Guild Wars 2

My Dead Characters.9517:

can it have traps and be a pvp zone? PLEASE!!!!??? i love killing people in the jumping puzzle in EB. i want more pvp jumping puzzles!

I certainly hope not. IIRC, JPs were originally designed without combat (except as a mechanic for things like dodging specific, telegraphed attacks) and that’s the way I feel they should be. Focusing on precise movement and observing the surroundings to figure out how to proceed is what makes jumping puzzles fun IMO.

THACO.7021:

I Dunno maybe we all remeber D&D or some other MMO / RPG Game where the thief/rouge keept backstabbing there Paladin/GrayGuard/BlackGuard or what knock and there just annoyed as heck that each time the Rouge/Thief guy is involved arguements tend to follow them.

This might be a reason as well I suppose (it’s been brought up in previous discussions on the same subject) although no need to look at any other game, there are plenty of examples here. For some reason the thief board seems to be the one with the most hostile tone and e.g. an engineer who’s been repeatedly told that dying to a BS chain “is just a l2p issue, noob” might well have some lingering resentment to the class either consciously on subconsciously.

I don’t feel like kicking a thief if I see one in a pug but I do feel a bit cautious (not as much as when I see a ranger but more than any of the other classes). Thieves can be good in dungeons, no doubt there, the problem is that the gameplay for thieves differ more between open world pve and dungeons than it does for any other class (I’ve got all classes at lvl80 and switch between them for dungeons depending on my mood). Especially d/d BS thieves can make me cringe, in open world pve their combo is often enough to take out an enemy or leave it damaged enough that it’s a quick kill while in dungeons a less-than-good thief will insist on doing their same rotations which only leads to subpar damage (compared to other thief builds, based on CDs and bad initiative management) and downed thieves since stealth won’t cause bosses to stop attacking and there is often a ton of AoE damage going on which will kill squishy thieves.

A well played thief is a boon to the group but a badly played thief is a bigger drag on the group than the other classes (again with the exception of rangers… bloody pet AI)

Cooking is great for the daily crafting one. I generally make omnom bars, it’s 4 steps so I usually make two full batches and 2 extras of one ingredient which I save for the next time it’s included in the daily list.

If you’re lvl80 then one easy way is to go fight young karkas. They start off with a multiple projectile attack and if you dodge towards the karka you should get multiple dodges in one go. Another way for rangers is, IIRC, to use a greatsword and just auto attack since the chain contains an evade which should also count. Going with a pet that isn’t likely to draw agro, e.g. devourer is better than bear, is also a good idea.

William Fairfield.1428:

We are currently looking into the rewards for events like this. I will post more information on this as it becomes available. Risk vs Reward is most certainly something we are thinking about.

Could have fooled me considering how the rewards from fractals are handled. Do a higher fractal than your current level and it’s all the risk and none of the rewards.

I’d also guess this change is due to pvp rather than pve, if for no other reason than Anet seems to ignore pve in favour of pvp whenever some balance change is implemented. That SWs were invulnerable were definitely wrong but just as Anet did with engineer grenades, mesmer might-on-shatter trait or any number of other examples it seems like they took the nerf too far. I never used SWs in pve after hitting lvl 60 but they are quite fun (although hammer was way OP in pvp and shield might have been OP in fractals, I don’t do them so can’t comment there)

Robert Hrouda.1327:

This stuff is currently patched and in game. I tested it last night on my necro and ranger, and the lupicus grubs did not spawn on either my pet or the minions.

EDIT
-Also changes were made to Alpha and his attacks.
-Jade Maw was left alone. There is some good play that happens, but the argument is 50/50. At least with other cases there was a definite need for change. I will continue to investigate/debate Jade Maw adjustments.

Just finished an Arah run with my mesmer and I can confirm that grubs still spawn on clones (specifically I saw it happen on an iBerzerker).

ANet has said that next month’s patch will be a WvW patch so hopefully we will see more incentives to do WvW then. Of course, it might also mean (for better or worse) that a lot of new people will join WvW

Regarding the daily/monthly achievement:
1. Daily used to be easiest/quickest done in WvW, now it will probably depend on what the requirements are for any given day since they’re supposed to change daily.
2. Monthlies will also change, hopefully on a rotating system as well.
3. A system is coming which will let you chose to do X things out of a list of Y alternatives.
4. There are about as many people who used to complain that WvW kills were part of the monthly as there were people complaining about fractals. The thing about the monthly (and to some part daily) achievement is to encourage players to try out various aspects of the game. I’d guess the upcoming change I mentioned in 3. is because there are now actual, useful rewards from the achievements so they are trying to make some middle ground between encouraging new things and letting people play how they want.

prayerless.9052:

why make this game more pve sentric and less pvp friendly. now i have to do a crafting daily and i don’t do crafting or pve so i guess i will be looking another game to play

They also said that the daily would rotate so it’s not going to be the same every day and soon there will be a system that lets you chose X number of things to do from a list of Y achievements, which should make it easier to get in WvW (oh, and before this patch WvW was the easiest way to get the daily done)

Azjenco.9425:

Lol, people are being referred to this thread, even though it has no answer to the issue. :P

It’s easier to ignore just one thread

I’d guess it will be the 29th for EU, based on previous examples. Keeping an eye on the forums (or possibly Twitter) is probably your best bet but I wouldn’t plan on staying up for it.

This might be fun although I wonder if this thread will be as active as previous weeks if AR and Arbor might be more on the French part of the forums. Welcome to Judge as well, I’ve seen several of your videos (thanks to you Osicat) and you seem to be a great guild!

I don’t mind pvp in the WvW JPs but I agree that badges should be more common drops from other activities as well (and perhaps removed from the JPs entirely), making those going for their legendary participate to their server rather than just take up slots on the map. Hopefully this is something that will be addressed in the patch on the 28th-

The forum message is for the Wintersday merchant, the one you trade ugly gifts with.

Has there been any word from Anet on the change or if it’s an oversight from their part? I can see how it might be something unintended but at the same time it provides a decent initiative to use them, something that makes cooking good and “a tier above the other crafting skills” as it was called back around launch.

Tough call between rangers and engineers. Engineers have better AoE for e.g. Orr farming and while not great in a dungeon they at least won’t be a hinder due to horrible pet AI from a pet that can’t be put away long term. Rangers can still have better damage in my experience though and they fare better in WvW in everything except certain specific siege situations (both classes have access to 1500 range attacks).

Alilinke.7690:

This is 100% false. It’s extremely easy for me to land my full meteor shower on Lupi with my 15 sec chill. I always run Arah with a staff.

The damage/offensive skills aren’t the point. I agree that it’s false, someone’s not a bad ele for bringing something other than a focus to this fight but focus has a definite place here due to Air4 being a 6sec block of projectiles with a 30sec CD. The block really comes in handy in phase 2. Staff also has its use for support here though, e.g. Water5 (and 3) can do a lot to help someone caught in the poison bubble in phase 3 stay alive.

I’d say if you’re in a group with problems timing dodges and such, then focus is better. If your group can dodge in phase 2 then you can make do with a staff.

I hope necros get it, they’re the second slowest class and badly in need of some loving. Engineers would also make sense but if it’s only one other class that gets a portal like skill, necros get my vote

What about making AoE have a small delay before it starts doing damage, similar to most mob AoEs? It would mean bigger focus on tactics for both the caster and the target, the caster need to plan more on where to use the AoE and try to predict the target’s movements while the target needs to pay more attention to his/her surroundings. For PvE I don’t think AoE is a big problem, almost all melee attacks hit more than one enemy anyway.

I do however think this might be a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, there are tons of threads complaining about single target damage attacks being too high (backstab, killshot, etc) but I’d never seen anyone complain about AoEs. One big reason us probably that there are enough self healing available that dealing higher (X) damage to one target can kill it or make self healing only give back a bit but doing lower (0,75X) to multiple enemies will only mean they can heal back up from it.

arenta.2953:

w8 you cant revive in PvE?!!?!

Yes you can. The “no rez in combat” refers only to not being able to respawn at a waypoint if someone in the party is in combat. (I hope they limit this to dungeons or e.g. Dragon fights will always be done without a group)

Winds.3087:

Runcore.5107:

I think that some Shadow gate on thief make sense thematically. This teleport should have all classes and not only some like necro or engineer. If you speak about absurd portal it is engineer portal.

Pocket asura gate is not absurd, and they could add it with race-specific turret meshes too.

There are even pocket asura gates in the lore already, Destiny’s Edge use one in the second book (I think it was developed by Snaff).

Yeah, I meant that’s the way I think it ought to be handled Unfortunately, it would seem the devs aren’t of the same opinion.

Would seem so. A bad implementation IMO, you should get the rewards and take the risks of the fractal level you’re doing.

At level 40? No. At level 80? Doubtful. Several dungeons prevent soloing due to their mechanic (e.g. Citadel of Flame path 1 requires 4 people to stand at specific locations so the 5th can go through a door that then opens and destroy a switch which jams the door open for the rest). Besides that, I’d say mesmers lack the survivability needed, so far the only class I’ve seen being able to solo a path is warrior and even then it’s enough of a feat that the the dungeon designer posted in the thread and congratulated the player on his skills.

Because fractal weapons are only skins while the rings actually are needed for progression?

They said they would take their time in evaluating this, I really hope they do and come to the conclusion that their initial findings on AoE being to strong is wrong. For PvE it doesn’t really matter since you can easily group enemies together (guardians even have a specific skill for it) and most melee attacks (except daggers) can hit more than one enemy if they’re right in front of you. For PvP (both sPvP and WvW) being able to burst is better than just doing a smaller amount of damage to a group, even if the total damage done is higher – there are just so many ways to heal that a single target skill with higher damage will outperform AoE with lower individual but higher cumulative damage in all but a few, very rare situations.

Even if it’s only attacks with a red circle that are affected, it would mean a huge imbalance between professions. Eles, for example, can’t switch weapon in combat and while it’s normally fine due to the attunement system, a nerf to AoEs would however mean they will be even more forced to stick with d/d since bot staff and scepter rely extremely heavily on AoEs – something that is completely contradictory to their statement of wanting to make more builds viable for every class.

Nerfing things to bring them in line isn’t the way to go (unless it’s clearly OP), bringing the other options up to par is the better way to do it.

They also said they would adjust some dungeon content to take this into consideration, I would guess this includes CoF p2.

Are there any plans to split skills further between pvp and pve to compensate for the vastly different styles of combat, enemy types, and skills needed in the two game types?

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is nothing currently wrong with skipping if that is what the group wants to do. That said, I doubt that ANet intended skipping to be used to complete dungeon paths. However, they have neither made a statement against the practice nor revised dungeon mechanics to discourage/prevent skipping or encourage/enforce fighting everything. Until and unless they do, the practice is legit.
.

They have actually given a response on the matter of skipping. If I remember correctly it was along the lines of them not going to change or add mechanics to prevent it but rather look at ways to make fighting the mobs more desirable. (Posting from my phone so can’t find the exact post but it should be on this sub-forum)

I’d say the bigger reason is that it is something purely cosmetical. Changing the skin of an item has no effect on the game mechanics, on other players or on the economy in the game nor will it make the game easier or give you an unfair advantage. If you could also transfer stats then it might be another matter but not just for the looks.

DancingPenguins.9875:

Wynne.3908:

I’m to lazy to “instruct them”. If they don’t know how to run i tell them we are fighting everything. Only when i am with a strong group (like my guild) do i feel totally comfortable running and skipping through dungeons.

I thought this is an interesting point you raised that you consider your guild group strong. Your PuG is someone else’s veteran dungeon running guildie. Don’t understand why people always put their own little tribe on a pedestal when the main difference between most players is the level of communication.

Probably due to two reasons:
1) Guild groups often have some kind of voice chat which makes it easier to function as a group.
2) Guild groups often consist of people who have done dungeons together several times before and they have learned each other’s playstyles (an example of this in games with the trinity is that healers in a raid group often learn how each of them acts and can therefore be more efficient at it with timing and avoiding overheals, same principle to some extent in GW2 as well with boons, condition removal and even condition application)

I skip like a rabbit in a three leg-race in the dungeon paths I run often (skip, not exploit), some paths I do more or less daily and have been doing so for months so it’s just not interesting to kill trash mobs for worthless loot anymore. As the official response was, the solution is to make trash more rewarding/fun to kill rather than prevent skipping.

Also remember that F3 is a daze if you’re out of endurance and your skills are on CD. Generally though, mesmers perform quite badly in the beginning since they depend more on their traits than most other classes IMO. At about lvl30 it starts picking up and when you unlock the master traits at lvl40 (and especially the every so useful Deceptive Evasion) you start being able to perform much better.

GummiBear.2756:

what biofringe said, and that does in fact makes crest useless, in fact havent seen a single crest i think go for more than 1c over vendor price in market

Crest of the soldier (rare) sells very well actually, I think it’s between 23 and 32 silver these days and it had a peak of over 40 silver in December. Some crests and orbs are actually decent budget alternatives to runes if you’re only after stats and not the specials runes give.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Fits the mesmer playstyle quite well actually.

“Title unlocked: Italian Plumber”

With no points in Acrobatics and in full berzerker gear it’s 10805 health. Using the mists for these kind of things isn’t so useful since the amount of customization you have is very bad and the amulets + jewels aren’t fully the same as the ones in PvE.

Remember that WvW bonuses also boost health so subtract that.

-For condition heavy situations (WvW and some dungeons), I recommend Sigil of Generosity if you have a good crit chance.
-Sigil of Energy is also nice for more dodging but if you’re using Mirror Images (or possibly Decoy) you might have an easy enough time getting clones for shatters anyway.
-Bloodlust is quite nice for PvE (and dungeons if you can avoid getting downed, either by stacking defensive stats or knowing how to stay alive) but in WvW it’s less useful since you need to kill a large amount of enemies/mobs before it becomes better than other options if you get downed.
-Fire is nice in WvW and to some extend in PvE for extra damage but the AoE means it’s not always good in dungeons since there are situations where you want to avoid pulling large groups.

If you use the trait fo clones on dodge, you might also be interested in Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew, might on dodge and +40% endurance refill rate.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Orrian_Truffle_and_Meat_Stew

We can always hope they’ve learned from past mistakes. RNG is ok is some cases but not in the reward system.

There is a huge difference between skipping and using exploits. Running past/avoiding mobs in order to get to boss fights is skipping, doing things like going through the wall in HotW to get more chests is an exploit.

There has already been word from the devs on this subject btw: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Will-the-new-update-stop-skipping/first#post1205684

I’m fine with skipping, my enjoyment of dungeons has roughly been: 1st time = Great fun, watch every video, listen to conversations and read chat options with NPCs. 2nd to ca 10th time = Still finding new interesting details in the maps (e.g. some murals in AC or background areas you can’t reach but still have activity in them in CoF). 10th to 20th time = This is getting kinda stale. 20th+ time = Let’s get it over with quickly.

After a while it simply turns into a grind and grinds are never fun, ergo people start looking for the most efficient way/“the path of least resistance”

I fully agree. It’s not just the legendaries but several other nice looking skins as well that suffer from the low drop rates of lodestones. Besides, anything that makes non-fotm dungeons attractive again is a good thing IMO

There is http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_forge which has all the (known) set recipes either on it or on sites with links from that page.

Bosses (and champions) have the Unshakable effect: “Gains defiant when targeted by crowd control skills. Blind is 10% effective. Weakness and vulnerability last 50% less time.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unshakable

Ross Biddle.2367:

With just signit of midnight, the prestigue, and sceptre 2 I can pretty much shut down some bosses in dungeons etc.

You know that blind only has a 10% chance to cause a blind to miss, right? It’s good but it can’t shut down bosses like it can do other mobs.

It was uncontested on Gandara (EU) about 30min ago.

I’d say the Temple of Balthazar quest chain is way too difficult now given the complete lack of players in the area. It should of course not be soloable but even when a group of 10 or so does it the morale seems to drop so fast that it just isn’t feasible to do it. Much of this seems to be due to bad NPC AI since they tend to run off and attack some insignificant enemy out of the path, thus prolonging the pain quest.

The fact that there is a 13 page long thread on this forum just for on what servers, if any, it is uncontested as well as a multitude of shorter topics on the same subject just screams ‘bad design’ to me.

Daendur.2357:

Hohotask is right! D/D thieves are OP… when they are attuned to air and use Ride the lightning to switch to heart and do heartquake they are really a pain!

If only there was an attunement for heart, then five eles could use their elites to summon Captain Planet!

Warrior probably has the easiest time but it is also IMO (having all classes at lvl80 and playing them in dungeons and wvw) the most boring one. I’d recommend elementalist, they are just as good in dungeons and at DE farming (well, better probably) but level a bit slower. It just feels like they’ve got more variety at lvl80 and while it requires a bit more attention it also keeps it from feeling stale.

As someone who plays both a d/d ele and a mesmer, here are my thoughts:

The condition removals a cantrip build d/d elementalist has are:
1. 3 cantrips (Cleansing fire removes several)
2. Healing skill (removes one if GoEH or 8 if ER)
3. Attune to water (removes 2)
4. Dagger5 in water
5. Dodge in water

This is indeed a lot but there are weaknesses. The shortest CD on a cantrip is Lightning Flash (45 sec) so if an ele burns the, they are gone for some time. ER seems to be the more common healing skill and it is an extremely efficient cleanse, it is also however a channeled skill that removes per pulse and is very distinct so it can be interrupted, if an ele burns his heal just for chill/cripple removal, he’s probably either not that good numbers 3-5 are all tied in to water and both 4 and 5 have other uses (evade and heal) which will be sacrificed if they’re used to heal – the best time to burst an ele is just as he switches out of water, same goes for applying conditions.

As you might see, keeping conditions on an ele isn’t an easy thing although it can be done (especially since this is the max and requires both 30 in water and arcane). That said, I usually don’t bother trying to catch an ele in WvW if they’re running away, it’s the most mobile class vs. the least mobile (tied for last place with necros, they have more swiftness but no blink) and while mesmers are extremely good duelists they balance it out by having problems chasing after the initial burst with blink.

The Fish.8079:

I’ve also noticed that there will only be one burning effect on a target, regardless of how many players are attacking it.

If there are 10 fire elementalists attacking the same target is only one burn ticking between all of them?

Yes. It will likely last a long time but it won’t tick for more.

I agree that it is annoying in a game where the end game gear more or less is (or at least was supposed to be) about skins that you can’t access tget the other orders’ skins, especially since there was no heads up about it when chosing an order. I don’t think you should be able to join another order but I do think you should be able to buy gear from the other factions after completing the personal story.