Guild Wars 2

All stuff started with ppl being mad due to the expansion containing the base game and the complete riot on fora (forums), media, vloggers, Gamereview sites and so on…

If everybbody says it is unfair, not cool and dishonest, ppl will go and will not try.

The Hypetrain derailed catastrophically and sales were BAD. You cannot expect this to recover… Not easily at least. GW2 sold 5 Million copies and maybe 500k HoT I guess…
So for most ppl I see there are at least 9 ppl who chose not to buy the expansion….

The fact the game is not bad and the QoL updates were good, the story was well… mediocre at launch but is still continuing every 2-3 months… and is now 26+ steps instead of the 16. The introduction of RAIDS, well there has been a lot of stuff….

Just no(t enough) players… because they made a really bad marketting choice ad they kittened ppl off… a loss of 90% of your playerbase is a really really bad thing. small remark, most ppl playing high end have 2(+) accounts…..taking THIS in consideration the actual number of acounts could have been 90% but the player nuber could have dropped 92-93% even… Even if a quarter of those ppl wold come back we would have tripled the amount of players overall…

Imagine if 50% of all players HAD purchased HoT, with 2.5M accounts most stuff would have been significantly easier, everything could have had 6 times more instances… and I doubt gw2 would have been F2P…

The Flat and easy is to allow new ppl to fastgear their characters…. Or for the Old Guard to fastgear thier Alts…

I expect the new expansion to be reliant on ppl having ascnededs, not having a base level of exotic anymore… This would be very very likely. I do not expect further gear progression, I expect ascnededs take the place of the rare madatory for vanilla(exotic for instanced), exotic for HoT(ascneded for instanced) to ascneded for EXP pack 2, with legendaries (need to swap stats often???) being normal for the instanced content at that time…. but we’ll see. I do know acces to legendary character will mean instant changes to meta / gameplay will no longer cost cast/ecto’s/shards and so on…

Well…

HoT was launched, and suffered from an extremely bad reception, instigated by a feeling of old players they shoudl get more then new players to keep the game alive and a revitalized game, which was compensated with some more character slots.

The story felt incomplete, BUT if we look at storylines in gw2 :
They are allways open ended because the story is not yet done… There are still dragons/gods, however you perceive ’m, alive…

The maps have their own distinct feel and Meta, and even if people find Tangled depths difficult to navigate… it is a distinct map with it’s own set of creatures and habitat. I find the map both impressive and annoying and if I do spend time there I have placws I like (nuhoch and ogre meta especially), i do not really care for the rata novus part… the scar lane tend to be ok…
The gerent fight its nice as well, just a shame we need to wait 2 full hours before respawn.. it’s way too long.

I dislike Dragon Stand mostly due to the forced nature and grindy feel of the rewards… 6 leadership runes require 10-12 runs to aquire, not counting legendaries or other things… which has proved a huge obstacle in my appreciation of the map. The (feeling of) forced grind is horrid.

This said HoT is now 8(10?) maps:
VB Verdant Brink
AB Auric Basin
TD Tangled Depths
DS Dragon Stand
BF1 Bloodstone Fen
EmB Ember Bay
BF2 Bitterfrost Frontier
LD Lake Doric
FT Forsaken Thicket

Maybe the Desert Map was not a huge thing
But I still feel they should have implemented Desert map, The Old frozen map and EotM map for 3 distinct maps… thsi with the EB map would have given 3 complete different maps…

As such the EotM shoudl be changing every week as well, swapping between the 4 available maps…

I however am really happy with the Elite specs, Masteries, new stats, and looking back at this they have made 1 real mistake… They didn’t release balance to each seperate gamemode…
In PvE it’s Warrior,Chrono Druid and Tempest(Sssssss) most other classes are pretty rare. A Guardian, yes sporadically, a Thief yes occasionally .. BUT engi is pretty dead, necro is dead, but cannot be ressurected… nd Revenant started out unbalanced, without usable underwater skills (herald underwater??? nope.)

Limited legendaries… Legendary armors… these are longer term projects then the projects for the players themselves and it will show how fast they will saturate the battlefields…

In all Gw2 was 9/10 game maybe even a 10/10 , HoT was bad at launch, barely a 6/10, but has fought it’s way back and for me is now at a 8/10…..

The game is far from dead. Even if the money is not there it’s not dead yet. If they do well it will rise from the depths like Steve Bubbles. I just hope it will be a good reunion.

well finished story on 17 of 22 lvl80’s finished lw s1 , finished lw s2 on 12 characters(though some partially), finishing lw s3 on 2-4 characters…

Would equipping rodgort melt frostfang? Now that would be a joke!

Kudzu could also be seen as a joke, but my sylvari ranger really synergizes with it…

I hope there will be a nice legendary longbow fo my warrior however.

I’ve unlocked HoT on 21 of my 22 characters…
On all of those characters I’ve unlocked the elite specs, I did map completion on those maps 10 times for VB, 5 or so for AB, 2 or 3 times for TD and a couple of times for DS…

You will learn to decide to fight or avoid in due time, some HP’s cannot be solo-ed accept it and accept this game to be a Massive MULTIPLAYER Online game and accept you sometimes need some other players. You can domost content pretty easy on glass builds, though some meta parts tend to be just a gamble… in DS having a group of players doesn’t matter If you get shot at by 3 snipers at the same time, you’ll die.. Then again you should be running with 20-30 ppl in the area’s anyways… And wipes of the total group are -very- rare

After the nerf in difficulty the maps became really easily navigated, providing you have 25% speedbuff or on demand swiftness.

I’ve ran all maps as warrior first using S/Wh and LB. this worked out pretty well. Nowadays I just use Condi PS build , but I used a variant using dicipline/tactics and defence and later arms/defence and berseker, before specing arms/tactics/zerk as a total new build…

I do want to add 1 thing: expecting a game to keep it’s level of difficulty will mean all efforts you put in (gear/experience/skills/build) will be mostly useless, they might give a diffeent experience of play but still…

The CC part of the game radiclly changed though, and the amout of people noww uing condi builds for alts… Balance patches had sobered the game to a point where 5 classes could just be removed form the game even…. and for the 4 remaining thier focus has overwritten thier DPS in most cases, Druid doing extremmely low dmg, PS and ps condi being low dmg, necro dead due to no dmg, engineer in a corner cause of no balance, revenant nerfed to EXTINCTION… yes some things have changed not for the better, the content however has improved greatly with HoT now also providing acces to Ember Bay, Bloodstone Fen, Lake Doric, Bitterfrost Frontier and 2 Raid Areas…

Yes…. HoT @launch was bad. But a lot has been improved. I admit not everything promised has been delivered (missing a dozen legendaries and Tier 2,3 and Lgendary armor….) Though the legendaries released have been nice and truly unique… You can at least give the ppl credit for having the legendaries as they are mandatory self crafted.
I think my Nevermore and Ad-Infinitum are worth more then my 2 Bolts, Kudzu and Meteorologicus…

With regard to difficulty.. even with the retention of the gear levels the Specs have bought 5-15% added dmg… Easily. And Masteries improved travleeing a lot… I no longer die from falling dmg anymore (well almost not… just dropped to my death from Griffin Rook due to the no glider area)

Taking in account LS S3 (IMHO a part of HoT expansion) improved my experience a lot…

First
I guess you should figure out what you’d find interesting. Things which hold your interest will be fun, if they do not interest you (yet) skip on them and look on…
Do not worry. I have many friends and even if they might want to do the same content the reasons why can vary so much…. you’ll notice you want a reason to further content and want to gear to allow you to perform fast/stabile or allow you to help others play easily

As for gear and level of gear:
Understand it’s perfectly normal for ppl to have 2 or 3 armors/ char or multiple haracters of 1 class so they can provide more builds/options whith a class and/or have them geared to be used in multiple gamemodes…
PvP gear is completely not connected with your armor (you will need armor and weapons slotted but the stats are not used, you can use white l80 weapons for this and they’ll work the same as ascnededs of others… in PvP
As for PvE/ instanced content/WvW/Exploration/farming and so on… All things have their own builds and gear… In farming in SW you’ll want fact characters/thieves with a build based upon speed and swiftness to maximize income/hour… in dungons and fractals you wan high dmg builds, in WvW you want a character who can stay alive in a battle of dozens of ppl fighting dozens of enemies….
Getting new gear tends to be easy and cheap and later on you could consider restatting it when you’re owning ascneded’s or legendaries, also making stat swaps pretty easy…

• All open world vanilla content can be completed in rare’s and exotics…
• All open world HoT content can be completed in exotics
• All story can be completed in rare’s and exotics
• Dungeons can be completed in rare’s and exotics
• Fractals can be completed in exotics (until lvl 19) and in increasing levels with more and more ascneded gear added
• Raids can be completed in a mix of Exotic and Ascneded gear, though Ascended would be highly preferable
• Gear stats will vary on goals… condi, DPS, Heal or support in either glass or bunker will vary extreme from gamemode to gamemode

As for what to do….

1st try to figure out where you want to put your time in. As I am not you I cannot foretell what you’d find the most enjoyable gameplay, but a lot of options exist… I listed the basic choices

Try to have a general idea how you can fit in your trial gamemode:

• this can be open world content/story(Vanilla, w story dungeons, LS S2, HoT, LS S3…)
• this can be instanced content (dungeons, fractals, raids)
• this can be PvP and/or WvW (WvW GvG)
• this can be Worldbosses/Meta maps

And when you found your main point of interest, use it to facilitate other tasks/ goals:

• this can be crafting
• this can be farming
• this can be flipping
• this can be achievement hunting
• this can be skins/dyes/looks/aura’s (fashion wars)
• this can be legendaries
• this can be (advanced) min maxing (asc trinkets, asc weapons, asc armor, infusions)
• this can be alt-ing. (I have 22 characters…)
• this can be RP-ing
• this can be social play (no goals, just friends)
• this can be exploring (mapping)
• this can be teaching
• this can also just running around enjoying the view
• this can be relaxing
• this can be virtually everything….

2nd when you know the answer to your 1st question you can gear and trait your character… and play your preferred game mode to the fullest.
people will suggest qantify builds, metabattle and many more, whcih is really only important for mid and high level fractals, Raids, and GvG Raiding in top tier wvw servers.
IF you do not care for those thingss (yet) you can allways gear as you want, play as yu want as long as you remember you stay away from “The Elitist(’s) High End Content” (there are alternative builds and options for ppl not following the zerk/viper track. You will need some added patience…maybe (mostly depending on the quality of the glass party’s capabilities….)….
If or when you have more things you are really interested after you’ve geared up for 1 mode first. then proceed to get a set for the second later… do not try to rush, DO however try to distinguish between primary and secondary/optional interests so you gear up best for the things you like best…

3rd Just enjoy the ride. find a dedicated guild, learn and after a while revaluate and commit if it’s for you. Have fun…

TL;DR:

• Do what you think is fun. If you want to solorun dungeons naked, well who’ll stop you?
• In the end this is a game, so spending time here while having fun is your main goal I guess…

Corrected somthing which obviously got botched in translation…

well… This is going back to zerk meta or nothing arguments…

Understand in thei games there are roughly 4 types of builds. No,… 5 actually…

1 Meta,
These are meant to be the highest DPS rotations with the maximum dragged from all avaialbel gear/sigil and runes available.
2 Optimized,
These are the builds tailored to specific encounters, although not always part of the meta, either in gear and build they tend to be tailored to what’s needed to pull the group through, here brains take over from the practiced dance paces.
3 Viable:
Anything… can contain DPS glass builds and PVT gear, really doesn’ matter and gets the job done.
4 Niche:
Only usable in specific circumstances, a.k.a. Gimmick or cheese builds.
5 Garbage:
The builds without synergy, or coherence. from the people who have gotten 6 exotic pieces from the story line in different levels with different runes and stat combinations and never looked on. Contains bad traits and low level gear for the sole purpose off not being interested, not intrigued, not bothered, or just not familair with the build system.

Examples for example Ele would be (for PvE (including dungeons and fractals))

1 A Meta:
Zerk/Scholar Staff Ele for DPS, fire/lightning/tempest
(nice for dungeons/fractals/raids)
2 An optimized:
Zerk/Scholar Staff Ele for DPS fire/water/tempest
(allows some heals by just rotating past water lowering dps sligtly, but providing enough sustain so non healer groups can manage if needed, smart thinking) No where near max dps though due to the loss of precision and ferocity
3 A viable:
Zealot/Monk Staff ele for DPS/heal water/arcane/tempest.
(not the main class for healing, but capable to do so allowing for okay healing and reasonable dmg (think 65% dmg and resonable heals) easily replaced by druid
4 A niche:
Minstrel/Monk Staff ele for heal/support water/earth/tempest( in PvE), (would be meta in wvw) No DPS at all, but stupid amounts of healing while fully tank capable… incredibly bunker. but will ned to make sure any DPS in the group has no problems staying above 90%.
And other example of niche could be a Condition S/F elementalist (Viper/nightmare) earth/fire/tempest…. It will be usefull in limited circumstances… but will likely also be passed by other builds.
5 Garbage…: zerk/clerics/carrion/soldier/rampager with 6 assorted superior runes earth/arcane/lightning (useless build, due to no synergy, no concept, no fiing gear and in general it could outperform the number 4 on thislist in DPS, but any build could do so…. so that’s not a measure, escpcially as its focus would be on a point whcih is completely ignored by the niche build in 4

Personally I do not have many issues wih toughness.. Toughness would be a more advantageous stat if it would not be the stat guiding for aggro mechanics in a lot of instances

Understand healing is done per point…
if you need to do any content where healing is preferred or mandatory toughness automatically becomes more valuable then vitality.

this is simply explainable if you have a lot of vitality your healthpool will be really large and the healthpool wil be hit hard for hits received…

You could have 30k health and be hit for an unmitigated 7500 a hit… whcih would allow 3 hits… healing can fill you about 5k…in the same period
you’ll see there is a point where your will run out of health…

You could also have 20k health and be hit by by a mitigated 4.8 k a hit and be healed for 5 k in the same period… this should leave you up indefinately.

Understand you can finish -any content WITHOUT timers- in most set of gear and combinations….. even a group all in minstrels and nomads will eventually finish it…

Now for a DPS comparison…
Zerk ele does 25k-45k dmg per second in burst, at least so I’m led to believe…
Minstrels ele will do 1.25k-2.25k dmg per second…

Enemy A: 30k Hp and hit for 5k Hp every 5 seconds..
Enemy B: 3M hp and hit for 5k Hp every 5 seconds

So a zerk ele will kill Enemy A in 1 second which will take the minstrel ele 20 seconds. this is a significant advantage…. both will finsih the enmy with no problems…

So a zerk ele will kill Enemy B in 100 seconds wich will take the minstrel ele 2000 seconds… , Zerk ele will finish way quicker but has to make sure it’s not hit more then 2 times every heal period (20 secs) and must never run out of dodges to make this… The lack of DPS during dodges and heals will mean DPS will be lower.
The Minstrel ele, will just facetank this on water auto outhealing all dmg without a problem. it will take some time and if (s)he’s confident she might actually swap to some more dmg attunement now and then to up dps a bit.

IF the dmg would double…. 10k / 5 secs, the ele would be in a world of hurt requiring outside heals to stay alive, use a water build OR DIE. When dead this player will have to retry, all time spend until then is LOST. The minstrel ele will just whistle, dodge when it suits him/her and facetank the boss until its dead even though it takes ~20 minutes to do so.

Both have uses, buit the best options tend to be either:
All dmg, so you’ll kill normal enemies in as little time as possible.
OR
A balanced build allowing for res time, healing and some mitigation…

True bunkers only have uses in places with extreme pressure , and outside WvW this doesn’t really exist.

Haleydawn.3764:

Isn’t the quite a few ‘Necroish’/Dark weapons already?
Shadow/Spectral are quite dark themed and spectral has the bones.
AC weapons are Ghost Fire at night.
There’s also the Halloween crafted ones (Arachnophobia, The Crossing, The Mad Moon), Accursed Chains, Lidless Eye, Eye of Rodgort, Malice, Gaze, Adam, Final Rest, Mojo, Zhaitan’s Reach, I’d also say Improvised Sceptre is a bit creepy. So we’ve get eyes on sticks, skulls, voodoo dolls, chains and ofcourse an undead arm. Can’t get more necro than that.

I have 3 necro’s and I was reading…

1st: I use eye of rodgort, and the crossing on the 1st, with the severed dagger skin…
2nd: I use zhaithan’s reach,the ley line staff (blue grey color themes char) and the severed dagger skin again
3rd: I use godskull axe and dagger, adam and final rest as staff…

arachnaphobia , mad moon are not very usable for necro’s even though the theme fits…
Godskull set is pretty okay for a common set…

I have 21 lvl 80’s geared.
I notice I have mosly power and condi variants..

3 war, 1 DPS, 1Condi, 1 CC/bunker
3 grd, 1 DPS, 1 Condi, 1 Support/bunker
2 rng, 1 DPS or DPS/Heal , 1 Condi
2 thf, 1 DPS, 1 Condi
4 ele, 1 DPS, 1 Condi, 1 DPS/Heal, 1 Support/Bunker
2 msm 1 DPS or Support/Bunker, 1 Condi
3 ncr, 1 Condi, 1 Condi/Bunker, 1 DPS/Heal or Support/Bunker
(1 rvn, 1 mule)
(1 eng, 1 mule)

All condi’s are viper, all dps are zerk(/sin)…DPS/HEal tends to be zealot…
Only my Support and/ or bunkers tend to be commanders, minstrel, trailblazer they can be used in PvE, but you will never need a minstrel ele in AC

Well if all know the dungeon from more then 3 runs, you’ll run dungeons faster then 2013 speeduns now with the DPS zerks.. as casuals… And it takes an effort to get killed… you need to stand in circles, never dodge or just forget to press 1,1,1,1,1

I would have liked:

MAIN: Condi dmg, Healing
Minor: Expertise, precision…

And:

MAIN Condi dmg, Healing
Minor Expertise, power

both have a real option for me to replace other builds.

Dual wield Sword Warrior
is a conditions build. it has moistly been replaced by swords/torch (for PvE) or mace/torch (for PvP) . Sword mainhand is meta for condiwarrior builds in PvE sword offhand can be useful, but is inferior in dmg to torch, swordt is used in running builds for it’s skill #2 whcih allows for leaps and the offhand can be used for warhorn, for added speedbuffs.

Dual wield Mace Warrior
is a cc related build, the burstskill does good condition dmg though, I haven’t seen the build for quite some time, as most ppl wanting to use CC related builds tended to use Hammer, for it’s AoE CC. Mace offhand can work , but if you’d run it for CC shield would be more powerfull, and if you run it for conditions I’d advise a torch (or -in theory only- a sword) Could be viable for WvW, has been Meta last season as Mace/Torch, no dual wielding though,

Dual wield axe Warrior
used to be a build as alternate for GS, since the introdcution of PS in 2014 or so, it mostly ignored and axe/mace used to be used as alternate set, until the introduction of breakbars which moved the focus to mace/shield. Axe mainhand still is a very good DSP option, especially if you NEED an offhand (shield WH or whatever)
Optional for WvW, not meta, most likely still viable.

Other dual wielders (non warrior)

• D/D thief Meta High DPS build
• D/D elementalist, surpassed by D/Wh in many cases. Used to be the High DPS melee meta variant of elementalist.
• P/P engineer. Meta conditions build for years
• P/P thief Ranged option, usually passed over in favor for shortbow due to the versatility of shortbow.
• S/S mesmer Part of the dungeon META, In some cases surpassed by focus or shield offhand mostly due to varsatility of the latter 2 in group content. In no means outdated though.
• S/S revenant I have no clue what to say about S/S revenant other then the fact it exists, I’m no Revenant player
• A/A ranger A strange set as axe mainhand tends to be more conditions focussed and axe offhand tends to be DPS focussed

Note: Most builds will make you fall outside the “meta” but for open world playing this should not pose a problem.

I smiled when I found the graves of Gwen, Proffesor Yakkington and Nicholas and my next experience was I felt a bit sad… as I would not see them again…

My gw1 experience was mostly focussed on Gwen. She was the little girl I did the 1st ingame mission for trying to find her flute…, and later with her help I found my way into every corner of Tryia. I felt joy when I attended her marriage with Thackeray.

I came to the fields of ruin and saw the graves and heard the music and I remembered 3 years of gameplay ( I started late), many friends , many allies, and a lot of people, PC or NPC.

It was more then just a smile. It was finding my former Tyrian life. and coming to terms with the new life I started and the reflection on the new friends, the new explorations and good times I was moving towards.

It’s okay to think outside meta and use a custom build and stay alive, instead of focussing on 100% DPS and then dying over and over cause you want to feel elite.

It’s okay to get your healing (fill in class here) and make sure ppl can finsih their content 10-15% slower instead of wiping 3 times and leaving unfinished

It’s not okay to get told by your friendly guild to git gud and it is ok to subsequently think: “Why should I need you, cause I’ve been playing this game for 4 yrs now and you know how to kill this , but fail at everything else, except at bragging about the 1 thing you can kill, even though I killed it as well and all the other stuff, maybe just a little slower, but on the 1st try”.

It’s okay to be content with your normal crafting routines and get your last class geared up fully, while others ping their 8th legendary, but are still bound to 2 classes.

It’s okay to craft your 8th legendary and accept you only have 2 classes

It’s ok to be who you want to be, when you want to , with who you want to.

It’s ok to play a game for fun.

you can make builds removing soo much conditions… or invalidating them…

Either active:
(example: AoE shout cleaner warrior (shouts available on necro, ele, warrior, guardian, ranger) :
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQJBHhdyzBU5B25BYKIQHCWIDMlPwkbDkEBCALg3E7iNyC-TRRWwADU+JRJIQ1fIpHAw+DkCoIhWA-e

Passive:
(example diamond skin ele):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XC9XiNYCWYCcYiFTAztsmWjrEHgAQDYg3HA-TBRWwASUCCY/hBK/Aq+DpAKSoF-e

Or just by gear: reducing 45% of conditions and stuns
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApdSl0AhShYrQwWIQQEHLEEOBLvE3AYA57v/QA-TBhRwAlUCOV9HA7PYR5HpAKSoF-e

Lastly you can send ’m back..
ExampleL: necro/rev, necro minion build, with generosity sigils and staff (#4) and dagger offhand (#4)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWnc0AdbiN1A+1As3glgBT6EkCKBxHxk4UMKpFAiAA-TxxXABzq+zwK/E5JAAw+DjqPYuTBQ2KBJFQRCtA-e

You’ll never have problems with conditions again. You can also just try to make sure you do not get affected by conditions in the 1st place.. dodging, using blinds, reflects or otherwise…. whcih should clear up a lot of the problems conditions need 3 things to be dangerous. 1 stacks, 2 c.dmg and 3 duration. If one of the 3 is missing conditions tend to be way less effective. you be the choice of whcih things to impair or mitigate…

Saying you cannot run these cause you cannot run zerk is being ignorant.

Simply said : ZERK was introduced to outdps all bosses in dungeons so you could kill them before they could kill you…

So if you die with zerk gear you cannot fullfill this simple task, you’ll be stunned, blinded or otherwise incapacitated or made ineffetive in the 1st place (chills/weakness) so you cannot fullfill the basic, I can kill it before I die.

This shows very well in WvW and lesser in PvP but even there you need to have an opportunity to kill someone. CC them, or make counterattacks useless..

so we have dedicatesd heal and/or cleaners to make sure you can stay alive indefinatly
so we have hybrids with sustain and cleansing
so we have aggressive builds whcih can counter the conditions

you should think why you want to be in what group….and how you could get more grip on the problem instead of just saying it’s OP.

Well I have:

Norn 8 times:
2 berserkers, 1 tempests, 1 ranger, 1 chrono, 1scrapper, 1guardian,1 herald

Sylvari 7 times:
1 druid, 1 reaper, 1 mesmer, 2 daredevils, 1 tempest, 1 guardian

Human, 4 times:
2 tempests, 1 necro, 1 dragonhunter

Charr, 2 times:
1 Necro , 1 Warrior

Asura…, -none-
Well I deleted those for being little know-it-alls… as such I do not agree with them a lot.

I also noticed I have 19 female characters and 2 male (Charr Necro and Sylvari Guardian)…

This also means all my Norns are female, due to male Norns being pretty ugly IMHO

I found revenant and engineer not my playstyle.. and this doesn’t mean they are not fun, they are just not for me. They are used for chest duty, or storage. I however keep ‘m as futurer updates muight unlock something I’d appreciate

I mostly solo-ed my way to a bank guild level 24..

I had a bank guild before HoT and I spend a lot of time on this game
I found I needed a (time-,mat-,gold-) sink for me to experience my efforts were still worthwhile…

I have 21 lvl 80’s now and 1 "open"slot now camped by a temporary lvl 80 charcater I see as my present PvP character, when I’m done with this season I’ll probably delete him.

I have half a dozen legendaries, 17 or 18 full ascneded armor sets and most of my charcters where I like them.

I geared my last character 2 days ago, it has viper’s ascended armor, viper’s ascended weapons, partial viper’s trinkets rest sinister, 98.6% condi duration and has unlocked 12% of the map.

IMHO I have come to a point ingame I can spend time and mats to a guild hall, BUT I do notice some things are pretty blocked for me as solo investor in my guild.

50 elonian squares? Nope, 300 timegated mats? Nope.

But I do have a private guild hall. I’m presently working on unlocking the monument vendor. I have the patience to achiev this, but I’m in no hurry.

+10% buff would be nice, I’m only at 8%
SO some kegs are my 1st priority when done I’ll try to find the next thing.

I hope to finish the 10% by mid to end of february.

Make a personal guild hall?

WvW buffs affected PvE since start

your actual health points are on your heroscreen, multiply those with the buff you get from WvW ad you can see what your present vitality should be.

It is normal for Gw2. You can read the actual vitality. it is given on your hero screen.

I wish you good luck, the difference between 33.1 and 37k really doens’t matter on a full tank build anyways. you should not die in PvE on a 1000 health 100 vitality build if you do things well. Oh and with base vitalkity you also see the numbers rise until friday where they are reset again. So you die easiest in the weekend.

As for this old discussion…

A-Net uses an old engine which was used for gw1, which was based upon an old (directX 7 FPS Engine (Unreal (2?) engine).
They modified the engine so far they were using only a couple of basic components ad dthey now had it running and were eventually allowed to use without paying COMMISION.

Then gw1 was released 3 games and 1 expansion on the 3 base games were supplied, without monthly fees.

Eventually GW2 was developed on a slightly modified version of the original gw1 engine. Now running Direct X 9.0c

This engine is property of ArenaNet. as as such it doesn’t cost them much to have you play on it.

IF Arenanet would buy the latest version of the unreal engine and do the project to get it running like this present engine they still own the owners of the engine 25% of all REVENUE made from this game, that’s 25% less updates, 25% less personell and 25% less servers. OR A MONTHLY FEE.

Even then all code needs to be rewritten, and the project would take years. I doubt gw2 as a game could afford the investments. also after these investments it would not be a new game. it would be the sma game just with a litlle more fluent gameplay, IF it works out.

Yes it sounds easy, but can this game afford no content updates for 2 years while the code is made to get this game refreshed? After 6 months of coding for HoT this game felt dead. I doubt this game would survive a DX12/ multi CPU update…

It will take time to rewrite the game (which is likely heavily spaghetti-ed due to 2 big code updates to the engine and the fact the base engine is so old.)
It will take resources (cash/manpower)
It will take commision (loss of revenue for the game)
It will change the minimum requirements of the game (even though most GPU’s should work with DX11 or 12 and most PC’s have 4 or more cores or threads nowadays)
Why? \\to make a 4+ year old game look a little more fluent, on high end systems only.
This game works on 4K screens (though the UI gets really small) it works on lower end laptops (i3’s and i5’s) without real problems except maybe for the fact it was made for 5 vs 5…

Neural.1824:

Legendary weapons used to stand out because they had the best stats.
Then Ascended gear was introduced.
Legendary weapons still stood out, because they had swapable stats.
Now we are starting to see ascended items that do the same thing.
I agree with the upgrade swapping, even if they don’t go the route of making them something you select, at least allow them to be added/removed (AT NO COST) whenever someone chooses.

*Ehm…..

ORIGINALLY legendaries had exotic stats and exotic dmg-values at launch,
no infusion slots and 2 handed weaposn had 1 sigil slot like all 2 handed weapons at that time.*

At all times Legendaries were the equivalent of the higest available gear.

Also on many occasions ArenaNet has said there would be no further introductions of new levels of gear introduced into the game… They broke this promise….And:

With the introduction of Ascended gear: all stats, and dmg of legendaries was raised to the level of asnceded gear, 2 infusion slots were added as well, this was on November 16th, 2012.

Later on we got the second upgrade slot on 2 handed weapons on April 15, 2014.
ArenaNet has said there will be no further introductions of stats, telling us there will never be any gear with stat values higher then Ascneded/Legendary

Please ppl… Even though I have well more then 5 legendaries I’d lke to see ’m as they are, Instead of forcing us to go and buy new sigils/runes whatever so we can swap..

90% of my legendaries/ascneded weapons never swap character. I only moved the meterologicus from ele to mesmer as I always play staff or dagger anyways. I have enough ascnededs for my 20 charcters now anyways. and 15 or 16 armors.

You’ll create: The Generic Legendary People…

IMHO generally these requests seem to come from ppl who want to use 1 weapon on 5-50 characters and then when they say they achieved it immediatley post something like “I have all gear now” and start off on this “I want moar stats or higher tier gear” subject…

SO now when you have all sigils swappable, how will you deal with stat infusions.

When you have your full sets swappable on your gear weight and all rune sets? .
You do want to show ppl your account where all naked ppl are standing around, waiting for their shared legendaries? And all your weapons?
You’ll have characters naked with no personality in your selection screen cause they have no gear to wear,
Which is no cause for alarm of course and their generic outfit will cover them?

And then when you have 3 legendary sets and all (common) legendary weapons, is there any reason to play? Cause you’ll -never- need anything more, all time spend after achieveing this point is wasted as there is nothing better to get anyways.

Yes, maybe skins? They’ll be less interesting then the legendaries themselves . But then? You’ll need to rework their armor skins… Autoswappable amor skins?
Dyes? To dye the outfits or the legendaries? Autoswappable colors
Yes infusions… to clutter everything with bland colors hiding the dyes to become another yellow Legendary wielding firefly… Ah selectable infusions…autoswappable of course.

Else you’de only be generic… with 1 more or 1 less infusion compared to others.

Cause your rich you know Or are you?

To get for final comnpletion of fashion Wars::

• 1 Legendary of each 2 hand
• 2 legendaries of axe, sword,mace,dagger, pistol
• 1 legendary focus, torch,shield,warhorn
• 1 legendary Light armor
• 1 legednary Medium armor
• 1 legendary Heavy armor
• some infusions with AR or nice animations and of course some stats, when..
• Just do all power, condi and healing… 150 AR on all….
• outfit or 2 to cover up you have no gear for your alts
• some dyes to be able to show some personality

And done??

Eh wrong. And so is swapping sigils.

I’d say atttibute combinations. as the attributes specify the type of your gear, precision/power/condi/toughness/vitality/healing/expertise/concentration/ferocity.

Where stats are the actual numbers involved in your gear:

“Link the hight of your toughness attribute, please.”
- “I have 2500 stat points in the attibute toughness”
“That might be too tanky for us”
- “I chose my attributes carefully, and I think I can use this very well as the attibute combination Trailblazer is suited for WVW roaming”

But names and attibute combinations are mostly trivial.

“Are you using infused gear?”
- “I am using part Pahua, but the recipe’s for the ascneded gear are hard to come by and I do not like the Tangled Depths Meta too much so the other gear is just Trailblazer. I do have infusions for the Pahua gear.”

Confusion? not really as in most cases the meaning is clear from context anyways:

“You can stat change other gear with the exotic insignia.”
- “Ï do not believe the amount of stats will change when I change attributes.”
“You know what I mean "
- “Yes, I do. I just do not had the luck to have all ascneded pieces drop yet,”
“You can craft them.”
- “Yes but to aquire the gear is expensive and using boxes with attribute selection saves me a lot of effort.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t craft exotics, as the gear also needs insignia’s and the exotioc insignia with these attributes are pretty expensive.”
-“You could be right but I can craft exotic but not ascended”
“You could get more stats by getting all ascneded”
-“True, but I’m low on gold.”

• Color most often indicates the rarity of the item:
  “a green berserker’s ring”,
  “send me a blue scepter if you have one”,
  “I got some nice yellows…”
  , when omitted it is an exotic ring, noone uses “an orange ring”.
• Ascneded value gear tend to be referred to as ascendeds or pink gear.
• Sometimes ppl say my legendary gear, but purple also happens…
• There is the named attributes (Verata’s, Zojja’s and Yassith’s) which are ascended
• there is the common attributes (sinister, viper and berserker(zerk)) which are exotic and lower and which are used to communicate the attribute of your gear, for easy communication this is also used for legendary and ascnededs even though they should default to the named options..
• stats are the value of the attribute, but their use is also the same as attribute sometimes causing a trivial discussion
• prefix and suffix are mostly an outdated mechanic, but their use is relevant to be able to read the attribute combinations of exoytic and lower level gear. ( IMHO the only place you still find in this age of asnceded gear is on exotic jewelry in niche builds, often with regard to the attribute concentration which translates into the attribute boon duration and the other way round.).

Ppl said it:

1. You likely have ~33k health without buffs
2. WVW buffs will add a % of health, healing, precision boon duration and more
3. WVW reset is on fridays in the evening so in the weekends your health will be the lowest continously rising till friday till the point of reset
4. Arenanets calculations are perfect, they know what they’ve made.

And on good weeks servers health buffs can be over +25%… So that’s a big chunk of health.

Lastly you shouldn’t get hit anyways in PvE if you can help it (maybe in 100 CM and some ranged attacks on t4’s and raids…) but this shouldbn’t make so much difference in the 1st plage…
My ele has 11945 health base.. and on good weeks I reach 13k+ health on thursdays.
Doesn’t momentum give toughness? why should it affect vitality then?

LouWolfskin.3492:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Are they still doing this? I don’t know be cause I always log in during new episodes. But imagine you are a new player, you pay a whopping 50€ for this expansion and then they want 200 gems per episode. WTF? That’s just horrible marketing, with this you make your customers angry. No wonder they fare worse and worse. Remove this horrible restriction and give it for free. I can’t imagine new customers will have understanding for this. (200 gems are quite a lot of gold as a new player btw).

They give it for free for quite a while.
And, you won’t believe this i guess, they have to make money one way or the other, so saying: Hey you can get this either logging in or later on with some gems, is quite fair.
It’s even more fair, yes, it is, because you can get gems via ingame gold, other games would tell you to pay with cash right out.

Also, a new payer, as in someone who just started his account has no bsiness in the new aeas or story anyway.

Also seeing how some ppl got vanilla “free” with HoT will still need to pay 1600 gems (20 euro) for the story line, when HoT might / will be replaced the ls s3 will also cost 200 gems/episode, I think we could see this will be 6 parts bringing the cost for the living story up to 2800 gems (35$/€) for the story line from vanilla till the new expansion content,

This way they( A-net) can still give vanilla and HoT free to ppl on buying the likely to be next expansion pack. We had it so… see it as our payment for the content of vanilla and ls s2/LS s3 and 4+ yrs of gametime…

This also invalidates the well the ppl get the whole of the game for free with their exopansion buy…thingy. whcih is not so unless you expect ppl to be instant 176 mastery, with legendary/ascnedec gear omnn 6 or 7 classes (whcih are possible with both vanilla&HoT purchases)

This said I can see this will be a barrier for new players, who will lock themselves out of decent content, with in certain cvases worthwhile upgrades/ gear unlocks, as well as usefull (well easier to aquire) mastery points.

Warrior can be more then a buffbot, but does shine as a buffbot…

As a buffbot (PS warrior) it can provide 150+170+750 power and 170+750 condition dmg, 170 precision and 170 ferocity…. and provided okay CC..

But there is more:

• I can imagine builds with a lot more CC however using physical skills hammer and mace/shield with rampage/headbutt as elite… (strength/defence/berserker)
• I can imagine variants of the shout heal and condi cleaning build. having synergy with banner of tactics and regenbannertrait, and res banner/ traits. either with runes of mercy or runes of the trooper.
  (defence/tactics/discipline) or (Defence/tactics/berserker)
• mace/shield & Longbow DPS/DOT Hybrid
  (defence/strength/berserker)
• Then there is the warrior S/? & longbow (PS or not) condi build.
  (PS: arms/tactics/berserker) or (non PS: arms/discipline/berserker)

Most of these builds have seen some use, or are still part of meta somehow

As for guardian: (do not know trait lines from head) I do know some builds were top tier DPS with zerk and scholar doing extremely good dmg while providing very good support…

• DPS dragonhunter with GS and LB (traps or not)
• DPS guardian with S/T and Sc/T
• DOT burn Guard with SC/T and GS (condi build, burn only)
• Support with staff and ? (shouts)
• Hammer support CC/control build
  or combinations…

As for revenant…

It’s not really my thing. I found my way into all other class’s specialisations and I briefly had some feel for herald, but it’s gone.

Well IMHO crafting tends to be very usefull. But other sources do exist, lucky drops from high level fractals, WvW, certain wolrd bosses, event map drops and so on… also see the second part of this post.

A far as squishy goes:

- You’ll learn telegraphs and bosses eventually lowering the need to run bunker(ish) stats…
- I’ll be honest. and say I sometimes also use my WvW builds/armors for PvE if I’m lazy, or tired or just not into doing everything perfect…

As stated I have 20 characters. of these 5 have builds I can use in WvW.
- The Necro support character (zealot/clerics with dwayna’s runes) (WvW only)
- The support ele (Minstrels/monk (very low dmg (~200-350/hit), but never dies in PvE), I can carry ppl trough lvl 99 and 100 fractals without them losing the 90% buff though. (150 AR)
- The boon/support guardian (Commanders/Clerics with monk) does do okay in PvE (150 AR)
- The Necro Condi character (full Trailblazer/nightmare) is pretty tanky… (150 AR)
- The Shout heal Warrior (zealot/clerics with trooper) is mostly obsolete, but I like it anyways. can be very usefull for things with condi pressure (only wvw infusion) I use it to go trio AC with ppl with lower then 1500 AP.

All these builds are or were made to last in WvW, and are way to tanky for speedruns and such, but will be extremely durable in PvE, being the last ones standing in any content….

As for getting your gear:

At start:

• use whatever you have, get (cheap) runes and try to aquire usefull trinkets & backs
• HoT stats, most of them tend to be very expensive to get so most ppl use vanilla stats for exotics:
  - (making berserker relatively easy to get…)
  - (options ro condi builds could be sinister (partially locked away behind LW S2, rampager or carrion)
• trinkets can be aquired in bloodstone fen/ember bay and bitterfrost frontier for the HoT stats
  OR
  Trinkets can be aquired in low level fractals in fractals/ guild missiosn and laurels from daily login for vanilla stats

later:

• collect/craft ascneded armor and then -if needed- swap stats or choose the correct stats from boxes, and then move from there…

• Asnceded armor (and (in some cases) weapons) can be aquired via:
  - Crafting, mats are partially timegated and somewhat expensive, you’ll need recipe’s in some cases (sometimes behind content)
  - fractals (requiring AR in infusion slots ( mostly on asnceded gear!) for higher levels for more rewards and faster progression)
  - raids (requiring ascneded weapons/trinkets to start in most cases) can drop armor and you can buy it from vendors after your killed the boss(-es)
  - World bosses (lucky drops freom tequatleand triple trouble)
  - WvW (I had 1 box in 890 ranks)
  - PvP (at this moment the PvP season is on, allowing to get some armor pieces by buying them, they seem stat selectable.)

2 remarks:

1. Condition duration is MANDATORY for condition builds in PvE, unfortunatley max condi duration is only obtainable using HoT stat: Expertise you can get up to 90% in some casesd using gear focussing on only 1 condition, but unless you play a class whcih is very limited to 1 or 2 conditions (Ele (burning/bleeds) or guard (burning only) you’ll have difficulty maxing your condition dmg out.
   Note: mesmer has a signet giving +20% condi duration, with food (30%), nightmare and trappers (25%) and malice(10%) you’ll be at 85% duration without any need for HoT stats.
2. Boon duration is a serious boost to your abilities in PvE when booning/ supporting:
   Concentration will be usefull , but this HoT only stat is costly to procure… you can however get “work around” gear provided you can afford losing some stats, (platinum doubloons for example)

Simply said:

At this moment in GW2:

• Elementalist/Tempest is wanted for everything as main dmg dealer.
  - DPS or heal options, heal is niche.
  -HIGHEST PVE DPS CLASS IN GW2: taken in nearly anything in PvE.
  -Solid ranged options.
  - Due to the enormous amount of skill options sometimes overwhelming to learn.
  - Staff has 20 skills, any other set 20 as well. this means you can have up to 35 diferent skills in a build… (think Glyph’s elementals, storms….)
  - Knowledge of combo’s is a must. Else do not bother.
  - Even in DPS form you can fill up any hole in a group comp except giving alacrity and swftness (as theya are mesmer only).
  - You need a thorough knowledge of your skills, and traits to be usefull…
  - No weapon swap.
  - Glass build in PvE (Zerk)
  - Least costs of gearing (Zerk = cheap),
  - Just need 2 weaponsets (dagger/warhorn and Staff),
  - Runes can be bought on TP,
  - Food is okay priced.

• Mesmer/Chronomancer is wanted in a lot of content as support class DPS or miche as condition build
  - DPS (chronomancer) is used in most PvE things,
  - Condi builds mostly have use in PvP and WVW.
  - DPS chrono is meta in most comps.
  - VERY LOW DPS, average/good Condition build
  - Okay sustain.
  - Ranged options mostly in condi class, as the DPS is used sometimes as tank..
  - Good use of chrono is limited by rotation.
  - Little bit of toughness in Commanders parts/ trinkets armor.
  - Pretty expensive to gear
  - Nasty aquirable runes for meta build,
  - Commanders is expensive to aquire
  - Needing 2 swords, focus, shield, GS.
  - Meta food is expensive and partially account bound
  - Niche use “minstrel bunker” has no other uses then RAIDS.

• Necromancer/Reaper is used in some PvE things mostly to full fill niche roles as condi build.
  - Power Necro sees limited use in WvW.
  - Condi is part of old Fractals Meta.
  - Low DPS and DOT,
  - Overall extremely good sustain.
  - Knowledge of it’s Combo’s tend to be usefull.
  - Glass build in PvE using Viper’s
  - Moderate costs of gearing
  - Using scepter , dagger and warhorn, maybe a staff.
  - Viper’s is easier to aquire then commanders,
  - Runes are from TA dungeon.
  - Food is pretty expensive but can be bought on the TP.

I have 20 characters:

• Heavy
  - 3 warriors (PS DPS, PS condi, (WvW) shout heal)
  - 3 guardians (DPS, Bunker Support, burn)
  - 1 Revenant (-mule-)
• Medium
  - 2 rangers (Druid/DPS, Condi)
  - 2 thieves (DPS, Condi)
  - 1 engineer (-mule-)
• Light
  - 3 necro’s (Hybrid, Bunker Condi, WvW support/DPS)
  - 3 elementalists (DPS, Glass heal, Bunker support)
  - 2 mesmers. (DPS chrono, Condi)

Odin the exiled.5764:

lol that’s cause he’s adding everything over the 4 years of the game though. Like southsun cove was added a few months after launch lol. And he didnt mentioned Guild halls, mega servers, cross guild chat’s from what i can tell either lol.

Maybe. I have no perfect recollection of the order. I’ve been playing this game for almost 1600 days (1596) and some things tend to get vague. BUT I still find returning ppl who’ve never ever been on/near Karka island. (Guild missions tend to show me this, often.)

We have player housing… It’s not customizable though, they are called home instances and are located in everyone of the 5 major cities.,
We also have customizable areas in the game, being Guild halls. I made a guild, capped a hall, unlocked scribing and I -mostly- solo build it to lvl 24 now. And decorated it to my personal liking.

The 2 together fullfill everything I want from player housing and personal space…. I do not have a house: I have a MAP I can decorate.

As for fishing. If I need to do stuff while afk-ing… well I wouldn’t like it, alternatively If I need to sit next to water for plenty of time at an end I would probably dislike it. I can go spearfishing anyways… and farm fins anyways

Well look at all the people….

For PvE we had

• LS season 2 (dry top 1/4, silverwastes 5/8) (200 gems/missed part, 1600 for full story)
• rework of fractals, multiple times
• nerf of dungeons (67% gold reward removal)
• buff of dungeons (20 added tokens, box with 5gold and 150 tokens of choice every 8 different paths) (most average ppl should be able to run dungeons in 2013 speedrun times…)
• added fractals. rework of agony resistance
• reworked trait systems, personal story
• new Lion’s Arch
• new maps: southsun cove, dry top, silverwastes
• silverwastes chest farm
• lvl 40 fractal farm
• Guild missions

HoT a.k.a. The Expansion

• masteries
• elite specialisations
• RAIDS
• maps: verdant brink, auric basin, tangled depths, dragon stand, bloodstone fen, ember bay, and the new ice map, bitterfrost frontier….
• easy farmable ascended trinkets
• Living story 1 to 3 (200 gems/missed part, ???? gems for full story)
• some new legendaries
• Guild halls, making guild banks extremely expensive… nice for medium andd bigger guilds
• introduction of berry farm, AB multiloot

in other game modes:

WvW:

• introduction of HotM,
• introduction of desert map,
• removal of part of the desert maps, and reinstateement of the old maps
• rework of WvW abilities

PvP

• introduction of some new maps….
• introduction of new amulets
• introduction of new runes
• introduction of new reward tracks
• introduction of several new scoring mechnsms, some ofwhich have been replaced again

Common

• Numerous balance patches..
• return of the same events during holidays..
• The enormous jump in price of leather.
• The fading of exotics in normal gaming, most ppl run full ascneded now.
• The complete change of all vanilla content to faceroll mode due to elite specs eing 10-25% more powerfull compard to vanilla, neccesiy for glass builds to effectively farm vanilla.

Some things are still the same: warrior, and elementalit are still mandatory in most game modes
Things radically different:

• guardian, is no longer used in PvE,
• revenant arose from the mists with HoT, and was nerfed and died and is now back in the mists.
• Ranger is now meta in compositions, the bearbow is no more. the druid buffer is mandatory. Condi ranger is now the most potent condi build (!)
• Mesmer returns to the meta comp as chronomancer giving cd reduction to the party and relects, pulls and quickness allow for much use even though DPS is rediculously low.
• Necro was okay and average, and normal in some raids, then nerfed and only used now in fractals: 1 ranger 4 necro’s is an old meta comp. It’s still used as a slow build, to kill some spawns while continously applying chill. It needs a good necroing to prevent it from going the same route as revenant.

• CONDI BUILDS ARE VIABLE,
  stacks have been released and went from 25 stacks to 1500 allowing condi builds to rise and find places in meta….
  Condi ranger, condi mesmer, condi warrior/berserker, condi engineer are good now and have uses, condi necro/reaper was destroyed by ppl with no idea how to balance games and is now laughed upon by all ppl, in all game modes, except maybe in fractals, where 4 necro groups epidemic through everything….
  As for your specifics:
• Expansion was on 50% reduction twice already.
• Base Guardian is only used in WvW as a F2P zerg build.
• PPL are getting LI’s for legendary armor, legendary backpacks, legendaries in common, and gearing all alts in Ascnededs, having less then ascneded weapons and trinkets is nowadays a sign of either lazyness of a new account.
• farming in common.
• Meta has shifted , mostly because HoT specilisations tend to be better then Vanilla builds with a few exceptions.

as a fervent condition player I’d say:

1st) bleeding has use as cover condition having bleeds will make for basic DOT while protecting other conditions from stripping… This is also why burning guard and burning tempest are less effective in comparison to multi-condition users.
2nd) immobilize is extremely usefull in a lot of circumstances (as CC yes,) but also keeping enemies and self in a specific place, unlike chill/cripple which still allow for movement.
3rd) poison is a healing effeciveness reduction 1st and a stacking condition second
4th) confusion and torment are shutdown conditions… meant to reduce movement and skill use. The combination is exceptionally powerfull….especially high stacks of confusion requiring a significant hit to remove…
5th) fire is likely more redundant then bleeds… Then again you can light up almost any item, bleeding a wooden door to death feels less… well… immersing/immersive … I’d like a spreading option.. It would add something really nice to the condition builds….

6th) I’d like dazes and stuns to be combined. their differences in use are trivial at best. this should make stunbreaks more usefull
7th) I’d like stealth and invisibility to be fused… so they’ll allow duration stacking and no longer cancel eachother out.

Removing bleeds to benefit small duration burns will change DOT more towards DPS while removing pressure. It would remove the 1 thing conditions would be really good at…. forcing any burst build opponent to fight -now-!

I’d say most condi cleanses are weak at best especially the personal condition cleanses often still clean 1 condition….. also the boon ‘resistance’ is pretty weak, often just reducing 4 or 5 ticks, I’d rather see a 50% decrease in condition dmg for a double the length period (8-10 secs maybe even a bit more) providing some protection more comparable to protection while still allowing pure condition builds to do some dmg….

Pls don’t change stuff.

Now it is so it will remove the most damaging condition. Remember you asked for this when you get hit in lvl 98 fractals and get 15 stacks of bleeds and cripple… or in ascalon you get 20+ stacks of poison at the queen and you remove your immo…
or knocked down and crippled while 40 stacks of bleed spawn upon you through gravelings. (just basic AC , not going into other dungeons or more nasty environments (RAIDS?))

A lot of classes have options to remove movement impeding modifiers other then cleanses (warrior warhorn as a nice aoe example.)

It would be a QoL change to the life of armor repair dudes and most likely: wear out anvils.

Or you could just get a nice minstrel ele for WvW and misuse him/her to farm berries. You will outheal 6-12 enemies without problems, you cannot kill ‘m, but you’ll live.

Still interesting you cannot get a decent number of blood rubies from bloodstone fen, but can get okay amounts of petrified wood and huge, sometimes nearly unlimited amounts of berries..

getting a ring (100 rubies) takes about 7 days. if you do not camp all bosses for days straight
getting a trinket 150 petr. wood takes about 5 days
getting a ring or trinket (200-300 berries can be done in 1 day, both even…)

why can’t the 2 first maps not be unlocked, it would be of value for ppl starting and a HUGE INCENTIVE TO BUY THE MAPS!

marwan.9016:

I understand your point but I never over clock my CPU’s and even with my current pentium (especially since it’s unlocked and easily overclockable). Also when seeing a LinusTechTips video, he showed benchmarks where the xeon and i7 have the same score for games and other stuff. I’m also not going to use any ECC and Buffered memory because it’s slower than Unregistered and buffered ones.

If you do not OC your CPU and you will not use ECC/REG you could place a e3 1231v3 in your PC instead of a i7 4770(K)

Advantages would be having exactly the same CPU for less money, both would run on a 1150- mainboard. With the E3-1231v3 having same cores, same amount of lanes and same capabilities.
I’d wonder why a i5 4690K at the same speed wouldn’t be enough (for Gw2) and use the same mainboard and be OC-able
Or a i5 4690 at 235 euro, which would be the non OC version at same clock speeds still the same TDP/ lanes, except no multithreading for the i5’s.

e3 1231 v3 , 4 core/8 threads 3.4Ghz, 3.8 turbo, no OC, allows eec/reg DRAM (80W)
@ ~305 euro
i7 4770, 4 core/8 threads. 3.4Ghz, 3.9 turbo, no OC (84W)
@ ~320 euro
i7 4470K , 4 core/8 threads. 3.5 Ghz 3.9 turbo OC-able (84W)
@ ~375 euro
i5 4690 , 4 core/4 threads. 3.5Ghz, 3.9 turbo non OC (84W)
@ ~235 euro
i5 4690K , 4 core/4 threads. 3.5Ghz, 3.9 turbo OC-able (84W)
@ ~260 euro

All socket 1150, all DDR 3, all 16 PCI lanes. the i5’s will lose 2 MB L3 cache. then again they have 6 MB for 4 threads vs 8 Mb for 8 threads so they have 1.5 times the amount / thread.

I’d however run the 4770k as I could clock the CPU to the turbo limit without real worries (3.9 Ghz) instead of the stock value with little or no risk and gain 15% speed at all times. This said, -if- you run a decent cooling solution you should be able to maintain the 3.8 or 3.9 on the other 2 as well Ghz without real problems, while not forcing the CPU to do so.

If you want to get above 3.9 …. well… tough luck with e3 or 4770, in that case 4770K would be a LOT easier. OC-ing isn’t that dangerous. Provided you can keep your ambient temps in tome and make sure you have decent cooling for your box.

The i7s are generally faster in multitask environments due to the fact the cpu is better used due to the 2 threads/ CPUcore, But you will need to do stuff above 4 threads to notice anything, and have the ram to make sure everything stays smooth.
But in all cases if you need an i7 for work/ applications multitasking make sure you get one. The i5 is more for -PURE- gaming IMHO.

Oh and I noticed the E3 being a server CPU uses 4 watt less power so your CPU will use 4% less energy compared to the other CPU’s, but the GPU, peripherals and mainboard will make the difference very small in the end.

Any OC-ing will raise the TDP and will reduce the efficiency of the CPU. (Only valid for the K’s)

In the end I guess there is nothing bad about choosing a server CPU and the 4770 was a very good CPU. PLS Post if you had succes. Check if your BIOS if your BIOS version supports the 4770K and the e3 1231 (which should be the case I guess, unless it’s a really, really old MoBo)

Well… IMHO using a server processor would be unadvantageous, as they have fully fixed clockspeeds allowing little to no OC whatsoever. Also sometimes the potential need for ECC and/or REG RAM tends to cause problems/more costs… if you need to replace stuff…

As the GW2 engine is still locked behind CPU capability nd not GPU capability (so if you have 3-4 usable FAST (preferably intel) cores and a halfdecent graphics you should be able to run 30-40 FPS in cities and 45-??? (high sixties to hundred I’d gamble) in the world mostly depending on the amount of ppl you are playing with (standing at jormag or other world bosses will crush your FPS and will zerg vs zerg (vs zerg?) in WvW

My i7 3930K OC-ed to ~4.1 ghz runs ~40 in mid LA to 150+ in the world bottlenecking only at huge crowds. My system supports PCI-E v3.0 @ 16x (for both my GTX 780’s) I play windowed (reducing performance a little)

At stock (3.2 Ghz) I will get approx 80% of those framerates. eg 32-35 in LA and 120+ in the world.

Raids and dungeons are in the 70s-100s for me.

In both cases my Sli-ed GTX 780’s have 35-40% load. (while running a second screen.)
res 1920*1200 (game screen) & 1920*1080 (alternate screen for video/ internet voice or whatever.

having a CPU at 5.0 Ghz would obviously be better, but I have no need to change my setup at this time.

I run a huge amount of ram, but it isn’t that important 8,12 or 16 should be roughly the same provided you do no other things beside playing gw2, when you DO use a second screen and utilities 16 would be beneficial. I have 32 Gb, but I tend to leave many applications running and i do not consider my behaviour a good guuide to normal computer usage (the fact I have 12 threads with my i7-3930K makes multitasking a bit easier.

TL;DR:
So
- OC-ing my CPU 20% gives me 20% added FPS.
- my GPUS are never at 100% load, or transfer
- Ram above 8 Gb is mostly usefull for multitasking

Tip: make sure you have an SSD to reduce loading time.
Tip 2: make sure your GPU is set to maximum performance, else it tends to downthrottle and stay at low transfer, destroying FPS
Tip 3: lowering character limit can go a long way to improving your FPS ingame. I have a capable system, and I had problems when the character limit wasn’t capped. I use high instead of highest though, which is only a minimal loss in details. I had game crashes on tequatl and TT, on triple zerg fights in t1 servers and in rare cases on daily world bosses. Which are the most extreme loads ingame. Updates have relieved some of these problems.

I play most classes, except revenant and engineer, I do have both a revenant(herald) and an engineer (scrapper)

I’ll be honest, I die regularly as well, especially in open world running with my dungeon/raid sets and being ganged tends to be fatal. I can save myself 9 out of 10 times, but I tend to fall back on my WvW characters if I really want to be indestructible

I do however play most classes: so I’ll provide some tips:

1 condi cleanses/ stunbreakers can be usefull
2 Having toughness is no problem when roaming PvE land especially not when alone.
3 Defensive builds tend to help a lot in staying alive.
4 ranging can help a lot
5 pet’s /clones/ minions /elementals/ summoning suff (pet whistle or fire elemental powder) can be very usefull.
6 if you have acces to stealth use it if you find stuff hard to run through.
7 swiftness helps moving around. It can also get you OOC in case you get tagged.
8 Having heavy armor is nice, but you can often make very potent builds using different trinkets (swapping 2 berserker trinkets for knights trinkets can go a long way to staying alive.)
9 condi builds tend to allow a bit of distance well in all cases except revenant.
10 Use your heals and your dodges, but do not waste them,
11 Use food when running power builds dungeon utility potionssometimes are very potent. (Undead slaying in Orr), but also in fractals these utility potions are nice, not only for the +10% dmg but also for the -10% dmg
12 There is plenty of dmg reducing food

BUT:
In dungeon and fractals (not to mention raids) make sure you run (GLASS) meta, you might draw aggro if you do not abide by this simple rule. Especiall in EXP or speed groups

As for classes
I prefer:
- Necro, warrior, guardian and ranger as they seem the most most tanky classes even on zerk armor
but:
- PU mesmer and thieves (engineer) have acces to stealth they can get to things relativelly unseen on the other hand they tend to be squishy classes
- Elementalist with a fire/water/tempest (more dmg oriented) or water/arcane/tempest (heal oriented) trait line can be extremely durable, even though they can be really squishy.

Remember there are other sets of armor the berserker and viper’s….

Hmm, trying to do all content without willing to adapt…

-Unacceptable….-

Making builds and imporvising so you can do what needs to be done without getting killed all the time, due to inabilities to cope with game mechanics, seems like the way how to play this game. If you need to kill a 20 Million HP enemy in a set time you will need your full DPS build with matching rotation, but when you are running in the world facing 10k HP enemies I think that’s mostly overkill… So change build and traits for running / harvesting /survival if needed and learn how to cope with content not being DPS meta only.

I run a PS condi warrior as main. I drop the torch and take a warhorn when running, speccing for warhorn trait and thus condi removal on warhorn., I replace the banners with shake it off and balanced stance and I’m able to run anywhere with only minor hindrance. I can replace either the weapon for a slight boosted effectiveness in combat or use banners when I think I see a champion somewhere.

Just this minor adapting leaves me in full control.

for cripple/chill condi removal
for immobilize stunbreak, for speed swiftness and
for cc’s acces to stability…

Done. Oh and you’ve got dodges as well.. almost forgot….

same for me.

I talked to the grawl before I did the heart. I need 2 more achievemennts
1 is disabled and 1 is unreachable, both making me unable to progress

I want glacial gloves for my heal ele

Well ifthis leads to more decent armor sets I’m very much for it…

I’ve seen ppl stating the following against:

• Cause Outfits can be used on all 3 the character weight classes developmet time is reduced by 67% (only need to make 1 skin instead of 3)
• Then again, I’ve seen invisibe armor launched before whcih doesn’tt have any development time whatsoever (invisible shoes?)

My negative views on armors:

• Armors from different weight classes tend to be very focussed towards butt skirts, trench coats and spiky things not seeing any deviation from the basic class things….
  *some things might be used on more classes IMHO (helmet skins/ shoulder skins /gloves/boots as most of them overlay on the armors)
• transmutation charges can be costly especially after a big metachange…. Though I can farm them with a low level in cities

My positive views on armor

• you can stand out. I have 20 lvl 80’s in ARMOR, I do own a few outfits, but I only usse ’m on key farm/ low level characters.
• If ANY character gets lvl 80 I get a use plan for it (WvW/PvE/PvP/Instanced?) and a decent armor/ build and I take time to apply skins/make over kits and so on to it… It builds a feeling of attachment to the character, and If I’m not happy with it I’ll redo it.
• I recognize all of my 20 characters instantly, unlike with outfits…..Outfits are generic and lazy, and I find I tend to feel more okay with people wearing armor then outfits. The fact they took the time to look pretty & unique shows me they spend time on their characters and I generally feel this extends to their builds (mostly true)

• I’d like the merchants, BLTP and so on back at the starting area’s
• I’d like the story to start at lvl 2 again so you could level doing story instead of the you need to be lvl 10 to start story, which is frankly a problem as ppl tend to use their level 80 boosts now and get a totally wrong view of the game, on the other side the F2P’s tend to move away from the game before level 10 in some cases. Then again this is less important
• I’d like more attention to the written off dungeons. It’s good content and yes it can be abused and solo-ed, duo-ed and trio-ed. But we can play how we want can we? Fix condition usage in dungeon pls.
• I’d like an ingame movie theather with all movie bits ingame you’ve unlcoked so we can view the storyline (including LS S1 bits.) instead of the Ella Makkay short.

But I’m pretty happy as is, but these things would improve my experience as a whole.

• I’d prefer new content, a new expansion and the return of Queens jubilee event, Dragonbash, and the return of the remaining zephyrites in Labyrinthine Cliffs….

This content can be fitted in between LS S3 (and on) updates and keep the game healthy during so called “content breaks” also know as “content voids” and “just login for the laurel time”…

Minor effort could be used to refresh content and keep it enjoyable, but since Halloween and last Wintersday only saw some weapon skins and Gems Store items released:

I REALLY WONDER WHY WE STILL LOG IN AT TIMES!

But I’d say we are still okay, making the game water down will mean less players which will water the game down more…….

Mystic forge stones
Mystic Binding agens
Mystic crystals
Philosopher stones
Tomes of knowledge
Writs of experience
Elonian wine
Doubloons

And aside from it I’d love a keyring and a black lion goods dispenser…
Keyring for all keys

black lion goods dispenser for buffs, trading posts and so on.

afrocrusade.4253:

Yes but Mark of Horror didn’t need to get trashcanned, considering it was necros ONLY major damage source.

corrected it.

why axe? why would you want to use axe in the first place…? For melee you have dagger’s and GS, and for far away you use staff for the 1200 range…. Axe is margianlly usefull if you are only fighting single targets and dare not to close…. I have used it sometimes in WVW standoff builds on zerker necro with wells. problem is if you get pressured and get 2 or more melee attackers to fight you, you die.

Even if it would be brought from the dead it would still only be a minion…

My 3 necro’s will come and be buried alongside your’s

This story holds valid for quite a few other proffesions as well, and tbh, most skills in the utility segement would easily be more powerfull then some proffesions elites. As such making slot 0 equippable by both elite and utility skills would be a good way to adress the uselessness of most lolz @ “gamechanging” -not so- elite skills and provide gw2 with some new options.

I’ve been looking into effects of skills now being useless or problematic in the case of limited boonstacks….

I was thinking:

Stack now nolonger stacking to 5 instead of 9

This holds valid for protection, vigor,retaliation,resistance,regeneration and some other as well but more skills as wells, symbols and other AOE stacking boons
(Symbols,yes all guardian symbols proccing more the 5 times have been nerfed.)…
Timewarp capable of pulsing 11 times has now only 5 valid pulses…. the previous 6 will be 1 second to the next pulse, not the boon duration modified amount. this is also th reason you were limited in the quicknessin timewarp before If i’m right. cause the skill procced a couple of times. and before the 1st 2-3 stacks ran out before the last were given, but now you actually have some stacks overwritten.

I do not think this boonstack nerf was well executed by arenanet.

At least make sure we can get the full benefit from skills by lowering the amount of procs to 5 and raise the associated durations to make sure we keep the originally intended duration and not the now nerfed variant.

With regard to the elementalist SAND SQUAL: 2 seconds
duration on boons warhorn skill (Not affected by boon duration)… and asociated Trait: Imbued Melodies and boon duration when using warhorn and use sand squall below x% health…

Does this 2 seconds to every skill add a boonstack?? if so should use of the skill and trait be banned from play due to possible lowering duration of all duration stackable boons? Cause as I see it it could add 2*2 sec duarion in some cases overwriting mostly longer durations from boons….

Thank you.

A PVE/Dungeons/Raids player

corrected for bad reading and boon type limitations.

Esquilax.3491:

Wow glad I don’t own a Druid that I enjoy playing who has a full set of ascended gear qithout healing power stat.

Patch drops > forced to reroll all gear just to stay effective? That might hurt.

Still owna basic zerker ranger. Only use it for fractals anywayz, giving GotL via glyphs. and spotter, for max dmg, 1 spirit…

I also own a trapper ranger, whcih will not be healing until tyhere is a usefull healing stat combo anyways for condiution builds a at this time all combo’s are LOLz in regard to healing AND condition dmg. p[[robably as they would wreck PvP and WvW
condi and healer with some expertise and precision? Could like that.

1st Interestingly enough I missed1 thing in all cries for the effects of nerfed Signet of Inspiration (SoI). with a possible dual chrono:

So: The tank changes and will be full commanders (~97% boon duration with food and sig of concentration), and then the second? (S)he cannot run the same build…. because the TOUGHNESS WOUD BE THE SAME!

So you’ll lose some boon duration to replace a trinket (or use 1 minstrel) otherwise you could bring 1 commander and one partial commander and a revenant…. but you’ll lose a dps slot….

in all cases it’s not going to be a real problem if rev’s duartion get’s nerfed from 50 to 40 or even 33, but it will no longer return anywhere (in raids) when its 25 or less, it would be over. also these negative sentiments will desttroy the rev place in raids…… at least for a while while ppl try to figure out what now.

2nd It’s unfortunate duration will be nerfed on SoI but I can imagine the consequences in WvW, unfortunately enough WvW allways used PvE mechanics opposed to PvP where everything should be fair game and balanced;

And maybe WvW, being a MultiPvP SHOULD JUST SWAP TO PVP MECHANICS,

So this will mean: refunding the infusions, going back to Exotics or thee PvP build panel unlocking all removed stat options for WvW only and recreate the state this gamemode was originally build for. Incorporating the same strict mechanics and balance wish as found in normal PvP. Not in WvW: no asncededs, no infusions, no misuse of foods…. : Balance attained.

Cause again for the sake for balance of a PvP mode PvE is getting nerfed.

So maybe a split is in order here. A full split of all 3 game modes. Cause balance is different in all 3 game modes. And balance cannot be made until this is understood.

Other POSIBLE SOLUTION for SoI: Buff boonstrips/corruption/smites. make these corruption options corrupt 50% more boons, with comparable durations. so if a zerg has a HUGE boonload just insta corrup everything with a couple of wells. or just improve the amount of targets on said corrupts. make them Aoe or convert on 10 targets respectively….. could work really well for necro scepter auto, aoe 180 range corrupt 3 targets. it would really purify the meta by corrupting it. (<- I like that)

This would also buff necro if you were to destroy Epidemic when on a nerfing spree anyhow. to correct for PvE: just implement more boons in the game for enemies.

I think this would would be 2 good things to consider.

Oh and as for Druid, I do not care. Druid is only there for GotL so as BUFFER not to be healer.

GotL =for goodcomps, Healing = badcomps, Druid as a Healer is overrated. And it needed to be buffed to prove my point (MAGI HEALERS ARE NORMAL! That’s max healing power anyways, and STILL THEY SUCKED!) This clearly shows how bad it was. (And how badcomps need to be buffed to achieve priviously set goals)

This also means berserker druids will be STAY full buffers now, again not at a loss of DPS… Heals can be done easily by considering a guardian spreading virtue of resolve or a fire/water/tempest. (staff fire water tempest will be able to apply Soothing mists, heal on swap and more… at a very low cost to DPS if ppl do not go down. aalso water will heal around the target instead of just only the line beam….)

Oh and as a late and probably useless afterthought, Revenant

I use my revenant for Mule duty anyways, so I do not give a **** if it is nerfed to death. My main problem with revenant will be NO ranged weapon for condition, and no underwater skills with 3 of 5 legends leaving the proffession broke and ill equipped since launch of HoT
No amount of tinkering can repair the mess it is, untill base weaponry AND legends are fixed to allow it to be a fullfledged character instead of the beta proffesion it is now. As such I do not care if it is removed from the game altogether as an alternative option..

TL; DR
1 Mirror comp has basic flaw, 2 tanks will not work. (remplace 1 commander trinket by mistrel np)
2 PvE, PvP and WvW balance should have own balance. Yes old remakr, about 4 yrs…
3 Soi Nerf could be achieved by more boonstripping/corrupting, buffing condi necro, condi’s in WvW are useless ayways unl;ess 1 vs1 or few vs few.
4 LoL at more healing based upon stats for Druid CA, druids are there for buffs not for healing for healing ele’s were better. Guess somone read some old posts with balance suggestions for heals and no is going to try out healing rebalancing ~ 2 years afterthe questions and suggestions were placed.
5 Don’t care about broken Revenant anyways, still no underwater legends ranged condi weapon and other fail oversights.

I chose the priory mostly because of 2, correction 3 things:

1 Priory working to beat dragons, vs consortium only interested in making money, remember southsun cove where consortium build a leisure island between hostile animals?

2 I hate characters calling me Bookah. SO I tend to refuse dealing with “non-bookahs”…

3 snake oil might be extremely nice, but I prefer to sponsor a group whcih could answer my questions regarding dragons if I have them over a possible inquest non-bookah.