Guild Wars 2

Yes.

Second only to turning off other players visual effects. Those’ll get you killed in a dungeon, if you’re stacked with two big charr using Twilight. Mind you, if you tell them not to res you then you won’t have to listen to Ho Ho Tron.

Maybe if we all start reporting users for verbal abuse?

I’ve done five fractal runs, as a newb, at level 1, for the vine back item. I stopped after that partly because the 3+1 combination was too long. With a dungeon you can just do one path, but fractals are kind of an all or nothing deal.

I don’t see it would kill anyone to spread the rewards evenly so people can do one slice at a time. You can still do 3+1 in a row if you want.

Wanze.8410:

while someone who plays all the light classes only has to craft one and can share it between his alts?

For ascended gear…

elementalist: berserker armour with scholar runes, berserker trinkets
necromancer: assassin’s armour with scholar runes, berserker trinkets
mesmer: assassin’s armour with ranger runes and minipet, 2 assassin’s and 3 berserker trinkets (or 3 more exotic assassin’s trinkets if you don’t need agony resistance)

Zenith.7301:

That is the entire basis of free to play games. Placing enough annoyances/obstacles to incentivize people to spend cash at the store.

And the other entire basis is making the people who spend money (on prestige skins or whatever) feel cooler than the people who don’t. Some guy from EA said that 90% of the customers for one of their more profitable F2P games spend no money, but they’re very important because they give the other 10% a crowd to stand out from.

You can’t say how good one class is without knowing the other four they’re playing with.

A dual banner warrior is great… unless you have another dual banner warrior. A couple of single banner warriors is decent, but I’d rather have a dual banner warrior and a frostspotter ranger.

It’s teams, not classes, that you should rank.

And not all dungeons are the same — in CM I’d like a thief (skips) and reflect mesmer (fights), in AC I’m not so bothered.

I think this is a good framework for a LFG: one ele who can do scepter or staff, one guardian, one warrior running dual banners (optional PS), mesmer or thief if you want their specialities. Then one or two more, favouring a second ele.

IMHO, mesmer needs quick thinking and good judgement over quick fingers, more than most classes. It’s only really powerful where there are things to reflect, though.

Staff ele would be useful in more places, and it’s easy to find a PUG. But it is an aggro magnet, so you better be ready to read animations and dodge.

Thank you, Sins.

Sins.4782:

You really shouldn’t be having much trouble with the graveling CCs; they’re relatively well telegraphed

Yes. I can avoid them fairly well, normally. Today for various reasons (warriors) I ended up stacking might with the gravelings in my face, so if I was dodging I wasn’t blasting and the fire field was running down. If I could pre-stack I’d be ok.

Skipping on s/f is relatively easy if you’re used to no mobility skills

I’m not. Guess that’s another thing to practice.

, you have a full 5s invulnerability, kitten AoE projectile block, and a 3s personal projectile reflect/3x condi remove at your disposal, and that’s just from focus. Should you really need it, you have an instant cast blind, a second blind, and 2 good CCs as well.

The key word there appears to be “focus” as opposed to “dagger”. OK, I’ll do that.

If you have no swiftness and are feeling too lazy to swap weapons to stack it,

Not lazy as such, it’s more I worry that:
(a) people will run off while I’m stacking leaving me with all the back aggro
(b) somebody will be in combat ahead or behind until the next fight so I can’t get off staff
… but I’ll try it and see.

Also, I’d seriously recommend arcane brilliance. Having another blast finisher that isn’t tied to a specific attunement can be really useful, especially where you need to blast stealth often.

I do always use that. I just think “will I regret this?” whenever I use it to blast fire before a fight, and I keep it back for healing (plus incidental blast) in a known bad group.

I always play staff ele, but I have practised scepter and noted the build and so on just in case. Today I was in a low end AC PUG with another staff ele who asked me to switch, which I did.

God it was miserable.

I got my pre-stacks off, 18 might, not bad for a beginner I thought. Alas, few people deigned to stand in them.

Then I tried to stack might on the Graveling trash… knocked all over the place, no stability/aegis, lost half the might and both the conjures.

It hit me during the first skip: scepter/dagger has no realistic swiftness, and neither the guradian nor the warrior are applying group swiftness. I failed one skip (back aggro), first in AC for a while.

For utilities I used Arcane Wave, LH, Icebow. Nobody would use my spare bow for love nor money, it was sat there on the ground at the end of every fight. But the guardian kept stealing the lightning hammer, oh yes.

I dropped a few fire spells on one of the big Graveling burrows in the room just before Reilquary WP in P3. It didn’t die. This is, like, cognitive dissonance. Lava Font + Meteor obliterates any burrow, and associated wildlife. I had to turn around and go back for another Dragon’s Tooth.

Oh, and the other ele, the one on staff? Clearly not a believer in lava fonts. But the guardian did keep placing symbols, so I probably blasted something with LH.

It sure felt like I got more aggro than normal. Could it possibly be that some of the other “zerk” people were telling fibs?

There is a splendid moment in one of DEKeyz video guides where she says something like “if you believe you will have perfect defences, you can use Arcane Brilliance as an extra blast finisher”. Would anyone like to give me some advice on playing scepter/X might stacker in groups that aren’t like that?

Thanks for the info folks.

Say I’m an elementalist using scepter/dagger + lightning hammer, with a sigil of frailty on the dagger, and the water trait that gives +20% damage to foes with vulnerability.

Once I conjure my lighning hammer, does the sigil of frailty continue to give vulnerability?

full run 80 zerk 5k+ AP experienced, no wings (we need to see bosses)

I wouldn’t be averse to some automatic action against afkers (and the dead who won’t waypoint), but I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory proposal.

One thing it shouldn’t do is log people out, or move them out of the Silverwates. That could strip them of all their perseverance etc, for the crime of answering the phone. If it does anything, it should just move them back to Camp Resolve.

There’s no game wide overall number imbalance that’s strong enough to matter.

There are certain niches where some classes are less welcome. E.g. in big zerg WvW, a zerg of 100 players really only wants 2 mesmers. In dungeons, rangers and necros can find themselves unwelcome, 1 warrior is optimal but 2 is ok, double eles is good.

You don’t hear guardians and eles complain much, and everybody complains, so they’re probably a pretty safe bet…

…for now, until the expansion turns it upside down.

SW usually goes downhill at weekends, when it’s a more casual crowd. Has it been a public holiday somewhere?

TA fwd/up 80 zerk 5k ping

It was a very solid PUG. Plenty of DPS, good compositon, made the skips, knew what to do. Until I wrecked it…

A bit into the second path, just before the skip after Leurent’s lieutenants, I typed in party chat:

“I’ve just sold twilight”

Chaos ensued. People ran a bit, then stopped running to type. The living revived the downed, and started typing, and forgot to look at the wolves, and swiftly became downed themselves.

It was all my fault.

I’m sorry.

#puglyfe

Well, I guess I can only shrug.

I PUG every day. 6k AP PUGs are clearly better than 4k AP PUGs. It’s really obvious. Are you guys not seeing this? Is it just at my time of day (Euro lunchtime) or something?

I really wish I had 8k instead of 6k. A lot of HotW/CoE/Arah PUGs won’t look at 6k.

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

All the commanders are in WvW. In the boarderland maps.

I thought all the commanders were in the Silverwastes, not doing any actual commanding. Things you’ll never hear from a commander at a fort:
- “Use the arrowcarts”
- “Use the oilpot”
- “Don’t fight them away from the gate, let them come under the oilpot”
- “Two people go escort the supply bull here”
- “I bought this tag for 100g before the price went up, but I didn’t cut it as a commander, so Silverwastes is where I come not to get found out”

I’ll put in a plug for the dungeon guides by Banter Bill on youtube. These are how average or above average PUGs actually do dungeons, i.e. the sort of groups you hope to get into when you’re new.

Also, a plug for level 80 dungeon potions and second rank food (plate of steak and asparagus, minotaur steaks). They are very cheap compared to the dungeon rewards and make life a lot easier. Even if you’re the only person in your AC run using them, you won’t regret it.

Mokambo.3649:

If you don’t play a fotm profession this will be your number 1 obstacle to overcome every time you want to do something.

This doesn’t help. On my mesmer, which I only play with a reflect build in CM and SE where I sometimes outright carry, I see a lot of groups who could definitely use more reflects saying “warrior or ele only”. I bet some of those are near-wiped by a pair of elite dredge bombers on the corner of a fence.

There are resource sites like gw2dungeons but reading a lot of stuffs about 1 thing is not even close to experience, in fact it can actually get you more confused by the sheer amount on information on something that you don’t even know how it looks like.

Yep, you have to have done the dungeon a couple of times before gw2dungeons really makes sense. Best thing I found was watching Banter Bill’s realistic PUG guides on youtube and doing one path at a time, to minimise the information overload.

But then you have the guilds…oh the good lovely guilds. Getting random invited ( even more when you also receive a copy-paste whisper) is ALWAYS a bad thing, you are better of alone in that regard.

I can attest to this from recent personal experience. Dodged subject alpha 4 times before I ran out of endurance and died, he was still up, the axe/shield warrior in WvW armour made snide remarks about how he was still alive, I quit the party and since you can’t quit on guildies I had to quit the guild too. Pity, I liked those guys, I should have stuck to guild chat and pugging.

Getting into a guild that you could learn something from…hahaha you are very far from what they are looking for so don’t even try unless you want to get completely ignored or made fun off.

Wouldn’t even know where to look.

New players are getting punished for the simple fact that they are new and obviously lack the skills and knowledge of veteran players, and there is not much you personally can do about it.

Not sure if entirely true. But it certainly is a problem.

You can do it earlier, but I would advise you to be level 80 with full traits and at least some exotic gear.

Doing it earlier is uphill, both ways.

AC1. The party was listed as “Full run 80 zerk gear check”. I’m DEKeyz staff ele build, using blasting staff for AC, in full ascended except an exotic force/night staff.

We killed the SQ, it was a bit lively without taking out gargoyles first but there was enough DPS and not standing in red rings to make it work.

We killed the gravelings in the corridor no problem. I was last up the hall as usual (I’m spike averse), so I’m one of the two who realise he’s turned right towards the room with the burrows. Never seen that once, in my ?50? runs, and he didn’t say anything either.

The other two turn left and head for Kohler. He and his mate kick them.

I’m kicked a couple of minutes later, not actually sure what for. Maybe because I pulled Kohler when we got to him? We were stacked on a corner, nobody else was pulling, might was expiring, and AFAIK I was the only one with a ranged weapon that doesn’t cause defiance. Maybe us 6k APs shouldn’t get ideas above our station?

#puglyfefromthebottomofthepeckingorder

Purple Miku.7032:

Morte.5916:

How do I get that in slow motion?

Click on the gear symbol (Settings) and change the speed from “Normal” to either 0.25 or 0.5.

Youtube offers the ability to watch it in 25%, 50%, 150% and 200% speeds.

Thanks, I just get to choose resolution and autoplay from the gear symbol in youtube, but I found another way.

That is astonishing, he goes through 3 weapon sets in 3 seconds. I think he does 8 blasts without Arcane Wave, and a sigil of battle triggers as he goes into water. How on earth do people do that?

Jerus.4350:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF0ttD5lGkY

That’s solo…

How do I get that in slow motion?

I keep my head down and hope they don’t notice me, whilst trying to learn something.

If they get unpleasant, I leave.

If I can’t do what they want because they really are that much better than me, I apologise and wish them luck then leave.

Hmm, aside from CM1 everything that’s been suggested is a night dungeon. Certainly simplifies the gear…

Artemis Thuras.8795:

People who want casual groups don’t want to join those who use the filters.

I think that actually “casual” people do want to join the groups with filters, so they can be carried. They just don’t want the “serious” groups to have a way of filtering them out.

And as many people here point out, it’s easy to start a group as “no skips, all welcome”. But in practice anyone who does that in an explorable will likely be quitting after a few wipes, unless someone is carrying.

Dungeons are hard compared to most of GW2. You get better, or you get carried. I suspect Anet are trying to pretend this isn’t so, because admitting the issue and doing something about it would belie their “friendliest community in gaming” image.

I’m pretty sure some “leet” people do pugs specifically so they can trash talk other people through the run, with a captive audience who won’t just leave because that would lose their progress so far.

And the blame is not all on the PUG’s side. If you form a PUG to do CM, with the description “zerk 5k AP”, people will expect to run down the alley on the right to break aggro after the skip before Frost, equip a ranged weapon for standing on the beam, and then cross the water. That is “PUG meta”. If you run straight to him without saying anything, and pull a bunch of bandits from up on the ridge along the way, and die alone, that is your fault not theirs.

I had a guy do that yesterday. Then on the second attempt, he ran to a different place from the first (behind the upright in the cave on the left), and laughed at people in chat for not following, and called them “stupid noobs”.

Looking back, what I might have done is arranged a co-ordinated kick for him while I soloed Frost from the beam. But it never occurred to me, I’m not like him.

Oh, and he was a thief with a shortbow but he never once blasted my lava font before a fight. So leet.

But I’ve also played with people much better than me who were great, and sent a thief back for me when I couldn’t solo a skip in TA, and things like that.

I think unpleasant people just happen, speed clear or not, and in a dungeon you are semi-stuck with them. You just have to deal with it however you can — e.g. by posting the story on the forums to get it out of your system.

papry.8096:

More like “Shamelessly laying dead during a Boss event instead of WP”

Yesterday I died at the Vinewraith event, at the north lane. I died to kill an elite troll that was getting at the arrowcarts, and it went down within 2 seconds of me. There was an immediate lull in the fighting. I spun the camera and couldn’t see a mordrem, and there were four other players around the arrowcarts. So I lay there a couple of seconds, and the other guys started moving in various directions then realised there was nothing to do. So they ressed me to save the walk. Which they did, without problems, and I was back on an arrowcart when the fighting restarted moments later.

Now this, I think, is about the only circumstance under which you shouldn’t waypoint — the rare occasion when it’s quicker and no risk to do a full res.

But I felt really dirty.

rhapsody.3615:

When I’m feeling sassy, I mail the wp cost to dead players :P

Sir,

I like your style.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

As far as we know, according to past Dev statements, the dead do not scale up events. This seems to be misinformation that is commonly accepted. I’m not sure why.

I would like to know if there has been any serious player testing of this. Anet also told us broken fractal rewards where just “unlucky rng” until provided with unignorable statistics by players. Frankly, I don’t believe (or disbelieve) anything they say until verified in game.

This is resolved. I logged in at about 21:00 GMT, after several logins earlier in the day, and was presented with the monthly chest. I don’t know if you guys did anything or it just shook itself out, but it’s OK now.

Hi

I’ve just logged in expecting my second monthly Chest of Loyalty, but the system seems to have skipped a day and given me the reward for the first day of month 3 instead, which is a bag of mystic coins. The user interface seems a bit confused about what day it is: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/80519209/gw081.jpg

I don’t have a Chest of Loyalty in inventory. And I don’t think it’s actually possible for me to have reached month 3 yet, there haven’t been enough days.

Olvendred.3027:

As I understand it, it’s more to do with thin red lines on green terrain becoming invisible.

I have a hard time telling red rings from green rings, e.g. am I standing in a friendly guardian’s symbol or a hostile NPC’s AoE that’s about to hit.

Also, for example, it’s hard for me to see red rings in Twighlight Arbor. The last boss, the big tree, which partly hides the rings is especially bad. It’s not like you can adjust the camera angle very well in there either.

If the video/control options had a couple of drop downs for “friendly colour” and “hostile colour”, so I could change green and red to blue and yellow, that’d be great.

1700, no forge, no drop

May I have an invite on EU please? I’ve maybe 100 paths total under my belt, and I’m particularly interested in getting better at skips on ele.

The announcement at PAX will be GW2 console launch.

GW2 was origianally going to be on consoles, but they couldn’t get it to work. Now there’s a new generation that could run it OK, and they’ve been around long enough to make it announcement-ready.

You know it makes sense.

I’ll get my coat.

You know, I used to enjoy the Silverwastes.

The combat was fun. When I realised how well soft CC shuts down the Teragriffs and Thrashers, it gave my dagger necro a new lease of life. I made a sinister condi warrior with the new gear, and slew many husks with him. My squishy ele dances a lightning dance under Teragriff feet, killing them a second before they connect. I use Ranger longbow 4 for stopping mordrem as they charge downed players, even though most players seem to think it’s for rescuing mordrem from my AoE.

I got into the WvW-lite mechanics at the forts. I’m a wizard with an arrowcart now, I run a perfect rotation in a 270 degree arc. I’m the one who knows when to light the airstrike beacon. If I had a tag, I’d be a commander at pre-breach SW any time.

The new Vinewraith event is very good, perhaps the best open world event I’ve played in GW2.

But this RNG is destroying my soul. I feel a pang of disappointment when I hear the word “breach”. I’ve started to get taxis to 25% maps when the breach happens.

If Anet should happen to announce an expansion next week, I’ll be waiting for the reviews before I buy it. I’m really not sure about sticking with this game. Two months ago, I was wondering if there’d be pre-order goodies.

Either this is a dev testing the expansion who has forgotten to switch to the test server, or…

Now that I only screw up about half the time on staff ele, I’m getting ambitious. I need a scepter, dagger and focus. I would like them to:
- be clean and elegant, understated
- not clip too much on the armour below
- look like they belong together, in the various combinations
- stand out against the blue dye (unlike the warden skin I tried)

Any suggestions welcome.

So here’s my ele Aphrodite, T2 sylvari in royal blue and white with a phoenix staff.

They said there would be no grind.

Is anybody else thinking “if this is what Anet thinks of as the best way to do content these days, do I really want to pay money for more of it in an expansion”?

People seemed amused when they joined.

Going great until 57%, then stopped.

Thanks for the link

I wonder whether I have misunderstood this event.

As I understand it, you don’t AoE the bubbles because bad things happen if you do, except in special circumstances which somebody who knows what they’re doing takes care of.

I did this event yesterday on my ele for the first time. The boss went out of range of staff earth 1 for a bit, but I was stood next to some mesmers and rangers who were still hitting him. There were no bubbles anywhere near us, and there weren’t likely to be because we were up high on a ridge. So I dropped a fire field on them and blasted it 3 times for might and gave the rangers some burning.

“No AoE” said 2 or 3 people.

“Blasting fire fields on friendlies, not hitting bubbles” I said.

“No AoE!” said 2 or 3 people.

A bit later, some people were downed or hurt and under heavy condition pressure so I used a couple of water heals/cleans, again avoiding enemies (although the skills don’t do damage).

“No AoE!!” again.

“Water heals, no damage” I said.

“Red is going to fail because people are using AoE” they said, in map chat.

And at the end of the event, which went much as normal but with less dead players, someone said “next time no AoE”.

Like the man said, 20 people are enough.

Also, whenever I’ve been to Dry Top lately and just joined whatever instance it gave me, the map hit 4 or 5. Back when it was new and full of people, that would be 3 or 4. It seems that a high percentage of they people who’re still there are there because they’re into it, and they know what they’re doing.

Thanks. I think it was a PS warrior and dual banners, but not much fury.

Hi all,

I’m new in dungeons, I’ve read the guides but don’t have much practical experience. I’ve been doing CM on my mesmer in a reflect build and felt like I was getting the hang of it. Today I was in a “80 zerk exp” group and got asked to ping for the first time; so I pinged my 80 exotic full assassins gear with ranger runes and force/accuracy. I think this is good gear for a reflect build, especially with no spotter or food, and CM is a good dungeon to bring it to.

I was kicked, which is no big deal, but I wonder was the guy right? Should I run reflects in CM, and if so should I get as close to 100% crit as I can at the cost of power?