP Gain (lasts 24 hours and costs 0, increase depends on the guildhall status)
- if you are on a map with a big event about to start and you have a weapon which tags lots of monsters (e. g. the flamethrower), you can also consume some fireworks a few seconds before it starts. This gives you another + 10 % experience from kills.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lunar_New_Year_Firework
- in addition, if you farm only with that character and already own an ascended necklace, you can purchase an enrichment infusion for experience gain at the laurel vendor (10 laurels) to boost your exp by another + 20% from kills.

about maps, well it depends if you want tyria experience or heart of thorns experience. Bloodstone Fen is mostly designed to farm loads of experience, you can buy a permanent map-buff which increases your exp on that map by 10 % (up to 3 tiers). Also there are blue orbs flying in the air which you just have to touch and they give you a fixed ammount of exp. The ember bay is also an option, but that map is mostly to farm karma. Also good sources are the meta events in VB, AB, TD and DS. Look for organized squads in the lfg.

For central tyria experience it is not that easy. Orr is still a thing, temple events. Silverwastes can be a little gamble atm. Also you may want to visit old, lowlevel maps. Especially when the daily events are on those maps. But you can also go for regular low level maps. The thing is this:

We do get downscaled on those maps to the appropriate level, but only a little. Most of our power remains untouched, what makes us somewhat overpowered. When you go for the right gear you can nearly 1shot enemies at ease. If you go into lowlevel maps, you aim for yellow mobs and travel away from the traditional routes. Places where nearly no events take place, far away from waypoints or just unfriendly territory. You get bonus damage in this game for monsters which live long untouched. The longer a monster survived, the more bonus exp it gives. If you use the consumables I mentioned above, even without the killstreak booster, you may gain extreme ammounts of experience within a few minutes.

I leveled my masteries mostly in the old hot maps, before the qol change and in tyria in lowlevel maps (with the above described method). I used a few exp boosters, lots of food and no enrichment infusion/fireworks. Did not even use the cof exploit and still felt it happened way too fast.

Hello,

whenever a new build is available, my client decides to mock me. It opens normal and starts downloading the files until it reaches a certain number. It is always random and never the same.

Once the client reaches that random number of remaining files, it crashes. I restart the client and it crashes over and over again. It always “downloads” the same files over and over again, but the crashes at random numbers, then restarts from scratch. Again and again.

At the moment, the client decided the number 1320 to be its favourite. I open the client, start downloading. The number goes down to 807, crash. I restart the client, and surprise we are back at 1320 files left. This is a joke. I go through this madness every update now.

By constantly restarting, crash after crash, I get my new builds running. But it takes ages and is quite frustrating.

[EDIT] Finally completed the update. Took me arround 30 minutes, and countless of client restarts.

Any suggestions?

I like the jumping puzzle in that area, so when I go to TD I usually pay this place a visit. My experiences with that HP so far:

A necromancer or thief appears at the HP, preparing for battle. I jump off my mushroom and ask them to kindly wait for more people, as that fight is not easy at all. I clrearly point out that we need three people minimum. After a little chatter the guy usually ignores my warnings. “Let me show you how to do that, you coward.”

I return to the JP, but keep the guy in target. Regular players take 10-20 seconds to die, some glascannons dont even survive 3 seconds at all. Then I either ressurect them or they wp back to rata (what is the usual case). After a few minutes, the guy is back. Shocked that the mushroom is really that strong, he asks me if I could lend him a hand. I decline and try to persuade again, three people minimum or it is pointless.

Then I have to listen to some reasoning, like he has to GET THIS HP NOW. It is the only one missing and blablablablablabla. Simply it is of utmost importance that he gets the HP within the next 3 minutes, or the earth as I know it will end. Usually I agree to fight, although I’m totally aware of my soon death.

This time we survive arround 30 seconds with ease and a little more with trouble. We get the boss down to about 60 % HP. That is usually the point where the other guy gets downed for the 4th time in a row, my health is below 2k, I already have 3 conditions on me, I’m crippled and all my blastfinishers are on cooldown. Then I have to make the decision, run or die. Not a hard decision if you ask me, but some people are like “We could have killed him if you did not run away!” Which is just not the case. But it has to be someones fault alone.

Sometimes the guy not returns. His family honor is runied for centuries now, as he was not able to get this hero point. Silently he decides to jump on the next HP train he sees on map chat. If they ever return to this map, which already is the greatest pile of … ANet ever created – the usual stuff ^^.

Some of the guys return a last time. Meanwhile I have completed the JP at least once. I jump down again and try to reason, that we do need three people. By that time, usually anoter person or two appears and wants to start the game as well. We can hardly persuade him not to solo it XD.

Before the fight starts, I send the guys some buff food, which enhances endurance regeneration and grants might on dodge. Most of the time I get it back with the reason “food does not help.” Fine for me, it is expensive anyway. We go into battle and succeed. It is a tough battle still, even with three people. But you have a good chance to beat it without someone dying. If one of the guys is a glasscannon, who does not want to go ranged, you have one corpse at the end :S.

Ofcourse it is possible to solo this thing … somehow … I guess. But I know my limits. And that supid time-limit ruins my chances to solo any HP in HoT anyway. I have my three people rule for this boss ^^.

Thank you very much. I updated my previous post with the answers.

Pretty Pixie.8603:

1.) Retaliation doesn’t directly reflect damage back on an attacker. IN this case reflection means ‘returning damage back on an attacker’.

2.) Mechanically, when you apply the boon, the attacker takes damage when they attack you, scaling with your power.

3.) It ticks only ]once per attack[/], so it’s generally [u]less useful against bosses, since a lot of their attacks are slow. When a mob has an attack that ticks often, Retal procs more often. Retal is way more effective in WvW/PvP where attacks come in wat faster. It’s quite easy to kill yourself by casting an AoE on several players all with Retal up.

Thank you for your answers. I just marked the answers I needed to my questions.

So my assumption in 4.) is technically correct. Retaliation is basically a counter attack function. If I want to deal good damage with retaliation, I need high power. But as it only scales with 7.5 % of power and the base damage is 200, I won’t be able to deal higher blows than 500 damage each hit (approx).

But I’m not done yet, there is more:

When retaliation strikes, is it possible to dodge/block these “counter attacks?”
No.

When retaliation hits me, does it work like a regular attack? Does it use my defense ratings and reduce the damage or does it go straight through everything?
No.

If two people have retaliation active. And one of them attacks the other, once. Will there be a retaliation-bounce between them as long as the boon lasts? Or is there a function which prevents retaliation from triggering another retaliation?
No.

FT 5 saved my life countless times. The blind duration could be longer, the radius could be larger. But the way it works is good so far. We still can use it while knocked out, which is nice. Even with permanent stability and stunbreakers, it is a nice addition in case the other stuff is on cd. I’d like to have an additional effect, to dodge projectiles with the cloud. That would be amazing and serve the infamous “purity of purpose” the devs focused on the last patch. Because you cannot hit something you cannot see.

The FT is one of the kits which received nearly no nerfs so far, and some minor boosts. Either none of the devs play engineer, or none of them loses against FT engineers. Luckyly they focus a lot on PvP, so my favourite kit remains unharmed most of the time.

The improvement of the FT 2, as blastfinisher was a little weird. Yes, the explosion. Explosion = blast. Ok. It is a bit difficult to aim with it, especially if you shoot it across two or more fields and want to trigger a certain effect. But it helps. FT3 could be a blastfinisher as well (imho).

Every patch the FT remains untouched is a good patch. Every patch it gets slightly boosted, it is a miracle. I just fear the day they gonna nerf it too :S

Good morning,

retaliation is one of the things in GW2 I still do not understand completely. There is a wiki, but the information there looks a bit strange and it feels like it does not work as it should in certain situations. Maybe some of you can enlighten me:

1.) Wiki says it reflects damage, but does not reduce the damage you receive. English is not my native language, but afaik reflection means you change the direction. Confused.

2.) Wiki says the damage dealt depends on the power of the source of retaliaton. Does that mean:
Guradian casts retaliation on Elementalist
Elementalist gets hit by Thief

Retaliation damage is calculated with Guradians power?
Or does it mean, target as source:
The damage is calculated with the Elementalists power?
The logical path would suggest:
The damage is calcualted with the Thiefs power?
That would be a true reflection. But I do not think that is the case. Confused.

3.) It is technically possible to die from retalaiation, if you are a human player. I’ve experienced this in pve and pvp/wvwvw. But when I have the boon applied and fight any kind of boss (legendary, champion, elite) it does feel like a waste. While I can knock myself out with a few very bad timed attacks, the damage dealt to npcs seems to be … lower than it should be. Is there a border which prevents npcs from receiving retaliation-damage higher than 0.0xxx % of their max hp maybe? I have no proof, but the boon feels completely useless in pve.

4.) Or is retaliation just some sort of extra aura that hits everyone who touches you. The damage your attacker receives has nothing to do with the hit he has dealt to you. It only checks if he touched you, not how hard? And the damage he gets depends on your power because, the boon is yours. Like you hit him with an imaginary sword of yours? – I know that sounds very weird. I hope that is not the case.

Anyone can cure the confusion?

Different ways to get more space:
- infinite salvage kit: Normally I used to carry 15-20 salvage kits with me, now I only have my mystic one and the infinite one. As I placed it into the shared inventory slot, I have like 15-20 extra inventory slots on all my characters now = totally worth it.
- bag slots from gemstore: If you use 20-slot bags and still have trouble, this can be an option. You need gems.
- mule characters: You always have at least one character you only use rarely. Equip it with 20-slot bags (15 slot bags are a lot cheaper) and use this character as a mule for all the stuff that does not fit in your bank.
- guildbank: these days no longer a good option, back in the old days it was quite cheap. Still it is possible to create at least the first tier (50 slots) without aquiring a guildhall afaik. Not cheap and you sacrifice one of your precious 5 guild-slots.
- clean your bank: I do it once a week and it kinda saves me 2 slots each time. Some things can be sold/salvaged, others can be stored on a mule – e.g. seasonal stuff like continue coins from SAB. If you pick the stuff up once in a while, you start to realize wether you need it or not. If it lays in the bank untouched, you may ignore it for months.

tl;dr
If you have lots of space, you use lots of space.

SpeedyG.7340:

I did a google search on this and all I could find were references to GW1. But with regards to GW2, all I could find was speculation.
So do we know if Skeletons take double damage from Holy attacks? Do we know if blunt damage is more effective than piercing or slashing damage? What about elemental damage? Is Lightning better than Fire against skeletons? Are skeletons immune to bleeding? Would make sense, right?
These questions relate to Halloween and the Mad Kings realm.
What am I overlooking?

Good old days of RPGs … when elemental attunements served a real purpose. I always feel very weird when I pick my flamethrower and burn a lava grub, which is burning and stands in liquid hot lava, to death. However, there are a few mechanics which work in our favor if we use them correctly.

Some of the big bosses (the ones with a special HP bar) have two damage spots. One where you deal normal damage and one where you deal double damage. Like a weakspot, if you say so. If you use weapons which cleave, you can technically hit both spots simultanously what results in damage x3. Don’t know if this is intended.

There are some mobs and mob-classes which resist certain conditions, like the dredge which cannot be blinded or destroyers which cannot be burned. However those seem to be removed slowly from the game, or at least not continued in new maps. For example the destroyers in the RoF. They can be burned although other mobs of the same type cannot.

GW2 rather follows difficulty by game-mechanics everyone can use with every char than focusing on certain attunements which are probably locked for certain professions.

However there is one thing that actually works as elemental attunement, the potions. There exist potions for nearly every mob type in the game, which increase outgoing damage from you and decrease the damage you receive. See in TP “Potion of … slaying.” There even exist some for halloween creatures, like skeletons. We only have two buff slots for food and potions. You can different stuff in there. Some people either ignore food or put only stat-improvement/loot-boosters there. Depends on your needs.

Even if there was a thread of this before, we are not allowed to revive it. (necroposting)

If your guild is acitve during the same period of time, you could organize a guild-meeting and invite every participant into your squad. ANet added a function for squads to start a poll with all squadmembers. Players will have a big message on their screen which they can sign with yes or no. Everyon can see the results on the left, as there is an icon at every member which indicates his choice. (wiki: squad, readycheck)

Another function we use, the location markers. Especially during missions. Our leader sets up two or three markers on the field and we can walk to the marker we want. For example if we have 3 more guilmissions to go, trek, bounty and race. He tells us trek is star, bounty is heart and race is square. When we walk to what we prefer and the majority wins.

Sadly this type of vote is not secret, so everyone sees what everyone decides. Also you need a commander tag for this, which is not that cheap.

About the guild-message of the day
If you want your members to read it daily, you have to put information in there which is necessary for gameplay. We usually write in detailed information about the fastest dailies and waypoints/hints as well as the list for the karma agents (waypoints). As the guildmessage apperars on login and every game-link you put in can be read and clicked on, this works quite well.

Still, even with this little trick, polls are a pain to make. The number of people who really do not care at all is too high. Best would be to ask your members during a guild event, e.g. guildmissions. Those who are online and care, will say their opinion. Once they decided, discuss the result with your officers and make the final decision.

I wonder if they ever think about removing the cooldown-bug from the gyros. It is not a big deal, but it kinda leads all their attempts to balance the cd ad absurdum, especially with the sneak-gyro.

Maybe one of the devs is a dedicated pvp-player who just hates to lose against engineers. Whenever he gets a bleeding nose, we get another nerf. Then we adjust our settings, continue and improve. Then he gets another bleeding nose and continues the nerf. I mean they only nerf things we rely on, because something else got nerfed before.

As ridiculous as this may sound. I had that exact issue in another game, years ago. I was playing my cursed class for 5 years until its power was literally cut in half. That changed my point of view with nerfs. Whenever a new update/patch/build arrives, I’m just happy about all the things that still work. Later I adjust my setup to balance out the nerfs and continue as nothing happened.

If you own HOT, yes. Just to go the Silver Wastes, amber sandfall, north of the camp is a small entrance to an area with a gate to Verdant Brink.

Back in my old game (lineage 2), some classes had cubics. Those were tiny flying objects near the head, always following their master and assisting him in combat. One cleared conditions, other placed them and one even drained HP from an opponent and gave it to the master. It was a fun and very creative way of having pets without the struggle of having camera issues.

I wish all gyros would be minimized as the f gyro and fly arround my head. And become big, once the skill is used. But I guess that is just my nostalgic point of view.

http://legacy.lineage2.com/Knowledge/images/cubics_final.jpg

You are chosing a dificulty level. If you want to play on easy, your options are limited. If you want to play on hard, there are no restrictions. GW2 is a community game. So if you choose a higher difficulty, the gameplay becomes harder but many other things as well.

The decision is yours.

Hello,

first of all I’m not doing much WvWvW, I just go to the maps in the mornings, do my dailies and get out so I’m hardly familiar with the rules and mechanics. What I do know is, that the counter on the top center goes down to 0 and people on the map get a bonus in WXP (?) then the timer starts again.

This morning I came to do my dailies again and noticed a strange person. He was in the corner of a shop, constantly running in to the wall. Yeah probably he is lagging or my gc freaks out. Well, I d/c during my dailies so started over again. Took me nearly 30 minutes today. So out of curiosity I went back to the shop after the job was done and … well, he was still running into that wall.

I know that method from other MMORPGs, where people use this not to get ported out as they are about to go for some food or toilet – which is fine. But due to the thingy with the timer on top, I’m a bit curious if this guy was just short afk or parked his character there before he went to sleep.

So my question is, does this count as afk farming or is it tolerated and I just wasted 5 minutes of our precious lifetime?

One of the major influences in our economy still is the gold/coins and the gold/gem exchange rates. Material, equipment and skin prices are important as well, but everything relies on the gold market. As ANet uses the gem-store to make money, they still have a great impact on the economy, even if they do not touch the other sections at all.

A huge problem of our great economy is still “play the market.” The fact that people can make money from just sitting afk in towns and just doing transactions while others play the game and farm, makes the situation nearly as awkward as in RL. Some of them are so efficient with it, that they earn more money than from regular farming. As in RL this could be stoped within a second, with a small change in the transaction-fee. But why changing a working system? So some of the difficulties we encounter on the market derive from “playing the market.”

About hoarding. Once I had 500 Mystic Coins, because they were on an all time low of a few silvers. When the price exploded, I sold them all at once and bought the remaining kegs we needed for the last guildhall upgrades. I created two peaks in gw2spidy, they are not very high but noticable. Compared to the long time progress, it was a breath in the wind. Space in this game is limited. And what people collect now and hoard, other people collect a few hours later. If all hoarders would sell their goods at once, we may notice a peak for the length of 2-3 hours? Then the farmers would stabilize the market again -as they already do. (imho)

But thanks for the official statement. When talking about economy ingame, I usually earn tons of ironic smiles, when I mention ANet has direct impact on the market. No ecomony works without a good controling system. The market is mostly stable and survived countless of money- and farm-exploits, which would have forced other game-economies to reroll or wipe more than once over the years. You’ve been doing an excellent job. Don’t take the laughs too seriously. The game would not be where it is today, without your work.

Few weeks ago I’ve completed my new dragon hunter. I was working on it for nearly a year. Everything suits now, the looks, the build, the skills, the stats. It is my most powerful character (damage wise). Compared to my engineer it is a squishy glasscannon, but it even survives in HoT territory. Perfect for farming. The only problem, I hate farming XD.

It is so extremely boring to play the DH. I’m used to the fact that my enemies take some time to go down, and that I can nearly survive every situation. I’m used to supporting other people with heals, buffs or condition-removings. Or harrasing my opponents. Also I’m used to be one of the fastest characters on the field. This abomination just kills things and is immobile as a rock – although I use mediation teleports.

I’m playing the engineer for 3 years now, as my only main-charcter :S. All my other characters only serve a single purpose or exits to tell me how other classes work and how I can improve my own stuff. Currently I think about downgrading the dh to a mule ^^.

About 4 years ago I started GW2 and began with a thief. I’ve chosen it for two reasons: style and stealth. If I had my current knowledge back then, it would have been a walk in the park. It sadly felt so squishy, most of the time I was running away from enemies or hiding in the shadows. The stealth was great for exploring, but as I did not know anything about the traits or even combos, it was mostly shadow-refuge only :S.

After one year I switched to engineer as main, where I stand till today. Every attempt of reviving my old thief results in a bleeding nose. Condition, damage, stealth – no matter what I try, I lack the training and the perfection to play this class correctly. To add insult to injury, I started a guardian few months ago with no experience on that class at all. It is my most powerful character now (damage wise).

I even tried to do the unthinkable and maxed out the defensive stats for once. Still feels like balancing a raw egg on my head. Now the thief is degraded to a mule again, until I find enough motivation for the next attempt to revive it. I think it is just me and not the class itself.

When I come across newbies who play thieves, I show them the possibilities and the ways to improve. May they have a better experience …

Imho all classes with a basic set of weapons and straight mechanics like warrior, guardian, thief & ranger are good for beginners. Revenant, mesmer, elementalist & engineer require knowledge to use properly and basic understanding of some game mechanics. That is why I do not recommend them as starters. But when I see a newbie on one of those, the last I would do is ask him to switch his class ^^.

As we explained more or less detailed above, it is a class based function, not a cheat/exploit. Or to say it with the words of a fellow countryman of yours:

“This is truth: when you sacrifice your life, you must make fullest use of your weaponry. It is false not to do so, and die with a weapon yet undrawn” – Miyamomo Musashi (A book of five rings)

The fact that you are able to write in better english and the words of Joxer are proof enough for me to block you ingame, so we shall never meet at all.

You want an advice about your 50g? Take a look at the guilds needs, if you do not see them, talk to your leader(s) about the future plans. Then take a look on your own money. Pick a sum you can give away without losing your smile. Enough that you can still reach your own goals in the estimated time. Now mail that money to a friend and he shall return to sender. Look at it and look into your wallet. How does it feel? Is it much? Then use only half of it :)

Just wasted another 5 minutes of my life to click on this guys link in his signature. English is not the native language *surprise*

If you want to complain about unfair mechanics, we should also get rid of stealth, stability and every sort of immortality-buff. Would make the game a lot easier, for certain classes and would butcher a few other classes completely. Every class has its own super-power. Some are visible on first view, others take you hours of gameplay to realize.

In your channel, which I did not subscribe, I noticed you play various classes. necromancer, mesmer, ranger and revenant. No thief, no engineer and no guardian. Try out the engineer yourself. Try to be as good with it as with your other classes. And if you still think, the gyro is OP. We can ask the devs to nerf it.

But complaining about a class you do not play, for a skill you do not understand, because you’ve got a bleeding nose in pvp is no base of a discussion. Know your enemies, learn how they play and you can beat us even with that OP gyro ^^.

I still have not completed it yet. But after every attempt I get a little further. Meanwhile I was able to watch that famous “behind the scenes” video. From my understanding, the goal was to create a JP with maximum scales. Maximum difficulty on every parameter. I think they unlocked that achievement for themselves.

But I do not like it. It is definetly the most ugly puzzle I ever set foot in. The mapping is … skulls, rocks and lava. A good jumping puzzle has some sort of atmosphere. There is nothing inside. There is not a single spot where you really want to take a break and enjoy the view or the background sounds. Instead of using environment-based mechanics we are limited to gliding masteries in order to proceed. A volcano, with so many sources of temperature, pressure and updraft-sources. We could have had mechanics as with the skipping stones from southsun cove. Or a hot dust trap-mechanic, like we have seen in the aetherblade hideout. You could have used a mechanic to let us wet ourselves with water, so we resist walking in the lava for a few seconds (leidenfrost effect). You could have added skritts who help you inside the volcano with services, like a giant slingshot that catapults people across the crater instead of using the gliding/leaning stuff.

I love jumping puzzles, I do them a lot. I do tours through several ones nearly every day and try to get even the hard ones on my schedule, as they deserve to be played. Every JP in this game deserves to be played frequently. It was a huge work to create them and each has its own atmosphere which attracts you.

But the Chalice of Tears is the first JP I do not feel an urge to play at all. “Well then don’t play it!” – I can hear you arleady. Maybe …

A thing noticed within the first few minutes on the new map, you changed the water mechanic. We now have tides and waves on the open water, which improves swiming and diving a lot. It feels a lot better and less flat and basic. Although there are huge sections of emptyness in the water, the experience is totally amazing. Whoever was tasked with this, awesome job! And it is sad it is not listed in the patch-notes :S.

The re-design of the mystlock-observatory is also just brilliant. After one of the previous patches, you already made one of the vendors nearly obsolte. The maping is amazing and the vendors and new options – as far as I tested yet – are a huge improvement. It finally feels more like HQ and less like an outpost, excellent job!

Talking about aquiring gear of exotic and ascended rarity, what you did in this patch is great. Finally we have real alternatives to the crafting-procedure and fractal-farmers and regular-farmers have a chance to get their stuff without being forced to play something they do not want. Most of those prices are hillarious for me, but I guess I’m not the target group.

What I’ve seen about the pve mechanics so far, some of the changes force people to step away from simple aac, which is a huge improvement. Sadly I’ve only seen a tiny fraction so far :S.

So far I’m happy with the update, and I’m looking forward to see the rest.

As others wrote above, the accountname is rarely seen. In guildboards and friendlists only when you are offline, which is mostly no reason to talk to you anyway – except you belong to the cool kids who play on stealth for w/e reason.

The names people mostly recognize are the character names. If you want to wear a certain nickname permanently, the best solution is to name all your characters mostly equal. Sounds very stupid, but works quite well. Example:
desired nickname: Hector
Warrior – Mighty Hector
Guardian – Hector The Brave
Mesmer – Mesmerizing Hector
… etc.

I know many people who use that system and it works great. Another option, for guild/friends is you can tell them your desired nickname. Then they add you as friends and give you a nickname on the friendlist. This changes the display name in the friendlist and guildboard for them. Plus when you log in, they receive a system message that you loged in (with your nickname, not the account name).

At last, you can just name your main-character with your desired nick only, but that requires you to play it as main. I did that and it works quite well. But especially for people who love to play several classes, the first discribed option might be better.

And, talking about bad account-name choices … >_>, I’m cursed with this abomination for nearly four years now. After several misconceptions for a bot, goldseller, hacker … I somehow got used to it. I’m still waiting for the day a dev bans me on sight, luckyly it did not happen yet.

Yet another topic my opinion will be ignored because it is not mainstream, anyway:

The racial skills are not as bad as people talk about them. In fact there are very good reasons they are still completely locked away from PvP. They just do not exist in any meta build, thats why people say they are useless. As useless as the shortbow for a ranger ^^.

For example, my first main character is an engineer. I had to completely reroll him once, as I noticed that I have chosen the wrong race. Took me a few weeks back then, but I do not regret it. Why did I do that?
- Prayer to Dwayna is one of the most powerful self-healing skills in the game. The 30 seconds cooldown are OK, compared to the hp you get back. There are more powerful skills with other classes, but for the engineer it is fine. Also suited well into my build. The toolbelt skill is a ground-target area instant heal with a nice range.
- Utility Skills: Prayer of Kormir and Lyssa are basically conidtion removers, which (on toolbelt) are also ground-target area skills.
- Hounds of Balthazar Elite is nice for short dps boost in case motar and elexir/supplies are not efficient enough. Sometimes it is the little extra dps that grants success.

There are many other good examples of racial skills doing an excellent job and provide help beyond the limits of the class-skills. The elite of the sylvari for example, which roots you but grants immortality and spawns turrets is nice as well. Not as powerful as the focus-elite from the guardian, but if you are no guardian it is a nice life-saver.

The norn bear transformation was proven to be highly effective when it comes to tanking extreme damage, when skilled correctly. The asura skills are a bit tricky but the golems are a nice addition for lower levels and the radiation field, depending on your class ofcourse, can be a good addition to your condition-fields.

They are not bad, they are just not meta.