Guild Wars 2

Well, yes! I really enjoy the elite spec weapon scavenger hunts, and I LOVED the Caladbolg quest (getting an ascended weapon as a prize really sweetened the deal of course). But even just some profession lore would be pretty exciting.

I can see locked-in content for subsets of your playerbase being an unfulfilling option to develop, actually. If you split 3 ways, you have to work 3 times as hard, while reducing viewership of each part to 1/3rd. I can see why you would prefer to do that only for things players like enough to play through multiple times, like the racial storylines in GW2.

I say that, but I would love to see a bit more lore for our professions. Not as much as the racial storylines, but a few little quests where we explore the meaning and philosophy and heritage of our professions would be really cool.

I think we can all admit nobody breaks into 5-figure achievement points for the sake of 2 gold.

Are there any traits like Quick Draw for other professions, that reward weapon swapping on cooldown?

So that suggested AR can be trusted? I won’t be a liability to my group if that’s all I have?

Lots of good advice in here! Thanks!

Some important tips I’ve picked up:
-you can’t infuse accessories, weapons, or armor – only rings and backpacks
-attuning rings is cheaper than infusing them
-Mawdrey can be infused cheaper than other ascended backs
-infusions can be extracted for 24 silver
-artificing and vendoring infusions has a roughly equivalent cost

Some other questions:
-I’ve read the rule of thumb is you can do fractals up to the level of your AR minus 10, so you have to start with at least 30 to do level 20 fractals. Is this correct? And is there any reason to bother starting at 30 when it’s immediately too low at level 21? What are some good breakpoint totals to shoot for, do you think? Maybe 40 so I can break into T2?
-there is a vendor potion, the Anguished Tear of Alba, that gives 10 AR. It looks like it can only be purchased a finite number of times though. Should I save this to eke out 150 when I need to?

I’m at the very beginning of my fractal journey; I think my personal level is something like 9, I have 70 +1 agony infusions, only my weapons and trinkets are ascended, and none of them are attuned or infused or whatever – as far as I can tell, the attunement/infusion process requires materials and currency I have to run a LOT more fractals to acquire. But to run fractals above 20 (I think? is that right?) I need agony resistance. That’s coming up pretty fast and I still have no idea how to get started.

I tried looking for guides on how to put agony resistance onto my gear but they are all from the time when “Versatile Simple Infusion” was a thing, which it’s not anymore, so I’m kind of stymied at step 1. All the other guides are about how many thousands of +1s you need to get 150 AR as cheaply as possible, which is the opposite end of the experience spectrum from me.

Basically I’d like to start putting my +1s to use in a way that doesn’t require me to start from scratch or waste a ton of money/resources as I go forward.

Sword is a power weapon on ranger, and very versatile in general: a huge number of professions can use it, and it leaves the offhand slot open for whatever. My first ascended weapon was a zerk longbow, but if I had it to do over again I might have gone sword.

HOWEVER, consider the free ascended weapons which may or may not be in reach for you. Elite spec weapons: staff, longbow, greatsword, warhorn, torch (and shield and hammer). HoT completion weapons: greatsword, sword, dagger (and shield and scepter). The Caladbolg set in particular is amazing because the stats can be reset and the weapons can even be swapped to each other for the low low price of some unbound magic; this is even cheaper than stat-swapping in the Mystic Forge. Speaking of which, if your heart’s desire is to gun straight for condi meta, you might as well choose a shortbow and forge-swap it to Viper’s stats. IMO power is simpler and arguably stronger for soloing than condi, but I understand wanting to learn and practice meta (or meta-ish) builds in a forgiving environment.

I’ve used both the Razer Naga and Nostromo in the past, and both kicked the bucket shortly after their warranties expired – suspiciously shortly, almost as if programmed that way. Conspiracy or not, two times was enough for me; no more Razer products. I now have a Logitech mouse with 12 side buttons and it is a workhorse. I’m very happy with it.

Fallesafe.5932:

I’m assuming that you mean I’ll need all of those materials to get my skills up. But I’ve already maxed my skills (they’re all at 500). All I need at this point is the ascended materials. And the only thing that seems to be coming easy is bloodstone dust. Is there any zone or instance that’s especially good for farming ascended materials?

No, you need it for the ascended crafting too. A single deldrimor steel ingot contains 50 mithril ingots, 20 iron ingots, 10 steel ingots, and 20 darksteel ingots, and multiple deldrimor steel goes into most weapon bodies and always into the dowel for the inscription. Same with spiritwood. So you should save your vanilla mats or save up some gold.

Ascended trinkets: do not neglect WvW. The badges of honor rain down on you, much easier to get than laurels, and you can use them to get the same items for fewer laurels from WvW laurel vendors.

Ascended weapons: finishing HoT opens up a quest for a free ascended sword (or greatsword, scepter, dagger, or shield). Elite specs also unlock collections for free/cheap ascended weapons; guardian gets a longbow, necro gets a greatsword, ele gets warhorn, warrior gets torch, ranger gets staff. And ascended weps are always account-bound. So there’s that to keep in mind if you have alts.

You’re going to need absolutely enormous amounts of iron, platinum, mithril, and soft, seasoned, hard, and elder wood. The sheer volume is a bigger barrier than the account-bound salvage materials, IMO.

Mawdrey is fun in the sense of the skin being cute and weird, and arguably fun as a scavenger hunt, but it is not cheap or easy. The cheapest, easiest ascended backpack is the one you get for winterberries from Bitterfrost Frontier.

Fluffball.8307:

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

“but everyone and these forums strongly advices against Warrior”

This thread is from 2 years ago.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. There have been posts this week about how Ranger is the prof most persecuted and hated-on by the devs. TBH I didn’t see that though, my bad for contributing to the thread necro.

Fusreya.1562:

I am hoping for better survival, and possibly damage? I am not sure if the two can be done at the same time.
Oh! And I am not against using pets! I love using pets.

I hope that some of that will help.

Survival and damage can definitely go together in the sense that the best defense is a good offense; everything does 0 damage once it’s dead. Seriously, for open world your first priority is bursting down trash as fast as you can. Practice your dodges and using your defensive skills, and really most fights will take one heal or none, unless it’s a pitched map meta battle.

Weapons: as others said above, you really only need one ranged weapon. Your choices, pre-Druid, are longbow, shortbow, and mainhand axe. If you like longbow, you are in good shape with Berserker’s stats – this is a “power” weapon. Shortbow and mainhand axe are “condi” weapons, meaning they’ll be more effective if you choose stats with Condition Damage and Expertise (with Power, Precision, and Ferocity still important, but secondary to these two) like Viper’s and Sinister. Condi builds are stronger for longer fights, but Power is fine too, and stronger on shorter fights; for open world the difference is small enough you might as well choose what you like best.

(EDIT: I just reread and saw you have staff available as well, so I’ll talk about it. Staff is a ranged weapon with mostly healing and defensive skills – the two damage skills do low damage and healing, 3 is a kind of teleport, 4 immobilizes and cleanses conditions, and 5 heals projectiles and is a water field. Reasons to use staff are mainly 3 for running/skipping, or if you want to build up tons of astral force to get into Celestial Avatar faster for big group heals and a group damage buff).

Once you’ve chosen between shortbow and longbow, power and condi, you can pick a melee option. Mainhand sword is popular to pair with longbow, both because it has the highest direct damage, and because you can swap offhands between offhand axe (highest damage and super fun to use), warhorn, and torch. Condi builds most often suggest pairing shortbow with mainhand axe/torch, even though this leaves you with a lot of projectiles, because these weapons apply the most conditions. Greatsword isn’t recommended as often, but the damage is still fine for open world (especially since its recent buff) and it can also be really fun to use – and sometimes better for tight spaces as it’s harder to throw yourself off a cliff with greatsword than sword!

Oh, about pets: Felines do the most damage, but the others can be useful too, depending what you want/need. Try them all, get a feel for them! Swapping pets and weapons and even traits on the fly is central to the ranger lifestyle.

“but everyone and these forums strongly advices against Warrior”

Forums are always full of whining and crying. The truth is warrior and ranger are actually favored meta classes right now – although that can change at any time – and all classes are viable for just running around in the world, having fun and learning the game.

FrizzFreston.5290:

The price is fine. Im more worried with the stance that mystic coins and goals tied to them are only for the rich players. Because I dont feel that way about alot of them at all. Legendaries and such sure, thats all good. But some of the more generic ones? And that all tied to one currency? (Pick one, give up on the others to some extend) That sounds completely ridiculous and I think they could maybe rebalance those specific recipes to be more in line with what they provide.

Only legendaries require 500 of them. All other mystic coin goals require much smaller, more achievable amounts. Anyone can farm up 30 from logins, or if they want coins faster they can farm the gold and buy them from players to whom coins don’t matter, but the amount of gold they get from selling one coin matters a lot.

I was using good ol’ Zappy back when he was bad; I found the three knockdowns in a row more helpful for clearing trash in the new maps than pure DPS, even if it was just the psychological benefit of knocking down something that was about to knock ME down. I am looking forward to running him secure in the knowledge that he is low-key good now.

It would be really interesting to see the results of a rerun of those ranger pet DPS tests since the new patch.

Ascended trinkets are easy to get, but not Viper’s. I’ve looked for my own toons and it seems like they can’t be had for laurels, nor guild commendations, nor badges of honor, nor pristine fractal relics… Outside of raids, and LWS3 maps, is there any other source of ascended trinkets with Viper’s stats?

So am I a bad if I bring e-wyvern for 3 knockdowns (2 on summon and 1 on F2)?

I have no faith in defensive stats for PvE. I think they just eat chunks out of your DPS without making any genuine difference to your survivability.

Fights are always designed to force dodging, CC, and other methods of avoidance/prevention; a fight where you can eat the damage while you stand and deliver is a boring fight. Also, stats that enable such behaviour in PvE would make a game-breaking difference against player-sized numbers in PvP.

If you care enough about your performance to customize your gear with intent, you’re probably a better player than you think re: dodging etc.

There’s an entire Hall of Monuments about our deeds. It’s missing its statues (looted?) and forgotten by the outside world, but everybody’s been kind of busy. Also, we were far from the only human saving humanity in the GW1 stories. We were an Ascalonian refugee, which people were absorbed into Kryta or turned into ghosts; or we were Canthan, which country is behind an iron curtain; or we were Elonian, and THAT country is on smart zombie lockdown. ALSO also, in practical terms, it’s hard to write lore venerating an ancient hero without… you know, mentioning their name. Ever.

Jora is remembered because renown for great deeds is a pillar of norn society. Also Svanir’s legacy is still causing trouble, so the memory of the one who put him down with extreme prejudice stays fresh as well.

Pyre is remembered because he started The Revolution, and because his daughter finished it.

Vekk is remembered somewhat, but asura are all about the next big thing; they don’t look back much. Makes sense when your entire biome is now magma and you have to survive in a blinding alien hellscape.

Lean techniques are more important than a speed buff for nailing the final column, I find. Although admittedly I do still use both. I am not good at jumping puzzles.

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

So is the mysterious unnamed villain behind the Golems created by Zinn that were sent to assassinate Queen Salma, the Princes of Elona and Emperor Kizu a candidate for the fake Lazarus?

As Sherlock Holmes stated: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

We must consider all possibilities including this possibility as well as the possibility that Fake Lazarus is Menzies the Mad as shocking it may seem!

I’ve always hated that quote. It makes such breathtakingly arrogant assumptions: that you have successfully identified all the possibilities, and that you can conclusively eliminate all but one.

Djinn.9245:

As I’ve said about all HoT maps: I don’t know what people are going to do once this zone is dead.

If this one source of leather is truly intended to bring leather in line with ore, wood, and cloth, I’m sure it will be tweaked somehow.

The Greyhawk.9107:

EVERYONE loves Canach.
“Brutish man with aggressively unsettling facial hair? Yes.”

It’s a good line, but I would have preferred something about how sylvari don’t really understand what’s going on with mammalian hair, with the finer points of hairstyling being completely beyond them.

I will miss Canach and Anise’s constant back-and-forth jibes. They made a wonderful odd couple.

Thank you for nerfing Caudecus. I had to partner up to beat him previously. Which is not the end of the world, but the personal story is supposed to be soloable content that I can work through at my own pace. I like to stick to soloing most of the time because I have to go AFK frequently and unexpectedly (I have little kids), which is not very fair to my party.

I love the Lake Doric map! It feels huge, especially compared to tiny Bitterfrost, and full of Easter eggs and puzzles. The dynamic events all feel connected and progressive, instead of self-contained rapid cycles (defend a brazier! Good, you defended it! Now… defend the brazier again!) I wish there was a complete ley train loop or some thermal cannons, because I love swooping around at high speeds, but I can live without them. Overall, big improvement on Bitterfrost, well done.

Also, the story! I am seriously excited to find out what is up with Lazarus!

THIS GAME has both story mode (in dungeons) and challenge switches. They just don’t use them all the time, and they absolutely could.

I don’t see why they can’t put this kind of stuff behind challenge mode switches. That way everyone’s happy: hardmode types can beat their heads against the wall to their heart’s content and then brag that they did it on hardmode, while the folks who just want a bit of a puzzle and an exciting fight while they work through the content can do that.

I was able to do it pre-nerf, but only by partnering up. I don’t mind doing that from time to time, even enjoy it, but it was a jarring break from the usual playstyle of the personal story content, which is supposed to be content a player can complete on their own and at their own pace. If I want to group I’ll do a group activity. So yes, thank you!

Found the final fight impossible solo, succeeded on the 1st try with a partner – doubling the amount of shards thrown and halving the aggro took the fight down to decently challenging. Also I got smart, hotkeyed Counter Magic, and just spammed that key nonstop the entire time – about 75% catch rate!

I like to check GW2timer.com for which HoT metas are starting soonish, and get into squad and onto the main map for it. Follow the zerg, open the chests, salvage, rinse, repeat. I hoard my mats because I am levelling crafting, so I remain cash-poor with less than 100g, but I also have spent probably less than 20g all told to get jeweling to 400, huntsman to 500, and tailoring closing in on 450, with artificing and weaponsmithing squeaking through the miserable iron tiers on the cheap as well.

We know the blighting trees are corrupted; part of the VB map meta is to halt the corruption process of one.

We know the Pale Tree is inspired and fortified somehow by the influences of Ventari and Ronan.

Maybe Malyck’s tree is what happens when the seeds are left completely alone? Maybe one escaped all notice and was allowed to grow unaltered? A seed implies a parent plant; maybe the whole “print plant-based copies of life forms and send them out into the world” strategy has been going on for some time, just using animals (sometimes so loosely they passed as more ordinary plants) and only recently using sentients.

Not sure how to square this with Wynn’s revelation that the trees come from Mordremoth and belong to him. But then why would he need to corrupt them before they’ll make blighted Mordrem? Is Mordremoth as we encounter him in the game also somehow blighted, deviated from his original state? Maybe by the release of Zhaitan’s magic?

But as for Malyck’s tree. Do you think they’ll ever pick up that thread again, or will they just say Mordremoth got to it and it became an ordinary blighting tree, end of story?

…other people’s thresholds for gem use are very different from mine.

I don’t even remember where this is, a Durmand Priory dig somewhere, but a passing male charr exclaims, “Ghost pirates! Haha, I love this job; it’s exciting!” and that just made me grin.

I recently broke away from the meta to learn my way around staff and greatsword, and I’m having a ton of fun wisping and swooping across maps with those, and sprinting the rest of the time with Natural Stride. Freeing yourself to experiment with your build instead of adhering to the meta is really rewarding, IMO.

The other thing that can really perk up open world: switch pets all the time. Try all the pets. The hybrid Destroyers in Ember Bay are weak to chill, so take some of your white pets from the norn areas and use their F2s to put the hurt on. Every mob has knockdown or a freakin’ breakbar like a boss? Sounds like a job for Flappy and Zappy, my adorable pair of clumsy wyverns, both of whom spam double knockdown on summon. Did you know that tamed smokescales retain that rapid pinball skill that makes the wild ones so stressful to fight? Or that the treasures dug up by pigs are actually useful? Or that elegant little birds are the burstiest DPSers of them all and may even outshine cats for mowing down trash, and also sing while they fight? Explore your pet collection. Learn your pets. Love your pets. We’re the pet class; own it.

First off, the stars:

Thank you for making ascended backpacks we can get with a few days of simple farming – no spending 100s of gold on collections/rare mats (orders, luminate, forge) or having half a dozen characters with maxed-out crafting (mawdrey). Maybe there are even more attainable ascended backpacks out there but I’m not aware of them.

I am also personally a fan of the return of renown hearts, and liked them being dailies.

I for one like the quaggans, including this dwarf orca type, and even dropped half a day’s berries on a little babby one to follow me around.

I liked that thermal propulsion carried over from ember bay to bitterfrost – made the mastery feel less manipulative (also I really enjoy being shot violently out of cannons all over the map – way more fun than rat/toad mud tunnels). As a gamer I’m prepared to accept being manipulated, but not having that manipulation smugly rubbed in my face. My most hated part of all of GW1 was the maze of three-inch high rocks or whatever in the Glint’s lair story mission, that we had to slowly plod through to get to our objective because we couldn’t jump. Bloodstone gliding skills would have been cooler if they carried over, but at least they went deep in their own zone. If Koda’s Flame turns out to have no use other than as a key replacement and a sink of three mastery points to get to the ep4 mastery, I’m going to be irritated.

Coupla nuggets for you:

Berries, stumps, and rubies all being neither currency nor material feels like a smug kick in the teeth, exactly the kind of manipulation I was just talking about. You KNOW players are collecting them in bulk, so not giving them even a material slot’s worth of storage comes off as just plain mean.

Bitterfrost Frontier felt really… small. The svanir patch, the berry patch, a tiny quaggan patch, and a much worse svanir patch most people visit once for the story and maybe again for diving goggles… and that’s it. No secret nooks or crannies, no exciting ascents or descents (I mean there’s the steep svanir hill, but the only exciting thing on it is veteran svanir on a 10-second respawn timer and ori/ancient nodes at the top). Nothing to really explore or discover. I know exactly where every single berry node is, which I cannot say for stumps or crystals.

I’m glad you didn’t go for locked-in map-wide meta cycles in S3, although those can be very exciting once you’re in they would have started to get old if that was on the menu every time. But again, I feel Bitterfrost goes too far in the other direction: the dynamic events are so small and fast they’re not exciting at all. Bloodstone and Ember were much better, with their identifiable buildups to important-feeling battles; they got people jumping in to participate, but they could still participate without needing two free hours frontloaded by twenty minutes of trying to login to the only map where the meta was proceeding.

This is all too late for the Head of the Snake, but maybe it will make a difference in the future. Looking forward to Ch4!

Amaimon.7823:

BrettM.9062:

Amaimon.7823:

Why should he. Its his now. He peed on it. His scent is on it. If they want it back they better be ready to die for it. Its just a chunk of metal. Your local smith can make a 100 new crowns

Unless your local smith is a god, I doubt he’s going to be able to make a crown like the one needed for the ritual. The gods made that one as one of the gifts they gave to Doric. If Rytlock lost it in the Mists, that doesn’t bode well for ever being able to undo the Foefire.

Meh, those ghosts did it to themselves. they had a chance to make a new life over the shiverpeaks or stay and fight a futile fight that would’ve endlessly repeated itself by pushing borders with the charr. I know what I would’ve chosen.

I don’t think Rytlock particularly wanted to help the GHOSTS. I think he wanted to help the charr by evicting the ghosts.

Seeing my sylvari ranger holding Yggdrasil for the first time, I felt like I’d made some good life choices.

Between being able to wear every cloth armor set in the game, and outfits, there’s no reason YOUR mesmer can’t be tough or sinister instead of fancy.

Part of our characters’ downed abilities is yelling for help while they try to rally. The game knows when someone revives us; it would be cool if that triggered a “thank you” line. Instead you have all these strangers typing “ty” at each other, sometimes in the middle of fights. I just think it would be a fun little bit of extra immersion that would tie in nicely with the existing behaviours.

This may be the most Canadian suggestion I’ve ever made.

It depends what you’re using them for. I mostly play solo PvE on my Ranger, so I almost never set her to Druid – everything exciting the Druid can do is exciting in groups.

No suggestion, just wanted to say the chicken glider makes me smile every single time I whip it out.

Okay, I do have one suggestion:

Mauzo.5469:

I’d like to add a vote for toggling glider on/off. I’m terrible at jumping puzzles anyway, and a glider popping off just makes them impossible for me. Btw, I was astonished when, after I started HoT with one character, all my characters sprouted gliders! Even at Level 2!

I wouldn’t mind if I could preserve one character as a jumping puzzle specialist, but if it going to apply to all my characters , please, please add a toggle. Thanks! Mauzo

Seconding the option to toggle, OR to change it to a separate hotkey from jumping.

In no particular order:

1. Their wannabe overlord is very, very dead, and he took several legendary heroes (including the first of the firstborn) with him.

2. The people on the ground saw that everyone is one blighting pod away from being a minion, zombie minion, or zombie minion template, which kind of takes the wind out of the sails of anti-sylvari sentiment.

3. It’s an open secret among the asura that some of their own cheerfully vivisected the first- and secondborn, with no followup or consequences of any kind, so I’m sure they don’t want to go pointing fingers… or have such a different understanding of racial identity it doesn’t even occur to them to do so.

4. Those sylvari who didn’t cave right away immediately organized themselves into mutual-monitoring-and-euthanasia squads, which was a pretty good demonstration that they took the problem seriously.

5. The charr and norn despise weakness and respect strength; any sylvari who clearly had a firm grip on reality would shortly be alright by them.

That leaves the humans to be convinced by 1, 2, and 4. I don’t think it’s a stretch for things to return to a rough status quo.

Thanks for these replies! I’ve gotten in several times now :-D Apparently the other reason I’d never seen it happen is it’s so quick, especially compared to, say, Dragon’s Stand.

What do you want to change? Nobody cares what you do in open world PVE – there’s no one to impress. It’s strictly to your own tastes.

Sigfodr.9576:

Just to be sure, you do know about taxi right? About right clicking on the commander and picking “join in xxx map”. Not being sarcastic

Else as stated, its more often a lack of commanders then people (often the commander dont even need to do anything, just be a tag). I blame it on “/how many others are in this map” mentality, 99% of people will asume that a map is emty if there are no tags, even if its a 95% full map

Oh THAT’S what taxiing is! Thank you! I knew about the right-clicking but not that that’s the only way to get onto a populated map.

Here’s a followup question: is it true that the only way to have a tag, make a squad, and otherwise have access to the “commander” toolbox is to shell out 300 gold? And, can impoverished little me just start a normal group and hand leadership to someone with these tools if they join, turning it into a proper commanded squad?

Also, is “IP” In Progress, or a map ID, like as in IP address?

I’d be more inclined to make my own group if I could experience the event even once first. I’ve never seen it. It’s like a myth to me. But I can try talking people on the overflow map into saddling up.

I’m having the worst time trying to attend the TD meta. No matter what time I join the squad, I seem to zone to an overflow wasteland and just listen to everyone else having fun. Any tips for actually getting onto a populated map? Is there a window before the meta starts when I can guarantee zoning to the “main” map and then just park my butt and wait for the timer to roll over?

Okay, thanks for the advice! When I get my Yggdrasil put together I’ll give it some nice healer runes. checks hmm, there are only 3 prefixes to choose from for it and Cleric’s is the lowest toughness. I’ll keep an eye out for Magi stuff though :-)