Guild Wars 2

Yes! We need the Living Story to be more about our characters. The best parts of the personal story were the truly personal parts, pre-Pact. Once it became about dragons and Trahearne and the Pact, it became less compelling. Sure, it was fun the first time, seeing how I’d fit into the machine that stands against a dragon. But I’m no longer evolving. There’s nothing new about me. Sounds selfish, but the tale of my heroism needs the ability to continue and to grow. Living Character would be complex, but is absolutely what’s needed.

Remember that just because there are 6 champs in the Frost chain, doesn’t mean you have to do all of them. I often skip either the wurm, troll or broodmother just to sell some items to make inv room or chase an ori node or mass salvage.

Remember that many professions have some sort of an underwater skill that lets you charge forward. Also, for the trains, you really only need to spam auto, so take all the traits and utilities you can for speed boosts. Blink, Shadowstep, ranger warhorn, engineer Speedy Kits, warrior banners, guardian shouts…they all make you faster. Champ farms are pretty mindless so you don’t need to run your fractal build. Retrait for speed if necessary (mesmer?).

I play however I want and as I do so eventually start completing dailies. If I’m close to done or on an alt, I’ll finish em off quickly to get the bonus XP for my alt and then continue on my way. I rarely have to chase dailies except maybe the 5th one if I’ve been doing something specific while playing.

Elixir Gun is a great kit. But, no matter how you buff it, it’s just not a damage kit. That being said, it’s a wonderful support tool. Using it, Healing Turret, Pistol/Shield, you can set up a lot of healing and support. Bring along elixirs with 409 and Fumigate for aoe cleanses and tons of blast finishers on water fields for aoe heals. Stack a bit of condition damage & duration to boost the effectiveness of your pistol and EG’s blinds, confusions, poisons, and bleeds.

It works by bringing the total number of available traits in that line to 12. Other than that, it serves no purpose.

Aedelric.1287:

M Night Shyamalan quality writing, I agree Seras…..

Never said Shyamalan quality writing, simply Shyamalan-esque twists. Re-read. I agree that M Night has seriously lost what made him awesome and his movies are now nothing but set-ups for obvious twists.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Seras.5702:

You find out that the Flame & Frost alliance, the Aetherblade revelation, the Watchwork attack, the LA murder, the Steam Creature invasion….all connected by one Moriarty type character. A genius. A true nemesis, that can pull the strings of multiple entities to craft a detailed web of confusion, distrust, and chaos. It’s an M. Night Shyamalan twist revelation and everyone is all ho-hum, another salad. So she’s a Sylvari…so what?! She’s orchestrating something that we haven’t been able to figure out. We haven’t caught her. She’s struck many times, both overtly and from the shadows. Yet she continues down her path undeterred. We hope she dies pitifully while we speculate what new atrocity she’ll visit upon us. Her insanity makes some rolls their eyes, simply because they feel the need to compare her to the only other insane villian they can think of; The Joker. But she’s not. She’s part Moriarty (brilliant, calculating), part Harley Quinn (petulant, insane, precocious), part Magneto (reshaping the world).

She’s a quality villian, she just needs a better delivery.

A few things:

1. She’s not behind the steam creature invasion. It’s rather unknown why there are some in her army. It’s been completely left in the open thus far.
2. She’s FAR from Moriarty, far from Magneto, and far from Harley Quinn. Those were actually good villains. She is not, and it’s not because she’s a sylvari – her being a sylvari actually gives her a chance to be good in her own way.
3. It’s far from an “M. Night Shyamalan twist revelation” as well.
4. We haven’t been able to figure it out because we’re given no or next to no hints about what she’s trying to do. And that’s one of the biggest issues with Scarlet – the story is so drawn out that we get one chapter a month (even though it’s 2 updates a month, the second update is either a continuation of the chapter or unrelated), and so little story in those chapters. Anet compared it to a book, that by the time of the Bazaar of the Four Winds were were only at the end of chapter 1. That is six months for one chapter’s worth in comparison to a novel. Too little, too slow.

You didn’t give any counter-arguments. You just made bullet points and said “no.” You say she’s not behind the steam creatures but can’t explain why they’re in her army. You say Scarlet’s twist is far from M. Night, but it’s almost exactly the same as the twist in Unbreakable. You say she’s far from the villains that I listed (and I explained how she’s like them) but you can’t say how/why.

I’ll agree that we’re given few hints and no in-game text to guide us. And that’s precisely why I said that she’s not a bad villain, simply that she’s had a poor delivery. These partial chapters every month are so slow and drawn out. And we’re forced to go outside the game to learn anything.

Moar Armoar!!!

You find out that the Flame & Frost alliance, the Aetherblade revelation, the Watchwork attack, the LA murder, the Steam Creature invasion….all connected by one Moriarty type character. A genius. A true nemesis, that can pull the strings of multiple entities to craft a detailed web of confusion, distrust, and chaos. It’s an M. Night Shyamalan twist revelation and everyone is all ho-hum, another salad. So she’s a Sylvari…so what?! She’s orchestrating something that we haven’t been able to figure out. We haven’t caught her. She’s struck many times, both overtly and from the shadows. Yet she continues down her path undeterred. We hope she dies pitifully while we speculate what new atrocity she’ll visit upon us. Her insanity makes some rolls their eyes, simply because they feel the need to compare her to the only other insane villian they can think of; The Joker. But she’s not. She’s part Moriarty (brilliant, calculating), part Harley Quinn (petulant, insane, precocious), part Magneto (reshaping the world).

She’s a quality villian, she just needs a better delivery.

I threw this together last week and have been having a blast.

It stacks might with Juggernaut and HGH. FT does better damage based on power/prec than conditions, so I go full zerker rather than rampager. Lower base crit chance (49%), but more power. And I chose the sigil and runes to stack more might, rather than increase crit%. But with Elixir B, I’ve got fury with 50% uptime, plus a chance on throw B. I can keep a consistent 15+ might stacks up, generally 20+ at all times.

It’s just plain fun.

You can squeeze out more crit% easily by swapping out for Sigil of Accuracy and 4x Lyssa or Eagle Runes along with 2x Pirate Runes for example.

biggerthanthesun.2397:

… Here is the problem. I am trying to run the manor instance, and everything one-shots me. I am told, “dodge more,” but I fail to understand how to dodge a during a group pull when one mob, among five, with a gun, behind me, out of line of sight, can one shot me. I spend the entire encounter with my eyes glued to my health ready to smash spacebar as soon as any damage shows, yet I have no recourse against being ranged one-shotted. I see other players with health bars at 3/4-1/2 full. My health bar is either full or red. There are no in-betweens. What gives? …

Dodging after the fact won’t help. Don’t stare at your health bar, watch the mobs for attack animations and the ground for red circles. Use some defensive skills (auras) and traits. Stand where those who are alive stand. Learn the mechanics of your enemies. Those snipers deal a ton of extra damage to moving targets. So don’t move, reflect, or time a dodge.

Excalibur.9748:

cluster bomb is hard to land, that’s what’s keeping it from being OP imo

Clutster Bomb spreads bleeding better if you detonate it in mid-air. Leveling conditions, this was my goal when I used it but it was tough. It shoots slowly and the arc is inconsistent, leading to early or late detonations on my part quite often.

Revert Pistol #2 functionality to pre-Oct 15. Then swap Death Blossom’s functionality with Pistol #2. Adjust initiative costs for balance. Viola! You now have vulnerability stacking on D/D (power builds) and you have an aoe bleed/evade on pistol (condition builds).

Right thief looks better.

Both wielding dual daggers, so the right one looks more stealthy, more assassin-ish. If only you could get rid of those awful flames without altering the rest of the look.

If the left thief were wielding dual pistols, then I’d think “gunslinger” and that’d work better for me. Do like the hat though.

Tyria’s rotational duration is not the same as Earth’s. In-game the whole day/night cycle takes like 2 hours though…at that rate people would be spinning off the planet. It could be a bit longer. But definitely not synched to Earth.

Lore aside, I work 8-5 Mon-Fri & wouldn’t want to only get to play in the daytime on weekends.

Also, Signet of Midnight would be heavily affected, making it standard for players like me who play primarily in the evening/late at night.

I like the idea of seeking out trainers for new weapon skills at 80. It would be like hunting down elites in GW. And they’ll allow some progression at level cap that doesn’t involve gear grinds and mat farming. I’m thinking a trainer that has you accomplish a chain of training tasks in the zone you find him/her.

Upon completion, either get a specific new skill unlocked that’s only available from that weapon trainer or receive a red-skill point used to purchase your choice of available new weapon skills. Each skill would cost just 1 red-SP but it’d allow you to unlock whichever you want in whatever order you want.

+1

It seems that with the introduction of the candy corn node & the upcoming obelisk in quick succession, Anet is working toward improving our Home instances. If that’s the case, and we’re going to be going there more often, this feature would be a huge QoL improvement. It wasn’t until they added the Quartz node that I even knew where the home instances were outside of the personal story lol.

IAnd agree with mercury about LA’s loading times. So long and an immediate travel to home would alleviate having to post an alt outside Salma.

What you got was the Krytan armor skins, not actual armor. Each piece can be applied 1 time. Stats are not affected. To keep the look as you level and get new armor, you’ll have to transmute its appearance onto a new piece of armor.

Why can’t I get this lore in-game?

In which case I think the easiest way would be to ask in map chat in a city (just not overflow).

I have a number of 80s (Engi, Ranger, Necro) and a few other alts 45+ (Thief, Mesmer, Guard) and want to try my hand at Ele.

Looking at Ele though I’m confused how you can trait into an attunement but then have to constantly attunement swap. How does that work? Do you favor 1 attunement? Do you swap amongst them evenly?

Can you give me advice about how to level? Weapons, attunements, traits, gear, utilities?
An 80 build won’t help me much, and that’s all I see posted.
Thanks!

The next LS patch will introduce a new condition: Toxin. There’s a lot of speculation as to what exactly toxin will be. What I hope it will be, and if not what Anet will do in the future…

A new condition that acts similarly to bleed. It will stack in intensity, up to 25, just like bleed. The damage will be similar, perhaps differing in that it ticks every other second but for more damage per tick, or vice versa.

The idea will be to then replace existing bleeding on many skills across all professions to this new condition, toxin. This will diversify conditions and allow another one to be applied and tracked separately by the servers. This would alleviate the quickly achieved 25 bleed stack in dungeons (hopefully).

Then simple tweaks to the numbers of conditions cleansed for various skills would occur. And since bringing a lot of condition removal is already apparently a part of the meta, not a big change for builds.

Given that torment was introduced recently, this is apparently well within Anet’s ability to implement.

This is my SD/Rifle build

I like using Goggles, ToolKit, and RocketBoots. Goggles gives a stun break & blind immunity & fury for maximum burst. Rocket Boots gives some mobilitiy, a blast finisher, and movement-cc cure. Also, despite having a longer cooldown than Rifle Turret’s toolbelt, I like the Rocket Kick because it deals nice damage and adds a hefty burn. And of course, that’s one more condition for Modified Ammo to take advantage of. And RocketKick’s reduced range isn’t a big deal considering all the bouncing around you’ll be doing with JumpShot and RocketBoots, etc.

I take Power Wrench trait because another cripple when unleashing my toolbelt barrage is super nice. The reduced cooldown on GearShield is an added bonus.

Also, I prefer Hair Trigger over Rifle Mod. Ordinarily, I’d grab the trait to boost damage. But since I’m not going to be swapping kits much but rather relying on my rifle, I want access to JumpShot, Blunderbuss, and especially NetShot as often as possible. NetShot on an 8s cooldown = more immob, cripple, vuln x5.

a) hoping the toolbelt ability will be “Throw Antitoxin”

b) I’m actually hoping toxin replaces bleed for many professions’ skills, yet acts similarly. This might help to mitigate the 25 stack cap in dungeons by making a separate condition to track. In mid-sized zergs it’d be a little better, but in large zergs like we see for LS events it wouldn’t amount to much.

Of course, if you’ve got the laurels and want gear now rather than in 6 months <eye roll> then buy em now. Why wait months for something that might come out?

Can’t you check on the character select screen?

Yea pretty much what everyone else said about bearbow & miniontank. They are quite boring and (especially bearbow) lackluster. Having said that, playing both of those solo in PvE will be easy to stay alive.

I’m a bit baffled that you found engineer boring. In my experience, it’s one of the most dynamic and fun professions available. Have you tried may things other than the guns? I mean, you’re entitled to your opinion, but I can’t fathom someone saying engi is boring while having played a warrior. o.O

Guhracie.3419:

This is a great thread! Thanks for the information, all!

My engineer was intentionally mismatched while I was leveling her, for RP reasons. I have leaned toward really vibrant colors, particularly on light armor… and I love how there are great colors in every rarity.

Orangespring, Sand, Blue Ice, Lemonade, Sincerity, Midday, Oxblood, Warmth, Cocoa and Taupe are colors that I find memorable (and/or use frequently), off the top of my head. I haven’t found a lot of greens that I really love, though.

Those are some good ones too. I especially like Orangespring and Oxblood.

For greens, it seems you always gotta go darker than expected to get a shade that isn’t pastel or puke.

Flying was cool. For a time. Then it became tedious. Flight points let us see the scenery as we traveled. That’s what GW2’s vistas are for. And you can still run whereever you want to go. You don’t have to WP. But I enjoy playing the game, and WPs allow me to go wherever I want when I want to play with whomever I want. Convenience, in this case, furthers the gameplay. After the initial oooh-aaah of flying wore off, throughout my WoW playing days, I missed the GW map traveling.

Also, you can’t use WPs until you’ve discovered them, so you will need to run to those areas and take in the scenery on your way.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Also, on the vision thing – Scott McGough said in an interview with TowerTalk that the device that “let her see the Eternal Alchemy” was just a sensory depreviation device of sorts. Her vision was just a hallucination. Nothing more.

This is the kind of stuff that kitten es me off. I play the game, read the conversation bubbles, talk to the heralds, watch the cutscenes, and read my in-game mail. Nowhere, did it say that her vision into the Eternal Alchemy was simply a hallucination. I have to come to the forums and read a re-quote by a dev from an interview on another site to get details of the story and the villain I’m supposed to be instrumental in fighting. There needs to be more in-game communication.

And I’d love an explanation of that fact too. She’s supposedly brilliant, yet doesn’t know that instead of delving into the EA she simply got into a sensory deprivation device and tripped? Then why the sudden madness and murder? And the vines thing…can all sylvari do that?

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Seras.5702:

What if it’s a skill point that can be used once a day by a single character on your account? That would be fun. Recharge the SP every reset. Then you get a free SP as currency for your main or an easy SP for an alt each day.

While I won’t complain about this for my alts, and it would still be a nice addition, I don’t think I need it. 600+ skill points on my main and over 100-150 skill point items sitting in my inventory. Unless the potential new skills before the end of the year cost lots of skill points I’d argue most people who have been playing for a while won’t really need an extra +1 sp a day.

a) not everyone is like you and has 600 skill points banked
2) not everyone farms champions and has a stack of SP scrolls
d) in the future, Anet might decide to use SP as the currency for new skills

/home alone reference

Someone had mentioned in another thread making venoms act as mesmer mantras. This sounded like a great idea. This would let us pre-load venoms and then use them strategically rather than just spammed as they are now. The next x attacks causing chill are a waste imo, as it’s just stacking duration anyway. Rather have them loaded so that I can have 2 charges of my next attack causing chill.

Another idea would be to remove venoms and replace them with stances. These would augment the attacks or defense of the thief for their duration. For instance…

Mirrored Stance would let all attacks stack vuln & weakness for x secs, but for every stack applied to an enemy 1 stack of vuln is received too.
Withering Stance would let each attack stack torment for x seconds, but costs 1 more initiative.
Cautious Stance would let you gain protection for x seconds and your attacks cost 1 less initiative but you deal 15% less damage.

Make it a strategic give & take that can be planned around. Obviously, tweaked and balanced. I realize Cautious Stance as I described it would only encourage perma-stealth.

The only issue I haven’t figured out would be the venom sharing trait. It’s one of our few group support abilities, so that’d have to be figured. So for the 1st idea give each ally 2 immediate use charges of the venom, to be used the same as it does now. For the 2nd idea: take a page from the Engineer book & have each do a unique action whenever triggered, like Engi’s Kit Refinement. So for Mirrored Stance give allies retaliation for x seconds or for Withering Stance let each ally’s skills recharge 10% faster for x seconds or for Cautious Stance give allies protection for x seconds.

Thoughts?

What if it’s a skill point that can be used once a day by a single character on your account? That would be fun. Recharge the SP every reset. Then you get a free SP as currency for your main or an easy SP for an alt each day.

The Viscount’s candy pool graphic is pretty obvious. The problem is that a zerg and all its fabulous particle effects make seeing anything extremely difficult.

I think if I could attack the Lich in a group of 10, we might be able to figure out his mechanics. Could see how the skeletons spawn, any animation tells, etc. But instead all I ever see is a bright spot inside the mausoleum and the occassional Revive prompt.

Another ranged option would be warrior. As much as I generally hate to promote them, they have 2 long range weapons (longbow & rifle) which can throw out a fire field, blast finisher, stack vuln, and kill shot. It’s not elegant, but if you can keep yourself at range you can rain it down. Obvously, warriors have some great melee options too if you get pulled into the fray.

No, no perfect class. Try em all. Figure out which a) you enjoy more and b) which you’re better with. They all have very different styles of combat so you may find that you excel more with one over the others.

Yea it’s sometimes not well explained in-game how to travel to FoR. First time I had to go there from my personal story I believe I was directed to the gate via mail. But the next time I don’t remember getting any mail telling me to go thru the gate in DR.

Milop.6943:

Guardian – Human – Priory

She was a little expensive…

Shoulder : Human cultural T3
Chest : Human cultural T3
Hands : AP Hand skin
Legs : piece of Aetherblade Heavy Armor
Boots : piece of Aetherblade Heavy Armor
Weapon : Cobalt
+ new hairs for humans

result:

Great Look!!!

Not even going to read what everyone else has told you. Enjoy the game. Enjoy exploring Tyria; it’s gorgeous! Never stand still. Dodge often. Try everything. If you want to give each profession a look, roll a new one & (after your 1st mission) click the PvP icon at the top-left of your screen to travel to the Heart of the Mists (HotM). There, you’ll be auto-upleveled to 80 (level cap) and can participate in all PvP immediately. But, it also means you can test out your skills and traits on target golems (dummies) to get a feel for what each profession will eventually bring. Or, don’t and let it all be a surprise. Welcome and good luck and have fun.

No to Shadow Knight. I’d rather see the return of one of GW’s more unique archetypes, like Dervish or Ritualist.

holodoc.5748:

“Sea of Sorrows” was personally a mixed bag for me. One of the things that I can’t forgive ANet is the fact that prior to releasing the book they’ve put Marriner Plaques in the game with absolutely ZERO warning that they contain major spoilers. That ruined the book for me because the moment I read a character name I almost knew what was going to happen to him/her.

That’s a shame. I saw the plaques and heard about the book and figured I shouldn’t read the plaques until after the book. I hate spoilers and didn’t want to chance it. I agree with you though that it is kinda lame to put spoilers on the plaques. They were supposed to bea sort of ad campaign for the book, but you can’t go giving things away in the trailers.

Moving nodes keeps the game from being a farm run. God forbid you have to find the expensive crafting materials that you’re just going to flip on the TP after you run all your alts. Sorry for the jaded tone but I’m sick of hearing everyone whine about having to work for stuff.

Ranger – Preparations
Engineer – buff Flamethrower autoattack to make the kit a viable dps option
Thief – improve Venoms (like the act like Mantras idea) to make them more useful
Necro – Improve lifestealing and make dagger auto cleave

xephire.8324:

Just do0n’t buy them.

Awful solution. The issue is that they look great and people want to buy them, but they’re worthless being town clothes and not armor. Not buying them doesn’t solve the problem for anyone.

Quite frankly, I don’t understand the town clothes. Seeing someone rocking their town clothes in LA is extremely rare (for me). We work so hard to put together that perfect set of armor…why would I rather don riding pants and a vest? And to make a set of townclothes that look so armor-esque is just plain mean lol. That skull mask!

I liked all 3.

Edge of Destiny gave me that nerdy enjoyment of reading the backstory to what my in-game characters eventually encounter. I agree with CMF that the story went very fast and could easily have been another 200 pages full of character development and longer battles.

Sea of Sorrows was actually my favorite of the 3. It’s a much broader story and, while it focuses primarily on only 1 man, encompasses many years and gives the reader a sense of the world of Tyria changing.

SoS is chronologically before EoD but it’s ok. I read em in that order too.

I’d love to be able to buy a single piece of gem-store armor and/or have it unlocked not just one-time use. The medium Krytan chest armor is great and I’d buy a couple but I’m def not gonna buy the whole 800gem set for it.

I too love sword. Sword/Pistol mesmer. Sword/Axe ranger. Sword/Torch Guardian.
More awesome 1h sword skins are def needed. Most look clunky.

Engineer. Very mobile, like a thief. Med armor. Lotsa variety. Plenty of team support. Absolutely, not an easy profession to play; one of the higher skill ceilings. Kits offer a unique mechanic that bypasses many cooldowns, again like a thief.

Just some colors I’ve found to be really nice and fairly cheap:

Ocean
Blue Shade
Butter
Honeysuckle
Umber
Midnight Rust
Midnight Yew
Icing
Fog
Tarnished Silver
Spite
Forgiveness
Sincerity

Damash.1074:

If i use Engi for Roaming and Dungeons… Is it possible to stay on my weapon set or just one kit instead of switching all the time?

If you don’t mind swapping between your weapon set and 1 kit, then you’ll be fine as an Engi. There are plenty of builds for just 1 kit.

Also, you’ve been playing for 10 months. Despite not having an 80 yet (which is perfectly fine), you’ve obviously played quite a bit. Which classes have you tried? You should be able to get a little bit of information from your own experience.

Ah that’s fun. Didn’t realize you could Steal mid-heal-cast.

If I trait for Stealth on Steal though, would the burn from the runes cancel my stealth?