Guild Wars 2

Same damage, more compact package. Young mages these days, no appreciation of efficiency in their spellcraft…

Medium coat precursor (no trenchcoat) and light boot precursor are excellent in my opinion. A few other pieces I would smile if they happened to drop. The legendary versions of everything look grotesquely gaudy to me. No interest in pursuing them for any reason other than mechanical utility.

If all you care about is the cost analysis, buy it.

But when you’re doing that cost analysis, at least use the costs for assembling the ascended mats once per day yourself instead of adding up the price of the most OVERVALUED items in the game bought with buy-now orders.

I went on a spree one time and bought the bundle of 25 with real money. There was a new black lion weapon set out I wanted one from (and they are so very rarely to my taste…). I got enough scraps to make a ticket, a couple of mini’s I didn’t have, and an oricalcum node for my home instance. All and all I was pretty satisfied.

But really I find you get the best results if you think of them as ‘stocking up on my boosts’ with an occasional surprise. Any higher expectations lead to disappointment. Buying them for the prize items definitely leads to disappointment.

maniamsmart.7981:

Katta Castellum.3957:

i think the problem is you opened 10 chests. that is not a large enough sample size to have any conclusive results.

Which may be true I agree, but 10 keys is like 12 dollars… I’d at least expect one rare item.

And your expectation would be wrong.

The only guarantee is that you get three spins on the wheels. Even the streak-breaker scraps are pretty erratic.

Definitely enjoying my Mad-seed aggressive druid build but it’s a little irksome not being able to see the internal cooldown on Ancient Seeds (especially since when I’m throwing around Entagle its hard to know when I proc’d it. Deadly brambles everywhere…). Would it be possible to have it generate a debuff icon on our bar that counts down from 10 seconds to 0 to know when it’ll be available again?

Thanks!!

Photonic.4157:

On a side, note… I would literally spend $200 dollars on this. I am dead serious, it would take FAR too much real life time to switch a characters race that has map completion among other things.

I’m morbidly curious why?

Ascended gear and a bunch of the new exotics are account bound now. Achievements/masteries are account level. Other than the leveling up, which is almost trivially easy to side-step with tomes, what’s on your character you can’t recreate/move to another character with far less effort than $200 implies to most players?

I just did it a few days ago (called out I was opening it and there were people camped there and more showed up fast ). However I think the character had been holding the crystal since before hoT released. Sorry I can’t give you more info on getting it, other than it dropped off a mosquito up at the north end of the map. I think any mob on the map has a small chance of dropping one (I’ve gotten about 4 across my entire account).

Crystal Reid.2481:

Nike.2631:

“Required” is a high bar . Are there any other masteries that have any effect at all inside raid-spaces? Will there be speed ’shrooms on the map for example?

There were speed mushrooms in the Vale Guardian encounter area, but we saw kills from groups that weekend without the mastery. They are there to help you if you are struggling, but it’s possible to defeat him without!

Thank you for the information. That’s the exact kind of difference I was looking at: “it helps” vs. “mandatory”. Knowing what the “it helps” things are is useful for raid leaders trying to set their group up for maximum odds of success. I like to know what homework to assign the troops. Mostly an issue while learning an encounter before everyone has both experience and full confidence they can win it .

Any others masteries you can mention? Does the Tyrian ‘faster rez’ mastery work in the raid-space?

Larynx.2453:

In return we have diminished class identity as a result of designers creating skins that are mostly acceptable for every profession of that armor type.

A) Class traits, skills, and their accompanying FX provide plenty of identity.

B) For the most part I don’t want ANet telling me what my identity is. I’ll choose/create it myself, thanks. My vision for my Necromancer has little or nothing to do with traditional pseudo-European tropes or example.

I’m always in favor of more cosmetic options, not less. There’s nothing wrong with my Guardian using the Glint’s shield, my ranger using Bo, and my Sylvari Elementalist using Yggdrasil so long as I went to the effort of unlocking those skins for my account. That flexibility in fact adds value to those efforts.

Feel free to limit yourself, but there’s no reason to slap those limitations on other people.

Rym.1469:

Does having fancy glider skins help with Gorseval?

They make us feel pretty. Which give us the buff: “We can’t die. And you know why? Because we are so… very… pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die.”

Crystal Reid.2481:

The only masteries that are required for the raid release are Glider Basics and Updraft Use. They don’t come in to play until the third encounter.

“Required” is a high bar . Are there any other masteries that have any effect at all inside raid-spaces? Will there be speed ’shrooms on the map for example?

Oh, there’s a point. I’d been looking for this thread actually. Because it’s there’s really no upper limit to the “I told you so” some of these posters need to suck up.

I love this thread dearly.

((A few items mentioned are currency and should go into the wallet. I have TONS of outdated currencies taking up slots that should also go in the wallet…))

I have 6 of those too .

shroomduck.7548:

Hey all,

So I just started playing gw2 when expansion came out as my gf was playing and wanted me to try it. Long story short I tried it, loved it and now have a level 80 guardian.

Welcome .

A few questions since hitting 80 last night.

- how to I farm skill points to get to DH? Just level, or Gian them 1 at a time in the wild?

Initially you’ll get them 1 per hero challenge in the Tyria maps. There’s 200+ available that way so you can get most of Dragonhunter unlocked doing that. Don’t forget there are 3 on each WvW map too (4 on the central map), so spending some time out there can get you 13 more Hero Points for doing a little hiking around.

Eventually you’ll head into the Meguma Jungle for the 10 point hero challnges. A very small handful of them can be done without any Jungle Masteries, but more than enough will become doable once you have the ability to glide.

The guides at Dulfy.com will be invaluable when you start trying to cherry pick them.

You can also get Hero Points through WvW play. This process actually randomly fills in hero points on the map you haven’t done yet, so you want to save it until after you’ve picked all the low hanging fruit/easy once and are just sick of trying ot get them from the normal and Meguma maps. Its basically the weapon of last resort and I’ve fully unlocked several Elite Specs without cashing in my WvW currency.

- gear. How do I know what to get? I leveled with a great sword and 1h with foci and it worked great but now I have 13 gold and am afraid on spending it on stats/gear I’m not quite sure will be beneficial. Before I focused on power mainly but I seem to die quite quickly now when doing events heh.

Greatsword is mostly a Power Weapon (as opposed to a condition or hybrid weapon) so any set of stats with power in it won’t suck. You’re eventually going to want to have crafters for heavy armor and weapons with skill of 500 so you can build ascended gear, but that’s a really long term goal. For exotics you can do a lot with the Trade Post and just matching the highest bid offer on the cheapest pieces that have stats that are ok-to-good for you to get your initial exotic gear. 13 gold should be plenty fully armor up as long as to you don’t get over anxious – just make fair offers and hope it sells to you in the next 36-48 hours.

Also look into getting map completion for the last 3 Orr maps. The map rewards down there are exotics that will either help you or give you something decent to sell.

Finally, laurel vendors are your friend for getting Ascended tier jewelry. Just log in daily and do some world boss trains for ectoplasm. If you like fractals you’ll get ascended rings coming out you nose, ears, and other orifices. If not buy the rings from the vendor, too, along with your necklace and trinkets.

- what to do at 80? Do I just go find events in the world or is there dungeons I can, raid bosses, etc.

World bosses is a great start. Theres an upcoming bosses chart on the wiki.

The Silverwastes and new Meguma maps are also made up of huge mega-events, so playing through those from time to time is a good tactical exercise with decent to excellent loot.

WvW is a sort of continuous battle, which it’s own XP track that goes on for months, and months, and months even if you’re pretty hard core (lost of skills to unlock). You’ll need to set up your WvW spec once you get in the zone – its stared spate from your open world spec.

sPvP gives a lot of repeatable scenarios against live players and the reward tracks can be pretty sweet incentive. You’ll need to set up your sPvP spec once you get in the lobby – its stared spate from your open world spec.

I am asking here because my GF while really enjoys the game is more about aesthetics than game play, usually I’m the one guiding her in games and she is a bit flustered with the slew of questions I’ve been throwing her way so I figured ide come to the forums and get it from the horses mouths.

For clothes horses (like me!) crafting is a big way to unlock skins. Dungeon runs or dungeon reward tracks in sPvP will also give you cool looks. Boss trains and the Silverwastes chest train both give good gold which can be used to buy looks and unlock racial armor skins (many of which are really nice).

Thanks guys, loving the game so far!

Sounds like you’re off to a good start!

walsd.4968:

The description of that build seems pretty accurate. Definitely wasn’t using sb but I’m pretty sure it was staff and axe/dagger now. What’s the counter? As much stunbreak as possible and/or ranged attacks to avoid cc in the first place? I can’t even access more stun break than I had lol

There’s a couple of things you can do to up your chances.

Most of the Druid stuns are point blank AoE – the glyph and the Staff swap, so if you can dance around the edge of medium range you can reduce his opportunities and possibly get him to waste some of his stuns. Untargeted effects like those don’t come with a safety net, you can pitch them into thin air and get nothing but cooldown for it.

While a stun break or 2 is common load out for any sPvP, I wouldn’t push for more than that. The stuns are annoying, but they aren’t what’s killing you. It’s almost certainly bleeds doing the heavy lifting on his DPS so a couple of cleanses will probably do more good (and be more generally useful) than 3+ stun breaks. (that’s true of most condition bunkers).

Sigil of Purity or Sigil of Generosity should SERIOUSLY crimp his style.

If you can endure/survive the swap to staff, he gonna be sitting there with a crap offensive weapon for a few seconds and will have to do all his damage with utilities. That significantly limits his options and should help you counter once you’ve figured out what he’s following up with.

Some of the CC may be coming form the pet. Stay mobile and strafe a lot to leave Fluffy snapping at empty air.

Sounds a bit like my Mad-seed. Shortbow has a really potent daze/stun and there’s CC on glyphs. Mad seed is more built for team fights than dueling, but the tools are there.

Finally sat down and ran my Ranger through all of Verdant Brink, completing Druid (though you don’t need the Elite skill for this build).

O.M.G. has this been fun in events. Some of the most ferocious PBAoE damage I’ve ever had the pleasure to dish on a Ranger. You can also drill through break bars like nobody’s business. Once I had it leveled up I went for a stroll in WvW and it smashes camps and shrines in seconds.

f5 is still good for burst heals, but its a CC/DPS build through and through.

Drekor.5217:

That swiftness on trap is only when it triggers which makes it useless for getting around between combat.

Uh, no.

Gav.1425:

Masteries were a speed bump.

Had a ton of fun, but pretty much done with everything. Time for Raids!

I tend to agree. I’ve just been having preposterous lag from my poop ISP on and off since HoT launched so I’m a bit behind the curve.

Unless you plan on Raiding off the LFG tab, I’m not worried about what gear most people run. I can find 9 others off my friends tab with the pink stuff and a big golden number by their heads.

Time for Raids!

Good man. Kick some potted plant butt for me !

Oh, the groupthink is strong on this one. I can and have bunkered on the other professions… and NONE of them are as fast as a thief. That’s actually one of the areas where all Guardians including the DH are deficient.

You go ahead and play in a way that strokes your duelist ego. Which may include being a DH bandwagoner for a few months. DH is gonna see some additional nerfing, but it’s not going to be enough to give Thieves anything more than a chance to take them in a face to face because Thieves have other strengths that win matches even if you choose to ignore them.

fellyn.5083:

Jungle masteries and requiring ascended armor and weapons. Which most people probably don’t have.

Lets just call Ascended gear “strongly encouraged” so the ’I’m too skilled to care’ crowd doesn’t freak out. Either way, there’s gonna be substantial prep-work to be done before succeeding, so plenty to do while we wait for the doors to open.

I am content.

I expect to see more adjustments as the population bleeds out ‘Tragedy of Orr’ style, but we’ll see how that goes.

No. Raids were possibly available within a month. Maybe. Depending on how they test out.

They’re also going to be massively gated by Jungle Masteries, so odds are good you still have some prep work to do while you’re waiting .

Nike.2631:

Look. I play thief too. I play thief bunker.

T raw.4658:

LOL really?

I’m pretty sure everyone reading knows the answer already, but I’ll ask: Do you want to win duels or matches? Because Thief still has unparalleled mobility and easy access to sustained stealth. It can also be spec’d to be absurdly difficult to kill.

I personally prefer to win matches. So yeah. Really.

Serbianwolf.1652:

Seriously guys, give me one good reason to go for DH’s longbow. Every skill is weak, barely doing any damage and doesn’t apply any condition whatsoever except that nice burn, which is again – bit weak.

Please, for DH’s name, buff that longbow(or at least in PvE).

Yeah… that’s not happening.

Learn to use it (and that included gear properly) or choose another weapon.

T raw.4658:

Ya you can expect some lip especially since DH takes literally zero skill to play.

It’s like having my point proven for me ((sigh)).

I play ALL classes. And mouthy thief trend goes back way before HoT.

Look. I play thief too. But not the rawrimakillah thief. I play thief bunker. You know how you beat a Guardian with one of those? You get into their back line. You take their home. When mister Guard comes for it, you STALL HIM. You stall for 3 seconds and you’ve won the exchange. You stall for 10 seconds you’ve made a shmuck out of him. You stall him long enough for your side’s +1 to come over and help you put him down and you’ve completely dominated. And if you can’t stall him long enough, you pop stealth and walk away denying him the kill bonus.

Beast Sos.1457:

I beg you guys, please dont lock raids behind masteries.

Thanks. <3

You KNOW they’ve been talking about masteries to penetrate special armor and avoid special attacks (raid damage) since masteries were first described.

There was never any doubt raids were going to be mastery gated. None.

How many people are on the map with you when you fail? Because with 5-8 it seems to happen a LOT. Really, if you get a full or organized map, just log out and back in. You’ll end up in some desolate hellhole overflow that should be MUCH easier to progress on.

Maybe they’ll make a similar offer this year around Christmas. People should have blown through their HoT pre-purchase gems by then.

Keira Wildflower.7304:

Master Gwyllion: WTF are you thinking!? His mechanics don’t even make sense!! He instakills the whole group, and he takes a massive group to kill him apparently. I have yet to see a successful group yet. He needs a way to be dodged or something. He shouldn’t do 100k damage to go through deathshroud and full health in one hit. the smokescales don’t help. Needs a massive rework.

CureForLiving.5360:

You are fundamentally missing the tactics of this fight. You need stealth detection mastery, when he stealths you need to interrupt him or you get the massive damage. It’s not you get the massive damage and you can’t do anything about it.

He’s not even that hard. You can avoid the damage countdown thing by being a bit further back from him, and its amazing what a group of people that know how to rez each other can do while your 1-3 people who can see him tag up and provide targeting information with their bodies piled right on top of him.

He’s not trivially easy, but he’s not unbeatable by any stretch of the imagination.

Ok, I had worries about doing the crystal breaking achievement for a long time, but I’ve got a possible solution to you. Place you character on the appropriate map, log out, and log in when or slightly after the event should start… deliberately place yourself on a overflow map. I’ve been put on maps that only had 4-5 people facing the Shatterer and guess what? Crystals. More than once.

You basically need to do it wrong on purpose.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

I’m tired of stupid thieves talking crap in say chat that I only killed them because I’m using OP DH. And it definately isn’t the thousands of hours I have on guardian, and it’s not the fact a stupid thief decided to 1v1 a guardian.

I swear ‘talk smack while dead’ is a Thief skill… like something they can slot on a toolbar, because its the only profession’s corpse that’s ever tried to tell my I’m bad while I’m standing over its broken and cooling remains.

I get in a protracted duel with a Necro and they compliment me when I finally seal the deal on them. I down an outstandingly tough Warrior and we exchange tips after the match for 10 minutes, ‘cause he had stunningly good game while downed and I stopped to tell him so. After the match he literally schools me with things I didn’t know about the last 5 seconds of a 1-on-1. I’ve said ‘that was amazing’ to a Mesmer who pretty much took me over her knee and spanked me for control of a point all match long. She offered some tips on my build that were really useful while I was laying there in a heap. Win or lose I’ve had good interactions with opponents on every class except Thief. Who to be fair have extremely helpful and sportsmanlike players on their board. But in match? Mouthy.

It’s just something about the psychology of players drawn to thief gameplay. At least at my skill level, which I’m sure is fairly middling. I like to hope really skillful thieves are better about it. Even the ones kicking my backside.

Roy’s moved on to a new class?

You’ll probably do better if you don’t set you expectation based on the version of Dragonhunter they first revealed in beta.

DH f3 was changed to all attacks from the front long ago.

Could you be any more defensive about what you know is a gross mismatch between intended progress and what’s being squeezed out of one tiny corner case where they forgot they set the respawn rate to nigh-instantaneous?

Yes, yes. The unmatched geek factor. I’m sorry, but its one thing to make a mistake, and another to repeat the same dang mistake over and over. And that’s what’s happening here. Somebody tried to use unchecked respawning to create pressure and players turned it into a buffet table — LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO.

Which is part of a recurrent and growing problem that ANet is so pressed for time validating the code works at all, they aren’t testing for a fundamental question — “how will players try to subvert this?”

Unless maybe you thought the tag a few mobs and move on stunts run rampant during the Mordremoth Invasion event where another totally valid/legit tactic that no one should care about? Because I’d say the new lose credit for wandering off code we see in the jungle is a hint maybe Anet thought that’ really didn’t go how it should have…

What is this fascination with glowing piles of poop?

There is nothing unique about being the same as a dozen other Legendaries…

Harper.4173:

Stay mad – the way it was handled was a choice.

To be clear, I’m not mad at the players. I’m irritated at the Designers throwing another total farce of design with their complete failure of in-house hostile testing, bringing us up to 3 egg-on-face episodes in three months.

You can almost hear the snickering from other studios… Once again ANet’s been outfoxed by their players: a long term progression system burned to the ground in days.

Well done.

Have you tried Dagger Storm? A long duration missile reflect could let you close the distance in complete safety.

Personally I run a tanky, condition damage dagger-dagger/pistol-pistol, with signet of malice ,tricks, and dagger storm. DH generally have weak condition cleanse and a gap in their range brackets from 300-600 (inside pure of sight’s larger bonus but outside of melee). Apply pressure from there and don’t bull headlong into their traps.

leftyboy.9358:

There have been times where literally all the wp’s were contested except the intro one in VB.

That’s really strange, since there’s at least one other that is NEVER contested.

If I had to guess its either a new item that’s not a weapon (and therefor stacks) or its Mithril Axe Blades which are a crafting item that definitely stacks.

I don’t like CoF farming because is throws a spotlight on the content designers being incompetent. That after 3 years they still haven’t figured out that if you have an area with excessive spawn rate and rewards — ANY rewards, including MXP — people will camp there and blow the hell out of the progress curves. This is the Southsun Skelk farm all over again except they’re being even slower to fix it.

You can’t hide behind “playing normally and gaining XP at 1/50th the rate of others who are abusing a corner case is a CHOICE” and frankly they need to stop letting their security guy speak directly to the public if that’s the quality of drivel that’s gonna come rolling off his keyboard.

Seriously, they need to have a hall of shame at the annual MMO design conference. This won’t be the highlight of the year, but it’ll be up on the board in ALL CAPS BOLDFACE…

“100+ mastery levels in the first three days because we’re clueless.”

Sandzibar.5134:

Makes me not want to play DH now… purely because with all the vitriol and hate aimed towards it it’s going to get nerfed. Hard.

So untrue. It’ll get nerfed some because it needs to get nerfed some.

Dragonhunters will get another shave or two because the Devs went overboard with the last minute tweaks giving traps huge boon-surge because a bunch of people who didn’t know squat about how easy it is to place traps kept complaining that all traps were categorical “useless”.

You’ll notice those people finally shut the hell up.

So brace up. Fortunately the pattern we’re seeing is they like the burst threat of traps (they went after the tempo, not the magnitude of trap gameplay). We’ll get dinged one more time and then the good, skillful Dragonhunters will continue to kick butt and take names and the flavor of the month crowd will move on. Which is good for both groups.

jassking.7934:

If you want, I could go to the pvp forums and complain about you guys are uncounterable, so your choice, you could moan and complain about being helpful or you could help someone learn the game.

In what carebear universe is that a meaningful threat?

Despite the gross self-importance of most posters here, they don’t balance based on the NOISE blaring in the forums. They have this nifty little tool called ‘database queries’ which paint (literally) a million times broader picture than the caterwauling and kitten that roars though here.

Dragonhunters ARE strong. No argument. They’ll almost certainly see another shave before Thanksgiving. That said people are also learning to fight them and I see you’re genuinely trying so I have no doubt your W/L will improve. But keep in mind the PvP modes they DO balance around aren’t duels. So it’s unreasonable to think they’re specifically interested in the problem you’re presenting. Building some lifeforce before you try and YOLO any opponent that’s putting up a good fight is just common necro-sense.

Ya’ll are the ones saying that DH can be countered, so back up that claim and explain. Honestly, some people…

Biggest weakness right now? They’re all TOO enamored with the long bow. When you start meeting DHs who put it down and melee-trapset, THEN things are gonna get real.

So counter the bow. Half their weapons loadout is tied up in a weapon that’s terrible in close. I’m still of a mind to lead with the Bone Minions to set off the minefield, and then hug them ‘til their dead because just like the parent profession they have zero disengage. But for Grenth’s sake don’t chase them, fight ‘em from 300-600 where they get the lowest damage bonus but you’re not bulling right in the china shop of their mid-fight trap setting. If they run, circle them. Because 9 times out of 10 they’re baiting the trap with their own shiny butt.

Btw, thanks for the people who helped out.

I play core Necro too. Personally I run well-mancer with earth runes because in a team furball 16 second of AoE protection is game, set and match most days. But it’s not a duelist build, so all I can do is wish you luck finding your perfect balance. And say ‘use the Bone Minions, really’ .

I’ve been building a Keepers (zealot) set most of the year and love to run group content with Battle Presence. Having absolutely everyone else still alive makes getting rez’d if you totally bungle a dodge a lot easier.

Azukas.1426:

When I saw the DD reveal I knew,it was only a matter of time…..

Only a matter of time? I was announcing this loud and proud in the Daredevil development threads. Dagger+Dagger and caltrops everywhere in Settler’s armor with Undead runes. Its glorious.

Try Summon Bone minions. They’re good little mine field detectors while the DH concentrates on you.

jassking.7934:

Give me some tips on how to 1v1 them on points, trying to play Reaper vs a Dragon Hunter starting from 0 lifeforce on a point

Swap one of your utilities for Summon Bone Minions and send them in first to set off the traps…