Guild Wars 2

BGDM is personal and talking-to-other-BGDM users only, but ArcDPS has a “simulated group DPS” function where it tries to guess the DPS of other party members without their consent.

The only other MMO I’ve played is WoW, where Recount spamming in dungeon party chat is a prelude to a group falling apart. Because it is NEVER used to say, “hey friend, you’re not really pulling your weight, need some pointers?” Never ever. It’s used to say, “Bads GTFO.” (Bads being everybody but #1, natch). You would think that more information would improve performance and increase success, but I’ve never seen meters used in PUGs for anything but toxicity. It was fine in guilds, though.

I think you just need more commitment to each other than a PUG has to use meters in a non-abusive way.

Well, Trahearne was initially created to be just an info-dump character, someone who could plausibly be around the PC and explain things without it feeling too out of place. So a dry, scholarly tone was appropriate. But then he became more and more important and in the thick of the action as the plot went on, and the original tone the VA struck fit worse and worse. A mistake that I can imagine was easy to make and hard to correct if the voice production team wasn’t kept in the loop on the writing, just handed dialogue to read and make into recordings.

This is also a case of “be careful what you wish for”, because our new infodump character? Is Taimi.

Heh, I’ve never geared a levelling toon any other way. Although every fresh 80 goes on a TP spree.

Legendaries are a special case: account-bound on equip. And only the first generation are like that; the second generation isn’t tradeable at all.

I want the “always flanking” bonus to Light On Your Feet that was briefly included in the updated tooltip by accident. I hate trying to find the fronts of oozes, giant tangled wobbly bosses, and small bosses that are just a white bonfire of particle effects.

Price of having even as much prersonal story as there is.

There are two other points worth considering:

1. All ascended gear is account-bound, even after equipping it. So you can pass it between characters if you want. There is some account-bound exotic gear, but most of it is soulbound on equip.

2. Ascended armor and weapons can be stat-swapped for less than the price of crafting an exotic piece. (There is a backpack, ring, and accessory in Bloodstone Fen that can also be swapped). Note this only changes the stats, not the gear itself; an axe will always be an axe, medium pants will always be medium pants.

So while ascended gear IS a big investment, that investment is low-risk. You don’t have to start completely over if you decide you want different stats or to use the gear on a different character.

While you’re levelling, feel free to equip whatever gsear you have that is strongest. Whatever it is you’ll be replacing it in a few levels anyway, and it’s a good way to try all the weapons and see what you like.

I play my ranger a LOT, and I haven’t gotten tired of her Dreamer. When I run into someone else wielding it there’s a sense of mutual delight, like, “EYYYYY!” And then we both fill the air with the singing of our unicorns. But then it’s a very silly and lighthearted weapon – it’s impossible to feel too serious while playing with it.

Edit: You know what I can’t do though? Wings. Wings and 90% of backpacks. I spend a lot of time making sure my toons have beautiful weapons that fit their look, and if those weapons are 2-handed or shields they’re going to be stowed on the back, and anything else on the back is just going to create a clipping-ridden mess that wobbles irritatingly from side to side when the toon runs (on humanoids anyway – I remember the exact same wobble from GW1, like the whole shoulder blade area is made of jello).

If I was smart I would hustle all my neglected alts down to Draconis Mons and park them at the end of the JP. A guildie has 10 toons doing that, and buys packets or something with the resulting unbound magic, and says he’s making 50-70g a week that way alone. But I CBA ;-)

“Always as if flanking” would have been almost brokenly good, especially added to the other effects. I think they accidentally left in early draft text that didn’t match the final draft buff.

Norn have the most unfulfilled potential.

The Grove is where I go to get the home instance chests every day, and the whole city pushes a lot of happy buttons for me – I love that it’s as organic as the sylvari themselves, that it’s glowing and alien and not entirely efficiently laid out. I can get lost there and not mind because it’s all so beautiful.

Buuut, in all honesty, most of my characters live on the Havoc’s Heir airship. The convenience is too good to pass up, and also IT’S AN AIRSHIP. There are few things more exciting and adventurous than a giant steampunk airship.

My warrior, Sister Castilleja, is a sylvari based on the indian paintbrush flower. Her colors and armor skins are almost perfect… almost. The ideal saturated orange-red for her look is Scorched Dye, but I just can’t justify a purchase like that for a single color on a single character. If some angel wanted to bestow the perfect dressing on my fiery little salad, I would be eternally grateful <3

EDIT: OMGGGG thank you so much kind stranger!!! She looks amazing now <3

I made the switch to viper SB/A-T when I realized condi stacks were just DoTs, and I always love the “throw more DoTs!” playstyle. It’s nice that condi degen keeps ticking for a while if I have to dodge, or if I get downed or even killed, or just distracted by IRL baby aggro. It’s like a second pet, damage that delivers itself to an extent. Yes, converting all my ascended gear to Viper’s was an expensive experiment, but I was reasonably confident that it would have a good outcome. Also, having tried shortbow and liked it, making The Dreamer became a vaguely practical choice :-D

me reading about permanent “behind” status:

:-D

me learning it’s a fake change that doesn’t actually work:

D-:<

Edit: oh wait, it’s one of the traits sharing space with Quick Draw. Probably wouldn’t have used it anyway then.

Is Refined Toxins competitive with Ambidexterity now?

It just occurred to me that the infinite mists potions could be considered a form of “grind to trivialize content”, as the full set of three costs 18,000 relics. But they aren’t the only way to get those powerful buffs – the 1-hour large potions give the same for fairly cheap, and a full set of THOSE can be acquired for free by doing the 3 daily recommended fractals.

Endless tonics are as close as we’re going to get, I think. They struggle to put out armor skins as it is.

Considering my druid wears pastel pink and green luminescent armor, and wields The Dreamer, it’s probably the My Little Pony theme song >_<

UW combat does need some love – the current system I call “jousting in the murk” because I usually can’t see what I’m attacking, when I’m in range at all. That said, I love the concept of the mode and really hope to see it fully realized one day, instead of sidestepped and ignored. Drained lake? Boiling sea? Come on guys. This is what you gave us instead of flying; see it through.

Twilight arbor for a fourth set of salad armor for my salads <3 yes I’m shallow. Fwd/up fills up fast in LFG and is virtually always a one-shot even though everyone sucks at skipping – the ones who do know where to go included, as they won’t wait for the ones who don’t know where to go, so it turns into this strung-out mess of aggro and triggered volatile blossoms and corpses. Aside from skipping fail, these two paths are an easy deadly bloom farm, to feed that all-important Fashion Wars machine.

If you go condi, Sinister is good, but Viper is even better: expertise increases condi duration.

castlemanic.3198:

As someone who has defended Brahams writing (specifically considering the connotations of Braham being one of the few people who knows the true circumstances of Eirs death and how, if word got out, it would forever marr Eirs reputation and Brahams issues specificay surrounding the hero/legend surrounding Eir) I agree, Braham isn’t written to be sympathized with (not entirely at least) and I want to know what will turn him around into joining Dragons Watch.

Considering this episodes reveal though, I’ve lost a lot of faith with the writers. There’s only one episode left and if Braham just turns around and joins Dragons Watch only,because Jormag is dormant or,something similarly easy to write that’s completely unrealistic, then I’m not looking forward to GW2s future. I’ll be along for the ride but I won’t enjoy it.

Wait, what? What about Eir’s death is scandalous? She tried to help someone, who betrayed her, and then tried her best to fight the ferocious beast that killed her. Is it that the vinetooth had to be put down by the player?

Ehhh, if they were selectable and easier to get than the bloodstone ones, I would want them on every character instead of leaving all my alts in exotic because the upgrade to ascended is too small to be worth the work. But the desirability of these “budget legendary” trinkets would be so high, that I would go back to the maps more than I do.

You’ll find more informed opinions in the Ranger forum. But since you asked, condi has higher potential max DPS. A segment of the playerbase likes to translate this into “condi is the only acceptable spec, power is garbage”, but having the mostest meta build won’t save you if you can’t do a rotation, use your CCs, dodge, or stack.

If you want to do high-level fractals, you’ll need full ascended regardless. The nice thing about ascended is armor and weapons can be stat-swapped in the mystic forge. So you’re only 2 weapons (shortbow/torch, or longbow/sword) and 6 trinkets away from the other spec no matter which one you choose. Viper trinkets require visiting the LS3 maps. Berserker ones can be had more easily, with laurels, badges of honor, guild commendations, and pristine fractal relics.

I tried to think of a scepter I would like better than Meteorlogicus, and came up empty. I should probably put it on my “to make someday” list.

Dungeons are still a low-key thing, at least the easy paths. “Fwd/up” groups for Twilight Arbor fill up in seconds with people farming tokens for armor and weapon skins, legendary gifts, condi runes, etc. I’m about to start working HotW into my daily rounds (gotta have that heavy bear hat…) and I just hope it’s almost as lively.

And hey, they’re helping to deflate leather a little bit! That’s a good thing!

I was sad when the Smogscales in Draconis Mons didn’t turn out to be tameable.

If you love a legendary, especially the 1st generation ones are really not too bad. A good website that can help you track what you need is gw2efficiency.com – their crafting calculator is super useful, especially if you link your account with an API key (it’s a kind of “read-only” set of information about your account, very safe). I made The Dreamer recently and it is super satisfying to see (AND hear – ponies away!) my character using it. That said, they do take a lot of resources; if you play at a pace where the Living Story updates overwhelm you it might take a very long time to build up the wealth for a legendary.

HoT maps are at an age now where they frequently feature “HP trains” of people who want to blow through the HPs as efficiently as possible. Following one through Verdant Brink and one through Auric Basin is nearly enough to unlock your entire elite specialization even if you never did a single HP in vanilla, and will also leave you with all waypoints unlocked, which can really open up the maps and help you get the story done. The story instances themselves are tuned to be easily soloable (aside from the end boss – it does help to have at least one buddy there); it was getting to the green stars in the open world without dying that I struggled with the most early on.

Well, the primo stat combination for condi PvE is Viper’s (Yassith’s for ascended), because it’s the only one with the wonderful Expertise, which increases condition duration, without any wasted garbage stats like Toughness.

Not gonna lie, it can be challenging to get; the only vendor trinkets outside raids are the ascended ones in Living World Season 3. You pretty much have to craft it. The special ingredient for all the exotic stuff is Black Diamond – not as bad as Freshwater Pearl (making exotic Minstrel’s gear actually MORE expensive than ascended, depending on the piece) but still painful.

If you just want to jump into something casual, cheap, and low-commitment, you’re honestly better off with a power build.

BUT if you want to try condi bad enough to hustle for Viper’s gear – and it IS fun, I made the switch and don’t regret it – then the typical advice is to pair SB with axe/torch, and use 4 Superior Runes of the Nightmare (5 Twilight Arbor runs) and 2 Superior Runes of the Trapper for extra condition duration. You’ve got lots of options for Sigils – I like Earth (moar bleeding!), and Accuracy because I’m not in a raid and so am nowhere near the crit chance cap.

Is it just me, or are there hints that Taimi’s degenerative condition is progressing? Her limp seems slower than ever in the lab, although that could be just that her avatar has gotten bigger (nice continuity on that, btw ANet). And she talks multiple times about being “so tired” – so tired it didn’t occur to her to run a key simulation about what would happen to Tyria if two of the remaining four (formerly six) pillars of its magical ecosystem were destroyed? So tired, yet she keeps working at breakneck speed… almost as if she feels she has very little time left? I also read an interesting theory on here that her new outfit is set up to inject her with blighting pod fluid.

It’s been really interesting having a disabled, chronically ill character in the story; I would love it if she stuck around while her abilities changed and she dealt with that, rather than neatly dying off at a specific threshold.

Yeah, dual professions were fun, but they were also a big part of what killed GW1. The “meta” always revolved around finding and exploiting OP combinations of skills and attributes – most often one single skill, with all 7 other skills devoted to making the one even more OP.

Some builds I remember running: ZB monk; the completely degenerate and unintended PS 55 monk with which I farmed hydras to finance a suit of Vabbian armor; the even more degenerate PS/SB 600 monk with which I (and an entire hero’s worth of maintained enchantments) soloed CoF with paying passengers. SY para, because warrior shouts were better on a paragon than paragon shouts, and better on a paragon than on a warrior. Discord necro hero x3, or x6 with a friend, because Discord was just that good and the heroes’ AI made it even better. Jagged Nova ritualist hero. Splinter Barrage A/R that made a better ranger than my ranger, critical scythe A/D that made a better dervish than my dervish.

I’m actually getting a little nostalgic. But my point is that each of these builds revolved around one or two skills that were broken in some way, allowing for more damage or more support than intended when approached with a specific combination. And dual prof made the number of possible combinations nigh-infinite. I wouldn’t want to balance that. Nobody would. And it only got worse with each expansion. It wasn’t sustainable.

OR, just make them work from inventory instead of having to be equipped. Boom, put them into shared slots and leave them there forever.

Are the stat numbers sized to compensate for no upgrade slot, like ascended backpacks?

Well, what do you want out of the game? If you want to finish the stories and need help to get through them, you could use LFG or find a guild with people willing to group with you. 250 HP is easy if you keep an eye out for a “HP train” – many of them start in the first HoT zone and continue into the second.

If you need more practice with fighting, I honestly suggest going back and getting map completion in one of the starter zones. Easy enemies are good when you’re learning or relearning what your skills are and how to use them. Using boosters is fine for skipping levelling, but skipping levelling on a profession you’ve never played before is a great way to get overwhelmed fast. Take yourself back to basics and work up – maybe complete the personal storyline as a way to gradually ramp up mob difficulty?

Also? Be kind to yourself and play a pet class: MM necromancer or ranger. Pets help draw aggro off you, and they keep right on DPSing even when you get confused. Nothing as relaxing as a pet class for soloing.

MF recipes with luck and bloodstone/dragonite/empyreal, AND airship oil/auric dust/leyline stuff. I don’t care what; it could vendor for a few silver after taking stacks of stuff and that would be fine.

I don’t think CM100 really constitutes a 5th tier, just an extra challenge like the other challenge motes. Even the once-daily rewards aren’t even on the level of a daily chest, nor is it listed anywhere as a daily (which CAN start to feel required).

[Quote]They see it as a Money Train, and have planned for such in the future.[/quote]

How ironic to opine that ANet employees don’t need food or housing in a thread about player housing.

Ascended is close enough, god. If they added another functional tier I would quit.

If gear grind appeals to you, you should chase legendaries. The whole point of them is to be wildly extra for those folks who really need more to do. (I made The Dreamer recently so I’m among this number).

Another “farm” that gives huge rewards for little effort: if you have maxed crafting, make as many of the ascended mat cooldowns as you can every day. Even if you don’t have the mats to make the next stage which is the tradeable one, just cache the cooldown. Yesterday I pole-vaulted the last 350g for my first legendary by turning a few dozen mithrilium into dsteel ingots, spools of eleather into eleather squares, etc. and selling them.

Also. If you’re in Cursed Shore or Frostgorge Sound, harvest every single Orrian truffle and snow truffle you see. Both are required for BiS condi food and are worth over 10 silver each.

T4 fractal dailies. They’re too varied and challenging to really be a farm, nor are they infinitely repeatable like a true farm, but they have very good gold returns. You open all the fractal encryptions you can with free keys and the 30 you can buy for 1 relic each and vendor the valuable junk from those, and sell stabilizing matrices. On average, just doing that, I can get a solid 20g for the 3 daily runs, less than 40 minutes of work with a good group.

I was so pleased to see him. I don’t remember Zinn from GW1 but apparently he led an interesting life – he was in Rata Novus, escaped massacre by the chak, and sometime after reacquiring his old golem made his way to Draconis Mons where he finally met his end.

Love the map. Verticality is rich and fun when it’s open, like this or VB (although I despise the Habitrail maze of Tangled Depths, with only one right way to get to any given point).

Story… you’ve got NPCs discussing the problems with the big reveal. Scripted, voice-worked dialogue. So I’m keeping faith that you will follow up with the exposition such a huge development deserves.

Do the human gods correspond to the dragons’ domains of magic? It seemed like Balthazar went after Primordus’ power instead of Jormag’s. Which makes sense. And a few others line up as well:

Zhaitan – Grenth
Mordremoth – Melandru
Primordus – Balthazar

The other three are less clear-cut. I would argue:

Bubbles – Kormir (by way of Abbadon: ocean, secrets)
Kralkatorrik – Lyssa (purple, mesmery reality-warping a la Glint)
Jormag – Dwayna (blue, and sheer process of elimination)

But is this just (flimsy) thematic overlap or am I on to something here?

Its heavily implied Ogden was forced to become stone against his will; I can see him then refusing to join the mission underground out of sheer spite alone, nevermind actually wanting to stick around as well.

Okay, thank you!

If condi builds, thieves, mesmers, warriors, and druids are all so OP… you could… try out condi builds, thieves, mesmers, warriors, or druids? If it’s the OP build that makes them win, if you have the build then you will win. Unless… could it be… it’s not the build, and they’re just better at WvW than you? No, surely not.

Hey, so I was wondering if there is any data on what to do with fractal encryptions if you want to maximize your liquid gold? And stabilising matrices as well, considering they can be exchanged 1:1 for encryption keys, and are tradeable.

This won’t help for your first character, but later, for alts, if you have gold/mats: crafting. And it’s very convenient to have each of the crafting disciplines maxed out (except scribing, you don’t need to bother with that).