Guild Wars 2

Quick Mouse.7635:

CassieGold.7460:

Both methods are viable, both work just fine. Melee range is a risk / reward system…. you get higher damage working in melee range, but more exposure to 1 hit boss mechanics. Less time to ‘see it coming’ as it were.

Want to be powerful in GW2? Learn how to float between melee and ranged based on needs and be effective in both ranges

This

Agreed, this is what I was having a problem with on my Thief. When I got my first pistol and heard the noises it made, I was hooked on running pistol/pistol. As we all know, this is an underpowered weapon set for most of the content in GW2. Since pistol/pistol was single target only, I used shortbow as my other weapon to supplement my AoE damage when necessary. I ran these two weapon sets for a long time, not realizing how ineffective I was until I decided to start killing stuff with my sword so I can get 5,000 kills for the achievement.

Now I run sword/pistol for a lot of content. The amount of damage done in melee versus the amount of damage done at a range is so different (for thieves at least).

Basically, just know your character’s limit (your skill basically) and when to back out to a ranged weapon. I run sword/pistol until things get too hairy, then usually I have pistol/pistol as my other set because it will be bosses that require me to go ranged.

To go off the TA examples, I usually melee the wurm boss, but sometimes we take too long to kill it and the other 6 smaller wurms start spawning and all of them start tossing their spit attacks at us. Sometimes I can evade enough with pistol whip to avoid the damage, other times I have to shortbow out and attack from the safe spot until I regen enough health to get back into the fray.

Labyrinth.7201:

Cool. That makes a lot more sense. I’m not one for +condition damage, but it’s good to know. I think we have answered the OP’s question and +some.

Yeah, I hope everything is clear. The GW2 wiki isn’t up to par with GW1’s wiki. GW1’s wiki was ridiculously accurate and always had loads of information about every little detail. Then again, GW1’s wiki has been around for years.

As my thief I use signets on occasion depending on the fight.

-Signet of Malice: The healing signet which works wonders with some weapon sets.
-Signet of Shadows: The movement signet, only used outside of combat or when running through mobs, but even then, smoke wall will sometimes trump a signet speed boost.
-Signet of Agility: The +precision signet, only used against certain bosses that require minimal effort, HoTW P1 comes to mind.
-Assassin’s Signet: The +power signet, only used against certain bosses that require minimal effort, also used when the thief from ambush will always be one-shot.
-Infiltrator’s Signet: The +initiative signet, basically never used.

However, underwater for thieves changes things because of the lack of underwater skills we have. It’s basically either run signets or run venoms. I choose to run signets underwater because I don’t have share venoms traited.

IMO signet use != people who don’t know what is up.

Labyrinth.7201:

Poison – Me and you both rapidly apply poison to a target using (for example) Thiefs shortbow Poison Aoe. We apply psn at the same time for a total stack of 30 seconds. My shot stacks 5 seconds, and your shot stacks 5 seconds so on…. My poison damage will ping the target for 30 dmg with no +condition, then after my 5 seconds are up, your 5 seconds kick in with the +condition damage? Is there a cap on the duration of conditions? If so, it would seem like the +condition toon is getting gimped because the no +condition toon is taking up time on the condition.

Bleeds – Your explanation of bleeds makes sense. What is the cap on bleed stacks? How many players can take part in this Thief1 + Thief2 + etc of bleed damage?

Edit I looked up conditions on wiki and saw the bleed formula. I know how they work now. Poison still seems kinda fishy though

Yeah, like I said, I’m not sure how the damage for poison is calculated when two people work together to stack it.

As above, the maximum stacks a single condition (bleed, confusion, vulnerability) is 25. Up to 25 players can take part in stacking intensity conditions (bleed, confusion, vulnerability) because once the 26th person enters and adds their application of the condition, the oldest application of the condition is overwritten.

Say Thief1 attacks first, then Thief2…and so on…until Thief 26 attacks. Once Thief26 attacks and assuming all the other Thieves’ conditions are still in effect, Thief26 overwrites Thief1’s condition stack. Even if Thief1 has +a ton of condition damage and Thief26 has no +condition damage, it will still overwrite. This kinda sucks for people who spec into condition damage and fight large dragon fights. The max stack is still 25 and more often than not you will have people like me who could care less about condition damage overwriting the condition stacks from people with a lot of condition damage because I just go for pure damage from my auto-attack skill.

Labyrinth.7201:

So what about this… (all numbers are easy on the eyes)
A thief with no +condition damage applies poison/bleed to a target and it ticks for 50dmg /sec. A 2nd thief with tons of +condition damage also applies poison/bleed that ticks for 100dmg /sec. With both toons attacking, does the first thief with no +condition damage just add to the duration of the 2nd thief conditions or what?

With this situation, since bleeds and poison stack differently, the bleeds from Thief1 ping for their damage and their duration. Thief2’s bleeds ping for their damage for their duration. Total bleed damage would be Thief1 + Thief2.

For the poison its just a simple duration addition. So Thief1 applies poison, then Thief2 applies his poison which the duration is added to the duration that was applied from Thief1. However, I’m not sure how the damage works, it might work by just taking the latest application’s damage (Thief2’s damage in our case), or it might go with whoever’s damage the duration is burning through (Thief1 for X seconds, then when Thief1’s poison expires, Thief2’s damage kicks in).

I’m not sure of a maximum duration, but the highest I have seen on myself is 1min from the spider boss in AC. The highest I have applied to an enemy is like 40ish seconds. Both occurrences have been with poison.

I should also point out that you can modify the damage mid duration. So if Thief1 does 50 damage with poison and then someone buffs him with a stack of might, the damage will increase even if the thief does not apply poison again.

Another important note is that when a target reaches 25 stacks, the newest stacks replace the oldest stacks (FIFO first in first out queue)

As my thief is my main and my elementalist is my alt, I can say if you prefer mashing one button that isn’t an auto-attack, the thief is where its at. If you prefer mashing a lot of keys, then elementalist is it since you have 20 skills to rotate between, plus some more if you grab all the conjures.

Sororita.3465:

Sorry for my ignorance on this subject, only been playing a month, but id like some confirmation on conditions and their application.

If i apply two of one type of condition to a target, does the stronger of the two override the other or do they both tick for their durations separately? In other words, is it better to pile them on both at once or should i wait for one to finish before i start another.

There are two types of conditions, ones that stack in intensity, and ones that stack in duration. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

For example we’ll take bleed and poison. You apply bleed on a target that has a duration of 3 seconds, it starts pinging its damage every second. You apply bleeding again 1 second later. Now you have 2 stacks of bleed with a duration of 2 seconds. You will notice the bleed damage pings every half second now, aka 2x damage per second. The maximum stacks a target can have is 25.

From before…1 second later you apply poison that lasts 5 seconds. Now the target has 2 stacks of bleed for 1 second and poison for 5 seconds. 1 second later you apply another 5 seconds of poison, now you have 1 stack of bleed for 1 second (because your first stack of bleed finally expired) and 9 seconds of poison. 1 second later you have 0 bleed stacks for 0 seconds (expired) and 8 seconds of poison. Then so on and so forth until all your conditions expire on your target.

You should be able to pick out that bleed stacks in intensity and poison stacks in duration.

Lexandro.1456:

No I read the ops post entirely and understand precisely the problem. The graphics drivers are causing a blue screen for the OP. How? Well graphics drivers are extremely easy to corrupt, anything from a bad shutdown to a minor power fluctuation right the way through to a simple AV update can cause drivers to become damage or corrupted.

The issue is not the game, or it would be a different error code in the BSOD event. As the op stated he had data storage problems already, so its extremely easy for the drivers to then become damaged.

My earlier advice stands; A clean instalation of the graphics drivers is required. If BSOD’s of the same type continue after doing so, then that points to a system hardware fault; quite possibly a HDD in the throws of failure.

Yeah, I’d toss my coin in with this. Clean installing a new driver doesn’t take long and could resolve the issue. For everyone out there with an Nvidia card, a new WHQL driver is out. I’ve heard it fixes the glowing textures/objects, so I’d give it a shot.

Well even with the latest Intel processors, you aren’t going to get awesome frames in WvW. In the chaotic battles, with an overclock to 4.5Ghz, you’ll still only get 30 FPS. To some this is fine, to others its ridiculous that even the top end hardware available to consumers can’t pull more than 35 frames in the worst case scenario.

You can still stick with AMD if you aren’t fond of switching over to Intel. The FX 8350 overclocked to 4.5+Ghz can achieve close to the same performance in GW2 what an i5 3570K or i7 3770K overclocked to 4.5Ghz can do.

If you still want to go Intel, the i5 3570K is the most optimal CPU for GW2 on the Intel front due to the number of big threads GW2 uses and the price compared to the i7 variant. However, if you do video/audio encoding, the i7 3770K will be the better purchase.

I also don’t know if you want to wait for Intel’s new architecture, Haswell, to come out. It might lower the price of the Ivy Bridge processors. Haswell is due to debut in early June.

Your 6950 is close to a 560Ti according to what I’ve seen. So you should be able to toss everything to max besides super-sampling and get at least 30 frames.

Yeah, I think this deserves a move to the Technical Support forums.

Everything I have heard about the 314 driver is good. It has gotten rid of glowing textures/objects for a lot of people that had the problem.

From a personal experience, I haven’t had a problem with the driver yet. I have gotten no performance increase or performance decrease.

Noctura.3908:

Thank you for the replies.

I have been monitoring our bandwidth every day… it’s terrible with the satellite internet. They have a limit of 10GB per month and we can barely do anything. I have found a way of monitoring how much data usage GW2 takes per day running it on 2 computers for about 6-8 hours. It isn’t very much at all, but the data cap basically makes it where gw2 is about all I can do with it besides youtube.

They told us that we had 10gb during day hours per month, and 10gb off peak time between the hours of 2-8am. Even having said this, it is showing unlimited at night… so I am not sure what the deal is, but so far the service is pretty unsatisfying for gaming. I am completely unable to dodge things in the game, and it happens so often where I keep warping back to the position i was in a second ago after I move. It keeps getting me killed.

I am starting to think that EVDO would be the better option. I saw on the website they had unlimited bandwidth for a bit more money. I am going to get more information on EVDO.

The installation fee is large, so this choice hasn’t been easy. I appreciate all the advice. ^^

EVDO looks like the better option of the two even though the down link is ridiculously slow for today’s normal internet standards. The lower ping will definitely make your GW2 experience better, however the time it takes to download anything will take siginicantly longer.

Having a bandwidth cap is also not favorable since some of these GW2 updates are pretty large. The client alone is about 15GB right now.

There is no way to view your own target information like you can when you click on others. If you have a title selected from the achievements tab in the hero panel, then it appears below or above your name. I can’t remember, but just look around for other people with titles and where ever their title is located is where yours is when others click on you.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Supposedly, versatile simple infusions will work in offensive, defensive, or utility slots.

So yes, they should work. But I don’t think anyone has been able to verify this. Yet.

Going against my own word here, but according to the wiki, versatile (omni infusions) can be placed in offensive, defensive, and utility slots.

I’m going for a hail mary when I suggest this, but perhaps the game file corrupted and for that one character the game tries to access the corrupted part of the file or, perhaps its a sign the hard drive is deteriorating.

If I were you and have another hard drive, I would copy the game files over and launch it from that hard drive. If it works, it might be a sign that the hard drive is going bad. Run checkdisk to ensure the hard drive’s integrity.

You can also redownload the game on your current hard drive if you don’t have another one. If it works, it was prolly just a bad part of the .dat file. If it doesn’t it might be a sign the hard drive is giving out.

Alternately, it could all be on ArenaNet’s side and it’s a problem with accessing your character from the server.

I learned the hard way that the wiki site is not always right. Initially I had gotten a fractal backpiece thinking it had a slot for an upgrade (since it was an exotic and that is what the wiki said). As it turns out it did not, and I was surprised by this. Trust the tooltip, not wiki for things like this IMO.

Reincarnated.1754:

What is the point of me getting the fastest broadband package (100 Mbps) when ArenaNet cant get that speed to the UK?

I am getting Blo**y P***** O** with LAG.

WvW is NOT PLAYABLE with LAG.

Can somone tell me a remedy for this.

Do I go make my self a cup of tea and watch a film instead?

This was a FANTASTIC game to play when it first started.
I could give it nothing but prase.
I thought it was the bee’s knee’s
I thought it was the bench mark of future online games.

Now it just gets slower, slower, slower, slower, slower, slower, slower, slower, slower.

Ok, i have calmed down a bit so I will go do 3 speed test before I post this.

1. UK Local : Ping = 7 ms, d/l = 57.99 Mbps, u/l = 4.89 Mbps
2. EU Germany: Ping = 34 ms, d/l = 10.36 Mbps, u/l = 4.8 Mbps
3. US Texas: Ping = 124 ms, d/l = 1.91 Mbps, u/l = 4.35 Mbps

Oh dear it seems I can upload faster than I can download from texas, may be I should hoast the EU servers.

IT JUST SPOILS A GOOD GAME.

I agree that is a shotty situation to be in, but I fear one of the only solutions is to move to America D=

You should start a petition for all those in Europe who are having connection problems and try and get some stuff moved to that side of the world.

I can clarify some things, the duration of a boon is rounded to the nearest quarter of a second. I found this out while leveling my elementalist and watching the duration of boons that Glyph of Harmony grants as I added points into the Arcana trait line.

So for example:
3% boon duration makes a 10 second might actually last 10 & 1/4 seconds.

You can take an elementalist into pvp land and watch this effect as you put more and more points into the Arcana trait line and hover how the skill to show the tool tip for the boon information.

I can also confirm that Dynamic Event rewards scale with your level. You should be getting 1s49c-ish at level 80. From your description from moving around to different maps to see if the DR is universal, its a bug. DR should go away when you do different events, especially in different maps. I’d toss a bug report to ArenaNet explaining the problem since there isn’t anything else you or we can do to assist you.

Rampage.7145:

Ryokuro.8125:

No black magic here. My rates do not drop in WvW.

But this is a tech support forum, not a kitten talking forum, so carry on gentlemen.

50.000$ if u prove it with a video. 100.00$ if u pay me to go to ur place and watch it live.

Yeah…maybe its not black magic, but its definitely some kind of magic. Teach me your ways.

You could attempt to overclock your CPU, but I think the only way to effectively do this is to tear apart your laptop and strap some ghetto cooler to it to ensure it stays within reasonable temperatures. There really isn’t much you can do in terms of increasing FPS with your system.

AFAIK there are no recommended system specifications that ArenaNet officially posted because there really isn’t any right now. Even the top end CPUs from Intel and AMD struggle in chaotic WvW battles. Perhaps the recommended system specifications could be a liquid nitrogen cooled CPU running at record setting Ghz.

While you may far exceed the minimum system requirements, those only mean that the game will actually launch on your system and does not mean that the game will perform well at all.

In reality the people at ArenaNet who made the decision to stick with their DX9 engine are to blame. What they really should have done is rebuilt the engine entirely from scratch. However, if they did that, we might still be getting the response “It will be ready when its ready” from ArenaNet.

Serophous.9085:

ok, that seems a lot more in my budget. though, i assume from that site, i have to build myself? Would be my first time XD

Building your own computer really isn’t as bad as it sounds. Its basically like adult legos. Plus there are a lot of resources out there that show you what slot is what and what goes where. I built my first computer when I was in middle school. I was fed up with sharing the computer with the rest of my family, so I built my own rig. I told my mom it was a 1000 dollar learning experience. To this day I was so happy I decided to do that. Its a great hobby and its always nice to have a person around to troubleshoot a PC problem.

Duranox.7259:

the BSOD occurs maybe 1-2 min after i enter the game, the temp reaches 50-55C

Yeah, those temperatures are well within the limits of your GPU. I would tackle the reinstall for the driver. Then, try other games and see what happens.

Serophous.9085:

hm, ok, so i should just go with the amd one for now, so later on i can upgrade

With your budget of 400-600 dollars, you can get an Intel CPU/Mobo/RAM, but it requires some slick deals and a Microcenter nearby. I was able to pull off a 550 dollar build with a bundled EVGA X58 FTW3-SLI (etc etc etc) and some 6GB GSkill RAM, then took a roadtrip to Microcenter for my i7 930 water cooled on a Corsair H50. However, that was a once in a blue moon deal. I was patient and pounced at the right time and was able to salvage everything from my old tower besides my CPU/RAM/Mobo.

I’d recommend an AMD build with your budget if you don’t want to salvage your video card, power supply, hard drives, etc from your old computer.

Serophous.9085:

Rampage.7145:

Well i think u can sell it for arround 200/250$ asus makes quality stuff ppl like it, so even while being old i think u will find a buyer. I would definitelly try to sell it instead salvaging any part from it cuz it would most likelly cripple ur new build. For 600-700$ u can probably get smth like this, it won’t be fancy but it will be functional for modern gaming.

Intel
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Dx3s
AMD
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/DxdF

So basically equivalent systems AMD is a bit cheaper, also offers 8 cores (which is kitten for the price), intel offers lower power consumption and overall better single thread performance, for games that is actually nice, GW2 for example. I’d say intel would be beter for only gaming system while AMD will be better for computing in general streaming, encoding, eidting videos stuff like that, 8 core AMD offers more raw computing power while and intel offers single core efficience.

hm, ok. But how bout upgradability for later in the future?

Personally, the way Intel works and the way I purchase a computer, its a rebuild every time for me. Between me buying higher end parts which would result in marginal at best upgrade paths, and the way Intel switches sockets every other year, makes it not worth upgrading. For example, my previous computer was a LGA 775, and by the time I needed a refresh LGA 1156 and LGA 1366 were out. My next computer will be a rebuild since LGA 1366 does not exist anymore and will most likely be when Broadwell comes out in 2014 on a LGA 1150 or LGA 2011 if its still around (doubtful).

AMD though has a much better track record for having compatibility between upgrades. Rampage should be able to give a good idea what the available paths are for AMD right now.

Edit: Rampage beat me to responding D=

Hmmmm, maybe the download didn’t go as nicely as you thought. If I were you, I would backup your current .dat file. Then, I would download a new one.

Edit: Just took a look at the settings in your attachment. Do you mind me asking what your computer specs are?

=D Not that BSODs are ever something to be excited about, but I came across this error not too long ago. Its related to your graphics card.

“STOP error 0×116 means that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed.”

If you’re overclocking your 570, then you have gone too far (it was what happened to me when I got the error for my 560Ti 448).

If you aren’t overclocking your 570…

Install the latest driver for the card from (or reinstall) and make sure to do a clean install. There is a check box during the installation which allows this option.
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/55121 -Official Release
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/56530 -Beta Release

If that doesn’t help…

Does the BSOD occur immediately after launching the game (before getting to the character screen)?
If so, try playing another relatively intense game and see if you get a BSOD. If you do, then its a sign that your card might have bit the dust.

If it doesn’t BSOD immediately, check your temperatures when the game is lauched to make sure they aren’t boiling water.

Another option to try is to downclock your GPU to see if it just isn’t stable. This can be because some graphics cards come pre-overclocked and might not be stable at those higher frequencies any more.

Unspec.9017:

If you have another 600 dollars to burn, you might as well just skip another card and upgrade to a 2011 system. In GW2, CPU is more important than your GPU.

By 2011 I hope you mean the socket :p

If you are for upgrading, I would make sure that Haswell-E follows the same suit as Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge-E. Ivy Bridge-E is due out later 2013 IIRC and Haswell-E most likely at the end of 2014, so that would make for a nice upgrade path if Haswell-E stayed on the same socket.

Kozai.8269:

eXs.6210:

. unless you REALLY want the skins from other dungeons, stick to CoF p1 and p2 as a reset for easy-mode

I’ve tried CoF p2 once, the group failed at the end room after half a dozen tries, with different strategies discussed and tried each time, so evidently it is not THAT easy. I have encountered the same problem as the OP, with only a couple of occasions/week when I might have time to run any dungeon once and a lousy memory it is hard to learn their mechanics. It would be nice if they weren’t QUITE such a jump in difficulty from standard content, then I might be able to get 4 more guildmates to join me, but two have sworn off them after initial experiences.

Note that also you can get certain stat combinations from specific dungeons which are not craftable, such as Soldier (Pow/Tough/Vit), so there can be other reasons to run other dungeons.

This is a tough subject about adjusting difficulty. You’re right when you say that there shouldn’t be such a jump in difficulty between dungeons and normal PvE IMO. I like the difficulty most dungeon paths are right now, some are too easy (CoF P1 in particular) and some are too hard (Arah P4). Personally, I think ArenaNet needs to take their concept of Hard Mode and Normal Mode from GW1 and apply it dungeons since they are instanced. Normal Mode can be made slightly easier, say from silver enemies to copper enemies, and make Hard Mode the same as it is or even harder. I’ve gotten to a point where in most dungeon paths, if I die (not just downed), I consider it a failed run because of how well I run my character.

I also don’t think PvE should be adjusted in difficulty because I find it nice that I can play with my little sister and she can play the game semi effectively.

Oglaf.1074:

40 Health per 3 seconds I believe, not affected by Healing Power.

That’s at L80 right?

Serophous.9085:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Your current processor is a socket LGA 775, in terms of computers, this is 3+ generations old. The best you can upgrade to is a C2Q (core 2 quad) like the Q6600, but in all honesty, thats still 3 generations old. Its time to get a socket LGA1155 (Intel) motherboard or socket AM3+ (AMD) motherboard.

With the AMD side of things someone else like Rampage hopefully speaks up, but I recommend an FX 8350 processor.

If you choose to go Intel, the i5 K-series processors are where its at. i5’s in theory are what run GW2 the best when they are overclocked to 4.5+Ghz.

ok, so upgrade the motherboard, gotcha. And yeah, prob gonna go with intel. This is probably going to change my ram, isnt it?

Yeah, from the LGA775 days and the current generation hardware, the RAM standards have changed from DDR2 to DDR3. I recommend at least 8GB of RAM at 1600Mhz or higher.

PS: I don’t know if you are interested in waiting or must upgrade immediately, but the next generation CPUs from Intel debut in early June.

I’ve got Windows 8 on my laptop, I haven’t run into issues with the game on Windows 8. If you’re looking to make sure the account is secure, use a unique password for GW2 and enable email authentication.

Your current processor is a socket LGA 775, in terms of computers, this is 3+ generations old. The best you can upgrade to is a C2Q (core 2 quad) like the Q6600, but in all honesty, thats still 3 generations old. Its time to get a socket LGA1155 (Intel) motherboard or socket AM3+ (AMD) motherboard.

With the AMD side of things someone else like Rampage hopefully speaks up, but I recommend an FX 8350 processor.

If you choose to go Intel, the i5 K-series processors are where its at. i5’s in theory are what run GW2 the best when they are overclocked to 4.5+Ghz.

LithePanther.5027:

Crits are actually 1.5 but that doesn’t change the math xD

Yeah, but you can get up to 2.x with stats, so I just decided to use an easy number for people. Very true though, order of operations if order of operations. =D

Mirithal.7685:

Thank you very much for the input! That definitely steers me away from purchasing an additional card. I’d much rather save my $500 and just purchase a high-end card that is unreal (later on in the year).

What you mention regarding other games is definitely something I should look at more (I play BF, CoD)… however, I’ll do my own research on that front.

Why do you say low framerate in LA, WvW, heavy PVE, etc. with a SLI configuration (why doesn’t SLI help in these scenarios?)?

It’s because even the nice i7 3770K overclocked to a nice 4.5Ghz is the limiting factor in the CPU configuration. The way GW2 was programmed was kitten poor for multithreads, as a result, GW2 has 3 massive threads and a bunch of small ones. However, if any of those three threads get hung up, your FPS drops to garbage. Ideally, ArenaNet would split these threads in smaller threads, but that requires a lot of engine work.

To answer your original question though, you’ll have one of the best machines to play GW2 in its current state. The best however is still limited to low FPS in crowded LA, crowded dynamic events, and chaotic 100+ man WvW battles because of how the GW2 engine is so inefficient at utilizing the CPU. Low FPS being 30. The GTX 680 is fine for your setup and won’t be the limiting factor.

Here’s to a new (dare I say) DX10/11 engine in 2014. Cheers!

I’m pretty sure the sigil does not care if its a critical hit or not, so it should just add 5% before it checks for a critical hit or after it checks for a critical hit, either way it comes out to the same damage because it’s all multiplication.

Ex1: Applied After Critical Hit
100 base damage * 2 for critical * 1.05 for the sigil = 210

Ex2: Applied Before Critical Hit
100 base damage * 1.05 for the sigil * 2 for critical = 210

Ex3: Applied for non-Critical Hit
100 base damage * 1.05 = 105

You’re missing a key part of information for a high stable FPS. What processor are you running with the GTX 680? It makes a world of difference sadly.

My guess is that ArenaNet was working with the code to retroactively give laurels for other achievements besides the dailies/monthlies. Perhaps they were testing the idea of making us unlock everything again by putting us 1 kill (1 unit of whatever) away from getting said achievement.

Haha, yeah I run into accidentally targeting a few monsters everyday because of this. Its annoying, but more of a QoL thing than a bug IMO.

Yeah, this is a known issue with the latest build after that maintenance ArenaNet did last night. My guess is that they were messing with code to retroactively give laurels for other achievements. Perhaps they were looking into making us who completed these titles 1 kill/1 whatever away from completing it to get the updated rewards for getting said achievement.

maniolnba.2678:

thanks for advices very much . i need extra colling? should i change disk maybe?
Samsung HD502IJ ATA Device.

so should stay on win8 or reroll for win7?

I’d stick with Windows 8 since you have it installed. If you run into issues with Windows 8 when you start playing, then I would revert to Windows 7. I have Windows 7 on my desktop and Windows 8 on my laptop, both 64bit, both run GW2 accordingly to their specs.

You can already enable showing when friends come online or go offline. Unless you mean specific friends, in which case it would be neat to be able to group friends into different custom categories; like WvW, Dungeons, etc, etc.

New weapons, always a plus!

Other than that, I’m not a fan of mounts so I hope those don’t enter the realm of GW2 unless its purely cosmetic and doesn’t provide any speed boost or flying capabilities.

Yeah, something needs to be done about the movement of the icons on the targeted enemy’s part of the user interface. Whenever I try and hover over an icon to figure out what it is, other things are applied or have worn off, thus changing the position of the icon I was trying to look at.

Expanding on the enhancements for the UI, it would be awesome to have a part of the user interface keep track of the skills the enemy is using. Much like in GW1, so I can learn the skills that the enemies use and generally play the game better.

Where does one acquire a karma salvage kit and it is the equivalent of the Master’s Salvage Kit?

Avoid first generation i-series processors. Get a second or third generation processor. That is, a i5 2500K or i5 3570K.

The i5 650 is a first generation processor, its kinda outdated and runs on an older architecture.

8GB of RAM is enough.

If I were you, it’s time to build an entire new system rather than upgrading what you currently have to outdated parts.

If you’re not on a budget, I would go with an i7 3770K or an i5 3570K. If you just game and do other menial tasks like surfing the web and word processing, then I would just go with the i5. If you do video/audio encoding as well as everything else under the sun, I would get the i7. If you are on a budget and don’t want to make your significant other mad because of the price of the new machine, I would get the AMD FX 8350. Personally, I go with Intel partially because there is a Microcenter within a reasonable distance of my home. Microcenter sells processors at a much lower price than other outlets, like Newegg and TigerDirect.

As for RAM, if you are on a budget, get 8GB of DDR3 1600Mhz. If you are not on a budget, then I would get whatever your heart desires. There is some pretty neat stuff you can do with an absurd amount of RAM. Fancycahce allows you to cache some or all of GW2 or other programs into RAM to allow for faster access to the files. You can also make a RAM Disk with loads of RAM. What a RAM Disk does is make a very fast hard drive out of your RAM. I have a RAM Disk for GW2 which eats up 16GB of RAM, then I have 8GB left over for Windows.

As for a graphics card, I wouldn’t get anything less than a GTX 650Ti. The GTX 650Ti will allow you to play the game on medium settings on a 1080p resolution. If you have money to blow you won’t see any improvement beyond a GTX 670 unless you run a crazy setup with 3 monitors and/or inject a custom AA like SweetFX instead of using the terrible AA the GW2 options lets us use. Personally, I run a GTX 560Ti 448 Edition, I play on highest settings (besides supersampling) on a 1080p resolution and never have a problem with dipping below 25 fps in LA.

If you’re really tight on cash you can upgrade just your graphics card for now since a graphics card will port over to your next computer. Then, wait until Haswell comes out in June and upgrade the rest of your PC. My siblings have a GTX 650Ti on a worse processor than yours (a C2D @ 2.4Ghz) and get just playable fps in LA (25ish) on medium settings on a 1600×900 resolution with 2GB of RAM.

Someone else will have to give the perspective of the AMD side. My knowledge of AMD products severely lacks so hopefully Rampage, Jazhara, or someone else will come give some insight.

I have a theory that some people buy whites/blues to turn into higher tiered items, and eventually get exotics. Just speculation though…so take it with a grain of salt.

Bad luck sir. My guild group frequents this dungeon. Normally one of the three paths, the troll will spawn next to the corridor of flame spewing gargoyle heads.

Just thinking outside the box, but have you tried to see how long it takes your pings to get to and from ArenaNets servers? Maybe we’re looking a bad connection.

Overclocking your CPU is not required, but if you play GW2 for those chaotic WvW battles and want to do it on high settings and get at least 30 frames a second, then its necessary.

Overclocking your CPU basically takes the speed it runs at right now (3.6Ghz) and makes it run faster at the cost of additional power (which in turn makes more heat, which in turn theoretically degrades the CPU over time). IIRC the CPU you have has a locked multiplier, so you probably won’t be able to get much more speed out of your CPU, my guess is a few hundred MHz taking it close to 4.0Ghz.

No third party software is required, all the modifications can be made in your BIOS settings. Normally you spam the ‘Delete’ key (not backspace) to get into the BIOS but depending on the make/model of your motherboard it can vary.

GW2 is very CPU intense, which is abnormal for a game since most other games are very GPU intense. Due to the way GW2 was programmed, very fast single thread performance is required. Intel reigns over AMD in this category for some of its processors, but just having an Intel processor is not enough. To further increase single thread performance, one must increase the frequency of the processor, hence overclocking.

Essentially your FPS is limited by either your CPU or GPU, more often than not its the CPU for GW2.

A few examples:
My sibling’s computer is essentially my old computer, a core 2 duo (before all this i3/i5/i7 stuff) and an ancient 9800GT graphics card. The game ran, at best, 10 fps anywhere. For Christmas I got them a GTX 650Ti, a current gen card, and now they can play on medium settings getting 30+ frames a second. This is a case where the GPU was limiting the game from getting good frames per second.

In another case, my CPU is an i7 930 which at stock speed is 2.8Ghz. I was seeing some definite slow downs in LA and larger WvW battles. I really didn’t want to upgrade yet so to get some renewed life out of my processor that is 2 generations old already, I decided to give it a beefy overclock. I currently run this CPU at 4.1Ghz and it runs the game noticeably smoother than it used to. Albeit, its not as good as a second generation (your CPU), or third generation intel processor. This is a case where the CPU is the limiting factor. However, it will definitely tie me over until Broadwell comes out slated for a 2014 release.

Sorry for the essay, but basically it looks like a nicer than average machine. I would just load up GW2 on it and see how it goes. If it turns out that the performance isn’t up to par with what you want, then you can take a shot at overclocking the CPU. I’ll give a word of caution though, as mentioned before it does shorten the life of the CPU, but you will probably have a new computer by the time it bites the dust. I’ve had my CPU overclocked for some time now and basically have it pushed to the max safe voltage (1.4 volts for my CPU). I plan on keeping this machine for another 2 years, then handing it down to my siblings or my parents, whichever needs it more at the time.

If you want assistance overclocking your CPU, I can assist. I’m not a perfectionist and I’ve only overclocked 2 CPUs so far, my old core 2 duo, and my current i7. However, they make it pretty easy and you’re almost always guaranteed getting a few hundred Mhz without and real effort.

Uhhh, just for GW2, I’d give it an 8.5. If you overclock that CPU, 9.5. The only reason I don’t give it a 10 is because its a sandy bridge CPU, not an ivy bridge CPU.