Guild Wars 2

Keyboard as-is. I have an Avant Stellar (basically a remake of the Northgate Omnikey – VERY old – and loud – mechanical). Though the F1 row starts over the 2 key, that works out OK for the classes I use regularly (Guardian, Necromancer, Engi). Also, I have the keyboard in ‘Unix’ layout – Ctl key is next to the A (changed in the keyboard’s firmware, so its permanent). I’m waiting for WASD Keyboards to release their V2 before I finally replace this with something quieter.

Most of my modifications came with the Logitech G700 mouse, and bindings added there:

7-9 are on G10/G9/G8 (the group on the upper left).
Dodge is ‘Scroll Right’ (tap the scroll wheel to the right), which I found very intuitive.
Weapon Swap is Middle Button (Wheel Button).
6 is G5, 0 is G7 (the two forward thumb buttons).

The rear thumb buttons are reserved for voice comms on two programs.
G4 – PTT (primary)
G6 – PTT (secondary – unbound atm)

Why two? After three years in Eve Online, old habits break hard, and access to a second voice comm server is always a handy thing (if at server/alliance level).

That picture has the helm twice, and the boots are missing… :p

Either way, I can see this being an interesting choice for some professions (engineer for example) that can benefit from a more flexible stat distribution. I can certainly see my Engi (which I mostly use for open-world these days) wearing a Medium set like that, with a mix of Soldier and Berserker trinkets to round out the set’s deficiencies.

Hmm. Does a Medium set actually exist? I’m looking at the basic recipes involved, and it looks like you’ll need 750 Quartz for a full set.

VoxShatterfall.5470:

The issue which is brought up here is a clear misconception about issues in the game: either a) its ANETs fault, or b) its the players fault. I believe we are being too kitten either party in that there is an option c) no party at fault.

In this case Living World Achievements being missed can at times be the players fault – such as a person deciding to go on holiday during the time period even after knowing about the event. However, there are many external factors outside of both ANETs and the Players’ control which make participation in the event very very hard.

Case in point – Tornado hits the main power plant in your town – you lose power for 2 days, you miss the dragon bash fireworks (at least until next year).

Everyone should understand just because these “acts of nature” occur ANET or the Player are not intrinsically at fault. Rather we are suggesting here in this thread that ANET could add some type of way to accommodate our busy schedules which has a) minimal impact on the game economy, b) is easy for them to implement, and c) satisfies a minimum desire for linking past events and completing some achievements.

Agreed. In my case I missed the end of the Halloween content because of Hurricane Sandy (the storm put our work at an ‘all hands on deck’ level several days before it hit, and there was some fallout from the stock markets closing).

Overall I didn’t mind at the time, though, because 1) they at least handed out something afterward, just in case, and 2) I did not have a character to 80 yet and was still new to the uplevel mechanic anyway. Also, I realize there’s a good chance they’ll replay some of it again this fall, and I really didn’t like anything I saw from a skins perspective too.

For Living Story, however, the issue is that a new player (starting this September, for example) will be hip-deep in whatever is current, but when he/she asks around about certain items showing on characters, the answer will be “Oh, that was at event X some months ago, its gone now, you can’t get it anymore.” There is a good chance the player may drop at that point for something else – in particular if everything is available there in some form, even if you have to work harder for it now.

While the concept of constantly updated content seems a good one on paper, you will eventually paint yourself in a corner from a rewards standpoint, related to new player retention. It’s going to take forever to undo that mess (see: Eve Online – two years on and still restructuring – maybe another two to go), so its to ArenaNet’s and NcSoft’s financial benefit to look at this now, before it gets too out of hand.

Edit – Related to the Historian, I think that will also help with new player retention, if only to help a new character be ‘jumpstarted’ into the existing story without being thrown into the deep end (again, I would reference Eve and its ‘learning cliff’ – though they are getting better).

Latinkuro.9420:

Tintifax.2614:

Ehm, another question: If you can’t get the meta achievement of this limited time event for whatever reason (no time to play etc.) you permanently lose access to a crafting resource?
If so, second question: Has Arenanet totally lost their minds?

This on the other hand is a very GOOD question, they better find a way so that new players coming to the game after this event is over can also get access to this quartz resource.

Slight bump to this concern. Though I’ll probably get it, I worry that later possible players will hear about this on the forum, and not buy/play GW2. “What’s the point? I won’t be on the same starting point than everyone else who joined before?” (Yes I understand that can be a flawed argument, but I’ve seen it used enough in gaming – and other venues, like Second Life – that it still has merit for future income to ArenaNet.)

A simple fix would be to add it as an account upgrade in the ’Shop, include it as a new part of Digital Deluxe (even better), or make sure enough of the world content used to unlock this node is made permanent (best).

Very interesting breakdown. I will be watching for the update regarding supplementing Cleric builds, as I’m looking to move off of the healway/AH build concepts and onto something a bit more interesting (and damaging, particularly for Fractals).

The idea that this can boost Staff also perked my ears. Its the primary weapon I run with, and has worked out well for me even in WvW.

I admit that I’d be tempted by this. Moreso for my human (who has the ebony skin option and white buzz-cut hair).

It was nice to see the ’tats on my norn warrior for a little while though, and the glow on my sylvari (which I normally only see just on the head).

On a related note – if someone could direct me to a Collector that still exists someplace, I’d be very happy. Even if just to free up the various inventory slots without trashing them…

Astralporing.1957:

You are right. Which is weird, since i got my karka backpack before getting all of the achievements. I don’t remember any achievements that are not on the list now either…

In that case i must agree, that the level limitation for the omelette IS a problem.

Of course, there are still those 5 achievements that will be unlocked in the next phase of the Southsun Living World event.

Yeah, its doubly a problem because its also soulbound to whomever bought it. :-p I partially lucked out by doing that on my warrior (lvl 69 at the time), and was able to hit 75 later that evening by finishing a crafting run I had started previously.

Thanks for the tip re the Settler/Consortium achievements. Could not figure out why I wasn’t getting anything, or how to trigger it.

I believe people are forgetting one small distinction here.

The JetPack, Fused Weapons, and the current crop of RNG skins are just that – skins. There are no stats attached that I’m aware of so far.

These two Achievement items (along with the Gauntlets in the F&F meta-achievement) have actual stats on them – reasonably decent ones too. One of them is even clearly marked (!) as Ascendable. Of course people will be interested in that (in particular the folks not interested in running Fractals).

I’ve no interest in the skin for that scerlite item (that whole item line creeps me out actually), but as an Exotic/Ascended I can put any ’ol skin I want on it later. Tempted to dust off the Toy Bag and use its skin, just for lols.

While technically correct, there is a bug regarding the spawning locations on two of the achievements. This is preventing completion of the meta-achievement needed to unlock the gloves.

If not fixed in time, I’m hoping ArenaNet is willing to consider moving the chest to the ‘rallying’ achievement, or move the ‘closing’ time of the event by a couple days (say the 16th).

Josh Foreman.8250:

Julian.8326:

The last part of the rapids level, where you fight ninjas on top of the raft, may be a reference to Final Fantasy VI.

Hmm… I don’t think I played that one. The raft level was really just an experiment to see if we could do it. The ninjas were a last minute addition. Fun coincidence though!

FF6 is the disc release (for PS1). The ‘original’ name to us in the ’States is FF3 (cartridge release for SNES).

Here’s a well-known video (the Opera Scene).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuvSDedrtKM

takes hat off
/salute Celes ( I named her Ace <3 )

And the actual raft bit (one example):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3ANrkDXIEU

Hmm. Actually the raft reminded me of FF3 (FF6 when re-released).

Interesting ride so far though, thanks Josh. And, btw, look up Blaster Master while yer at it. (In particular, the water and ice worlds)

I prefer the term ‘primary character,’ due to my time in Eve and its normal use of multiple accounts. Anyway…

At this point, it seems I’ve settled on a Sylvari Engineer and Charr Guardian, which were my first and second characters. I’ve started to get exotics lined up for the Guardian, but the Engi keeps getting moved in different directions from patches, so he’s staying in rares for now (other than rifle). The Guardian is also a bit ahead due to limited play time – restricted by RSI concerns – and the character-bound nature of Fractals (and now WvW).

I do have two other characters that I poke at from time to time, a warrior and a ranger. The warrior may end up being deleted due to being too boring for my own taste (ironic, since the character slot was originally a thief which got deleted – too much hand/wrist pain). I find the ranger quite fun in sPvP and World PvE, possibly because he’s an Asura (dodge animation amuses me a lot, and every pet so far is more than twice his size).

I’m still glancing at the unused 5th slot, which may end up as a Necromancer (mostly because I’ve not tried that yet). I’d have to go Human for that one, as its the only racial storyline I’ve not completed yet (though I could delete after that and start over in a different race).

Daywolf.2630:

I must agree, that would better fit my steampunk themed (aviator style) engi, but settle for the eye optical thingy. But oh if we could only own crewable air ships /me crosses fingers for such an expansion.

But yes, for a mes in combat, tophat + staff + maybe a long tail tux would be quite stylish! Like a mad hatter

Why am I suddenly thinking of Setzer (the gambler with the airship) from the Final Fantasy series?

The staff with the ‘8-bit bird’ (?) looks interesting. But as mentioned, my guardian is also a Charr. :-p It’d look neat only during the Empower animation.

I have a rare weapon currently (Krait Crook IIRC), which actually works well with the ‘clean’ look I’m trying to keep on that character (non-spikey, non-puffy, etc – hard to find on Heavy armor). The Guild staff looks good as well, though I’d really love something like that edited version of Final Rest.

No, its not. Its nearly a year out of date; many changes have occurred since then – some drastically.

The only thing that may be worth it is the map flipbook, which the hardcover version supplied. But even that is out of date (Southsun Cove is missing, new waypoints, etc).

As Danikat has suggested, browse the wiki.

Markadis.9012:

A trackball? People game with those things? Hell. I haven’t even seen one in 10 years!

I actually use that trackball’s wired model at work (on my second so far). Works great, but I’ve tended to wear the scroll wheel on them. Will probably end up with that one next. I even considered playing Eve Online with a trackball, but moved to the MX510 instead (now known as the G400 IIRC).

As for current use at home, ended up on the G700 since its a natural extension of the old 510’s button layout. My arrangement is different than the other person here mentioned, but I do like some of the keybind suggestions (thanks btw). One thing to note: your PC may not always wake up from sleep mode with correct bindings. A quick bounce of the management software fixes it.

Unfortunately, as few times as possible.

There’s something the devs did with the karka that causes my video card to freeze up a bit every time. Similar to the effect that TES4’s oblivion gates had, just not as bad.

With the new card incoming, though, I may have another go at it. Didn’t know about the reflect tricks, will need to look at that more.

Update…

I got a reasonably nice controller to work from (since I found the old one had a bad dead zone in it). But, in setting up the Xpadder config, I realized something – where are people mapping the PTT (Voice) key?

This is kinda paramount if I want to go back into WvW, or even longer dungeons, Fracts, etc. But it appears that Windows 7 is too good in relating keys to voice programs, and will only relay the direct keypress instead of what Xpadder created.

Either way, its a good start. We’ll see how it pans out in a bit.

Also, any out-of-game suggestions for keeping one’s wrists sane between activity? I do have some stretching exercises, etc, and considering looking for a CMT again (which helped a lot when I was also involved in MMA).

That will depend on your general style.

As a typist/programmer (moreso than a gamer – and also learned touch typing on an original IBM Selectric), I invested in a mechanical keyboard ages ago (one of the originals dating back to the Northgate Omnikey, which is still loved by typists). The problem with that keyboard of course is how loud its been – especially in my case, since I bottom out the keys.

You can do some research here, which is another site that makes custom mechanicals based on the newer Cherry keys (their options include a bumper under each keykap, to prevent bottoming out):

http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/

I’m awaiting their V3, which will have a DIP switch so the CTL key is where I’m used to (aka the UNIX layout). But if you don’t care about that, their current models may be useful to check out. Their ‘quick’ option allows the WASD group to be a different key model then the rest of the keyboard.

One of the other interesting options available are egonomic keyboards. Microsoft’s is the most popular of the bunch, but its not a mechanical. I don’t know as much about this space, but a quick search should bring up several vendors.

If you can find a Staples or similar place that has a bunch of keyboards on display, you can try them to see what will work for you. This is becoming rarer over time, so you may want to try this soon.

For anyone not familiar with the term, RSI is Repetitive Strain Injury. It usually manifests in typists as Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, but can cause other problems too. And its shockingly painful if you’re not used to it…

Anyway. :-) I’m a programmer / SysAdmin, so its important that I don’t kill my wrists/hands. Until now, I’ve been able to manage in Online Gaming by participating in the non-traditional formats – such as Myst Online and Eve Online – as well as more social platforms like Second Life.

And in trying this game over the months, I’ve realized I have a problem – GW2’s command concept (as a whole) does not work for me physically; I cannot use my pinky or ring fingers (of either hand) for very long without killing them. That’s huge here – it means the 1/2 weapon commands are very hard to work regularly. And the large number of key commands needed are not helping either.

So, is there a way to get around this? I’ve been seeing the occasional discussion of re-mapping analog controllers, and I’m very intrigued by it. I already have one from Logitech (which I bought for something else and then shelved), so it should be pretty easy to setup.

Thanks in advance. o7

One item not brought up yet:

—> If you have RSI/Carpal Tunnel (or just susceptible to it), this game may not be for you. Give it a shot anyway.

This was the reason I ‘hate most traditional MMOs’ as stated in the original manifesto, and I had hoped that this would be different here. Unfortunately that does not appear to be the case, at least for the weapon commandset. Have not given up yet, but the fact that an hour of really cool WvW has caused me to take 2+ weeks off (with pain all the way from my fingers to my elbows) is a bad sign.

Until GW2, the only ‘online gaming’ I had been exposed to was Eve Online and Myst Online. (That’s about as far apart in the spectrum as you can get. ;-) Plus some very-long-ago exposure to virtual worlds like SL. And none of those caused me any problems like this game has. So perhaps I’m just not physically able to play a traditional MMO; I’m still trying though.

Shiren.9532:

An ignore overflow option. Allow me to select an option that would never inform me that I’m in an overflow (the mini map is enough) and never bring up the dialogue to send me to my home server map. I don’t care and its like that kid in the car who says are we there yet. I’ve been driving across the country for six months with that kid and he still pops up and annoys me every time I load into LA.

I’ve made that suggestion in a couple threads now, but can help quantify it in two relatively (I hope) easy items:

→ Change the “you are in overflow” popup to the yellow overlay text used for XP, new sub-zones discovered, etc.

→ Allow a ‘default’ answer to the second popup through the Options tab. If you decided to go back to your ‘home’ server instance, the yellow overlay text should give warnings at, say, the 20 and 10 second mark (similar to server shutdown).

Keba.8930:

I have just completed the mission without any trouble except for one armored fish that got inside a wall. Forgal followed it inside and I managed to kill it by hitting it with a spear through the wall. After its death I continued on and Forgal followed me.

Interesting. My guardian character had that ability, but I always preferred the trident in later levels (better ranged work, and works better in groups if you have high Heal Power).

@ Jeffrey – I would suggest allowing a skip of the middle fights. Most classes (or players for that matter) have the ability by this level of just storming through parts of the tunnel and going to the end objective of the Scout. The rest are probably more likely to stand back and work their way through as expected.

I also agree that the arrows were misleading due to the ‘3D’ aspect of this instance (I was able to figure it out, but only because I use tactics honed from Eve in dealing with your water combat – Descent players may also have an edge here). A series of stars/dots may work out better, as suggested already.

Now and then I will buy a set of 5, but only when a stack of 10 or more boxes are available. This is because a set of 5 keys will normally ‘open’ 8 or more chests for me.

As for what’s in the chest, I hate the tonics, and before the recent changes I was usually griping the cost of keys (since the chests usually had one useless output out of the three). With the tonics mostly removed from the table, I find a group of keys/chests are better now in output. Not enough to get more keys more often, but I’m griping less about the output. In particular, my last round yesterday – 2.5 Gold between coin bags and dyes sold (for 5 keys, 8 boxes).

The rest: what level are the BL harvesting tools? If they’re at least darksteel in equiv I’ll consider using them (wiki implies the axe is ori type, others don’t have an expected level). The others I’m getting some use out of so far, though revive orb was ‘nerfed’ with recent dungeon changes. Have no clue what I’d do with a killstreak booster yet – engineers can’t kill that fast. :-)

I also agree that the cost per key should still drop a little – from 125 to 90-100 (for one) would be better imo. It’s one of the reasons I’ll only buy in groups of 5, and yes I considered that group of 50 the one weekend but decided against it (too tempting).

Fletch.3572:

Shizzlenit.7648:

The worst thing about the Neverweinter MMO is, i have to pay 190 Euro to play a Drow character… i love drows =(

Drow is playable, you are paying for the “background” of not being a standard evil drow. Quite the money grab on the Drizzt nerds out there =D

I’m a Forgotten Realms nerd too, but once I heard Crytpics name pop up a couple years ago, all interest was lost.

Ow – they set the bar a bit high for that (US$200). That’s only for the Founder pre-release edition no less (though they’re also throwing in stuff like VIP priority in login queue – yes you read that right). Money grab indeed.

I’ll just go back to dropping all online gaming, if GW2 does not pan out. Probably re-focus my spare time helping with Icinga/Nagios instead.

Was Tybalt’s ‘closing’ statement at Claw bugged (the one with the doors closing)? I only heard two short lines, as opposed to the long background that Forgal gave out…

If anyone has a video link to it, I’d be interested.

Ekleipsis.4820:

I’ve come across something similar in relation to my character’s personal story (character is in Order of Whispers). I was in Bloodtides? doing map completion, this random DE appeared.. Unfortunately when I stepped a little closer to get the WP activated before turning to avenge Tybalt, the Risen Commander disappeared.

Interesting. I’ve always had that Commander show up in the water to avenge Forgal. Missed him the first time, like your case (was making a dive run to Orr), but a second wander down there had him pop up again and took him out (I’ve had far worse water fights than that one).

Will watch your spot for this version of the Commander, but my Engi in Whispers needs better gear first (my first 80, not done much with him since then until recent patch).

moiraine.2753:

I farm only dungeons.I like to do only instances in MMOs.
I have two speed running groups.One from friends farming AC,CoF,TA(9 paths) for gold.The 2nd group is made from guildies farming CoE(3 paths) for charged cores,Fotm and Arah(2 paths) for rares to sell ectos.
When my groups are bored we do the other 3 dungeons too.
I almost don’t go out of dungeons i like them.

If you don’t mind my asking – how would you bring new players into these for the first time? If they’re just starting they’re not going to be in Exotics, probably just Masterwork and a couple Rares.

Would starting in just low level Fractals (say 1-5) be enough to bootstrap someone?

Will add my note here as well, since the merged thread seems to have dropped off. My first possible item doesn’t seem as plausible now (with recent discussion here), but the second still is on the table IMO.

Technically, I see two possibilities as to what’s going on:

1) The ‘timeout’ required for a disconnected session to stay open (so a client can re-connect to their original point i.e. Fractals) has been increased significantly – perhaps as high as 10 minutes or more. Normal defaults are usually about half that, and at work we drop it even further (sometimes as low as 20 seconds) as the application requires. I’ll need to know the server’s OS to nail it down better.

2) The queue subsystem is not properly accepting a request from a client, and silently dropping them under load. Since servers do not update the client with any status until they are ‘next up,’ its impossible for the end user to know what’s going on – even a simple feedback at the beginning, that says the queue application was denied would work (for now anyway). Right now, the only recourse we have is to keep spamming the re-queue every 5-10 minutes, which is going to make the situation worse.

At minimum, the queue system should ‘heartbeat’ the users in it, causing a pulse/flash of the WvW icon every minute or so. That would give a great deal of comfort to anyone actually trying to get in, while requiring a minimal amount of programming (the UI elements for this exist already – most of the work would occur at the server).

Another area to suggest is northwest Metrica Province (the exploded Thauma reactor). Daily Healer in no time (and they do fall over on their own – scripted), Daily Dodge if you find an Inquest Mark II Golem nearby (or the AOE frost ‘spears’ in the reactor), and Veterans have been seen as part of the nearby ‘Power Overwhelming’ area just southeast of there.

While there, the Fire Elemental is still a nice challenge if available (to me anyway – I’m trying to survive it without any Down/Dead, which is a nice way to practice against multiple AOE from a zerg; compounded by the fact that you’ve got red circles underneath a giant transparent orange object – that really ramps the difficulty up).

@ MLieBennett – I’ve actually not explored frostgorge much, will probably give it a shot at some point.

If you’re worried about letting NPCs get killed, try the Thauma reactor in northern Metrica. I’ve seen them fall over from whatever ‘background fallout’ is there (aka scripted death as part of story).

While you’re in the area, there are also Mark II Inquest golems hanging around nearby. Pick a fight with one if you need the dodge daily, and dodge through his rapid fire attack 2-3 times. Done.

And one of the ‘Power Overwhelming’ meta-events generated 10 Veterans in 15 minutes one evening. Which was annoying as it was the wrong night, but hey… * shrug *

Technically, I see two possibilities as to what’s going on:

1) The ‘timeout’ required for a disconnected session to stay open (so a client can re-connect to their original point i.e. Fractals) has been increased significantly – perhaps as high as 10 minutes or more. Normal defaults are usually about half that, and at work we drop it even further (sometimes as low as 20 seconds) as the application requires. I’ll need to know the server’s OS to nail it down better.

2) The queue subsystem is not properly accepting a request from a client, and silently dropping them under load. Since servers do not update the client with any status until they are ‘next up,’ its impossible for the end user to know what’s going on – even a simple feedback at the beginning, that says the queue application was denied would work (for now anyway). Right now, the only recourse we have is to keep spamming the re-queue every 5-10 minutes, which is going to make the situation worse.

At minimum, the queue system should ‘heartbeat’ the users in it, causing a pulse/flash of the WvW icon every minute or so. That would give a great deal of comfort to anyone actually trying to get in, while requiring a minimal amount of programming (the UI elements for this exist already – most of the work would occur at the server).

Kaleygh.1524:

Nice to see fellow Eve players in GW2
That fight was pretty crazy, but the delay on module activation was horrible.
Back on topic – i think the loot is ok-ish at the moment, would be nice if enemy players would drop crafting materials for example based on their level (a level 80 would drop t5-6 mats). A lot of people dont realize what a money sink wvw is for people who are involved in it day by day. Siege blueprints, upgrades, repairs, consumables and so on they all cost quite a bit of gold, and if things go bad at the end of the day you wont make back all the gold you just wasted.

I suggest browsing a Laural vendor again – they offer Siege blueprints too…

Where do you view upgrades? I’ve not seen that screen (though I don’t think our guild has held a ‘hard’ objective when I was online either). I keep hearing its using Gold, which was a surprise – would have figured that was done through the Supply system instead.

DarkElvenChic.2618:

Don’t forget to use a Karma booster before drinking those jugs. They do gain the 50% buff, chug them back to back and buy karma gear. If you WvW a lot P/V/T gear is a godsend.

WvW loot isn’t actually worse than open world loot. I’ve gotten exotics off of tower lords, just like in the PvE world. Even without MF gear/buffs. Yeah it sucks compared to grinding dungeons but that’s life.

I’d rather not have a bunch of farmers in WvW anyway, what with queues to get in and all…

Here Sungak, “I can has your lewts?” EVE style.

You’re welcome to try. :-) And with the ranking reset there’s a good chance I’ll run across you guys at some point. I’m equally comfortable in a borderlands hitting other players or other objectives, just minutes after helping a group of people I’ve never met with map completion or some other open world event. Just need more practice with tactics, and I should be in a good spot between fun and effectiveness.

I’ve read about the Karma stuff btw, and one of the reasons I’m waiting is due to the guild needing to re-upgrade from scratch after the move. I can be patient as a stone sometimes too (useful when I was flying around in an Anathema) so no worries. And thanks for the gear note; its not going to help my Guardian – he’s based on Clerics or Knights setups – but do need to properly gear my Engie since the kits are now working out better. Power’s going to be key there.

I guess my own view on the drop rate is probably skewed anyway, since I started late in October – and most of the time between then and the Nov 15 patch I was offline helping with the aftermath of Sandy. Still making a decent amount of money (for my own needs), but I am thinking hard about using ‘supplement’ buffs like food more often.

I admit I have the ability to ‘throw Gems’ at the problem (equiv to two PLEX a month, for example), but that feels like cheating in some bizzare way. Plus the point of coming here was to keep that down to a minimum in the first place. For now, I’m fine with setting long-term gearing goals – which also gives the Devs time to sort out their plans as well.

Churros.7196:

So… whats the monthly achievements for Feb? I can’t log on right now.

Someone’s updated the wiki for it, but its:

5 Dungeons
100 Events
500 Item Salvages
5 Dailys Completed

Seems reasonable to me. Giving Fractals or AC etc another go should fix the first one easy enough, and I’m doing Dailys anyway so the Event one should clear itself as well with no effort.

If anything the Salvages will be annoying for me, since I make better money most of the time just selling it all to the basic vendors… :-)

DarkElvenChic.2618:

I miss it as well, the battles were epic. Besides, I imagine most of the tears we see on this forum could be solved by 1 month on EVE Online (sorry, had to).

I spent three years in Eve, as an industrialist mostly (and the occasional Thrasher roam /w Caldak). So I actually agree with that – though the folks that kept suggesting to put Second Life related stuff there annoyed me no end as well (spent several years there prior to Eve – would have had a Beta account if I had joined immediately after the first Uru Shutdown).

Anyway, on topic – thankfully I’ve not been too worried about drop rates – thanks to Eve, I’ve learned to do more with less anyway, so I’m a spendthrift at times (plus I’ve been a lot more savvy about ‘using’ the TP once I got used to it). I do Dailies and saved nearly every karma jug so far (just about to hit 50 IIRC), so between that and the new Laurels is where I’ll probably get most of my end-level gear now.

Have you looked at the new Utility Infusions though? 15% Karma, 20% Gold, 20% MF are the ones in particular that got my attention. The MF one is gaining most of the rage, but I think that may be misplaced when looking at the other two (mudflation seems possible with those in place – though that seems to be happening anyway). Perhaps its just me, dunno…

[Edit] Also, I wonder if drop rate and loot quality is also balanced against what WWW Tier you’re in. Perhaps it was just a chance change in playstyle as well, but as my original server was dropping in rank, I was seeing more and more Masterwork and Rare items. That dropped dramatically again when following my guild back up the ladder. Again, it just seemed odd, and may just be me changing styles over time (if so, I need to figure out what I was doing right, heh).

Sagramor.7395:

tigirius.9014:

I personally was hoping they’d finally fix napalm so it exploded on impact instead of floating thru everything like it wasn’t there.

Are you talking about Flame Blast (FT#2)? Because Napalm (FT#4) is incendiary, not explosive.

Yes, its Flame Blast, and I’m on the fence about it.

On the one hand I would prefer it to be explode on impact, which would make it really nice in some of the enemy event waves i.e. Orr. On the other hand, keeping it in this current format may be interesting as an anti-zerg device (if you’re cagy enough to get that close – perhaps use a wall, or does it go through doors too?).

Rest of that kit line I’m happy with, I’ve used all of them much more with the recent changes. I still get ‘miss’ issues though when dealing with sloped terrain.

For those who’ve not seen it yet…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magical_Infusion
Ascended Infusion – 20% MF – cost 20 Laural ea

I personally don’t care either way, since I’m more interested in Cleric’s or Knight’s gear these days anyway (both of which are missing on Ascended IIRC – though its still just rings/amulet, so may be fine for other stuff there).

Edit – I’m also far more interested in these two anyway:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gilded_Infusion – 20% gold from monsters
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Karmic_Infusion – 15% Karma

I will repeat that I felt much more survivable in Orr, and the fact that I just did a mini-roam with another engi just now was really cool. I’m currently Rifle/FT/H/B/U (Juggernaught, Tough/Vit/MF gear), the other engi was Rifle(Pop Gun)/EG/Elixirs from what I could determine. Good synergy there – FT didn’t miss very often, she would pop SE now and then in tight spots (which was a good supplement to H /w 409). I finally got into a zone where I’d alternate the knockdowns between FT and Rifle 4…

Darnit, now I’m torn as to wanting Cleric gear or not. Pfft.

BTW, I’m just not seeing these Toolkit numbers everyone’s talking about. I guess that’s because I’m just not geared properly (in particular, almost everything is still Masterwork), and really need to sit down and focus on a setup now.

Actually I had more problems with the healer one, since everyone kept reviving anything that’s supposed to have a pulse… For the Dodging one, I would find a Veteran I knew would be OK to dance with, and stood there practicing.

Of course, I’d be 80% done and a zone crash would roll me back to 20%. :-p That was far more annoying, but I finally got through it. Too bad that wasn’t happening when I poked my head into WvW, would have been nice to rollback 6 silver in repairs…

Should also note that there was a patch note about a possible nerf to ‘life steal on crit’ food:

→ Life-stealing food buffs based on critical hits no longer affect gadgets.

Odd wording…

Well, just ran around Orr for a bit, I feel a lot more survivable, and FT/EG seems useful most of the time. Crit’ing for about 1200 (base, no Juggernaut etc), with Green stuff on (Armageddon gear, MF version). Admittedly they also nerfed/fixed Orr as well, so perhaps that’s a wash.

FT and EG are still missing, in particular when trying to aim up/down a slope. Even terrain works great.

I am seriously contemplating Clerics gear now, since I see that the Heal Turret is showing the same as Elixir H (though I can probably kick off H more since I’ve 30 in Alchemy).

Oh, and congrats Devs, you’ve finally got my attention here.

Good timing too, I’ve got two weeks vacation coming up (part of my 40th birthday – nice present to boot).

Hmm. That could well make EG/FT builds viable for me (and my wrists). Question now becomes how far up the healing turret scales. Tempted to get Clerics armor for him too, not just my Guardian.

Downloading now, should be interesting.

If you have RSI or other hand/wrist pain issues, than I would suggest not trying an Engineer in WvW or t/sPvP at this time. The builds discussed today almost always include grenades or bombs, and those do not have an autoattack on #1. I’ve had to shelve mine until they can make other non-kit builds viable (such as turret-based or Rifle/Elixir, which is what I did to level).

Mind you, this goes for most classes anyway. I had to delete a Thief after L11, even more painful then the Engi was – re-built as a Warrior and she was L12 in four hours with almost no pain afterward. I just completed taking a Guardian to 80 as well (a HealWay variant) and has been great fun getting there.

If this is not a problem, go for it. It can be extremely rewarding and fun, as others above state. I’d love to join them, but can’t yet. :-(

NinjaEd.3946:

Deathadder if you dont mind wired mouses, but I use Logitech G700 Wireless Gaming Mouse and it hasn’t failed me for a second. You need to get the logitech gaming software with it and mess aroud with the options for a bit before it settles in as the software sometimes has troubles saving your settings.

At first you may want to only secondary key bind the mouse buttons, as you may still be used to the old key binds but over time you get used to it and start seeing a huge difference in your gameplay. Hope this helped ^^

Also use the extension cord for the receiver to put it as close as appropriately possible to the mouse, helps the mouse stay connected and do its thing better than the receiver being under a desk behind the tower (if you have a tower on a desk that is)

Another G700 user here. Very nice if you’re using your mouse in a ‘confined’ space (i.e. a small desk area will tend to have the mouse directly in front of a speaker). My ‘tower’ is a Cosmos 1000 (sticking out under a credenza desk) so I just put the receiver into one of the top panel USB slots and its good to go.

You’ll want to set a bind to battery status (I use G11) and look at plugging in the cable every few days to charge it. I get about 3-4 days use out of it (at battery saver settings), and usually takes 3-4 hours to recharge.

The feel took some getting used to, coming from an MX518 as well, but has been great once I got through that. First keybinds were ‘right scroll’ to dodge (making that far more intuitive), G10/9/8 to F7/8/9 respectively, G7 to F10 and G5 to F6. G4 was left on ‘Back’ which I use as a Voice PTT key. I’ve recently added Middle-Click to weapon swap, but still not sure how I like that.

Manoa.5897:

The dynamic level adjustment we have now in GW2 is the natural extension of COH’s super-sidekicking system (by tying the autoleveling it to the zone rather than your party). The idea of “sidekicking” up to higher level character was in beta, but was scrapped for GW2’s PvE though because ArenaNet found too many people were bypassing content (so we now only see such upleveling in WvW and sPvP). In PvE, we only have something similar to “exemplaring” (downleveling).

Thank you for the background on this.

One thing of note is that the Devs can (and has) set PvE areas to uplevel for some events. As someone who started the game about a week before the Mad King event string began, I was wary at first about going into the Labyrinth areas since it was saying 80 (and I was ~ 25 or so at the time). Once someone explained how the uplevel system worked, I dived in and had a blast.

I did notice there are issues with how the system worked – for example, a Guardian upleveled from say, ~15 to 80 (an experiment I tried on the Tixx dungeons) does work, but its difficult. Its made me wonder if the weapon damage of the upscaling is being worked on, since that was the part that gave me the biggest issues.

xanthic.9478:

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

[…]I noticed that its actually cheaper to train four of the crafts to 150 than it is to train Artificing (currently the cheapest by ~20sil) to 400. IIRC that’s going to be 15-20 levels for about 1.5 less gold (and you don’t intend to take a craft to 400 anyway).[…]

0-150 is 2 levels(1-100 is 1% per per level, 101-200 is 2% per level, etc). So it would be 8 levels. But it is reasonably close price wise. If you ever decided to finish a craft it would cost 10 copper * level (so 15 silver in this example) to switch back to a craft.

OK, that’s where my math was off, thanks.

My personal exercise was to see if you could gain 20 levels over more crafts (to a smaller level) for the same cost as just one craft to 400. This assumes a ‘clean’ character that will not incur the switch cost.

I currently have a new combination of Cooking and two others that should advance 19.75 levels with ~ 3 Gold 96 Silver.

Again, thanks for this. It will be interesting to see how the bucket prices evolve over time.

Ran across the site tonight, really nice. Its even ‘clean’ from a jscript perspective (rare nowadays). Thank you.

One interesting observation – I’m looking at your totals page, and its broken down by tier. If you ignore cooking for a moment, I noticed that its actually cheaper to train four of the crafts to 150 than it is to train Artificing (currently the cheapest by ~20sil) to 400. IIRC that’s going to be 15-20 levels for about 1.5 less gold (and you don’t intend to take a craft to 400 anyway).

If my math is off someplace (either for the gold or the XP/leveling) please let me know – it just seemed interesting to a penny-pincher like me. ;-)

As a player who’s ‘main’ is an Engineer, I don’t particularly see a problem in trying to rez someone in a number of situations. Even if I can’t directly get to you (due to being undergeared, or just knowing that I can’t get there in a decent amount of time), if I can get within throwing range I may try sending a couple Elixir R’s your way.

If I can reach you in a troublesome area, a ‘fast’ rez would consist of 1) Drop Elixir R, 2) drink Elixir B or kit swap (personal swiftness), 3) start the rez. Add Turrets to taste, though I don’t run with them anymore. Even at low Healing Power its worked out pretty well – better than my lower-level Healway Guardian currently, though I expect him to surpass that eventually.

As for my own deaths, I sometimes wait, sometimes not. Recently I’ve been charging headlong into Bad Things solo, so more often than not you’re not going to reach me anyway. This is probably a side effect of coming to GW2 from Eve Online – not losing all your equipment on death has probably been far too liberating. :-)