Guild Wars 2

Preface

It is well known to all the colleges that Skritt exhibit enhanced intellect the greater the population in proximity to one another. The magnitude of the said population is frequently an area for study; but this is not the only variable in the equation.

Common consensus is the skritt communicate rapidly and ultrasoniclly with high pitched chirps or similar sounds. Sounds can only travel through a medium at a predictable speed dependent on density, this indicates that both the distance between two skritt, as well as their population magnitude are a factor in the equation.

Given the sound must travel and then be replied to the equation is likely something to the form of:

Speed of process = 2rK + k / p

Where K is the bulk modulus, k is the constant of skritt processing, ie. the time it takes for the rodent to form a response (Preliminary research indicates this could be anything between instantaneous, or several weeks according to some studies), r is the average displacement between the skritt, and p is the magnitude of the population.

Most studies until now have focused on increasing the population, and k obviously is constant. However, if my theory is correct, then reducing the distance between skritt will also increase rate of processing.

Proposal

My proposition is to form a krewe to study the possibility of training large numbers of skritt, and then compressing them into extremely small volumes (<1cm – a large vice may be required), reducing the displacement between them to microscopic scales. These trained skritt can then be asked to perform calculations and operations far faster than any extant technology.

Early prototypes will aim for distances in the millimetre range but more powerful compression techniques and larger numbers of skritt could yield distances in the nanometre scale.

This new technology (Henceforth referred to as “microskritts”) could revolutionise a number of industries – replacing current generation aetheric valves with a far more compact, lighter and cheaper alternative that also turns skritt into a resource besides fertiliser.

The Incredible Zizi, Future Grand High Sovereign of Tyria
Professor of fractal metaphysics, College of Synergetics.

Short answer: It does

Long answer: It does, the tooltip doesn’t reflect the cooldown changes, try using the skill and note the actual cooldown.

runeblade.7514:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stability

A number of classes have little or no access to stability. Most notably necros (Who tell me they have none), and mesmers (Who have a mantra that grants 2 second stability on a 40 or 50 second cooldown and requires perfect foreknowledge and timing of the impending CC to be any use) – given it’s duration and prequisite foreknowledge of the impending stun, you may as well dodge roll ;p

People talk about wanting progression, but then they talk about filling bars and getting bigger numbers on their gear

Have you progressed as players? – Have you truly mastered your class, fine tuned your builds to suit your style while maximising effectiveness, have you gotten outfits tuned to look 100% pure awesome?

What about WvW, PvP, fractals – have you mastered those?

Getting exotic gear isn’t “the end of the game”, it’s just the beginning, now your gear progression ends and taking your mastery of the game to the next level – you can’t rely on gear to make you “better” you have to become the better player. I don’t understand this attitude that “legendary weapon and ascended gear = completed the game”.

Look at players in fractal level 1 and players in fractal level 40 and tell me that nothing has progressed.

anzenketh.3759:

OP care to explain how you think the market is broken.

He can’t afford his legendary weapon yet. Clearly, not working as intended

I think when we see significant expansions come out – revisiting the Shiverpeaks and that dark blue area of the map, pressing into the crystal desert, returning to the depths of tyria etc – we’re going to be in for a real shock when we see the level of corruption and the hostile alien landscape that’s growing within the dragon’s realms of influence.

Just look at Orr in contrast to the uncorrupted parts of the world…

Ayrilana.1396:

Didn’t really change anything except make a berserker guardian the preferred class to solo these. I just tested it and guardian is now the fastest due to their pull attack.

Every time people say that god kills a kitten.

(AoE pulls arn’t unique to guardian, mesmer’s can do it too using focus 4, and can create a much larger opening burst, frequently sufficient to kill the entire group in a single blast)

I have a big hangup on “conventional” spellcasters like elementalists. To me, the idea of clobbering people with fire or frost is the magical equivalent of a barbarian slugging someone with a warhammer.

No finesse or skill whatsoever, just “hit stuff til it stops twitching”… I’ll take my fiddly mind magic thank-you-very-much

Yeah, 1 and 2 are pretty much pure offence, they don’t leave much to the imagination (A common trend in guardian skills when compared to mesmer :p), and 3 is of course a root which naturally combines with 2 to keep people rooted in the AoE

Looking up the normalised damage:
Orb of wrath (Wand 1) – 224 damage (896 dps)
Spatial Surge (GS1) – 348×3 damage (696 dps)

So, yeah. It was probably difference in traiting that was throwing the power curve, the difference isn’t as great as it looked on in the field and is almost entirely reliant on the enemy being so kind as to not wander out of Wand 2 to make the DPS difference.

Oh well, pondering resolved

(Now I feel a bit happier that my attempts at hybrid DPS/support on mesmer isn’t a wasted effort)

Ah yeah, valid point – sceptre projectiles can definitely be reflected, GS2’s clone can be freely shattered (along with GS4 if desired) for a fairly significant amount of extra spike damage and of course you have a fair degree of “hands free” functionality thanks to phantasms.

So it probably all balances out once you factor in all the additional damage sources – GS is definietly my preference in terms of usability, I was just kind’ve shocked at how fast I could burn through the tentacles in Jade maw with a sceptre, compared to a GS (Where the tentacle tends to smash your clones so you’re more reliant on GS1) which led me to examine the numbers

Lately I’ve been doing high level fractals and dungeons and become acutely aware of how important DPS is compared to support and control (That’s not to deny mesmer’s support, which is incredible, with spammable reflects and whatnot), and been refining my kit and build to make DPS a much higher priority, switching from sword/focus/staff to sword/focus/GS, and managing to tune my GS to routinely land 2.5-3k GS1, 6k+ GS4, 9-10k Focus 5 etc

Seemed like good numbers and I was really happy to be doing so much DPS.

I decided to dust off my guardian today however to see if my new angle on DPS would be useful there too, set it up with very similar gear to my mes (zerker/cavalier/knight mix)…

…am I imagining it or is mesmer really lacklustre in DPS, I mean. I know our DPS isn’t stellar, but GS is a two handed, dedicated ranged DPS weapon – it’s kind’ve our equivalent to ranger’s longbow, or Warrior’s rifle.

Contrast this to Guardian’s sceptre, which is a one handed ranged weapon (Like mesmer sceptre), on the most heavily melee orientated class in the game that has more of a defensive than offensive angle. And yet, the average damage values I’m getting (With similar stats) are:

Mesmer GS1: ~2.5k crit average (1.5 sec channel, 1.6k DPS)
Guardian Wand1: ~1.3k crit average (0.25 second spam, 5.2k DPS)

Now, obviously GS has a great ranged phantasm option on a long cooldown that can hit super hard, but, the sceptre is a mainhand weapon leaving 2 slots free to mix and match and of course Wand2 adds a lot of DPS on static targets so, swings and roundabouts there.

I’m just wondering if anyone could tell me where I’m going wrong with the maths on this, surely the “long range sidearm” option for the bunkery heavy melee class, shouldn’t be over double the DPS of the dedicated long range DPS option for a cloth caster class?

Before anyone pipes up with the obvious “But the sceptre projectiles are easy to dodge” ask yourself, have you ever seen a dungeon boss dodge roll?

Jam.4521:

I dont understand it when it comes to the Dragonball mini-game.

You get one achievement for 20 games and another for 20 wins, why not just play and try to kill 2 birds with one stone? On average you will complete 10 of the wins in the time it takes you to do the games.

I’m assuming people are just giving up on the wins bit?

We had two leechers on our team in one round, and we still won (The enemy team appeared to have 1 leecher, and our team were just that much more proficient that per-person we killed twice as many players each); so, while a leecher is a dead weight, they may still get wins even while akitten.

The real answer, is most likely down to making homogeneous dialogue.

The term bookah DOES occasionally arise between asura NPC/human NPC interactions, but when it’s Asura NPC/player character, due to the possibility of the player also being an asura they have to use more generalised terms.

This goes even further when you realise that all the playable races have the EXACT same dialogue in the story beyond their personal story; which is why the Charr player character suddenly starts acting like a wimp, the Asura player character loses their flowery egomaniacal speech, the Norn player’s balls shrivvel and drop off etc

Conner.4702:

Bright.9160:

ITT: open-world PvE’res complaining about risk vs reward….

The Dungeon/Fractal community would like to have a word with you..

With exploiting in both has been running rampant this group doesn’t get a vote.

I agree open world drops are utter crap. Unless you do the events people are funnelled into like daily chest events.

Riiiight, and the main source of kitten ing and moaning from the PvE farming community was when they fixed the Lyssa event that was letting them farm an endless stream of heavy moldy bags and crystalline dust.

And we don’t get a say in things because you believe we’re all exploitters… I’d like to see your logic on that one considering you really can’t exploit fractals.

I usually report it as botting, since technically botting is a way of using a script to have a character avatar perform an action for gain in the absence of player effort.

In this case the script is: “Stand still, push no buttons” in order to farm something without putting in any effort (To everyone else’s detriment)

Kuzzi.2198:

This must have been a mistake. It completely destroyed the appeal of Minis.

Heaven forbid other people might have the same mini? O,o

Zumy.6318:

Ryuujin.8236:

I actually made a fairly big loss (~10g)

Sorry, but I giggled a bit here.

To Joe Plumber anyway – 10g is barely a scratch on my daily profit margin, but you can still buy quite a bit of nice stuff on the CS for 10g :p

I would’ve said that elitism isn’t a problem; until the last few days in dungeons and fractals… and elitism really is sucking the fun out of it – but not in the way you might expect.

World of Warcraftism

“Stack here”, “Pull”, “HOW YOU AGGRO THE WELPS! MINUS 50 DKP!”

A wise person once said GW2 is an art, WoW is a science, but there are increasing numbers of people trying to play GW2 like WoW, forcing the party to stack in certain places, execute pulls in certain ways. In the dredge fractal yesterday some guy made us stack on the pipes (for some reason?) and we wiped 3 times, each time getting nuked down by the combined AoE shockwaves and melee of the dredge.

The whole idea was stupid, counter-intuitive and ultimately didn’t work but when people have the ability to /kick you for disobeying, nobody dared question it.

After the 3rd wipe I said “screw this, I’m a mesmer, I have reflects coming out my kitten and dodges and AOE’s – this is NOT a natural or effective way of doing this”, so I just fought the trash mobs on open ground and, guess what, we suceeded this time because the mobs didn’t burst us all down as a group and actually couldn’t hit us with ranged attacks at all due to my chainned reflects and since we wern’t all stacked up, we didn’t all get downed simultaneously whenever we did get meleed by the champion

Should be obvious, but “THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO DO THIS DUNGEON HNEERRGGHHH” attitude is tiresome, frequently misguided and just takes all the fun out of things. I understand the importance of having a plan in many instances and how it can speed stuff up at times (ie. cliffside’s tunnel pulls and sparing the first two chanters), but some plans are just stupid, and the attitude you can only do a dungeon one way, or get kicked is rediculous.

The market correction was much needed; ectos were becoming worthless, while crystalline dust (Which is important to the game) lacked supply to meet even the basic demands of the economy. Now the two are effectively linked

I actually made a fairly big loss (~10g) due to this fix; there’ll always be winners and losers when a change comes around, but even I recognise that this change was needed

My biggest problem with defiant is less than exists, and more the lack of precision it introduces.

Given the entire team is slamming away at the guy, some of them using skills that count as “controls”, the defiant stacks DO eventually get used up and reset. Now take the enemy does something critical you need interrupt, like the mining suit’s heal – now you might need hit him with half a dozen stuns – or maybe the next stun’ll do the job, it’s pure luck whether you’ll be in a position to make a timed interrupt or not.

Sorry nemesis but you really do seem to be missing the wood for the trees here. An effective mesmer (Even in terms of DPS) really is more than just big numbers.

Take for example your AoE phantasms, iWarden (Which you don’t use), and iZerker – they might well hit 6-7k routinely in a glassy build. But as long as you’re just throwing them at the enemy as they come you’re only hitting 2-3 enemies at a time; less with iDuellist.

If you were to use focus offhand, you can slam the enemies into a wall, lock them there and then dump iWarden and iZerker on them; you’d still only hit 6-7k – possibly less if you’re running a more balanced build; but you’re probably going to hit every single trash mob in the pull, dealing far more DPS and making a far greater contribution to the pull.

And this is without even looking at how you can leverage your team-mates DPS. Using a staff to spread retribution/aegis/chaos armour/regen/doubling up the AoE might and dumping reflects for your team might sound like a big waste of DPS, certainly you personally will be making smaller numbers; but again, behind these protective wards the frontline DPS guys; especially warriors – will be able to really lay down the pain with less regard for their own safety; while it’s true your goal here is to define a “glass cannon mesmer” – but this is rather like setting out to define a “thief tank”, or “Warrior backstab build”. GW2 classes allow immense flexibility but some classes just don’t lend themselves to certain build concepts.

GW1 had the capability, it’d certainly be nice; there’s some great sets out there that are just awful to try and match to any outfits due to their colour schemes.

The larger hit values tend to occur when the target is butted up against a solid object so the zerker spins into the object and keeps spinning hitting the target with all 4 of it’s whirling strikes.

Saying it’s a “problem with the floaters” is all well and good, but it’s bullkitten. I’ve seen plenty of examples where a “big hit” zerker has melted a target, whereas a “weak hit” zerker has barely scratched an identical target. If the problem was purely cosmetic every target should melt like a “big hit”

Another bump and will continue to bump whenever it slides off the page until the problem is at least acknowledged.

This is iZerker all over again and we can’t wait another 4 months for it to be addressed it’s a high priority issue that breaks several mesmer skills completely.

A collector.

Some people just gotta own them all; and they have wallets to cover it. You might not, 99.9% of the game’s player base might not. But that’s ok, because you evidently aren’t the target audience of the seller (And given the total absence of supply, it’s not an unreasonable gamble)

sorudo.9054:

the dye remover option only resets to the last saved colors, so it’s still a gamble.

Odd, dye remover usually resets stuff to it’s basic, default colours – on armour anyway. Unless they changed it’s behaviour recently.

Dawdler.8521:

and thats when you run a power spec and laugh at people using expensive food.

Uh… you do know that lemongrass is most often used by power specs right?

They are less likely to be dependent on a specific food to make their build viable (Boon bots tend to use some like chocolate omnom for the 20% boons, condition builds frequently run rare veggie pizza for the +40% condition). With that already in place than -40% condition duration is an ideal use of the slot in WvW effectively rendering condition builds harmless

Don’t forget they always break something in the behaviour scripting. (iZerker’s aiming, bounce logic etc)

I’m predicting that after this patch clones/phantasms will all behave like iWarden and stand where they are spawned instead of closing to melee.

This was the entrance to the bloodstone caves in GW1:
http://atyrianodyssey.com/gw/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/bloodstone-caves_entry.jpg

Looks like a nod towards it without spending too much in the way of custom art assets for what is ultimately just minor trivia at this point.

The way I interpret agony as of GW2 is that it’s due to the fundamental nature of the mists, physical beings from Tyria on coming into contact with certain components of the mists experience massive physical damage, like a meta-physical law not meant to interact with physical matter that doesn’t apply properly to a physical object.

The Muraat’s understanding of the mists means they’re aware of that and can leverage it as a weapon – but it’s not a unique weapon of the Mursaat but something specific to the metaphysics of the mists.

If you need convincing of the superiority of Asura you’re clearly not cut out to be an Asura, it’s that simple bookah.

You might also look up “Combat Mode”, which is a key binding plugin – while not endorsed by Arenanet, it doesn’t violate the “1 click = 1 click” rule, it adds a key that engages something akin to “shooter mode” in Star Trek Online (Or the entire game in Mass Effect 2/3), so you don’t have to click and drag the screen, instead moving your mouse aims and the reticle is fixed centre screen, this frees up the scroll-wheel and mouse buttons for key bindings that are traditionally required to orientate the camera and gives the game a much more responsive shootery feel

Skapocalypse.5236:

The skill needs to be fixed and should have been priority 1 or 2 on there fix list with izerker.

If it’s on the same priority list as iZerker we’re screwed; how many months has that been borked now?

It’s Saturday.

All the weekend warriors are online – the influx of additional players always throws the TP for a loop, increased demand across the board coupled with increased supply in the materials sector.

…as well as us veteran traders all prepped and waiting to sell them our fine wares at an elevated price.

Jigain.8231:

That face reminds me of someone. Or something. Can’t quite figure it out, but the skin tone, lack of ears, and unibrow combine to really tickle the ol’ memory cells.

“ET phone home”

This isn’t a nerf, it’s a stealth buff to make the “Ambient killer” achievement easier.

Why, only this morning I threw GS2 at a raptor, and took out 2 sparkflies and a toad!

Nice to see the thread isn’t dead, guess I’ll add my two cents for the count.

My style: Inspiration/Support (10/20/0/30/10, Staff/Sword/Focus)

Why: I spend a lot of time in fractals, dungeons and to a lesser extent zergs these days, and mesmer DPS really isn’t much to write home about, so rather than making myself a glassy liability for the sake of a few ticks more DPS, I make sure that my traits and utilities are orientated towards providing buckets of reflects, boons and healing for my team.

That’s not to say I’m running “full support” as a get out of DPS card, I’m packing cavalier/zerker gear and pull some pretty decent damage too, just the spec itself puts Mesmer’s immense defensive and utility options to work ensuring my team can give their fullest without having to waste so much time on their own survival.

TooBz.3065:

I think you are definitely right to prefer the staff when soloing the open world. With 5 other team mates you can keep range better. If you go into a dungeon, bring both and see what works best for you.

A thing to remember with staff in dungeons is that chaos storm provides chaos armour (with combos), has a chance to stun the enemies, weaken and chill them, and provide aegis to your friends.

While staff’s DPS might be lower, it enables the rest of the team to engage more recklessly for the duration – in most cases this’ll provide a net increase in party DPS; teamwork isn’t about having the biggest numbers, it’s about making the combined numbers of the entire team bigger.

perche.3215:

manipulation market , naaaa

That guy isn’t manipulating the market. He’s buying in bulk in order to process it into mithril and orichalcum and sell for a net profit. I made much of my early funds that way

This is half the problem with “you people” – you look at activity on the marketplace and say “HERMAGERDMANIPULATION!” without really understanding what you are looking at.

Zumy.6318:

You do know that you get rich by failing at making mystic clovers, do you?

Tons of crystalline dust made yesterday. It is 1 skillpoint 2100 karma and 21 silver per attempt and only like 3 things that could drop dont result in a win.

Getting 10 Dust in 20 attempts is not uncommon and already cutting even. Now you have the rest of the t6 mats too…

Indeed. People don’t seem to realise that the “mystic clover” recipe is actually a net profit if you do it for the T6 mats – a way of converting your spare skillpoints and karma into gold effectively. Under those circumstances, the mystic clovers actually represent a failure rather than a success as you can’t sell them

Yuchen.5980:

i use scepter since i wanna use sword and pistol as offhand… block is good anyway

You can use swords in both hands if you want…

It has a time and a place, but honestly – in a party greatsword feels inappropriate. It’s AoE DPS is less than that of a sword and lacks the utility of an offhand, while staff brings major boons, party support and survivability to the table.

I always feel that if I’m bringing a greatsword, I’m sacrificing utility that could improve the parties overall effectiveness (And risking getting my own ask kicked by mobs) for the sake of a small boost to my personal DPS.

It’s just something of a niche weapon and requires knowing in advance whether you can sacrifice the support/utility or AoE DPS for single target DPS in that situation

Correct me if I’m wrong; but according to the lore now that both swords have been obtained, Queen Jenna (Provided Rytlock let’s her borrow his sword… I don’t see that he wouldn’t) is now in a position to undo Adelbern’s curse and free the souls of the Ascalonians and stop the daily slaughter of innocent Charr.

…the fact that she hasn’t seems like a pretty hostile action.

You know… if a nation claiming to be your ally had something set up that killed you citizens on a daily basis, and had the power to shut down that something, but refused to – you’d probably stop considering them your allies in relatively short order

ilr.9675:

Also: does anyone know what the AVERAGE outcome of 250 Incandescent —> Crystaline is supposed to produce?? B/c if it’s anything below 33, then we’re getting totally screwed here by the Forge…

It’s very much under 33, my past experience plus some experiments today indicate it seems to be in the 10-30 range

For – but not for party selection reasons. Simply for build fine tuning.

Being something of a perfectionist I often find myself thinking “How much damage is this rotation really adding and how does it break down into condition/power/crit damage”, “Can i trade off a few points here and what loss of damage does that cause”. With no way to monitor my own DPS I can only wing it

Even GW1 had a DPS test target in the mists for experimenting with builds, GW2 has no such feature

Shiyo.3578:

Ryuujin.8236:

You’re lucky if option 1 is even an option – for many of us out there we don’t even have access to guild events and thus commendations are a non option, you ONLY option is to wait literally months to accrue the necessary laurels

Why is it not an option? Hundreds of guilds host public guild missions multiple times a week. You’d have to go out of your way to not be able to finish your guild missions every week, it’s so easy.

Where can I find further information on that? – It’s certainly not common knowledge or something that is publicly advertised.

Getting INTO a guild is like getting blood out of a stone. The last guild I applied to 3 times, their application form took an hour to fill in each time and they kept losing my application, the guild before that the leader got stoned and booted me over an imaginary slight, the one before that closed over-night with no warning, and before that they all band-wagoned to a more successful server for the WvW… at this point I’ve given up even trying to find a guild… so you’re saying there’s guilds out there that just take in random people to do their precious guild missions, no questions asked? – Seems like crazy talk after my experiences so far)

You’re lucky if option 1 is even an option – for many of us out there we don’t even have access to guild events and thus commendations are a non option, you ONLY option is to wait literally months to accrue the necessary laurels

Staff does work really well in condition builds but it also works just fine on shatter and power builds – iWarlock does a huge amount of power based damage, and the staff is ideal for generating lots of shatter fodder quickly.

The main attraction however is chaos storm; which has a pretty good chance of granting aegis to allies (often multiple times), stunning enemies in the area, and can be combo’d into chaos armour – throw in genuine chaos armour, and that’s a huge amount of damage mitigation. (Not to mention phase retreat letting you keep one step ahead of enemies)

Scepter is almost useless in PvE/WvW unfortunately; it’s a strongly single-target orientated weapon and only really excels in small scale fights (1 Vs 1, 1Vs 2, sPvP, tPvP), the huge zergs in WvW, or larger swarms of enemies in events and orr render scepter largely worthless.

Even then, all of mesmer’s weapons except greatsword are close-combat weapons (Sceptre has a built in block and confusion requires the enemy be encouraged to attack you, sword is melee, staff works best at close quarters, etc). As the official description of the class states, mesmer’s are duellists who utilise illusions, if you don’t like melee combat, mesmer isn’t the class for you; they’re not a stand-off caster like classical mages.

As I often tell new mesmers – they’re basiclly un-thieves. A thief hides in the shadows and stabs you in the back. A mesmer hides in plain sight and stabs you in the front.

Erasculio.2914:

Ryuujin.8236:

it includes a whole row of minor dedicated to interruption that NOBODY uses

Diversion, the profession skill 3, is an interrupt, which means all mesmers have access to interrupts whenever they have some illusion around. It’s not something “NOBODY uses”. Even if you think the interrupt effect itself is weak (and it isn’t), it’s better to have traits improving things that are just good than traits making overpowered things even more overpowered.

OK, so “nobody builds to leverage them”. Taking 2 grandmaster traits for a skill that has a super long cooldown, is incredibly situational and to truly get your investment back on requires significant investment of slots.

It’s part of a paradox I noticed back in Allods online playing as a psionic (very similar class to mesmer but with a stronger control focus); you had to draw a line somewhere between control and DPS, there came a point where you need to stop beating about the bush and just kill the guy; and the interupption traits sit the wrong side of the “control Vs killing” sweet spot.