Guild Wars 2

What the pet does when the F2 skill is activated should depend on what type of skill it is. For skills like the Fern Hound or Brown Bear, the skill should activate immediately wherever the pet happens to be. For attack skills, the pet should get in range to make the attack successful. For example if it is a melee attack, then the pet should run to the target to initiate the attack. If it is AoE attack like Alpine Wolf’s howl, it likely could go either way, but I’d vote to have it activate where the pet is at. This gives the player more control to see where the pet is at on the battlefield and activate at the best time.

My favorite sets are Axe/Warhorn and Sword/Torch. I like to start with Axe/Warhorn and buff myself and pet while calling my pet in to grab aggro first. I unload the Axe/Warhorn skills and ranged traps as needed (specced into Skirmishing to allow ranged traps) and then if any mobs are still alive, I switch to Sword/Torch and cleanup. The sword #1 root issue has problems, but I’ve learned to workaround them. No denying sword/torch is a lot of fun. People may argue the effectiveness of the ranger 1H sword, but it is fun to play – and that’s important.

RaoZaoku.5289:

Don’t slow the down the Sword AA.
Fix the rooting. That is all.

Agreed. The faster attack speed of the sword AA is useful and one of the draws to using that weapon. The ability to stick to a foe isn’t necessarily bad as long as a fix is implemented that allows dodge roll to break out of the AA sequence. I’d also say that the sword needs a leap at the beginning of a chain. Possibly the skill 1 sequence should have the leap into battle only in the first skill in the sequence. Or possibly reverse hornet’s and monarch’s in the sequence. Being able to leap out of battle with hornet’s is sometimes useful, but it can be replicated with other skills. Being able to gap-close with sword in hand would be useful more often.

An exception to that is the sigils that build up on kills such as bloodlust. If you build up a bonus stack with one weapon set and then switch to a different weapon set, that bonus remains active.

I’ve noticed this too. Also on a related topic, skill tooltips need to be updated to show new stats based on modifiers like this. So if a person has sigils of chilling like this, the tool tip for the skill should show an updated chill duration to let the player know how long the chilled condition will now be.

lordkabal.4857:

Enemies get Invulnerable when they cannot reach you, it’s an anti-exploit mechanism that I’ve seen in other games.

I see what you mean, and anti-exploits are a good thing, but I don’t like this mechanic. When attacking at range, it is appropriate to use the terrain to your advantage. If I am above my target, the fact that he has no quick path to get to me to retaliate isn’t necessarily an exploit – it’s just a strategic attack location on my part. I’ve grown weary of attacking mobs from an elevated location, see them go “invulnerable” and be forced to walk down to where they are so allegedly they have a fair chance to beat on me.

That helps – thank you. Based on that, it sounds like a build revolving around Condition Damage is most effective only when you can reliably put on multiple stacks of a condition. But if I’m only able to put on one stack of something like poison, a big investment in Condition Damage isn’t as well-spent as it would be in Power. Sound about right?

I’ve been experimenting with some traits and equipment that focus on condition damage, and I wanted to make sure I understand the mechanics of this attribute correctly since on the surface it seems underwhelming. For example when I look at the Power attribute, it equates 1 to 1 with attack damage. In other words, for every 1 power I gain, my attack damage potential goes up by 1.

Condition damage however is not 1 to 1. I need to invest 4 points in condition damage to get 1 damage for burning, I need to invest 10 points to get 1 damage for poison, and I need to invest 20 points to get 1 damage for bleeding.

Taking bleeding as an example, if I have 500 condition damage, have I just added 25 damage per pulse? So for a 10 second bleed I’ve done 250 damage?

My apologies if I’m totally getting the mechanic wrong, but wanted to get some feedback. If my understanding is correct, it seems like I’d rather have 500 extra power than 500 condition damage, even for a condition-based build.

Agreed that the respawn rates (especially in Orr) are too fast. In some areas with the larger groups of enemies, especially around a skill challenge, by the time you kill three quarters of the enemies and the end is in sight, the first ones you killed have respawned. I’m sure the respawn rates were an attempt to make sure you don’t explore an area and find it empty of enemies and fun because some players ahead of you cleared it out. Therefore as mentioned above, there needs to be some code added that checks if other (new) players have entered the area. If so, go ahead and respawn mobs. But if the same player(s) are the only people around, don’t respawn.

Would it make sense to have contested waypoints available to travel to but they would cost more than an uncontested waypoint?

Don’t agree with the OP on this one. Map completion is not boring in my opinion. It may cater to one playstyle over another as compared to events, but that is a good thing. I personally enjoy the solo game more than group activities, so map completion has been a lot of fun. Having the discrete items to gain (POIs, vistas, etc.) is a better mechanic than cartogropher was in GW1. All the wall-scraping in GW1 was no fun. GW2 map completion is a better mechanic and the rewards are appropriate.

I just wanted to add a +1 for the ability to preview items in the trading post. This really should be near the top of the game enhancements queue in my opinion. When looking at expensive items in the trading post that have a generic icon, it would be very beneficial to be able to preview the item.

You’ll be able to transmute. As mentioned above, you just can’t transmute while the item is equipped. Just unequip it, transmute, then equip it again.

+1 for any change that provides access to all content to solo players. I’ve heard many folks give the response “this is an MMO” and “join a group or do something else” and they probably have a point, but I just wanted to express the opinion that not everyone enjoys playing the game the same way. Some people either enjoy the solo game more, or don’t have long chunks of time to stay in a group during a dungeon/mission without needing to be AFK for a while. In GW1 I still haven’t been through Urgoz or the Deep since my H/H team is limited to 8 and I prefer not to PUG. I’m hoping my preferred playstyle won’t prevent me from experiencing dungeon content in GW2.

I found this thread searching for tips as to why opening strike seemed to take effect so randomly. I would clearly see the opening strike is active icon present, throw an axe at the enemy, and it seemed like vulnerability would only be applied half the time. I see from some posts above that possibly range is the issue (900) but if that’s so, I’d propose that this be clearly listed in the trait description. Honestly though as others have noted, there really should not be a range limitation on opening strike.

I attempted the mission a second time and this time it worked. The researchers followed me and the mission was completed successfully. The only thing I did differently was I didn’t ask the researcher what he was looking for – I just told him we need to move right away. Not sure if that was the difference or not, but the first time I went through the mission and it got stuck it was frustrating.

Just wanted to report a bugged mission for me as well. Tried to take the researchers to the southern exit, and the exit was blocked. Story could not continue.

I realize karma items cannot be salvaged, and I think I understand why that restriction is in place. However I’d like to suggest a small modification to that restriction in that upgrades we apply ourselves could be salvaged back out. I’m not suggesting that we be able to salvage out a mod that sold with the item, however if we apply our own mod and replace the one that sold with the item, it would be great to be able to salvage that mod back out.

I don’t believe this additional functionality would cause problems for gameplay or item balance. I know it would help improve enjoyability to not need to permanently apply a nice mod on a karma item that will only be used for a few levels.

I’d like to see waypoint fees removed as well. ArenaNet once said regarding GW1 that they didn’t want to make players regularly go through content they weren’t interested in to get to the content they were interested in. Waypoint fees appear to be contrary to that philosophy. My RL allows gaming time only in small pockets, and especially as waypoint fees rise as I level up, they make me think twice about simply going where I want via waypoint. Often I’ll just sigh and stay in the area I’m in for a few minutes before signing out to attend to RL.

If it’s a matter of needing a money sink, I’m sure ArenaNet can come up with other ideas that don’t inhibit quick travel to the content people desire to consume. If it’s a matter of wanting to encourage exploration, possibly require sometime to walk to a waypoint before being able to use it to travel to another waypoint? Or make intra-map waypoints free.

Anyway, I admit I don’t know the best solution, but I do know that waypoint fees are not a good part of the game.

I’d support this too, but not just for Elementalist. Having additional weapon sets available out of combat shouldn’t hurt combat balance, and would help ease inventory shuffle. As a ranger I often like to have two specific sets to swap between for certain content areas, and have two different sets to swap between for other areas. Going into the Hero pane to shift things around isn’t the end of the world of course, but it is a hassle that could easily be remedied.