Guild Wars 2

It wouldn’t make any sense to have the charr basically be primitives but still be able to build an entire city out of metal and organize three separate armies. They’d just be bigger grawl.

They do help, but as you go along later into the game they’re less and less helpful thanks to the game’s sudden decision to have undead zerg rush you.

Martym.6971:

Teleports and mobility don’t help against ranged.

Teleports do. If you teleport while there’s a projectile in the air, it misses.

Throw away one of those pistols. It has the same fire rate as the bow but does less damage and doesn’t have any area effect attacks.

Oh we have plenty of ways to avoid getting hit, the problem is the cooldown for those abilities mean we still get hit.

Gryz.8376:

I enjoy the Story Quests.

You’re playing a warrior or guardian obviously. Because those are the only two classes who can play the story quests without issue.

supergica.8652:

Also because of shadow refuge, you don’t always have to fight that veteran/champion to get the chest, rich vein, or resurect someone. Just run up to it, ignore all the mobs, pop the stealth and loot/revive away then run. For some reason that stealth is alot more then 3 seconds it says on the tooltip (more like 6-7 seconds), i’m not sure if it’s a bug or intended.

Refuge gives you and others more time in stealth the longer you stay in the area you activated it in.

Warriors have the game’s easy mode. They have the most HP, the heaviest armor, and a good selection of area effect attacks.

Them and guardians are pretty much all the game’s PvE is for.

Devildoc.6721:

Shooopa.5632:

Sometimes we warp out because we’re too close to the enemy who downed us, and if they hit us just one more time they’ll completely knock us out. Irregardless of someone healing us or not.

Champion enemies are notorious for this – the giant that attacks Nagling for example has a stomp that has an absolutely ridiculous range and kills with two hits. If you got hit by the first one, then you will be hit by the next and killed if you don’t move.

2 hits? it always killed me in 1.

Odd. Are you the recommend level for that event?

Coffietire.2783:

I guess so that the objectives remain relevant and challenging to the player. I mean, if I leveled to 80 and then did the story, I would probably keep the motivation to complete it on the back burner.

It’s because the game is steamrolling my level 45 thief with a quest that’s supposed to be done at level 26 I don’t feel like ever doing the personal story ever again.

It’s not challenging, it’s as unfair as I Wanna Be The Guy.

They say it’s for some sort of exploit. What it is I don’t know, but I’d prefer this instead of having to pay for world transfers. Because every world I’ve been in to date is nearly vacant.

It’s ludicrous design decisions like this that are threatening to ruin this game for me.

Apparently the developers want everyone to be either a ranger or a guardian and everyone who wants to be anything else should play another game. A good fight should be a mix of timing and simple puzzles, not just picking the right option at the character selection screen.

What’s Stapler’s game ID – the one with the numbers at the end?

ZetaStriker.9142:

I’m able to keep them alive easily enough via blinds. It’s a solid strategy for Thieves and Engineers especially, and if they drop it’s not too hard to revive them.

Blind only lasts four seconds – that’s not long enough to replenish your initiative to keep it up constantly. And if they do drop they’re good as dead because the zombies then turn all their attention to you. Even if you escape, the enemies just hang around right next to your friends’ bodies.

The worst thing is if you play as a thief. Thieves are made exclusively for one-on-one and medium range support engagements only. So of course the story mode is now pitting my thief against a small army of enemies who overwhelm all the NPCs in seconds.

Shannon.9583:

Keta.9601:

mulch.2586:

A MMORPG — if something seems too hard for you, try it with a friend.

You shouldn’t have to. If the personal stories are designed to require a party of any size than they need to clearly state that. As it is, they’re set too hard. The fact that most of the missions require you to rez and repeat multiple times is an indication that the difficulty level is too high. I no longer bother with any of them on any character.

All you guys need to do is come back when you are a few levels higher. The storyline missions get easy if you out level them a bit.

I know that’s not necessarily your ideal, but it does work if you are having trouble.

So far I’ve had little trouble doing them on a ranger, some minor issues on a thief.

Most of the time I run with a friend just because I find the solo stuff boring and well… I play an MMO to play with my friends, not run solo.

But if you are stuck, I would add a few levels and then go back. You’ll have better skill and equipment and it makes a big difference.

I tried to do a story quest suggested for level 26 at level 45 and still got steamrolled because the sheer density of the enemy spawns. Some of the quests are completely unfair for anyone playing solo.

The NPCs aren’t effective against… Well anything Mr. Vaughn. They’re downright suicidal in most cases, charging into enemies and getting downed within seconds.

Having as many enemies as you do would work OK if the friendly AI were competent, but they’re mostly limited to seeing a single enemy, charging at it, and then attracting and ignoring the ensuing swarm.

I had little trouble with the first 2 parts of the story arc because in terms of numbers, I was on equal footing with the enemy. They didn’t kill anything effectively, but they did break up the crowds. Now that the undead have appeared, we’re outnumbered and they tear through any NPC in seconds. They have much too high a spawn density for most players.

I’m not playing a glass cannon, my thief is being speced for survival instead of DPS. But it’s not possible to give him enough HP or toughness to outlast a small army. Stealth skills and blinds don’t work if you can’t separate one or two enemies from a group of 7-8. Blind only lasts for 4 seconds and stealth backstab only hits one enemy at a time.

It turns into a game of repetition where you try to kill one enemy, flee to regen your health, and then repeat. I really hope that’s not how you intended the game to play like.

Did you follow any of the story in the previous game? The old charr leadership was religious fanatics. And the first half a charr’s personal story is fighting their remnants.

How anyone even manages to get a PUG I have no idea. I wander around a server listed as “Population: High” and rarely run into any other players.

It’s starting to get depressing.

When fighting any major enemy with area-effect attacks, DO NOT MELEE THEM. You should only melee champions who you can tell are facing you so you can dodge out of there and get behind them again. 90% of the time your best bet is a shortbow. With it you can cause poison and bleeding.

One of the last major traits for the thief is called venomous aura. This is incredibly useful and makes you a major asset to your team. It means every time you activate a venom up to five people around you get it too. Combined with basilisk venom which turns an enemy into stone for 1 second, you can lock up any enemy in the game for up to 5 seconds!

If you’re not that far along, don’t worry you still have skale venom which works wonders even without sharing. It causes vulnerability for 5 seconds and weakness for 15. It can make a huge difference in a fight, making a thief as useful at cushioning enemy blows on your friends as a guardian while also making them take significantly more damage every time someone hits them.

Her name doesn’t show up anywhere on the game’s IMDB page.

Is that why the cubs always say, “You smell funny.”?

You can’t use the NPCs as damage sponges even because they die too quickly. They serve absolutely zero purpose once the Order representatives appear. The enemies kill them in seconds and then turn all their attention to you – there is no strategy you can formulate that would take advantage of them because they don’t stay alive long enough to be used.

The terrain doesn’t help either – enemies can climb over anything you can.

I know you’re playing the human story, so maybe there’s some fundamental differences in its difficulty compared to my charr’s but believe me – there are situations the game throws at you you simply can’t win without either gaming the system or bringing in a whole team of human-controlled players.

Can they at least come up with a way to find specific players then? I feel like I’m playing in an empty building every time I load up this game and it’s starting to get depressing.

Kind of rough so far. Level 49, and settling on a dagger/pistol and shortbow.

Dealing with more than one enemy at a time is often frustrating instead of challenging. Having the thieves guild ability really helps a lot, but still. The scorpion wire is extremely helpful and fun – when it works. Sometimes it just acts as a low damage projectile without the GET OVER HERE effect and that’s never good. I run out of initiative too fast when fighting veteran enemies so I can’t keep them blinded all the time. I may need to get better at figuring out when to dodge.

I’m staying away from double daggers because I hear some boss enemies heal on condition damage which is all they excel at. The sword/dagger is powerful, but the shadow step attack/return range is too short. If there were a way to cripple the enemy then it’d be a much better setup.

But I think I’m doing pretty well as a team player by using a shortbow and skale venom and once I get venomous aura I’ll be much more helpful by sharing skale and basilisk venom. I use shadow refuge to help downed players and always try to shoot through status effect circles.

I’m not even attempting dungeons because I’m not laying waste to everything I run into by myself, and the last thing I want is to be the guy who gets KO’d every 3 minutes.

Sometimes we warp out because we’re too close to the enemy who downed us, and if they hit us just one more time they’ll completely knock us out. Irregardless of someone healing us or not.

Champion enemies are notorious for this – the giant that attacks Nagling for example has a stomp that has an absolutely ridiculous range and kills with two hits. If you got hit by the first one, then you will be hit by the next and killed if you don’t move.

Shomaruki.7395:

Just going to point the finger and assume most people who say learn to dodge a thief are the people who are actually the thief players themselves. I wouldn’t have an issue with a thief as long as he couldn’t attack me with 4 different attacks while under stealth.

^*ISSUE being, the thief is able to literally hit you with everything while stealth. My whole deal on it, you CAN NOT DODGE what you can’t see. Even if I were to make a random lucky dodge, oh wait I still have 3 more hits to avoid…and only 1 more dodge left…let me attempt another random dodge again.

The goal isn’t so much to dodge everything because you can’t – the goal is to not get backstabbed because that’s a hell of a lot of damage and their ultimate goal. If a thief hits you with a projectile from stealth instead, then you’ve successfully dodged them.

Dagger/pistol and shortbow.

I’m more concerned with staying alive. Glass cannons are a terrible idea in this game. Worse, I’ve heard some bosses heal on condition damage. Shortbow works OK for crowds, much better than the pistol but still so slow.

I work great in a team thanks to weakness-causing skale venom (using it sped up killing the champion giant by maybe 3-4 minutes!) and I’ll get even better once I unlock venomous aura, but soloing can be a challenge especially against veteran enemies. The thieves guild skill is a must.

I’m not touching PvP until I hit 80 and finish the build.

They’re using backstab on you – if a thief stealths them-self and hits you in the back, it does double damage. And some level 80 thieves have a skill which makes all backstabs critical hits too. They also have a skill which lets them deal 20% more damage to anything with 50% HP or less.

Don’t ever try to fight a thief one-on-one. That’s what they specialize in.

Important note about blinding – it doesn’t work on champion enemies. It works wonders on all others, making nearly all of their attacks 100% miss.

For champions, use skale or basilisk venom. Especially if you have venomous aura which gives anyone standing around you the venom on their attacks too! It’s amazing how much faster a large enemy with more HP than they should reasonably have goes down when you apply the skale venom’s defense-cutting status to them.

Starting with Ash and liking it. They’re basically the charr Spec Ops.

Will try out Iron in the near future – Blood doesn’t appeal too much to me because it seems mundane.

Their cynical view of religion, embrace of technology, and love of general mayhem.

They’re probably only 20 years or so away from ICBMs. Then it’ll be a real party!

…You mean there’s another race in this game?

Seriously, these guys have sniper rifles, artillery, and currently working on submarines. In about 15 years they’ll have ICBMs. They’re awesome.

Isn’t the entire point of the game that anyone can fulfill any role they want at any time? That’s a big selling point for the game. You’re not locked into a rigid specific playstyle right at the character creation screen.

OK this feels a little more than ridiculous. I’m playing a MMO right? So why is it so hard to actually find other players? My home server says the population is “High” but I rarely see anyone except NPCs about everywhere I go. Well, fine they must be doing something else.
So I go to global chat and ask for some help. But I get no response from anyone – the reason? Probably because they’re in different areas of the world. I’m basically playing alone 99% of the time.

This is especially bad when I want to contact a guild – how am I supposed to know exactly where in the game world its members are so I can reach them?

Why is there not a global chat that works across the entire world somewhere?

My problem exactly. Every time I turn on this game I can’t find anyone around anywhere. I even signed up for a guild but no one in it has been online the past 3 days.

I can’t even join a PUG let alone an organized group with voice coms because everyone’s on a different area apparently. The very thought of trying a dungeon makes Dark Souls look relaxing.

Wow, he’s got range. He did two of the major charr voices and I barely recognize them as being from the same person.

You have any idea how hard it is to keep NPCs in this game alive? They just stand still and attack something until they’re killed. And because of their suicidal nature, they’re impossible to revive because enemies are waiting right next to them.

Don’t you even start. Lots of people are having trouble not because they’re not playing well but because the game is throwing completely adverse situations at them like level scaling the player two levels below the enemies. The only “strategy” is kiting.

Sjach Darasv.3729:

It does get to the point where pretty much most of the story is just being zerged on by 6+ enemies at a time with useless npc help.

Jeffrey Vaughn

I just completed it as a L26 thief, but I have a build geared towards story, so take that with a grain of salt.

Quoted from a different thread but same topic. Even as a Dev you are saying you have a build for story. Seriously where is the fun in being able to play all these different traits and weapons, and play a class how I enjoy it as opposed to it doesn’t matter if you find this way of playstyle horribly boring, it is the ONLY way to get the job done without having to get from other players or guildmates in what is supposed to be a personal story.

I’d like to know just what kind of build you’d have to create with the thief to get through the story considering thieves are absolutely rubbish at dealing with crowds in general. Their skill sets are made for picking enemies off one at a time. And even some one-on-one fights against stronger enemies become frustrating because you can’t dodge constantly like you’d need to.

I’m not sure just slowing down the enemy movement speed will do much to make Defending The Keep any less punishing considering the sheer number of them. Remember, the game scales players down to level 26 at most and every zombie has the ability to cause poison and cripple with every attack.

One hit and your movement speed is cut in half, and you loose about 20 HP every second. Considering how little HP you have at level 26, that’s huge.

They’re involved because of your former legionnaire Howl – he has one of the amulets that turn you into a zombie and attract other zombies.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Are you trying to melee them? You have a cannon and arrow carts to thin out the undead without having to fight them directly. (I had at most 2 attack me at the arrow cart so that I had to release it, and kill them, then go back to bombarding them while they fought the Vigil NPCs.) Also, I’m not clear on how they spawned inside the keep, when there are enemy spawn points inside the keep at all. Did they follow you inside?

What class are you? I just completed it as a L26 thief, but I have a build geared towards story, so take that with a grain of salt.

I’m a level 48 thief. And the zombies run past the cannons so fast they’re irrelevant. Reloading after one shot gives them enough time to swarm the whole roof.

They quite literally spawned inside the keep. I ran down a flight of stairs to a room to heal and a group of 10 of them spawned right in the room.

There is something horribly, horribly wrong with this quest. Even an extra living player going with me would probably be overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies you have spawning and their status effect attacks.

Anyone who doesn’t think the personal story is absolutely horribly broken hasn’t played the charr personal quest “Defending The Keep.”

It’s supposed to be for level 26, but I’m a 48 who can’t last 5 minutes in it. The sheer number of enemies thrown at you is unfair enough, but each and every one of them causes poison and cripple. AND they literally spawn in every single place you can run to. I ran down into a room hoping to heal up and a mob of 10 of them spawned in that very room.

Was the mantra of the developers of these events “No fun allowed”? Because they succeeded at that magnificently.

tokyoshoe.6308:

At least with the Vigil missions, I have other soldiers wading into combat with me to support me. The Order of Whispers guys send me to my death ALONE.

That support is meaningless, they don’t even work as good distractions. Just wait until you get to Defending the Keep. Every friendly on the map dies in about 8 seconds and then hordes of monsters who each and every one causes poison and cripple follow you everywhere you go, not giving you any place to heal.

Personal story is a sham.

Is there even a point to these missions other than to make people throw out the game disc in frustration?

Digging Up Answers was absolutely impossible unless I pulled enemies to me one at a time because any more was suicide. And one of my NPC allies vanished completely leaving only me and Clawspur. He of course, was downed several times during the fight leaving me to struggle with a boss.

Now I’m trying to do Defend The Keep and it’s completely impossible. There is absolutely zero way to fight as many enemies as there are in that instance who not only swarm over the entire area in seconds, but each and every single kitten one of them causes poison and cripple. Want to run away and heal up? Too bad, they spawn EVERYWHERE YOU GO. The NPCs are completely worthless, being KO’d in seconds so they don’t even work as distractions. Is this someone’s idea of fun? Take them to see a doctor right now.

I Wanna Be The Guy is more fair than this game’s “personal” quests.

Wolfe.3097:

and I think stealth and backstab is how your supposed to use dual daggers, beacuse you cant backstab without a dagger in mainhand, and you cant CnD without dagger in offhand.

not too mention in order to make a build that can use death blossom more then maybe 2-3 times you need a highly specialized spec with very specific traits/skills.

its a fun spec to be sure, i enjoy it when i play it. but dual daggers is still split between power/crit and condition because of death blossom. you spec one the other is crap.

You can backstab with pistol/dagger though – black powder shot followed by heartseeker stealths you.

I’m open to any suggestions, what kind of major traits should I look for? Status effect boosts, damage boosts, init regen?

I am next to clueless about how they all interact with each other so I’m just picking what looks good at the time.

Wolfe.3097:

how so? the only skill that relies on condition damage is death blossom, heart seeker and backstab (and cnd) are all power reliant.

its a problem i think dagger needs some rework to identify itself. be condition or power based, not have skills that rely on both, it just means youll have skills that arent worth using.

Death blossom is how you’re supposed to be using dual daggers mostly. It not only inflicts massive bleeding but puts you behind your enemy so they can’t counterattack right away. Then when they loose enough HP you can use heartseeker to finish the job or just let them chase you until they bleed to death.

Depends.

Have you been putting points into your first trait path for physical damage? Dual daggers kill by causing massive bleeding to the enemy which is condition damage.

A way around that bntapoo is to use scorpion wire. Not only does it pull an enemy to you, it supposedly doesn’t even realize it’s been attacked at first and the other enemies in a group shouldn’t be alerted. If my source is correct.