Guild Wars 2

Not Randall. The agent from order of whisper who is in charge of opening the gate.

Arah p4: if you let the NPC die at the gate with Abomination, the event at Lyssa will not trigger. There is no fix for this bug.

AC p1 (after p2): if you run straight to the boss area before passing the usual cave opening the event will be bugged and not spawn the final boss.

33 points for 24 wins? You can’t be serious.

Play ranger. Ranger looks cooler; it requires more situation awareness and reflex to pull off a timely dodge. Ranger has higher base damage, better burst, better mobility, better crit chance, better reflection damage and better CC overall. Ranger stacks vuln, brings Spotter, Frost Spirit, aoe heal and condi cleanse. Ranger has the best tank (bears) in EU. On the down side, ranger’s utility is rather selfish and meh, pet AI is clunky and the sword autoattack roots him. In the end, play ranger if DPS is what appeals to you.

Just the guardians are generally deemed useful doesn’t mean that rangers can’t be useful. Players’ skills matter.

My Asura school girl. She’s adorably nerdy in:

Heritage chest
Glorious skirt
Aetherblade boots
Shoulder scarf
Reading glasses.

My fourth elementalist and the second asurele. Fashion knows no bound ;o

https://youtu.be/jAG5kU0QPg8

GhOst.4019:

Iris Ng.9845:

I think my matchmaking is like 80% good with close matches. Then 15% of the time my team has one or two people who are frustratingly bad mechanically – to the point that playing Shoutbow to babysit them does not work at all. Most of my punishing loss falls to this area as the system expects me to carry the match. And another 5% of the time I become a black sheep to balance my other teammate’s high MMR against a full premade. Then I pray that I’m not too heavy for them to carry. That sums up my mixed feeling about the current MMR.

Out of curiosity, why isn’t MMR used to normalize the rank points of the leaderboard? For example, if I have a lower to mid MMR, my points wouldn’t be full 35, but instead my effective point would be (35 x MMR coefficient) which lower than 35.

Did you look at your own team? All 4 of those players are Esportz (not just 2). The only oddball is you in there. 4+1 vs 5 is a pretty close matchup…. You team might not have been a full party of 4 but they know each other. The enemy team also doesn’t not normally team together. They are actually most likely a 3+2.

My conclusion was that the enemy team knows each other well and works together like a full premade From my team, we were fully solo Q and folks were already at each other’s throat before the match started. I only know of AK and Hiba’s fame so forgive me if I don’t know anything about the other two teammates. But my impression is still the same. I clearly didn’t belong to that bracket.

D/F is not competitive on Burst. It’s still the best for sustainable DPS and fairly balanced between damage and defense/crowd control.

spoj.9672:

Iris Ng.9845:

spoj.9672:

Wethospu.6437:

Picking up deals 30% of your maximum health so it doesn’t matter that much who picks it.

Well eles taking it is risky due to how fast they die to cultist attacks.

But,

ele

has

Arcane Shield,

and Sandstorm,

and an effing condition removal in every weapon sets.

Banner kitten has nothing. But banners.

Yeah but on the final seals you arent standing in your sandstorm. You are running out to hit the seal. And you cant use weapon skills while holding the hammer. Plus as someone who always plays eles in fractals i have much experience being singled out by cultists in the stack. Conveniently taking me low inbetween blinds and projectile blocks.

Its not to say an ele cant run the hammer. I do it sometimes. Its just not as favourable as a class with a bit more durability. And eles cant hold the hammer for as many charges most of the time due to condition damage and single hits taking most of your health.

Likewise, but as someone who has much experience in pugging trio with my ele and pug never runs hammer anyways. I always save Sandstorm on the un-aggroed group of cultist, or even simpler, signet of air when I’m out of Sandstorm. If not, arcane shield and double dodge if things hit the fan. Point is, it is simply not an excuse not to run the seal and completely relying on warriors.

Not to mention, ele is one of the best if not the best (scratch it, mesmer is better) class to run the hammer in between seals without the need of portal. The only time that I think it is not wise to do so is at the chest seal.

Edit: Ele can hold as many charges as you want compared to the warrior for the fact that you can either heal or cleanse or both at the same time. Meanwhile the warrior cannot even regen with Poison on top of his Healing Signet and consecutive pickup will just kill him.

If the warrior doesn’t use much condi then why not using Blinding Ash? It helps in your attrition. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYlcMozh9MwuB8rNgAgFOAUBKijCClfDjh0AA-T1SHABpt/QdKBXUlA+UDwQVI+QVlCOBANp8DMtAwpDAgHAApAKSYF-w

As far as I know, stance warrior doesn’t have many condi cleanse. If they use berserker stance, play defensively and keep up your aura for protection. After berserker stance wears out, keep applying burn to them. The burn, blind and poison should wreck their burst rotation enough to force them disengage. If they play aggressively then you need to keep up with blind and weakness and avoid their burst. You should win the attrition fight eventually. In sPvP, there will be a high chance that the warrior will use long bow and Cleansing Ire. Save your CC for that F1 long bow skill and stick close to their back so that most of their projectile can’t be used. When they swap to melee weapons, keep your distance at 400 range.

There are other viable and useful builds for ele in PvP besides d/d cele. But first, let’s re-examine why d/d cele is meta in most tourney. It has:

• Good damage pressure, coming from both power and condi and synergizing well with our might stacking. It is a great 1v1 class and good in team fight.
• High sustain and mobility. It can escape focused fire and stay on point for a long time if need be.
• Also great healing output, condition removal and frequent boon sharing. It’s very good at peeling for teammate.

What it doesn’t have:

• High burst or focused DPS aka. ability to kill for your team.
• Massive cleave against AI-reliant classes: turret engi, spirit ranger, minion master.
• Projectile hate skills
• Soft CC/lock down/ denying areas

In tourney, d/d cele is extremely useful when your team has good communication. You can help with team fight if your team calls for it, or rotate out to decap or rush to defend your capped points. However, in low to mid tier PvP, you will become less effective against cancerous specs. Most people playing in this tier are not able to land a perfect one shot so your sustain is not as useful. DPS and the ability to give chase and stomp become really really important. Plus, it’s better to know how to counter comps and use different builds flexibly. That said, I find all these builds below have their uses:

• D/F (Fresh Air): good at roaming, small team fight, plus one. Good against Power Ranger, Lich, Shatter mesmer. Not so good in big team fight and against condi classes.
• D/F (Burning signet/Blinding Ash): good at team fight, locking down a single target and most 1v1. Good against any melee DPS and power ranger, not so good against classes that can kite and use heavy condi.
• Staff Cele: good in team fight, point holding, aoe damage and CC. Best use with high terrain, i.e. Clock Tower, Graveyard. Good against condi, damage pressure. Good against turret engi, or any pet zoo. Not so good against CC chain (Halting Strike mesmer), range aoe. Always getting focused.
• Scepter/focus Fresh Air: good at focused DPS, 1v1, plus 1, chase and finishing, spawn camping. Best when paired with someone to peel for you. Not good against any kinds of pressure. Not so hot against stealth DPS.
• As a small note: Focus is good against power range classes in general and d/d cele is better against condi classes.

I have not tried other builds but they all seem to fulfill a certain niche role. In general, d/d cele is more of a support role than anything else. It’s very easy to play as the build has the best sustain out there. However, unless you are really good mechanically (like Phantaram), you can’t really kill anyone with it. If your team lacks DPS, it’s one of the most boring and ineffective build to solo Q with.

@Nike: I know the bracket is already set, but would you consider double elimination rule with best of three next time? More actions and more chance, less seeding required

Element Two.7316:

Purple Miku.7032:

Dub.1273:

I bet miku’s team will feature more hentai than all other teams together?

Tom’s out of the team now because he is busy with coursework and Ambro ditched us again to go to NA, so my team is now:

Me, Der(py), Quaggan, and Sesshi.

No hentai :<

I’m still the manager/owner though

edit also some Kyaa hype propaganda
http://imgur.com/a/5StMr

<< Slow claps >>
Tom, you are amazing!

Any buffs in dagger, scepter, focus will not be viable either as seeing how they are very prominent in sPvP. Dagger already received a buff with Lightning Whip, even though they killed Burning Speed (RIP </3). Scepter is a high burst weapon in sPvP, giving it more direct damage will only cause chaos. Focus is, well, focus – it’s not a damage weapon at all. Dagger OH was nerfed due to its too good mobility but it’s more valued for easy CC and burst.

There are only two things of ele which need rework: trait synergies and targeting/tracking of some skills. Then we will have even more builds and more working skills to play with

Lendruil.9061:

oxtred.7658:

Lendruil.9061:

Morte.5916:

Iris Ng.9845:

RIP Icebow

TBH, I wouldn’t miss it. It kind of takes my character over, I become an icebow bot with some additional features.

Now just nerf staff and my ele world is in order again.

Nerf scepter, dagger and focus as well. Lightning hammer also deals damage, wich is an exploit. let’s all play flame axe nomad and be happy.

Doesn’t make sense in my opinion that a ranged weapon that requires only spamming 1, 2 and sometimes 5 has the highest dmg output and even a longlasting evade on the dmg-attunement.

It is trade off by a slow attack rate, easy to avoid damage by strafing or stepping out and oh-so-easy to completely shut down by any CC heavy classes from a PvP stand point. In fact, its air attunement sorely needs a buff which probably never happens. By all means, they already nerf Tornado+Meteor shower combo and completely destroy that elite. The next expansion will screw up the current Ice bow meta and Tempest Defense trait as well

Lendruil.9061:

Morte.5916:

Iris Ng.9845:

RIP Icebow

TBH, I wouldn’t miss it. It kind of takes my character over, I become an icebow bot with some additional features.

Now just nerf staff and my ele world is in order again.

Doubt it. Staff is in a very good place in sPvP right now. Good as in lower bracket and unnoticed.

Minipets do not work anymore. Good things I have replaced all my ranger runes to scholar – except on my ranger bc my bear never dies !!!

spoj.9672:

Wethospu.6437:

Picking up deals 30% of your maximum health so it doesn’t matter that much who picks it.

Well eles taking it is risky due to how fast they die to cultist attacks.

But,

ele

has

Arcane Shield,

and Sandstorm,

and an effing condition removal in every weapon sets.

Banner kitten has nothing. But banners.

YourFriendMarvin.4127:

Play 5 Digums, solved.

Eh, pretty much this! 4 roll for one-shot spec, me roll shout bow. At first, we push the team fight at mid and force two turret engis to drop their turrets there. Then we retreat, wipe the one who tries to cap our home. Then 4 of us go to far, wipe the one in far, spawn camps and farm the turret engi as they pop their heads out. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at home, snacking and reading manga. Whenever they come to me, I just have to kite around and hold point long enough for our glass cannon to roll back and blow them away.

I think my matchmaking is like 80% good with close matches. Then 15% of the time my team has one or two people who are frustratingly bad mechanically – to the point that playing Shoutbow to babysit them does not work at all. Most of my punishing loss falls to this area as the system expects me to carry the match. And another 5% of the time I become a black sheep to balance my other teammate’s high MMR against a full premade. Then I pray that I’m not too heavy for them to carry. That sums up my mixed feeling about the current MMR.

Out of curiosity, why isn’t MMR used to normalize the rank points of the leaderboard? For example, if I have a lower to mid MMR, my points wouldn’t be full 35, but instead my effective point would be (35 x MMR coefficient) which lower than 35.

Lava tomb Ele and Nosstate Necro. Nothing ticks me off than suicidal builds nowadays.

We won’t be able to chain Deep Freeze in with the new defiance system.

RIP Icebow

Yesterday my friend and I queued up against a 5 turret engi premade from the same guild. When you see people resort to cheesy builds to farm ranked, it just feels so… wrong.
Nevertheless, it was the temple map so we won easily with constantly wiping them in team fight. But guess what, since their MMR is probably low yet they can hold at least 300 points against us, their rank points would advance no matter which outcome anyways.

Hey, I love double pistols on my engi too, even though I limit myself to only playing it while I solo easy facerolling contents. It is a ton of fun seeing all the little condi damage number while not totally gimping my straight damage – a reason why I don’t like Rabid gear at all.

I’m using this old school HGH build with nades. As you can see, Aristocracy rune is really sweet for this condi build. It synergies well with our might stacking through HGH and add considerable amount of condition damage. Here is a short footage of my engi doing Battle of Claw Island: http://youtu.be/XYPmEWBn1r0

I love nades as it is our only good range option. For easy and zergy contents, you can swap to Flamethrower, like this variant

With pure staff (no icebow/lightning storm yada), 3-6 might, on a small hit box, moving target (Mossman, Archdiviner, Ashym), it’s about 6-8k DPS at best – number pulled from my personal record with DPS-meter. It is about the same with D/F, 9-12 might. D/F edges out when you have to swap attunements for crowd control, but staff edges out if you factor additional cleaving. If the object is stationary (Ice elemental – Snow blind, Anomaly), staff is pulling far far far far — far ahead and even 4-5 times better if you cannot crit.

Bloodlust is still major in zerg vs. zerg (WvW) as you replenish the stacks extremely quick (tag 5 kills) and most of the zerg ele uses hybrid builds (more defensive gears, support traits) and in need of Power supplement. It is also good in open world if you camp a specific map for hours for event farming (e.g. Silverwaste).

However, from a min-maxing stand point, it’s not as good as damage modifier sigils.

Necro are much better in condi if you play more team fight. You have Corrupt Boon, then you also have traited Death Shroud skill 2 which also converts boon. You have condi carpet: Signet of Spite, then you have condi spread as Epidemic. You have condi transfer with staff skill #4 and dagger off hand #4. Its survival ability is, however, entirely dependent on your group’s support. If I have that kind of comfort then I pretty much play necro as I prefer bigger battlefield.

Condi ranger is quite tanky, and at best a good 1v1 class but they can’t really kill if their opponent decides to leave them alone.

Dub.1273:

Iris Ng.9845:

Dub.1273:

Nobody has mentioned how you can troll party members with them. Honestly, permanent merchant express is the best item in the whole game. TP one has use too, just the banker one seems largely useless to me.

The bank has a great use for when I want to quickly deposit all the PvP chests and bags without opening all of them ;o

PvP chests in dungeons? :o

Ya, all my chars are parking in HotM now. More than often I don’t realize that their inventory is already half full with boxes until I set foot in the instance.

I think you picked ranger already. Necro is a powerhouse that needs to be babysit everytime; ranger is more of a roamer type and their pet carries them way better than necro’s minions.

Ranger is decent in zergs if you can fill the role of dorito-sniping or finishing stragglers. They are only less desired in guild raids. Necro is superb once you know how and when to get-in/get-out of the fight quickly. My favorite necro skill is Spectral Walk.

In the end, why not playing both? They have opposite play styles and are fun to switch in between once in a while.

If you can get the author of this guide: http://dulfy.net/2014/07/21/gw2-mesmer-pve-class-guide-by-sanderinoa/ to teach you, you basically transcend to the top tier elites of the hardcore PvE world. He’s a bit busy lately but always kind and helpful to new players.
PvP wise, he’s not the man for the job but he will bring your knowledge of the class to a great extend. I would advise you to contact Sanderinoa via ingame mails.

Use this: http://gw2legends.net/

Every dungeons become hard mode when I roll my ranger. On the other hand, they all become a zzz mode with my warrior. Ranger’s personal DPS feels so much nicer and their buff is potentially more prominent on targets which can’t be crit.

Dub.1273:

Nobody has mentioned how you can troll party members with them. Honestly, permanent merchant express is the best item in the whole game. TP one has use too, just the banker one seems largely useless to me.

The bank has a great use for when I want to quickly deposit all the PvP chests and bags without opening all of them ;o

If you aim for always loss within 100 score difference, you’ll have the maximum points with lowest MMR possible. Then your Q time won’t suffer and you can farm more games for ranked.

#Logic

Abe [SC] How to stack might on a Sc/F elementalist

if Queue time is less than 5 minutes… x__x

YourFriendMarvin.4127:

December.3946:

No one gives a poop about MMR or leaderboards, but unranked queues are SIGNIFICANTLY quicker than ranked queues. And most of us play troll classes/builds in unranked anyway -/smileyface-

Pretty much this.
Ranked doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll run into more good players. I always solo into Ranked now, but sometimes I queue unranked because the queues are faster. Sometimes I queue unranked if theres a bunch of premades in ranked that I know I could beat with a real group, but I get PuGs that don’t have a clue what they’re doing. I don’t mind being smashed by a good team, but against subpar teams that I know I can beat it’s just not fun. So thats a reason to queue in unranked sometimes. We need Divisions with incentive.

I echo this sentiment, especially against teams with STACKED turret engis. As if one is not annoyingly facerolling enough. I also find ranked queuers at the middle tier are generally more salty and like to boss around. The only time I queue ranked is when I q’d up with better players (AK for example) and other good players like The Abjured are farming unranked. So I tend to avoid getting farmed that way.

If you want a name to duel with, Readymade is also a strong staff ele. He loves to push far and usually wins 1v1 against thieves easily.

Either Fear Me or one of the Plank consumable items that has a massive knockback AOE range. Usually breaking the Plank is enough to push all of them away.

What is the double wall that everyone is talking about?

My PvP friend would often troll me by bringing his lava tomb to my speed run group. Not like he lacks DPS or anything, he just trolled me by purposely going into down state to deal damage. P/P thief is one-shot wonder in PvP. They don’t have a shred of sustain DPS, sadly.Yet people fail to understand how it has no chance in PvE.

iWarlock deals crazy damage if you have an engi in your group knowing how to frontload 6-7+ condis. But again, staff is known for their defense, aoe control and cheap source of clone for shattering. I have not much experience in playing staff to give any comments except that during world boss event, i warlock and sword/focus are my mesmer’s best dps.

Lorgus.6148:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Mesmers can do some really awesome stuns and boon removal. In the urban fractal there is no such thing as enemy might when a Mesmer is played.

This is not even included other things like portal entre for faster times, insane condi removal if its support shatter, etc etc.

Chaos Storm from staff is OP, can combo that with power block if you want to freeze enemy AI like the mages, layer your illusions then daze shatter (which is AoE) for a chain daze making it impossible for them to do anything.

Please…
Mesmers are already pretty bad… but please don’t make us look even worse by running a staff shatter build in dungeons.

Halting Strike makes its damage really good. It is one of the valid tactics that Sandy taught me when I first started learning mesmer in fractals.

I’m not sure about condi removal but boon removal and daze/stun/interruption are two basic strategies for mesmer in Ascalon Fractal and the third one being reflection against Ashym during his FGS phase. I prefer 64004 with greatsword and sword/pistol against the vets but if shatter works for you then I can see why staff is better (basically, cheaper dispenser of clone). Cripple shortens the distance of Heart Seeker and Rush, and pretty much slow the spamming rate of the Cultists and Warriors. It’s an understated condition to be used in fractals.

The tracking bug may be related to how they change shadowstep/port function. Shadowstep is now smoother, more responsive and slightly faster than before.

Jerus.4350:

robertul.3679:

A lot of people seem to forget that stealthing from a thief perspective is mostly “press 5 and let the group blast”. It’s more of a team effort really.

God I wish most of the time taht was all I had to do, only with good players.

Even with good players, the good thief still has to blast on their Black Powder twice with short bow and even use Blinding Powder on top of it if stealth duration is not enough. In fact, good thieves need to watch out for their group’s stealth duration at all times and know which spots are safe to refresh and where to path the mobs.

Booxos.8715:

I don’t want to make a new thread so I’ll ask also in her?. I am looking for a character for me. I have a long career in MMORPGs but in GW2 I just cannot find a spot for me. I dont like to have many characters i am a fan of having just one and keep inproving only it. In Knight Online i played as a debuffer/healer priest, in WAR it was ironbreaker, in Wow heal paladin, in GW1 i was playing as a mesmer and necro in gvg and as a elementalist in soloqueue. In Neverwinter i played as a Guardian Fighter. I am a support. I like to support others and i hate to be squishy because it is annoying for me if i die with 1 combo. As i was checking professios my chooice was obvious – Guardian but… as i am playing it now i feel like i was useless. it has 15k hp and i die usually as a first. I have also tryed warrior it was ok due to big tankiiness, necro as i rly liked it in GW1 and Engineer as i wanted to try to Stay at the distance and put conditions on. I played mayby 50 Games at all but still cannot find something for me. Could You guys help me and give som? tips or help in finding character for me that i will stick to and master it?

Seems to me that you’re into the support type in PvP/GvG. If that’s the case, I suggest you go with either elementalist/warrior and to a lesser extent guardian. D/D or staff cele elementalist is the best support class at the moment. They survive really well and provide a lot of boon and condition cleanse.

Lorgus.6148:

So are there any other encounters in game that you can think of where the party would benefit from having the boss stand still and face off with the “anchor/tank/cleric guard/whatever”.

Svanirgandr is the first coming to my mind. Then some of the HotW bosses can be good candidates. Like the one that spawns a cone of geysers which knock people down constantly.

Enko.6123:

Iris Ng.9845:

Because Rocky is an extremely intelligent tanker that will switch its target to a nearby wolf if you accidentally hit it —- Oh wait, I forgot that those wolves have been conveniently GLITCHED out of their aggro range so that they don’t chase and attack you – for a skillful smooth run!

Let’s see and compare the zerker guard footage with this cleric “shenanigan”, shan’t we? I’m genuinely interested in learning the new tricks to improve my bad guard skill as well. This comes with no sarcasms as I know a handful of people who can pull it off (Robyn for one) in a full group. Not sure about in low manned situations.

Edit: Further clarification of this glitching method will be explained in details by Purple Miku in the following post. This tactic is super helpful for those having troubles dealing with wolves as they can now only focus on killing Mossman alone. Inarguably much better than glitching Mossman under water as you can perform your full DPS rotation on land and achieve faster time.

Summons attack enemies that you have targeted and use an auto attack on. They won’t initially agro if you don’t use a 1 skill. You don’t have to hit the enemy with it. Try summoning one and using a melee attack. It’ll head out to attack your target.

Their AI is kind of weird but once you figure it out, it’s easy to work with.

Hey Enko, the problem always happens when Mossman goes into stealth and Rocky’s aggro resets. He either returns back to me or runs to a random target which coincidentally gets cleaved in my AoE. The reason I prefer Rocky to stay put and close to Mossman at all cost is that Mossman will promptly reveal himself as soon as he can hit a target from stealth. However, if Rocky runs around chasing butterfly then it is more likely that Mossman will teleport to players and gouge them or simply use Dancing Daggers while in stealth.

spoj.9672:

maha.7902:

This thread is literally just meta drones talking down people arguing against them and the other half trying to say “hey, doing this makes our runs a lot easier but we aren’t trying to say it’s more efficient”.

Can everyone just like

step back

chill

Actually the issue is coming from them claiming clerics is more efficient in trios. :P

Easier yes. Efficient i dont think so. Anchoring might be more efficient. But not in clerics.

@Iris
Thief gets more damage from moving because they should be using seaweed salad or experimental remnants. I think thats what Miku is referring to.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experimental_Remnant

.__."

But thief can just strafe left and right a little and still behind the back of the boss right? < I refer to this as Sandy’s famous swishy-swashy movement :p >. It’s not like thief is always standing still, not if they already choose to use such a specialty food.