Guild Wars 2

DarksunG.9537:

I just want the “pet running 20ft in front of me” & “sword roots you” fixed. My pet should be RIGHT NEXT TO ME all the time unless he’s fighting. & the 1h sword rooting & yanking me all over the place sucks.

Try going from Ranger melee to Guardian melee. Guardians stop attacking the second the target moves. Believe me, you’ll miss that yanking all over the place when you have to reposition one step forward every few seconds. I’m not talking about mobs that run away, they just make things worse, I’m talking about the ones that just move slightly like drakes. That’s the one thing I hate about Guardian that the Ranger does infinitely better.

Solandri.9640:

Well that was disappointing for my ranger. I tried adding hunter’s shot and was confused when the kill times increased. I did some math and it turns out it’s fairly worthless if you’re solo. The skill has a 0.4 coefficient vs autoattack’s 0.9, which costs you most of the extra damage you get from the 10% vulnerability. If you time it perfectly, you only gain 3% damage over plain autoattack. If you don’t time it perfectly, it interrupts autoattack wasting your time and lowering your DPS. Add in a pet and it’s marginally worth using, or add a party and it’s a great skill. But solo it’s not worth using.

That’s fine saying that Hunter’s Shot is worthless in combination with auto-attack, but it’s a de facto combo skill. You don’t use it in isolation, you use it with Barrage.

Arimahn.3568:

AlietteFaye.7316:

I have an 80 Engineer as my main, an 80 Ranger as an alt, and an 80 Necromancer as an alt.

Wow. I mean, seriously, wow. That takes dedication. I’m seriously awed and also incredibly sorry for you.

It is sadly impressive, isn’t it?

I started my Ranger on the first day of Headstart. I loved her and had a great deal of fun with her. After reaching 80 I decided to make a Necro. I had a lot of fun with him, but not as much as Ranger. Then I made an ele and got frustrated at about level 20, so started a Guardian. It took the Guardian to show me just how sub-par my Necro and Ranger really are.

Also, I’m bitter than Warriors and Thieves are better with bows than Rangers are.

I find it difficult to believe that so many Rangers are ignorant, which is probably wishful thinking… Despite the fact most of our skills are borked in one way or another, we do have useful ones. I can only assume that someone started a rumour that it was bugged and that’s why people use it.

It’s no wonder people don’t want Rangers in dungeons. On top of everything else there are Rangers that are actively making themselves worse by using this Signet instead of something useful.

I have a reason for you to play your Ranger again – new pets! Yes, that’s right, just as with Lost Shores, Fire and Frost will see Rangers rewarded with a new pet to add to their arsenal!

Pssst! It’s a reskin of an existing pet, but it should shut them up for a while, and divert their attention away from the Warrior and Thief buffs we put in at the same time.

My understanding of “Increased Monement Speed” is that it does just that: it increases your movement speed. This is identical to “Swiftness” but significantly different to “Quickness” which doubles the speed of all abilities.

Signet of the Hunt’s passive effect is +25% Increased Movement Speed.

I feel obliged to use this in WvW, simply because everyone else is using something similar on top of thei Swiftness (which is simply the same thing). It’s no surprise to see many other Rangers using this Signet.

But I am seeing Rangers equipping this Signet everywhere in PvE. Both in open world and in dungeons. The other night, while running AC on my Guard, I asked why both the Rangers in the group were using it, after both of them got wtfpwnt by Poison. I got no answer from them… because they were the mute types that only say anything when they die. I got an answer from a guild-mate, though, who told me that it increases their damage. This is true – it increases the damage of the pet’s next attack when it is activated but that’s simply not worth a Utility slot. The problem with this is that I never see Rangers activating it. Ever. When I told him that he said that the passive effect increases attack speed. That was news to me. That’s what Quickening Zephyr is for.

Does Signet of the Hunt increase attack speed, or is it simply a misunderstanding on the part of, apparently, nearly every Ranger I’ve seen lately?

If you think back to September, all the trash in the dungeons were insanely tough, but they got, rightfully, toned down. The Baby Spiders didn’t get the memo and are just as bad as they were back then. Still manageable, though.

The next Ranger fix, due in three months:

How Bleeds stack has been adjusted to alleviate the issues Condition builds have in large fights. Bleeds now do double damage with half duration. Rangers rejoice!

Warrior bow skills have been adjusted to make them more attractive. All bow skills now do 15% more damage.

Azjenco.9425:

Sokar Rostau.7316:

Couldn’t each Class have it’s own Conditions, each with it’s own “haemorrage”?

Instead of Bleed, Necro’s get Disease. Once a Disease reaches the 25 cap the next application becomes an Acute Disease, which is burst damage. No other Class can apply Diseases.

Thieves get Toxins. At the cap, the next application becomes a burst of Virulent Toxin. No other Class can apply Toxins.

Guardians get Fervant Fire, a type of burning effect… that has blue flames instead of orange. No other Class does this kind of damage.

Ele’s have Fire, Rangers have Poison, Warriors have Bleeds, Mesmers have Confusion and Engineers have… um… Acid.

That’s the gist of it. Each Class has a unique condition. The cap remains at 25, but each application after that 25 bursts the oldest stack’s remaining damage, as smeone described earlier. By giving each Class their own unique Condition, this negates the problem of having three different people of three different Classes all competing for the same spot on the stack… while also preventing Condition dealers from just dealing constant haemorrages after the first few seconds fighting a Champ because every single class is applying the same Condition.

I really like the idea of professions having their own set of conditions, however, I’d prefer it if there weren’t three different sets of “poisons” competing with one another. For instance, in a fight you may have a necro, a thief and an engi, they’ll all be throwing their unique poisons to full effect, each utilizing the skill for maximum damage. But when there are three thieves in the party, the same problem will rear its head again, as each of them will be competing for toxin dominance. This will cause the same professions to rather not party together.

I think the amount of overall shared conditions should be lessened, which will make classes feel more distinct. At present, all profession except for the guardian can cause bleeds, while six can cause burn. What makes them so special if they can all replicate effects? I’d rather say they should share less conditions, but specialize a bit more in the conditions they have. For instance, two professions should share bleed, and two share burn. Add in extra conditions such as disease, albeit different than poison, such as escalating damage, but lowish duration, and has a chance to jump to nearby enemies. And give deep wounds to the warrior. Stuff like that, so each class starts to have more of a unique purpose rather than sharing almost all conditions across the board. The guardian is actually a good example of what I’m trying to illustrate, as he only has burn, and has a unikittenfect in aegis, which no other profession shares.

I also like the idea of spike damage. This will solve the PvE problem to an extent. When players of the same profession stacks a damage dealing condition, it will go into a burst, for instance, burn will get periodic fire explosions that deal aoe damage. Whereas something like bleed will have deal added damage whenever the target suffering a bleed burst takes an action.

The idea behind different Conditions for each Class is that instead of 20 people all applying the same Condition and only, say, three people actually having any impact, more people are getting to apply their Conditions to start with because they’re not in competition. Conditions of the same type that reach the stack cap then “haemorrage” as someone suggested (I really like the idea of each one having a different effect like the Fire being an AoE fireball you mentioned). Since fewer people will be adding to the stacks, the haemorrage effect will be seen less often than if you just applied it to Bleeding as we have it now.

Could another solution lie in the idea of a haemorrage, without changing everything? Once the subject has 25 stacks, the 26th then removes all current stacks and replaces them with a haemorrage debuff which itself can stack up to 25 times. Each haemorrage makes the target 1-2% weaker to Bleeds. Since the haemorrage isn’t actually applying direct damage nobody gets penalised by missing out on applying their damage to the stack. Come to think of it the opposite would happen because everyone would be doing slightly more damage and even those piddly little double digit one second Bleeds would be welcomed. The same idea could be applied to Burning and Poison.

Soulbind on Acquire.

The same Runes/Sigils are also SoB if you get them from the Mystic Forge.

Couldn’t each Class have it’s own Conditions, each with it’s own “haemorrage”?

Instead of Bleed, Necro’s get Disease. Once a Disease reaches the 25 cap the next application becomes an Acute Disease, which is burst damage. No other Class can apply Diseases.

Thieves get Toxins. At the cap, the next application becomes a burst of Virulent Toxin. No other Class can apply Toxins.

Guardians get Fervant Fire, a type of burning effect… that has blue flames instead of orange. No other Class does this kind of damage.

Ele’s have Fire, Rangers have Poison, Warriors have Bleeds, Mesmers have Confusion and Engineers have… um… Acid.

That’s the gist of it. Each Class has a unique condition. The cap remains at 25, but each application after that 25 bursts the oldest stack’s remaining damage, as smeone described earlier. By giving each Class their own unique Condition, this negates the problem of having three different people of three different Classes all competing for the same spot on the stack… while also preventing Condition dealers from just dealing constant haemorrages after the first few seconds fighting a Champ because every single class is applying the same Condition.

Easy.

Using the My Story tab on the Hero pane, you can access any “chapter” through the Mists. Since you are reliving history all choices are disabled.

LotRO has a very similar system where you can replay any plot instance by going to a Pool of Rememberance. As a reward, you gain tokens that can be exchanged for unique (though under-level and largely useless) items.

GW2 could do the same thing to give us new skins, Achievements and titles. Complete the Battle of Claw Island 5 times, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 times until you unlock a title. Along the way you gather tokens for a unique armour and weapon skin appropriate for your Race and Class. Different titles and skins are tied to Race and story section (personal, Order and Pact). The exposition instances don’t count for anything, of course. You could also have a meta-Achievement for completing your entire story, every single instance (with locked choices) from beginning to end, a certain number of times which rewards you with a complete set of skins and a title.

I quite enjoy the story and, as a couple of people have pointed out, they are very different depending on the choices you make at character creation and during the plot. Playing as other Races really fills in some gaps in the story. There are some fantastic “episodes” in the story that I would love to play again… but, as it stands, some of them I will never have the opportunity to simply because I won’t be making the exact same character and making the exact same decisions again. This is how it should be. From a story standpoint, this is the very definition of replayability.

There seems to be a bit of a trend on this forum at the moment, that amounts to “I want to do everything on one character”. As well as this idea of replaying the story to make different decisions, there are threads about changing your name, Race and gender. So… it seems some people want to get a male Charr Warrior to level 80 as the Blood Legion in the Vigil and then, at level 80, turn Snarl Gorestomp into Ms Hugsn Puppies, the Human female Mesmer who lost her sister and joined the Priory…. and then at some point turn her into Imno Tyoda the Asura Thief. There’s no other way to say this… that’s just plain stupid. Lazy, too.

Except that what you’re talking about is totally independent of any system, whether it be quests, renown hearts, jobs, tasks or events. What you’re talking about comes from interactions with NPCs, pure and simple, and I totally agree that this is, to a large extent, lacking in GW2. On the other hand, they have at least made an effort to put some of this in in ways that don’t involve walls of text, like listening to NPCs actually talking.

It’s also worth noting that you cannot get the full story of GW2 from a single play-through. Indeed, you cannot get it in even five play-throughs. Each race, Order and minor race tells a different part of the story. There are two perfect examples of this that I can think of straight away.

When you go and “meet your mentor”, at the fountain in LA, there are three kids discussing what game they want to play. At first they want to play Destiny’s Edge and have a bit of an argument about what happened and why. Then when they decide that they want to play a different game they decide on Renegades and Separatists and the Charr cub jubilantly says “Dibs on Ajax!”. Now, I’m not entirely sure what path you need to take, but you either have to be a Charr or in the Vigil (maybe a Charr in the Vigil? Most likely it is simply the Vigil, though) to find out a) who the Renegades and Seperatists are and b) who Ajax is. The point is, if you play a Human that joins the Priory or the Order of Whispers, as I did, this reference to the Renegades, Seperatists and Ajax is essentially meaningless until, or unless, you head out to Ebonhawk where you can get at least some of the story by speaking to NPCs. Incidentally, skipping all of the Story-mode dungeons until Arah means skipping a chunk of story which basically means that the final quest makes little sense because, aside from your mentor, you’ve met Destiny’s Edge once. WTF are THEY doing here?

Another example that comes to mind is all the people you meet during your story. Sometimes you will meet someone once and then never see them again until the Cleansing of Orr. Personally I thought “WTF is HE doing here? I saw him loitering around somewhere once, but that’s it.” But by doing a playthrough with a different race and making different decisions, their presence at the end makes much more sense since some of them play larger roles in different story branches.

When all is said and done, GW2 does do a decent job of conveying the kinds of things that usually come through “quest boxes”. What is lacking is the “flavour dialogue” you get by talking to random NPCs which serve to colour the world. And you don’t need quests to do that.

I’m not sure I’m following your logic here. Drop everything in favour of Precision and +Crit Damage, even though I’m not relying on crits for anything other than damage?

The reason I went with 3 Monk/3 Water instead of 2 Monk/2 Water/2 Sanctuary is because this isn’t an AH build, so I figured that I would need the extra healing power since i’m not getting it left, right and centre from applying boons to everyone around me. I would actually prefer the longer boons, I’m just not sure whether an extra second, or two, of regen is worth losing out on up-front healing from the same regen and direct methods.

Interestingly, changing the sword from Berserker to Soldier, in your version, results in a change from:

Effective Power 3445.14
Effective Health (EHP) 19880
Damage Reduction 31.31%

to:

Effective Power 3244.94
Effective Health (EHP) 22785
Damage Reduction 34.45%

Which seems quite significant, in terms of surviveability, for a relatively small drop in effective power. How much damage does 200 Power translate into, if it can be translated?

I noticed this the other day, and it seems to me that there is a short “immune to Blind” effect going on, or it may be that your target is immune to blind for the full duration of the condition after it has missed it’s attack. If that makes sense…

I typically try and start a fight with a SoW/LoF combo which applies Blind and Vulnerability, making me immune to the first two attacks in any fight. I then make a few swings before I hit VoJ and sometimes I will get the Burning, Blind + Vuln icons but others I will only get Burning and Vuln, with no miss notification.

For what it’s worth, I have yet to see anything be permanently blinded, even in big events with lots of classes capable of doing it. It makes sense that there would be an immunity effect otherwise players could render things completely harmless.

“Quests” in Generic MMO Area:

1. Kill 10 Wargs that have been stealing my sheep!

2. Collect 10 Warg skins so I can can make myself some blankets.

3. Find me 7 Elderberries for a Warg Repellent Potion.

4. Kill the Warg Alpha male.

5. Help me fix the fence (to keep the Wargs away from my sheep).

6. Bring back my stray sheep.

Renown Hearts:

Please, help make this place a little safer. We need the fences fixed, our sheep need protecting and rescuing and if you can find some Elderberries, we could use some for a Warg repellent.

In other words, they are almost identical. The major difference being that you can do any combination of tasks in a Renown Heart to “complete the quest” whereas most games require you to do each one individually, and in order, to reach the same destination.

While I agree that there could be more dialogue, you really don’t need much more than what is there already. In a “traditional” system you speak to a quest giver, he gives you a problem, you speak to him again after you have solved said problem and he thanks you. This is exactly what happens in a Renown Heart if you go and speak to the person with the Heart above their head (oh look, he has a heart above his head, so completely different to an exclamation point!) before doing anything, and after finishing it.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

You also get a good amount of gold for a dungeon run and a garentead 60 tokens of some swort witch can get you 2 golds crush into ectose to sell if you like.

And by “2 golds” I think this person means “two Exotics”. There’s a reason people don’t talk about selling golds for gold. Although, how you get two exotics from 60 tokens is beyond me… Unless by “2” he means “to” which is a very different word with a very different meaning to 2.

Are we going to do two too?

First let me say that I loathe “rate my build” threads, especially since they all start off with the bestest build ever and seem to often end in someone getting kitten. But I really need some advice so here I am…

This is not the best build, but I am liking it so far and am looking for input as to how I can improve it without drastically changing it. I have already made one drastic change, in dropping my Fire-related Traits (a bunch of traits designed for Fiery Justice, but I figured they’re all pointless whithout +Cond… or are they?).

This is my current set up. And by current I mean what I am currently aiming for within my means, so no Ascended stuff just yet and no expensive runes/sigils (I am thinking that a Sigil of Strength would be great in the Mace, but I can’t afford one, I am also unsure of whether Bloodlust, Strength or maybe Air or Fire would be best for the GS).

I am only just starting to learn to use a Hammer, but I plan on using it more often. I still prefer the Greatsword because of the Might, which is something I want to try and make the most of, but I think this build should work just as well with the Hammer’s Protection as the GS’s Might.

In this set-up the Radiance line of Traits is fluid, so I can regularly swap in Inner Flames, Searing Flames and Inscribed Removal (also swap my heal from the Signet of Resolve to Shelter if things aren’t condition heavy, since I find Shelter tends to be more useful). I am a little disappointed that I no longer have Retaliation all the time, so Unscathed Contender can be swapped with Vengeful if I feel the need, but I am hoping that the increased Boon durations will make this redundant and I can rely on SoW/LoF combo and my Virtues to keep Retaliation running.

So, what can I do to improve this, without changing it altogether?

As a side question, I did 3200 damage with Faithful Strike the other night, using the Fiery Justice build that I started with, which included 30 in Virtues and happened while under the influence of Might, Retaliation and Stability. Since I have very little in the way of Precision and +Crit Dmg, how does this compare?

Khal Drogo.9631:

Right Guild wars a G-rated game is considered violent. It shows how ignorant the media types are. If I were a parent I would be much more concerned about games where you could chop cyborgs up into little pieces with blood and gore in full hd glory and rip out their spines. Even better still bank robbery simulators shooting civilians, cops and guards dead etc. I dont need to name the games: if you watch Youtube game reviewers / read gaming news online / own Steam, you probably know what their names are. Btw what is GTA?

This is what Rupert Murdoch has done to news internationally.

Sure and CNN is such a font of knowledge when it comes to games. Or for unbiased news for that matter. And btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfax_Media_Limited

If GW2 can be blamed for murder, I suppose chess or checkers could be too.

Someone above listed the bugbears by decade but got one a bit wrong. In the 80s it wasn’t music and TV that was the root of all evil, it was heavy metal music and Dungeons & Dragons. So, yes, apparently board games can cause people to worship the devil and become murderers, as well as encouraging suicide.

As for Murdoch… Murdoch did change the news media, with the help of Roger Ailes. Fox News is simply the end result of a decades long move from actual news to newstainment. Murdoch’s background is in tabloids where scandal, gossip and manufactured stories are the bread and butter of the business. He took the tabloid format from print and applied it to the screen.

Fun fact: Fox News’ slogan of “Fair & Balanced” is often mocked, but it is usually factually correct. The news content generally is “fair & balanced”, the problem is that 95% of what is on Fox News is not news. They give you the news story, during a news break, and the few seconds that the story lasts for generally covers everything to appropriate jounalistic standards. But then those few seconds of balance are thrown out the window by hours of one-sided discussion.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether it is true or not. There is a very loud minority in the US that sees gaming as the new dancing, in the (original) Footloose sense, and another, larger, minority that sees it as a way to deflect debate from the real issues. This latest article just feeds into the echo-chamber. Stay tuned for the “if the victim had a gun, this wouldn’t have happened” claptrap.

Just a suggestion: Try this build calculator. I don’t know if it’s the best out there, but someone linked to it a few days ago and I’ve found it pretty useful. It’s also not limited to PvP.

I don’t think there’s much more I could add that hasn’t already been said. This is ridiculous, and yet one more reason for players not to join small guilds or to start new ones. For a new system that is supposed to be, at least partially, about encouraging the social aspects of the game, pushing people to be faceless members of a crowd is not the way to go.

CriminalMind.4379:

You know. If they would just lower the cost of items in the Black Lion retail section I believe that more people would buy item. 125 gems for a black lion chest key is just plain absurd. Their mentality is to make X amount of dollars off the few instead of making XXX off the many. This seems to be a general merchandising malpractice IMO. Especially for items that are a bunch of 1’s and 0’s. It cost nothing to manufacture these virtual items but they are charging a price like they are something used in real life. For the price of a Black Lion key I can have a lunch at McDonalds. So I personally will not buy anything more from the store unless prices drop drastically.

The only great thing they sell is a character expansion slot and maybe bank slots but everything else just cost way to much.

Just my opinion. And don’t get me wrong. I love the game and would love to support it by purchasing items from them but not going to happen for me at the current prices.

For what it’s worth, I agree with you… but.

Just as with gold sellers, the real problem is not the selling of things, whether that be illegitimate gold or things from the gem store, it’s the people buying them.

To give you an example from another game, Lord of the Rings Online has a microtransaction model and, generally, it works very well because most things you buy actually are microtransactions that work out as no more than a couple of dollars. You can also buy full expansions through their version of the gem store. Depending on the expansion (and I don’t know what Rohan costs), this ranges from about $18 – $35. Fair enough. Outside of buying Quest Packs, which unlock the ability to do the quests on each map (you can still go to every area and kill things, you just can’t do the quests without them) the majority of the items you can buy are vanity items and cosmetics. The most infamous vanity item, at the time I was playing, was a mount called the Steed of Night. The Steed of Night cost $20 and was a horse identical to the second-best horses you can get but it had a unique skin. While a lot of people used their saved up Turbine Points, which you can get for free just by playing the game, to buy these things, some people actually payed cash to get this horse. They paid more for a vanity item which, at the time, couldn’t even be used in combat than they did for an expansion. In fact, I knew one person that bought TP for the horse instead of the Mirkwood expansion.

And people complained about the Horse Armour in Oblivion…

So long as people are willing to fork over ridiculous sums of cash for useless things, the microtransaction model will remain a misnomer.

I do think it would be in ANet’s best interests to double the number of Keys that you get in bulk, and maybe give a bonus. Instead of getting 5 keys for the equivalent of $4.50, 10 keys, or maybe 11 or 12, for the same price would see more people willing to buy them.

Something to think about: Just as with the Steed of Night, if ANet released a Skeleton Key, that could unlock an unlimited number of chests, for $50 people would buy it.

Last week I got an Abyss Dye from a BL Chest.

I also vaguely recall reading that the Mystic Forge Conduits had a miniscule chance to drop in the chests after the “market stabilisation event” ended and you couldn’t make them anymore. I have no idea if this is true or not, but if it is they are worth 70g right now and rising (and I sold my spare for 15g during the event )

Also, Chests already have a chance to drop Keys. It’s at a high enough rate that buying 5 BL Keys from the Gem Store has about a 50/50 chance of giving you at least one key. Back in October I bought 5 keys and opened 13 chests (only bought keys once since then because I was playing Skyrim most of the time).

Because they are all the same. The only difference between the sets is the runes they have in them. It’s the same with the rare dungeon sets – they are identical skins regardless of dungeon.

What still pisses me off is that innocent words like this are censored because someone “might” find some way to be offensive, and yet words which are entirely offensive, and have no other meaning but as racial slurs are perfectly acceptable.

I made a character several months ago just to prove the point – Abo Boong. Not only was the name acceptable, it was not filtered in-game or on the forum. In Australia this is the equivalent to calling a character kitten kitten (that’s a four letter word starting with C and a six letter word starting with N).

And yes, I do know that boong means something like brother in Malagasi, which does complicate things. But the last time I read one of these threads it was about censoring a perfectly innocent French word which was offensive slang in a single US city.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Knut Whitebear is a reference to this lovely little fella’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZLKb_5S21E

And there is a personal story mission called “Through the looking glass” which is a reference to Lost.

Kids these days…

Through The Looking Glass was the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (better known by the name Alice in Wonderland) both by Lewis Carol and published almost 150 years before Lost was even thought of.

Amos.8760:

Where’s
my resurect*
portal?

Tomb of the
Scrybe*

*These are misspelled on the stones, I translated them here exactly. ‘Scrybe’ is probably intentionally ironic, but I have no answer for why ‘resurect’ is misspelled.

Think about it. The Scribe couldn’t spell.

I just ran out of money while leveling up my Weaponsmith and noticed that Sun Beads were showing up in my Discovery panel. I needed 75 of them, but only had 20 so I went to get some more. After googling the Sun Beads I discovered that there were quite a number of recipes available, for several professions, so spent all my Karma buying them up so I would have access to the skins. It turned out that most, if not all, recipes required 75 Sun Beads.

I bought around 750 Sun Beads. One at a time. I jokingly wondered in /map whether I could sue ANet for Sun Bead induced RSI. By the time I ran out of Karma it wasn’t such a joke. My finger hurt, and still does more than two hours hours later.

Please have pity on the clicking fingers out there. If you don’t care about our fingers, please have some mercy on the poor mouse buttons that don’t have any choice in the matter.

Bulk buy. As far as I can tell, there is no conceivable reason for these things to be sold one at a time. Better yet, drop the number used in the recipes to one and raise the Karma cost to 1575 (75×21).

Try interacting with the door. I did this story instance for the first time last night and when I got to the door it seemed natural to try and open it, attempting to do so seemed to trigger the NPC dialogue.

I have a Minor Rune of Something in my boots and in my diving mask. While I haven’t checked to see whether the stat’s actually do reflect it, the bonus for having two runes displays as active, and when I added an item which had a third copy of that rune I got the red 3/2. I think that’s more along the lines of what the OP was asking.

Grapes are fruit. Just sayin’

Something that has always bugged me about Cooking is that so many things cost Karma… and yet if you go and check every single Karma vendor in the game 90% of them all sell the exact same handful of useless ingredients unless they are a heart vendor. I vaguely remember there being more ingredients available from at least some of these vendors in Headstart and that they were being exploited, but that doesn’t exaplin why we need so many of these useless vendors standing around in odd places.

Reminds me of Mortal Kombat. Back when it first came out there wasn’t even a hint to the combo’s (and Fatalities) possible and figuring them all out was part of the game. That was over 20 years ago, and they’re still making that game.

There might be a couple of drawbacks, though. Something like this may result in locking players into ideal skill rotations and it may also mean that some skills get under-used, either because you’re saving them for a combo or because they’re junk in a combo.

You’re forgetting something. By sacrificing herself at Claw Island she saved the rest of us from having to put up with her for the rest of the game. Had she lived, The Pact would never have made it beyond the Straits of Devastation because she inevitably would have done something stupid. “Oh look! There’s a horde of undead giants coming! Don’t shut the gates! Let’s just go and hug them, see what effect that has!”

Conncept.7638:

Unless I’m mistaken Warrior can have the highest single crit in the game, but there are likely crit combos that yield more damage in the same amount of time.

It’s a sniper build though, so it’s ranged. You build crit and power as high as possible (don’t worry about crit chance) and equip two rifles with a sigil of intelligence in each. Shoot with one then switch to the other for an automatic 9000-11000 damage crit.

And all the Thieves that do 18k laugh at your paltry 11k damage. Also, My Ranger does 10k using Rapid Fire, even more if her rune proc’s, so there’s nothing particularly special about an 11k crit, especially when you have to set it up with weapon switching.

I have had mail arrive 24 hours later twice in the last week.

This topic just disappeared… and posting was the only way to get it back… stupid forum.

As already mentioned, the part when the Sylvari go to the fighting pits with the OoW to reclaim Cadabolg. The best line is when the Asura announcer says something along the lines of “Welcome ladies and gentlemen! Humans and Sylvari, Charr, Norn and Quaggan… wait, we have a Quaggan?”

I hated Sieran the first time and I hate her now that I’m running Priory for a second time. I can’t wait to get her to Claw Island. Her death is a relief that I don’t have to put up with her anymore.

I don’t know if this has been suggested before, but I was surprised to discover that the tooltips for my Guardian’s Virtues didn’t update when I took Inspired Virtue. This is very confusing, especially to someone that’s new to the class, since the only way to find out which Virtue gets which bonus effect is to look it up in the Trait panel. Likewise, taking the Trait Blind Exposure isn’t reflected in skills which cause Blinds.

I know that the duration for most things is reflected in the tooltip, but these extra effects should be included as well (for all classes). Skills that impact other skills should also, if possible, be shown: for example when a ranger uses Sharpening Stone, the Bleed should be shown for all eligible skills.

Then again, maybe the tooltips are meant to be dynamic and I’m just noticing a bug/oversight.

kKagari.6804:

Lenneth.1372:

The GS Guardian isn’t all that great, Hammer or mace, or go home. GS has no support on it, and the skills are pretty bad even damage wise. Hammer auto = protection 90% of the time, and if you trait it, the symbols heal you.

Sword/Focus is pretty good too, get 2 blinds with that, or 3 if you have the trait for it on activation of Virtue of Justice.

Completely disagree. You might say GS vs Hammer is debatable in terms of support, but to say that there isn’t any at all on the GS is simply not true.

Whirling Wrath on the symbol cleanses plenty of conditions, binding blade is invaluable for positioning enemies for team aoes. Leap of faith can be used as a clutch blind.

Symbol of Wrath + Leap of Faith = 5 second Retaliation to nearby allies and if there’s a Ranger nearby this also removes conditions. And if you trait for it your Blinds can also give Weakness. Both Retaliation and Weakness increase dps meaning your allies take less damage.

Support comes in many ways.

1. Tengu
2. Skritt
3. A Tengu/Skritt hybrid that shoots laz0rz from it’s eyes and missile barrages from it’s kitten Okay, either Kodan or Largos, I’m not decided.

Cactus.2710:

I don’t know why suggestions like this keep popping up. The surest way to kill a game is to prevent the ones who really want to play it from being able to play it. In your example, roughly 15 players from each side get to play for a total of 30 players, while 65 players are totally shut out of the game. That’s just ridiculous.

I agree that that’s a bad solution, but how about a compromise? Leave EB as is and add three more BL each with only half the possible population. As much as I do enjoy the very large battles, there’s nothing worse than going out to a BL only to find the odds are 10-1 (regardless of which side you’re on… outnumbering is just as bad as being outnumbered in terms of fun).

How useful is this skill? My Guardian just hit level 40 and I have taken both available Guardian Elites, and have Mistfire Wolf. I am debating whether to save up for the 30 point Elites or to grab Warband Support now, just so I can have some fun with it before slotting a permanent Elite. The Mistfire Wolf is annoying to cast, but has saved my furry hide more than once and I am assuming that the Warband Support will be an improvement on that. Is it as good as Hounds of Balthazar (which I have never used on either of my Human characters but is undoubtedly a very popular Elite)? On the other hand, I’ve never seen anyone use it, so is it complete junk compared to the other 10pt Racial Elites?

What about the other Racials?

The guild system is definitely in need of an overhaul. Right now, it favours big guilds that have been in-game for a long time, in fact it has been this way since Headstart. The main problem is influence and guild upgrades.

For a large guild to get enough influence for the highest upgrades, all that needs to happen is each member logs on and represents for a few minutes every day. That’s it. For a member capped guild, this is as much as 5000 influence every single day for doing absolutely nothing. Getting the most expensive upgrades is trivial, and they are limited only by the time it takes to research, maintaining buffs is… well I can’t think of a word for something that is less than trivial. The irony of big guilds demanding permanent representation is that they have nothing to spend that influence on.

On the other side of the coin are the small guilds. It is physically impossible for small guilds to get even close to the influence gain of the large ones. Depending on just how small, getting tier 3 upgrades (5000 influence) can take weeks, and the higher grades can take months of every player representing all day every day. Small guilds have a very good reason to demand representation because they need every scrap of influence they can get. That doesn’t make it “right”, it’s just a reality of the system we have.

And then there’s the upgrades themselves. Players want the banners and the buffs. Back when the game released, large guilds that had formed in Headstart already had most of the buffs by the end of the first week of general release. The effect of this was that players would represent the guild with the buffs rather than the guild that needed to gain influence to research those upgrades. I imagine that this is considerably amplified now and that forming a new guild and getting members to represent is extremely difficult.

I think that part of the solution would be graded influence based on representation and guild size.

1. Representing rewards 100% of influence gained. Non-representing members still earn influence for the guild, but only at 50-75%.

2. Guilds with less than 50 members get a 100% bonus to login influence (ie, the bonus you get for logging in and representing). Guilds with 51-100 members get a 75% bonus to login influence. Guilds with 101-150 members get a 50% bonus. Guilds with 151-200 get 25% bonus. 201-300 members get no bonus. 301-350 get -25% reduced login influence. 351-400 get -50% reduced. 401-450 get 75% reduced. Guilds with more than 451 members get no login influence at all.

3. Similarly, small guilds get a bonus to all influence gained, say 10% more if there’s less than 250 members, 25% more for less than 50. While large guilds get a corresponding penalty.

At first glance this may seem like penalising guilds for being too big, but the reality is that the large guilds would not notice it at all. At the same time, new guilds wouldn’t be stillborn and small guilds would be able to get upgrades at some kind of reasonable pace.

Slightly OT, but related to the OP…

I just had a situation in a normal dungeon , which we had spent way more than the usual amount of time in, where the party “leader” had to go to work and simply went offline without leaving the party. After pushing on as a 4-man for a while someone decided to kick him (I don’t know if they planned to get someone else or not, but we were fine as just 4) and we all got booted from the instance.

This shouldn’t be happening at all. If a person is offline for more than a reasonable amount of time, a vote should automatically be started and there should be no consequences for it.

What happened to the other (even older) thread about this?

I found one the other day… on an event that I’ve probably done a dozen times before on three different characters. In Gendarran Fields, the escort event that starts at the Lionbridge WP has an extra member that you might not see: A Raccoon named Chief Cherpa. Chief Chirpa was the name of the Ewok chief in Return of the Jedi.

Not a spectacular drop, but I was quite happy to get a lvl 79 exotic pistol from the harpy event near AC a few days ago, and even happier that it turned into 4 ecto’s and gave me some much needed mat’s.

I’ve been away since the Lost Shores event, only coming back a few days before this last patch. Imagine my surprise to open up the WvW panel a few hours after this match started to find that Dragonbrand was matched with Kaineng… and they were winning.

Truth be told, I think I spent far too much time in WvW before my vacation, so the only reason I went out the other day was to see if I could nab a few PoI and Vistas for World Completion. Needless to say, I got a handful of both before succumbing to temptation and ended up spending three or four hours killing and being killed. It was a really good fight, despite us being outnumbered and being attacked by culled zergs (so much for that issue being improved… ).

I assume that Kaineng’s drastic change in fortune is the result of a guild or two migrating before free transfers ended. Given that the last I knew of Kaineng they were “punching above their weight” and “proud underdogs” that fielded zergs that would be called guerillas on other servers, I have to ask: How has this change in fortune impacted you Old Kaineng players? I am sure that you’re happy to finally be up in the tiers, but you had a pretty solid identity before. Given the number of people I saw the other day, I imagine that a lot of the Old Kaineng players are a bit lost in the crowd.

I should point out that this is an honest question with no implied jabs at anyone. I’m just interested in how the people who have been on Kaineng from the beginning see things, for good or ill, and I hope to get some honest responses.

I ran AC story mode earlier today. It was my first time doing it for several months and my first time on a Guardian.

Two party members had never done it before.

I was level 32/3, one person was 37, one 64, one 48 and one 80.

The level 64 crashed before we finished the first fight and didn’t come back. We four-manned it with two people that had never been there and one that hadn’t been in ages.

We wiped exactly once. On the King. On our second attempt at him nobody came close to going down until the last few seconds when someone got dropped and got straight back up when the King died.

I don’t think you can get much easier than that. I was actually surprised at how easy it was… the last time I did AC SM the trash mobs alone were a nightmare.

Just remember that just because you don’t see or hear anyone, it doesn’t mean there’s nobody around. I was in Lornar’s Pass a few hours ago and nobody said a thing in chat for over an hour, and I only saw two or three people. Suddenly 8-9 people showed up for an event, went their separate ways, then there were another three people at a different event. Still, nobody said a word (except that one guy asking if there were any events).

A few days ago I did the Frozen Maw with about 30 other people and the only words spoken were “Maw up”.

Sometimes people just have nothing to say.