Guild Wars 2

If you can line up Fire Grab, Drake’s Breath and Lightning Whip as an Elementalist you should be right at home using the flamethrower.

Autoattacks are the best way to apply might when using a conjure. The best is either bow or axe AA, followed by Hammer at close range.

If you’ve already played an Ele you should be at home with how Engineers work. Rather than being super mobile and squishy though, you’re more of a stationary fighter with a lot of self-sustain. I recommend leveling with a pistol or rifle alchemy build. Put points into explosions, alchemy and firearms and it should carry you easily through most of the game’s pve content. Once you get enough trait points to start experimenting, you have a loooot of freedom in what you build.

It’ll honestly be a shame if they do nerf this. You can get maybe 9 stacks up before it starts to decay. That’s not particularly overpowered compared to warriors running around with perama-11 stacks, and it encourages Engineers to explore their unique class mechanism in kit switching anyway.

Even if the medkit thing gets nerfed, it’s still a very nice buff to healing turret and HGH elixer builds. +5 might every time you use healing elixer instead of just 2 is really nice.

The newly released Runes of Alturism are fantastic on support engineers who use the medkit in their healing slot. It procs every time you equip the bundle, meaning 3 stacks of might to everyone around you -on demand- so long as the runes aren’t on cooldown. I use 3 of them in combination with 3 runes of the monk on a might-sharing bomb healer support build. It allows me to keep 10 stacks of might on my teammates with ease, while still supporting just fine. You lose out on having healing turret’s aoe heal in exchanged for stronger self-healing and more aoe might, so I feel it’s a fair tradeoff. Healing turret is not too shabby either since when deployed, it gives 3 stacks of might too, and then you can use it as a blast finisher in fire field for 3 more stacks of might on top of that. Beautiful. Utilising healing turret this way, the might-giving combo of B.O.B. >> Healing turret >> Fire Bomb >> switch to pistol/shield > Magnetic Inversion >> Explode Healing Turret will grant 12 stacks to everyone around you. However I feel that constantly kit-switching the medkit is more practical.

Thank you Anet, for giving us this wonderful new toy to play with. Team-support Engineers salute you.

I imagine this would also work well with flamethrower builds too, come to think of it.

Even my tanky heal support bomb build has been able to benefit from this. Now I freeze enemies while switching kits, which makes me even better at migitating enemy damage while keeping the team alive.

I wonder though, if I would be better off just going full 30 into earth as opposed to 25 earth 5 water. The healing regeneration from water attune is negigible without any healing power.

Rogacz.9865:

This game, along with many other MMOs, is about working towards things.

‘Game’ and ‘work’ are not synonyms yet you treat them as such. Regardles of genre, games are about fun. If at any point you equate your game time to work, you should stop doing it – unless you are legitimately making real money off it.

Its one thing to challenge oneself to improve, or to aim to achive something, and its completly another to ‘work towards something’. You re not building a house here, brick by brick, to be working towards something. Unfortunetly, thats the direction legendaries/unique exotics/ascended gear are forcing the game into.

This is where you’re completely wrong. ‘Fun’ is subjective, and for a lot of people, working towards an imaginary goal is what they consider to be fun. Consider gaming as a hobby, such as building a model ship. You put time, money, and skill into building a replica of the S.S. Booty and all you have to show for it in the end is a pretty trophy. Games are similar to such hobbies in that, at the end of the day, you’ll have a stronger, more personalised avatar with which to show off your dilligence to people who will appreciate your dilligence. People put model ships in bottles and pop them on shelves where they will be entirely useless, garner no further income, and take up space. Yet the person had fun building that model ship, and enjoys showing it off to friends who also enjoy and build model ships of their own.

Saying ’it’s just a game and you shouldn’t have to work for anything because it’s just a game is just a game is just a game" doesn’t work anymore in this day and age. Gaming is a hobby and a passtime as much as anything else, and like any hobby, there are competitive, passionate types who enjoy putting time and effort into things they love and enjoy engrossing themselves in everything the game has to offer, right down to the min-max.

The summoned Flame Axe is actually a very solid skillset for damage, and I use it frequently in my fire specced D/D build. It has the longest duration burn of anything in the elementalists’s arsenal and it’s extremily easy to land. Once you’ve tagged the opponent with a burn, you can run away and build might stacks simply by attuning to fire and continuing to autoattack.

It’s worth remembering that the fire axe can hit targets behind you with it’s autoattack and 2nd skill, making it incredibly dangerous for foes to chase you, as it does substantial damage + stacks might (which also improves the condition ticks from your burn).

Turning the camera and using Flame axe 4 can serve as a gap closer, not just a retreat. It’s also fantastic for avoiding melee gap closers such as bull rush or heartseeker, since it not only evades, but leaves a damaging trail in it’s wake. I usually use the fire axe as a means to force opponents to blow their dodges and condition removal. And then you move in with regular skills for the kill.

I believe that power + condition damage is necessary for the flame axe. with 10 in arcana you gain fury for a short duration every time you attune, so criticals can still be a factor. Fire 30 and high strength + condition damage is how I like to roll, since a 19+ second burn is nothing to sneeze at, on top of two gap closers, an escape skill, an AoE nuke that does respectable damage and a ranged autoattack that’s better than any other ranged option with D/D.

I never bother with the trait that gives 10 extra charges. Flame axe usually comes off cooldown when I need it, and I never hang onto it for all that long anyway. Dropping the bundle appropriately in order to utilise weapon skills at the right moment is key to using conjures.

I’ve been playing around in HoTM and I think I’ve found a build that’s kind of interesting. It’s 30, 0, 25, 5, 10, but with knights gear and carrion jewellery. My runes are full Runes of the Undead. This gives me just enough survivability, raw damage and condition damage and while my healing power is nonexistant, I have a lot of toughness and fairly decent HP, while I still hit quite hard all around.

The big kicker is that I realised Pyromancer’s Purisscence will proc even if you’re using a conjured weapon while attuned to fire. I tend to summon the flame axe and use it to quickly build stacks of might with the autoattack as well as inflict long-duration burns with the other skills. When I need to use my other skills I’ll quickly drop the bundle and do a proper rotation through fire to earth for even more stacks of might. Combined with superior sigils of battle, it’s extremily easy to keep 13+ stacks of might up with no problem.

As for my utilities, I use glyph of storms, summon flame axe, and cleansing flame. Glyph of storms seems like an odd choice, but you can actually combo it off of an updraft or earthquake, and then keep people inside it for most of the duration by following with other CC skills.

As for traits, I take mostly damage traits from the fire tree, as well as elemental shielding and stone splinters in earth. I decided to go with 5 in water just for the regen on attunement. I can’t see anything in earth 30 that I specifically want except for 2 seconds of stability on earth attune, which seems useful but I wasn’t able to put to very practical use while testing, due to how often I switch to and from earth, it never seems to be up when I need it.

And no, I definately swap attunements often. Flame axe inflicts a whopping 19 seconds of burn off of Flame Leap. If I land that, I usually drop the bundle immediately and try to stack on as many misc conditions as I can to cover for the inevitable condition removal, or go for hard CC through wind/earth if I know that they’ve got lots of condition removal. The point of the build isn’t to just stay in fire as often as possible, but to have a fiery focus. I think my current build feels just right.

I am currently leveling a charr elementalist, and one little quirk of mine that I like to do is establish my character’s role-play lore and then find a suitably strong build based on their theme. Unfortunately, this character is Flame-legion themed, which means that as an elementalist, I’m challenged to find a build that utilises a focus on the fire tree and fire skills so that I can have thematic unity.

It’s pretty well known that the fire tree just doesn’t work for a lot of eles. I’m currently running D/D and Fire/Earth/Air, and have done ok in PVE relying on condition and upfront damage, but now I’ve hit a snag at lv 50 where things hit too hard and too fast for my middling damage to keep up. Ideally I would want Fire/Earth, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s holding up too well.

Are there any viable fire 30 builds out there? And how do they work? I don’t really mind if the build isn’t optimal compared to the glass cannon builds of other classes, but so long as it’s ‘ok’ I think I can manage. Thoughts?

I use the Flame Axe as a part of my rotation. I’m currently attempting a fire dps based build, and not only does the axe give me a good ranged option, it also allows me to proc an additional aura thanks to a quick fire/jump combo, dps while running away from a target (the autoattack can hit targets behind you) and flame axe 2 is just a nice aoe attack all in all. Flame axe 5 is also the fastest, longest lasting burn I can inflict. I’ll often quickly drop the bundle after doing a rotation and go back to using my regular skills.

Ele don’t do ‘massive’ damage in any way. Even if you know how to play them well, by comparison their damage is eclipsed by their utility. An elementalist going full glass cannon can’t touch a thief building the same way. Mathamatically. This is common knowledge.

Actually if you want to nitpick, races DO matter, but only in WvW (since you cant use racial skills in Spvp)

One good example is charr racials with engineer proffession. The Charr’s racial skills compliment and combo well with several key engie dps mechanics, making them an ideal race for Engineers.

I have no idea about ele though. For the most part you’re going to want to have your utilities full of ele skills. No room for racials.

Do people here ever go and look at other class forums? Elementalists have been complaining about their damage and crap skills since day one. Yes, eles are versatile, but they certainly aren’t particularly stronger than Engineers in terms of dps and are much squishier.

It’s also sad when the casual player thinks they deserve more for being lazy or impatient. Typically you see the increasingly common mentality of “no, I don’t want to work for anything. I have a life and a job. I shouldn’t have to learn a game, because I’m not a nerd.”

this kind of mentality is just as disrespectful as players who insist on raising a bar when they want to run dungeons. Players should not be rewarded for attempting a dungeon under-prepared or under-geared. AC is known for being one of the harder dungeons in the game in spite of being lv 30ish. It’s design is generally poor as it is because of this.

A full team of lv 80’s struggles with AC in certain areas, especially that one zone where you have to protect the engineer while she repairs siege equipment. the ghosts spawned there are too numerous and have way too much damage and HP for undergeared players to deal with comfortably.

A player who has taken the time and effort to hit lv 80 and gear themselves properly should, by any means, be entitled to having an advantage in dungeons. That’s not being selfish, that’s being efficient. They have already completed the content that players are expected to work towards, and as a result they are stronger.

Also, vertical progression has been a staple of mmo’s for years and has never been an issue until the current insurgence of casual gamers in the past few years. The “I want it now” crowd now rules gaming as a whole with an iron fist, and we see many modern games forced to adhere to this model in order to stay financially competitive.

If the people who enjoy vertical progression are ‘locusts’, then the casual players who don’t want vertical progression are ‘piranhas’. They will sit in a stagnant pond, a large legion of majority gamers, and instantly shred any new material that breaches the water’s surface. Unfortunately, this also means that nobody can set foot in the pond, new fish will never thrive there, animals can’t pass through, and the whole thing just stays stagnant forever.

It’s very much a matter of old school vs new school, east vs west, hardcore vs casual and so on so forth. Striking a balancing act on that is nearly impossible, but I simply cannot stand the idea of all mmo’s becoming stagnant horizontal progression in the future. that’s like the fabled GW2 manifesto being soiled, except for an entire genre’s legacy.

I’m not fond of modding. I can understand the fun that comes with it, but it feels like a perversion of the actual product, like playing Ragnarok on a private server. I could play a fun mod if I liked the features being involved, but I would never consider it a true game experience and would value the original more.

All of those classes you just listed have much lower natural defense modifiers than a warrior. Even if a warrior builds glass, he’s still got 20,000+ HP.

Also, Engineers and Elementalists can’t swap weapons. Ele’s need to put most of their skills on cooldown to do this. Warriors need to put 1 skill and some utilities on cooldown. What’s stopping you from switching to that sword/warhorn and running away with your perma-swiftness as soon as people figure out where the sniper shot came from?

Development stuff is always an interesting read.

First of all, Mesmers are exceptionally powerful in PVP, so it makes sense that their PVE experience would require a little more work. Warriors are also powerful, but vs skilled players they’re generally easier to handle due to their straightforward style and guardians are tanks. Tanks always have the easy road because they don’t die.

Try leveling an Elementalist.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Lifelike.5862:

LordByron.8369:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

LordByron.8369:

an example of the flaws of “work for it” theory is this:

Player a is completely selfish, spent all his 3 hours farming the same mob beccause he found a loot too generous (or a minor exploit in a dungeon to make it easy).
If he goes to a dungeon he insults everyoen if they dont manage to do peed runs.

Plyer A gets rewarded

Player B helps actively community, helping low levels in dynamic events, attendingto wvwvw, and helps guildmates (but also strangers) to learn how to play in a dungeon, and helps people to gear.

Player B is punished because having worse drops, higher repair costs, less incomes and logistic costs….(see waypoint).

Player A meets player B in a dungeon OR wvwvw…one of them is profiting of equipment…

Player B leave the game
Player A goes on the forum saying AC is too easy and L2P etc etc etc….and he already got his legendary and is bored…..

Simple as that.

Well, one difference, does Player B realize he’s pretty much sacrificing “being the top dog” for how he chooses to do things? And if so, does he do it willingly or grudgingly?

Cause Player B pretty much encompasses me except for that higher repair costs bit – I rarely have to do full repairs outside of the two dungeon runs where I “lern 2 dodge traps” and hot action in WvW.

i do it quite happily……unless some elitist come son the forum insulting everyone and asking for nerfing ac drops and making it harder or because vertical progression is required….

I mean is like being fined because you help people…..that is too much for a GAME.

It’s just as bad when some casual elitist comes on the forum complaining about those ‘elitists’ who work for their gear, and demands to be able to achieve the same results for half the effort.

Lifelike, I’m still curious where you saw the grind in Minecraft, just out of perversity. Given I’m playing through a mod I might suggest on a server I help work on . . .

. . . I’m going to predict you’ll list the grind as “searching for those ever-elusive resources such as diamonds”.

I edited my previous post with details on what I percieve to be a grind in minecraft. And don’t worry, I actually enjoy that kind of grind a lot. I don’t necessarily consider it a bad thing at all.

still playing vanilla minecraft.

Akiko.2364:

I’m interested in seeing how the next generation of Sandbox MMO’s work out, these are games like Archage, Black Desert, Blessed, Everquest Next which will have no (or very little) linear content or in some cases class’s .. you just roll your character and it gets dropped into a world and away you go.

If you just want to build a farm and raise cows go for ir!
If you want to build a castle and rule a kingdom, go for it!
if you want to raid boss’s and dungeons, go for it!

In some ways GW2 tries this, but it really is more of a theme park mmo with the linear personal story lines and stepped zone progression.

Is that what it’s coming to? Jeez, that sounds…awful. No structure, no sense of identity. I don’t think I could enjoy that sort of game as an ‘mmo’. One of the first things I think when I boot up a new MMO is “I am going to be a _ and I am going to use _ build, and people will recognise me as such.” and that feeling is one of the reasons I love this genre – that sense of having a title and a class, and progressing that way. Like wearing a snazzy uniform and having the satisfaction of people looking at your character and immediately knowing “that’s a healer.” or “that’s a thief”.

Modern MMO’s are trying too hard to strip out the player’s sense of identity in order to homogenise the genre. Nobody has to learn anything anymore. Nobody has to put in any real effort or build their character from something small to something big. Nothing can compare to that feeling of starting out as a Novice in Ragnarok online and thinking “I’m going to work hard, and eventually I’ll be an acid bomb Genetic with a Dieter, and I’ll spec into MVPing, but also focus on brewing potions to play market”

This current mentality of “I want to PVP now!” is pretty depressing. I like how GW2 handles it by scaling everyone up when they go into WvW, but still forcing them to obtain decent gear to do well. But when a game starts completely removing defining features like classes, leveling and vertical progression, that’s when you know the industry is going downhill.

LordByron.8369:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

LordByron.8369:

an example of the flaws of “work for it” theory is this:

Player a is completely selfish, spent all his 3 hours farming the same mob beccause he found a loot too generous (or a minor exploit in a dungeon to make it easy).
If he goes to a dungeon he insults everyoen if they dont manage to do peed runs.

Plyer A gets rewarded

Player B helps actively community, helping low levels in dynamic events, attendingto wvwvw, and helps guildmates (but also strangers) to learn how to play in a dungeon, and helps people to gear.

Player B is punished because having worse drops, higher repair costs, less incomes and logistic costs….(see waypoint).

Player A meets player B in a dungeon OR wvwvw…one of them is profiting of equipment…

Player B leave the game
Player A goes on the forum saying AC is too easy and L2P etc etc etc….and he already got his legendary and is bored…..

Simple as that.

Well, one difference, does Player B realize he’s pretty much sacrificing “being the top dog” for how he chooses to do things? And if so, does he do it willingly or grudgingly?

Cause Player B pretty much encompasses me except for that higher repair costs bit – I rarely have to do full repairs outside of the two dungeon runs where I “lern 2 dodge traps” and hot action in WvW.

i do it quite happily……unless some elitist come son the forum insulting everyone and asking for nerfing ac drops and making it harder or because vertical progression is required….

I mean is like being fined because you help people…..that is too much for a GAME.

It’s just as bad when some casual elitist comes on the forum complaining about those ‘elitists’ who work for their gear, and demands to be able to achieve the same results for half the effort.

Gehenna.3625:

I think you miss the point.

A lot of people came here because they thought it was going to be a different experience and that’s not going to be the case now. Sure, there are differences between GW2 and other MMOs but they are not that big in the end.

I know all MMO’s have bugs and I do undestand why. This is however the first game that disallows people to finish their stories (Arah) and this is a problem that exists for months now.

Other MMOs have some elitism at least but now GW2 will cater to this too.

So the question is not if there are other MMOs that have less grind etc but considering the state of the game today and where it’s heading, are there any MMOs that I prefer playing over GW2?

And there the answer is yes. For some it’s non MMOs like D3 and many more, for others it’s WoW and for me it happens to be SWTOR.

Now, all these games have their problems but in the end I know what to expect there and with GW2 I really can’t make out where they are heading with this game.

Read the AMA and it’s full of “we can’t tell you this yet”, “watch this space for more info” and “will be implemented soon”.

I already left GW2 the day Lost Shores came out and haven’t come back. I feel no pull to play GW2 at all. Nothing gnawing at me wanting to try and see. I went back to SWTOR because I know what to expect. The game is buggy like any MMO and raiding I ignore cause it’s not my thing, but the game has great leveling and story (voice acting is of very high level) and I just love Star Wars in general. It’s far from perfect but it works for me.

Before that GW1 worked for me, it’s just the lack of expansions that made me stop playing it. GW2 has failed to take that place. It was fun to level 1 toon to 80 get geared up, do world completion and all the jump puzzles and a bit of WvW. Second time wasn’t so fun anymore.

Bottom line for me is that the game grew stale and the new direction doesn’t add the type of content I like. The voice acting is horrible, “my story” isn’t my story at all and the world, though beautifully crafted, has not managed to make me feel “at home” like GW1 did pretty much from the start. It doesn’t have the magic.

The ironic thing is that the ‘elitism’ you speak of is actually strong in the GW1 player mentality. Wanting to make a game that caters solely to casual players and excludes design philosophies that exist in ‘those other, common MMO’s that are not GW" is casual elitism at it’s finest. Elitism goes both ways, whether for hardcore players or casual players, and since the introduction of ascended gear and the backlash caused by it, there has been a lot of casual elitism rampant on these forums.

LordByron.8369:

an example of the flaws of “work for it” theory is this:

Player a is completely selfish, spent all his time farming the same mob because he found a loot too generous (or a minor exploit in a dungeon to make it easy).
If he goes to a dungeon he insults everyone if they dont manage to do speed runs or they helps him with his exploit to be “more efficient”.

Plyer A is rewarded

Player B helps actively community, helping low levels in dynamic events, attending to wvwvw, and helps guildmates (but also strangers) to learn how to play in a dungeon, and helps people to gear.

Player B is punished having worse drops, higher repair costs, less incomes and logistic costs….(see waypoint).

Player A meets player B in a dungeon OR wvwvw…one of them is profiting of equipment…

Player B leaves the game

Or, Player A could simply be a dedicated player, not necessarily rude, but someone who knows how to play efficiently and who decides to focus on hunting, making gold, and progression.

Player A is rewarded.

Player B is extremily lazy, and spends all their time hanging around in town instances spamming the global chat. They expect to be able to jump into PVP and win based solely on ‘skill’.

Player A and Player B meet in WvWvW, and Player A wins the duel because he’s actually been working for his gear.

Player B then complains that they are not being rewarded, and that player A ‘has no life’, and then writes a post on the forum complaining about how the game rewards people who grind over the poor casual player who only has 2 hours a day of play time…

See, it goes both ways.

Also, as par my minecraft example. Say you just started your game and you spawn near a witch hut. Yay, free potions, and you want to go to the Nether so that you can kill a blaze and make yourself a potion rack. You also want to make yourself a nice brick house like the one your friend has.

You’re going to need to spend a lot of time digging at bedrock to find diamond, which is completely RNG based, as diamond spawns rarely in random chunks. You’re also going to have to walk all the way out to some swamp, dig up clay, bake the clay into bricks for your house, and you’re going to need a LOT of clay.

Once you do end up getting into potions and enchanting so that you can have shiny feather touch pickaxes for farming interesting things like ice blocks, and swords that rarely break, you have to start farming for EXP. If you don’t find a skeleton dungeon you can exploit for infinate experience with a well-made trap, you’ll have to go out and kill a lot of mobs at night, or spend ages baking rock in a furnace from a cobblestone generator, and you still need coal, which will require you to build a tree farm. Finally, when you do have enough experience to enchant a weapon, it’s completely random.

So yeah, minecraft is actually farming for fun at it’s best, and a really bad example for an ‘anti farm’ game, just saying XD I consider minecraft to be allll about collect, farm and grind. It takes what hardcore gamers actually enjoy in a grind and makes do with it in a way that comes off as fun and satisfying.

Actually, Minecraft has progressive gear and grinding too, for whoever brought it up as an example.

that was sooner than expected. Well done, Anet!

IMO, trying to make an MMO that’s ‘perfect’ when compared to other MMO’s is a futile exercise, because everyone’s perception of perfect is different. A casual player would find my ideal of a ‘perfect’ mmo to be very flawed, for example, because I enjoy complexity and effort-based progression.

rather, MMO developers should try to corner a certain ‘feel’ of gameplay they want to push for, and try to make the game ‘perfect’ for that initial vision. Gw2 tried to do this and partially succeeded. It succeeded in making an enjoyable MMO that felt unique and was just deep enough to satisfy MMO players while being accessible enough to satisfy casuals, but just like a lot of other ‘revolutionary’ MMO’s, it sacrificed tired and true staples of the genre in order to do so, creating an ultimately watered-down experience for players who compare it to other games.

If I could just take Ragnarok online, Tera online and GW2 and smoosh them together, I would have the perfect MMO.

Also, I think you just described Second Life.

That elementalist combo also puts almost literally every option he has on cooldown. He’s blown his condition removal, teleport , all his utilities, isn’t specced for healing, making his water attunement a no-go, and the only escape he has after performing that combo is Ride the Lightning, which is just as likely to get stuck on a nearby target, making the entire escape plan at point blank range a bust.

My gaming background started with classic Nintendo, whom I stuck with for quite some time. Eventually I moved on to competitive fighting games, MOBAS and MMO’s. I have always loved RPG’s, and my first MMO was Ragnarok Online.

I’ve never touched WoW. I stuck with Ragnarok until moving on to Tera, which was my first ‘western’ MMO. Now experiencing Guild Wars 2, I have to say that while it lacks the sheer content and depth that I’m used to from a true korean MMO like Ragnarok, it is still fun enough to make me like the game. I just wish that it wasn’t so babied and watered down.

I do not like the art in GW2 as much as Tera, which I feel is the most beautiful MMO out there right now. The animation in GW2 is very solid and fluid, sometimes outdoing Tera, but the combat, while deeper and more similar to what I’m used to from RO in terms of status effects and control, lacks that ‘feel’ that I can get from Tera’s free combat.

I used this glitch to get a look at my charr. And well…he actually looked much less silly than he does when he’s got clothes on.

someone should really ask about temporary weapons such as engineer kits, and whether or not they intend to fix the problem of losing weapon stats and/or poor scaling (elementalist summons, engie kits, turrets, banners)

in WvW, I use my downed state to drag people into my team’s zerg. Die to a warrior’s rifle while skirting the edge of the stare-off? No problem. Yoink some sucker into your teammate’s ravenous maws.

I run a tanky healer support setup that utilises p/s in combination with healing bombs. The blast finisher provided by the shield skills as well as a ranged interrupt synergyses very well, but the build requires a lot of really fast kit switching and combos to be effective.

yes, kits are affected by armor and jewellery, just not the main weapon. This actually means that your kits ARE getting a significant bonus from your gear, just not from your weapons (which means that compared to weapons, they are also losing a significant amount of stats)

Definately worth having clothes on if you like using kits.

people need to learn to drop the weapons. You’re not supposed to hold onto them or use them like kits. They are to be summoned, used, and discarded as necessary. I think their cooldowns could be reduced, definately, and they need to be given more in the way of utility to make them woth a slot. on-summon buffs would be very welcome.

Ok, so now we only need to figure out how to optimise this to make it ‘practical’.

losing some damage in exchange for utility while still being able to get about 18k burst should be alright, methinks.

Actually, that combo is fairly impractical, easily countered, and in general elementalists need to sacrifice a lot more to achieve what a warrior can achieve and less.

Even fully specced for glass cannon instagib rifle, warriors are a lot tankier than Elementalists. They can throw out their combo from a lot further away, and can use Frenzy to cover for the long channel time of Kill Shot. Even without Kill shot, they still do very respectable damage with volley, and they have the luxury of doing all this from the top of a tower, which is actually practical during seiges. Thanks to piercing rifle shots, they can also take out a sufficient chunk of a zerg without exposing themselves to retalliation.

Come on, it’s not rocket science.

Apparently, you aren’t supposed to farm at all in this game, because it’s kind of like grinding, and this game is supposed to be played by people who hate grinding, only.

Seriously though, it’s best to use the trading post when you want materials like this, or hunt for drop bags from evil groups (flame legion, etc) in the area you want to farm in. You can get a lot of these ingredients very cheaply on the market.

I would like to know if there’s any plans for making Engineer kits and Elementalist weapons scale with weapon stats.

Ianervan.3415:

Lifelike.5862:

But you’re not -supposed- to be farming in this game! farming is some kind of grind and ew, we all hate grinds! Why don’t they just give everyone a button that they can press which gives your character 100 gold? No grind involved, other than pressing a button…ugh, but then you’d have to press the button 4 times to make a legendary. What a grind!

You’re trying to be ironic but yes, I could play a game where there is no farming. As a matter of fact it’s the type of games I play. I don’t farm even in GW (I did a small bit), because I consider it unworthy of human beings, and completely degrading to the state of mind.

But since vast majority of people love farming and the idea that they’re better than someone else purely because of time invested, there is farming in this game and many other online games.

That’s not what this thread is about so stop derailing it. It’s not about farming vs non farming, it’s about GW1 farming and GW2 farming.

Also, see my signature.

Speaking of state of mind, you dislike farming for all the wrong reasons it seems.

An enjoyment that comes from farming is not necessarily to do with being ‘better’ than anyone or time investment. It’s the satisfaction that comes from working hard at a goal in order to procure results. There is a basic, simple pleasure that comes from gathering enough items to craft yourself something cool, which is a basic staple of game design from very early on that still holds strong today. Being able to think “I have a goal now, and I’ll progress with that one step at a time until I get what I want” is a driving factor in what compells players to collect, farm, and earn ‘points’ whether it be gold, items, cosmetics, gear or whatever.

Now, grinding in an MMO isn’t always about who gets the best gear fastest, so that poor, entitled time-lacking players don’t get jumped by those nasty grinders who put time and effort into earning their shiny rewards. It also can fulfill the ‘role playing’ aspect of an MMO too for people who are into that. If you remove that kind of grind from the game, you’re severely limiting people who like to play their characters as gatherers, craftsmen, and hunters. I mained the alchemist class in Ragnarok online solely for the reason that I got to brew potions and sell them to other players. The feeling of going out and hunting the materials required to craft a fresh set of Acid Bombs, then turning them into profit by playing the market is a pleasure that’s lost on this generation of gamers, apparently.

People who attribute the willingness to grind as some form of social ineptitude are, themselves, usually insecure about something. Most likely they don’t like the idea of being bested in ‘skill based’ gameplay by someone who has time and patience to put into something they believe is not a worthwhile cause. Last time I checked, patience and perseverence are just as valuable virtues as skill, and often go hand in hand. What happens when you encounter a player who is not only patient and diligent, but also insanely skilled and works a full time job? That whole ‘nerds vs natural talent’ point of view can fall flat in an instant when players like these, who truly love the game and are willing to sink their teeth into it out of passion, step up to the playing field.

binidj.5734:

Lifelike.5862:

Memnoch.2589:

So Arena Net promised not to add better dungeons or gear? Meaning once you hit 80 zero progression at all?

Yep. And some people actually think that’s a good idea. Kind of sad, really.

And yet, knowing that, you paid for the game. Why would you buy a game you thought was sad?

Those who bought it knowing that it was horizontal progression did so because a number of them (like myself) have run on the gear treadmills of other games for more years than some players have been alive and are, quite frankly, tired of it.

I bought it because my friends were all playing it and insisted it was good. And also, because I was disgruntled with Tera at the time for having a lack of end-game content and meaningful “MMO” features. Ironically, Gw2 seemed like the only alternative at the time which appealed to me aesthetically. I signed up because I was promised that the game ‘caters to both hardcore and casual players alike’ but I was also EXTREMILY wary, having heard from several other Tera players that GW2’s game design did nothing but cater to casual players. The game turned out fun enough for me to enjoy right up until endgame, when I started to realise that yes, I did miss some of Tera’s features, it’s difficulty and it’s competitiveness, but I also loved some of the convenient features introduced by GW2. If only it were possible to blend the two, we could have a perfect MMO.

Ruby Red.4019:

1) 0
2) 0
3) 0
4) 0
5) 0

This is a FTP game paid expansions are the way to go imo not cobbled together gamebreaking “free” content. (I say 0 because they shouldn’t be used to bring in more exclusion and elitism)

The sad thing is, this game is already full of exclusion and elitism towards players who enjoy vertical progression, and it’s posts like yours which prove it.

elitists go both ways.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Onshidesigns.1069:

You want gated content

Well of course I do, those asura gates need to go somewhere, why not more content?

You know what I mean. You want content available to only hardcore grinders with no life.

I’d rather content that requires some work to obtain and isn’t handed to lazy players on a silver platter, yes.

I have a job, alternate hobbies and family responsibilities, and I still enjoy grind in my games and manage to find time to put effort into farming for things. What’s your excuse?

I’m playing less because I realised just how shallow this game is at endgame, and the fact that the community cries at the slightest sign of vertical progression is very offputting.

Still playing the game a lot though, but now I’m managing to balance it between Tera and Minecraft.

1) – 10.
2) – 8 (it’s exciting, but not super exciting. This sort of thing I feel is standard for progression)
3) – 10
4) – 0 (no payed expansions, please.)
5) – 5 (I was more interested in class balance and the addition of more misc. items to collect and things to craft with them therefore, but an extra gear tier is ok I suppose)

I’m not one of those GW1 hipsters, by the way. I like my games with meaningful content.

Memnoch.2589:

So Arena Net promised not to add better dungeons or gear? Meaning once you hit 80 zero progression at all?

Yep. And some people actually think that’s a good idea. Kind of sad, really.

But you’re not -supposed- to be farming in this game! farming is some kind of grind and ew, we all hate grinds! Why don’t they just give everyone a button that they can press which gives your character 100 gold? No grind involved, other than pressing a button…ugh, but then you’d have to press the button 4 times to make a legendary. What a grind!