Guild Wars 2

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Kilandros.2098:

Second, there’s nothing stopping people from retraiting pretty much on the fly anyway beyond the WP cost.

If you have to WP somewhere and then come back, it’s not “on the fly”.

Helpful post, thank you

Black Teagan.9215:

Yeah, make it infinite and you give the players a freeticket to exploit the game.
I cant wait to read the first sentence with: “LFM only Instant Trait Reset item users”

lol, is this post for real? For starters, I don’t think you fully grasp what an exploit is. Second, there’s nothing stopping people from retraiting pretty much on the fly anyway beyond the WP cost.

First of all, drop the PVT armor for Berserker gear. In high level fractals, everything hits very, VERY hard regardless of the type of gear you’re using. Killing quickly is key and berserker gear pays dividends.

As for build, it depends on what weapon you’re using. 10 into Virtues is a good idea for master of consecrations.

Assume you’re using Sword + Focus (our best DPS), try something like this:

0/30/0/30/10

Signet Master/Powerful Blades/Right Hand Strength

Superior Aria/Empowering Might/Pure of Voice

Master of Consecrations

For Skills I’d then recommend: Signet of Resolve; Stand Your Ground / Retreat / Hold The Line OR Save Yourselves OR Wall of Reflection.

This build will be max DPS which is a must. But it also offers a ton of utility and group support. You’ll be able to throw up Wall of Reflection every 30 seconds which is pretty much mandatory in Fractals. Pure of Voice will let you clear conditions on the group.

laokoko.7403:

I don’t have enough resource to get many different gear set.

So I’m wondering what kind of gear should I invest for high level fractal. And what kind of build should I use for high level fractal.

As others have said, full Berserker gear. Monsters in high level fractals hit very, very hard regardless of what you’re wearing, so you want to maximize damage.

I mean come on, make it soulbound and it will sell like hotcakes. The current iteration just isn’t worthwhile.

For flavor I think Hammer is the coolest weapon for Guardians, and our Hammer is pretty awesome. But Sword + Focus has definitely become my go-to for pretty much all content. Paired with a Meditations build and Judge’s Intervention, the mobility of Sword is just awesome.

What’s your favorite and why?

Sword is still our best DPS weapon by far, and it pairs nicely with Focus for some added defense.

Guardian: LONGBOW. Please—PLEASE—give Guardians Longbow.

Warrior: Shortbow

Thief: Longbow

Ranger: Main-hand Dagger

Elementalist: Greatsword

Mesmer: Dagger

Necromancer: Hammer

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

I’m okay with having less hp and even less DPS to a warrior, but what I’m not okay with is they have better passive healing. Guardians should have the stronger passive heal imo. That’s supposed to be part of what makes up for the loss of the other reduced attributes.

This. The passive healing advantage Warriors have over Guardians is obscene right now. I’m really not sure how Anet let this happen, since the idea was that you give up a high HP pool in return for more access to heals as a Guardian.

CptAurellian.9537:

Smite, grawl fractal? You think that it helps you down the legendary shaman’s shield quickly? Well, unfortunately, that assumption is just plain wrong. So the change of smite to a symbol (if they keep the singletarget damage on the same level) would be more than just great. Because right now, that skill does not do any more damage to multiple opponents than it does to a single one, which would be quite a different story for a symbol.

It wasn’t at all clear to me what he was trying to say. And anyway, an overall buff is still an overall buff. Smite would benefit from being a Symbol is every situation I can think of. That someone might be able to conjure up a situation where it wouldn’t—well, it’s still a buff overall.

Would love to dual-wield swords

Traveller.7496:

Kilandros.2098:

You can argue that it doesn’t make “business” sense to you for them to do this, but they are doing it nevertheless, so it’s fairly safe to assume that there are legitimate reasons and that these are not merely arbitrary decisions designed to aggravate players.

Legitimate reasons in this case being that they have estimated that it makes them more money than selling them separately in the gemstore, hence, my original point about greed.

I do admit though that I am not perhaps being as objective here as I would usually be, mostly because I have failed in the randomness challenge to get myself the skins I wanted for the last few events. And now, I really, really, want that rapier, since it’s the weapon of choice for my mesmer, has been even before the game launched. I’m so disheartened to have it locked behind a wall of randomness and spending real money that I’m very bitter about it, and I can admit it. I guess my only chance is that if they are indeed tradeable, I can at least try to farm some gold and buy one in the TP (can we get confirmation on this?).

I totally get that RNG isn’t even handed and can be very frustrating. But applying pejorative labels like “greed” to the process are simply incendiary and provoke complaints over constructive criticism.

And anyway, you say that the RNG “wall of randomness” is the cause of your angst, but Anet is clearly on your side by making the skins tradeable. You’ve won. You can avoid the headache of RNG entirely by proceeding directly to the TP. You should be celebrating and you’re not.

Traveller.7496:

Vol.5241:

Making money =/= being greedy.

But we have nothing to compare to. What if they put the skins themselves on sale in the gemstore and see how much people buy them compared to the randomness? (yes they do this with the armors, but for the most part, they are fugly. Most people want to buy the weapon skins for this round and the previous one.)

I would guarantee you players would be much happier too. Or do you think players would instead complain that now that they took the randomness away, they have nothing to grind and waste money on?

I can’t understand how some people support ANet over this so sincerely. You don’t have to lecture me about how ANet is a business and has to make money either – I don’t think that their whole existance depends on selling Black lion keys on the gemstore. (if it does, their business model is designed probably by some Skritts.)

However I agree that the tradability is a good thing. Does that mean they can be sold in the TP as well?

Anet has put plenty of items on the gem store directly (e.g., unlimited gathering equipment). They also put the Rox & Brahm skins directly onto the gem store. For whatever reasons, Anet has decided it makes more sense to make weapon skins available through RNG. You can argue that it doesn’t make “business” sense to you for them to do this, but they are doing it nevertheless, so it’s fairly safe to assume that there are legitimate reasons and that these are not merely arbitrary decisions designed to aggravate players.

EDIT: I also want to add that I sincerely doubt that money is the only motivation behind making these skins are RNG. I think it’s relatively obvious to anyone who plays this game that widely available skins are less desired by the majority of players. Rare and difficult to acquire skins, on the other hand, are more widely desired.

I’m sure that part of the analysis in deciding which skins to make RNG v. which skins to make directly available includes discussion of future value of the skin. Rox’s shortbow was extremely popular when initially release and is now largely ignored. I, for one, regret the decision transferring gold to gems to acquire the thing. I would hazard to guess that Anet has this in mind when releasing new skins; they want those skins to retain some value, and the best way to ensure retention of value is by making them somewhat rare.

As a proud owner of Eternity and The Juggernaut, I’m filled with envy whenever I see a Bolt.

JonPeters.5630:

Among other benefits the stealth on hunters also let’s you cast the beginning of barrage without detection.

Awesome.

LHound.8964:

Excursion.9752:

It would be nice to have build profiles and when you accepted the switch to a new build it just charged you the silver. No need to use trainers other than buying your manuals. I would love to have this ability in dungeons and it would even act as a gold sink because I am pretty sure people would swap builds more often.

^this.
We definitively need profiles. Profile expansions could even be sold on the BLTC for gems…

Profile could include but not limited to:
- Traits, gear and skill set.

It’s a major pain to have to change traits just to play in a different manner (and i have 5 sets of armor and weapons) on my Mesmer…

Yeah man, I probably have 7 armor and weapon sets for my Guardian and it’s becoming more and more difficult to stay organized. Being able to flip or tab through profiles where everything is kept neatly would be a huge qualify of life improvement

Excursion.9752:

It would be nice to have build profiles and when you accepted the switch to a new build it just charged you the silver. No need to use trainers other than buying your manuals. I would love to have this ability in dungeons and it would even act as a gold sink because I am pretty sure people would swap builds more often.

This. Totally this. Build profiles paired with weapon profiles would be absolutely brilliant.

Agreed. It’s an unnecessary time sink to travel into one of the towns simply to do this. Everything locks in combat—that should suffice as far as arbitrary restrictions go.

Allowing the weapon skins to be traded is a HUGE concession by Anet. Obviously this is a business and they’re in this business to make money. Monthly weapon skins through RNG is a great way to make money and keep this game subscription free. But allowing skins to be traded shows they’re listening and are trying to find a middle ground between earning profit and pleasing all players (i.e., paying and non-paying) alike.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Zealots Defence isn’t just lye in the projectile blocking.
but Yeah I would love to change smite to somekind of “symbol of the judge”
but wait….
in this case it will loose rapidness of the atack – it will be atacking once per second…

NO
I can’t do that to my party on the grawl fractal…

Nah, you could really just call Smite a “Symbol” for purposes of adding flavor and allowing it the benefit of traited Symbols. Keep the hammer effect and everything; simply make it a Symbol for classification purposes.

Zealot’s Defense is easy because you adjust the Symbol to block and give some damage ticks. The skill is already a DPS loss compared to Sword #1 so you only use it as a utility anyway—even then, you hardly use it.

Blasino.3128:

@Kilandros

According to the notes the symbols of faith and swiftness are bigger. Up from 120 to 180, traited 180 to 240.

I’m excited about this, since I like running symbols.

Hey man, thanks for the size specs! This is awesome. Symbols are my bread and butter.

Edit: So all other symbols remain the same? The rings are merely being adjusted to reflect the actual size?

I’ve long thought that Symbols are core to the Guardian profession, and are one of the things that really make it a unique play style.

I’m recommending adding a Symbol skill to the weapons that don’t have one, namely, Sword and Scepter.

I think the change would be pretty easy and don’t really threaten imbalance: Scepter #2 stays the same but becomes a “Symbol”; Sword #3 becomes a Symbol that provides 3 seconds of projectile blocking.

Easy changes that would give every MH Guardian weapon a Symbol in its repertoire.

Stealth for Ranger is an AWESOME addition.

But why wasn’t it put on SB?

Whoah whoah, wait. Someone explain the new symbol sizes to me (all I know/knew is that previously untraited symbols were small, traited symbols substantially larger).

Are untraited symbols now the same size as previously traited symbols? If true, are traited symbols now going to be 50% bigger than that?

Korval.3751:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Because Right Hand Strength is probably one of the best grandmaster traits in the game and you will probably be using a scepter or mace at least some of the time, and that alone makes it worthwhile.

The only weapon that puts out the highest, consistent (consistency is really important) DPS for Guardians is Greatsword. Everything else is either healing or a flavor preference.

The mace is a weapon for healing and protection. Using the trait Valor > VII Mace of Justice grants 5% additional damage and up to 250 healing power while wielding a mace. Besides the trait you have these mace skills:

1. Faithful Strike (chain 3) – Hit your foe with a final strike and heal nearby allies.
2. Symbol of Faith – Smash a mystic symbol onto the ground that damages foes and regenerates allies.
3. Protector’s Strike – Surround yourself and nearby allies with a shield. Damage foes that strike protected allies. Grant protection to yourself and nearby allies if you are not struck.

Needless to say every skill on a mace for Guardians is meant for healing and protection. A Greatsword has none of these type of skills. It’s pure DPS. If someone was keen on going with a one handed weapon for DPS then I guess a better solution would be sword. But I still feel Greatsword is the best for straight DPS.

I really disagree with this analysis. In my experience, Sword DPS is superior to GS DPS. Throw in Right Hand Strength into the analysis and I don’t think you can reasonably disagree that Sword > GS. GS offers up a lot of utility that Sword doesn’t, but for DPS Sword > GS.

Akechi Hotaru.7129:

@kilandros you probably should have realized you didnt like norn movement long before you got the 2 legendaries. imho it wouldnt have hurt to try all the races in the first week to get a feel for what you would like to put the most time into.

Yes because playing every race during the first week after launch would accurately disclose all of those classes quirks I’d later experience with end-game content. Oh wait I did and they didn’t.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

Kilandros.2098:

Frankly I think Knight’s gear is highly overrated. That being said, I’d speculate that it’s probably on par with celestial. My issue with Celestial is the wasted stat points into condition damage—the points simply add nothing to most builds.

If you do value vitality over toughness, have you tried working with Valkyrie? Yeah you lost precision, but you could do a mix and match.

No matter You want or do not You are still passivelly burning every fifth atack
so that point into condi dmg isn’t such great waste

My point wasn’t that it’s an absolute waste, but that those points are far more valuable going into stats other than condition damage.

If you really want to maximize Altruistic Healing, Hammer yields better results than GS. Swap Might on Crit and Shouts remove conditions traits for larger symbols and symbols last longer.

Also, the 10 in Radiance isn’t really doing anything for you. IMO Radiance begins to shine at 15+ points, but not really under that. Move those 10 into Virtues and get longer consecrations + 20% cooldown so your projectile reflect will last longer.

That’ll give you a pretty solid Fractal build. It’s fine to equip offensively and trait defensively, as this build does, for PVE and do fine. You just need to familiarize yourself with the scenarios to excel.

Frankly I think Knight’s gear is highly overrated. That being said, I’d speculate that it’s probably on par with celestial. My issue with Celestial is the wasted stat points into condition damage—the points simply add nothing to most builds.

If you do value vitality over toughness, have you tried working with Valkyrie? Yeah you lost precision, but you could do a mix and match.

Saw this thread in the Mesmer forum and thought it would be fun here. Tell us what weapon skins you rock and/or give us a screen shot!

GS: Eternity
Hammer: The Juggernaut
Staff: Fractal
Sceptre: Abyssal
Focus: Anomaly
Shield: Zenith
Sword: Zenith
Mace: Fractal Mace
Torch: The Fate of Menzies

Hoping to get some more fractal weapons. Would also settle for precursor to get Bolt!

GS: Twilight
Sword: Whisperblade (x2)
Focus: Anomaly
Pistol: Lyss
Sceptre: Abyssal Sceptre
Staff: Zenith (bleh)

I would happily forfeit cultural armor to be able to change races. Race change would really exist for people who are truly lazy anyway, since you can 1-80 a character in a few hours by leveling crafting skills.

But I think it would be a nice feature because all races in GW2 are not created equal. For example, armor is idiosyncratic to races and tends to look weird on Norn and Charr. Also, character movements for certain races is less than impressive (e.g., compare Norn sluggish movements to Asura).

The reason why race change should be provided, IMO, is precisely because some races really do feel and play better than others. For someone like me who has 2 legendaries on his Norn Guardian, I would love to switch to another race without giving up all of my progress and transmuting my legendaries into mere skins.

Now, if racial differences were indeed purely aesthetic I would say that this feature should not be implemented. You chose a character and it is what it is. But because there really is a difference in feel when playing the larger, slower races, I think a race change should be permitted because those differences were more difficult to foresee when original picking a character. Alternatively, of course, Anet could opt to optimize all of the character animations and armor for all races. This however seems less likely than a gem store fix.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Kilandros.2098:

Paragon Signet —
Elite type: Signet
Skill description: Gain Fury, Swiftness, and Might (5) for 30 seconds.
Cast time: 1/4
Recharge: 60 seconds
Visual effect(s): none

(yeah I ripped of signet of rage for the guardian. How awesome would this be though?)

what would be the passive?

haha I didn’t even think about that (who would ever use the passive with a signet like that right?) But really, Movement Speed bonus would be amazing.

Hermes.7014:

ZBeeblebrox.4928:

Hermes.7014:

They will either revert back to their original state or they’ll add some easy mystic forge recipe to revert it.

I like how you state this as fact when you can’t possibly have any idea. Lol. Wishful thinking akittens finest.

I indeed missed “most likely” in that sentence. However, the other way around would be screwing over transmuted legendary owners, and I don’t know how pleasant would that be for them.

Yeah, I have a hard time believing anet will basically tell transmuted legendary owners “tough luck” for transmuting weapons when they had no idea those weapons would be upgraded later or ineligible for upgrade later.

The skill seems super buggy to me

Hopefully someone comments on this. A lot of people (myself included) transmuted legendaries early on before improvements had been announced. For us, it seemed like a no brainer to get the stats we wanted.

Paragon Signet —
Elite type: Signet
Skill description: Gain Fury, Swiftness, and Might (5) for 30 seconds.
Cast time: 1/4
Recharge: 60 seconds
Visual effect(s): none

(yeah I ripped of signet of rage for the guardian. How awesome would this be though?)

Hey man – The Phantasm build is just awesome. I actually arrived at the same build myself after the recent changes—of course, my initial build was completely based off your original Phantasm build you posted months ago, so credit goes to you.

Anyway, awesome builds awesome theory crafting. Keep up the good work.

Now that Legendaries will allow stat customization outside of combat, will there be a way for those of us who previously transmuted our legendaries to bring them back to pure legendary status?

A lot of people have transmuted their legendaries to get stats they actually wanted. It seems like a good idea to make this change retroactive so that they aren’t effectively penalized for not holding out for a change they couldn’t know was coming.

I’m really excited about the upcoming legendary changes hinted at in the recent blog post—particularly the ability to customize weapon stats outside of combat. Great idea.

That being said, as a proud Eternity owner, I’m hoping that Eternity is one of the legendaries being looked at as a candidate for improved effects. I really enjoy how Eternity is Sunrise during the day and Twilight at night, but, seeing as it’s (arguably) the most difficult legendary to achieve, I’d like to see some added effects that say: “Now THAT is Eternity.”

As things stand it’s impossible to identify it as unique from Sunrise or Twilight aside from the missing footprints and some other missing skill effects. I think the effects should largely be kept as is, but please consider adding some extra effect that is unique to Eternity to show off our hard work to others.

Anyway, GREAT changes hinted at in the blog. Looking forward to what you guys are bringing us in 2013.