Guild Wars 2

I was wondering if there are large guilds that do Guild Missions on FA. My girlfriend and I are looking around to find one.

I can live with all those fees just to ensure there is enough gold sink in the game so the market doesn’t go crazy (or whatever reason there are so many gold sinks). However, one you listed I would really like to see go, or have its gold sink cost merged with the others, is the traits fee.

Like you, I loved being able to go from having a fully specced and functional build to experimenting without having any costs to do so (in GW1). There was a lot more to play with in GW1, but there is enough to warrant some creative building in GW2 for PvE.

Expanding on this idea a little, one could gain reputation in the Durmand Priory, Vigil, and Order of Whispers to gain access to their respective armors. Then, more armor sets can be added for the other organizations as well.

I would definitely get the i5. If you like playing on medium, then the GTX 550Ti will work.

Indeed, your processor is the weakest link in your machine. If you want playable frames in WvW, then I would recommend an upgrade to either an FX 8320 or FX 8350, i5 3570K or i7 3770K. Then of course you will need a new motherboard. However, your graphics card is fine, it should do a solid set of medium settings at 1080p.

This probably belongs in the suggestions forums.

Depending on your definition of decently, the stock i5 3470 will need to be overclocked to 4.5Ghz ish to be able to get 30+ fps in the worst case scenarios. The stock cooler likely won’t be able to dissipate all that heat generated by the extra voltage and transistors switching at a faster frequency, so an aftermarket CPU cooler is in order as well. A commonly suggested cooler that is cheap and performs well for its price is the Hyper 212 EVO by CoolerMaster.

As for graphics cards that are meant for media, I can’t speak for their performance in games.

Have him delete the existing mail inside his mailbox. You can only have so many messaged before your inbox is full. Your messages are either waiting to be queued into his mailbox or you made a stranger’s day.

A GTX 650Ti can be bought for just over 100 bucks (after rebate) which will be able to play GW2 on a mix of medium and high settings in a crowded LA with a solid fps of 30+ at a resolution of 1600×900. This is my choice of card at the 100ish price range having upgraded my sibling’s graphics card which was an old 9800GT. Anything under 100 bucks isn’t worth an upgrade in GPU IMO because tomorrow you’ll need another upgrade.

I hear the HD 7870xt (1536 version) is the best bang for your buck at the moment. If that is the original 7870, I would pass on that, but if its the newer xt 1536 core version, then I’d grab that. Personally, I’m an Nvidia fan, but if you’re looking for the best bang for your unit of currency, then the 7870xt is where its at.

As for a PSU, if you overclocked your processor and ran out of power to feed your CPU from the power supply, then yes I would upgrade. However if you got an overclock and ran into another wall, like voltage or heat, then I doubt a PSU would help very much. I’m a corsair fan for PSUs, 550W will ensure down the road, if it is lossy, it will still give enough juice. If you plan on crossfiring/SLIing then a more beefy power supply is needed, I recommend a 750W or more in that case.

There is no problem with this. Infact, you can just copy the gw2.dat file from your old hard drive to the SSD without having to redownload the game.

Fiontar.4695:

I think someone ticked a wrong box when moving this. Not sure how persistent lag/culling issues in the game during large events, especially server lag that makes use of some skills impossible, (can’t even be triggered with key or mouse press), belongs in “Players helping Players”?

Bugs? Maybe. PHP? Has to have been in error.

Yeah, there are a lot of threads similar to this in Tech Support. Maybe they’re trying to see if people that troll other sub forums come across the same issues with larger dynamic events and chaotic 100+ person WvW battles.

Ursan.7846:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

The difference is that GW1 never added more powerful equipment post-launch.
There were some runes added, but most of them were crap (like those majors that reduced condition duration), and Vitae/Attunements which were mainly just filler for slots you didn’t have a rune in, but none that were inarguably stronger.
Vertical progression beyond what it had at launch being added to the game is what people have a problem with.

I really can’t argue with this. But I will point out GW2 before Ascended had a ton less vertical progression (max effectiveness very easily with exotics) than GW1 (Good luck maxing out all those titles.). After it though, it’s now pretty similar.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Getting max gear in GW1 took two weeks at most, even with title grinding.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re saying you were able to achieve max titles in 2 weeks?

Sunspear/Lightbringer/Kurzick(Luxon)/Ebon Vanguard/Deldrimor/Asura/Norn/Wisdom/Treasure Hunter/Luck?

That stuff took a LONG time to max.

Luck/Treasure Hunter/Luck I wouldn’t count, with the weekend events; SS/LB, books for the 4 EotN ones, and speedclears for Kurzick OR Luxon were not that bad. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt though and say 3 weeks because I forgot about the 4 EotN titles.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

The difference is that GW1 never added more powerful equipment post-launch.
There were some runes added, but most of them were crap (like those majors that reduced condition duration), and Vitae/Attunements which were mainly just filler for slots you didn’t have a rune in, but none that were inarguably stronger.
Vertical progression beyond what it had at launch being added to the game is what people have a problem with.

I agree, this is what I have a problem with, not a huge problem, it just makes me not want to upgrade until I can get the very best. I liked just getting max gear and then tweaking my play-style to get the best performance of my build.

Getting max gear in GW1 took two weeks at most, even with title grinding.

However, you could say that GW1 had vertical progression if you mean it in reference to how well you can play your 8 skills. I loved my ele for bond/infusing because you had to be ultra conscience about having all your maintainable enchantments up and make sure you energy bar was filled. Your energy bar was more or less the life-force of the group, if it went to zero, people started dying.

I may have a possible resolution for you. You can still play your Engineer that you love, but instead of shooting for a legendary you’ll never see, help your fiancée get her legendary.

Now you have something to shoot for and you can still play your Engineer. These were the only two problems that I got from reading what you wrote, let me know if there are more.

REDXIII.6270:

Ya I have a desktop computer that plays it just fine because I upgraded the motor and the graphics card. But looking for a laptop to play on if i do not want to sit at my desktop.

God I wish my computer had a motor!

Sorry I couldn’t resist.

As for the laptop you found…if you can’t spend over 500 on a laptop and want to play Guild Wars 2 on it, don’t expect much in the performance department. An A8 at 1.9Ghz, I question how well that would run even in normal PvE.

If you’re a fan of WvW and large DEs then this may not be enough to be considered playable (15fps) in these more intense situations.

As others have said, I think your best bet is to get an A10 at a decent clock and ditch a dedicated graphics card to make sure you stay under the 500 dollar budget.

As others have said, there is no problem with this.

Looks like this site has up to date node information for Anvil Rock judging from the locations you have given. http://gw2nodes.com/index.php

Dungeons, run them and eventually an exotic recipe will drop (like the Nightmare Coil from TA) and every 200 tokens turns into 5g+.

During the dungeon runs, make sure to use Omnomberry Bars for the additional gold find. This increases gold drops from bosses by 40% which turns all those 5s mobs into 7s mobs, 10s mobs into 14s mobs, and 15s mobs into 21s mobs. It basically pays for itself every time and gives some magic find as well.

Normally a dungeon takes me a half an hour to complete. I recommend all paths of TA, HotW P1, CoF P1 and 2, and the 2 easier paths of SE (I forget which ones).

I’m assuming those temperatures were taken while playing the game. I can’t say I have ever overclocked an AMD card, but I would try backing the overclock down, or setting it to a stock HD7770 speed and see what happens. Hopefully someone with more knowledge on AMD graphics cards can chime in and help you underclock your card or give additional things to check.

Striker.4853:

Isn’t unparking cores dangerous for the cpu? I mean reducing its life-time?

Not necessarily, its a power saving feature where the CPU will ‘park’ (not use) some of the cores if it doesn’t have to. Parking a core is like a stopped car at a red light. When the light turns green (there is work to do) it takes a few seconds for the car to get up and running at the speed limit. This happens in a similar fashion inside the CPU, which can cause stuttering issues and crippling framerates since the game is heavily used by the CPU.

I have my cores unparked to achieve better performance. I’ll take anything at this point to get this game to run better.

I would check your temperatures on your graphics card. It might be that your GPU is shutting down due to extreme heat.

Make sure that you are not overclocking your graphics card to make sure its in a stable state.

Rampage.7145:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Rampage.7145:

Yup, u have to overclock to get more FPS, the stock i7 will bottleneck since game uses 1 core only the others just feed from the main thread.

What absolute nonsense. Don’t listen to this.

An i7 won’t bottleneck anything. I have one, I can easily get 60FPS in Divinity’s Reach.

OP, do you have reflections and / or supersampling on?

Sure, now go to WvW, or a dragon event and tell me the i7 isn’t bottlenecking u, i know cuz i have a 2600k and yeah it can easy bottleneck my hd7950 it even bottleneck my gtx 550ti which i use as a phsyx card, but sure don’t listen to me i don’t know kitten about computers
Again it dosn’t happen cuz i7s are bad processors, it happens due the game main thread capping out on 1 core. Game can’t take advantage of multicore CPUs, and that was cool back in 2005 but in 2012 that is terrible due most ppl CPUs are quads at least, having games still coded for pentium 4 architecture will make em run like crap on modern systems.

Any and all processors bottleneck on this game because of how it’s coded. I’m willing to bet even next generation stuff will still bottleneck just because of how bad it is in some places (chaotic WvW battles, huge DE, etc, etc). I have an i7, albeit a first generation i7, but it is the bottleneck of the system.

Yeah, I went and got myself some foraging sickles.

Ruufio.1496:

Okay thanks guys.

About the SSD and HDD… Do I have all of my programs run on the SSD such as Google Chrome, Norton, Guild Wars 2, Spyboy S&D, Disk Defragmenter, The Sims, etc?

Or just the ones I always use like Guild Wars 2, Google Chrome, etc?

I ask because I don’t really understand if a program/data is on the HDD instead of the SDD, do I have to like, load up a different profile to use the stuff on the HDD or is it all handled automatically from my desktop depending on if I saved it on SDD or HDD?

Basically you want everything that you want to load really quick on the SSD. Having antivirus stuff on the SSD will not speed up scan times. From the items you have listed, I would toss Chrome, GW2, and The Sims on the SSD. Everything else can be tossed on a HDD.

SSDs are just really fast HDDs. They tend to have smaller form factors, capacities, and power usage, but have much better performance. SSDs also are subject to die out after so many write cycles, because of this it is recommended to keep more static file/programs on an SSD and toss everything else on a HDD. Typically people run a SSD for the operating system and programs you use most often, then toss other programs and media on a HDD.

Interesting that this place charges more money for a stock clock version of your processor. That 4.0Ghz will have to be pushed higher to achieve 30fps in the worst case scenario battles in WvW. The 660Ti is a good Nvidia card for this game, you should be able to push everything to max at a 1080p resolution.

I experienced this the first night the patch went live. It happened in P1 (I did not do P2 or P3 yet) and only happened when we were fighting two breeders that spawned a lot of enemies or during the burrows event where the burrows spawn a lot of enemies. I didn’t check my CPU/GPU usage during the burrows event, but I noticed my frames were lower than expected because it was choppy.

When we fought the breeders I actively watched my GPU usage tank down to 40% ish while my CPU was chugging away as normal. During the fight as more gravelings spawned, the GPU usage went down. Then, as we killed them, my GPU usage gradually rose. In the end it was a very nice parabolic ‘U’ shape.

This is just another CPU bound processing problem, similar to what people experience in chaotic WvW battles.

Yeah, influence bought on server X stays on server X and can not be used on server Y.

I’ve traded large sums of money to and from my girlfriend’s account for the achievement. Neither of us were banned.

My friend that got ‘The Legend’ sold it and transferred his new large sum of gold around my circle of friends for the achievement.

I think you’re safe unless its like over 250 gold.

Running dungeon paths is my preferred way of making gold and karma. At your level, I would recommend checking out TA and doing all 3 paths daily.

If you’re lucky like me, a Nightmare Coil Recipe will drop. Then you’ll be making bank each time you get 200 TA dungeon tokens.

Another dungeon I like to run at 65 is SE. Two of the paths in SE are ran fairly commonly and are pretty straightforward.

Very easily. Just join some CoF P1 farm runs. Make sure its with a group that doesn’t mind teaching you the basics of the dungeon path. You can do 5 runs in just under an hour if you do this path 5 times.

I’d suggest using gw2lfg.com to find a group suited for this.

My bleed stacks were working last night on all 3 variants of the last boss of TA.

Yeah, the mesmer’s elite skill can do this.

Have you tried to play other games/stress the graphics card to make sure the card isn’t bad?

If the graphics card is overclocked, then I would set it back to normal clocks and voltages.

I had a similar experience last night when doing the first path of the redone AC.

Health:
A lot of things seemed to have less health; breeders, gravelings, Kholer, Spider, and even the end boss. The little spiders that spawn around the big spider in the beginning, they have more HP and took a little more effort to kill this time around. I think that there might have been a little too much HP taken off from the mobs. I was with a Mesmer friend, and 3 pugs (another Mesmer and 2 Guardians). I’m not sure what everyone was specced, but I play a more supportish Thief, and enemies went down a little too fast IMO. With that said though, some other fights got very interesting.

Spider:
With her adds that have more HP and not knowing about her new attacks, since this was our first run, we actually had to get some downed people back up. Once the little spiders were taken care of though, the fight was relatively easy. The spider seems just as predictable, if not more predictable now. Her new root attack seemed to only target one person at a time and never caught anyone inside her poison fields. Her poison fields are predictable now as there are always 3 in a cone-like pattern. They seem to last longer now, which is good since it limited the size of the playing field. I did notice that I was actually given a little longer to get out of the field before I started accumulating immense amounts of poison like the previous version of the spider dished out. Once we killed her, I was very indifferent about the new changes.

Champion Mobs:
Their new stealth skill is lackluster. They’re still very visible, but now evade all attacks while in that phase. Overall, the changes with this mob seemed like an improvement since its not just an HP bag now, but I feel like there is room for improvement.

Kholer:
My take was that he is more of an endurance fight unless you have a lot of DPS. I pulled him normally down to where the troll sometimes spawns, this time no adds followed partway. Instead he summons them during the fight, which is really nice. Since the new mobs he spawns are really low on HP, they make for decent targets to rally off of in case you get caught in the spin2win attack. We ignored the adds through most of the fight until they started to get out of control. At one point we had like 6-8 and that was the turning point where we had to start focusing them instead of just Kholer. I liked the change to this fight, it felt better than just a ‘learn to dodge’ fight.

Burrows Event:
Not much changed here, the burrows seemed to spawn more enemies, but we still did this successfully on the first attempt. I will give a word of caution, if too many enemies spawn, you’ll start to notice heavy performance decreases. My hardware is listed in the sig, but during this fight I was not always utilizing 100% of my GPU since my CPU couldn’t keep up. Normally the two parts (CPU/GPU) work well together giving a decent game play experience in dungeon runs. However, it seems the additional enemies or other changes have really started taxing my hardware. I run in 1080p with highest settings besides supersampling.

Scepter Pieces:
I’m a Thief, so if there were changes I didn’t notice them since it was still runnable. IE: No change.

Boss:
First off, I knew it was serious time when there weren’t any breeders in the room anymore. It was just the boss by itself. So we engaged and were instantly met by some new attacks. He now has a Jesus ray which does damage and applies stacks of confusion if you face tank it. I got up to 20 stacks of confusion during the fight. If you avoid this attack like you would his normal scream, no biggie. What makes dodging it more difficult now is his army that spawns. He spawns a lot of mobs. I’m not sure they’re all silver tiered, but a lot of them were. They don’t seem to move around much, but they do use their lunge attack that KDs quite often, especially when you don’t take them down. By the end of the fight there were maybe 20 of these adds around and a dead boss. Once you learn to anticipate the lunges and steer clear of the two shouts from the boss, then it turns into an easy fight. Standing still doesn’t seem like an option anymore in this fight.

Overall:
I really liked most of the changes. I’ll prolly go ahead and do the other paths tonight since I heard P2’s boss got much more interesting. I really like the more interactive fights rather than ‘dodge this one bad guy’ which is relatively easy if you have people that can control aggro. 1.5 thumbs up! Keep this going Robert, you’re onto something here!

I experienced this as well. It happened when lots of enemies were on the screen. From my experience, this happened when doing the burrows event in P1 and when fighting two breeders at once.

Both times you could see my CPU chugging away as my GPU performance went from 100% to the mid 40’s. It was really funny when fighting the two breeders since as they spawned more enemies the GPU usage went down, and as we killed them, it went back up. In the end, the GPU usage graph made a parabolic ‘U’ shape.

Here’s to one day fixing the CPU limitations of the game.

There are probably a lot of a lot of people trying to download this patch at the same time. Their servers are probably not properly equipped to deal with such massive amounts of requests for such large amounts of data. Be patient and try again in like 15-30minutes, the patch isn’t going anywhere

Sir Emanuele.2689:

I have the latest drivers the temperatures are around 33°C

I meant temperatures under load, like when playing the game or benchmarking the graphics card. If 33C is under load then you must be playing outside :p If its idle, then I doubt that it’s a temperature issue.

You don’t have an overclock on your graphics card do you?

Does this happen when playing other games, or just GW2?

Donari.5237:

Heck, just drag the bigger bag on top of the smaller one in the tab. It will swap it out for you and you can save the smaller bag for an alt or sell it or destroy it or even mail it to a friend if it’s not soul bound.

edit: The stuff in the bag will stay there in the newer bigger one. No need to empty it first.

Made my life easier, thanks!

Yeah, first, empty the stuff out of the Leather Bag’s inventory spots. Then drag the empty Leather Bag from the left side of your inventory window (where it shows the list of bags and where you can unlock more bag slots) to another open space in your inventory that is not in that Leather Bag. Then, double click or drag and drop the new bag into the slot. Then you can sell or do whatever with that Leather Bag.

I cheat and use a Razer Naga. All the slot skills are bound to 1-0 and I use the mouse buttons to activate the skills. It takes minimal effort and really helps with twitch play. Since I play a Thief main, steal is on ‘Q’.

Using the mouse allows me to continuously move while using my skills giving me full range of motion during combat where position and skill usage is important.

Just curious, but what graphics driver are you running? I recommend moving to 314.07 (the latest AFAIK). Make sure to do a clean install, to do this, there is a check box during the installation process that asks you if you want to do a clean install.

I would also make sure that the graphics card is not overheating. Typical temperatures are around 70 degrees Celsius.

List your system specifications please.

The first generation i7’s can still pull their weight in this game. Albeit not as well as a second gen or third gen i7. I have a 930 and at stock it was really showing its age, but once I overclocked it from 2.8Ghz to 4.1Ghz it gave me a noticeable performance boost. The speed boost gave it life to last until Haswell comes out in June and maybe even Broadwell in 2014 depending how well Haswell performs.

I don’t recall what frames I was getting in a crowded LA at stock, but now I get a solid 28+ with it at 4.1 staring south at the Mystic Forge.

On a good day you can find a GTX 650Ti which will be able to play GW2 on a mix of medium and high settings for 100 bucks. Currently the cheapest I can find is 110 after rebate. A GTX 650Ti is the lowest card I would recommend, anything less and you will be upgrading sooner than later IMO.

On AMD’s side of things, the HD 7770 should work for you as well. It’s slightly cheaper than the GTX 650Ti and give around the same performance.

Yeah, this site is pretty intense. It’s making me remember the days of GW1 build crafting. That said there are a few issues with the calculations, but the creator(s) mentions them in the FAQ. I highly recommend this for being able to get the most out of your gear and what is currently available. It’s a great tool for min-maxing.

It looks like the site stays up to date with the most recent additions of items, like the ascended amulets. A good read, I highly recommend this place.

There are a lot of good artists out on the tubes. Malukah is another one worth mentioning, she does a lot of Skyrim songs with a guitar and vocals.

I also like miracleofsound’s channel on youtube. The harp twins I also enjoy.

However, Lindsey Stirling is the best, she’s out on tour soon to Milwaukee! (I’m so excited)

Fire Bullet.9236:

Thank you for the info it was helpful
I didn’t know 240GT was for media. I’m going to upgrade both, can you tell me which CPU and graphic card would be good for medium setting. (I’m on a budget so if you can tell me the least ones that will be great)

It really depends on the dollar range and what you do besides play GW2. I’m going to assume you can cannibalize your old hard drive, optical drives, case, and power supply. If you don’t mind me asking, what make/model is your power supply? We need to make sure its up to par with newer components.

For the CPU I would grab a i5 3570K from a MicroCenter if one is close by else everywhere else has them for about 230:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

For the RAM, any sticks should do as long as they’re DDR3 at 1600Mhz or higher. Low profile sticks are a plus because you can get some nice air coolers for the CPU to dissipate the heat better than the stock CPU heatsink Intel provides. With higher profile sticks, the sticks get in the way of the heatsink for the CPU. I believe GSkill and Corsair make some smaller RAM sticks, just make sure there is no crazy tall heatsink on the RAM chips and you should be fine. Something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148661

Another note on RAM: get at least 8GB if you have a 64bit version of your operating system. If you don’t have a 64bit version of your operating system, I recommend getting one since 32bit has a limit of 4GB.

For the graphics card, I got my siblings a GTX 650Ti for Christmas for 110 after rebate. It works well for 1600×900 on a mix of medium and high settings.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133473

For a motherboard, some overclock better than others, I’m not up to snuff on the latest in this area. I however am a firm believer in ASUS and Gigabyte. ASUS makes some really durable boards in my experience, I’ve had one go through power surges, which made some of the capacitors leak fluid. That however did not stop the board from working at all, it just kept trucking until it was time to upgrade to new equipment. My Gigabyte boards haven’t had to go through the crazy stuff my ASUS board had to, but they still work great.

All in all, you’re looking at about 500-550 bucks if you go with Intel and can salvage stuff from your current setup.

You may have tried this already, but have you upgraded to the most recent graphics drivers?

Preferably both; the 240GT isn’t a gaming graphics card, its a media graphics card. It’s also 3 generations old.

Your processor is also about 3 generations old, going to turn 4 in June. My siblings run a similar processor at those frames at 1600×900 with a GTX 650Ti.

If you’re on a budget, upgrading a graphics card now is going to be the cheaper of the two to upgrade. Upgrading the graphics card also allows you to use it when you upgrade your CPU/mobo/RAM to current generation technology.

If I might make a recommendation, a HD 7750/HD 7770/GTX 650Ti for absolute minimum for a graphics card. These will allow for a mix of medium high settings at 1080p.

As for a CPU, there are no CPUs that allow for 30+ fps in chaotic WvW battles of 100+ people at stock settings. In order to achieve 30+ fps in the worst case scenario, you must overclock your processor to get the extra performance required. Many CPUs can achieve this, but the notable ones are:
AMD’s FX 8320/8350
Intel’s i5 2500K/2550K/3570K
Intel’s i7 2600K/2700K/3770K

The ‘K’ on the Intel processors denotes that the processor has an unlocked multiplier making it easier to achieve higher overclocks.

The only reason to get an i7 over an i5 is if you’re going to effectively use the additional computational threads available. A good example of utilizing these would be for audio/video encoding.