Guild Wars 2

An organized guild like TTS or EVOS makes all the difference in bringing down Triple Trouble. You can PUG Tequatl now, but Triple Trouble just requires too many players and too much coordination for most random groups.

I don’t believe you need all of the available mastery points to unlock all of the currently available masteries, so you might be able to get by without doing certain ones, if you’re not available for an organized TT run.

I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of Anet’s rigging and texturing setup, but I can easily imagine that light/medium/heavy models are incompatible in ways that go beyond simple clipping.

If they say it’s a serious no-go, I believe them. I’ve done enough amateur-level character modeling/rigging to just take them at their word there.

If you deposit crafting materials directly from your inventory, either by right-clicking on them, or by clicking the gear and then “deposit all materials,” the items will go to your personal bank. You can’t send them to a guild bank that way.

Are you playing the game on one monitor with the other monitor for other things, or are you playing with the game stretched across both monitors?

I usually have the game up in one, and Firefox up in the other, and I’ve always found the experience worked perfectly well. Windows 10 will occasionally show the taskbar over top of my (otherwise borderless) game monitor, but hitting the Windows key and then clicking back to the game fixes that.

I also keep the game on my primary monitor all the time (since the other one is SD instead of HD,) so I haven’t tried getting it to be borderless on the secondary monitor. I could see where that might not work as well.

At the risk of getting into the thing I said I wouldn’t get into, I actually prefer the new system. I found the old system too cumbersome—I had a lot of choices, but without spending a ton of time researching and learning all my options, I couldn’t make an informed decision. It was overwhelming. I played a Ranger/Ele, and it was lousy, but I liked it and didn’t have time for the rabbit hole that was GW1 strategy. With GW2, I had fewer choices, but I could focus more on how best to use the choices I have.

Some people prefer the strategic depth of GW1, while others prefer GW2, just as some people prefer trading card games to board games. Both are perfectly valid preferences.

And I’d disagree with your assessment that balance isn’t fun. Not every combination has to be equally good for there to be balance, but too much imbalance spoils competition.

komali two.6154:

Not to be pedantic but illegal isn’t the right word to use. Violating the TOS or against the game rules is.

You’d have to work hard to actually break the law of whatever country you’re in within GW2.

It’s risky to be pedantic. Ever hear of an illegal play in a sport?

adjective
1. forbidden by law or statute.
2. contrary to or forbidden by official rules, regulations, etc.:
The referee ruled that it was an illegal forward pass.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/illegal

Anyway, it’s not against any rules, but it’s not supported, either. You also run the risk of being mistakenly flagged as something suspicious going on due to the large transaction being done through the mail. It’s probably a minimal risk, but there’s a chance you and your trading partner might have to contact support to clear things up if something happens.

That’s the strategy guide.

Still, neat to see it in there!

You seem like you didn’t enjoy spending 20 hours farming hero points on day 1, because you consider that time wasted now.

Did you have fun? Was it really wasted if you enjoyed it, even if other people can do it quicker now?

If the grind made you that bitter, it’s probably a good thing they changed it.

The debate about weapon-based skills is as old as GW2, so I won’t get into that. That horse isn’t going anywhere.

If you’re bored with thief, however, try another class. There’s some pretty significant differences in how many classes play and feel, so you might have to try some out before you find what’s best for you. Elementalist, Engineer, and Revenant have some interesting options for changing your skills on the fly, even within the weapon-based-attacks system.

It’s so beautiful.

;__;

Unless you’re trading with a friend you trust, it’s just too risky to trade anything of value via the mail system. The TP fee might hit hard, but getting ripped off hits harder.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

This is an “eye of the beholder” situation.

• Your choice of monitor and your monitor/game settings will affect how much detail you see (with any color and especially any of the blacks or shadow dyes).
• Some people assume that Shadow Abyss is meant to be too dark to see details.
• Some people assume that if you don’t like the look of a dye, you would choose another with similar attributes, especially since there are 50 shades of black now. (well, a lot, maybe not quite 50).

This is all pretty accurate. I’d like to add,

• It’s going to look different on different pieces of armor, even within the same weight class.

• It’s going to look different under different lighting conditions. Armor looks different in the preview window than it does in, say, the Priory, or Lion’s Arch at day/night.

Here is a list of outfits. When you purchase an outfit (and use the item it gives you,) it’ll add the outfit to the Outfits panel of the hero window. (The one that comes up when you press [H].)

You can use outfits across all of your characters, and you simply toggle them on or off. Most (all?) outfits have four dye channels. They replace your armor completely as long as you wear them, so you can’t mix-and-match. You can, however, toggle off the gloves and headgear by toggling off those pieces of your armor. (I think this applies to all outfits, although I’ve mainly used the Mad King outfit. YMMV.)

Armor skins are anything on this list that says “skin” in the name. These are skins you can use to change the appearance of armor pieces, so you can mix-and-match to your heart’s content. However, you only get one free application, and you have to use transmutation charges if you want to apply the look to a new armor piece, or on another character. Most armor skins (head, gloves, shoulders) can be applied to armor of any weight, but others are exclusively suits of light/medium/heavy armor, and say so in the name.

You most flexibility out of armor skins, which is great if you’re a player who likes to mix-and-match for cosplay or roleplaying purposes, but outfits are much, much more convenient.

Hope that helps!

This is a solid idea. While I don’t expect most players to finish masteries for a long time, people will finish them, and unless Anet pushes out more masteries soon-ish to them reaching it, we’ll go back to XP on level 80 characters being worthless.

It was worthless between the switch to spirit shards and the release of HoT, and it’s nice that I’m not wasting that XP anymore. Even a small, repeatable reward seems like a good planning for the next drought.

I’m pretty sure that’s the point of Shadow Abyss dye.

You could go darker than Abyss without losing all detail, but not a whole lot further. It doesn’t look great, IMHO, but people want what they want.

Molten Jetpack.

/ducks

Akijo.7395:

Masteries are account bound, so all you have to do is do the Hero Challenges

This really, really bears repeating. Getting HoT hero points can be frustrating right now, when you find them locked behind things like Exalted symbols or Hylek poison fields, but once you’ve mastered those things, it’ll be much easier for alts to tear their way through the HoT maps.

Don’t get me wrong, it’ll still take time, and the large number of group-oriented hero challenges will only prove themselves sustainable with time. I think everyone’s first elite spec is going to be the most difficult by a long shot, however, because you don’t already know where things are or what to do, and you don’t have all the tools to do it with.

I get people’s frustration about not being able to rock their way through HoT with the elite specs. If I want to start a new character, even a Revenant, I can power level to 80 with Tomes of Knowledge, Birthday scrolls, etc. While players always had to level up their initial character, and I still tend to level my characters gradually, for many players it’s been years since they had to grind out traits/skills, while alt-leveling consumables trained them to expect they didn’t need to.

For better or worse, HoT doesn’t seem to be friendly to that. I’m so-so about the Tempest (cool abilities, but Staff > Warhorn) so I’m more intent on story progression and masteries than on hero points. It’s a mild frustration when I find a hero point I can’t reach because I haven’t obtained poison mastery, but if I were really hyped for my elite spec…

At least Masteries are a one-time thing. It should be much, much easier to unlock elite specs for alts, I think.

I’m definitely going to wait for every step of the process to be documented out in a guide. It seems way to risky to get into otherwise.

As long as I’m having fun at lower levels, I don’t worry about wasting birthday scrolls. If I want to catch up to a friend, skip to my story section, or find myself getting bored, then I’ll use one, whether it’s optimal or not.

Unless I take up key farming, I have more scrolls than I can realistically use.

Just wait. I really like the expansion, but it’s tailored for level 80 characters. Unless you absolutely MUST play the Revenant, there’s just not a lot you can do with it until you’re level 80.

Play through the base game, and if you want to keep going after you finish, the expansion will still be there. It might even go down in price, depending on how long you wait.

SHM.7628:

Your defense of the developers is “it was way worse last year”. That is a poor excuse in my opinion. This is supposed to be holiday reward content. 10,000/ 400gold/ 100,000 candy corn is unreasonable for too many people.

That’s a valid point, because past Halloweens have had some ridiculous numbers going on. I have mixed feelings about this mini in particular—On one hand, I wish it had never cost so much to begin with. On the other hand, a lot of people got really invested in their quest for it, so I don’t want Anet to devalue it too much.

There are people who are upset it costs so much, as well as people who are upset it costs so little. We can talk about how much it should have originally cost, and how this situation could have been avoided, but that doesn’t fix the situation as it is. People are going to be unhappy either way, so it’s a balancing act.

If you haven’t played at least one character to 20/30 naturally, I wouldn’t boost through it, but if you have, you’re not going to miss anything too exciting by boosting alts.

I actually really like the simplicity of the lower levels, and the starter zones are great, so I find myself not boosting right away, especially if I’m leveling an alt alongside a low-level friend. But that’s a personal preference.

A lot of this seems subjective, based on the OP’s preferences, definitions, interpretations, etc. You can objectively answer things like “Do I have to do map completion to unlock my elite spec?” or “What happens to my guild bank?” You cannot objectively answer “Is this the death of solo play?” or “400 points is too much!”

Subjectivity is okay. People are going to have different opinions on these issues, and they’re going to fight about what’s best, and that’s normal.

It becomes a problem, though, when you flatly tell people their complaints are wrong and you are right. You’d better stick to just the facts if you want to do that, not your ideas about what is reasonable or how things are meant to be, because those are subjective.

I would love to be able to glide in Central Tyria, but I can’t even imagine the map-escapes and other weirdness that would ensue.

Although, I don’t have much of an argument for how it could be harmful. It might suck some of the challenge out of certain things, or allow people to get themselves stuck (which could make the game look unpolished,) but I can’t think of any economic or fairness problems. (Allowing gliding in WvW or PvP, would be a more complex question, I think.)

I would enjoy it, but I’ll understand if they keep gliding in the jungle. It’s only a matter of time until I get killed jumping off something in Central Tyria, however.

Storm.1653:

no skins are not anymore it seems. once you consume, that’ts it. also bought a finisher, not account bound either. just can use on the toon i bought it with

If that’s the case, that sounds like a bug. Your account wardrobe, finishers, mail carriers, outfits, etc., etc., should all still be account-based. You might want to contact support about it.

Huh.

I think players (mostly humans) will look ridiculous barefoot, but this is something I’ve seen people ask for, so props for giving it to them, I suppose!

(Whenever it’s actually available, of course.)

When you put it that way (ludicrous profit reigned in by boredom) it sounds like a pretty terrible time.

I’m sympathetic to people who find Maize Balm farming fun, but this is the worst argument I’ve heard in favor of it.

I have a personal guild that’s essentially a 100-slot bank, and it’s still there.

I’m sure there are other features that have changed some way or another, but you’ll have to be more specific in explaining the problem.

Sadeak.8410:

[…] I know linux has such a tiny share of the market. well if developers would make their software support the linux platform too, more people will start using linux […]

Thing is, most developers don’t have a financial stake in the spread of Linux. If anything, it seems like that could only hurt them financially, because they’d have to develop for three platforms instead of two. (Even with two, the PC version is still the primary one.)

It’s nice for the Linux community that more developers are thinking about it, but unless you’re working on an indie game, or you want to work on Steam OS / Steam Machines, it’s hard to see the financial argument for it.

As I suggested above, why not just do some of the other mastery points? There are more than enough available for all of the current masteries without doing world bosses.

Currently, it looks like Central Tyria masteries require 48 mastery points.

I have 47 points, and there are a ton of mastery points I don’t have, so there appears to be plenty of flexibility with which points you get.

I assume they’ll add more masteries down the line, but you shouldn’t need to do Tequatl, Triple Trouble, or Karka Queen if you don’t want to.

It’s a little 2012, a little 2013–2014, and a smidge of new rewards for 2015. We have Ascent to Madness again, like in 2012, but we don’t have the scavenger hunt (they said they’d like to have put it in, but didn’t have time because it would need a lot of work to fix,) or Reaper’s Rumble. We also don’t have the Blood & Madness instances from 2013–2014.

It…doesn’t look like Lunatic Inquisition made it back this time around? Blood & Madness needed a rest, so I’m glad Ascent is back, but I don’t know why Lunatic Inquisition is on the shelf this year.

While that’s a bummer, and will be affecting how much I play the Halloween content, I’m glad to hear that it’s a bug, rather than what’s intended.

Thanks for the clarification! It means a lot just to know that devs get sources of player frustration like this, even if it isn’t going to be fixed while the festival is live.

If you’re new to crafting, GW2crafts.net is generally a good place to start, if you want to craft efficiently. It won’t teach you to craft bags, but simply crafting bags isn’t going to get you very far.

Just a tip, you might consider 18-slot bags instead of 20-slot. 20-slot bags require Superior Rune of Holding, which costs ten gold from a vendor. 18-slots require Greater Rune of Holding, which is only 2 gold. Most of my characters make due with 18 slot bags.

You can craft bags with armorsmith, leatherworker, or tailor. They vary in cost a little, because of differences in the price of cloth/leather/metal materials, but you can craft bags with any of the three types. Check those Rune links for recipes, and check out the Minor, Regular, and Major Rune of Holding pages for lower-level recipes.

I can’t complain. The first time I loaded Lion’s Arch, I had a couple problems with models not loading and…not being able to jump, oddly enough, but leaving and returning later fixed it, and HoT has been bug-free for me so far.

The download wasn’t quick, but not unbearable, either. Pretty satisfied!

The “Character Jump Start” is 3500 gems, and contains items worth 6,170 gems (~$77 on sale for ~$43.75, USD)

Seems pretty expensive to me, but gathering tools are 1000 gems ($10) each, so that’s 3000. Then the Salvage-o-Matic is 800, and three Bag Slots are 1200. (400/each.) Then you get 10 XP Boosters (900 gems? Seriously?) and 10 Transmutation Charges (270 gems.)

I would just ignore the transmutation charges and XP boosters, since they’re not too difficult to obtain in-game, and the XP boosters are hardly worth a dollar each to me. So it’s more like 3,500 gems for 5,000 gems worth of goods. If you want what’s in it, it’s a savings, although I wouldn’t buy it myself.

(I wouldn’t buy it because gathering tools aren’t super convenient if you have multiple characters, and I would never make my money back on them. If they’re not convenient, and they’re not saving me money…)

Perhaps those were upsells? It’s not uncommon for ecommerce pages to suggest additional products to buy as you’re going through checkout.

I pre-purchased, so I received beta access and the title. I also got a character slot, since my account was old enough to qualify for that bonus. That’s everything I should be getting, along with the game.

Hrm. I haven’t heard of such an offer.

There’s a new “Character Jump Start” package in the gem store that includes three Gather-R-Tron tools, along with other items, but to the best of my knowledge, no gathering tools were ever offered with pre-purchase.

The bat wings are in the gem store. 700 gems gets you a back skin of the wings, as well as a glider skin of them, which is pretty neat. (It looks like they added glider skins for the black/white feathered wings as well.)

I haven’t seen where the other things are yet.

An entire stack of luck can now be consumed buy right-clicking the stack and selecting Consume All.

It’s so beautiful. ;__;

All of my characters who aren’t my artificer appreciate it!

Because it would be expensive, and they haven’t determined that the trade-off in development resources would be better spent there than on developing new content.

I don’t know what kind of answer you’re expecting.

dom.2748:

Redenaz.8631:

We have this discussion every week, and unless you can show numbers to back up the 2-3 times claim, I can’t believe it.

Prices might have gone up since I last did the calculations, but there’s no way light armor costs more than 1/3 more than medium armor, much less 2-3 times as much.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

These are just the cloth/leather/metal costs. A full suit of armor costs something like 400 gold, but most of the other elements are the same regardless of what weight you’re wearing.

October 4th, 2015
Bolt of Damask — craft 13g | buy 15g | sell 17g
Elonian Leather — craft 3g | buy 3g | sell 4g
Deldrimor Ingot — craft 4g | buy 4g | sell 5g

Heavy armor uses 150 Thermocatalytic Reagent instead of 360 Gossamer Thread, but both are sold from vendors and cost about the same. (2g30s40c for thread versus 2g24s40c for reagents)

---

Light
36damask + 6leather
Medium
24damask + 18leather
Heavy
25damask + 16steel

Converted to gold costs,

Light
468g + 18g = 486g
Medium
312g + 54g = 366g
Heavy
325g + 64g = 389g

Cost Differences
Medium (0)
Heavy (23g)
Light (120g)

Bolt of Damask — craft 13g | buy 15g | sell 17g
Elonian Leather — craft 3g | buy 3g | sell 4g
Deldrimor Ingot — craft 4g | buy 4g | sell 5g

Its right here… its literally 4 times the cost of leather and 3 times the cost of metal…..

Are we comparing the cost of armor, or the cost of silk/leather/metal? Silk and leather materials aren’t supposed to cost the same. They’re not used in the same amounts, because everyone uses a lot of silk, between the armor parts and insignias.

If you’re comparing leather squares to bolts of silk, instead of total cost of the armor, you’re losing sight of the actual difference in cost between armor classes. Each armor weight uses a mix of materials, so while light classes might pay 30% more for their entire armor, it’s very misleading to say the whole process is out of whack because they pay 3-4 times what other classes do.

It does seem a little unfair, but have a sense of accurate proportion.

I wouldn’t put undue emphasis on the one tweet. I wouldn’t dismiss it entirely, because it gives us a picture of the thought process behind development, but do you really think they’re going to hone content to that specific a level, that you can only beat in in exotic gear, not ascended?

Unless the content has agony and needs infusions to survive, I’m skeptical about it. We should pay attention to whether there’s gear creep going on that we should be concerned about, but let’s not flip out, or no one will ever be able to tweet without setting off a firestorm.

We have this discussion every week, and unless you can show numbers to back up the 2-3 times claim, I can’t believe it.

Prices might have gone up since I last did the calculations, but there’s no way light armor costs more than 1/3 more than medium armor, much less 2-3 times as much.

I think Anet wants to keep the official forums focused pretty narrowly on the game, suggestions to improve the game, questions about the game, etc.

There’s some sense of community here, but between the lack of avatars, high traffic, (relatively) heavy moderation, lack of off-topic areas, broken forum software, etc., it’s not the best place for a community. Kinda a pity, but I suppose that’s what fan sites do best.

I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re not that interested in the old game, only the achievements, you’re probably better off just playing GW2, especially with HoT coming out on Friday.

I like GW1, but the HoM rewards aren’t a small thing to get, if only for the time required. There are guides on the most efficient way to do it, but you’re going to have to learn a (more or less) completely different game and commit a large amount of time to it just the same.

If you have guild mates who also play GW1, or can find a guild that also does GW1 runs for HoM points (I assume some might do that?) that might make it easier. Otherwise, you’re going to have to get people to help you. Heroes and henchmen help solo, but henchmen are dumb as rocks, and full-heroes are overwhelmingly complicated, if you’re unfamiliar with GW1.

It just doesn’t sound like a fun time, if you only care about GW2.

They haven’t announced anything. I believe they were looking into it a long time ago, but that seems to have fizzled out.

There’s a little speculation that the Action Cam is the first step towards a console release, but I wouldn’t expect anything.

Silvercyclone.1462:

I wish there was a gem store thing for GW1. Hate credit cards so there isn’t any way for me to buy anything for that game.

Have you considered a prepaid card? It’s basically a gift card that works like a credit/debit card. You just buy it at a store, and when it runs out of money on it, most will let you either refill it or (more likely) trash it. You never give your actual credit card/bank information to the issuer (buy the prepaid card with cash if you really want to be sure,) so there’s not much room for surprises.

It’s basically a burner credit card, cash in card form.

Anyway, they seem pretty convenient to me if you don’t like regular cards, but need to purchase something online.