Guild Wars 2

Huck.1405:

I’ve meaning to ask for a while here, what’s with the “tax” now when buying gems at the TP? Is this something legit, or just another way to squeeze more money out of us?

I’d like to hear something from a Team Member.

Not sure on if there is or not to be honest. BUT, all the taxes, they are good for us. Why? Because they combat inflation. All the gold you get from simply in game means, not TP but drops, doing dungeons, selling superior/minor sigils, etc. That’s all bringing gold into the economy. If you don’t bleed that a bit you’ll eventually see inflation. Your 1 gold will only be worth 75 silver and so on.

So taxes in the TP are actually good for us. In the moment sure they suck, but the fact that they’re there is a good thing overall.

I will say I’ve always liked the synergy of the fast recharge on Rifle Turret toolbelt skill and Static Discharge. Just seems there’s something nice there. With it’s synergy I still wonder if FT’s Flame Blast beats it out? Though the blast and firefield and all that it probably does, but if might isn’t an issue, I’m curious.

So, I was thinking I should probably find a dungeon/fractal guild as I started playing a bit more often. Any suggestions? I’m not serious enough (or skilled enough yet ) to go for one of those big time guilds but looking for something a bit more casual, not PHIW casual but just casual casual.

ahh forum bug! Ahh there’s the raid, Kills bugs dead forever, in case there is some kind of live temporary killing.

As far as Fairness is concerned I’d also point out how “unfair” it is that as a say guardian I have to swap to a different weapon set for 10s to gain my “on swap” capabilities, while I can activate it at a loss of less than a second on Engineer by dropping the kit and activating it again.

There’s pros and cons to things, and I think it’s better left alone.

Einlanzer.1627:

I love how simple people can’t comprehend nuances and throw-out knee jerk arguments using false dichotomies, black-and-white reasoning, and strawman tactics just to deny there’s a problem with the game when there clearly is one.

A note for the less savvy – the suggestions I made above are almost exactly how PvP works. Precision would only have a subtle influence on the hit rate for monsters, and they would go down in roughly the same amount of time as they do currently due to the reduced health pool.

I like how people use big words to try to act smart when they chose to play a game without healers or tanks and all they do is complain that there are no healers or tanks.

There are encounters with slow heavy damage, and there are encounters with passive damage from either multitudes of enemies, conditions, or simply fast attacks. You can look at it as two major categories of encounters. Simon Says and Battle of Attrition. Simon Says Dodge! simple, learn the tell, do the action, screw up and there are big consequences.

What you want to see more of is attrition based content. Here’s the problem. Historically, at least in the games I’ve played over the last 16 years of MMOs, this only strengthens the DPS meta. Why? Because there’s two ways to look at this problem. I’m taking 500 damage a second. I can either A) Boost my regen to match it or exceed it leaving me able to continue the fight indefinitely thoroughly conquering the attrition aspect of the fight. or… I have 15k health, I have 30s to kill this boss, can I do it? Yes? Ok, yeah I’m going with this method, it’s faster.

It simply doesn’t fix the problem it only enforces the elitist mentality even further and gets anyone underperforming kicked because people chose method B and kitten you if you feel like playing in method A in a method B group.

Of course you could make the attrition so severe that there is no way someone could survive it without nomads gear… but do people really want to have to carry around a set of nomads for that fight? Is that really a good thing? Isn’t that simply flipping the problem upside down and asking people fill their inventories with different gear sets?

I wish people could just accept GW2 for what it is gear wise and see the fact that your diversitya nd build is empowered mainly by your traits and utility choices. You can play supportive, it just doesn’t involve you being able to face tank Mossman.

Mirta.5029:

I just think that stealth has no place in games.

I actually agree, but it’s an archetype that will not easily be shed. People enjoy it too much. It has overpowered potential, and is really tough to balance.

Not saying thieves in pvp are OP, just saying the whole invis/stealth thing in games in general seem incredibly tough to balance as I don’t think any game really does it well, at least not that I’ve played.

MithranArkanere.8957:

All I an say is that I want just two things:
- Account-wide unlock.
- Vanquiser mode for dungeons.

You complete Story Mode with any character, you get explorable account-wide for any other character of that dungeon’s recommended level.

Complete all explorable paths, you get Vanquisher mode unlocked for any level 80 character.

• Enter with a party of 1-5. Scaled content.
• All doors open. Fully explorable.
• Events and bosses on each main room. Bonus hidden events and jumping puzzles.
• 3 weekly bonus reward ‘stages’. Bronze, Silver and Gold. Like Guild missions, can be retried as much as you want each week, but you will only get the difference if you got lesser rewards.
• No checkpoints, no waypoints, no joining mid-way, no drops from enemies, all drops from events, boss chests and bonus. Wipe and you are out. Fail or leave, and you only get the rewards from the events and boss chests, and the bonus up to the last stage completed.

Complete all 8 Vanquishes once, you get an achievment, a title and a bonus chest, and unlock a repeatable version of the achievement. The repeatable achievement is infinite, but only gives up to 250 AP; 5AP per completion. After that you only get the bonus chest.
The bonus chest gives 500 of a generic token. Talk with Dougal Keane to open his cool new shop. There use the generic token as currency to exchange it for tokens of specific dungeons in any amount you want, or to buy ascended materials to craft items (along other ascended materials) that can be used to “ascend” dungeon exotics.

This would actually be pretty fun. +1

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Engineer, everything…. but all just a bit. average DPS

Why do people still think this? Engis have pretty solid damage if you execute properly. I mean Acid Bomb is the equivalent of 100blades except I don’t have to sit there and channel, I can drop a Flame Blast/detonate, Blunderbuss and a Jump shot on top of it all while the warrior would still be channeling his 100blades. After that I can add on top Freeze Grenade, Shrapnel Grenade, Grenade Barrage, swap back to Flame Blast again, finally use a grenade1 skill, then back and blunderbuss… I mean, Engis are full of some very potent damagers.

Avipt.9632:

Yeah tried CoF for the first time as thief today, Daaaaamn these guys are squishy i dont know how you do it, but i got kicked for the first time in this game. I might stick to my warrior, more noob friendly :P

56030 build, lots of dodge, keep your S/P set handy for extra evades, blinds and interrupts. It certainly doens’t have the passive defense, but the plethora of active defenses it has available make it actually one of the easier professions to survive with in a lot of content.

Marthkus.4615:

Zerk player does not mean good. Most of the zerk players I have ran into do not know how to dodge. They just know the pug stacking tactics.

This is mainly because of the zerk meta. Way to many people think they are good because they wear zerk and know where to wall stack.

I guess I shouldn’t have added that part as it obviously detracted from my main point.

The point is to play with like minded people. Zerks like other Zerks because they have that same mentality of Speed > All.

Of course though on easy dungeon you have a lot of people claiming to be meta, still corner stacking for no reason, guards/mesmers not using reflects and general kittenery going on but it all goes fine because you can burn through any of those pitiful boss encounters thanks to far too much damage or far too little health on those things. Personally I just avoid that kittenty content for the most part though or play a profession that can force people to run it better (Screw pugs pulling nokk and corner stacking the golems, I’ll just play guard/mesmer and do it strait up).

At some point you’re going to be stuck using the skill1 of something as you’re out of big hitters. Eliminating the best 1 skills we have will mean that baseline of damage is lower, your spikes of damage would somehow have to be increased. I don’t know if that’s possible. I mean I guess maybe in solo situations if you get fury/might upkeep going really well, but enter group content and suddenly there’s might/fury for the party diminishing the returns of your selected self buffing.

Basically I don’t think you’re going to find anything close to bomb/nade setups as far as damage potential is concerned in group situations at least (probably true solo too honestly but maybe).

You can try to find something different and fun though and just have fun with it, but it’s going to be less efficient.

Marthkus.4615:

Thaddeus.4891:

The problem is when the guy that started the instance start to ask ppl to pings and then ppl don’t do it and then ppl start to kick and bla bla bla. Mainly the reason why i never ask for zerk meta in a pug, that’s just awful.

This always baffles my mind.

The only reason to zerk is for speed. If you burn time witch-hunting the non-zerks, you lose that edge.

Just a note: Even when in full zerk, I will not ping you my gear. I am going to block you then leave your party.

Not really. Zerk = Speed, Yes. But it also means someone who’s chosen speed over east of play. And the fact that it’s as squishy as it is means they generally have to know what they’re doing a bit more. Now, not saying all PUGs do, there are many that “run zerk” but don’t even understand what they’re doing. But, it’s at least an attempt to grab like minded people who likely are a bit more experienced as they’ve shed their safety blankets which is the vit/toughness/healing power stats.

While I never put up LFGs for zerk/meta stuff (rarely put up lfgs in general), I completely understand the idea because to me “getting through” a dungeon isn’t the point. I want to have fun doing it. For example a Walled Lupi… nope, I even ask before I enter the zone if I see a guard in party. Ranging p3 SE dredge cart… it’s much less fun. And SEp1 is very fun to charge through at lightning speed, but when you’re doing the pug tactics waiting for Nokk to run down the ramp and what not, it just kind of takes all the fun out of the dungeon for me.

I don’t play to be frustrated, I play for fun, and in that regard I understand why people at least try to gather like minded people in their groups.

Thaddeus.4891:

PvE (Dungeons) : Except necromancer, all profession are good, but Ele, thief and Warrior come out on top. You can also add Guardian to that list, but only if you are a pug that need some babysitting.

sPvP : All profession are in a good place with Elementalist, Engineer, Warrior and Thief being on top right now.

WvW : GWEN is the meta, Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist, Necromancer.

I’d say GWENV, Guardian Warrior Elementalist Necromancer and Veilbot…

TPMN.1483:

It was put at UTC time as it never changes – is a crude measure.
Getting guildies together is much harder than you think- the population imbalance of let’s say NA players on EU or EU on NA servers is much smaller than you think which can run at a high level.

Now if EU & NA merged for PvE – better coverage would be available.

The suggestions of a 8 hr reset are not that unreasonable on the face of it.
It’s not an exploit – people that could be on for 12 hrs prob currently still earn the same in or out of dungeons as all zones roughly balance out at 10g/hr wherever you are – dungeons actually come out with a lot lower gold/hr ratio than a lot of other content available.

The big issue with more dungeon rewards is that it’s strait gold. Other places can net you quite a good profit after you sell the stuff on the TP, but there’s a big difference between the two. With strait gold you’re causing inflation, with materials sold on the TP you’re deflating the economy through the tax.

I really wouldn’t mind seeing some more material rewards in dungeons. Perhaps add a slot on the standard completion for a bag of crafting supplies, of course limit it through DR so you aren’t just spamming the dungeon, but have it be a bit more rewarding.

With Silverwastes and what not, I do agree dungeons aren’t the cash cow they once were by comparison. It could use a little boost and I think some crafting bags would do that, as well as make it more reasonable to repeat dungeons other than SEp1.

Marthkus.4615:

Ranael.6423:

Marthkus.4615:

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

Can you explain a bit more your point? Naively I would think that stacking under a boss makes the entire group directly in the range of the things they have to dodge… so if those you describe are bad at dodging they are then more exposed while stacked no?

Here are the situations I see
1) Boss goes down before it can kill even zerkers
2) Enemies like kohler spawn adds that go down regularly enough so that zerkers do not even have to dodge the spin. Even if they go down, they just get right back up again.
3) Boon poop, Aegis/reflection spam negating all the damage without having to dodge.

I see dodges in zerker groups in crucible of eternity against the alpha subject AOE, In arah, and higher level fractals.

Aside from those situations, I do not see zerkers dodge. Heck, when I run zerker I do not need to dodge or even click my negate damage stances.

Stacking is fast, but I think it should be an awful idea. In practice it is only bad for non-80, non-zerk groups who don’t DPS fast enough.

This goes right back to what I keep saying in every one of these threads. They need to address scaling. Like you said, CoE, Arah, Fractals… the level 80 content that people regularly do, bet people are dodging in HoTW too.

AC though, hell no, why? Why dodge when I can kill things so fast that they can’t even attack back?

They need to address how the scaling damage works and prevent us from instantly killing these things, at least not without having perfect coordination.

silvermember.8941:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Carighan.6758:

That is to say, content needs to be balanced so that berserker characters go down in 5-6 hits, while a Nomad character can not only sustain 20+ hits before going down but also easily heal themselves back up. Instead of the 1 vs 2 hits we have now. Likewise a berserker character should kill an enemy before they can utilize their own healing/CC, while a nomad character cannot do that. And so on.

So, let’s see if I have this straight.

• Mobs should hit for less damage, so that berserker stats should allow for 5 to 6 times the mistakes/white damage as now v. the 1 hit you believe they can take now.
• Nomad characters should be able to make/take 20+ mistakes/white damage v. the 2 hits you believe they can take now.
• Glass characters should be able to consistently one-shot (presumably players, since mobs rarely heal, unless you’re talking about Mordrem Menders) before they can use a heal or (in most cases instant) CC.

That’s what your words say. I hope that this is not what you meant.

You are being too literal. Also he didn’t say anything about mobs doing less damage.

I think the point he was making is Zerker should go down if they get hit by a mobs attack significantly quicker than a Nomad for example. Zerker however should be able to kill faster than Nomad as a compensation.

Essentially, his point is vitality and toughness should actually scale relative to surivival similar to the way power and ferocity and precision does for damage.

And… they do.

Factanking bosses that hit like that isn’t scaling?

paladinecho.3024:

The only thing I really disagree with is that even though I had to switch out one of my Superior Sigils of Bursting for the sigil of corruption, I ended up winning when I went dual pistols for condition damage. This pushed my Condition damage way up there and managed to keep my stacks.

I craft another set of pistols for the idea of having power pistols, but pistol is not a power weapon outside of condition damage. Condition damage pistol has been very fun, however I really like to switch things to power mode when I need to use bombs, rifles and golems (Driving golems, not the golem special). The rifle is superior in damage, distance, and close quarters combat.

By the way, what is the new best attack power for engi?

Best attack power? Acid Bomb? at least as far as highest coefficient/lowest cooldown assuming people stand in the damage.

Kaldrys.1978:

Oh yeah I forgot about that trait, probably because I don’t carry an axe with force or slaying sigil on it. I had a few bloodlust stacks but didn’t get it maxed out for the last fight. I’m not clear on the math but is cruelty>bloodlust? My ranger was using 6/6/0/2/0. I used signet of the hunt+signet of the wild for +75% dmg modifier. Probably the only scenario in pve where you would use signet of the hunt active.

Bloodlust = power, Power doesn’t help reflects. Your crit chance/mod will adjust the reflected damage though.

Malthurius.6870:

I’ve said this in every “zerker meta solution” thread I’ve posted in.

The solution isn’t a change to stats or a mechanic, it needs a change to the way encounters are designed. If enemies didn’t stack on AE and instead moved out of it, if enemies dodge rolled and used evasion like the player does to avoid large burst, if enemies were more vulnerable to conditions and sometimes not vulnerable to direct attacks, if, if, if.

Just design better encounters and the zerker meta will fall behind. Zerker works because enemies are really dumb.

I just want to point out, that in many cases they tried this. There are enemies that look for range, there are enemies that will trigger evades. It’s simply that it’s very mediocre AI that controls it and we’ve learned to manipulate it. “don’t target the hunter” at hunter/crusher in Arah p3, not doing so avoids his jump back, just as an example.

But… that isn’t a problem of “zerker” it’s a problem with PUG tactics, or not even necessarily PUG but simply AI manipulation tactics. If I can avoid hits, I can wear zerk and will be better for it. If they avoid my field damage (lava font/symbols/whatever) then I simply re-evaluate what skill choices I make, Staff on Ele likely goes down in priority while Dagger goes up.

Though in regards to your comment about condi’s, again, I’d just re-evaluate but then I may go sinister, I’m still not going to look at defensive options unless they down right force me to, which I think is a bad idea for many reasons people have already stated.

AyumeiKitsune.8256:

Soooo I have looked around and all these guides and all they do is confuse me. There is so many ways to build a mesmer T_T! But I dont know which one I want to be. I like the staff because I can add so many conditions on the enemies like bleed etc. But some of the guides I see are I need power and precision. And all I have on all my gear is condition damage since I thought I needed that for mesmer.

So what weapons am I suppose to use? I like giving boons to people and doing a bunch of conditonal damage. But I feel like I die all the time. T_T! Can anyone help me figure this out?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW7dl0npBtdoxVNUrNCuxY6JCpCU+zQlMgfB-TBSAABFqbQ6HAgYK/A4KAEq6PEu/gHHEg2UCCA-e

That’s your Staff Condi build, basically you just want 3 of the staff Clones (not phantasms) up constantly bouncing those condi auto attacks around giving you might and bleeding the hell out of the enemy. IIRC it’s actually theoretically better damage than the power build in solo situations, the problem in group is that you quickly cap out bleeds and a guy doing 200 in bleeds is overwriting your’s that is ticking for like 2k-3k (note that the build may be slightly off, I haven’t really done much condi just screwing around with it, so that’s off the top of my head from what I remember).

In general for WvW for XP, people are talking about edge of the mists, where you simply run around trying to tag things for credit and be part of the train/zerg. You want something that will tag a lot of things, unfortunately mesmer doesn’t really have that. I’d use GS and try to use Mantra of Pain as they both have some good AE tagging capabilities.

Also note even with that condi build there’s a huge ramp up time, that’s mesmer’s huge downfall, you simply don’t have that burst damage that other professions do, Mantra of Pain helps but it’s simply not enough to match say an Ele dropping Dragons Tooth→Ring of Fire→Pheonix→Flame Grab → Ride the Lighting…etc, or even a guard jumping in with a Whirling Wrath →Symbol of Wrath → Leap of Faith..etc. For Mesmers your damage comes after you get your clones going, which takes time. Good news for that condi build though with the clone on dodge you can produce them quicker, but you sacrifice an unnecessary dodge… it’s a tricky business.

Hope this helps some and GL.

They changed that a few months ago, you can no longer stack with one weapon and keep the stacks when you change to one with a different sigil. Also if you go into the water and you don’t have that sigil on your water weapon the buff will go away.

In general that’s why people have gone away from those sigils in many cases. They are still nice for those professions that can leave a weapon in their offhand set, like say a hammer/staff guard who camps hammer, or a thief with shortbow that they won’t need to swap out. But, for the main combat weapons people have gone to Force + Night/Slaying/Accuracy/Frailty/Something else.

Mapisto.2154:

In ‘rewarding’ i meant for the player. there is no reason to change your build and armor stats to something other than zerk (mostly in pve). Its just too good on anything like world events, dungeons, it can solo bosses…
Ill give you an example:
My main character is a thief, and thieves have a bunch of fun skills like traps, caltrops, venoms and elit skills like dagger storm.
But why would I use them?! They arent that effective in pve, they are too weak.
You better put zerk armor and all your signets and just burst damage by spamming backstab.
Even short bow is used only because of its 5th skill for mobility and thats it.
If you like this style, be my guest. But I think arenanet need to make other builds more liked and wanted.
Its like they are saying ‘We gave you a lot of skills but only 2 are actually good. The rest is just foe the show’.

Tonight I ran through all of Arah, the only time I didn’t have a shortbow equipped was on Lupi where I run DD/SP. The rest of the time the blasts for stealth and mobility make it a must have.

For Dagger Storm, I used that quite often actually, I didn’t have a very well made group so I was on reflect duty to take out the orrian turrets, boom daggerstorm baby. Aside from that the Ghost Aboms in P1 if you get 15 stacks of that buff/dot on you then unleash dagger storm, well… they just poof, so much damage!

Traps, well Shadowtrap is used to do the orbs before Lupi solo, combined with Shadowstep (which I also use on Lupi).

Venom I use Devourer Venom and Needle Trap on Tar for the immobilize.

Then of course all 3 stealth skills I’m using regularly as well as Smoke Screen for projectile defense on different bosses.

Weapon wise like I said shortbow usually equipped, but I’d swap between DD for most boss fights, DP for blind/defiant stripping, and SP for when I need the evades.

I think I get what you want, and that’s more options than a power based build in dungeons…. well conditions just don’t work in that content. I think many people are open to them adjusting them somehow but as far as we know it’s one of those things that’s “on the table” but really not going to happen.

Aside from a Condi build being viable though, I simply wouldn’t play my thief any other way with any other gear. It just wouldn’t make sense. There certainly are many unused abilities in the game, from traits to utilities to even weapons for every profession in PVE. Why use a shield on guard? A scepter on Mesmer? Most of the Signets on Guard go unused. It’s simply that they don’t lend themselves to the content, and buffing them would break them in PVP and ANet is very reluctant to have separation of PVE and PVP so… yeah…

I do understand the desire to have more options, I mean at most I feel like I have about half a dozen regularly used builds on each profession in PVE, that’s not including just minor tweaks, but 2-6 play style effecting build changes per profession in group PVE play. With the vast amount of abilities out there there are so many combinations that simply don’t live up to what is best, and that is a bit dissappointing. But, there’s no miracle fix for that, we need ANet to give in on a few decisions and work towards some things.

That does not include gear outside of condi, the safety blanket that defensive stats provide is perfectly done. What needs to happen is simply addressing the issues with Condi, and perhaps giving some separation of PVE and PVP on some abilities so they can be buffed to be worthwhile. I mean really Skale Venom for thief is 3 stacks of 10s (5s with defiance) of vuln… look at Rapid Fire, Grenades, Glyph of Storm, Warrior Axe2/mace4… There are some glaring inadequacies that are hindered by that decision. Those are the things we need ANet to look at IMO.

Oyjord.2508:

OP here. Thanks a TON to you all for the great suggestions. I have a lot to consider now (which is great fun).

I think I’ll try out a GS Mesmer and PS Warrior first, based solely upon all of your suggestions. Then maybe a LB Ranger and Staff Guardian. Finally maybe I’ll try a Staff Ele if I’m feeling brave.

Now to look up some builds for all of the above….

Thanks again! Most helpful thread evar!

Oy.

If you do go mesmer, don’t be afraid to stand up in there with sword. By that I mean at least give it a shot, you have “Blurred Frenzy” on a very quick 12s(9.5 traited) reuse, that’s a 1.5s evade, really powerful.

I would suggest mesmer though, as it’s strength often lies in the planning vs simply the reaction. Knowing what to bring and where/how to apply it is much of what a mesmer does. I’m not old but I have slow reflexes and I find mesmer to be a very reasonable play style for me… though I’ve gone to have fun with Engi/Ele, it’s a lot of finger movement but it becomes muscle memory eventually.

It’ll be $25-50 most likely, I see no reason for me not to get it. The issue has always been that ANet doesn’t give me enough reason to pay them more! But, for what we know is coming I have no problem getting it even if it ends up sucking.

Xialoh.7261:

Iris Ng.9845:

For funsie, these are two builds you can use:
More offense

More sustain

Thanks, those look like what I’d expect it to be. Though you said for funsie. I assume D/D just isn’t optimal for this sort of thing really? I’ll probably still go with it though. Or I might try D/F for the first time even..

D/F is for tougher fights. D/D would be ok for it’s better mobility when doing say map completion or general running around. I would grab a staff if nothing else to swap in and hit the swiftness/static field+Blasts to keep the speed going, some fights you may even want it so you can range and kite.

Personally I went with S/F for a lot of the open world stuff as I could simply run the quick spike damage rotation and blow up enemies quickly, I’d go D/F or Staff when things got tougher.

Big difference between pve and pvp is that you can change your weapons around when out of combat and get the skills. Swap to Focus and obsidian flesh to run through things without getting in combat, swap in staff for speed. Even maybe swap S/D run a might stacking rotation and swap back to your dagger quickly to burn things down quicker? Just saying you have options on your weaponry always at your finger tips… well as long as you’re out of combat.

Engineer is the “jack of all trades”, not much you can’t do but some things you’re not great at, and with that it has a high skill ceiling so there’s lots to learn before you get good (dont use flamethrower auto attack!)

Ranger also has a high skill ceiling in that it’s highest damage weapon (sword) has a funky auto attack that takes getting use to. Other than that it has a solid set of tools as well as unique buffs that make it nice in groups. To avoid the issues with the sword auto you always have the option to take Greatsword which is a very defensive weapon but you lose the utility of the offhand options and the dps of sword. Longbow of course being an offhand. Pets are kind of an annoyance, but you have to use them

Necromancers… honestly, general PVE easy, tougher PVE… it’s hard mode. It’s a profession with no blocks, limited blinds, no extra evades, and no vigor trait as well as no consistent stability. I know i’m speaking a foreign language at this point if you’re new but basically all those things, that’s what lets you avoid damage and that’s what this game is about. You do have Deathshroud though, which is a secondary hp bar. This lets you get by and in easier content it’s kind of hard to die because of it. It’s not a bad choice, but it’s very limited at least in PVE.

I’d recommend a GS/Longbow Ranger or a Bombkit based Engi to a new player, out of those 3 professions those 2 thing would likely be easiest to get into for starters.

God, i wish everyone (including me) could perfectly dodge every “OBVIOUS” tell. Things would be so smooth.

Thaddeus.4891:

Jerus.4350:

Thaddeus.4891:

Marthkus.4615:

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

I was expecting that to be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKO11Y55DTM

LOL never saw that one. Did someone ever watched it from start to finish at normal speed? I bet the guys fall asleep in the middle auto-attacking.

I didn’t, skipped around, but then Dub made a better one that’s already at accelerated speed (edited my previous post with it), and he takes even more kicks and what not.

Thaddeus.4891:

Marthkus.4615:

Not really. Mob Damage is high enough that you have to dodge the big attacks regardless of gear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

I was expecting that to be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKO11Y55DTM

Or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1mxlA13ICk

Maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuMgBBlWz58

I’m a noob and there are never enough dodges!, I mean on Lupi I take tool kit, shield, perma vigor setup, and energy sigil. And in PUGs I still take elixer S (mainly for the bubbles that are bound to happen).

PVP will surely help Iris now I just need to get better at it.

And yeah, blasting is pretty sweet… I still consider myself a bit noobish, mainly because I see some posibilities I don’t go for. Lay Healing Turret ->Lay Napalm -> Flame Blast -> Big ol’Bomb -> Swap bomb to Thumper and Use the toolkit blast -> Acid Bomb -> Shield4 -> Flame Blast. Should be doable and get 18 stacks of might pre fight, I haven’t tried yet though, best I’ve done is 12 leaving out either EG/BoB/Thumper for whatever. And, of course you could do more with the thumper even, drop it and use the skill after you use the toolkit, then swap it for your EG to acid bomb, now it’s 21 stacks.

Not sure I have the coordination to pull it all off though.

And exactly Taku, though don’t forget Infused precision… god that trait slot gets swapped so often.

dlonie.6547:

Jerus.4350:

If they made Glint’s lair into a fractal, I wouldn’t complain.

It would be cool, for sure. I’d rather see it as a dungeon without the RNG, though.

They’ve said they’re reworking traits. I hope they’re reworking fractal selection and rewards, too.

It’d be kittening wonderful if we didn’t have to wait for some big hyped up announcement to find out. For the life of me, I don’t know why they can’t just say “We know this is bad, and we’re working on it” in a timely manner and without all of the theatrics.

I’d love it so much if we could do Fractals that we chose… so much. Fractals are cool, well most of them, but the system they are in is annoying, kitten RNG.

If they made Glint’s lair into a fractal, I wouldn’t complain.

Engi gets my vote because it’s so crazy. By that I mean that there isn’t a simple order, with the way timers work you’re either leaving things on cooldown for quite some time, or you have to swap early to catch it, then back to something else, and ahhhh. For example Shrapnel is 5s, Blunderbuss is 10s, Flame Blast is 6s, acid bomb is 15s, jump shot 20s, freeze grenade is 20s, grenade barrage 27-30s. There’s not really a neat way to put those things together. Then add on if you use Hair Trigger, which is nice for bosses you want to keep immob going on, now your blunderbuss is 8s and jumpshot 16s. Fireforged Trigger, ohh Acid bomb is now 12s and flame blast < 5s.

So it’s interesting trying to maximize and attempt to keep all of that going in your head.

Peutrifectus.4830:

Actually… I stand by full celestial for solo, self support… Take elixir gun and either grenades or bombs, the trait modified ammo, a few stacks of might and you’re out damaging zerker gear whilst having toughness vitality and healing power.

… you make the assumption that zerkers can’t be doing the exact same thing and thus still outdamaging celestial by quite a bit.

Condi can be very powerful for a solo engi though, but I’d focus one way or the other, Rabid with a condi build is quite good with a bit of sustain, but not backing off of damage too much.

First and foremost, I’d suggest you get use to swapping weapons. It’s a great thing you can do in PVE to make things go smoother. For example if I’m just trying to hop across a map quickly I can go with Retreat/Save Yourself. Toss on a staff and throw down symbol ahead of me, swap GS and leap out of it as I get there, weapon swap to my Sword/focus and target something far away and hit 2 to teleport forward. When I get to where I’m going to fight I’ll swap in whatever I want for that, so for you you’d quickly swap your scepter in for your sword, maybe staff for GS.

Personally in PVE on guard I never like to go without my 3 in radiance so I wouldn’t want to make a full swap to AH. But, I’m sure you could work AH in there for some kind of trait setup. AH’s strength really shines in large groups so when you join the zerg you’d be rocking even in zerker gear. Maybe something like 23630? 10% extra in first tree, your blind spam in second, AH, and then you get dodge heals + Vigor trait + Shout reuse in the 4th. You’d be losing Master of consecrations which could be a big loss depending on how you play it… i love the trait but yeah…if you want maybe take the 2 in your power tree and drop the 10%er to get master of consecrations?

Of course, personally I basically just run dungeon meta, maybe with a few tweaks, almost everywhere, the fast kill times are worth it to me and in a zerg if you play well enough and utilize all your blocks you can still be fine, just gotta really be on your toes as those scaled up mobs hurt.

Wait, how did you pinpoint who was wearing zerk gear? … ohh wait, you meant zerg right? sorry had to, but that’s funny. EoTM a place built for people who like running around getting free loot and people who enjoy griefing those other people

Glory.1493:

Lindbur.2537:

Brodin have mercy on his soul.

dude..plz…how does someone change leg size????

Arnold needed calf implants to do that…

Seriously though, just look around at the boot options, there are some bulkier options, there’s really no fine tuning of your physic, and with the way they handle armor scaling, trust me you don’t want to, just test it out with the buff norn and put on some shoulder armor… see the monstrosity it is, they don’t really tailor the gear to fit their own body manipulation very well.

Ask yourself what you want to do.

Are you simply trying to get map completion, killing things quickly being the goal? Well I’d glass up a bit.

Are you trying to kill big bosses alone, well you may want some tanky stuff if you want an easier time at it.

Everything will change depending on what exactly you’re looking to do. I’m sure Urdhgag’s build will get the job done against big nasties much easier than a full zerk one will, but it’ll also take 3X as long to kill that little set of trash things that you want to kill.

So what is it that you want?

I will say, the biggest strength of an Engi is it’s flexibility and endless utility. Don’t get yourself stuck in certain kits/utilities just because that’s what you were told or that’s what has been working. Rifle is great, it really is, I’d probably say it’s generally what you want to be using. But Pistol/Shield has it’s uses too (extra blind, a block/daze, and a reflect/blast). Personally at this point I have 3 shields, 2 pistols, and 2 rifles all decked out different, and looking at some more options but I just haven’t done it yet.

I mean no offense to Urdhgag as I’m sure that build works great for the tougher stuff where some defense will really help. I just know going through general map completion and more trivial PVE content that I’d personally much rather be going faster and getting quick kills especially as you can use blinds so effectively on it that you can go through unscathed much of the time.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Mapisto.2154:

things.

Coming from a bunker warrior that went full zerk, I can attest to the fact that trading all defense for damage is the farthest you can get from lazy. being unable to soak damage/ take more than a few hits forces you to pay more attention to actually staying alive; there’s much more to it than doing big damage.

I agree condis should have a pve buff to make those more viable, but I believe your viewpoint for zerk is a bit off.

People get that viewpoint from open world and a dungeon tour that consists of ACp1/p2. Those places yeah you can kill things before they get to hit you more than once and the one hit doesn’t kill you. It’s only when you get into more challenging content do you get that “ohh crap, i’m gonna die”.

I mean hell my Thief is squishy enough that a single kick from lupi downs it, the difference between that and survival can simply be the time of week with the WvW bonuses, by like wednesday I can take a kick

… I only have my bank guild

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I’m imagining the mastery thing like the WvW masteries…. we’re gonna get +10% dmg vs Mordremoth’s minions and -10% dmg taken from Mordremoth’s minions for example

That’d be fine, it’d actually be pretty nice as it’d be harder for those that didn’t get it but not impossible at all.

What I’m thinking it sounds more like is that they have say those gliders. In some mission you need to use them, if you never got the mastery unlocked on them you don’t get to use say the gun or whatever… making you actually HAVE to have the mastery.

Maybe I’m wrong but it simply sounds like that from what he said.

The way he phrases that worries me. " If you haven’t played the jungle and you haven’t built up your character, you’re not going to beat that content." Sounds like good ol’ gear treadmill type thing.

That’s what’s so great about GW2 is that for the most part you can jump right into whatever you want. This sounds like i’m going to have to do a ton of map completion on all my characters to get them to where I can play the actual fun content.

We’ll see how it goes, but if it’s “difficult” because I need some trinketX because the mechanics just say so… it’ll be quite disappointing.

insanemaniac.2456:

click me

1st 2 posts

^^ very nice picture aided guide.

If you like videos then the KING one is great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnOcbGWBvXg&list=PL-f7beQOnuHhR9Rkjyv0e6gl4TKU0RVzj&index=4

Then there is GW2dungeons.net that has resources for everything dungeon/fractal related.

Kicked my first person from a dungeon today! Silly guard trying to use consecrated ground trick on lupi, he was gone before the AE finished… luckily it was only a p2 skip but ugh, i hate that thing, and luckily the rest of my group did too(PUG).

Vayne.8563:

Grinding has a traditional meaning with regard to MMOs. People want to apply their own definition to grind.

For years, the only definition I EVER heard for grind was killing mobs to level. Everything else was farming.

Yes, people use the word grind every liberally, but then, Guild Wars 1 had plenty of grind too if you were talking optional grind. You just didn’t grind for levels.

Anet explained what they meant by grind many times in interviews and at conventions after the manifesto.

If you choose to try to apply a different definition, it’s probably not Anet’s fault.

That seems quite a limited definition using only one connotation. I’ve heard it used for years as simply meaning ‘something you have to do repetitively’. For example a Gear Grind, which I guess you could say ascended is, but I think what we’re coming into is the Heap Paradox type thing. At what point is it a grind? Is it after you have to repeat it Once? Twice? Ten times? Twenty? At what point is it considered a Grind? To that end it’s a bit subjective.

In other games I’d have to repeat a raid sometimes 100+ times, that was pretty well accepted as a Gear Grind.

Overall I think ANet does a great job of limiting it while still providing a time sink for those who enjoy that. The only thing I’d consider a grind is getting AR in Fractals, but… you do it to get access to higher level fractals and nothing else, so you’re doing fractals so you can do harder fractals. I don’t see that as a negative thing as you should probably gain a mastery of the content before going into the higher ones anyways, and with infused stuff you can kind of skip any alts ahead now that you can pass the trinkets around.

So again, I would agree with ANet that it’s a no grind game, but I do think there is room to argue that it does have it’s grinds, it’s just that they are relatively painless compared to other games and very much optional in most situations. I will say I think Dragonite should drop in fractals/dungeons though as it’s the only “game mode” that doesn’t have access to it (maybe I’m wrong but I consider World Bosses part of general PVE, but Dungeons/fractals as a separate entity, General PVE/Dungeon&Fractal/PVP/WvW).

DanteZero.9736:

Lately, I’ve been running around with my guardian and I’ve noticed that virtue of justice with the renewed justice trait doesn’t always refresh. How long has it been like this? I remember back in October that the trait worked properly while I was in groups running around in the Mad King’s Labyrinth so was it bugged since then or was it always like this?

If you get xp/loot from the kill it refreshes, if not, you don’t. Many things fall into that category. Living Story instances for example don’t. Also a lot of summoned things as part of different encounters (the last room before gaheran in p2 CoF).

One of those many little hiccups in the system where things don’t work like they should. Just like projectiles that don’t reflect or what not.

shinjin.3924:

i got zerk already for dungeons,but i wont make it ascended,i got pvt for wvw but i dont like it so much because i just tank and dont deal great dmg.

So in the end is this a valid options ? :P

Just be aware that it’s pretty common for people to run melandru/hoelbrek runes + -condi duration food in WvW, which really cuts into Condi damage. Just a thing to keep in mind.

Spoj The Second.7680:

They did emphasize really challenging group content a lot. But yeah that could easily be stuff like Tequatl, Marionette, Wurm and Vinewrath.

Although they also mentioned in the interview that they wanted to address the concerns of players that were very vocal about what would make them keep playing or come back to the game. And the instanced group content community definitely fits in that category. So fingers crossed.

Maybe we will get something which isnt completely open world. Something new maybe? Or maybe just the option to have private maps so we can treat world bosses as organised guild raids. At the very least we should hope for new fractals. I doubt they will ever fully abandon fractals because it provides a good portal for unrelated stories and extra lore.

I’d be very down for new fractals. There’s only 2 things that really ever kept me from liking them all that much. The RNG nature, where you favorite ones you might not see but 1/10 runs. And how many of the bosses are very small and easily lost in the effects, hard to dodge the big hitters when you can’t see the tell.