Guild Wars 2

jclink.6308:

For the record, if someone kicks me out of a group because I chose a class that isn’t ‘desired’ for whatever reason, it’s their loss, not mine, because I am extremely attentive and always ready to support a group. And hell if no one wants me, so be it. I’ll go drink bourbon and watch The Wire.

Make it tequila and play Command and Conquer 3 and you’re set. I dunno why, I’ve just gotten rather lucky lately with those combos o_0

Lillian Wandom Hale.7102:

It’s useful when you need to Tank Arah ^^
I Usually don’t leave without at least 20 in earth …for Dungeons and WvW

You should see how people react when your Ele Laughs at bosses face as Boss does no dmg to me
;)

Yes, I spent a lot on Earth, and use special Utilities, but it’s worth it

I’m curious how you accomplish that.

Just curious though. I like playing things other than glasscannon in PvE and it was a nice mix-up to respec my Mesmer as a tank/support (with all the regen, retaliation, some protection, aegis as well as illusions with huge HP bars and Phantasmal Defender splitting my damage ontop of throwing out constant 3k heals ever 3-4sec, I’ve face tanked quite a few things on a class I didn’t know I could). My little Asura Elementalist has gotten a bit dull and the only builds I really tried out on him were heal/support, hybrid, glasscannon burst and glasscannon condition.

I didn’t think it was possible to facetank much on an Elementalist that didn’t also involve dodging around like a fool on crack for the arcana dodge rolls.

Let’s not be frank. All those preview videos of professions were misleading.

Check the Warrior one, popping Eviscerate on a target way further than 300 range, one shotting it, then popping it 2 more times right after, leaping big distances and taking them out super quick.

Or the elementalist one, Water Trident spamming the foes down…

The hair wizards in Divinity’s Reach would have a field day with her.

Sorry, jclink. Some people don’t know how to read…

If you’re looking for a tank spec, I believe it’s possible as there’s a ranger around here who uses his drake to tank champs and solo dungeons. Although I’ve never actually asked that poster exactly how he solos and if he’d consider it tanky.

My suggestion, as my experience with Ranger is low, you should just play it and try it out. See how you like it then ask for specific pointers on things like weapons, gear and traits. Asking “I want to play Ranger, so what should I do?” will get you the “pick another class” answer from the jaded vocal minority.

The only other advice I got is to use drakes. They seem to be pretty durable, IME. I guess bears are also an option.

PS: And people cry about how the Asura were usually the main focus behind holiday events and not other races….probably because those so gung-ho about their chosen race do this kind of thing. Howling about the lore or the appearance not lining up with their perspective or whatever.

Starting to thing the whole frost and flame thing would have been better with Inquest+Dredge and the main 2 characters Asura. Then no one would complain!

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Frotee.2634:

Also, as for observing that chance meeting:
The whole Flame and Frost storyline was set up, storytelling-wise, by your race’s Destiny’s Edge member (who has, if you remember, served as some sort of a mentor to your character through your personal story) sending you a notice about the Bad Stuff happening in the north, urging you to go help out.
Now, being familiar with the members of Destiny’s Edge, it does actually make sense for you to check in with the command center in the area once in a while (instead of just running around the map looking for heads to bash in). And seeing as the Norn, as a whole, are much less organized than the charr, plus half of the threat stemming from Flamelegion Charr…well, logically speaking, you would be skulking around Rytlock’s offices from time to time.

While random encounters are not necesarrily a good way to tell a story, they are used often enough, so don’t act as if this was totally outrageous. I’m pretty sure we had some chance encounters over the course of GW1…

My Mentor is Eir.. you know, the one that was oblivious to my presence at the meeting, and I wasn’t allowed to talk to.

I’m Vigil. I have nothing to do with the remnants of Destiny’s Edge, beyond Eir. I have absolutly no reason or inclination to lounge around in Rytlocks office or have anything to do with him, and so far in game, have not. My character is not familiar with Destiny’s Edge beyond some overblown reputation. I did not wander about trying to put them back together, there were other, more pressing matters.

But I’m done. I’m sure the fanclub has 50 plus reasons why Eir ignores all of her Norn students, She’s Blind, and hiding it. Seeing her son brought on Temporary Amnesia. She never really liked us, it was just a job. Garn was Yakking on the carpet and distracted her. We forgot our nametag. etc etc.

If Scotty had beamed Braham in you all would have 50 reasons to rationalize that too.

Wow, so you’re just a-okay disregarding the Tribute of an entire legion just because he’s not your race? I mean, yeah, you don’t have to care about the prime minister or president of a country across the ocean that doesn’t concern you…but that doesn’t make them any less important to the world.

Whatever others are doing to rationalize the story for you, you’re going the opposite direction and trying to rationalize your flawed perspective. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

I find it funny and confusing how people portray the state of Rangers.

Having played a Warrior in WvW a bit….it’s hard. Even with a good ‘tanky’ spec, it’s hard to get by when conditions are thrown at you. You can use a shout spec to curb a lot of the conditions (but my favorite is Warhorn) but you’ve got to be really on your toes to not go down in situations were you’re outnumbered.

…so people’s perception of Warriors against other players, I can sort of understand…it can hit pretty hard if you spec for it and that’s about it. It’s not tough facing an average Warrior mainly because they are predictable.

Now when it comes to Rangers vs other players, I’ve heard bad stuff about them but then I’ve heard good stuff about them. So after watching that video linked above, I’m curious what the general perception of Rangers are against other players? IMO, the stuff Warrior has doesn’t compare and while I wouldn’t call Rangers the top PvP profession nor Warrior the bottom, I’d probably say Ranger definitely has the edge over a lot of the melee professions because of the versatility I’ve seen. The pet seems predictable but the Ranger not so much…

Rizzy.8293:

Ice elemental to me seems on par with the earth elemental, you need to be near it when it heals to receive its heals.
It heals quite a lot too.

That it does. I’d prefer it in PvP though as the chill serves a good purpose and it may not be focused down quickly. In PvE, where you’re circling around mobs or moving out of range of some, that heal is more infrequent and unreliable. It’s alright when you see a huddle of warriors bashing a target, send in the elemental to help out and heal but in most situations the heal isn’t needed or comes at times when you don’t need it.

…yeah, it’s just not reliable. The chill is good though.

Rizzy.8293:

Oh I see so you pop out fire elemental when you’re being attacked by a horde of rabbits.
Gotcha, situational.

Is it so hard to protect your elementals? Throw a Lightning Surge or Sandstorm to blind foes, throw a Lightning Touch to weaken the enemies’ attacks, toss in an Earthquake to interrupt their attacks, share an aura or two with them. Combined with your group, you can keep an elemental alive long enough to get a few attacks off before it dies. If you can’t, then that’s the situation where you don’t use a squishy fire elemental.

Well that’s good to hear. I’m working on my Ranger now but still don’t have any stealthing cats, and no traits and no experience. I think I’ll just PvE until around lvl 25 and I get some more points.

Thanks Rising Dusk and Danikat. Was what I was looking for.

I guess I’ll have to settle for one of the other races although I had my heart set on a Tengu Ranger. No point waiting a year for it to come out. I’ll just reroll it later if I’m still around.

As for what race gets released, I don’t care. If it was Largos or Kodan first, that would tell me that either Tengu wouldn’t be released or it would but much later which further tells me “just roll your stuff now”.

I was honestly hoping to hear that they were just going to release new races/areas within Tyria (the continent) in content updates and release whole continents (Cantha and Elona and whatever else) as expansions.

Since they haven’t started work on the expansion, perhaps we can convince them to revise what types of content go into what types of updates/expansions.

Don’t care about any of that. Whether a story is living or not, it’s content and that’s all that matters.

Balance isn’t something content developers work with. Artists, writers and map designers are usually involved while programmers and numbers guys are the ones involved with balance. Both things can be worked in parallel.

Wanderer.5471:

You totally missed the point of the thread: you can’t apply such math to pvp because you can’t count on how many attacks will land!

Then you should have named the thread “The Philosophy of the Quickness Change” or something. Factors like blocking and evading in PvP don’t matter as you can capitalize properly on Quickness via crowd control. That’s why CC in this game is so short, it’s boarderline useless in PvE because its purpose is to chisel an opening in on your opponent in PvP. Then, when the target is stunned, dazed etc, is when you push for the burst.

I’m not sure if the quickness nerf was a good thing or not for balance, maybe we were OP before, but it is a huge nerf and i wanted to make that clear. Furthermore it kills build diversity at the top end of tpvp because soon no team will want you to run anything other than trap ranger.

Ranger wasn’t OP because of quickness, players in general were OP because of quickness…it’s quickness that was too strong.

For relativity sake, take a look at the traits and equipment with quickness. If all the game had were those (no QZ, no Frenzy, no Time Warp, no Haste), I’d probably say everything was fine at 2x speed quickness…but when you start getting into 5-10seconds of 2x speed, now that’s out of bounds.

The way it is now, those quickness abilities are closer to being in-line but in order to do that, other things (such as Last Chance trait) are just somewhat alright to borderline useless (Orr and Balth runes as well as sigil of rage…they weren’t really worth a slot before and they definitely aren’t now).

Going to have to agree with some people’s thoughts on the math…

If you’re going to compare the old quickness and new via math, you shouldn’t measure them over 2 different time frames. Old quickness lasted 4 seconds while new is 5 so you might want to compare OQ to NQ over both their time frames (both at 4 seconds, and both at 5). Likely, the factor of the speed of each animation plays a bigger role here so perhaps limit to just auto attacks for simplicity and see how many of them you can get off in each time frame then you can base the general effectiveness drop of OQ vs NQ.

Honest question. Added races, will they be in an update or an expansion? And if an expansion, anyone know a general timeframe on that?

I figure people that were keeping up with the game while it was in development/during the alphas/betas might know what stuff they had in store regarding release and what they had to hold back, perhaps even how finished said content might have been or if it was scrapped. Throw that all (or whatever else you’ve got) in the Mixmaster Excogitat-o-matic Un-Finity Golem and a probable assumption is made!

Any thoughts?

It’s situational like all the others. If you’re going to summon in a situation where it might be cleaved, use earth or air. If not and/or you can defend it, use fire. I honestly can’t think of a situation where ice is good since it dies pretty fast too and its heal/chill feel unreliable…likely it’s better used in PvP.

But yeah, if fire elemental dies too fast, defend it or use something else. Use them blinds and protection to keep it in the game. There are a lot of situations where you don’t have to worry about it dying instantly if it isn’t the direct target of an attack.

Tis the case for many attacks that hit quite hard.

I’d rather more Asura options

Loki.3152:

Mif.3471:

Moto is male with a female name.

I believe the name is a reference to Shigeru Miyamoto, as he controls the box that enters you in to the retro 8-bit themed jumping puzzle.

Is that why his eyes are like that?

-dodges barrage of rotten produce-

Jemmi.6058:

Euin.3578:

Jemmi.6058:

Also, why is it that Rox cannot wear mascara? Confused.

Also, for everyone complaining that Rox does not fit the Charr theme. Why does every Charr have to fit under a certain characteristic? Can there not be a variety??

A big cat wearing makeup is a little out there, no?

Less out there than a big cat talking. This is a fantasy game and these are humanoid creatures. If they can walk around, talk, wear armor and clothing, why can they not wear make up?

I’m thinking because people feel it’s unnatural and human like.

But I don’t have a problem with it. I mean, it’s not unheard of to want to participate in cultural behaviors when surrounded by them. I’d assume, if a human woman were to surround herself in Charr culture, she’d dress and act more similar to other females so why not the other way around? Could be a sign of curiosity or respect…-shrug-

So there were changes made to cats. How does this build fare now? Still good?

I’m in the process of rolling up a new character but haven’t decided yet (deleted a Norn and Charr Ranger, thinking Human or Asura Ranger instead but what I really want is Tengu T_T). I had my heart set on catsassinating stuff in WvW and maybe PvE.

Nice rack, heh

Unwarranted.

The quickness skills that got a duration change also had bad side-effects (and the side effects were adjusted as well).

All quickness that had no side effects weren’t altered, which includes sigils/runes and traits.

So what makes Time Warp so special, exactly?

Have you ever thought that Moto likes it that way?

KorKor.9452:

Sad.

This aptly describes your post.

I mean, yeah it’s one thing to voice your opinion and I’d even defend you for it…but then you go about branding people of some other opinion mean and derogatory slang and profess in how you will avoid them for it.

As for mods deleting whatever it is you’re posting, it’s probably because of the way you’re posting it…but then mods will be mods…they deleted a post of mine which simply said “No not really” in response to your opinion.

Haven’t played Brahm’s part yet but I started it. It brought up a question about his origin though…just a simple one really.

For Rox’s part, I was kind of clenching as I entered the instance as I was expecting her to sound like a girl…but her voice and mannerisms thus far are just typical female charr…although I sort of kick myself for forgetting to talk to Rytlock after their scene.

Can anyone clue me in on what he says?

I thought defiance/unstoppable made NPCs immune to being morphed.

The only people in a position to complain about the decrease to haste are those that used haste runes/sigils. TW is still a really powerful skill whereas before it was a stupidly powerful skill…there’s still not much reason to swap to anything other elite since they are so very situational.

jportell.2197:

Kanto.1659:

jportell.2197:

Well… As long as the GS phantasm still hits like a toddler throwing a marshmallow I don’t think they will see this update do much… I haven’t touched my GS since the last update because it crits for 900-1k and only lands one attack. This is with zerker amulets GS/Empowered Ill/Phantasmal Fury/Phantasmal Strength… The swordsmen still regularly hits for 6-7k and the duelist for 5k… So unless they actually fix the phantasm… A situational beam cleave is going to be useless on GS… Scepter is cool.. If the wind up wasn’t forever and a day.

Hyperbole kills the credibility of what ever you say. Think a bit more before throwing such wild numbers for the sake of your argument looking good. Anyone who plays a mesmer will just shake their head.

Being serious… Every time I play and try to use the GS to see if maybe its fixed… I just shake my head and go back to something else… Trip sword combo was my favorite build on mes but with the lack of any form of damage from the GS phantasm… its kinda weak… There is a thread in the game bugs forum highlighting what I am talking about…And with the right build the Sword phantasm easily hits for that much. And the GS phantasm used to… Now… It misses 3 out of the 4 attacks its supposed to make… Here is a video showing my point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OIxE09FP_o

Wouldn’t that be working as intended? GS whirlwind isn’t suppose to hit all targets every hit, it’s suppose to hit multiple times in a line depending where they are. It’s just like Warrior Whirlwind doing more damage to a target that is stationed against a wall or sometimes not hitting at all if the target starts next to them but is perpendicular to their new direction.

Getting a better look at her, there’s nothing wrong except maybe how the horns attach to her head/their scale.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Thing is that they’re canonically said to have retractable claws in Ghosts of Ascalon, so it wouldn’t be a case of them functioning like a claw-shaped hoof (aka non-retractable claw).

Then you go with the first in that their visual in-game claws don’t reflect reality…or they have Wolverine (the Marvel character) fingertips.

Since I haven’t read any of the books (not really interested besides the actual lore, not the specific chatter), I just go with the 2nd since that’s what it reflects in (virtual) reality.

runeblade.7514:

This is already implemented.

It is called skipping.

Classy yet nonconstructive.

…half of that was sarcasm.

OP, I think you’ve got it a bit too complicated. Cut the fat with some of the middle parts and focus on actual infiltration and espionage. There could be some decent mechanics to take advantage of for such an encounter.

I went with a feathery wing motif with my mesmer right down to the runes

Although I’m always finding more fitting pieces for some reason, like the sword I just randomly came across and transmuted it. Still need a torch, pistol and focus though.

Jenosavel.1756:

I guess the only point of this post was to say, yes! And that interpretation isn’t mutually exclusive with the others in here.

With the exception that you don’t retract hooves. They exist there as much as weapons as they are for protecting the tips of their fingers when running.

gattsuru.4712:

Another possibility re: Claws is that Charr, unlike real-world felines, normally operate with their claws out (if only partially), but retain the muscles to retract those claws (presumably only doing so to protect the claws from damage, or as part of surrender). This would explain why in-game Charr show their claws regularly.

I’m just going to go with the thought that the way the models of the game were animated, it’d be too much work to make them retractable and still visually noticeable while playing.

If someone wants to RP that they retract their claws, then likely the claws aren’t as long as they actually look in-game…

Or, how I RP them, their claws are more closely akin to hooves in that the claws are a major formation of the bone structure of their hands and literally work as the tips of their fingers. It’s not too far-fetched considering they also have bovine horns.

Now that does look funny, guess they aren’t paying attention to a cat mauling their legs off

But didn’t they recently update it so pets can’t scale walls?

…but you lose the passive effect when you activate the signet and elementals only last 30ish seconds while the cooldown is 150 seconds.

Is the passive for Glyph of Lesser Elementals?

Oolune.4357:

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I’ve taken most of it in, and I have done a lot of feeling it out over the past couple of weeks that I have re-integrated myself in GW2. I ran plenty of dungeons on my Ranger, Ele, and Guardian.

I have to say that I probably felt like it was easier to be useful on my Ele or Guardian, but the fact that I know my Ranger so much better made a difference. I saw moments where I would not have been able to help or to save the group from a wipe on any other profession, but that I managed to pull us through on my Ranger. Again, this may just be because I know it so much better than the others, and I can certainly see why people have complaints about Rangers in dungeons.

So far, my major desire for changes to Ranger class, even more so than added utility: Make pets dodge when the player dodges, at the very least.

See? You’ve already gotten your base so develop it from there with your chosen profession. Whether a Warrior can do more damage or a Guardian can grant more boons or a Mesmer can add more utility than a Ranger doesn’t matter…because they won’t for you. You’re more capable with Ranger and people that tell you you’re wrong and should play something else are wrong.

When you start listening to the sheep tell you how to herd you lose freedom. You should keep going with whatever you choose.

Phira.3970:

I don’t care if you can clear any content. You can take 2 hours to clear fotm, and I will not call you successful. You are playing too defensively and too safe. It’s like swim floaties. You don’t know how to dodge so you resort to tanky gears which ultimately slows your team down.

On the swim analogy, I’d say you’re like those guys that go swimming and all you want to do is race to see who can finish a lap fastest or dive the most professionally…

…honestly, I’ve never gone swimming with people like that though but I can tell you, if one of my friends wanted to do that all day instead of who makes the biggest splash or goofy games like marco polo or chicken, I probably wouldn’t go swimming with them too often

I guess it’d be asking too much to just calm the kitten down and do a relaxed run instead since this is a game not a job.

The gloves and pants are different though, I think.

Greyfur.1082:

You are correct. Time changes but designers minds not that much;

It’s awesome that you speak for every designer and artist and have boiled their mentality down to simple concepts and dismiss individuality wholesale like that. It’s great!

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Nice spirit , Leo G. I was playing my necro long ago with the same attitude, learning every single bit of it. Not reading a kitten of uberl33t builds around some peeps was pretending to explain. If there was more variables, as you said, so much would have be learned and studied. I guess we are just rare.

Kimeni.2509:

Mmm, great thought, Leo.

Heh, thanks

But I could be biased. I’m playing a support mesmer in PvE right now that I just re-specc’ed and it’s pretty interesting. I only wish there was a little more omph to her, either in CC or support.

I really like your idea of changing the way healing scales, that and maybe making the way aggro works a little more aggressive, and making it a little more effective to keep aggression by stating for toughness would be a great way to incorporate some kind of tanking for someone who wants aggro.

Don’t even need to change enemy damage, but enabling someone to reliably hold agro, would allow others to further focus on DPS by avoiding toughness, which would make a stronger healing type position favorable for the game.

That’s an idea, yeah. But brainstorming ways to improve support specs (mainly for PvE though) might be off-topic here. It’d be an interesting read though. I’d start a topic myself if I didn’t have this curse that resulted in all my topics never getting discussed

Atherakhia.4086:

I don’t believe for an instant an ele is doing anywhere near warrior level damage regardless of spec. their damage is all over the place because, regardless of weapon, they need to stack condition and power for various skills at the same time. While Lava Font and shower are amazing damage and combined can do about what 100b does, their auto attack is dreadful.

Again, have you checked Lightning Hammer?

It’s only downfall is you lose all of an elementalist’s versatility when you use one…but in CoF path 1, where damage is the only important factor, who cares?

Same with a lot of the other conjures: Ice bow and Fiery GS are stupid ridiculous on things with large hit boxes, but again, you lose all versatility of the profession.

I like that last picture. It really shows that there isn’t that much of a difference. Consider how your foot lands when you’re running (for speed). Landing on the balls of your feet for footfalls lets you increase your stride and speed which is exactly how digitigrade run (and walk) normally.

Calle.8746:

somsom.5201:

ehhh I avoid those groups like the plague. Some of the players are skilled, but more are just bad. Zerker Eles can drop just as much dmg(if not more) than Warriors in CoF; check the Ele forum if you don’t believe me.

Would you mind giving a link for that? Cuz’ I find it really hard to believe. And can’t find anything about it in the Ele section.

Well there is the whole “drop a lightning hammer for the mesmer” so both the elementalist and the mesmer are doing warrior-axe damage during the timewarp. I’d consider the damage improvement of the mesmer as the elementalist’s contribution.

Kain Francois.4328:

But in all seriousness, I think Krait are already GW’s version of mermaids.

Yup. And they’re beautiful!!!

So beautiful, I want to stab their cheating, overpowered, poison/confuse/[enter every condition in the game] bombing kittens.

I’m no fan of speedruns, the ‘trinity’ profession only groups, skipping bosses and zerker only groups either…but your assumptions are way over the top, randomfightfan.

That is to say, just because I don’t run speed runs, or don’t like to always run pure zerker, or only have 3.5k achievements, don’t have 100% world completion and have only gone up to lvl 30ish fractals but run them at lvl 20ish…I don’t want people jumping to the conclusion that I’m a n00b that can’t hang with the elites or that I’m hardcore and play 6 and above hours a day. I’m just me and no need to jump to assumptions about me. So no need to jump to assumptions about other people :P

People want to run the content a certain way, and they should have the right to without being labeled something they aren’t.

Knight’s armor is a prefix like Cleric’s or Berserker’s. It only denotes the stat allocation of that particular armor piece and is the same across all 3 weights of armor.

Well, you could always start a trend. Find a really good support build and just run around playing it. Save enough people and perhaps they’ll be inspired.

I’m not so jaded with the game to boil it down into its simplest form, although some find it fun to maximize performance, there’s also maximizing utility and support. Players that tend to gravitate to maximization understand their damage performance and run-time will suffer but that’s not really the point.

The only way you’ll actually fully understand a profession is to test and trial its different aspects, using and abusing its traits with gear and marking your successes and failures…

I’m just hoping the devs see a need to make more variation in build options…and by options, not talking about damage since everyone can spec into damage and do well as it is. They could improve how healing power scales or vary the different things it can affect or add more traits aimed at support specs.

Even if they buff the kitten out of specs aimed at support, I doubt you’ll see an influx of them since they aren’t needed…but I wouldn’t throw out the prospect of ‘needing’ a support character for a dungeon…it’s a kitten load more interesting than the kittens that ‘need’ to cheat to get by. I’d hugely rather just tell the group to hold on a second while I log onto a support specc’ed character or just jump to a trainer and retrait vs “alright guys, stack here”

-bleh-

Parktou.4263:

Torch is the one I can’t understand why we don’t have, were essentially the best class to use a torch, don’tcha think?

Correct.