Guild Wars 2

Is there a reason why there are four graves on Southsun Isle beside a memorial to five lost crew members?

The learn to jump advice isn’t at all helpful. With jumping puzzles you can find yourself getting worse again if you persevere longer than your patience allows. You can easily spend your time just getting back to where you were ten minutes ago, only to fall off again on the next jump without really learning anything new. If you can’t do them, you can’t do them (unless a mesmers cheats for you).

For dungeons you can swap your utilities around a lot. Smokescreen and caltrops can be really good. Swap your heals as needed too and make sure you learn how to use them all. Your build is quite fragile with few condition cures so you will feel the pain quite often. Don’t be afraid to change your traits completely to try new things out. It doesn’t cost much in the long run.

You can get exotic armors from the auction hall, crafting, dungeon currency, and karma vendors. Auction hall prices can work out to be cheaper than crafting. Dungeons can help you get a full set with specific stats and that’s the way I’d recommend. If you run a dungeon often you can understand the fights and then see how they change when you use different skills and weapons.

It is very sad when you play a game knowing an NPC is going to betray you but the game forces you to progress the plot anyway by helping them. That really does make everything seem scripted, phoney, and pointless. I’d rather not see any betrayal than see it done badly.

We don’t want PvE mobs to have unblockable scorpion wires and pulls. All the same reasons hold when thinking about player thieves having unblockable scorpion wires.

I’ve got a good venom sharing build but I tend to use it less and less now. First of all missile defense is the best dungeon utility so smokescreen and daggerstorm get slots quite often. Shadow refuge also usually gets a slot and that leaves very little space for venoms. Caltrops can be more effective than ice or devourer venoms without any trait support. You can get poison/weakness from the shortbow. Basilisk venom has its place but isn’t universally good. Players don’t wait around for shared venoms in a game where mobile defense is needed. Venoms scale up really badly against a large number of enemies (5+).

The shadow arts line also gives me a stealth build and moving to venoms loses part of that. I can and do change traits around but the interface is poor to be honest. I don’t want to spend my play time doing trait admin on big screens that block vision. Being able to restore a saved trait configuration would make a big difference to how much I use venoms. For my own enjoyment of the game I prefer to just spend a few seconds changing weapons and utilities for a dungeon encounter.

If someone assigned to the machinery goes down they need to be revived quickly. Other than that, players shouldn’t cluster together due to Tom’s chain lightning. I’m guessing that players can hide from the poison spray behind a variety of obstacles such as turrets, pets, or each other.

The players setting up these portals are nice but I don’t think this sort of travel and tipping is good for the game. I can remember it back in EQ1 where some classes could move others and save a lot of time, like an hour. Players were tipped. It ultimately just caused friction between those tipping and those expecting tips.

If jumping were not seen as lightweight content the designers would already have
(1) relocated players who log out/in within a jumping puzzle
(2) prevented portals in jumping puzzles.
It is probably only a matter of time until these changes happen and yes it will annoy people who want the rewards from a puzzle without putting the effort into doing it.

Yeah you’ve been killing yourself for fractals and for what? I don’t think there is any promise of anything better at level 40 than level 20. You just get a different equation for time invested and frequency of items. When it gets to the endgame you can make your own goals and you don’t need to chase gear if you don’t want to put the time in. There’s little point complaining about the time you chose to spend in high level fractals since you probably knew all the issues before you got to level 30.

There’s no evidence to suggest that the designers particularly want players to get to high level fractals. It’s the player base that expects more levels with ever increasing rewards.

The testers seem really bad at spotting how a change in one part of the game affects other parts of the game. I’m guessing that’s what has happened here. I can’t imagine the designers really want to increase the tedious dredge killing in this most tedious fractal purely to satisfy the designer’s pique when seeing players use skills to solve problems.

“The difficulty, lack of decent rewards and boredom whilst dead is driving them all away.”

If your team were finding a lack of difficulty, a lack of rewards, and boredom whilst alive, then you might have run out of things to do. As it stands you have some improvements to make in your team play so you could set that as your goal if you wanted.

I completely agree with Nethykins. I ran into this troll when doing AC story with a scratch group of players who seemed to have little dungeon experience. The rest of the dungeon was well balanced and caused some downs and deaths whilst allowing progress. This troll however wiped the group repeatedly until we skipped him. The troll is the correct difficult for AC explore. The troll is not the correct difficulty for AC story and should be treated as a major bug, putting the wrong monster into the wrong dungeon.

Snowblind fractal – Activating the flag to get late access into the last boss fight will leave a player stuck in ice until they free themselves
Harpy fractal – Red circles are still often not visible on the islands.
Solid Ocean Fractal – Whenever any mobs are alive on the islands, the respawn point for falling players seems to change to the most fatal position possible. I don’t see why the falling respawn point should be anywhere other than the safe spot where players enter the fractal.

“Can we get fields that remove invuln/block/protection/etc?”

I don’t know, how about we get skills on our weapons that steal boons from the opponents? Cheap, repeatable, can be used anywhere, but that would never happen would it?

I think you’re not really getting the idea behind smoke screen. It’s a missile defense that doubles up with some smoke. So increasing the cool down is dreadful since missile defense is a really strong ability (even it other classes can do it better). If you turn slightly in melee you can also put the smokescreen quite neatly onto melee opponents for the blind. The one change I’d like to smokescreen is a slightly faster activation, cutting it from 1/2 second to 1/4 second.

The skill 5 is alright by itself but both weapon combinations, sword/axe and axe/axe, come together badly as weapon pairings. This means that neither pairing has versatile usage compared to the missile defense in other classes.

Pistol/pistol is used for single target dps with little utility, defense, or support. It also provides very mediocre single target dps. That leaves very little going for it other than the shortbow being even worse single target dps.

Dancing dagger has a lot of utility since it allows a thief to keep 3 targets permanently crippled. This is obviously most useful for the pistol/dagger weapon pairing and if you have the patience to kill PvE mobs that way it can be totally effective. I don’t see any need to increase the damage element since you don’t use it for damage anyway.

An experienced player can complete the dungeon on a level 35 character. Unfortunately you’re not an experienced player and your character is lacking gear, traits, and utility slots to compensate. Ascalonian catacombs is also a very unforgiving dungeon if you get things wrong as you will do.

My advice would be to wait until you’ve seen a few more story mode dungeons then return to the explorables. Do tell other players that you’re new to the dungeon. The worst thing you can do is die repeatedly when they don’t explain tactics simply because you’ve never asked for tactics.

Killing chanters selectively when you need to charge the hammer is a tactic you can use all the way through that fractal. It isn’t only on used that floor. It’s a tactic and not an exploit.

It seems like a nice idea but there seem to be plenty of players who complain about going into a dungeon just once for the living story. They’ll complain bitterly about not getting these animals if they don’t do dungeons. Other players will complain that they need to get more barter coins to fully equip a ranger than they do for other classes. In other words, players will feel entitled to any new pets and complain if they have to do any work for them.

I’ve got both and I think the thief has a stronger skillset and is more interesting to play. The ranger seems to be better when you just want more damage out + healing in, such as when huddling with guardian and warrior to do aoe with a greatsword.

“Only time anyone would use this skill is if someone is dead because if someone is downed and they are killed or revived/rally as the pet is walking to them it will reset and you won’t be able to use it again while its on cool-down rendering the skill useless.”

It’s fine. Someone was complaining to me in the weapons facility that it was a useless skill and too slow and yada yada yada. They had to eat their words when they died reviving people while I was fighting, dodging, and reviving with the pet. Twice in that run I was the only person standing, along with my pet, and we revived up to win. It does work particularly well in content where you are at great risk when you personally move to a downed player then kneel down to revive.

“Why is skill based gameplay not desirable?”

If I had a real life sword with a grip that would fall apart if not held correctly, then I could develop my own personal skill in wielding that particular weapon and no other. It would still be a lousy weapon and need fixing.

The thief philosophy is to avoid damage with blind, smoke, stealth, evade, and positioning. If you do that right then your vitality and toughness are not being used. Of course thieves are not perfect so you need to be able to soak a few hits but there’s no need to build totally defensively.

Players shouldn’t have to use so much effort to control weapon skill 1. The sword should be something the user enjoys wielding, as should every weapon if it is well designed. Unresponsive animations are better suited to skills that fire less often and deliver enough to be worth the effort (axe 5) or skills that have an inherent evade. Getting the positioning right on the longbow and shortbow just needs a simple skill level and that should be the limit of the work rangers do for auto-attacks.

It isn’t a matter of negative feedback. It really is a case of underwater combat not being good enough. It’s great that it is in the game at all but it has a host of problems, starting with classes being gutted of their skills and ending with it being short on fun. It is fine for occasional fights but needs more than some minor tinkering to support major underwater content.

- Good use of a cut scene for a boss fight. Existing dungeons could use a bit of that.
- Voice acting seemed to move the plot along rather than delay.
- Slight design change towards a slightly more cartoon style but it did seem to work
- No skipping (yet)
- Good difficulty balance since it is tough for people who haven’t done many dungeons

You can use them sparingly in dungeons with or without traits. Good observation can spot some places where they can give a damage boost without being at risk. The spirits will presumably add more dps than quickness or sharpening stones over a sustained fight.

RyuDragnier, if your group insists on grouping up for a guardian/warrior mash down then get an ice trap down followed by the healing spring and use the weapon defenses. Greatsword has the evade on auto attacks, a block, and the leap in the healing spring. Offhand axe has the missile defense. Don’t be afraid to roll out to safety if it starts going wrong and graphics lag hasn’t taken over. It’s more likely that you are getting killed with aoe than any specific attacks directed at you.

I’ve done this molten factory boss pair with both ranger and thief and yes the ranger was better suited to that fight. I also find it’s the same with fights like the CoE Alpha where big healing can hide small mistakes. The thief is still generally a better dungeon class.

“I still facepalm whenever people say I suck because I’m dying from mobs in a dungeon fast. If I’m dying from the mobs fast, it means the rest of them (was a party of me, a guardian, a mesmer, and 2 warriors) aren’t doing their jobs properly. I should NOT be taking that much aggro with a group like that.”

Hmm. You shouldn’t really be dieing very fast unless your groups is using bad tactics, like huddling up squishy characters in red circles so you can all melee a group of hard hitting mobs.

Tonight I was using a brown bear for a change. Seeing that the bear was standing next to me and someone nearby was burning I used F2 for a shake it off condition cure. The bear ran half way to the boss, used the cure, then continued running towards the boss. Just how are you meant to manage that?

I suspect that all these F2 skills have two problems. They have an inbuilt range that players don’t know about, so the pet walks to an unknown distance from the enemy then performs the action. The skills also seem to be put into the attack queue so if the pet if running after an enemy to perform another attack the F2 stays bottom of the the queue.

The first shot I fired after the patch missed by mile on a running target. Since then I’ve tested it out more and it does seem to hit walking targets, such as open world mobs who are not in combat.

Auto attacks should really hit targets in plain sight. The thief shortbow is a light weapon used in mobile skirmishes. If it can’t do that then it is no longer fit for purpose. It will be ridiculous if longbows and rifles gets better accuracy than a thief shortbow in a mobile skirmish.

Elementalist and thief are two professions where you need to learn to play quite quickly. Both classes get a lot better with traits as well. You need to use some active defenses (such as blinding enemies, knockdowns, cripples, missile defense) and dodges and also to know when to use them.

It’s quite possible to go through the levels just killing mobs to complete quest hearts and events. If you treat each fight as a learning experience, working out the skills and timing, you’ll be able to get better faster.

The arrow flies in a straight line after you fire it. If your enemies are static, moving straight towards you, or straight away from you, then this is fine. PvE enemies typically do that however PvP players will not (if they have any sense). Even in PvE, if you can see enemies running across your screen you might as well wave goodbye to them since you know your trick shot will miss. I’ve no idea how bad it will be in group content where all the players and all the enemies are moving.

It is quite possible that other things are causing your graphics problems, such as your graphics card, and it is not the game itself. Whilst you can say that the graphics card runs ok with other software, this software also runs ok with other graphics cards on other PCs.

I have middle mouse button set to dodge. I have removed the double move keybinding for dodge. This usually works fine. However twice in combat I have found that my other keys and mouse clicks seem to be working but middle mouse button no longer does anything in GW2. I can tab out to windows and the middle mouse button still works there.

The problem persists in and out of combat. However if I go to the options/controls page and save the settings again (i.e close the page without making changes) the middle mouse button again works and performs the dodge.

My pet could clearly see this change coming and took every chance to revive Logan Thackeray in CoE story last night.

“AC is all about tactics now and not just powering through content. Its no harder than it was before, it just requires actual teamwork, like actually rezzing downed players before they die.”

Which might be true if it wasn’t harder to revive people in the new AC. The spider queen has a persistent wide aoe field. The gravelings knock down anyone moving to near a downed target.

For Kohler it would be sensible if the adds were removed when Kohler is out of combat and at full health. Yes the champion vine in Twilight Arbor should fully reset as well. There’s no good design reason to make these fights more difficult for players who already find these fights difficult enough to wipe.

To get past Kohler, make sure you eliminate the adds quickly before he summons more. Throughout GW2, players just damage things and trigger new waves of adds without ever learning fights. If your group can manage to stay in melee with Kohler your group will probably be able to keep the adds close and under control, kill Kohler and the adds faster, benefit from group skills, and spot Kohler’s animations more clearly for better defense.

As with most dungeons, once you know what you are doing it becomes a lot easier. The basic plan would be to use missile defense to nullify the ranged attackers, take control of the annoying melee bandits and dispose of them, then take out the ranged attackers. Once you’ve run the paths a few times you can anticipate the ambushes and pick the places where you can fight without attracting more enemies. You can also spot the riflemen and saboteurs then avoid their big hits.

The skipping culture doesn’t really help players in CM. There are a few places where you can walk around the bandits without being seen and that’s good. Rushing/skipping through more than bandit group is generally bad.

“One thing that has always bothered me with the thief is the initiative mechanic. Most of the time I felt like there was no point in weapon swapping as a thief since your initiative stays the same amount anyway and you’d have to wait for regen. I’d prefer cool downs tbh, or if Anet can give us +4 initiative every time we swap weapons”

Why? Weapon swapping is a mechanic and there’s no reason why this mechanic should give you a bonus any more than swapping your armor. As a concept, it is ridiculous for a ranger to put away one bow and get out another bow because it will be faster somehow. Not having artificial incentives to swap weapons seems like a strange reason to dislike the thief.

I’ll add my voice to the growing list of people who do not want mounts.

“And IMO, that is as kitten backwards as it gets. A game should be solvable from within the game, anything else is insane.”

I agree, so go back and try again. You’ve made one visit there. Try two, three, or four visits. This is the last dungeon where you have to think up tactics before all dungeon paths become repeatable reward content so make the most out of the challenge. Try to master the other paths so that Lupicus and the trash groups are not big obstacles.

If every dungeon could be completed on the first visit by players, even those who do not know the dungeon, then the dungeons are too easy. Arah path 4 is the last path in the hardest dungeon and it is fair for it to be too difficult without tactics. I think it is a reasonable complaint that path 4 is too long compared to other paths.

It does seem to be a feature of the design that enemies within each race fit under one label. So the bad sylvari are nightmare court and a potion/sigil of nightmare court slaying is essentially doing damage to all sylvari enemies. Bandit slaying presumably covers all bad humans and supposedly covers separatists and ascalonians.

Adrenal health trait (defense 15) : gain health based on adrenaline level. There are build options to walk around with a full adrenaline bar.

The personal story quests are designed so that they will be completed. They aren’t necessarily easy for new players but they will get done. As soon as you put puzzles in they will either be an easy waste of time, walked through on the web, solved by trial and error, or difficult enough to totally block some players from making progress. None of those is great for the game. If you can design original puzzles that interest everyone but ultimately defeat nobody then you should sell them for a great deal of money.

What content are you playing in? Warriors can get very good passive healing in open world PvE with healing signet to the point where they can ignore bleeds and burns and just dps through mobs. You could increase passive healing but it still wouldn’t be enough for Dungeons/PvP and it would break PvE.

Those veteran risen acolytes seemed to get that summoning ability in a previous patch and it put a number of events out of balance, including one of the personal story missions for claw island. This change came in at the same time as the risen krait changes and in both cases there doesn’t seem to have been enough analysis/testing of the new abilities. The new AC explorable cave troll was also inherited by AC story, where he definitely doesn’t belong, so this isn’t an isolated problem.

All that was needed for Trahearne was a step to visit him after the finding Zaitan’s scouts since he was a scholar of Orr and could give advice. The player character could ask him to come to Claw Island and help then everything follows on more naturally afterwards.

In case anyone hadn’t noticed, the heal component will be of little use to a thief who opens a fight with mug. This means a thief can choose to use it for initial burst damage and forgo the heal, or choose to use it for the heal and delay some burst damage.