Guild Wars 2

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Respective nodes means: Sickle can gather plants, Axe can chop wood, Pick can mine Ore. It’s pretty clear.

But, who knows, maybe they will change it. /shrug

I’d say it is technically correct, but ambiguous: both readings are absolutely correct in english. I read it the same way you did, but that’s probably because I have specific knowledge of what “relevant nodes” mean, and the implementations of the tools.

Not that I expect change, just … I don’t think the complaint is wrong, that’s all. Validation and whatnot.

Darklaysaer.6792:

I have been getting huge lag spikes lately as well, I did a test to see if it was my ISP, no problems there, I was getting my full 25Mbs/10Mbs with ping of 6ms.

I found out my server ip while in game by typing /ip , then did a tracert to it.

From what I see it looks like there is a problem with a router that is giving uplink service through Level3 Communications, as can be see by my tracert to the North American server I am connected to at IP address 64.25.33.79:

9 7 ms 8 ms 7 ms ae55.bar2.Toronto1.Level3.net [4.28.138.45]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 40 ms 40 ms 41 ms 4.59.197.34
12 40 ms 40 ms 40 ms 64.25.32-9.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.9]
13 42 ms 40 ms 40 ms 64.25.32-26.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.26]
14 42 ms 61 ms 41 ms 64.25.32-82.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.82]
15 40 ms 41 ms 40 ms 64.25.33-79.ncsoft.com [64.25.33.79]

As with any server/client communications, when you do not get a response in the time the client expects, all goes to heck in a hand basket…lag spikes, disconnects and all the totally not fun stuff, when you just want to go in and bust a few heads for a while.

They need to talk to Level 3 Communications and tell them to get the router fixed.

That track actually shows a perfectly healthy connection. That one spot that doesn’t respond? That’s just a router or something that isn’t sending back error messages when the “TTL” field in the IP packet — a counter for how many computers can touch it before throwing it away, to stop something looping forever — hits zero.

The hops following that are healthy — you have a nice, stable, 40-42ms round trip to the anet server hosting the map.

That doesn’t rule out a network problem, but it does say that it’s not a simple and instantly obvious issue from that traceroute you posted.

Honestly, it sounds like a bunch of hardware issues. I’d start looking at the PSU at this point: if it’s not delivering enough power, or stable enough power, it could cause all sorts of hardware to misbehave in semi-random ways.

TheHeretic.3529:

For the past 3 days, WvW (NA T1) has been unplayable. The lag is far worse than usual, and I have a stable connection. Everyone in Teamspeak complain about it all at the same times. People just rubberbanding all over the place when nothing is happening and skill lag in smaller fights. Forget any 3-way fights.

Interesting. That definitely sound server-side. Interestingly, the arcdps meter actually has support for showing some stats, including the “tick rate” from the server — the rate at which normal background processing is being done as the simulation of the world advances.

That’s normally 25 ticks per second, but it would be interesting to know if you see that change substantially during these lag periods?

Permafrost.2695:

48 hours and counting…

It’s unfortunate you were stuck for so long, but please remember there is a 72 hour window before the ticket to anet support is out of the time range they promise.

Just to check, though, did you get the automatic confirmation email after you submitted your ticket?

loseridoit.2756:

Sister Xing.9072:

~Edit 6/3/17~
Just crashed again, guild wars triggered it again. Set the page file to be discarded on shutdown, that appears to solve my issue. Will update if it happens again with the file being discarded. Otherwise assume that fixed the issue.

Perhaps, you should manually install intel’s raid controller driver for you laptop. I dont know where is the driver

I heard that intel ahci driver is dreadful on windows so some oem does this ridiculous thing

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html

Your understanding of the relevance of that post by MJG is off – it’s vaguely interesting if you want to run Linux (or FreeBSD or whatever) on one of those laptops, but it is completely irrelevant to anyone running Windows.

that is: nothing in that post says anything about what you should (or should not) be doing if you own a laptop with Windows on it.

I’d also encourage you not to suggest that some drivers are “bad” or “good” without much more specifically quantifying how you believe they are bad. It’s extremely unlikely that any potential issues with the use of the RAID vs AHCI mode for the device and the related drivers will make any noticeable difference to anyone who owns the hardware and runs windows on it.

Michael.9403:

I’m not sure any server upgrades are required. The entire world is already stored on our computer. All that’s needed is a portion of the next map be moved off of our own HDD or SDD and into our machine’s memory, so it can be rendered as needed. It’s arbitrary whether a small amount is moved, in the direction we are moving, or we take time to move a large amount (a whole zone) even though we are not going to use much of the new zone at any one time, and perhaps never during that session.

The player centric range calculations are already done, I.e. how far you can shoot, are you near enough to an NPC or an object to interact, how much of the map to send to the rendering software, etc. Range checks are simple, and done literally thousands of times per second. Adding a calculation to activate loading a map tile is trivial, and it’s from your own HDD or SDD that it happens.

The basic problem is that they did not choose to do it that way, even though it was common art at the time, and there is no incentive to do it now. I.e. cost money to break the map up into tiles, create software to load it as background, but generates no money.

If the GW2 world had been done as 4000 tiles, instead of the 40 something zones we have now, it would have worked fine.

You don’t quite understand how the game works: there is not one bit of software involved in a map, there is one ANet server, and up to 150 different clients, all working on the same simulation at the same time, with latencies between them of up to 500ms on a good day.

Your client has the map data, yes, but the server is authoritative about everything, even if it happens to trust the client with some details such as what was being aimed at when the skill triggered. (Sometimes. This is, incidentally, true of every multi-player game out there.)

So … you don’t just have to have your client read the next bit of the map, you need the server to handle that. Right now that’s one process per map instance, with a bounded amount of space because of the zone boundaries, and with a bounded amount of actor involvement, because of the per-map player count limit.

What is being proposed here requires changing — radically changing — that design, both client and server-side, in a way that is pretty much identical to “write a whole new MMO, but reuse the assets”.

This is not even remotely practical.

Visit http://silverwastes.loltools.net/ and multiply as appropriate.

They play very differently. You should try both, and see what sticks. I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, but it’s truth — what you enjoy might be different from what I enjoy, enough that it makes a big difference here.

Asking people here is going to get roughly the same answers as metabattle, FWIW.

Anyway, you should play whatever you know better and/or enjoy more, really. It doesn’t matter that much.

So, the way it works is this:

1. Find an unstable rift.
2. Trigger the stabilizer.
3. Get all the 1-5 “skills” to blue, not purple
4. reward, you stabilized it!
5. now you have the roman numerals on skills 1 and 2
6. select your destination
7. jump through. you have to literally jump to trigger it. with the spacebar.

If you want the simple, mechanical solution to always getting the thing done with no thought: find the left-most purple skill. click one slot to the right of it. repeat until done. eg: if skill slot 2 is purple, click skill slot 3.

Maury Kayine.3924:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

If you want guildies to help defray the costs of running the guild, ask for donations. I don’t think it’s a good thing to siphon money from members.

What’s the difference?

One is voluntary, the other is not.

If the “money for boosters” is implemented, it also means that guilds suddenly become a source of income, so plenty of guilds spring up to actively recruit all new players, and effectively “farm” them for income for the leaders.

This is exactly what happened over in WoW, and while there are plenty of solid guilds, there are also plenty of guilds that hit the member cap without actually having anything of significance happen within.

eg: once members become a source of passive income, running a guild is incentivised for all the wrong reasons.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Class_II_Rift_Stabilizer — especially the “notable locations” table right at the bottom. I keep it on hand for reference.

thefiresoflurve.5691:

Auto-shared Pact Crowbars/Exalted Keys/etc would be awesome. Honestly not too hard to hit up a bank and shift them between characters, but it’s annoying.

Shared Inventory Slots work for this just fine, and items will be used directly from them.

When this happens, use the /bug command in-game to report it. That gives anet your exact location and path, and can help them find the gap in the geometry — which is often only one or two virtual “pixels” wide…

BatelGeuce.3591:

It would be nice to get an answer from someone in charge about this since this is around for like 3 days and the event is still in the exact same position. We tried to get to another instance but this map is empty.

If you want to get an answer to a question about the game, you need to submit a support ticket. While anet developers do read, and even occasionally comment on, the forums, they are mostly just about player to player support.

It’s worth noting that a hardware failure like that just after a hardware upgrade suggests that there may be hardware related issues at heart — especially seeing as how you describe a whole system lockup.

I’d encourage you to investigate overheating, card mis-seating, power supply, etc, issues and see if you can’t eliminate the hardware problem that is leading to this crash.

It’s not impossible that it is software related, but it seems unlikely since most people with those cards don’t experience these problems. (Note: there were some shadow rendering issues recently, but they did not cause hangs or lock-ups.)

Adzekul.3104:

I have used the “old” 368.69 driver for ages because it works (well, see below …) and the newer ones are a minefield with Guildwars 2.

Yesterday I started having display driver crashes (only 2, in short succession, and they went away after a reset). But today it seems I cannot load the game wihout immediate display driver crashes as soon as I log a character in. And restarting my PC does not make the problem go away.

So it would seem I need a display driver update, however …

I do not necessarily trust that Arenanet and NVidia speak every time NVidia update their drivers, so how do I know which driver I should be using? Which drivers work, and which should I avoid?

Currently using Windows 7 and 64-bit version of Guildwars.

Your description of the “cause” of the problem as “nvidia drivers being a minefield” doesn’t match the reality, which is that they work just fine for the vast majority of people.

I’d strongly suggest you look to hardware issues — cooling, card misseated, etc — in your system to try and eliminate the actual root cause of your problems. Once that is done you should be able to run the latest driver at any time without anything resembling the problems you describe.

Daddicus.6128:

Khisanth.2948:

The main issue with that bit is that for whatever reason the beast needs to build up momentum or something. If it runs into a rock too soon after it starts a charge it just stops without doing anything. The main thing you have to do is get the alignment correct so that doesn’t happen and get it to run over the minions.

Yeah, that seems to be my problem. But, it’s really hard to predict exactly when he’s going to start the bowling skill.

I ended up just hanging out with the beast and the thing I wanted to target aligned all the time. Move as little as possible to dodge attacks, etc.

Might be worth investing in additional healing or vitality to make it easier, if you are not as robust as a necro. (For which I could rebuild life force nicely on the things I could hit but not hurt.)

Djinn.9245:

Just curious: what are people “farming” in BFF standing in one place? Not Winterberries because there is only 1 harvest / node / 24hrs afaik.

Karma, and whatever loot drops from mobs. Karma is the big one, though. Using the purchasable boost thingy, you get it randomly dropping when you kill mobs.

Astralporing.1957:

Daddicus.6128:

That’s OK when there’s only one enemy. But, when you get more enemies, it’s the power builds that crash first, requiring the character to be revived. So, in large battles, power builds are a detriment to the other players involved.

You forget, that condi damage doesn’t cleave. The only thing that keeps condi relevant in mass combat environment is epidemic.

That is only kinda true, though. It doesn’t cleave, but many of the attacks that inflict conditions do hit multiple targets. (For which, as a necro, I’m glad, because otherwise pocket raptors would be even more kitten than they are already.)

I mean, yes, once it’s on someone you don’t cleave, but it’s easy to apply in an area, and about as effective as power cleave. (Since reaper has some cleave power attacks, I have a basis for direct comparison.)

You should submit that to CS in a ticket. (Though, uh, how did you determine a server reset happened? Usually that’s just at patch time, and I don’t recall a patch yesterday?)

Talek.6795:

How did you find it? Thats really good news

Well, anet told us they were working on it, so it’s not exactly news, just datamined evidence of further progress. Don’t interpret this as saying anything about when it might be released.

It was found by that_shaman, one of the dedicated data miners who often releases information about new things found in new patches, and mentioned on twitter and reddit.

I’d also check for hardware issues with the card (eg: is it seated correctly), and try a `-repair` in the gw2 client against local data file corruption.

FWIW, one of the biggest ways to help get that kill is to actually explain how to CC the boss to break the bar. Give examples, and make it clear you will patiently and non-trolling answer questions like “as a warrior, what skills do I have that count as CC”.

I have seen plenty of fail groups try and kill it, and mess up, but I have never seen one where someone stepped up and provided leadership and direction like that fail.

Probably from Hobbes in Lion’s Arch, who sells most of the items required for legendaries that you could discard on accident.

bearshaman.3421:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

bearshaman.3421:

I actually agree that guardians are not paladins, and that’s why I like guardians. Can’t stand paladins in pretty much every game they’ve ever existed in. shrug

The trinity does exist if you are doing raiding, where roles are more defined. So if you want to tank in a raid, mesmer is your best bet.

I’d say that even in raids, it’s way, way less “trinity” than in, say, WoW.

(and FWIW I like the lore of guardians way more than traditional paladins, I just can’t stand the gameplay. which makes me really sad.)

agreed on the trinity stuff. Another reason I like GW2.
What aspect of the gameplay, if I may ask? (i tend to be flexible on gameplay, one of the reasons I have most professions at 80 with elite specs unlocked.)

So, keep in mind that this is about how I feel about the gameplay, and I don’t think guardian is “broken” or anything. It just isn’t good for me — which is fine, there are other classes I enjoy, and no doubt people feel the same way about them.

I had three big complaints about guardian, which I did play a bunch at 80 including full elite, etc.

The first one is that aegis is a great defensive tool, but I have close to zero control over it. I can’t “save” it for a specific mechanic, because it pops up on a timer, and is eaten the first time anything does damage. (eg: random add pops the shield with a ranged attack, suddenly I’m defenseless against the champion I’m fighting.)

The second is that so many of the attacks feel slow, while also feeling weak. Part of that is damage output, but part of it is also just the animation and sound effects not quite doing what they should for me.

The third is that I just didn’t enjoy the hammer-sigil model, or the greatsword, or the bow. They all felt like they had two or three useful buttons, and several that were just a waste of time. Most other classes there might be one utility that’s not frequently used, but most stuff seems like it has value somewhere. Guardian, not so much.

So, that’s what did it. I think I’d probably have been OK with the second two if I had more control over aegis, so that it felt more like an active defense than a random, uncontrolled damage reduction that was better ignored than payed attention to.

CptAurellian.9537:

I don’t see how the damage formula is supposed to support your calculations.

OK. That’s fine. Care to show a correct formula, or explain where you see the flaw in them? I’m not going to claim to be infallible, and I might have something wrong because of some GW2 mechanic I’m not understanding correctly.

I grabbed the unlimited unbound magic harvesting tools, and I love the look and feel of the plant harvesting, and the mining, versions. Both of them not only look good, but they “feel” good — they act like something that might actually exist, and do what they look like they are doing.

The logging tool is the odd bird out here. There are two issues with it on my Asura — not tried on taller character — that make it just … not quite work for me.

The first one is that the three pulses target a location at about my head height on the tree, but run along the ground. So, what I see is an energy pulse flow along the ground, jump up, then jump back down and carry on to the end of the animation.

That just looks clunky, and worse, it misses some things (eg: petrified wood stumps) entirely, jumping right over them. It’s not like the other tools, in that it just doesn’t quite feel like the animation works.

The second is that it sends out exactly three discrete pulses, but harvests four wood per “cast”. That doesn’t feel great, because there is a mismatch between the visual behaviour and the mechanics of the tool. It’s not a huge thing, I’m sure, but it contributes to the feeling that it’s just not as awesome as the others.

I doubt that any of this will change, and if it did that you need my suggestions to improve it, but … I’d look at something that was more “channelling” like, so that there was a constant beam effect like the mining tool, rather than a discrete set of horizontal pulses. (or, perhaps, a series of “boom” ground effect explosions, four of them, overlapping).

Anyway, overall that’s two out of three that are completely awesome, so great job on those! Thank you!

bearshaman.3421:

I actually agree that guardians are not paladins, and that’s why I like guardians. Can’t stand paladins in pretty much every game they’ve ever existed in. shrug

The trinity does exist if you are doing raiding, where roles are more defined. So if you want to tank in a raid, mesmer is your best bet.

I’d say that even in raids, it’s way, way less “trinity” than in, say, WoW.

(and FWIW I like the lore of guardians way more than traditional paladins, I just can’t stand the gameplay. which makes me really sad.)

timetopat.7921:

So its working as intended where a player who dc’d just takes up a spot till the match is over and there is nothing you can do about it?

Well, no, it’s intended that they can reconnect and resume playing, but that means their slot is held, so if they don’t come back, that’s the effect, yes.

If you want a more formal response, you might try the PvP specific forums.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

ferocity gained * crit percent * (power / 1500)

So, if you have 1000 power, 50 percent crit from precision, and the food would give you 100 ferocity, or 100 power, we can do the math:

100 ferocity = (100 * 0.5 * 0.66) = 33 points of power, equivalent.

So it makes sense to me why you multiply by power, but I’m not sure how you’re getting the power divided by 1500. I’m assuming something to do with the base 150% crit damage, but if thats correct, how does it get to be divide by 1500?

Would you mind explaining where the power/1500 comes from?

15 points of power per one percent damage increase, one hundred percent.

Linken.6345:

Well the spear gun give some conditions but the raw damage of melee will outweight that mate.

Well, we both know the true answer is “neither, they both suck”, because underwater weapons just do.

I have two bits of advice, based on what I learned the hard way after coming here from WoW:

The first one is, forget trying to play either a tank or a healer. Just don’t do it. They don’t exist, or work, the way you will expect them to from WoW. It’s easier to just not even go down that path.

Second, classes are radically different not just to WoW, but to pretty much every other MMO out there. I normally love paladins, but … guardian is the same archetype in GW2, and I just can’t stand them. (sorry, guardian players, y’all nice, but y’all wrong!)

So … don’t assume that just because the class looks similar to what you like in WoW, you will like it in GW2 — even if that is true from WoW to pretty much every other MMO out there.

PS: tanking is mostly done by mesmers, or thieves, occasionally necromancers, all medium and light armor professions. It’s basically “someone attracts attention and avoids damage during a very specific mechanic”, 99 percent of the time the boss isn’t focused on the quote-tank-unquote at all, and that’s the way you want it.

I rerolled a charr to asura because the kitten “might makes right” shout so frequently drove me up the wall, but I kept thinking “eh, I’ve invested in it, should stick with it” until it was 80 will full exotics and stuff.

Ain’t no bad thing to decide that the aesthetics of a race or whatever are more to your taste.

So … you should just play, and hope they come back. It’s definitely possible to win 4v5, but even if you can’t … the math is on your side. Over time you are going to face opposing teams where a player goes AFK or whatever than you are going to have them on your team.

(eg: there are 5 slots on the other side, and 4 on yours, where a player can be absent. so, unless you disconnect, you have a mathematical advantage in winning more games from this problem than losing them.)

Not that it doesn’t suck, yo. Don’t get me wrong. Be great if that didn’t happen.

FrostDraco.8306:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

FrostDraco.8306:

Pregnantman.8259:

Sorry if I am derailing the topic but with your experiences,, do you think minstrel chrono in fractal pugs worth it? I like playing support roles in fracs such as heal druid (aldo condi ranger and condi druid, which is such a treat) and zerk chrono, and minstrel seems like a good compromise between them.

If you need to run mistrel chrono, just find a new group.
It’s generally better to run DPS as the faster things die, the better you team lives.

It’s interesting to note that both of these approaches are the same: compensate for bad players by doing X — in the first case use the mesmer, in the second case hope that you DPS the boss down before the inability to do mechanics kills you.

Personally, I take the approach that it’s better to try and teach people to do the mechanics, and help them when they fall short, so that while high theoretically DPS helps speed things through, we clear even if we can’t burst the boss faster than a mechanic for whatever reason.

Turns a lot of things from “perfect or wipe” into victories. YMMV, of course.

By the time you hit t4 you should know the mechanics. And in lower scales the fights don’t even last long enough for you to need healing.

There is a difference between, “perfect r wipe”, and your warrior fails to produce any might because he’s running a/a but also needs a res every few seconds, and your death magic reaper is boasting about how tanky they are, but literally dies every min and cant even keep up 16 bleeds stacks in full viper, but has the audacity to tell you about how raid builds need support (and how their build is up on qT’s site, even tho its way outdated), when you can just put on parasitic contagion. I’ve had that scenario happen countless times in T4 fractals. So yes, it is MUCH easier to just replace these people.

Sure, but it’s also entirely possible to complete the fractal successfully with people who are not in the “perfect” build for the current meta, but don’t suck like that. It’s that wide, wide gap between the two extremes that I’m talking about.

Rauderi.8706:

Ookamikun.6472:

I really wish Tengu were playable

Me too. :\
I’ve got 90 just waiting to buy a birb of each profession.

Sadly, it’s never gonna happen. The cost of bringing in an extra race vastly outweighs the benefits it would have — sad but true, that boat has sailed, and we will never catch up.

Liston.9708:

been waiting for a set of board shorts outfit (nothing else) I can dye purple for my I M Hulk toon. For now I run around in 3 pieces of armor (hidden) – but this toon is pve only…..

WTB SouthSun Faren tonic.

mrauls.6519:

I notice a lot more people use/recommend ferocity foods/utilities instead of power. Is ferocity a better stat when you have 50% or better crit chance?

The answer is “it depends”, and what it depends on is math. Complicated and annoying math that is very unintuitive, in fact. It also depends on how much power, precision, and ferocity you have (and what buffs you assume from the party around you) to determine which is most valuable.

So, extra ferocity can be translated into extra damage every time you crit, right, and precision determines how often you crit, so you can translate the gain of one point of ferocity to

ferocity gained * crit percent * (power / 1500)

So, if you have 1000 power, 50 percent crit from precision, and the food would give you 100 ferocity, or 100 power, we can do the math:

100 ferocity = (100 * 0.5 * 0.66) = 33 points of power, equivalent.

So, in that simple case the 100 power will provide a roughly 3x greater raw gain than 100 ferocity. If you bump to 2000 power, though, the numbers look different: 100 ferocity = 66.6 power. Still not better, but you can see that as your power increases so does the value of ferocity food. Likewise, as your precision gets higher, so does the value.

Once you have worked out the raw gain in terms of power, you also need to account for the naturally diminishing returns of stacking any stat. That works like this:

If you have 1000 power, and add 100 power, that gives you 1100 total, so you gained 10 percent extra power, and thus DPS. If you add another 100 power to that, bringing you to 1200, your gain was only 9.09 percent. That second hundred power is worth less than the first hundred power you add, despite bringing the same absolute amount of gain.

So, if you have 1000 power, 100% crit, 0 ferocity, then 100 power + 100 ferocity is going to give you a “greater” gain than 100 + 100 power will, because of those diminishing returns as the numbers get larger.

Anyway, lots of fun in there. If you want to know the answer, it’s not super-hard to plug in the power equivalence of the ferocity food based on your actual stats, and figure out which one is going to get you the most value after diminishing returns.

Tekoneiric.6817:

For the Engineer have the stow weapon hotkey also stow active kits such as flamethrower.

Doesn’t the “swap weapon” button work to put away any active kit, just as it does any other environmental weapon?

There are a few gaps and stuff, but something that systematic would be a huge deal.

I’d suggest two things here: first, every time it happens use the `/bug` command in the game and file a report that way. No response, but it gives anet the details like exactly how you got there that they can use to patch any holes that you can be pushed through.

Second, I’d recommend a ticket to support. The forums do get read by anet, but it sounds like you experience this enough they may want to do more investigation and it’d be efficient to just talk directly to them.

Classic Perception.2507:

This question is slighty biased and already very mad at arena net but i’ll give it a go hoping for insightful answer.

Coming from someone who knows very little about connections/IPs/routes…ect i apply logic instead:

How come when i play starcraft 2, overwatch, COD, hell even when i played gw1 i had perfect FPS and Ping, but SPECIFICALLY, when i play guild wars 2, i get average 250 ping sometimes up to 400 average?

Now once again i’m not an expert, but either 1. arena net doesn’t know how to make servers or 2. i’m a very unfortunate player living in Paris and the connection takes a weird route to their server (in germany i think for EU?) maybe which brings me back to point number 1.

More importantly, if it is coming from me how do i fix this?

https://www.pingplotter.com/fix-your-network is a good guide to using PingPlotter to track down where the issue is. The discrepancy with GW1 vs GW2 is interesting, though. I’d expect those to take the same path from your computer to the servers, unless you are playing one in the US and one in the EU or something?

Anyway, I’d suggest taking it to a support ticket once you have done the initial diagnosis with pingplotter and have a better picture of where the issue is. (or you can post screencaps here and we can help you understand what they mean.)

Finally, I know it’s annoying, but it’s worth remembering that there is a chance this is outside of anet’s hands — it looks like NCSoft are involved in their server hosting in the US, and so I’d guess in the EU as well, which means there could be three or four different companies all playing “point the finger of blame” while folks try and work on this.

Classic Perception.2507:

I already tried WTFast, anet is not gonna learn how to make servers over the night, and i can’t tell my internet provider “Everything works great except for GW2, fix this pls…”.

For what it is worth, WTFast seems to be a VPN, which can sometimes help with latency problem because it routes you via a different path than the troubled one.

However, while a VPN can help by changing the route, it’s … difficult for a VPN alone to improve latency compared to directly routing to the remote end. It really requires that your VPN (or proxy, as a non-encrypted version may be called) not just compensate for the extra latency that is added by routing to their servers, and the software processing required to send the traffic to the final destination, but it then needs to have a faster route to the servers of the game company.

That is the sort of thing that companies like Google, Facebook, and Netflix pay literally hundreds of millions of dollars if you can achieve. It’s… not completely technically impossible that they do what they say, but I would strongly suggest that it’s unlikely to deliver on their advertised improvements.

Shanky.4179:

drop your output res from 4k to 1080… simple as that.

Heck, 2560×1440 is just fine with normal size interface, as far as I’m concerned. Nothing is especially difficult to read or identify, text is acceptable even to my less than optimal eyes.

If none of the things that Inculpatus suggested work, I’d encourage you to open a support ticket — the forums are mostly player-to-player support, and if that’s a persistent issue, it’s something anet technical support are best placed to help you understand and resolve.

I will note that … trips my sysadmin “error matching” brain, so I think maybe I hit something similar when there was an upgrade, and it couldn’t start a new instance with an old client, or something?

Ballistic.2570:

What is the best underwater weapon for condi war?

Whichever one of the two brings condition damage on attacks; it’ll be one of the two, but I can’t be bothered to look it up.

The sad truth is, though, that you will likely be picking the “least worst” choice. The only class that I’ve found does really well underwater is necromancer, and then only because they have access to shroud, and the “on the ground” level damage it puts out. Their underwater weapons also kitten kitten the kitten kitten.

Lalette.9763:

Hey,
I don’t want to start a new topic, I’am thinking about returning to the game after few years (tbh I played only few months after release). Could you tell me how is WvW and sPvP nowadays? Is still Guardian a good class for pvp?

The game modes are much as they were before: doing fine, and filling the forums with whiners who claim they are dead, because their pet idea wasn’t implemented, or whatever.

Guardian can do just fine in PvP, though the specific builds from back in the day may no longer be the choice at the very pinacle of performance. For most people, though, anything will be fine.

FrostDraco.8306:

Pregnantman.8259:

Sorry if I am derailing the topic but with your experiences,, do you think minstrel chrono in fractal pugs worth it? I like playing support roles in fracs such as heal druid (aldo condi ranger and condi druid, which is such a treat) and zerk chrono, and minstrel seems like a good compromise between them.

If you need to run mistrel chrono, just find a new group.
It’s generally better to run DPS as the faster things die, the better you team lives.

It’s interesting to note that both of these approaches are the same: compensate for bad players by doing X — in the first case use the mesmer, in the second case hope that you DPS the boss down before the inability to do mechanics kills you.

Personally, I take the approach that it’s better to try and teach people to do the mechanics, and help them when they fall short, so that while high theoretically DPS helps speed things through, we clear even if we can’t burst the boss faster than a mechanic for whatever reason.

Turns a lot of things from “perfect or wipe” into victories. YMMV, of course.

Zaraki.5784:

Didn’t they nerf this farm by increasing the respawn rate of centaurs?

That’s my understanding, yes. I’d assume that it’s now approximately as rewarding as any other “AFK” farm in the game.

(Note: the definition of AFK that a bunch of folks on the forums use, and that anet use, are not in sync, and it’s entirely possible to sit in one place and farm this as long as you are responsive to gm whispers and/or actually pressing some buttons. Regardless of what should be, that is what is.)

DeceiverX.8361:

Climbing a ladder is not intensive when it comes to range of motion and mobility. I can climb a ladder with a 150lb weight strapped to my leg.

I’m just going to leave this here for anyone who still thinks “full plate” means “hard to move”