Guild Wars 2

I’ve ran soldiers armor and zerk/assassin trinkets in WvW for some time now with relative success.

I’ve also been doing a Cele LB/GS build in sPvP lately and it’s been working very well (especially thanks to everyone targeting me first, allowing my glassier companions to DPS without fear)

You can definitely run something other than glass lb/gs. in fact, you can run whatever you want. It’s your skill level that matters, not the build. I’d say you’ll be better at the game and win more fights if you’re comfortable with your build, rather than number crunching for the “OMG BEST BUILD EVER”

Some outfits are definitely better as outfits than armor skins, due to clipping and such

but i do agree that the trend lately of releasing a ton of outfits and not many new armor sets is a bit saddening.

it’d be nice to have a new race, so as to spread the diversity out even more (i love going into towns and seeing all the different kinds of races) but I agree that it shouldn’t be a priority kind of thing (especially since i wouldn’t even play tengu/largos/kodans/other popular new race choices. my love for sylvari is too great!)

but maybe in the far future it would be nice to see more races

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

So when i read the suggestions, there is no chance of a really serious legendary, right?
I dislike all this candyland-lollipop-style. Vote for a realistic bow, like my favorite in GW1 the naga longbow
Or just give me the skin as a white worthless weapon. So it is easier to catch this nice skin.

there are already basic looking longbow skins. they’re called low level weapons. just salvage them and skin them over your exotic/ascended/legendary if that’s what you’re looking for.

Xandrian.8304:

and I never really considered Bifrost to be one of the silly skins, just because it has rainbows doesn’t mean it’s silly – it can look very epic and serious with the right combo of armour skins.

I totally agree. bifrost gives me that celestial glowy kind of feel, like a weapon an angel would use.

sounds small scale or isolated to specific servers. if anything my connection has been running BETTER lately.

i’d support this. i’m all for simple “casual” things like this, for when i’m tired of grinding or tryharding in pvp and just want to relax and do something calming for a bit

Personally I think arachnophobia looks just as “silly” as the dreamer, outside of the projectiles.

I do agree that a darker or nature-ish shortbow would probably be the best idea though, what with the dreamer already fitting the role of shiny/pretty.

anything that doesn’t involve any form of gating outside of your own skill level.

I think it would be cool if it was a “learning” process. e.g. for druid; you talk to someone, and then get the ability to wield a staff. however, you can only use skill #1 (or maybe are limited to lower level staves) and you have to do some form of non-grindy “training” to unlock more skills and such.

that’s just a concept, i don’t mean it specifically happening that way

Arikyali.5804:

Some people were asking me where my little hideout was, so I’m gonna post it on the map.

Just hug the cliff face until you find the tiny little entrance. It’s easier to spot if you’re heading southward.

dang! i explored the area above and below that very thoroughly, but never thought to check in the less jungy area… :S

huh, i may have to try these runes sometimes. that heal on block seems really strong!

Which character/profession would you rather be?

a slyvari, definitely. profession, i’m not so sure. are we “living” with in game mechanics, or is it more realistic? I’d have to go with mesmer, elementalist, or ranger.

Which game mechanic would you rather not have to contend with?
the pain involved with fighting, if that counts ;P, otherwise, lag.

What currently unimplemented game mechanic would you wish was implemented?
Player housing

Which NPC would you be most likely to seek out and befriend or clobber or ________?
the pale tree

Which zone would you choose to call home?
I’d probably work at the farm in queensdale, with the windmill

I have no interest in the revenant and i’m probably not going to play it

I think living story season 1 was better than season 2

I think the shiny blue luminescent armor looks pretty dumb on a majority of the people wearing it (not sure if this is unpopular)

I think the legendary greatswords look kinda silly.

I think the classes are in a pretty good place right now in terms of balance.

I have a lot more, i just can’t think of any right now :P

EDIT oh i thought of more

I think dueling is a good idea

I think player housing is a good idea

I’m totally okay with them adding mounts. It wouldn’t make the game better to me, but it also wouldn’t make it worse

if it’s only krytan areas, then i’d probably say either kessex hills, or bloodtide coast, based on the sylvari buildings.. i’m giving it a look now, but i dunno if i’ll be able to find it (haha i have 100% map completion and still haven’t explored everything ;P)

EDIT: still searching… thinking bloodtide coast? honestly just looking for nightmare court/sylvari at all. still haven’t figured it out though (not gonna say more hints are a good idea, buuutt…. ;P)

DOUBLE EDIT: i give up for now. i have stuff to do, bed that need my head. I might continue the search tomorrow, if it doesn’t get found by then. on a slightly unrelated note, while searching i passed by the quaggan hatchery in bloodtide coast. i never noticed the quaggan calves followed you! totally adorable.

i recently got my guard to 80 (mostly via tomes and crafting) but i still have about 95% of my playtime on my ranger.

I think a major pro of having one character is not having to spend the money gearing out tons of character. and a fault is that you -obviously- only have the one character :P

Try all the classes you think look cool/fun, and if you don’t like it, move on to something new.

Personally I would be wary trying elementalist first, however. Me and my friend both tried and ele for our first characters and both of us just did not feel it at all. then i tried ranger (with arguably a simpler to understand class mechanic) and immediately fell in love.

and also, if you didn’t know, you can go into heart of the mists (the little swords at the top left, then hit “pvp lobby” or something similar) and it lets you try out your class at level 80 with all skills/traits/stats.

I’d say try everything, or as much as you can. as much as people argue otherwise, all classes can easily fit most roles, and all classes can definitely fit “damage dealer”

as the other people have said, i’d love to see a screenshot of your bank to see what’s really taking so much space. Not even for arguing or to help you clean it, i’m just curious how you managed to fill your bank so fast. it took me ’til looong after max level to manage to fill out my bank (but it seems you have given up arguing your point)

I’ve been playing for a bit over 2 years and one bank space would probably still work for me. granted, i have 3 bank slots currently (gotten via in-game gold, mind you (though i would be more than happy to invest some dollars into the game, given the lack of sub fee.)) but a lot of the items i don’t need at all and simply keep because i don’t “need” to trash them

personally i’d say use signet of the hunt, then swap it out before you run into someone, to a utility you’d prefer more. signet of the hunt isn’t too useful outside of getting places fast

llamas and dolyaks

Assuming you’re talking about roaming/small group, canines are generally the most popular choice, for their aoe F2’s (in particular, wolf for an aoe fear, and krytan drakehound for aoe immob)

other popular choices are birds for beastmaster builds, drakes for tankiness (not too useful in pvp though) and blast finishers, and cats for dps

are specializations going to be toggle-able? I haven’t kept up with the updates much but I always assumed it was a permanent change once you take a specialization.

i’m going into the new xpac locations first thing, and probably going to be focusing on specializations and masteries. I have very little interest in the revenant and it’s class mechanic outside of fancy new skills (which specializations will hopefully offer) so i’m probably not even going to make one, especially if they don’t include an extra character slot. (for the first couple months at least)

The hidden alcove in the grove that you posted, and the top room in the windmill at queensdale (mostly because of the cat)

As others have said, i recommend taking a while to read up/“get back into the game” as it were, so you understand the differences from launch compared to now (quite a few differences in my opinion) that said, my main question if i had the opportunity to ask anet, would be

What will set apart the new WvW borderlands from EoTM, in regards to balance and to keep it from being a glorified karma train?

along with that, i’m also curious about specializations and what their plans are on keeping non-specialization/“vanilla” classes from becoming underpowered in comparison.

P.s. love the show, your guild wars 2 and ESO reviews in particular I think were spot on.

the only problem i have with longbow ranger (being someone who has played it nearly since launch) is that currently it just doesn’t have as much skill involvement as other builds/classes. however, that also means that against a very good player, the build will do extremely badly.

what longbow doesn’t need is nerfs, it needs more involvement in it’s skills to raise the skill roof higher and make it so you actually need to understand the class to pull off a good burst.

it’s the same problem heartseeker spamming thieves had. against bad players, it was extremely op. press 2 over and over and get a free kill. play against a good player though, and they’d shut the thief down.

honestly, it reminds me of some of vindictus’ “raid boss” style bosses, and being a fan of that game and loving it’s bosses, it excites me a lot. it looks like a lot of fun fighting it.

how many times have we seen this kind of post…

salvage 500 rares, and if you get noticably lower results, then let us know. 30 rares is not a large enough sample size to indicate anything. i just salvaged 10 rares an hour ago and got nearly 20 ectos. does that mean that the ecto rate is higher? nope, just means i got lucky

It depends on the amount of stacks it will provide and what you are fighting. I could see things like offhand pistol thieves become powerful stability deniers. 5-7 stacks is enough for a lot of builds, in my opinion.

It’s decent, but with the condi cleanses and such in a zerg, muddy terrain doesn’t seem extremely useful? just me though. Also, bark skin is really useful in zergs, imo. otherwise the build looks decent.

this is the build i used when i used to wvw with my guild http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNUQJATRjMq0yaJLGsw1aA9gaZA8AtDicYbd2FJRBbqA-T1SBABCt/Qh6AwRdH+0EcwhAghHAAlqEYmSwrU+pxRAAgLAApAYSYE-w

it’s sort of a hybrid front line/back line build. anytime you get low on health you can lightning reflex to your back line and either take care of thieves and such, or use piercing arrows to continue dealing damage to the frontline.

EDIT: and also the lack of a sigil of energy or sigil of stamina saddens me. you can’t BELIEVE how powerful that can be in zergs. if your group is effectively killing the other group you’re practically invincible.

Atherakhia.4086:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

I don’t really understand why people who are in support of guild halls are not in support of player housing… maybe i’m missing something about it but they just seem like player housing for multiple people?

I’m extremely in support of player housing. As cosmetic as guild wars 2 endgame is, it also makes a lot of sense to add it to the game, in my opinion (a cosmetic addition to your character that has little to no effect, mechanically). I was excited at pax south when they announced guild halls, because i was hoping for player housing as well. I suppose i’m a minority, but I don’t enjoy guilds in MMO’s, so aside from wasting hundreds of gold on my personal guild to make a guild hall and call it my house, I’m completely missing out and it saddens me.

They should have both.

Guilds should buy a structure and be able to buy upgrades for the inside and outside with guild merits and influence.

Each guild structure should have a public face and a private face.

The private face is an instanced ‘hall’ where the guild can gather privately and a an instanced ‘barracks’ where guild members have individual housing that acts like I mentioned in my post above.

The public face is what others see. In a perfect world all guild structures would share a common base archetecture for the public side that way if ANet ever improves on the system, 2 guilds could go to war with one another, each guild’s structure would spawn on opposite sides of a map, and since they share a common design, they’ll be balanced. We could get some 2forts action in GW2!

of course, i didn’t mean to say i don’t want guild halls. i’m completely in support of them, i just lack the interest in them that i have towards player housing

I don’t really understand why people who are in support of guild halls are not in support of player housing… maybe i’m missing something about it but they just seem like player housing for multiple people?

I’m extremely in support of player housing. As cosmetic as guild wars 2 endgame is, it also makes a lot of sense to add it to the game, in my opinion (a cosmetic addition to your character that has little to no effect, mechanically). I was excited at pax south when they announced guild halls, because i was hoping for player housing as well. I suppose i’m a minority, but I don’t enjoy guilds in MMO’s, so aside from wasting hundreds of gold on my personal guild to make a guild hall and call it my house, I’m completely missing out and it saddens me.

DarkWasp.7291:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

In my opinion, you’re expecting meta mentality in a pug. I run SoTH in pug dungeon runs, and i never activate it. do i lose out on dps? maybe. does it really matter to me? not really. the difference between a dungeon run taking an hour and a dungeon run taking 45 minutes is fairly insignificant to me, especially running with pugs where you’re likely to run into other classes also running “unviable” builds.

Are you talking 1 path or 3 paths? Because even in pugs, you should be seeing a 20 minute max on most paths outside of Arah even in non-meta groups.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

in my books, a pug is meeting and having fun with people. if i wanted meta speedruns, i’d join a guild or those uptight “Xk ap zerker 80’s exp” groups.

I don’t like those guilds/groups much either. I’m half and half. I really just want to have fun, but I want to get the dungeon done in a timely manner as well. On the speed side, fun ends where people start whining about every small mistake. On the slow side, fun ends where the group is wiping at every encounter, or someone AFKs for a long time.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

but the difference between a single utility slot isn’t a big deal to me (i mean geez i run soldiers gear in dungeons and i’ve never seen anyone complain about it.)

The point of my thread here is to get people thinking about ways they can improve their build. It all cascades, as you’ll see below.

-snip-

I’m too lazy to seperate it into seperate quotes

45 minutes/1 hour was just an arbitrary number. but even if it did take that long without it, i wouldn’t really care. i’m in no rush

I don’t like those groups either, but i’m also not trying to use their mentality in a normal pug. and personally (in my opinion) fun ends when people get angry, not when we wipe. as i said earlier (i think) i spent like, 3 hours on an aetherpath, wiped multiple times, and it has been my most memorable dungeon run

I think you’re using a slippery slope fallacy. wasting a single slot on a “useless” signet isn’t going to make you some bad player inherently. that’s like saying that GTA causes violence cause one kid at your school beat someone else up over it.

“1. Who cares what anyone thinks! I like doing dungeons and I want to do it my way!
2. I like doing dungeons, I plan to do more in the future, what can I do to improve at dungeoning?”

what about “i just like having a good time with other players”?

I do get what you’re saying, I believe. I think your way of saying it is wrong, though. Your post seems to infer that people who use this signet in dungeons are bad players (and some may get the idea that they should kick SoTH users, from this post), when i think what you should be trying to say is that using something other than SoTH is a good idea if you want to maximize DPS. again, a speedrunners mentality in a pug run.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

@ITheNormalPerson: The mobile wall thing on Revenant is just a projectile block, not a reflection.

ah, i wasn’t sure, didn’t pay too much attention to the reveal.

however as far as i could tell, they’re adding mobile walls as a new “style” of skills, so a mobile reflection isn’t necessarily out of the question (just speculation though)

My lovely sylvari and her impeccable pet dolyak~

Personally, I don’t see a huge problem with it. condi builds generally have access to boonstrips, and even in cases that they don’t, i doubt resistance will be something you can stack for longer than 5 seconds realistically (10 at the most)

I’m not complaining ’cause they introduced a new form of mobile reflect, as a LB user…

p.s. before you complain about it being op and quitting the game, maybe you should wait until they say something more than “it’s a thing that blocks boons!”… and if you do live, dibs on your stuff ;P

Depends. right now, would i spend 3,800 for eternity? No way. that skin is definitely not worth the gold to me. Would I spend all my gold on Kudzu, or another skin that I “really” enjoyed? Yes, I would, because in that circumstance, those skins would be worth it to me.

In my opinion, they aren’t broken at all, they’re finally a top tier contender which is making all the other top tier contenders upset that someone else wants their spot

as a ranger who runs lb/gs, there are a few things that absolutely wreck my build

stability (that’s a BIG ONE. i have PBS, wolf fear, wolf knockdown, drakehound knockdown, etc. removing those from me puts a hamper on my build bigtime)
CC if i don’t run rampage as one (or boonstrips if i do)
teleports/blinks/gapclosers/etc.
lots of blinds

generally if an opponent has 2-3 of those things, i’m going to have a hard time with the fight. without it? CC and burst you to death, easy peasy. that’s your fault for not preparing accordingly.

p.s. most lb rangers seem to run glass, so just counter burst them down. glass lb rangers are one of the glassiest.

edit: also, if you want to bring definitions into this, “thief, a person who steals another person’s property, especially by stealth and without using force or violence.”

Currently when i record I use Dxtory and edit with… sony vegas i think? the video quality comes out well in my opinion ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7eW5yAGtRw is an example of the quality)

as for editing tips… uhh.. make sure your music is good (something i need to work on) and gifs in the chat box are adorable (or you can put a thing there showing your server/username on the offchance you get popular enough people want to play with you).

i’d suggest not putting fights vs underlevels or just bad players. imo, you “wrecking them!” isn’t as fun as seeing a good fight against an experienced player.

also, playing around with amusing handicaps is also pretty fun to watch (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z-d9vGO52E this guy has some of my favorite videos to watch)

and that aside, the rest of it should come with experience

In my opinion, you’re expecting meta mentality in a pug. I run SoTH in pug dungeon runs, and i never activate it. do i lose out on dps? maybe. does it really matter to me? not really. the difference between a dungeon run taking an hour and a dungeon run taking 45 minutes is fairly insignificant to me, especially running with pugs where you’re likely to run into other classes also running “unviable” builds.

in my books, a pug is meeting and having fun with people. if i wanted meta speedruns, i’d join a guild or those uptight “Xk ap zerker 80’s exp” groups.

edit: granted, if the other person is running a bad build (e.g. bearbowing) then sure, point it out or complain about it. but the difference between a single utility slot isn’t a big deal to me (i mean geez i run soldiers gear in dungeons and i’ve never seen anyone complain about it.) I guess this is just a matter of personal preference though. I’m not very picky, i’ll run with low levels and teach them the dungeon. I spent 3 hours on aetherpath with some first timers, and it was very fun and i do not regret it in the least

EDIT: accidentally said significant instead of insignificant. woops.

While i have no problem with the current log-in screen (i actually like it a lot) having something new will freshen it up quite a bit. I won’t be sad in the least if they don’t change it though.

and i think wow skins are ugly. see how that works? it’s called an opinion.

the only issue i have with armors is that there are some clipping issues (you got the rough end of the stick being a charr) and personally i’d like to be able to use all armor skins on one character (not likely, i know. just wishful hoping)

but, i can look past those issues because personally, i find this game so darn beautiful, especially compared to your average mmo that looks like it was made 10 years ago :/ (and in an attempt to prevent arguing, this is an OPINION. i’m not stating it as fact or saying other people are wrong.)

the problem is adding that won’t fix the unbalance in population, so over-all, nothing would really change in the long run

the thing that needs to be fixed is actually getting more people into wvw, and balancing the population better. how to do that is beyond me though

Blair.3796:

. I swear, the expansion will probably be out for 30 minutes before “HoT is pay to win” threads start popping up.

more like 30 days before it comes out

and as a person who mainly does wvw/pvp… i’m excited. I’m not going to go over why i’m excited because OP obviously doesn’t seem to want to be excited about new features :P

ignoring all the arguing above…

yes i do believe it is viable, depending on the gamemode you play. in pve? meh, stealth isn’t very useful in it to begin with. however in wvw/pvp it’s extremely useful. you can stealth then swap to a GS to get a hidden maul, or to reposition yourself and get a few extra shots off, for example

however this thread seems to be more of ‘this skill is glitched/broken’ rather than if it’s a viable skill

which i would say… no, not really. as long as you’re facing the opponent and you actually ‘hit’ them (no stealth, aegis, blocks, etc.) it procs stealth (and of course you can’t hit anything afterwards or you cancel the stealth) which doesn’t sound unviable or broken in any way to me

i’d suggest going into openworld pve or get some pvp friends and practice using it correctly

I believe zerker gives better “overall dps” in a majority of situations, but personally I think assassin’s is more fun (crits for daaays)

Lachanche.6859:

@Prysin
there’s a problem with piercing arrow though, you can’t have 1500 range + faster bow + piercing arrow at the same time, 2 master traits and 1 grandmaster don’t fit toghether.

you don’t need faster arrows or 1500 range when in a zerg. when running lb you’ll be surfing with the lights who are all ~1200 range, and since the zerg runs as a blob you’ll be hitting quite a few as is. worst case scenario you hit TOO many people and go to 25% from retaliation

Toxic unveiling on an arrow cart will stack revealed, so I assume this would too. it would be hard to stack it though unless you’re in a large group (currently only the 2 skills..)

I’m unfamiliar with playing a thief but that first video looked like a bug rather than an intended mechanic of immobilize, which doesn’t mean it’s op (just that it’s buggy which is a valid complaint)

the second video is just clever chaining on a 1vX. you can do that with fear even if they have stunbreakers, or basilisk venom, or spam knockbacks… if one close could, without counter, immob for 20 seconds, then sure, it’d be op. but that’s 3(?) people immobilizing one person. (minor edit: also, it didn’t seem like they were doing much damage which would suggest they were focusing on immobilizing)

along with that, immobilize is a condition and can be cleansed, along with certain skills breaking immobilize. (on my ranger I can break/cleanse immobilize a total of 5 times in a row)

second minor edit: and as ragnar said, there aren’t a huge amount of extended immobilizes out there either. (0-2 weapon skills, generally just a few seconds, 0-2 utilities/elites, generally just a few seconds)

I’m not much of a pve-er so I’m going to leave that to the better informed, i will answer your other questions however.

there are ascended backpieces that look like quivers

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quiver_of_a_Thousand_Arrows
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Quiver
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sights_Be_True
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowyer%27s_Delight
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quiver_of_Swift_Flight

along with a gem store quiver that comes every once in a while at random

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rox's_Quiver_Set

as for longbow vs shortbow, at this particular moment shortbow is probably better for dungeons (since you’ll be stacking close range, AND you’ll get a flanking bonus 90% of the time) but in open world I would probably suggest longbow

that being said, there are some upcoming changes (possibly in september) that could change that. ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Unofficial-Upcoming-Patch-Notes/page/1 )

and possibly bloodlust as well.

edit: kitten just looked at your screenshot, nevermind.