Guild Wars 2

My personal guess is that the update will up around the same time the daily achievements reset.

Oh, and I should add that ALL the fractals take place in the same instance. So you can finish your run of 3-4 fractals without restarting your game when the update comes around.

If you are in a dungeon, fractal or personal story instance, you receive 3 HOURS to complete it before the game kicks you for the update. Not minutes, HOURS!

It’s only minutes in the open world (including WvW).

This has been in place for MONTHS.

Based on previous experience, content updates tend to go live during the second half of their workday.

In Central European Time, that would be anywhere between midnight and 3 AM. However, for this particular update, I would not be surprised if it was released at the exact moment daily achievements update, which is at 1 AM CET.

At level 80, your trait points will NOT be refunded. Instead, you get a free refund every time you use a trait book (at level 11, 40 and 60).

However, you can reassign your trait points any time you want by talking to your profession trainer (the NPC who sells those books), by asking to reassign your traits. This costs only 5c per trait point, so 3s50c at level 80.

(You only need to buy each trait book once, to unlock a higher tier of trait powers. You do NOT need to spend 2 gold on a trait book every time you want new traits. Some people actually made that expensive mistake in the past.)

Obviously, I meant Question 4.

I can answer Question 5:

Auras are four specific weapon skills, found on different weapons.
- Fire Shield (Focus 5 fire)
- Frost Aura (Dagger 4 water)
- Shock Aura (Dagger 3 air)
- Magnetic Aura (Staff 3 earth)

What they have in common is that they do something to foes who hit you during their duration. Traits that refer to auras always refer to these skills. It is also possible for anyone (not just elementalists) to gain Fire Shield or Frost Aura by using a Leap Finisher in a fire or water Combo Field, respectively. (See http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo_field for more information.)

@Brullyra:
You should mention that you are wielding dagger/dagger.

How many of your 4 attunements do you use?
How often do you use skills other than the auto-attack skill?
Which utility skills do you equip? Do you use them?
Did you spend your first 4 trait points? If so, on what?
In which area are you playing, and what types of enemies give you trouble?

I’m very partial to the five signets, because they each give you a passive effect (as long as they are not on cooldown). I’m giving a quick rundown of these skills here, but please note that this is just my personal preference. MANY MORE utility skills are very useful.

Signet of Earth:
Gives you extra toughness, or use it to immobilize a foe (so you can run away or finish it from a distance).

Signet of Air:
Gives you 25% extra speed, or use it to blind a group of foes. Very useful in jumping puzzles.

Signet of Fire:
Gives you a bonus to Precision, or use it to inflict burning to a foe, for a good amount of damage over time.

Signet of Water:
Removes a condition from you every 10 seconds, or use it to chill a foe (see Signet of Earth).

Signet of Restoration:
Gain a little health every time you use a skill, attack or attunement, or use it for a larger heal (that is not as good as the other healing skills, to be honest).

As I gained more trait points, I invested in traitlines that gave signets more usefulness. For example, with the final Earth Magic trait “Written in Stone”, all signets keep their passive effect even if they are on cooldown. This increases the usefulness of Signet of Restoration tremendously.

A final tip on a different utility skill.
I found Arcane Shield an extremely useful utility skill at lower levels. First, it makes you immune to up to three attacks, and if it ends prematurely, it blasts all adjacent enemies for a good chunk of damage. Especially at lower levels, this damage is significant enough to decide a combat in your favor. And being invulnerable for a short while is not bad either at low levels.

Finally, about traits:
Don’t worry at low levels. Just experiment with traits you think might be interesting. You need to buy a trait book at level 11, level 40 and level 60. With the second and third tier traitbooks, you will receive a full refund of your trait points, so if you don’t like a traitline, you can still change it.
Also, your profession trainer offers you the option to RETRAIN your trait points, basically refunding you all your spent trait points, so you can reassign them. The cost is very affordable (only 5c per trait point you have, for a maximum at 3s50s at level 80).
At lower levels, what you should be looking at most in your traits is the ability scores that a specific traitline increases, because a +100 boost to your power/precision/toughness/vitality at level 20 is BIG. At higher levels, the trait powers themselves become more important, because you can start looking for combos with your weapon and utility skills.

1. Elementalists do not have the ability to swap weapons. Instead, they have the ability to swap attunements. You should treat this as a weapon swap option, because each attunement gives you access to a completely new skill set.

2. It is perfectly viable to use (for example) weapon skills from earth attunement without putting a single point in the earth traits. Some of the trait powers give a bonus to a specific attunement, but that bonus is not necessary to use that attunement. (Also, only a few of the major trait powers that you can choose from are limited to skills from a specific attunement.)

3. Over the course of 80 levels you will receive 70 trait points. Since each traitline only goes up to 30, it is possible to max out 2 traitlines, or to fill out 3 traitlines to 20 points each.Therefore, it is perfectly possible to give 2 of your attunements all the trait bonuses you want.

4. You do not need to play all four attunements intensively, but it is recommended to regularly swap between at least 2 attunements, with perhaps a 3rd (because of the cooldown on attunements) as a fallback option. If you WANT to go all-out and swap between all four, perhaps the Arcane traitline is for you.

In summary, elementalists are NOT suited for playing in only 1 attunement all the time. Why? Because then you only use half the number of skills other professions have access to (because elementalists can’t swap weapons in combat). Because it is perfectly possible to give at least 2 attunements all the trait bonuses you want. Because the cooldown on your weapon skills encourages you to change attunements (e.g. why not use some air magic skills while all your fire skills recharge). And because different attunements are suitable for different things (e.g. fight going badly? swap to water attunement for some extra healing skills).

Some crests (most notably Crest of the Soldier) offer a combination of stats that is not available in runes or jewels.

Check out this post by developer Jonathan Sharp, outlining the different professions with their (intended) strengths and weaknesses:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-December-14-2012/first#post999247

In December, a new bank tab was added for all rare crafting materials.
ALL rare crafting materials?
No, a small subset was overlooked: the doubloons. Even

This suggestion is simple:

Please include collectible bank slots for:
- copper doubloon
- silver doubloon
- gold doubloon
- platinum doubloon.

In my opinion, they could be added to either the “Gemstones” tab (because they can be used as equipment upgrades) or “Rare Crafting Materials” tab (because they are used for crafting runes, sigils and jewelry) in the collectibles bank.

If it’s a technical graphics card issue, you could consider writing a support ticket on the “support” section of guildwars2.com. (Check the tabs on the top left corner of this page.)

Zenyatoo.4059

Sorry if this seems harsh, but someone had to say it.

You have every right in pointing out flaws in the game, including things other people do not consider flaws, and I fully acknowledge that it has value, because it allows ArenaNet to improve the game, by learning from their mistakes.

But accusing me and others of sycophancy and logical fallacies goes too far for me. You disagree with my opinion. That’s fine. But that doesn’t mean that I’m wrong. Just that you think I might be. This doesn’t mean that I’m right, either. Just that I think I might be.

Opinions are not truths.

If you don’t like something in the game, you are free to state it. People may agree with you. Things might get changed as a result. But that doesn’t mean that because you or some other people don’t like X or Y about the game, that X or Y are automatically BAD and INTENTIONALLY implemented JUST to annoy everyone.
Instead, X or Y might be the result of human error, or a technical problem that we don’t understand, or perhaps even a deliberate decision to prevent problem Z (which we know nothing about because it never occurred).
You have your own logical fallacies. Like jumping to conclusions.

And do you honestly believe that screaming bloody murder is going to strengthen your case?
If you are in a restaurant, and your steak is too rare for your taste, what do you do?
Do you call a waiter or the chef to tell them that you are not enjoying your dish, and ask them for a solution (like a different steak, a hamburger instead, or your money back)?
Or do you stand up and start shouting to all customers that this is a bad restaurant because they can’t even make a simple steak, that you are insulted by their inability to cook, and that everyone else should be too? And do you argue with other customers, telling them that they are wrong for enjoying their steaks?
If you are eating out in this restaurant, which of these people do you want to have sitting at the table beside you?

What I think is happening here is that at the Guild Wars 2 launch, many players were expecting the level of polish and routine they had grown accustomed to in that other game (the one with orcs and humans).

However, there are huge differences between the games:
1. That other game has had years and years to iron out all the bugs and glitches.
Guild Wars 2 has not had that long, and ArenaNet is scrambling to clear out the bugs, the imbalances, the potential exploits, and all other teething problems as soon as is humanly possible. Still, the players who graduated from that other game are not impressed, because they are not used to seeing ANY imperfections.
(By the way, did you know that it took many months for that other game to release its first PvP battleground? Before that, there was only dueling, and randomly harassing players of the other faction in open-world PvE.)

2. That other game has had years and years to teach their players exactly what to expect.
Guild Wars 2 is not that game, and if they deviate from the expectations given by that other game company (the one with a name like a snowstorm), some players may decide that they don’t like it, because it’s not like what they have been taught to like by that other game company.

3. That other game receives monthly earnings from all active players, and has a huge development and customer service budget.
Guild Wars 2 has a fixed budget for customer service, rather than a budget that depends on the number of active subscriptions. They cannot pamper their customers like that other game company does (like having their developers write a lore encyclopedia on their website, or building and maintaining an extremely expensive website for letting people show off their characters in 3D, or organizing a full-weekend convention dedicated to their game, or writing personalized responses to each and every in-game ticket).
These are things ArenaNet simply cannot offer with their chosen business model. Instead, they offer THE COMPLETE ACTUAL GAME (that is of outstanding quality)with NO MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION. The rest of their services are decent, possibly good, but will never be VIP-state-of-the-art.
And people who are expected to be treated by VIPs by their gaming company will notice the difference in quality, and will complain. (“What? No forum avatars?”)

If I interpret this correctly, it means that there is a LOT of work being done on WvWvW, and it is so large that it won’t be finished until February.

What this specifically means:
- No major updates for WvW until February.
- Balance and bug fixes will continue as usual in the meantime.
- Once we get to February, we will either get some new maps, a new reward system, or at least a major overhaul of SOMETHING. Who knows, perhaps even a solution to nightcapping imbalances.
- Everything they are working is still subject to change until it goes live, so they won’t announce anything to avoid a situation where they promise things they end up not delivering.

So what’s so bad about this? They apparently see several ways to significantly develop WvW further (or a single way but BIG), and it will likely be done in about 2 months time.

Also, I expect formal communication about this to happen around the second half of January, because novelty of the January update will likely need to have died down a little before they start promoting the February update.

Starting on December 14, the Wintersday Event will take place. It’s not yet known what it will consist off (apart from an asura toymaker named Tixx who has a big flying airship toy factory), but it is this month’s big content update.

If you want this fixed, you would do better by describing the issue in the “Game Bugs” forum, and to not use sarcasm. And you should probably also write an in-game bug report with as many details as you can think of.

If you actually enjoy getting immobilized in this way, and wish to invite other people to entertain themselves in the same way, then I guess this thread is the perfect way to do that.

Charr and Skritt share a certain outlook on life: both races have a fascination with technology. While Charr are warlike and Skritt are sneaky, these races can still see eye to eye.

Asura and Skritt are centuries-long rivals for the same resources in their underground homes. Asura tend to view Skritt as unintelligent pests when in small groups, or a major threat to all civilized life when (too) many Skritt gather together and acquire more brainpower than the Asura themselves. Skritt tend to view Asura as “meanies” and as prime suppliers of “stuff” to snatch.

According to the patch notes, last night’s patch should have fixed Cliffside Fractal.

I hope this is fixed by changing the remove-all-headgear option for players too. Personally, I would very much like the option to see my character’s headgear in dialogues.

Don’t forget the cities. It’s easy to miss a PoI in one of them, and you can easily forget about them when you meticulously revisit all the explorable zones.

Half Tooth.1867:

Where can you see the pale tree in gw1? I completely missed that O_o

There are two instances where you get to see it:

1. Explore Arbor Bay. Ventari and Ronan can be found there tending the young (and non-responsive) Pale Tree. It’s on the island in the southwest part of the map.

2. The Ogden’s Benediction cinematic (for completing Eye of the North) shows a shot of the Pale Tree growing in what will be the Grove.

When the Risen control Anchorage Waypoint in Cursed Shore, they are joined by a number of Embers. Not many of them, but it may be noteworthy because it’s a level 80 zone.

Whether you have a focus or a dagger in your off-hand, your Fire 4 skill is a Fire Field.
The scepter offers you a number of finishers to combo with this:

• Fire 2 Dragon’s Tooth: Blast Finisher
  (The combo triggers on moment and location of the tooth’s impact since the most recent patch. It causes Area Might.)

• Fire 3 Phoenix: Blast Finisher
  (Nothing interesting to say here. Area Might is nice.)

• Earth 2 Throw Rocks: Projectile Finisher
  (Note that this is one of the few Projectile Finishers available to the elementalist, and combining it with a Fire Field causes burning on the target.)

Also, if you are using off-hand dagger, consider that Earth 4 and Earth 5 are also Blast Finishers. (Although Earth 5 has a long channel time, it will still trigger the combo if you start channeling while the Combo Field is still up.)

I’m just saying that it is no longer impossible to recolour hair accessories, if I’m reading the kits correctly. I just wanted to point this out since most of this thread was posted BEFORE makover kits existed.

Whether or not it is desirable that you need to spend gems on it is another matter entirely, and I offer no opinion on that.

Edit:
You do make a good point about underwear recoloring. This is not possible in character creation, so it will probably not be possible either by using a makeover kit.

Thank you all for the support for this suggestion.

I personally find it an oversight that the karka shell, passion fruit and passion flower did not receive their own collectible slot, while every minipet does get one. Especially since the recipes that use these ingredients are typically learnt automatically upon attaining sufficient crafting rank. For all intents and purposes, karka shells, passion fruits and passion flowers are a permanent addition to crafting variety.

Regarding the collectible tab for rare materials, that is just an afterthought for me. It would be nice to have though, mostly because there is a maximum to the number of bank expansions that can be purchased, and having an additional dedicated tab for these items would free up bankspace.
First and foremost, though, this thread is about the karka shells, passion fruit and passion flowers!

Also, using a staff as an elementalist is not recommended for 1v1 fights, even when fighting PvE (like pink moas).

Staff has great AoE, but few single-target attacks and its auto-attacks have a relatively long cast-time. If you want to play WvW, use it while standing on the walls of a tower to rain down destruction on the enemies attacking the gates. Or use it while running around in a large group, to buff/heal allies with AoE.
But if you are ever alone outside of the walls, do NOT use a staff.

About your personal story, I’m afraid I don’t know that one because I never played asura. However, if one hit from the fireball will kill you, the obvious way to deal with it is to not get hit.
Use dodge-roll to evade the attack. Or use an anti-missile skill, like Earth 3 on staff, or Earth 4 on focus, or Air 4 on focus. Chances are it will be a slow projectile, so easy to dodge, or the harpy will have a long casting animation to signal that its fireball is coming, making it easy to anticipate.

As an elementalist players since the first day of pre-launch, I can confirm that this bug has been present since (at least) then.

It has nothing to do with traits. My elementalist has never put a single trait point in Air, and this bug keeps occurring for me.

Somehow, the coding for the “Enter Air Attunement” command (F3) works differently than the other three attunements. What I notice is that this is the only one of the four attunement icons to have a small red bar underneath it, which also only appears under skills that are targeted attacks.

Here is what I think is the case:
“Enter Air Attunement” has been erroneously coded to be a targeted attack skill with infinite range, meaning that activating it will cause the game to search for the nearest possible target and autoselect it. While entering Air Attunement does not actually do anything to the target directly, the UI will register that an attack was made on a target, and will thus automatically follow up with the auto-attack skill.

And I want to emphasize that none of the other attunements do this, because they are apparently NOT considered to be targeted attacks.

Therefore, my suggestion is to fix Air Attunement to be like the other three attunements, by not having it be a targeted attack.

Since last week, the gem shop offers Makeover Kits (one for hair/horns only, and one for full character appearance and gender). I haven’t tried them, but I imagine that you can change hair accessory colour with the hair-only makeover kit.

Perhaps something for you?

And you can only collect the reward on the character who fill out the last part of the Daily Achievement.

You could also consider finishing the personal story if you haven’t been doing it while leveling.

The effect of Statues of Melandru when the Temple of Melandru has been corrupted:
“Players in the area of statues will be attacked by roots that cause Crippled and Bleeding. "

If that is what happened to you, you need to wait for the Temple to be under Pact control.

I recall doing that skill challenge myself with little effort, sneaking past some of the monsters. However, there was an underwater Melandru statue in Straits of Devastation that had the corruption effect that made it impossible for me to even fight a single one of the monsters, let alone commune with the statue.

This issue is known to ArenaNet already. I don’t have a link right now, but I do know they’ve described two possible workarounds. (One of those might not actually work, though.)
Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.

Don’t forget the Engineer as a profession suitable for fighting at range.
(Also very much in flavour for a Charr who is a member of Iron Legion.)

My guess is that the Temple associated with that statue has become contested.

Each of the five gods (excluding Kormir) has a separate Temple in Orr, in addition to several statues in various places. Either the Pact or the Risen can control a Temple.

If the Risen control the Temple of a specific god, all statues of that god will radiate a continuous nasty effect, ranging from random conditions to periodic damage to periodic interrupts. Some of these will make it impossible to commune with the statue to finish the skill challenge.

My advice to you is to either find the Temple and check whether it is contested or uncontested, or to periodically check back at the statue to see if the nasty environmental effect is (temporarily) gone.

Here is an overview of the Temples and in which zone you may find it:
- Balthazar: Straits of Devastation (Southwest) - Lyssa: Malchor's Leap (North) - Dwayna: Malchor's Leap (Northwest) - Melandru: Cursed Shore (East) - Grenth: Cursed Shore (Southwest)

Also, from the effect you describe, I am unsure whether it is actually a statue of Melandru you are at. It sounds more like Lyssa or Balthazar to me.

According to the patch notes, yesterday’s patch fixed the bug that caused Dragon’s Tooth to not trigger any combos.

I have yet to test it.

The title says it all:

Please add collectible bank slots for karka shells (under fine materials), passion fruit (under cooking ingredients) and passion flowers (under gems).

It is perfectly understandable that the Halloween crafting materials do not receive such collectible slots, because they are only available during Halloween.
However, the Lost Shores crafting materials are permanently available, and the crafting recipes they are used in reflect added general utility to crafting.

And as a bonus suggestion, I would like to suggest creating an entire collectible bank tab for rare crafting materials (e.g. pirate doubloons or glacial/destroyer/corrupted shards/slivers/fragments/lodestones, as well as globs of ectoplasm). Perhaps as a bank upgrade that can be sold for gems?

soistheman.7208:

I tested with Healing/Pw/Tough armor vs Healing/Prc/Vit armor a while ago. Everything was the same (trait, rune, weapons, accessories) except the armor, I found toughness reduced around 9% damage while vit increased 16% of my character’s health. So for that I would say if you have to choose between toughness and vitality I would prefer vitality, but that doesn’t mean toughness is useless though.

Either way CC mods is better than vit or tough

When you did this comparison, did you also test whether it was easier to bring your health back up using healing/regeneration during combat for both toughness and vitality builds?

Theoretically, with higher toughness healing would be easier (because your damage received is lower), while higher vitality would make healing you up to full health harder (because the difference between current health – maximum health is larger).

Is this a very tangible difference?

She’s the karma heart merchant in Snowden Drifts, right?

I once found her corpse significantly northeast of her original heart location. My belief is that she periodically gets attacked by wandering monsters, kills a few, chases after new monsters that wander inside her aggro circle, until she is defeated at some point.

If a player revives her (as I did once), she immediately attracts the attention of local monsters and fights them until she dies.

The real issue with Lionguard Auda is that she does not wander back to her starting position upon losing aggro or upon being revived.

“I used to play [Game X]. Why can’t Guild Wars 2 be more like [Game X]??”

The short answer:
Because Guild Wars 2 is not [Game X] and never will be.

The slightly longer answer:
Guild Wars 2tries to set its own standards, and to innovate the MMO genre. They take elements from other games that work (and not just from the one game you like), and they are not afraid to try to deviate from certain MMO staples from older games, if they believe that their new system can actually be more enjoyable for a larger number of players.

Dravos.7218:

I assume the “i” was entered but not filtered, since he has some results showing up without any “i” in them.

The “i” in the search bar is not limited to the item name, but also its ingredient list. Therefore, EVERY ITEM that has an *I*ngot as an ingredient will appear (meaning all metal recipes), but no wood recipes, except those that require anc*I*ent wood logs/boards/dowels.

Freedom Bound.6210:

You have an “i” in your search bar. Remove it.

This is the solution.

I think this has to do with the game code for “transformations”. Basically, whenever a skill, trait or item transforms you into something else, apparently all your equipped weapons are temporarily replaced by some kind of default equipment.

(As an elementalist, I once received an achievement for “number of foes killed with a sword” while transformed by the Tornade elite skill. Elementalists can’t even hold swords!)

I am assuming that transformation does something similar to your harvesting tools.

Interesting question:
Did your Orichalcum Mining Pick use any of its charges during your attempts? If not, then it would support the theory above.

I shall give an update on this bug.

I filed a support ticket on the website. The support team then asked me for a few screenshots. I provided these (and have also added them to this post), and was then given a more or less final answer. The support team told me that they weren’t the right people to report this UI bug to, and that I should support an in-game bug report. Which I have done.

I guess it remains to be seen if one of the next game patches will fix the issue, because this all happened shortly before the Karka event, and there has been no major patch since.

The first screenshot shows how far down I can scroll down on the “My Story” screen without problem. If I move the slider any further down, all entries disappear, as can be seen in the second screenshot.
(I should add that I have completed several story steps since then, but have not yet completed the entire personal story at the time I took these screenshots.)

This just in (from the Game Bugs forum):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/ele-fixes-in-patch-don-t-actually-work/first#post834125

ArenaNet will be looking into the elementalist bugs introduced in the last patch.

In my opinion, the forum climate has improved already since three days ago. I believe that some people have vented their opinions, calmed down and have continued playing.

This situation is still very toxic, though, because it is very taxing to read post after post by people who are religiously fanatic about the truth of their opinions.

Opinions are not truths.

The game is not ruined, just because someone believes it is.
There is no vertical gear progression, with tier upon tier of better quality items after ascended items, just because someone says they can see where things are going.
Everything ArenaNet says from now on is not automatically a blatant lie, just because someone believes that ascended items run counter to their MMO manifesto.

If it is up to these people, there is no need to wait and see what happens, because they tell us that they, in their infinite wisdom, already know that ArenaNet, Guild Wars 2 and all its players are doomed for all eternity.

I need to get away from this forum, but I thank you for your words.

Agent Zrii (who is introduced during “Forging the Pact”)

Her appeal comes from the fact that her asura-sized ego is expressed as extreme confidence in her ability as a spy, rather than as intellectual arrogance.

“Take a good look, Commander, because you won’t be seeing me once I get started.”

LordByron.8369:

Jornophelanthas.1475:

And then they conclude that they are obviously right, and that ArenaNet is obviously wrong (or worse: pure evil).
.

just 2 things:
not only on this forum but almost on any forum gw2 is discussed, the gear trendmill is largely discussed with many unhappy players

Which ArenaNet will likely be aware of. Because it is their job to be aware of player opinions, and provide decent responses and actions (if needed) to these.

LordByron.8369:

Second, Anet passed to the paradigm of the ethic model of mmo to the pure evil incarnate with just a single patch…..

From the most loved for years to the most hated…..
Something went wrong it seems….

I think we cannot just pretend complaint are just the normality.

This is a prediction about the future of Guild Wars 2 that is simply not confirmable at this time, which also means that the value judgements towards Guild Wars 2 are premature.

If Chris Whiteside were to actually say that new tiers of items with increasingly higher stats will be added every few months, then your prediction may count as confirmed. However, this is not the case.
All we know is that there is one tier of items added to the game three months after release. This could be “vertical progression”, but this could also be a fix to the game economy, because people were attaining exotic items far sooner and far more frequent than ArenaNet originally envisioned, with ascended items eventually being added to all existing dungeons, crafting and karma merchants.

We just don’t know, and hopefully an AMA Q&A session will help clear this out.