Guild Wars 2

i’m sorry, ele?? worst pve profession??, what game have you been playing!?

on topic: leveling a character in wvw has 2 drawbacks, 1) experience is good only if you’re with a zerg, 2) being low level means you’re harming your group because you don’t have any skills yet.

but should you ignore the above, i’d like you to know there is no “best” profession in WvW, all classes have their role, but if i had to pick, it would probably be ranger or warrior

AwwGee.5628:

try running with a focus and using the 2nd activation of the wall for a vacuum effect. Once you get familiar with it to pull mobs into 1 area, you probably won’t be using any other offhand. (that and it gives a very addictive swiftness buff)

perhaps it if had more range on the pull i could aggro 2 karkas and put a phantasm between them, but it’s range is short, and mobs in Orr event are already grouped up.

the problem i face in orr is warriors (they jump at mob spawn and whirl axe), and elementalists (too much fire aoe).

both of these have too strong aoes i hardly have any time to tag, and the fact that warriors simply jump at the mob spawn means the time it takes to move from gate to gate is longer, and messed up with the timing. (that’s penitent camp event and that other camp across the long tunnel.

it’s really annoying to farm there and i end up with only a handful of useless items.

that’s why i’m looking for something that mesmers are best at farming and makes a similar amount of money to orr.

First off you must understand, all classes are capable of DPSing, surviving, and supporting, but each in their own way.

But to put this simply, Ele has the highest skill cap, Mesmer comes next, Ranger after.

Mesmer survivability comes from shatters, teleports, and stealth (distortion and similar effects, blink, phase retreat, mass invisibility, decoy..etc), highest straight up burst damage builds come from berzerker gear and greatsword + phantasms, healing primarily comes from regeneration (applied generously by many skills), low cooldown heals, and traited mantras.

Elementalist survivability comes from heals and condition removals as stated above, you will always have one or two forms of those regardless of how you spec, fire eles are great for AOE dps, Air is for single target dps and mobility, Water is great for a support role, and earth is great for defense and control.

I don’t know much about the ranger, but the ranger is highly mobile and has many ways to dodge and evade attacks, and his heals are strong when pet is alive.

I’m not here to complain about the apparent lack of AOE skills and poor farming performance of the mesmer.

i’m here to ask, What does the mesmer farm best and how (aside from young karka farming)?

LHound.8964:

RapidSausage.4620:

LHound.8964:

other states it’s worse, and others that is better! Pure luck ^^

that’s the problem, magic find should always yield better results for anyone who stacks it.

Statistically it does!

But even if some item have a chance of 99% to drop. There always will be some cursed souls that will not get them!…

i should at least see more greens, buit i’m not.

LHound.8964:

other states it’s worse, and others that is better! Pure luck ^^

that’s the problem, magic find should always yield better results for anyone who stacks it.

Bartas.4908:

RapidSausage.4620:

Valenthor.4052:

Unlucky + possible DR (although I doubt it in 2 hours). Do it for more than 2 hours to gather more accurate data.

i once had 4 rares drop in 30 minutes without any MF gear, from the same event.

Within last 6-7 hours of my play I got total of 7 rares and 2 exotics with only 3% MF in gear + sigil of luck + nomnom bar. I did only CS DEs.
IMO MF is useless.

it certainly seems to be

Chickenshoes.6250:

It’s only 3 times the normal factor for loot “upgrades”.

explain this statement.

Valenthor.4052:

Unlucky + possible DR (although I doubt it in 2 hours). Do it for more than 2 hours to gather more accurate data.

i once had 4 rares drop in 30 minutes without any MF gear, from the same event.

Either i’m an idiot and don’t understand how MF works, or MF is absolutely useless.

i recently purchased a full set of MF gear (armor, weapons, sigil of luck, jewelry, superior rune of the pirate), and used MFood (30% MF) and MF booster, for a total of 199% MF.

i spent 2 hours farming Orr, no minute passes where i’m not killing something, i didn’t get a single exotic or rare, only 3 or 4 masterwork, and only very little t6 mats.

these results are very consistent with what i was getting prior to MF gear, and this is not cool.

Can someone shed some light on the matter?

Quick Mouse.7635:

You can get every ascended item except for the backpiece without ever setting foot in fotm. The backpieces can be crafted with only 1 vial of condesed mist essences, which is obtained in fotm 1-9 and is not terribly uncommon.
http://dulfy.net/2012/11/17/gw2-ascended-gear-and-infusion-recipes/
If you’re not going to be doing fotm, the minor difference in stats between an ascended backpack and a rare backpack are negligible.
Dungeons are an extremely profitable endeavour and it is really not that difficult to obtain enough tokens for an entire set of exotic armor within a reasonable ammount of time. Contrary to other methods of getting exotic armor, this will actually make you money instead of costing you money.
Dungeons are also a lot of fun and provide many unique encounters that challenge your playstyle and make you adapt to new situations. To each their own, I guess.

everything you’ve said is true, and also the reason why i dislike dungeons.
ANet philosophy with GW2 is to make everything you do rewarded, and not limit you to a routine to get something i.e you get what you want by simply playing where and what you like and find fun and engaging.

but they’re contradicting that philosophy by making the game more and more dungeon-centric.

i can understand having unique skins being the motivating factor for doing dungeons (besides the profits), but including dungeons in almost every high tier equipment piece while excluding other aspects such as WvW and open world (events, world bosses) is unacceptable, almost everyone is i talk to does dungeons to get the dungeon tokens for a piece of equipment.

i haven’t heard about badges of honor being included in a mystic forge recipe except for legendary weapons, but almost all other recipes include 500 dungeon tokens or some other amount of tokens from Fotm.

Legendary weapons require materials from every aspect of the game, from wvw, open world, and dungeons, and that is perfectly understandable and okay.

then ANet introduced Fotm, which is ok as well, and they introduced ascended gear as drops from Fotm, also okay.

what is not okay is making the new gear rarity exclusive to fotm AND making them soulbound on loot too.

true, the latest patch introduces new ascended equipment, but what about back items??, why can’t we get back items by doing something other than grinding fotm?

It’s not just that that bothers me, mystic forge recipes almost always requires farming a specific dungeon, which would be ok if there were recipes that required farming WvW or certain trophies from world bosses and events, but that’s not the case.

i don’t like dungeons primarily because i hate repetitiveness and engaging in an activity that’s supposed to be fun but turns into a chore.

ANet keep talking about how they don’t want players to feel obligated to do a certain activity to get what they want, but they’re doing the exact opposite of that with introducing ascended gear that can only be acquired from certain methods exclusively.

Laurels is a nice twist, you can only get 40 laurels a month (assuming you do monthly achievement and all dailies during that month), i have not tested if the equipment boxes drop any ascended gear, only time will tell, but for now, i’m not liking how ANet translates their design philosophy into the game.

i’m not asking anyone to agree with me, and i’m not asking anyone to hate dungeons for the reasons above, i still think dungeons are a very fun part of the game, and i would DEFINITELY play them more often if doing so was for fun and reward, not for farming and run times.

SOMEBODY TELL MEEEEE!!!!

zargnath.9524:

I sadly don’t have any pics from my GW1 games to show you(it’s still only the platinum edition or whatever with both proph and eotn). But if you want nostalgia inside GW2 you are to go to the southwestern part of Brisban Wildlands and enter a small passage and talk to he ghost standing there. For those who haven’t been there I shall spoil no more.

But I really wish I had been old enough to have been dedicated to GW1. Unfortunately I was not.

how far southwest?

My cherished collection, may the six watch over them. (excuse me for the low quality)

Embolism.8106:

RapidSausage.4620:

damage comes from the bleeds and burning applied by you and your clones via winds of chaos.

i’d recommend using sigil of corruption instead of sigil of earth, since clones won’t inherit the effect of the latter, they however inherit your condition damage.

you also don’t really need mirror images, i’d replace it with arcane thievery.

and the prestige won’t give you a boon on cloak so i don’t really recommend a torch, better use a focus.

I don’t see why you couldn’t use both Corruption and Earth. Earth on your Staff and MH, Corruption on your OH. The stacks persist even if you switch weapons.

The Prestige does bestow boons with Prismatic Understanding, it’s only the +1s stealth part that doesn’t apply.

hmm
i didn’t know that about the prestige.

only go condition damage if you’re going to use staff or rely on illusions to apply conditions.

power and precision are best for swords and pistols.

damage comes from the bleeds and burning applied by you and your clones via winds of chaos.

i’d recommend using sigil of corruption instead of sigil of earth, since clones won’t inherit the effect of the latter, they however inherit your condition damage.

you also don’t really need mirror images, i’d replace it with arcane thievery.

and the prestige won’t give you a boon on cloak so i don’t really recommend a torch, better use a focus.

since i’m running rabid gear and staff at the moment with 30 in chaos.
my main condition removal is arcane thievery (traited), other than that i just heal through them with my short cooldown heal or the random (albeit common) regeneration boon.

a nice way to go about this is remove the different tiered gathering tools, and just replace them by normal tools that have charges, and instead of depending on the quality of the gathering tool to decide whether or not you will get materials from the node, make it depend on your crafting level that requires/uses this type of raw material.

you need to know though, cooking might not be expensive on the gold, but it uses a lot of karma and you will need to move around the game world a lot.

other crafts you can basically sit at the crafting tables and do what you want right away.

additional criteria:
-the guild needs to be effective in WvW (i.e coordinated, takes control and upgrades outposts)
-friendly
-no voice chat requirements (don’t ask!)

Gizmo.8623:

What was also nice in WoW crafting, that every discipline needed something from another. Thank to this you knew that sooner or later you will earn gold.
What’s more – it wasn’t THAT systematic (agree with OP). I’ve maxed weaponsmith and artificier and I was over and over doing same type of things. And after reaching 400 I didn’t get anything for me. It was just the end. If I understand correctly, every “higher-tier” skins are available via Mystic Forge? There should be unique skins to crafting and soul/account-bound (especially on lower levels). This would make crafting more desirable, I think.
Cheers!

having good looking unique skins would also help make crafting more attractive.

you can go about this in 2 ways.
either get some toughness and condition damage gear, a staff, aggro 3 or 4 mobs, use chaos storm, then phase retreat from inside it and get back in it, create clones whenever you lose one, use chaos armor whenever possible, and shatter whenever possible.

not the quickest AOE but i solo several mobs in Orr doing this, it’s a very nice defensive way to do it.

alternatively, you can get crit chance and condition damage gear, a GS, 15 points in dueling, and just spam clones, you’ll be stacking bleeds like no tomorrow, and this usually is best for single targets.

i have not tested these methods in dungeons per se, either way, dungeons are not meant to be soloable in explorable mode, but story mode is quite easy so these methods should work.

My older guild practically disbanded and transferred servers.

i’m looking for an English speaking guild on any European server, whose main activity is WvW but not exclusive to it.

The server needs to be a very good performer on WvW (i don’t want to join wvw just to get my bass handed to me).

my server transfer timer is currently on “cooldown”, so any transfers will have to take place on weekend.

please, if you have any guild suggestions do let me know, and if possible leave the current size (small, medium, big) of the guild and it’s amount of active members, and the overall performance of the server in WvW.

general rule.

Staff = condition dmg
GS = Crit + power

you can make a condition damage hybrid by taking the trait that makes illusions bleed on crits, works great with GS clones (3 attacks) when you have high enough crit chance, all the while allowing you to have the defensiveness of the staff.

hmmm, i’m not a huge fan of mixing runes, but this might be crazy enough to work, however, you need to look at the opportunity cost (depends on build).

i’m currently running full rabid gear, 30 chaos, and 20 dueling/illusions.

by the way, chaos armor is not as chaotic as you think, it only gives you 1 of 3 boons for every hit you suffer.

the only real scenario where i believe this can be useful is if you’re going for a full “tanky” mesmer, since chaos storm and chaos armor only grant defensive boons, so you’ll find yourself investing in toughness, healing power and/or vitality.

there are 3 sides to doing this.
either you a) want to craft for yourself, or b) you’re crafting for profit, c) crafting for legendary.

in case of “a” then i suggest you go chef or jewelcrafting, they’re useful for all classes so you can make stuff for alts.

in case of “b” then i suggest you don’t get a craft at all, you will be making more money selling raw mats than selling the finished product.

in case of “c”, asking which crafts are cheap is irrelevant, since you don’t have a choice as to which craft you want to use for the legendary you want.

zeldara.4127:

There has been one noticeable exception to the rule… one craft I really found fun and rewarding. Unfortunately it isn’t in GW2, so forgive me for pointing at another MMO, it was engineering in WOW. And it had all to do with fun gadgets (that could backfire), utilities and fun consumable items that you could not get any other way (soulbound or atleast requiring having the craft learned), even if some took quite a bit of money and time investment. With various degrees of actual in game usefulness… but I loved them all.

to be honest, WoW engineering is what makes me feel this way.
no real high end stuff, but lots of fun stuff could be put into your build and add some spice to the character, and only you were able to use these stuff.

Mystic.5934:

maybe try cooking without looking up any recipes?

i leveled cooking to 400 in the first month of release before the wiki pages or guides were even started up.

this is not what bothers me, what bothers me is the lack of visually attractive equipment, or bound on acquire craft specific items that makes the person who chose to level these crafts feel unique.

Wolfheart.1938:

Ok so huge range no cast time 10 second AoE quickness is balanced ovverriding other classes elites is fine too, I see. That being said, I don’t want to derail the thread so I’ll just shut up.

Time warp comes with a 4 minute cooldown, and it is an elite, elites are meant to have powerful effects.

Crafting feels so dull to me, it’s very systematic, not very much unique themed items, and all items are tradeable.

i don’t get the feeling of “i made this, and only i can use this awesome item”.

the reason why i’m feeling this way is because of the absence of “bound on acquire” crafted items, there needs to be some, high end tier as well.

half of my enjoyment in MMOs comes from crafting, and all MMOs i’ve played had “soulbound on acquire items”, which made me feel unique and gives a nice amount of personal satisfaction.

at the moment, crafting is pretty much a pointless task since you can just buy the item you need from TP for less money than you’d spend crafting it.

and you make less money from selling a crafted item than selling its individual ingredients separately.

Please ANet, do some of your magic on crafting, it really needs attention.

in terms of pure enjoyment, engineer.
in terms of actual overall usefulness, ranger.

definitely buy.

you either keep the mats for legendary, or you sell the mats.

Wolfheart.1938:

Don’t fret, your Time Warp and Moa are safe…for now.

there’s no need to nerf either.
time warp i think has a limit of 5 targets, and moa morph is a single target disable with 3 minute cooldown.

Isaac.6041:

Mesmers got many nerfs and a few buffs to compensate. That’s all.

the nerfs i know of is the limiting on the number of portal uses.
what else is there?

Can someone give me a summary of the most important changes since early december? (short and informing data).

i mainly play mesmer, so info on mesmer stuff would be nice too.

note: i checked patch notes, but reading patch notes never really reflects ingame performance in context of actual gameplay, that’s why i’m asking for player opinion.

There are serious issues with an expensive rune such as this.

Disregarding the fact that it is a very very popular rune, there needs to be something done about it, the amount of bugs in it is much more than other runes.

-The cooldown on the random boon on heal is 15 seconds not 10
-The duration of the boons is 7 seconds not 10.
-The duration of boons from rank 6 is 7 seconds, not 10.
-Rank 6 effect doesn’t work with transform skills, guardian tome skills, or engineer supply drop, which made me pick an elite i don’t want to not waste the 15g i paid for the runes.
-The boons aren’t affected by boon duration…..really?

i realize that runes in general need fixing, but such an expensive and uncraftable rune should not have so many bugs, especially when the drop rate is so low and the cost of getting one is either 2.5g or 42k karma.

please ANet, at least fix the boon durations and cooldowns.

If i may ask, WHY?

from what i’m reading, many who also participated and didn’t get the rewards were not compensated because “they were not eligible”…..

What exactly was the criteria for being eligible?, i’m very interested to know, because if people who wasted 2.5 hours in the event to get stuck/ dc/ login issues aren’t eligible then idk who is.

13 hours after the announcement and my mail is still empty.

My situation was not a D/C, i spent 2.5 hours doing the event, and when we almost approached the couple final phases i got stuck under terrain, and i was in combat so i had to relog, i came back to find myself in an overflow server that had already finished the event, and i couldn’t get back on my original sevrer, and as a result i missed everything including what the ancient karka dropped and the chest.

i’m not whining or anything, but you can understand the amount of frustration for not getting anything.

i hope everyone gets a reward.

It’s been over 10 hours now.

why haven’t i received anything?

depends on what you need

personally i took rune of the centaur because i needed a constant speed boost for WvW, which the mesmer lacks, and since i have 30 point in chaos and i mainly use a staff, it’s perfect.

as for rune of the air, the speed boost is jut a minor bonus, meaning it’s not the real purpose of the rune, it’s supposed to give a little bit of extra DPS when you’re specced for precision and crit dmg, which could be good for 1 on 1 combat.

but as an overall impression, rune of the air is just not worth it, centaur is much better.

Does anybody really ever use them?

i mean Wolf is pretty useful because of the lifesteal, but it only works in PVe where enemies will stand still.

bear is ok for WvW because of the little control and HP boost, but does it really have the offensive kick?…not really, better off untransformed.

same goes for raven and snow leopard.

honestly, the only good elite i’ve seen so far is hounds of balthazar, other racial elites are pretty much a gimmick.

I have no objection in terms of stats, what i’m objecting on is the method we obtain it.

i know ANet wants us to play their “cool” “new” dungeon, but having to run a dungeon just to get the best gear in certain categories is just absurd.

I don’t like doing dungeons, especially when it turns into a grind, that’s why i craft my own gear and buy my own skins, and it was all good until Fractals were introduced.

now everyone has this necessity to play fractals to obtain materials to create ascended gear to be the strongest.

I don’t know what ANet still has in mind, but it better be craftable Ascended gear, because this game is starting to become a Dungeon Runner and as a result will become very stale.

IMHO ascended gear is really pre-mature, the game is only very few months old, it’s too early to introduce higher stat equipment.

anything besides dungeon or expensive Khilbron armor?

Urthona.3198:

Assuming you’re willing to run dungeons, you can get one from TA, Arah, or HotW.

The wiki has a couple handy charts.

besides dungeon armor.

I’m working towards getting a full god armor set, and i’ve found out that none of the karma vendors at the temples have a chest piece with rabid stats.

so i’m looking into transmuting another rabid gear with the god armor, and for that i need to find the cheapest option possible, and that’s what i’m here to find out.

what/where is the best and cheapest rabid light chest piece out there?

Do i have to finish 7 DIFFERENT fractals or just 7 fractals overall?

and what about the achievs with ??? on them?

plasmacutter.2709:

RapidSausage.4620:

or i can just get 20 dueling with high precision and a GS, spam clones and see the bleeds drain it down, which also works with other mobs

and die due to lacking defense because feedback is down and dodges alone don’t work against the 18k rapid-fire attack it does. (same for the other cd spam builds)

unless you know how to keep it off of you.

or i can just get 20 dueling with high precision and a GS, spam clones and see the bleeds drain it down, which also works with other mobs