Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

Hey all,
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Trait Tier level increase. We made this change because despite what the more hardcore players like myself want, most players need to be introduced to systems more slowly so that they don’t get lost.
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Since when does Anet introduce new players to the game by any other way than throwing them into the game and hoping they can figure it out? Different people learn best by different means. Some learn best via sight and reading. I’m that way so got the GW2 book and read it and the wiki. Some people don’t learn well via sight but learn better through spoken instructions. They have good audio memory. Some learn best by touch, by doing. Some people are confident and bolder than others and will try things to see how they work. Others are more tentative. Your one size fits all will never work for all players no matter how much you hamstring the game in the beginning.
GW2 needs a tutorial where it introduces the basic game concepts and UI for new accounts. The instructions should be in text and spoken and the whole process should require hands on interaction. It should be able to be toggled on/off so players who want to learn by immersion can skip the tutorial. There should be a menu of these basic topics so players can access it easily.

Unlocking traits. We talked about this a bunch in the horizontal progression CDI and it came to our attention that many players were not learning about traits, how they worked, or understanding the options. …
At the end of the day this system has helped spread out the teaching of the system
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Again there is no teaching. A short tutorial about traits could have been introduced at level 11 when characters got their first trait points but instead the whole trait system was mangled. Put the old trait system back with one point per level starting at 11 and master unlock at 40 and grandmaster at 60. If you want to tack on individual trait unlocks OK but make the tasks more reasonable. Or create a pool of task for adept level. Doing any adept task would allow the character to unlock any adept trait. Same thing with master and grand master.

Good luck fixing the trait system.

Love the diversity in looks among all the fantastic pictures of rangers in this thread. I’ve updated my ranger’s look slightly. Still going for the “blend into the background” look. My norn ranger, Aurora Wildborn, showing off her new quiver of swift flight:

I especially like my quiver of swift flight for my ranger.

Why not play both ranger and guardian?

Dumbing down the game for the Chinese market stinks of racism. They are just as smart as Americans or Europeans. Granted originally there were problems with the way GW2 introduced players to the game. That could have been fixed by including a real tutorial and making available an index of basic concepts in game but there was no need to mess with the game play.

kta.6502:

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I can think of one explanation. Last year, it was way too easy to level. A person could go from 0 to 80 in a few days. The easiest way to level was bypass the Personal Story, go to WvW, and join the karma train. …

If they wanted to slow down leveling and force players into pve areas then they should have nerfed wvw XP for characters under level 80. Instead they nerfed the mobs in starter areas and screwed up the previous fun leveling experience.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

If each map is at 100%, then the missing POI are likely added since the game launched. Check the wiki; I think it has a list of those.

There’s no way I can think of that would allow you to have missing skill points and vistas and have 100% on each map. Could you be missing 100% in WvW?

If not, I’d recommend visiting each map (not just hovering over) and looking at the map completion status until you find the maps with gaps. Alternatively, you can wait for the next update, which supposedly includes hints in the UI to point you in the right directions.

This ^

Why is cloth and cloth armor worth more on the BLTP? Do they get dropped less frequently than heavy and medium armor or are there more light armor wearers?

Nerelith.7360:

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When the game was first released, the whole idea was that for a level 80, the entire game should become a level 80 zone. The entire point was to give players the option to NOT have to create a new character to experience low level maps they might have missed the first time.

World completion for a level 80, that has to do another races level 1-15 zone, was supposed to be as challenging for the level 80, as it is for the level 15 next to them.

This was the stated intent of the developers. it is clear that they have now shied away from this stated intent. …

It used to work better before the April 14 change to the trait system. Before that time the mobs in the low levels where harder. I could take my higher level characters around with my sister’s lower level ones and vise-a-versa. After the April screw-up my level 30 or 40 something mesmer could take out the beast master champion in Wayfarers Foothills with 3 shots/skills when it used to take at least 2 people to do it (even better with 3 if you were south of the fort).

If they would just put the mobs back to the way they were it would help a lot. I used enjoy leveling characters but have not started a new one since April so all I have are 8 level 80s and 2 in their 70s. And if I want to go to low level areas, for whatever reason, I will have to take a high level character.

ArchonWing.9480:

I’d rather be downed, then outright defeated. Downed is more forgiving to new players…

This game should just add a tutorial and be done with it.

I agree, but I think we need 3 ways to access game info:

1. a tutorial with pop-up tooltips that is default for a new account and can be turned off for the whole account at any time in game options.
2. These simplified tool tips themselves are organized into a menu of basic topics that can be accessed via game options (or some other way).
3. the wiki

Lets face it unless you know exactly what you are looking for the wiki can be difficult to use. The first thing the tutorial should explain is how to turn it off and where to find the tool tip topics. The topics should be basic and explain game play as well as the game interface. The tutorial/tooltips should also explain how to access the wiki in game.

I wonder if the character slots being on sale is because very few are being bought currently.

For combos:
1. go to the very top of this web page
2. click on the word “wiki” (brings up the official GW2 wiki)
3. now scroll down on the extreme left menu until you find the search entry field and type in “combos”

saventis.1485:

Its fine as is
The present is for your character turning 2 years old
its a gift be grateful
i have it on 1 of my 6 characters for the record
its like an achievment saying good job for sticking with this character so long.
Wait long enough and your other characters will get it as well

Agree

I use the priory armor on my mesmer. I have it colored more as cloth but there are some parts of the top and bottom that could be colored for leather or metal. Also I have the shoulders invisible because I was going more for the scholarly look.

If your level 38 character was made before April 14 so their traits are not locked then definitely do not delete that character to replace with a new one.

My little sneaky mesmer, K Ki. Smallest I could make a female asura and short name.

I’m not sure if the entries should be a full screen for a wallpaper or if a cropped picture will do. To play it safe I’m using full screen.

The first picture is of my sylvari thief ( I entered it in your previous contest).
The second is of my norn ranger. Although not exactly ninja I chose her armor so she would blend into just about any background.

sdt.1697:

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Mesmer: I herd it a hardest class in the game
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But the most fun.

Here is a similar thread from 6 days ago.

Edit: All professions can play together. Are you interested in pve, pvp or wvw or all of it?

You might want to play elementalist. They have some of the highest DPS in the game They have AOE, ranged attacks and can lay down several kinds of fields including water fields that can be used for healing.

I guess I wouldn’t mind if Anet enhanced minis in some ways. Maybe some games for them or something. It’s just there are probably more players who have necros say than those who use minis. I main a mesmer and would like to see all of the bugs on their skills and traits fixed before they spend time on things that seem peripheral to the game. There are quite a few bugs and fixes that I think need attention first, the trait system being paramount.

Arctinus.7824:

I wish we could equip them somehow to our character and wouldn’t lose them every time we entered a new map. :/ …

I would rather have my necro’s minions live through map changes or even entering and leaving water. At least his minions are useful and not just fluff.

I don’t like minis since they serve no purpose and just clutter up the screen. And judging by how often I see them most other players don’t like them or use them either. I can go days without seeing one, even when my characters are in town.

I love all the pictures – some fantastic fashion and screen shots. I especially like the rainbow wizard that Donari showed us. Very creative way to color his garments that I have never seen anywhere else.

Here are some of mine:

1. Aurora Wildborn showing off her new quiver in Straights of Devastation
2. Amber Everglow in Bloodtide Coast
3. Dyvid Fernleaf after opening chest in Tribulation Caverns
4. Zolan Lazarus in Plains of Ashford
5. Katherine Swinford in Divinity’s Reach
6. Jel E, my newest level 80, in Dry Top

Some people litter their text with swear words as they become more and more angry. By replacing those swear words with “kitten” much of that anger is dissipated. One of the first times I noticed this, and still one of my favorites, is “Bullkitten”.

Nerelith.7360:

Substance E.4852:

Some classes are harder to level than others and the new trait system means you don’t inherently have access to traits that can make all the difference in lower level fights.

I disagree. IMO traits do not really sway fights til you have enough to make a real difference in your chosen stat preferences. Which to me is Not Lower level.

I Played before and after the 4/15 patch, and I have to be honest. As much as I Liked having trait points to play with…. The 10 to 30 levels do not feel much difference from before the patch. The trait points themselves make little difference.

It isn’t until you slot at 36 to 60 or so that traits really matter. Then again, maybe 36 to 60 is the new " lower level"?

With the new trait system anything below 80 is the new “lower level”.

I haven’t stated a new character since Apr 14 so all my characters have their traits grandfathered in and even so with the threshold for each tier pushed back I noticed how much more painful it is to level a character. Leveling my third mesmer (she was in her 20s or 30s when this new trait system got implemented) was so much less fun than the first 2. On my second mesmer I couldn’t wait until level 40 so I could get clones when she dodged (a very important mechanic for my play style). On my third mesmer I had to wait until she was in her 60s somewhere. Since I understand how to play mesmer it wasn’t painful leveling her but definitely not as much fun.

I have heard of people with new characters that need to unlock their traits playing traitless until 80. They put their trait points into the first minor trait of each trait line and don’t bother with the rest while leveling.

Khisanth.2948:

Lazuli.2098:

Astral Projections.7320:

It’s might be the ranger greatsword skill, Swoop. A giant semitransparent hawk appears over the head. This can sometimes glitch and not disappear.

Swoop: (my iPad won’t show the gif directly)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/9/98/Swoop_animation.gif

This. Today my sister used her ranger with a GS and the animation did not disappear. Neither of us had the GS 3 animation persist like that on our rangers before.

Never had it on mine either but it seems to be fairly common on human characters.

Yes my sister’s ranger is human (mine’s norn).

I had a weird persisting animation this evening on my asura necro. Using the diving goggles I had him spin when he jumped. He kept spinning through the water and then on land. Had to change to another character and then back to get rid of it.

I am retired also and had trouble with the personal story on my first characters. Part of the problem was inexperience. I didn’t really know the skills, both for weapons and utilities, for my character. I didn’t pay much attention to boons on the bad guys or conditions they placed on my characters. I didn’t know how to dodge or move very well. I didn’t really need those things to level up in the low areas. Also I was not very bold, afraid to die.

If a particular bad guy is giving you problems, analyze how they are doing that and then figure out which of your skills to use to counter it. You might die a few times in the process, but keep at it. If you can’t figure it out and there is no one on-line to help, google it or look in the wiki here. It’s amazing what helpful hints you can find.

Good luck and have fun.

Astral Projections.7320:

It’s might be the ranger greatsword skill, Swoop. A giant semitransparent hawk appears over the head. This can sometimes glitch and not disappear.

Swoop: (my iPad won’t show the gif directly)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/9/98/Swoop_animation.gif

This. Today my sister used her ranger with a GS and the animation did not disappear. Neither of us had the GS 3 animation persist like that on our rangers before.

How I usually start leveling up:

Complete the starter map for your race. That means visit every point if interest (POI), every way point (WP), view every vista, complete every heart. Completing a map gives a reward chest and an XP bonus, etc. Along the way participate in dynamic events, which will often contribute toward the nearby heart. Gather from every node.

Complete your race’s city – POIs, WPs and vistas.

Go to Lion’s Arch (LA) by way of the Asura gate. Complete LA – POIs, WPs and vistas. Do the 3 jumping puzzles in LA if that interests you. There are treasure chests to open at the end of each.

Then go on to complete all the races’ cities or go do one of their starting area or go the the second area for your race.

Some of the rewards from completing a map include XP boosts use them.

Fort Trinity is in Straights of Devastation. If you were farther along in your personal story you could actually go through those gates to get to Fort Trinity. So marking that as way to get there is misleading in the least. You must travel through Bloodtide Coast, then Sparkfly Fen to get to Straights of Devastation either by running the whole way or by using any way points you already have along the way. Once you get your personal story up to level 76 (or maybe 72) you will be able to travel directly to Fort Trinity from any of the 3 order’s headquarters.

Oops, I see that Brother Grimm gave a much more thorough answer already. Good luck.

MrIllusion.5304:

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Why is this even an issue?

Because mounts take up visual space on the screen.

I played another MMO recently that had mounts and found it very irritating when I couldn’t even see the quest-giver NPC because everyone’s mounts were blocking the view. I can imagine battle, especially in close quarters, where you can’t see the intended target because of the fat kitten of someone’s mount in front of you. Battle is sometimes confusing enough without adding mounts and all their animations.

We already have tonics and minis and costumes and costume brawls.

Relevance? I don’t use minis because I don’t like the visual clutter. They’re distracting. Mounts being bigger would be worse.

Also, the SHOW LOWEST CHARACTER MODEL LIMIT setting.

There will still be added resource usage on servers, clients and networks to accommodate the addition of mounts. This added burden would result in more frequent lag problems especially for those with lower end computers and slower networks.

Gummy.4278:

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GW1 was completely re-designed into a completely different game. Its now GW2. …

So this whining for mounts is so they will be included in GW3? Fine, just leave them out of GW2.

Read the stickied threads in this forum to learn more.

Gw2 is more about incoming damage avoidance rather than standing there like a bump on a log, taking damage that needs to be healed and in many situations the only one to heal you will be yourself. There is no skill to pull aggro. Aggro is determined by a complicated formula. The first to hit the mob will draw aggro first but they will switch to the player dealing the most damage and/or who is the closest.

Some professions are tankier than others but as they level up all professions can be outfitted with armor with toughness and vitality stats and can be traited to take mre damage. But in general 2 characteristics determine how tanky a profession is:

warrior – heavy armor, high HP
guardian – heavy armor, low HP
ranger – medium armor, medium HP
engineer – medium armor, medium HP
thief – medium armor, low HP
necromancer – light armor, high HP
mesmer – light armor, medium HP
elementalist – light armor, low HP

All professions can fight melee and ranged.

MrIllusion.5304:

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4) Screen Clutter, Griefing, Lag

You’re kidding right? Does the speed boost in the city make us any more griefers? Any more laggy? We already have swiftness boon in the game. Has anyone blamed lag on that?
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Then you would be alright with invisible mounts? Or maybe the mount would disappear outside of towns, forts, camps, or any map with more than a certain number of players. You see it’s not the speed boost that’s the problem, it’s the screen clutter and graphics burden.

Maybe necro needs to be nerfed because they are so OP in PvP. You want to balance around dungeons but others want to balance around PvP. If they all get “balanced” for all the different content pretty soon all professions with be the same.

sorudo.9054:

…Anet wants to make this game more like GW1 because it’s the sequel, the whole idea of the trait update was to make it closer to GW1…

That doesn’t make sense design wise. If they wanted GW2 to be a sequel to GW1 by having a similar trait system they should have designed it that way from the beginning. Instead they have taken the original GW2 functioning trait system and ruined it.

sorudo.9054:

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you on the other hand have absolutely no say in the matter because you don’t even know what you’re talking about
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I do know what I am talking about – GW2. In fact this whole thread is about the new GW2 trait system.

What I don’t understand is players who are so in love with different games they keep trying to make GW 2 like those games (I’m talking about GW1, WOW, etc). If you like those games so much just go play them and let us GW2 players worry about GW 2.

Buy 3 extra character slots so you can permanently have one of each profession.

Edit: With the new, free, easy re-traiting there is no need for more than 1 of each profession unless you want the look of a different race.

I think mesmer fits that description.

sorudo.9054:

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it’s to late to completely remove traits …

Yes, and thank God for that. I don’t need some new system similar to a game I never played. The original way GW2 traits worked was great. The only thing I like about this new system is the ease of changing the trait build. I would even be happy if they charged for that service, if they needed a way to make money, just as long as they put the old system back. I would also be OK with trait unlocks if the tasks were more appropriate for the trait level and/or were from a pool of tasks.

I may not be that convincing since I have 10 chars and only one Charr. I have 2 of every race except 1 charr and 3 humans.

Reasons to have a Charr:
Can complete the race personal story steps for each race.
I like the kazooka and Charr war band elites.
I got to have a Charr female named Pyanfar (since that name was already taken I gave her a last name of Cherryh ).

Reasons not to have a Charr:
I don’t like the way they hop along.
The camera goes wonky in tight situations like jumping puzzles, etc (that’s why I made her as small as possible but it doesn’t seem to help).

Although each character has 5 utility slots 2 of them are specialty slots – the first one is for healing utilities and the last one is for elite utilities. If you have not purchased one of the more expensive, higher level utilities you have nothing to place in that last slot.

Oops. Minz beat me to it and gave a move detailed explanation.

Good luck.

Sweetblue Huntress.9856:

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After my inept typing /say resulted in death many times, I found that saying “Thank you” while being revived works out well. I’m still dead and even if it ends up that I’m not fully revived, I can still be appreciative of the effort.

I do that too except I usually don’t hit enter until I am completely revived. There was an incident early on when my sister and I were first venturing into wvw.

We always just talk on speaker on our phones when we play since I have unlimited long distance calling via my cable internet connection. When we played with 2 others who introduced us to GW2 we used their ventrillo server (this was fall ‘12). So we didn’t even know how to use chat/say. Anyway we were getting 100% completion of the wvw maps on several of our characters that were not even 80 yet. We had died yet again and were about to use a distant WP when 3 members of our server came by. At first they started to revive us but when they didn’t see a “ty” they stopped within an inch and asked if anyone was there, then started dancing and taunting us and left us for dead. That incident left a bad taste. I had seen that kind of behavior from opposing servers but not from our own team. One of the reasons I don’t particularly care for wvw.

So as for thanking people for reviving generally I do because I like to make people feel appreciated but I am conflicted since I tend to rebel against doing what is expected. I like to give rather than just conform to someone else’s expectations. When I get a “ty” I will even often respond with a “yw” or a “np”, depending on how pressing the situation is and how expansive I feel or how lazy.

Thanks. I found the living story journal under the personal story section. I had been trying to activate the living story journal under the achievements section.

It should be simple but I can’t figure it out.

The first character I took to Dry Top was my level 60 something necro. I seemed to die very quickly so have been exploring Dry Top with my level 80 warrior. Do I need to bring my necro back to Dry Top or is there a way I can get access to the episodes with my warrior?

CureForLiving.5360:

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Ressees always remember to give the resser a ‘ty’, it’s nice to be appreciated.

When in the middle of a big fight I appreciate more the ressee staying alive after I’ve spent my time getting them to that state. In fact if they don’t use “say” I won’t see any message since I generally don’t look at the chat window.

After I learned that “thank you” was expected by many players I started typing it every time but many times in a big fight I just ended up dead again. So I stopped thanking unless I was pretty sure my inept typing/say channel setup would not result in death.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

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They decided to go with something similar to how GW1 is. It’s actually better than how GW1 is as you don’t have to spend a single piece of gold to get the traits….

Who cares how crappy GW1 was. The new trait system in GW2 is simply worse than the way it was.

I have 3 mesmers. Even though my main has travelers runes for the permanent speed buff I sometimes use sword/focus with her for the little extra speed but mostly for the second skill on the focus 4 that yanks mobs around without getting agro. Very useful when running through areas with mobs that you don’t want to stop and fight. Also one of my mesmers has a sigil on one of her weapons that I really like that gives a speed boost when she kills (can’t remember the name).

I started with greatsword on my first. Tried staff with a shatter mesmer that was fun, Now mostly use GS with sword/focus or sword/pistol or sword/sword. But it’s fun to try all the weapons and combos.

What’s the best practice under certain situations in the game for both the rezzer and rezzee. I play mostly open world pve but want to try dungeons, fractals and guild missions ankitten ot sure what is best in those situations.

If it is just me and one other downed player with some small mobs I kill them first before rezzing. In that situation if I am down then I try killing the mobs rather than trying to bandage since once the mob is killed by the other player I’m rezzed anyway (unless of course they try to rez me then I assist by bandaging).

If there are more than 2 players then I might try to rez the downed or defeated player while the other(s) kill the trash or keep the boss busy, unless it is at the end of the fight and I just help finish it. If it is only a big boss with lots of life left I am more likely to rez downed and defeated players. If there is a WP close by I tend not to rez defeated players since they can get back into the fight much faster by using it.

Not too long ago fighting the bosses in the Crown Pavilion I realized some players don’t have a clue what they should do when it comes to whether to rez or not or if they are defeated whether they should use the WP instead of expecting others to rez them. There were defeated players continually taking damage from lying in the lava flow at Sparcus that not only added to scaling him up by being there but expected the 3 or 4 players it would take to rez them to be just as useless. I refused to rez them until the fight was over.

On the other hand there were 5 or 6 of us fighting Pyro from the ledge during a gold run when we had to hold for 3 or 4 minutes waiting for the other groups to get their bosses down to 10%. Since neither I or the other mesmer could use our feedback on him we were taking more damage than the 2 guardians and the rest of us could handle. We were dropping like flies right and left but we managed to keep rezing each other until we got the go ahead to finish him off.

I know from my limited experience in wvw that unless you are in imminent danger it is best to rez player, since the WPs are so far away.

But I’m not sure about dungeons and fractals.

Dawdler.8521:

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Lulwat? The guardian scepter auto-attack orbs can do insane damage compared to the kittenty scepter a mesmer gets.

For mesmer try the GS. The greater the range, the greater the damage.

In the near future I plan to join a new guild. The guild I currently belong to is not very active. I mostly play solo or with my sister so I will need to learn how to play well with others. Although I have just over 7000 AP I have never run a dungeon or fractal or done a guild mission – all things I am interested in trying. And though I probably won’t be playing much WvW, I may want to again so will need to transfer from Ehmrey Bay to the server of any new guild I join (so not from any full servers).

My level 80s:
Aurora Wildborn, norn ranger
Amber Everglow, human elementalist
Katherine Swinford, human mesmer (100% world completion)
Bruce Robinson, human warrior
Dyvid Fernleaf, sylvari thief
Jan Elkjar, norn guardian
K Ki, asura mesmer

Others being leveled:
Pyanfar Cherryh, charr engineer, level 70
Zolan Lazuras, asura necromancer, level 64
Jel E, sylvari mesmer, level 77

I enjoy playing mesmer the most but can bring any of the others if needed, although I don’t really like thief or necromancer and am just starting to appreciate engineer.