Guild Wars 2

Does anyone have hard figures for how much healing Carnivorous Appitite heals? I may have to go do some in game testing when I get home, but in the past it’s always felt like a “lot”.

I’ve been hearing people having issues with pets dying or being squishy for so long I wonder what is going on, because I’ve used Cats the whole time and they always served me execellently and are plenty durable, dispte having low vit/toughness. But then again, I spec a full 30 into Beastmastery, which adds 300 to your pet’s attributes, so maybe that’s why my cats eat everything like it’s nothing.

I can even go afk for a smoke in a mob infested area, and come back with a few bodies scattered on the ground around me.

Really though, if you wanna focus on your pet being a beast, fully speccing into Beastmastery is huge. +300 (or +200 for the OP at mid level) is a LOT of stats…like…a lot.

We have by far the best water combo field in game. (And 1 of our Fire fields is pretty close to the best, if not the best too)

We have 2 Fire fields, an Ice field, 3 poison fields (Murellow, Spiders, Carrion Devourer), and a Smoke field (Jellyfish, water only) too.

So we have a good range of options there, really.

We can pull off all four of the finishers as well… although only three of the types can be done easily. The Blast type comes from Drakes, and isn’t highly reliable. But we do projectile like a Boss. And Leaps we aren’t too shabby on either, especially with main hand sword. Whirl only comes from Axe offhand, but with that weapon, you also get Path of Scars which is a Projectile… meaning you can main hand sword/offhand axe for 3 of the four finishers in one set… pretty BA imo.

Necros have aoe heals, and dark combo fields. Elementalists have aoe heals and water combo fields. Ranger has aoe heal and water combo field. Thief has aoe heal utilities and dark combo field. (That’s just what I’ve played around with personally…)

I’m pretty sure the Engineer heals aoe style with his turret… and it really wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if every class didn’t have options to heal other if they choose it.

This is not a guardian thing… and that’s why there are no healers. Not because no one can do it, but because everyone can… but not well enough to just heal only.

Draw.7529:

That’s what I did with my ranger after a couple of matches in spvp. Even in PvE I went for a defense build. Still, ranger feels like a support class. You can tank and annoy other players with bleed, cripple, stuns and your pet always after them, but when it comes to deal some dmg, it doesn’t seem very good. I guess we’re just not used to that, seeing rangers with low dmg. I just thought we’d have a wider choice of builds and if we wanted to be squishy and deal great a great amount of dmg, that would be possible too.

Oh heavens no, we have other builds too! Ranger can be built for glass cannon, most certainly. We can mix and match, a lil dps, a lil tank, a lil support. Full on “you can’t kill me ha ha ha” mode, full on “BOOM, head shot” mode…anywhere in between.

The OP was just complaining about Ranger’s lack of survivability, and I thought I’d give my two cents about it. Ranger can be glass cannons and get 2 shot if they choose to build thier character that way, or they can pick up defensive traits and skills and be an immortal juggernaut if they prefer.

I support the removal of pet rezzing. It was always getting in my way of rezzing actual players.

Pet swap serves the functionality fine. If you want an RP explaination, your pet just got his …. pushed in and needs a moment to recover. Maybe his feeling are hurt too, and he just doesn’t feel like helping out for a minute or so. Maybe sending in your best buddy to stand in the fire or get cleave gibbed isn’t the nicest thing a pet owner could do and we should be calling PETA on you for trying to force the little guy back into the fray so quickly.

Farzo.8410:

Remember that this section is for helping other players, so keep in mind to make threads which asks for help.

I need help knowing what little details everyone likes so far abot the game. Would you guys please continue helping?

I can tell you what it used to do? Lol… ugh, yeah. I “think” it gives you a free 1 skill hit off a timer if you interupt someone. I’ve not tested it out though, not since they changed it to its current form.

Smackjack.5071:

Ravnodaus.5130:

Personally, I would rather sell an item to a person than vendor it. Even if I take a very small loss.

That would only make a sliver of sense if you would have said “Give a item to a person rather then vendor it”

You cannot put items on the TP any lower then the vendors price so they may as well buy them from a vendor and in turn the market economy would not be on itskitten because of your misguided reasoning.

Aww, that’s adorable, you’re trying to look clever!

If I gather a bunch of wood, and there are 1000+ wood listed at vendor price+1, I can list that on the TP at the same vendor price+1. But if I do, I still have to pay the listing fee, and the commision when it sells… That’s called a loss. Very small one, but I would have made a little bit more coin simply vendoring the stuff.

And have you found a vendor that sells wood? Maybe you could direct all of us to this mystery vendor so that we could all stop chopping it down ourselves.

Not only do vendors not sell the stuff people ussually post for sale, but even if they did, the “vendor price” we are talking about is the “sell to vendor price”, not the “buy from vendor price”. Those are very different numbers.

My reasoning is very sound, you just don’t like it. It comes from a place foriegn to you, where personal gain takes a backseat to unrewarded generosity. I still have enough in-game currency, my gear is current, I have bags, I can afford to use waypoints and respec frequently, it’s not even that big of a deal to not make much money from the TP. There are many sources of it.

Thing is though, your real problem… it’s not that other people are selling for less than you, it’s that you don’t have the patience to sell it at the price you want for it. Eventually, maybe hours, days, weeks…eventually, someone will come along and buy yours. Especially if it’s a reasonable price, or even a slightly higher than reasonable price. It will just take a while, but it’s not like there are expiration times on listings. Set it and forget it. You’ll get the gold for it eventually. Patience.

I use a tanky support kind of build on my ranger in sPvP. I’ve yet to die to a 1v1, just doesn’t happen. Between dodging, continuous protection and regeneration, water field combo beatifulness, etc… coupled with moderate toughness and high vitality/healing… yep, too hard to kill. I had a really good 2v1 take me down once, but it was a pretty epic drawn out fight, lasted almost 2 minutes. Most of the time I just don’t die the whole match though.

It doesn’t have really any burst damage, it doesn’t have much sustained dps either really. But it will wear people down if they decide to stay and duke it out. And it’ll outtank and outheal anyon else’s dps, most assuredly. Pretty mobile too, don’t have to get lockedinto fights, can just disengage and move on…

Not sure how/why anyone would think rangers are squishy…far, far, far from it. Maybe your ranger is…but not rangers in general.

Dwok Immortalus.2763:

amradio.2513:

No one knows how to play their class, its clear as day. Thieves are so easy to kill its just not funny, and those one-button spam moves are easy to dodge and counter. We have at most 13 initiative, which is 4 heartseekers at most. If you can’t survive 4 of those you are way too squishy.

Moving on, you shouldn’t be alone in sPvP unless you roll a class that is great at 1v1 survival. Thieves roll alone because they have great 1v1 survival skills. 2v1? Not so much, and 3v1 even less. You want to stop a thief? CC and conditions. Blind=waste of initiative which is a very valuable resource. Confusion KILLS us because we attack so fast. Weakness kills our burst dmg for obvious reasons, and leaves us with you still mostly alive while we have 0 initiative.

If you’re sitting there trying to face-tank a thief you are doing it wrong. The same goes vs a mesmer. Classes like thieves and mesmers looooove those 1 vs 1 situations. Don’t play that game.

TL;DR- Make a thief waste his initiative. You can do this via blind, protection, weakness, and dodges. Chill is also fantastic.

I believe there may be a disconnect between two groups happening here.

I actually got to witness what the OP was talking about once tonight and I can understand what the problem is now. In brief, two asuran thieves took out 27 players, and got away scot free.

How could we be so bad we couldn’t kill two people?

Somehow, that I would like to figure out if possible, these two thieves…

• had 45s+ vigor, swiftness, fury, and regen at all times
• only used three skills: Deathblossom, Dodge, and Hide in Shadows
• were able to chain 4+ deathblossoms in a row (breaking the expected initiative drought)

Because of the Dodge/DB combo, they could not be hit by bolas, static field, crippling shot, mud field, or any other condition effects. The only ability that I saw successfully land was the knockback from the Guardian’s dome spell (since it overrides dodge), which did disable one of them briefly.

This has been completely abnormal from any other skilled thief I’ve fought to date, especially when I was running a skill setup specifically to counter the HS/Deathblossom build at the time.

---

What I suspect, is some smart players have found a skill/trait/gear(?) combination that allows the thief class to do something unintended and as a result we have players who have come up against it thinking the class as a whole has these characteristics.

---

Note:
The players in question were fought in WvW so I do not know the names. They were members of the Darkhaven server, and were farming the Tarnished Coast portal keep in the Sorrow’s Furnace Homeland on 9/8/2012.

Yeah, they were running a build something like;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYQQRAoY4alUm6Oney9E+5EB3Dji0k69gsjNsdkittenA;TwAgyCqo0yolQLrWOtkatEZIy2jZAA

(Forum says bad link, but copy/paste into web address and it works fine)

I threw it together kinda quickly, but the basic idea is to maximize stealths and utilizing smoke combos to rapidly go into stealth repeatedly while keeping all surrounding opponents blinded, and maintaining boon superiority, while poisoning/bleeding aoe style. I’d imagine two well coordinated thieves with some tweaks to this build would demolish whole groups of opponents. Unless you knew what they were doing and countered it… mostly by not standing in/near thier combo fields the whole time.

What you came across was a pair of good players who knew how to actually play their class.

Get used to it, and do it too. The more time that passes, the better people will get, especially when they really start mastering some of the less obvious parts of skillful play.

Personally, I would rather sell an item to a person than vendor it. Even if I take a very small loss. The person can get use out of it, it might make a difference to them, the vendor is essentially destroying it. I would rather benefit my fellow players by supplying an item they may want.

I’ve thought about your side of the issue as well, and keep it in mind. I’ve been in your shoes before, trying to make some extra gol and finding it slow going because there is just not a very high demand for what you have to offer. But I’m prfectly fine with the fact that by offering goods at minimum prices it’ll strong arm others into also selling on the cheap. The seller doesn’t need the item they are trying to get rid of, any amount for it is a good amount. The buyer does need the item they’re buying, and cheaper allows them to afford it with higher probability.

That’s my logic anyway.

But to be constructive to your plight… I recommend you take a moment or twelve and look around the Trading Post listings… look at what kind of stuff is cheap, and what isn’t cheap. You can get an idea of how many listing of that Item are too, wich is very handy. Look around and find a few things that are in short supply and high demand that you think you can provide, then figure a way to provide it and … wait for it… profit.

ComeAndSee.1356:

Seems like a waste of my time if you need perfect group, perfect spec, lvl 80, and voip to do a low level dungeon that drops crappy loot. I mean, Burning Crusade had some of the hardest hard mode dungeons I can remember when that expansion pack was released, but you were still able to beat them without the perfect group combination.

Also, I want you to show me a video of you doing the burrowers one where you have to defend the two ghost essences. Impossible.

I’m going to pass on this dungeon because from what I’ve been told the lvl 80 ones are faceroll easier and give better rewards.

You mean, seems like a waste of time if you have to try? Oh noes, the build you use for solo questing doesn’t work the best for group play?? Oh the humanity!! Just /ragequit.

I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be rude for sake of being rude. I really just want to drive the point home. There are two versions of the dungeon!!! If explorable mode is too hard, or too inconvenient for you to bother respeccing, retraiting, or changing up a weapon or utility… then by all means go play in Story mode!!!!! You don’t HAVE to play the hardmode. And it rightly should be HARD. I’m glad people are faling at it, it’s something to be able to work on, and to improve on. You can get better by challenging yourself.

Foriegn concept? Challenging yourself? I know right.

Oh, and seriously… BC dungeons were never hard. There were maybe ever a handful of challenging encounters in wow, before they inevitably got nerfed, that were more than simple gear checks.

Cromx.3941:

The holy trinity was a part of strategy and planning, and utilizing team work. Its what the internet allows us to do in games now..work together, SUPPORT and help each other to overcome obstacles. The decision has been made that this is now fun, and it must be radically changed. Ok, but what has it been replaced with?

C-C-C-C-Combos.

If you haven’t figured out yet, combos are very powerful, and make a huge difference. If you did not yet know, they work best when people of differing proffesions work together for greater effects than either are normally capable of alone.

That is teamwork, yo. Strategy, skill, teamwork. And on a whole new level that a lot of people can’t even catch up yet. They will, or they’ll give up, but all the teamwork you could hope for is very much alive and thriving in this game.

LightningLockey.5938:

Fara – Yeh your right about this class. I’m observing how all other classes are not having nearly as much trouble as I am. At times when I’m down, I think they are going to die as well and they end up fishing off the 3-4 mobs that jumped me and revive me. I’m considering giving up on the elementalist and just have it to craft stuff. Not sure what other class I’ll play.

Everyone Else – as for mages they are always glass canons. The problem that the elementalist is more of a glass sling shot. The damage is suppose to be (at least in PvE) insane but defense very lacking. The target is never suppose to make it near me. During the tutorial part is the only area in the game that I felt the elementalist was properly balanced.

Everywhere else I go, regardless of setup/spells, feels like I’m fighting monsters that are at least 10 levels higher then me. Then some level 17 comes along (I’m level 30 now), destroys all the monsters in the area to revive me and I become purely disgusted/infuriated.

That would be the case if you are hanging out in a lower level area. You cannot simply outlevel content. If you’re 30 in a level 17 region, you will be scaled down to the effectiveness of level 17. The scaling isn’t always spot on either…

I’d recommend you take some time and play around with different weapons, and make sure you fully master what each of them can do and how the skills in each element can work into each other to create useful and potent combinations. Rethink if your stats and traits match your chosen play style and weapon selection. And if you still cannot get it down, maybe another proffesion is more suited to your gaming. All of them have very different styles, ANet did a really good job ensuring the feel of each proffesion was unique, and maybe the one that’s perfect to you is just waiting for you to discover it.

Not all the racial skills are Elite ones. There are a few other utility/heal skills thrown in the racial mix too.

I just laugh irl every time I get one of these.

Can buy game money legitimately through ANet, you’d have to be an idiot to risk a ban for such a trivial savings.

elsbeth.3567:

The TP economy (when the TP works at all) is a mess. Tons of people are selling items at or below vendor prices. So many people playing now that nothing is really rare, and a lot of people must be using the TP interface to sell stuff out in the field for a minor loss instead of going to a vendor.

You cannot sell at or below vendor prices. The interface doesn’t allow you to post it that low. That is blatant misinformation.

You will not make money if you want instant gratification as a seller. The faster you want your gold or items, the more you end up sacrificing from what you could have gained or saved. As it is in real life, so too in the game.

The economy is a mess, that is true. But it has a lot more to do with the trader post being offline most of the time. There was an initial phase when it didn’t come online at all, and people stockpiled a lot of junk in general, this allowed the market to be flooded when the TP came up initially. Since the typical purchase is one of immediate necessity, most people buy what they want/need when they want/need it.

Since they are more often then not, denied the ability to purchase freely, the demand for stuff in general is kept artificially low. But because people are dying to offload mounds and mounds of junk whenever the TP does come back online, supply is still very high.

That’s why the economy is wierd. Use it to your advantage, if you know how.

Pet swapping saves my pets more than anything else. But I also make use of the trait to give my pet Protection when I dodgeroll, wich helps too. Especially if I’m BM, in which case my pet is a major source of my dps.

But if you’re not BM spec’d, your pet is not as large a part of your effectiveness, and the occasional pet death can be manageable.

Use ranged pets if your pet dies instantly in melee range, use bears if you need a pet with a huge HP pool. Fern hound is a good tough pet, it has decent toughness and vitality, but also AoE Regeneration. Drakes have the same stats as canines, and can self heal a little.

There are options out there. Plenty of traits and whatnot you can invest in to make your pet a real solid tanky critter. But the less you invest, the stronger your ranger itself will be, and that means the loss is less noticeable. Invest a ton, and if he goes down still, you’ll be just a wet noodle. Pros and Cons all up in this mo f…. what.

No offense intended Fara, but statements like that are always a little short sighted. I’m not saying you are wrong, per se… just the way you worded your statement, you are essentially claiming to know what thousands of people are/will do.

I have played all of the proffesions, for example. I’ve played the elementalist with regularity, from BWE 1 onward. In solo play, they have some difficulties unique to the class, yes, but every class does. In group play, they are very, very useful. I don’t think they need to be rebalanced any more or less than any of the proffesions.

At low level, it is more than “worthwhile”. Your pet will be a beast! >.>

Very potent at low level, and after opening each of the tiers. Still ok at higher levels too.

Start a crafting proffesion will boost your xp greatly. Hit up another starting zone or 4. Explore the cities. Do some WvWvW. Etc.

Hologramx.6402:

For those talking about gears, I don’t think you understand the problem.
You have to try playing classes like elementalists and you will find some of the story quests are severely imbalance. I am a skilled player and have all my gears usually up-to-date every 5 levels, usually masterworks until level 60+ which I start to add rares. Not to mention I did them 20 level higher. Other than those, other story quests are extremely easy because being outleveling them. There are many variations, some too easy, some are nightmares because of the rush to release and they didn’t have enough time to test them on all levels and classes. I don’t blame them for that. I am only suggesting that disabling side-kicking would help a lot if you can simple gain level before you do that impossible challenge again. Just imagine a light armor class + another light armor class helper NPC (who cannot tank and deal hardly any damage) who have to fight a veteran + 6 or more trash mobs at the same time. Should be a lot easier if you are heavy armor class or have a tanking pet but not with 2 light armor class.
What I suggest is an option, so those who prefer to challenge or play as a class which has no problem can still use the side-kicking system.

Why do people complain about something challenging? Rise to the occasion!! If there is a way, find it. If it’s hard, so much sweeter is victory.

Capturing objectives increases your score drastically. Not sure what issue is.

You can go in, be full on support/tanky/soaker/heals/whateverelsecleveryouwannacallalitedps spec and capture objectives and profit big time. Killing blows are another method, but you just need to hit f2 for that… there are other random bonuses to your score too.

Killing off (successfully) someone who comes into your objective zone you are protecting will get you good points too… but you cannot control the actions of your enemy… you might potentially be sitting there the whole match doing jack all and then of course you don’t score very high… you may as well have been afk.

Very useful. Thanks for sharing it.

LightningLockey.5938:

I’ve tried everything suggested and my character is just totally destroyed. I guess when I run out of gold and can no longer repair armor and teleport out of death I’ll give up on the elementalist.

I’m starting to regret getting this game.

Try a different character. At least until they can fix your issue with traits!

Guys, he answered his own question.

LightningLockey.5938:

Currently I’m level 30 and my character is just plain weak.

LightningLockey.5938:

I forgot to mention that I’m unable to use traits, I’ve already submitted a bug report so waiting on them.

This isn’t a hard mystery to solve. Give him all the pointers you want, it’s not technique per-se he lacks. His character is fundamentally broken from a statistics point of view.

Uh, less than 2 weeks. >.>

Hmmm…

Braize.4560:

In no game out there does every trash mob one shot a tank, and there is a reason for that. Challenge the player yes, but make instances where all you do is kite and CC? Sorry, no thanks. It’s not skill, it’s not challenging, it’s straight up boring.

There are no tanks. If someone is trying to be a tank in the classical sense, they are going to get themselves killed rather nicely and spectacularly. Kiting and CC are very useful methods of dying less, if you got em (You do), why are you not using them again? Right, you’re busy trying to tank, right…ok. Dode, evade, block, get out of the fire, line of sight, kite… do what you gotta do to succeed. There is a way, you just haven’t found it yet.

Think it’s boring? Do something else. Some people do think it takes skill and that it’s challenging to coordinate proper CCs with thier group, and to chain useful combos and manage to get encounters done in a way that isn’t what we’ve been doing for 10+ years.

Braize.4560:

TL;DR Bottom line is, PvE is not FUN at all. And the rewards for taking the time to do it are non existent.

Then don’t do it. There are many (many) other things for you to do if you do not enjoy instances. And instances are not all there is to PvE, it’s a rather small part of it, really. Go enjoy all the other parts. You don’t have to do everything to enjoy the game, do what you do enjoy and be happy.

This is a known bug

Change your amulet.

Nuzt.7894:

Thnx all I wasn’t really seeing the big return off the 6 piece bonus but at the same point its less return off the 3/3 … Kind of dissapointing tbh. Love the game don’t take that the wrong way but pigeon holing classes into the 6 bonus is kinda counter productive for a game like GW thats suppose to be all about the random PvP specs that don’t fall into cookie cutter territory.

Pigeon holing classes was the wrong term …. pigeon holing play styles is what I meant.

What are you talking about? I’m not sure that was even English.

There are tons of builds, tons of runes, and how they complement each other is an even greater number. What runes you use is completely up to you, and what style you are going for it similarly up to you. I’ve seen nothing come close to pigeon holing.

Some of the runes have amazing 6 piece set bonus, some are ok, others are meh. Same with 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 piece bonus…. Really depends on what class/weapon/skills/traits you have selected, as well as what other stats are on your gear, as well as what play style you prefer.

If it turns out that two 3 piece sets works out best for your particular build, dude…go for it. I’ve used three 2 piece runes. I liked the massive +% durations it gave me on my support spec’s boons. But I like the higher total stats and “stronger” effect that I get from a 6 piece rune set when I’m playing around on a dps build I use. Sometimes I just experiment and swap out and try random stuff…and in PvE/leveling/gathering/etc, I’m in love with the 10 seconds of swiftness after using a heal effect you get from the 6 set I’m using… great for roaming around in a hurry.

So many, many options and combinations… figure out what will work best for you. Stop rambling about nonsense.

AngelofAwe.4972:

no class can easily tanks things in this game. i’m a lvl 80 guardian with maxed toughness and vitality traits, a lvl 80 exotic 2 hander with vitality and a full lvl 80 exotic knight set (toughness).

that gives me about 3200 defense and 16,5k hp. i can now deal with mobs rather easily. i still take some 800-1500 hits but i can at least kill 2-3 mobs at once before they manage to kill me.
if you want to compare the damage you take to my max defense spec guardian, i take 600 dmg from a risen chicken exploding.

bosses are different, they still hit me for 8000-9000 dmg with some of their skills so no matter what i do i can’t stay in melee range with a boss and just tank it, even if i used all my heals it wouldn’t work.

With max vitality trait and vitality gear you should have far and away more HP than that…what are you talking about?

Anyway. OP, If you don’t have access to your traits you’re pretty much out of luck. They’re a huge part of your character, and you are going to be severely handicapped without them no matter what class you play or how well you play.

If you haven’t already checked, as already suggested, find a Trainer. The starting areas have them, so do WvW entrance areas. They have a green book icon on thier heads and on the map. Buy yourself a manual, and open your inventory and use it. The go into the Hero panel, (H) key by default, click on the skills/traits tab, and select traits. Use the plus buttons to assign traits to your preference, and select your new abilities you get for every 10 points invested in a line.

At your level, you’re missing 20 points. That’s roughly 200 points in 2 stats you’re missing (Or 100 in four, etc)… good luck replacing that with just gear. That alone is huge lose… but also missing the effects of the bonus abilities you gain for traits is crushing. This is your problem. Not your class.

Ignore these other random rants about elementalist this, elementalist that. “Oh, poor me, I like guardian skills better but am going to keep playing this class I don’t like, just to spite myself. Oh I’m a martyr, aren’t I cool” Bah. Play what you enjoy, easy concept. You can play any of them…. But in your case Lightning Lock… you just needs you some traits and you’ll be fine me thinks.

If you’re bored of the 5 skills on your mace, equip a different kind of weapon. greatsword perhaps? Rifle? Warriors have a huge selection, pick a new set of weapons and your skills change a lot.

But a weapon’s skills are preset, predetermined by class. You get the skills that weapon has and that’s that.

What would you want with 30 different mace skills? Have you played a game that gave you 30 different types of direct attack skills…that you used all 30 of?

I’m finding the game to be thoroughly customizable and adaptable, myself. If I wish to change up my playstyle considerable it only takes swapping a weapon, and maybe some utility/heal/elite skills around. You ve access to traits for further cusomizability, depending how you select your traits, your weapon attacks may start to be used it differing ways, or serve different functions, or be better in different sequences etc etc.

One trading post just means larger scale. There may be more supply, but there is more demand as well. Rarer items will pop up more frequently, but you’ll still see them just as infrequently and distributed at the same rate percentage wise.

The oversupply we experienced when the post went up was because the post wasn’t up. Not because there is only one of them. Everyone had been accumulating massive supplies of random junk to sell.. of course there was going to be an oversupply.

The clever folk out there knew this was going to happen, and took advantage of the rediculously cheap sales, stocked up on sought after items, and can/have resold them at a considerable profit.

Salvage, sell, or mystic forge. If you are fond of the skin you can transmute. Store them for later if you cannot decide… Plenty of things to do with them.