Guild Wars 2

Open world – switch between phantasm dps and condition damage
Dungeons – phantasm dps
WvW – trolly PU condition damage

I’d be happy to help test this. I look forward to finding all the spots where you Phase Retreat through the ground ^^

Walhalla.5473:

And for Anet. Please remove the defiant crap from Mai Trinn, at least as long she has her shield. The shield mechanic is a good mechanic to make Control useful, but the defiant buff destroys this possibility. Let us pull her or knock her to the electric fields with our skills, it would be much better.

This please. Mai’s fight is a perfect situation for making control skills fun and useful in a challenging boss encounter. I can’t understand why it was left to dodgy aggro mechanics to get her into a circle when we have a pile of skills designed to do just that but which we cannot use.

Arewn.2368:

subsequent “let’s kill off any character that starts to look interesting” during the Pact portion of the story that was bad.

I half agree. Trahearne had a couple of not-entirely-boring moments, but the peripheral cast were much more interesting. It was annoying to have them killed off, but even so their deaths had a strong emotional impact on me. I couldn’t care less about Tybalt for example, but when relatively minor characterTegwen died I was gutted. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and certainly goes to show that Anet can do great writing.

Sign me up please ^^

IGN: Brother Neacol
Server: Piken Square
Playstyle: Mostly PvE, bit of WvW
Role: Scholar
Playtime: Most week nights, some weekends.

I think it’s perfect. Inflicts Confusion on all who behold it

I really liked it – we 5-manned the last floor and had a blast. Last boss was pretty easy 3-man but looked great, as does his mini.

Getting sick of Scarley Quinn now though. Still no idea of what her plan is (if she has one) and no motivation other than ’I’m mad’.

Thank you Inculpatus.

SeNoZinD, I’m sorry for the appalling inconvenience.

Perhaps foolishly, I hung onto an old Dragon’s Jade claim ticket thinking I’d be able to use it later down the line. I wasn’t playing when everything got switched over to Black Lion claim tickets, but I just assumed this would be converted. Obviously that wasn’t the case – so is this ticket in my bank just worthless now?

Agreed, I can’t see why it would be difficult to have each guild listed in your chat tab menu, and being able to assign a colour to each. It would really be a huge help to smaller guilds and would make being in multiple guilds somewhat more worthwhile.

I wonder if there are any plans to allow access to chat from multiple guilds, even ones which you are not currently representing? I can’t understand why this hasn’t been implemented already.

I have to say I’ve been really disappointed with the multi-guild system so far – the game really pushes players to find one huge, all-singing all-dancing guild and represent it all the time. I help run a social guild, but many of our members find it impossible to stay in touch if they want to do anything with a big high-influence guild, a WvW guild, etc.

For a while we tried to become that kind of do-everything guild, but our officers quickly got burnt out and frankly it’s not something any of us ever wanted to do. We just want a space to chat to each other and sometimes all represent together and go and do stuff.

A simple option to view guild chat from selected guilds – not just the guild currently represented – would be a huge help.

Nretep.2564:

+Damage for each boon removed

That would actually be really nice without being at all OP, and would make for a clearer choice between Null Field and iDisenchanter.

I fully agree – the ‘control’ element of the trinity has no meaning in boss fights due to ubiquitous Defiance. This is a real shame as I’d argue that control is the most enjoyable (who doesn’t enjoy launching?) and tactical of the three roles, and making it effective would really open up fun and clever new strategies for bosses, as well as new builds for PvE (knockback Engineers, shutdown Mesmers, etc), which I know was part of the reasoning behind the recent patch.

As some folk have pointed out, there needs to be some form of defence against knockback spamming and suchlike. Fine, let more bosses have access to stability (which in turn makes boon-removal more valuable in PvE, encouraging further build diversification) and/or give them some kind of buff which, say, gives control effects a 50% chance to miss. Just something which makes all our fun knockbacks, dazes, launches etc useful.

I use the iDisenchanter situationally in PvE. For condition-removal I just find Null Field more reliable, particularly because you need a target to summon the iDisenchanter on. But for boon removal I prefer the phantasm – boons get reapplied so fast that you can’t wait for the Null Field cooldown, so it’s useful to have a phantasm constantly taking them off. I would like to see him get a damage buff or something though, or something to give him an offensive element.

I’d also like to add my thanks to Anet for this challenging dungeon. I’ve completed it a couple of times now with my Mesmer (in full berserkers), and if it’s a taste of what future group content will look like then I’ll be very pleased. It’s good to have to go through my utilities and consider which will be best to bring to each fight (not just ’what’s my build’), to have to use my spatial awareness, to consider when to throw out specific boons, etc.

It’s also good that it is completely pug-able. Yes, some players prove themselves to be utter liabilities who just stand there and don’t engage with the fight mechanics, but there isn’t actually much in the way of group communication required. So long as everyone knows the mechanics and pays attention (the bosses very clearly telegraph their most damaging attacks), you can get through it. I think we’ll find more folk completing it more easily over the coming weeks, when we’ve all got a feel for the mechanics and the liabilities have (hopefully) given up.

I would very much like for my Norn to crack open a keg of ale, and my Asura to pull out a tricorder-like device and do some tinkering.

Not sure about humans, humans are boring.

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed something odd going on with agony resistance since the June 25th patch?

I’ve just run two lower level fractal sets (10 and 12) with a character with 15 AR, and I noticed he was taking significant damage from agony. From the wiki and personal experience, I should be taking only a sliver of my health per tick from agony at these fractal levels. Instead I was taking damage which I think would be comparable to having no AR at all. Another party member in one fractal run had 20 AR and agreed that they were taking far more damage from agony than they normally would at these fractal levels.

Really excited about this – going to start stockpiling dungeon tokens in advance so I can switch straight to a condition build if this turns out to be good!

It’s been interesting to read this thread given that I recently made a change from almost exactly the mantra build the OP outlines, to a phantasm build with plenty of reflection and flexible utilities. This isn’t from a theorycrafting perspective, but just a casual player’s experience of the change in build.

While I found, and still find, the mantra build to be superlative in open world PvE, that really is the game’s ‘easy mode’ and the mantra build was simply the laziest option for grinding Orr, Southsun, etc. I realised that I was contributing bugger all to groups, particularly in fractals, and wanted to be able to switch out my utilities without feeling like I’d kitten my entire build. Sure, I could (and did) swap out to get Feedback, Veil, Null Field, Portal Entre etc, but since I was losing a huge chunk of dps by doing that, I figured that if I was going to have to use those utilities regularly I might as well not run the mantra build at all.

I have to say, the new build using a Sword/Focus and Greatsword has performed incredibly well in dungeons. Phantasms die fast (especially when their tagged mob dies, grrr) but the utility I feel I can justifiably bring to the group now completely outweighs that niggle, and in boss fights the phantasms more than pull their weight in terms of raw dps. Dungeons and fractals which were once a real hassle (especially the Underground Facility fractal) are now completely do-able thanks to the utility my character brings – plus the beefed up iBerserker and iWarden do a nice chunk of aoe damage which the mantra build was lacking.

In short, while I have a soft spot for the original mantra build, if you’re wanting to do group content then a more flexible build will make life much easier for everyone in your party, including you.

Monna won three times for me. She’s the champ!

It’s OK. It’s not as good as the Wintersday game, which had three weapons/classes, profession-based abilities and some genuine strategic thinking behind it. I could play that stuff all day long. This is mostly just running around spamming 1, and the rewards are pretty rubbish even if you win.

And we’re STILL forced to play Random Wars instead of Guild Wars.

These things need to start scaling, or drop loot a la Wintersday. The way it stands at the moment, we almost need to be selfish because it’s so hard to tag these things with their HP. I want to wait for others to arrive and often link the WP in map chat, but I know that every person who turns up dramatically reduces my chances of getting a kill. GW2 isn’t supposed to be like this, is it? I’m used to being happy when I see another player, not wanting them to go away.

And of course, it’s brought out folk actively griefing. Thieves in particular will just shadow step ahead of the crowd and take down all the mobs. Folk are getting really angry in map chat, and justifiably so.

Given that this is going to be our main way of farming the weapon tickets and wings, it really needs some kind of hotfix.

Chief.5928:

Btw Nikku, I really like that mask you’re using on your character. What’s it called?

It’s just a piece of transmuted level 40 crafted gear from tailoring – Acolyte Mask – coloured with Purple Tint. One of the few mask headpieces which I like and which works with the mushroom hat!

I love purple – it’s half the reason why I chose a mesmer as my first character!

That said, writing this just reminds me that condition damage Rangers are hard work compared to other professions. Elementalists, Mesmers, Necromancers and Engineers are much, much better at it imo.

I roam with my condition damage ranger (shortbow/axe+torch). The shortbow’s single-target condition damage is excellent if you can flank and if you’ve got a decent rune and sigil set up – I use a Sigil of Earth and use runes to maximise condition duration, as without bonus condition duration it can be extremely hard to stack bleeds.

If you’re in a zerg it’s a bit tricker and less effective. I have my axe with Sigil of Earth again, then I usually throw down a bonfire from the torch, stand in the field, hit Entangle, Quickening Zephyr and maybe something like Sharpening Stone for good measure. Then just toss out axes. I guess if you go for the Trapper’s Expertise trait, you could use the ground-targeted traps for it?

Pet-wise you could try using spiders and devourers for the poison fields – might get a bit more damage in by comboing with them.

I enjoy a lot of aspects of WvW, but the main thing that makes me avoid it are the crippling fps drops. I have a middle-of-the-road machine, but if I encounter more than 10 enemy players I’m down to 5 fps. More than that and not only does it take up to a minute for enemies to render, but I’m reduced to tabbing around and hoping I’ve hit something. Unfortunately there are limited objectives for roamers, so I feel that I’m not contributing unless I’m taking on a heavily-manned objective.

Some really good ideas on this thread. Hopefully Anet will check it out and pick up on one of them ^^

I agree with Myxo – at lower levels my illusions were more damage soaks than anything else.

I levelled by going condition damage with staff and scepter/focus (as it can be hard to get illusions out before you’ve got a pile of utilities and traits). Then just pump out illusions, kite with the staff and watch them all go down.

It’s slow but effective. Then once you hit 40 you can get to work with decent builds.

I’d be happier with Mind Stab if it removed more than one boon. Apparently mesmers are supposed to deal well with enemy boons. But unless you spec Shattered Concentration, we only have one decent way to deal with them (Arcane Thievery) and two crap ways to deal with them (Mind Stab and the sword’s third autoattack).

Not freezing us in place when we use it would also be nice.

This is my Sylvari mesmer, Brother Neacol.

Mushroom head ftw!

I run a full Berserker glass cannon build, 30/30/0/0/10, wielding GS and S/P, and with mantras as heal and utilities. Generally the only times I go down in Fractal or explorable runs are when we’ve got a full party wipe going on, if I’m hammered with Agony or, crucially, if I’m not paying attention.

I know mantras are unpopular, but they give you a great spread of what I consider ‘bread and butter’ abilities. I usually run with Resolve (condition removal), Pain (burst damage) and Distraction (daze) for the interrupt, which can often save your bacon. For some bosses, especially Kholer, I’ll swap out Pain for Concentration (stability) and you can interrupt his pull with a daze or ignore it with stability.

Also key is the Duelling minor trait Critical Infusion – so long as I’m attacking I’ve got pretty much permanent Vigor, which means I can dodge all the time.

As I said it’s pretty dependent on paying keen attention to what’s happening, and sometimes I get screwed by not noticing a boss charging his attack. But the mantras and the vigor are really excellent survival tools.

Agreed. Sorry, I know the forums are getting full of my bleating about this, but I’m trying to put together guild activities and to be honest, holiday events are actively preventing our guild from playing together.

Ryuuza.9258:

Yea this is just impossible to do with PuGs and the explanation disappear really fast before I can completely read it.

You can press ‘n’ to bring it up again.

I’m a fan of the Wintersday content, but I am getting really tired of being forced to play Random Wars 2 instead of Guild Wars 2. I have a large and enthusiastic guild, but it feels like we’re getting pointless barriers thrown at us when we want to play together. Do you not want us to play together?

Aside from that issue, Toypocalypse feels a bit half arsed. Only one of the weapons (the hammer) can be used to smash trees and buildings for bundles, the pistol is useless aside from shutting down one or two mobs for a few seconds, and there isn’t enough time between waves or rounds to actually go around building fortifications. The idea is great – the implementation, not so much.

Morvani.2937:

I’d like to team to do these. I really would. But nothing in this forum, and nothing I’ve experienced in the past, shows me that, outside of my tiny crew, I’ll find anything but frustration and discourtesy. I have every sympathy for those who are in the same boat as me.

The solution to Morvani’s issues – as well as to the complaints of those who seem to be up in arms about a call for more soloable content – is for the rest of us to be a little more understanding when it comes to our teammates. Honestly, if Morvani joined my Tixx or Fractals pug and explained that she(?) might have to go afk for 20 mins to help her disabled husband, I would like to think that I’d have the compassion and team spirit to say ‘No worries’. I’d like to think that any GW2 player would. Is it really so much of a hassle to take a break midway through and have a costume brawl, chat to guildies or read a bit of your book?

Sure, plenty of folk will continue to kick folk like Morvani. Those people suck and I’d sooner lose someone like that from my pug than Morvani. But the more of us who are welcoming of gamers with important commitments, the more they’ll feel able to take part in team-based content when they want to – which is win-win for the game and for our community.

gpbg.6852:

Hiiiiint. If you join at the same time as someone, you have a chance at being in the same lobby.

At peak time this is a minute chance. I have tested this several times with 15 people and usually only 4 ended up on a map with someone else from the initial group. It’s not remotely a workaround solution.

This isn’t about winning matches or getting achievements – I think most folk have all of them by now, and we’re all perfectly capable of playing with a random crowd. Hell, disable achievements and rewards for premade maps if necessary – I’ll happily keep score myself and dole out minis to the winners of each round. My guildmates just want to play with and against each other, to have fun together. These are looking like unnecessary barriers to playing GW2 with my friends and guildmates, which to my mind go against the whole spirit of the rest of the game.

I don’t understand how you could even have a premade team. From what I can see, players are assigned to a map and not a team. The two teams are constituted from a random selection of these players, and the teams are again randomised each time the match resets.

If this is how it works, then what would be the problem with allowing me to create a 10 or 20 person map, inviting friends and guildmates and having a game? You could even make it a closed map to prevent unwitting randoms coming in, I guess.

I understand the balance issue, but I would really like the option to start a Snowball Mayhem map and invite friends and guildmates into it, with teams randomising after every match. My guild was hoping to play this instead of our regular PvP night during the Wintersday period, but from experimentation we’ve found that even a large group of people entering at the same time have only a slim chance to end up on the same map as someone else from their group.

Anet, please consider making this an option in future holiday PvP. It’s the best PvP content in the game and interests even those in my guild who usually hate PvP, but we do want to have the option to play with and against each other in a convivial atmosphere. The current situation makes it impossible to play some of the best holiday content with our guildmates – surely that can’t be what you want?

The first time I did it, with myself and 4 others who had only read about it and not run it, it was frustrating and took about 40 minutes to complete this part. However, if you’ve got 3 people in your team who’ve run this a few times, you should have absolutely no problem. My groups usually manage it on the second or third try now.

You do not need mesmers or anything like that. Runners just need to know where the traps are, know what to do if a wall pops in front of them, and bring condition removal or stun breakers in case of accidents. A bit of swiftness helps too but is not at all necessary. The drake and spider paths are incredibly easy – you don’t even need to jump, you can just walk around the couple of traps in your way.

For those saying that the swamp fractal unfairly relies on getting a team of decent players – can you not just join multiple guilds, and/or make friends with some good players on your server? There is nothing random about joining a guild or making friends. Are people really upset that there is content which can’t just be zerged by five idiots?

I’ve done two 3-fractal runs now, first with my guildies and then with a pug. The latter run was more difficult because the communication wasn’t really there for a while, but we still managed it without too much trouble.

All in all, I think the fractals are some of the best PvE content I’ve ever seen in an MMO. I love that they incorporate puzzles, jumping and running areas, use kits in interesting ways, and that the bosses are finally showing some variety, ie. more than just ‘Stay out of melee, avoid red and oh he has ONE BEELLION HITPOINTS’.

Speaking as a mesmer, I actually found my shutdown abilities (moa morphs, stuns, dazes and interrupts) useful for once. The utility a mesmer can bring, such as blink, portals and invisibility, could also be deployed to get past a few tricky parts without it ever feeling like ‘cheating’.

Top marks, Anet.
(Also kitty golems <3)

I have to second, third and fourth some of the comments here. Some ingredients (vanilla and chili peppers in particular) are required in quite large quantities throughout all tiers of cooking, but are incredibly difficult to come by.

For those advocating creating alts to farm through Caledon or Ashford, I’ve taken two Sylvari through Caledon since the patch which moved vanilla to herb nodes, and come out with 9 vanilla beans, after farming every node I came across. I took my main back through Caledon on a farming trip, and found no vanilla.

This really does need some kind of fix, possibly along the lines of some of the excellent ideas above.

No, as of the Oct 1st patch it still seems to be requiring too many mats.

I haven’t heard of a patch making it less expensive to purchase these recipes – it’s not all that expensive at the moment – but apparently they are supposed to be reducing the materials required to craft these bulk armour sets. Currently the amount of materials required is ridiculous compared to the amount required to craft each piece individually. 11 insignias compared to the 6 you’d need to craft each individual piece!

Can I ask if any devs have responded about this? Will there be a fix, or is this just a pointless recipe?