Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

Phadde.7362:

I was thinking of bringing up the argument about having the day/night cycle match the actual, IRL one.

But now that I think about it, I probably just want the night in GW2 to be darker, indeed; It felt like the night wasn’t immersing and I didn’t care if it was night or day – But that’s probably simply because the night barely differentiate from the day, aesthetically.

Oh, and the skybox etc. is absolutely gorgeous. Don’t mess with that too much… Guess this whole matter would be less of an issue if the camera didn’t face towards the ground all the time, so that the sky would take up a bigger part of your FoV.

What part of our planet should you use to judge day/night? Or are you suggesting everyone get their own day/night cycle? I wouldn’t want it to be synced, it’ll always be night when I played.

Beldin.5498:

That is one of the worst ideas ever .. since then people who work would only be able to play in the night all the time besides maybe at weekends.

Agreed! Which is why I quickly abandoned that though. It’s entirely enough to make the night dark.

Maybe you load into Lions Arch? Suppose it’s a matter of the amount of characters in that area, who (i.e.) probably has an immense amount of polygons, relatively speaking.

Maybe you’ve a full, or poor harddrive? An SSD has a dramatic effect on loading screens.

What runes you should use is not really dependent on what armor you equip it on, but much rather what kind of build you use and if you want your character to be more defensive, offensive, supportive and so on…

Maybe you could give some examples of what you want from your profession?

There are actually Weapon Vendors near the starting area (A sword as an icon on the minimap)

But those only sell basic-quality weapons (white), and you can get both cheaper and better weapons from the Trading Post.

Khisanth.2948:

There should have been a warning but it would have looked like the one in my screenshot.

Should still be an additional warning on a pop-up window, imo. This can mess things up really badly.

Melkor.6591:

It like a legendary or any other item you select stat. Soulbound on use(if you had read the item descruption you would have see that). Taking your stat is like your are using it. Using the splitter will work as long you got the white leather strap

I didn’t know that. There should be a warning, such as “This will soulbound [item]”, and even then it’s not really pedagogical.

FWI, unlike most other popular MMOs, there’s no real need for higher-tier items after Exotic. In comparison, there’s a much larger emphasis on playing well, rather than having better attributes. Ascended provides a small boost to your attributes and are supposed to be a long term goal, for those interested.

Ascended quality items is never needed in any part of the game, except for in Fractals of the Mists (but not for the attributes per say)

The purpose of Legendarys are simply to make your character look awesome, although they are on par with Ascended weapons when it purely comes to attributes. They are a passion project and it takes about ~200 hours to acquire any one of them (that estimated number is a good few months old though)

Seems like a lot of people are troubled by the downsides of Open World content.

Sounds reasonable to offer an instanced version of sorts as well, doesn’kitten As long as it doesn’t takes away from the OW-version.

Darkobra.6439:

If you think people are actually enjoying open raid content, take ALL the rewards away from all of them.

See how many people do it for enjoyment then.

It’s an MMORPG. In addition to the fun content, there need to be a good reward for doing it. The journey isn’t as enjoyable if there’s no goal – especially if the game is designed around that very notion.

Just purchase Berserker-gear, and spend your Karma on defensive Soldiers-gear (Zerker isn’t available for Karma) and equip defensively/offensively by need.

Since Soldiers gear is also available as Trinkets (6 slots), you don’t have to worry so much about potential issues with Runes.

NateDogg.7892:

yeah I’m talking Christmas 2012, I was just starting to look at FotM at that time.

Was playing an elementalist at that time, anything I should know specific to them?

Pffff….. Attunements-CD is lower. If you have 30 in Arcane, it’s still the same for you. Lightning Whip has a longer range.
You might want to check out an up to date build. There’s mostly been a lot of tweaks to the profession, nothing really major.

NornBearPig.9814:

Roll a Guardian and spec dps. If someone questions it tell them to **** off.

Accurate!

If you want the best ranged dps, the Grenade Engineer is at your service.
Generally used a relatively simple build, without much support.

rogerwilko.6895:

- FT (flamethrower) is just a “cool” toy. While alone, you can play with it, but in a dungeon party / pvp / WvW / something serious, it’s not recommended because the damage output is much too low.

Actually, if you’re simply running in PUGs, or with fairly casual Guildmembers, the FT/EG Build is the most successful one for me so far. I also main a Warrior, an Elementalist and a Guardian, but the amazing support that the build provides is really good at keeping the run smooth.

I think that the community in general are a bit blinded by a current DPS output, rather than the overall success of a dungeon-run. The difference between a boring (meta) Grenade-build and a FT dps is fair, if one consider that whenever someone is downed in your party, your overall DPS will shrink far more. And, you’ll provide your partymembers with a lot of breathing-room which allows them to focus less on their defense. And, it’s an absolutely amazing build to play, and provides a stress-free environment.

However, if you run higher fractals, or with guildies that knows what they’re doing, I generally bring something else.

… And I think the Engineer is very likely to be the hardest profession to master. There are of course easy builds that are easy to master, but the profession as a whole isn’t. (I’ve played the Elementalist for about 2 years now, so I’m a bit biased when it comes to the difficulty of the Ele)

Dodosaur.6324:

Tell me more! I actually really like the concept of an Engineer, but as I’ve stated many times previously, I prefer melee (in my opinion the semi-action system in Guild Wars 2 is great, but then they had to go and make ranged targeted). Which kits do you use? What combos?

The closest the Engineer comes to Melee is continuously placing bombs at peoples feet and melting them with a Flamethrower.
Sure, there is a toolkit where you can whack people with a wrench and a crowbar, and you can Rocket-Kick and Rocket-Punch people (PBR), but you rarely use those.

Very interesting profession though. But you might miss out on that kinetic feel, like smacking someone with a (lightning)hammer, or even a Dragons Claw.

Hayashi.3416:

Actually there isn’t one in PvE. The closest to doing this is the Fire Elemental…

Well, you’re not going to have a jolly good time wielding D/D throughout the entire Harpy Fractal, i.e.

I think most people prefer it nowadays.
And people are used to these amounts of levels.

Rawkan.3749:

Phadde.7362:

Achivements have been improved.

Temporary achievements during 2 week zerg events is hardly an improvement.

Well, if he means X-Mas 2012, then the big updates to achievements must’ve been after that, surely.

Antalore.4206:

Did you use the flamethrower? Which build was the one you most liked?
Thanks for the help.
Glad to see such a great community over here ^^

’course I did!
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/72009-a-comprehensive-look-at-the-flamethrower-and-elixir-gun/
Somewhat outdated now though.

Profession pick is really subjective. It’s hard to give you advice with so little info of what you like.

The Warrior is the easiest profession. It’s very straight forward.
Some other professions that I found easy to get into is the Ranger, Guardian and Necromancer.

The “Goal” of this game is quite blurry… you have a bunch of options, but they are not as clear as in other mmos (i.e. grinding, gear-treadmill -> Raids…).

Once you reach level 80, you quite quickly get full Exotic-gear. After that, one usually progress their character aesthetically. This is, atleast for me, the main goal.
Much more fulfilling than getting a higher number on your attributes.

Although I’m happy with the current items that my characters have, there is always that item that would be really awesome to have.

What makes this game for me, is the Dungeons (and FotM), with the occasional sPvP. And ofcourse the amazing game design… I’m always having a blast when I play, due to how I’ve chosen to build my characters.

Then you may progress towards Ascended-gear, which is hardly needed to do anything well, but there’s a boost to your attributes. There are also Ascended Weapons which takes a godforsaken amount of time to get. Then there is the “grind” for a Legendary-weapon (few 100s of hours) which is pretty much generally the most awesome items in the game.

Elrey.5472:

/facepalm That one don’t have skelks and the entrance is not in a pool of water, the entrance is a gong…

Just a wild guess. The OP claimed that he might not have remembered it properly.

Antalore.4206:

Engineer does sound nice although i find him a little bit weak at pvp.
And i find boring uninteresting attacks, maybe i’m expecting too much from mmo’s xD
the game itself is awesome, i just need to choose a profession.
Thank you very much for the help!

The Engineer is a very complex profession. All of these problems are easily fixed with a fitting build. I used to play a Grenade-engineer, which was the dullest thing imaginable. Then I tried something else, which is very challenging, rewarding and extremely fun to play.

I Think Wooden Potatoes did a video for people in your situation… only that it was a few months ago =S

Suppose you mean Christmas 2012?

An immense amount of tweaks has been made.

You now gain ~2 gold for completing a dungeon path (depends on how long it is. Also affects FotM).

PvP has a Spectator mode. Glory is soon to be replaced by Gold.

Fractals of the Mists has had levels added, and been overall tweaked (I think FotM was released slightly before you quitted).

Achivements have been improved.

. . . This is very difficult to recall. . .

What kind of Champion?

If it was a Hylek, it might be http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tears_of_Itlaocol

Unless you’re in a really hardcore group, no1 should rely on you as a guardian. Everyone carries their own weight, with the occasional party-wide buff etc.

Not sure why you are even considering rolling a Warrior, if you find them boring. Perhaps you like big, meaty weapons and tough armor?

Dodosaur.6324:

I don’t really like the “general” description of it (more so because I dislike range than anything), I still don’t think anything can come quite as close for me to playing D/D in terms of how fun it is.

You’re basically always in Melee while wielding daggers.

There are still certain parts in the game that forces every profession to wield a ranged weapon, but they are few and far between.

Taygus.4571:

Try an engineer or necromancer. They seem to be the most fun to play.

INSANELY subjective. Necromancer is what I consider to be the least fun profession, after Ranger.

It’s hard to help you. So far you’ve pretty much said that you like cool animations. Based on that, I’d say the Elementalist wielding daggers, but that’s however a very poor reason on its own to pick a profession.
Your initial impression of a Profession might not be just to what makes the profession fun to play.

This might be quite a bit overwhelming. All in all, pick the profession that you enjoy playing the most. No matter what build you choose to use @ level 80, the things that made you pick the profession will still be there. (Unless you manage to pick a really boring build, but you’ll figure that out)

You should pick a Profession to main based on how fun it is to play. I myself love the idea of the Necromancer, but I can’t bare to play it because it’s so dumb-down compared to the Elementalist (this is my take on what you mean by “concept”). You’re going to be in combat most of the time, rather than looking at the cool effects that appear when a Thief dodges. Enjoyment comes first.

In GW2, each profession can focus on general support or damage (or a mixture of many things). The difference is how they achieve those things.

An Elementalist might play Support by utilizing different healing/cleanse skills & Traits; Building around Auras that gives more damage, defense, utility (etc.), and is shared with everyone in the Party; Building a bit more Tanky and try to maintain aggro while supporting allies.

A Theif might do this by Stealthing allies to make it possible to skip certain parts in a Dungeon; Building around Venoms that are shared with everyone in the Party that heals upon hit and applies all nasty things to the victim; Maybe blinding foes so that their attacks miss partymembers.

The Thief and the Elementalist plays quite differently in GW2. While the Elementalist is like playing a fairly advanced and dynamic Piano Sonata that lasts for about a ½ minute, and utilizing about 35 different skills and active traits to do a ton of stuff, puzzling together Combo Fields and Finishers and generally feel really good about it and rewarded…

… The Thief has a rather minimalist design. You might continually stab people in the back with your needles, or spam the Sword auto-attack. That part isn’t all that interesting. However, you’re generally very fragile, so you have to constantly look at animations and be ready to avoid being hit by dodging, evading, teleporting or blinding.

If you like the Elementalist, it’s a ton of fun and gets progressively more complex the more you learn. The learning curve is said to be steep, but the fact is, you’ll learn everything you need while you level up.

Initial Dagger/Dagger rotation

If you wheren’t aware already, the D/D have a skill rotation that’s insanely well-used.

Air Attunement:
(3:Shocking Aura)
4:Ride the Lightning
5:Updraft

The Foe is now knocked back by Updraft, while you rolled backwards. Now you close the gap with Burning Rush (3) that explodes at the end for a great deal of damage and leaves a Fire Field behind.

Fire Attunement:
3:Burning Rush (Fire Field)
4:Ring of Fire (Fire Field)
(If you manage to get in 5:Fire Grab while the foe is burning, do so)

You’re now surrounded by the 2 Fire Fields that you’ve created. Now you need to do a Blast Finisher, which grants you Might for more damage.

Earth Attunement:
4: Earthquake (Blast Finisher)

If you’ve the Utility Skill “Arcane Wave”, use that in the Fire Fields.

(If you’ve the Trait called Evasive Arcana (which you should pick as soon as you hit level 60) from the Arcane-Traitline, you would be able to dodge while in Earth Attunement and create an additional Blast Finisher.)

After this rotation (which takes a bit of practice, but not a lot) a lot is on Cooldown. The Auto Attack in Air Attunement is the strongest, followed by the one in Fire (if you’re close to your target).

Trait-wise, Arcana is usually a wonderful line to have points in, since it reduces the cooldown of your attunements. If you’ve trouble surviving, pick defensive traits, such as III in Arcane, or spend your traitpoints in Water or Earth, which passively gives you defensive stats.

I admire your passion and dedication.

I’ve played Elementalist since the first Beta. If you do bad damage while leveling, you probably have the wrong gear. If you’ve issues surviving, you definitively have the wrong build.

You can quite easily build an Elementalist to be close to invincible. When you’ve learned the profession almost entirely, you can do that with a Zerker-build. The Elementalist gets their survivability from traits and skills, many which aren’t available in lower levels.

Meta-game? That’s actually for Min/Maxers. Unless you’re in a hardcore-speedclear group (which most of the vocal min/maxers naively believes that everyone should/is in) the “Meta” matter not. If you’re not playing with Hardcore people, you can easily play any profession and outplay your whole group (i.e. making the run smooth for everyone)

My Elementalist is always the better choice when doing dungeons when compared to the Warrior. The thing is that the elementalist has a steep learning-curve, while the Warrior is the overall easiest profession to play.

It sounds like the Elementalist is a perfect pick for you. What level is it?

Oh, and you never have to wield anything except D/D. But perhaps you’d be better off with a staff on >some< FotM Bosses (but just the bosses, and just a few of those).

What do you want to do in the game? PvP, Dungeons, WvW?

I’d say that you should pick whatever profession you feel fit your playstyle. Nothings nerfed into the ground. However, Rangers and Necros seems to need some further iteration.

Zerker, and especially Warrior is not the only game in town. If you want to speedclear things in a hardcore manner, you might want to have a full set of zerker (Unless you’re doing higher fractals).

You never have to play a specific build or profession to be really good at the game. However, there are still bad builds out there. If you want to be sure, pick a good build from GW2Guru i.e. and maybe personalize it a bit.

If you just zerg around, your effectiveness is not really all that important. You’ll be fine.

If I came back after a break, I’d just do what I always have done: Play dungeons with guildies, play a bit of sPvP, explore the new fractal levels which I bet you missed out on.

In case you play dungeons:
There will always be min/max kittens around that only thinks in a hardcore environment with a hardcore team. If you want to have successful dungeon runs, I’ve found out that it’s actually better to have something a bit more defensive and support-oriented, rather that almost full our Zerk. Although that depends on who you play with. Bottom line: You can play pretty much whatever you want.

You do not need Ascended gear to do anything really well. The progress to Ascended trinkets is fairly enjoyable. Ascended weapons is another story and frankly, not so many people have them. Ascended armor is very rarely used.

Your 6th skill slot is a healing skill. You can dodge attacks with [V] (or maybe another keybind)

Attack one mob at a time. Make sure they’re not above your level.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Yes.

But the Thief excel at all points.

Ryze.2891:

reikken.4961:

thief fits all of those

and thief has game best mobility

Im sorry but dont warriors have the best mobility? if we just talk pure mobility i think its warrior

If we talk pure Swiftness-sustain, the Warrior wins.
If we talk overall mobility… You kidding?

Weapon choice is subjective. Find a nice build that you’d like to use.

Sounds like I should focus on a build with great movement and escapability… I tend to ignore the advice you just gave because I often feel like I’m just running around and unable to find a good fight, while still trying to score points for the team. Especially of LotFF.

I play as an Elementalist and an Engineer.

On my Elementalist I have about 29 skills that I can use and on my Engi I have about 23. Then there’s a ton of stuff to keep track of from the Traits, and Combos, sigils etc.
It’s bloody engaging, and the most fun I’ve had playing PvE content in any MMO before.

I’ve played many MMOs before, but I’ve never had so many options during combat as I do in this game while playing these profession. In the other MMOs I usually had about ~25 skills, but I only really used ~8 of them as I do in this game.

Minimalism in action; Less is more.

Not from the dyes, per say.

Torches, Ascalonian Catacombs-weapons, Legendary weapons, Fractal Capacitors, Sylvari Cultural Armor and Sylvari during the night, Citadel of Flame-items, many Foci, Wintersday weapons, Dwayna’s Embrace (back item). . .

Thief. . . And Thief.

None of the remaining does any of those as well. You’ve described the Thief as a profession.

Let her look at the aesthetic of each profession. Seems like a good idea.
Guardian is easy and has a ton of free defense. Necromancer is tough and fairly straight forward, and so is a Ranger aswell.

Elementalist is very hard to master. Glad you like it, but if you want to play somewhat effectively, there’s a lot to learn. Combo-rotations on staff, the long initial skill rotation on Dual Dagger etc.

Warrior is blunt, fun, has meaty combat, lots of movement-abilities that allows you to run really fast constantly, rush into battle, continually charge foes and so on. I’d recommend that one. None of the other professions seems to fit your description as well as the Warrior does.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gallery_of_foci

^List of all Foci in the game.

The reason why I time and again have tried to get into sPvP and always ends up disappointed is because it seems like you always end up in outnumbered fights @ the capture points.

It feels like it’s entirely a matter of running between points and outnumbering the others, and getting slaughtered if the opposite occurs.

This is not fun… I thought this game would offer fair, head to head pvp combat, which where to be decided by how well you play your profession.

Vayne.8563:

I really like this idea. My only question will be this…

Will the people who want this, knowing an instance is coming if they just wait, not play the content in the world and therefore end up in the situation I outlined above.

This dividing of the playerbase thing isn’t just my concern, it’s a concern Anet themselves have expressed before…in more than one comment.

Isn’t there a fairly big problem with overflows? It feels to me like these Open World encounters, especially when recently opened, have more than enough attraction to make this almost a non-issue. One would think that people still want to experience the original and fresh versions of these encounters, and get the loot, even if they might think they will prefer a (possibly) upcoming structured version.

Vayne.8563:

I’m against instanced content too. It leads to elitism. It leads to problems.

You must have seen the threads of people who only want zerkers, only want this build only what that build.

This game was designed so people could play different builds. Some types of players, rangers, necros, engies, have trouble getting invited to groups. But in open world content, they can play what they want and still participate.

This is much better for me than being dictated too by the current meta exactly how I should play the game.

There are plenty of games for people to play instanced raids. I sure hope this won’t be another one of them.

If it’s offered as an alternative (If it’s a remake of a LS-encounter, it should be released after the LS has finished, to avoid separation of the playerbase) it should be a part of the Guild Missions, (maybe with a few different levels) which should eliminate this elitism fairly well, and add a big guild-feature. Then, if you you’ve issues with elitism, you can simply switch to a nicer guild.

Zeldain.5710:

Vayne.8563:

You split the playerbase and end up taking some of the people doing the open world event into the smaller raid event (because you’re not going to have an 80 man raid) and then if ten or twenty groups do this, there might not EVER be enough people to do it in the open world…and that’s a problem, because Anet wants this game to be about the open world. They’ve always said that.

But of those guilds aren’t doing the open world content anyway because it sucks, why does it matter?

It’s very reasonable to argue that adding an instanced alternative would make the Open World version suffer. The instanced version shouldn’t be released at the same time, because of this.

Instead, wouldn’t it make sense to release the instanced version (in a seprate part of the Mists so that it makes sense) a week or so after the original one has ended?

Can’t we make big bossfights like these (in particular if they’re temporary) permanent content in form of Guild Mission encounters with a set number of required/maximum players?

Why not make a separate part of the FotM for Guild Missions? Tweak Living Story encounters that are only temporary to work with, say ~12-25 guildies, and put them in that part of the FotM.

Then we can experience these awesome encounters without the Zergy feel, without overflows, without lag and AFK:ers, in a balanced fashion. And it will add a lot to the Guild-experience, and even carter to those who want these kind of big, but structured encounters.

Wouldn’t this be good? I’d certainly like it.

I have to force myself into creating anything else than a Human female – They’re easily the best imo.

But why are the body types all skinny? Sure, I guess that you’d get pretty slim fighting dozens of enemies all day long, but still… I think it’s a bit immoral.

Bazompora.2635:

at least Guild Wars 2 offers two standards for humans (except females, who belong to the straight-haired lolita type only):
diversity is the sliding scale between caveman and prepubescence.

Actually, I don’t agree at all. I think there are a huge amount of good options to choose from, and this is more subjective than one might think; I’ve always though that only one of the Female Sylvari-faces was good and that no one used any of the others – However, a few minutes ago, I stumbled upon a thread where people voted for their favorite Sylvari-faces, and it was a lot more diverse than I ever though it was. Mine wasn’t even in the 2nd place!

Amazing! I though everyone used Female 1 (& 11). That’s the only one I can settle with. . .

Glad that I was wrong.