Guild Wars 2

Well first of all don’t go sinister for the hell of going sinister. It depend on your profession and build. Sinister was a thing for a long time now, you can started to hear about it i guess. Sinister Engineer was the best dps in the game since the specialisation update a couple months ago, now with the expansion it’s more about a mix of Viper and Sinister and I’m not sure Condi Engineer is still the highest dps. A lot of new build are coming out for raid, so we’ll see.

If you want a condi gear 1st Viper, 2nd Sinister, 3rd Rabid. But if you gonna raid, don’t take Rabid unless you are the tank or you gonna screw up the agro.

For Viper and Sinister, it’s usually cheaper to craft a exotic inscription/insignia and to swap stats on an existing ascended armor than to craft ascended directly. Simple because it’s so much more work to accumulate the currency needed to buy the Ascended recipe.

But really, look at what you want to do and IF it happen to be better in Condition than Direct Damage, then make the move. Don’t craft Viper or Sinister just because you heard of it.

Daltemir.1072:

You fail to see the issue, the issue is that a new player can come into the game play one of the OP metas and kill you with it, not that a veteran can take down most classes.
It’s like the time turret engi was a thing.

I think these two video would put some sense of what Anet is doing and why.

First video is about imperfect balance. You don’t want every single profession and build to be perfectly balance and they explain why in the video. It’s mostly to make sure the game doesn’t stay stall and evolve over time. Right now DH and Reaper are strong, but they won’t stay. People will figure out how to counter them. We gonna have to think about what we bring to the game instead of just following the same meta over and over again.

The second video explain about what they call First Order Optimal Strategy (it’s a made up term by the folks of Extra Credits). It’s basically an easy strategy for new or less skilled players to get into the game and still feel powerful. Still, against high level players, those strategy won’t work.

Kraggy.4169:

LOL.

Okay.

I would just point out, in spite of your fatuous comments, that this is a problem only because of Anet’s meta design that scales the event based on the number of people in the zone!

If 10 want to do the meta and 100 want to AFK for the raid the 10 suffer from the 100’s existence in the zone.

But don’t you worry about that, you carry on with your asinine comments.

wait what? The meta doesn’t scale with the number of people in the map. The meta is statics. It’s the individual events that scale with the numbers of people near it. So ya if there is AFk next to an event, this event will be hard to do. But the chance of that happening is very slim. Flax farmer and way to deep to count in the even in the Iztel village, maybe Raid AFK can affect on event, but that’s all. If there is too many AFK in the map this mean no enough ppl are doing even to complete the T4, but you need a LOT of afk for that. Most of the time, it’s people not taxing ppl in, people not spreading out to complete the most event or too many people doing something else (but that list can be long with Flax, Raid, Afk, HP, achivements, etc, etc).

Great guide, here some feedback.

1) I would be more general and not say healer, but support. I saw some run with the tank providing protection to the first party and a tempest providing protection to the second. And even the Druid healer is often in full zerker. You just need someone to boost your survivability and healing is one of them.

2) I would say 2-3 condition. We killed him with only 2 conditions engineers, we had enough dps to kill the Red Guardian in time. We started we true condition but it was too much.

3) I would seperate thing a bit. You don’t need 5-6 direct damage build. You could play with 1 tank, 1 support and 8 condition damage if you want. You need 1 tank, 1 support, 2-3 condition and the rest is all about dps, but you can take whatever you want.

4) The consumable part isn’t complete. You should add a line that said : Each profession and build are different, try to find what consumable are best for you. For exemple. Boon duration food on Mesmer is great for the Quickness even if it’s a Direct Damage dps. The PS warrior should have stuff like Dumpling. The support could prefer bountiful sharpening stone depending if he’s mostly about direct healing or boons sharing.

5) The Seekers spawn on the rock with a sign in each of the three zone. People should make sure not to step on it in case one spawn on them. If the green circle spawn on the sign, be prepare to push the seeker if he spawn on you. In the 5th phases, a 4th seeker will spawn in the circle in the middle.

6) When the boss spit in three. You should try to not kill Green in last, especially if you zerged blue first and then went to green. You only have a couple second after the last of the 3 die before the green floor illuminate. My group prefer to make sure Green is dead, everybody is up and then we break the bar of the red. That way nobody get caught on the green floor. It’s less of a problem when you do a even split at the three guardian because nobody should down at Green that way.

I’m not as far in the raid as others, but so far we killed the first boss with a Daredevil and a Reaper. In two days we probably gonna kill him with a Reapers a Daredevil and a DH.

Of course there will be profession that are better suited for a specific raid boss. But that will happen whatever Anet does. It’s just how reality work. But the VAST majority is about the skill or the players and the execution.

Daltemir.1072:

I meant as in the mechanics of the raid are easy but the thing that make it hard is just that they upd the health pool of the boss by a huge number and put a timer on it like everything else that makes HoT “difficult”, artificial difficulty by manipulating stats

They up the HP because of the huge power creep since the introduction of the game. Guardian for exemple used to do 8-9k dps in full ascended and now is doing 17-18k. And Dungeon were designed with full exotic in mid, not full ascended. We do around 3 times more dps than we used to do at launch, not counting how players are far better now. To be just equal to Lupi at launch the Vale Guardian should have around 9-10k HP. Of course they needed to increase the HP of their raid boss, otherwise it would be stupid going into a downhill spiral. Of course a better design would have been to stop the power creep, but that’s another story.

Are you saying that that there is no difficult mechanics in the boss. The teleport AoE, the break bar, lighting circle, the floor, etc. All of those are brain dead easy and nobody in your team ever die of those? You simply lack dps right. That’s what you are saying.

I guess the same answer as Draknar.

Raid are pure pleasure for my and my friends. I find it funny that you are saying that raid bosses are easy, but you never finished the first one. I’m sure the only reason in the world is the timer.

People said the same thing about Ranger and Burning Guardian before. It’s new, a lot of people didn’t find the counter yet, but they slowly catch up. I’m not saying that a rebalance isn’t needed, but it’s smart from Anet to wait that people figure out how these build work instead of using the ban hammer and destroying build that in the end are very easy to counter. Work around a DH traps or range a Reaper and they are easy target.

Fractal are not in the best place right now, but in December a lot of that will be fixed.

I still have a lot of fun with the 4 new map and their meta they are just fun to play.

On top of that, a lot of achievements and collection to keep me occupy for a long time.

As for gold. I do the flax run each day with 9 characters for around 3,5 gold per day in 10-15min. You can also craft time-gated item. Ascended crafting material or ley-line infused tools are super great exemple of stuff that will give you a high return. Dungeon can still give you 4-8 gold per hours, but true enough, it’s harder to find a group these days. They will be more popular in a few months as people finish up a lot of things in the expansion and spread out their time more evenly over the game.

If you already don’t have fun with GW2, I heard Fallout 4 is a super good game.

Kraggy.4169:

SkyShroud.2865:

lol, another person trying to find people to blame for failed meta
farmville is a more suitable game for ur kind

You’d do well in WOW’s raiding circles, your elitism would fit in perfectly.

That’s not elistim, that’s just reality. The meta don’t fail because there is 10-15ppl farming. It fail because

1) There ppl afk, ppl farming Flax, people going after achivement, people doing HP, people doing adventure, etc, etc

2) Flax Farmer are one of the less problematic group. Most of them are reloging on a new character each 45-60sec. If they were on a full map, when they will relog on another character, the map will full again and they probably won’t be able to get back in.

3) People qq, but don’t taxi. Most of the time, the map that fail isn’t full, or only full in the middle of the night. People start to panic while doing rally camp and start to taxi ppl in instead of starting to taxi ppl in from the very beginning. Just yesterday, I taxied ppl for 45min before the map was full. I think there was me and one other dude that were taxing ppl and ask for more ppl to taxi. We didn’t reach T4 because the map was right before the canopy boss spawned.

4) People have a lot to learn on the event. Especially during the night. They always need instruction or only work on canopy boss. I often see ppl asking for events even when I can see 3-4 rally camp still under mordrem control after canopy boss. It’s not really their fault either. We can’t all know about everything.

It’s just stupid imo to blame Flax Farmer when they are not a problem. Tag up, taxi people in, write instruction on the map chat, help the map succeed.

ChrizZcE.5981:

Don´t have full ascended gear and I´m a scrapper/hammer engi.

No group wants to have you if you are not the right class and don´t have fully ascended gear.

This game is no different than WoW now.

What is your build? Engineer/Scrapper have a couple of thing they can do in a raid. Maybe you have less thing to do on your build to make people at ease with you when you pug. Nobody will care that you have exotic armor if your build is good and you have ascended weapons/trinket which aren’t that hard to get.

The best would be to find a group of friends/guild. Ideally 9 others, but just 3-4 could do. That will give you a base group where you will decide which pugs will join you.

Please make at least a tiny bit of effort because QQing on the forum. You will be wiping the floor with those 9 others players for longs longs hours. So better make sure that everybody is comfortable with the situation to make the experience as good as possible.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

I already explained why they will abandon the raids, lack of players.

Ok then almighty Van Damme. Guess I should stop doing raids then since it’s a doom content apparently. kitten , and I had such a great time in there. To bad for me I guess.

I doubt that it will be for 1-2% of the players base. So far in my guild around 10-20% of ours players are interested or already started doing raid. It’s hard to see what will be the percentage of players doing raid in the long run. Will some people get tired of wiping for 3-10hours to figure out each boss or each wing? (Me i love it, but not everybody). Will people figure out that it’s not their thing? Maybe people are waiting that tactics and composition are developped before they go in? Hard to know.

Mitch.4781:

Already seeing it in my fairly friendly guild. A secret core “raid” group going in for a few nights in a row, not asking anyone else if they want to come. Seen this repeated in all the guilds I’m a member of.

Thank God they don;t actually drop gear with higher stats is all I can say.

Wait what? What did you want to them to do?

Write in the guild chat : Hey guys, we are 10 and we gonna go do a raid tonight. We would invite more, but we are 10, but just saying.

Do you complain each time people were doing dungeon in ’’secret’’.

CadeRG.4508:

posthumecaver.6473:

It is sad that Guardian, which my opinion only class that is originally designed by ANet to be closest to be classic Tank from other MMOs does not getting a consideration for tanking in raids says a lot about the problems we have at GW2 and state of Guardian specially.

DH or kick, men I love this game, 1000s of build combinations from gear and traits, only one viable build, I guess that must be balancing.

Guardian is much more of a healer in heavy armor than a tank.

If it was meant to be tanky, it wouldn’t have one of the lowest health pools in the game.

So far DNT seem to go with a Celestial Warrior as a tank. Not the only option, but it seem to be the one that give the most DPS out of the tank. I see several advantage to that build.

- Toughness + Perma protection give him enough surviability for the fight, while keeping agro.
- Healing Power + Regen + Shelter give him enough sustain healing to be independant (Again mostly because perma protection). If needed AH will help.
- Access to a good amount of CC. Signet of Bane and Banish for the boss, Shield of Absorption and Rings of Warding for the Seekers.
- This tank can still give a good amount of DPS.

Like i said. It’s not by far the only option. Herald, Warrior and Scrapper are pretty great too. I don’t know much about druid yet, but probably.

Rezzet.3614:

i mean that shrapnel’s 15% chance is too low for the trait to be effective without sharpshooter

its performance is too underwhelming when all i manage to stack with it is about 2-3 bleeding every 10-20 seconds

1 stack of bleed for 12second duration. But if you are using that, it’s a condition build ans you should get to 100% condition duration. Meaning that it’s 24 seconds.

In 24 seconds you should launch 72 grenades and if each land that mean around 10 stack of bleed. In reality it should be around 5-6 bleed because nobody always hit the target in all situation with nades. That around 1k of damage just from 1 trait, which is pretty great if you ask me. Maybe your build isn’t good or you are not very good with grenade.

Of course you are losing some damage in raids, but

Every build will lose dps in harder content or against boss that move. Warrior can’t make their 100B, Boofire on Condi Ranger won’t be perfect, field of a condi Elementalist won’t stay, mobs won’t stay in a Guardian symbol, etc, etc. Now we can argue how much all of those lose dps, but that’s hard because it depend on every single players and encounter.

For exemple, you may lose dps because you dodge a lot seekers and the lighting circle, but someone else can just walk between seeker and walk out of the lighting circle with the right timing, limiting the amount of time he need to dodge. Someone can be on the lighting circle team, but the same build can be used on the dps party, which can concentrate on their rotation more. Someone can have a good tank that will keep the boss from moving all around so he can stay more in your fields.

Keep in mind that most of the more powerful condi build Engineer, Elementalist and Ranger all have the same problem. Ranger is a little bit less affected outside of boonfire, but if he have to move to a circle, he doesn’t have a great range at all. Elementalist is the worst since most burning come from field, but with a great tank and good timing, that can be mitigated.

Necromancer just don’t cut it. Yep he could keep more bleed than engineer can in harder fight against a moving boss. But you just can’t compare the burning, nor the direct damage than the current condi engineer build is doing. If Dhuumfire hadn’t been nerf long ago, maybe a condition necromancer could be something worth using in raids. Maybe not as much dps as an engineer in the perfect condition, but comparable in dps in a hard fight. But as thing are now? I doudt it, even if I could be wrong.

Jellytot.9816:

Of course u wont,because it would be a pointless discussion,To you following builds made by pros down to the last inch is best way to go and my logic is flawed and ill never get anywhere with my builds.To me id just called you a mindless sheep and say you have 0 ability to do your own thing,Never ending discussion.So ill just end my replies here.

Have a good day xD

And who’s to blame for that? Where did MasterBlaster.6827 wrote that you’re logic is flawed and that you will never get anywhere with your builds?

You push the discussion to the extreme not him. Of course some people will push it to the extreme because it’s the internet, but you don’t need to follow them there.

The 2 extremes here are
1) I hate everything that the meta stand for and I will run on the complete other side just to not be part of the meta. I won’t adapt my build, the content need to adapt to my build.

2) The meta is almigty and the slightest change to it result in pure garbage that should be spit on.

But that’s a made up thing. In reality very very few people are on either of those sides. Just like Republican are not old racist bigots and Democrats are not communist.

In reality there is a lot of room in those build. Take thief for exemple. The meta build speak of 5 variations in traits, 5 differents weapons setup, 3 different heals, around 10 utilities and 3 elites. It also talk about changing a complete trait line and that’s not even talking about the standard D/D thief (not daredevil), which is still view as a great build. So talking about following the meta to the inc make no sense. What about people getting to a similar build by their own or taking the meta only as a starting point as they adapt it to their own need? Meta is a vague term, which regroup a huge diversity by itself.

Just like most people that create their own weird build usually have a brain and know where and why they use their stuff. They don’t bring AH and Staff claiming they do support, while they don’t. They able to recognize the strength and limitation of their build.

DeceiverX.8361:

If you’re tanking in raids, from what I understand you’re going to need three defensive stats.

What? No. You can have only a bit of toughness as long as you have a big of sustain, either AH, Writ of Persistence, Protection, Aegis, etc. Some prefer to use a mix of toughness and healing power to be independent from the Druids and to keep the dps party at 100% hp, but that’s not needed. Most only use the druid for that job, leaving the tank to increase his dps.

Kraggy.4169:

GW2’s origianl story had no artificial gates, only level, which you could get by questing without the need to ‘group up’ for endless meta events.

I think it not unreasonable I expected HOT to be an extension of GW2 not turn it into GW3, nothing in the pre-launch hype indicated a huge departure from the gameplay of GW2 which HOT is.

GW2 HoT story have no artificial gates, only mastery, which you can get by questing without the need to ‘group up’ for endless meta events.

bai long.2085:

A team of Berserker’s, Knight’s, Nomad’s, Sinister, Clerics, etc is diverse. It will also never beat the raid, which is sad.

True but a group of Sinister, Valkyrie, Viper, Zerker, Assassin will. Hell there is even a place for a celestial, cleric, zealot or soldier guy.

Now I can’t talk about the second boss, i’m not there yet. But the first boss, you don’t need 9 glass canon and 1 tank. People with this kind of composition are killing the Vale Guardian with 1-2min left on the timer. So you could really have some Marauder, Celestial, Zealot in there too. Hell the tank could be Normad or Knight. So every single gear you mentionned can’t be usefull for the raid. But if we gonna have role in the raid, we need a balance in the team.

I’m not surprised at all. Most good players that want to be serious in raid have a team or are building a team. A group of 10 people that will be able to raid on a regular basis. Most even have 2-3 other people able to replace if needed. What’s left? Serious players that for whatever reason can’t create or join a 10 man team, and pugs that ain’t that serious and think that it’s just another content. A lot of those people will stop doing raid in a couple of weeks/months, complaining on the forums that they get kicked, that the raid community is toxic, that Anet need to do something and that they quit.

You know why ppl couldn’t kill the first boss after a couple of hours? The main reason was because we were testing the mechanic. My group never tried the beta so we had no infos. Of a circle, what is this, oh kitten we are dead. Ok we need to have people in it, 1, wipe, 2 wipe, 3 wipe, 4 bingo. Can we get out of the circle? Too fast, wipe, too slow 4k hit, just the right timing, bingo. What the boss split, what are these symbol over our head, why the floor is illuminating, etc, etc. Once a group figure out how the boss work, it’s a lot more easier to do. And over time people will spread the information, guide will appear, pugs will share info and people won’t have to try and die to learn.

The second reason is composition. It’s part linked to the first problem. People didn’t went into the raid with all the right tools the first time. We swapped things out as we learn them and it wasn’t really efficient. As time pass the community will be able to develop different composition that work best, making the fight easier to complete.

The third reason is just player skill. Whatever your knowledge, whatever your composition, you can’t carry 1-2 bad players like you could do other thing content in the game. Everybody need to carry their own weigh. People that die can’t be rez, rally is almost inexistant in raid and almost everybody have a role.

I agree with the difficulty of Finding a Rain and Joining a Raid. Those don’t really impact me because I run with my guild squad, but those are issue that need to be fixed because people will want to run raid in pugs. At least part of raids or when you are looking for 1-2 pugs to complete your group.

Enrage timer, i disagree completely. There won’t be 1 answer there. It’s NOT a matter of good or bad design. Some people thing that it’s THE most important thing, some like it, other don’t mind and some dislike. There are there, like it or not and there is not logical issue with it, just opinion about whether or not it’s good.

- Impractical and insufficient menu systems: I’m not sure what you are talking specifically, but true enough. There could be a lot more option there.

- Raid mechanics require frequent trait and build swapping. Which is something that love so much, so I can’t agree with you on that. I think that’s a great thing. It’s the timer all over again. Matter of opinion.

- Gear, Trait, or Build Template saving : Completely agree.

- Weapon swapping from two-handed to dual-wield. True, this could be better handle by the game. But you get use to it if pretty quickly. What Salvaging your gear?? Ok now you are stretching. I won’t salvage my ascended weapons. Minor issue IMO.

- User Interface Menu system, Trait swapping, build swapping, and such like primitive and unsolved compared with demands placed upon the player. I disagree. It’s pretty intuitive and fast now. Except if we are talking again about build template.

- User Interface less evolved nor pragmatic as former game: Guild Wars 1. Different yes, less evolved? Debatable. You would have to be more specific there, because for now It look a lot more like nostalgia than anything else.

For the first fight Guardian only shine a the tank. But that said, you don’t have specific role for all 10 people in the group. DH have a good dps with a simple rotation while they bring aegis and quickness which is good for the melee group. They also have great mobility for reaching the Lightning circle and can use F2 to protect everybody when in there if needed. Do they seem the best for these two roles? Maybe not, but they do a great job at it.

So far there is alot of diversity in raids. Obviously you have some profession that seem nearly unavoidable like Viper Engineer, Zerker Herald, PS Warrior, etc. But you also have a lot of room to complete your group. I saw all kind of stuff from Celestial Tank Guardian to Zealot Druids to Venom Share Thief to Support Tempest, etc.

I saw team with 8 dps, 1 tank and 1 zerker support, I saw team with 1 tank and 9 dps with more defense, there is team of mostly condi, other with only 2 of those. Now you want to limit yourself, do what you want, but the timer doesn’t. Plenty of team kill him with 1-2min left on the timer so if you want to play it safe with a bit less dps you can. In pugs this might be a little bit tricker because you don’t synergize everybody together. We probably gonna end up with 5-6 of the build/profession set in stone. The best tank, the best support, the best might/fury source, the best conditions, leaving only place for 2-3 profession more free to choice. But in guild group you can balance the squad how ever you want, the defense, the support, the dps, the cc, etc.

Partially. I saw kill with 60-90 second left on the timer so there is room for less dps. Most team have 1 tank and 1 support which have less dps anyways. We are FAR FAR from having a good rotation in there so over time we’ll get better and up our dps this way. So no, we don’t need everybody to be 100% ascended. There is room for some less efficient build/gear.

But at the same time. It’s hard. Getting to know the mechanic, paying attention to everything. Those additional stats will make the difference in a lot of situation. And to be honest, raid are a huge investment in time. So far, most people spend 3-10 hours on the first boss to learn and practice it before they were able to kill it. And I heard of people spending 20+ hours in there. Seriously, anyone ready to give that commitment should have the commitment to get his ascended gear. Not by requirement, but by respect to the other members of the group. To show that you are doing your very best.

That said. I ask for ascended trinkets and weapons, but don’t give a crap about armor for my requirements. So it’s not really hard to reach since weapons and trinkets ain’t that expensive to make.

Amadan.9451:

i want to say just this:
if people need exploits to kill the mossman whatever the level i’m calling them noobs

I can’t take for everybody, but a lot of people that I know don’t exploit it because it’s hard but because it’s boring. For now I didn’t feel the need to exploit it, but it was so boring that we stated to do other things while fighting him.

Amadan.9451:

here (this is not me, but this is how “skilled” you need to be for lupicus)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDM1gMJ06cY

2 Important things here

1) The guardian use the one shot wall mechanic. Of course it’s not really hard, the mechanic is broken. Not an exploit, but something that Anet missed and now don’t care to fix. Of course any content with a back door like that doesn’t require skill.

2) Lupi was designed to be fought by 5 people in full exotic. The power creep was HUGE in gw2 since day one. Ascended gear, is already a big power creep, but not the only one. Take Guardian for exemple. It used to do around 11.5k dps full buffed. Then the specialisation update came and buffed that to 15k. Then we got the Dragonhunter which give us a dps of around 16-17k. We kill that content so fast now that we just bypass all the mechanic that need skill.

I also did all of HP in AB and VB on all my 9 characters. The easiest way is to have 1 or 2 friends with you. I tag up and tell in the map chat that I do a HP run and by the end of the run I usually have a small zerg of 5-10ppl. Once I even had 15ppl on my tag.

The best is to start that right after the meta event. After the night on VB and after the octovine on AB. That way ppl won’t be occupied with event to advance the map and will more likely join you.

The players base is already split. There is 6 cities, some people go in WvW for crafting, PvP for Guild Bank, some have the pass for ‘’I don’t remember the name of the place’’, some have their personnal bank, mystic forge, TP items.

Not everybody will have everything in their Guild Hall. Some will think that it’s too costly to be worth it, some won’t be in a big enough guild for that, some will have it, but prefer to go in another place. Some service will still be unique to LA like dungoen seller.

With the megaserver, this will diminish the number of overflow of the different cities, but I doudt the cities will look deserted.

A little resume of what we got so far

Material Storage
- Amalgamated gemstones
- Essense of Luck
- Doublons
- Unidentified Dyes
- Sigils
- Runes
- Agony Infusions +1up
- Seals
- Medallion
- Bloodstone Shard
- Eldritch Scoll
- Mystic Crystal
- Philosopher’s Stone
- Siege Masters Guide
- Augur’s Stone
- Anthology of Heros
- Bottle of Elonian Wine
- Tome of Knowledge
- Blade Shards
- Mystic Forge Stones
- PvP Arena Tokens
- Black Lion Chest
- Baubles
- Vision Crystal (Lesser and Normal)
- Unidentified Fossilized Insects
- Mystic Keystone Crystals
- Pile of Mystic Dust
- WvW Siege Blueprints
- Milling Basin
- Aether Keys
- Aether key Pieces
- Tenebrous Crystal
- Fortune Scraps
- Black Lion Claim Ticket
- Black Lion Claim Ticket Scrap
- Queen’s Gauntlet Entrance Tickets
- Reclaimed Metal Plate
- Writs of Experience
- Boosters

Wallet
- Crowbars
- Chak Acids
- Exalted Keys

Now a list of other stuff ppl asked in this thread, but that I didn’t add to the list and why.

I would love those too, but they would double if not triple the size of the Storage. Not sure if all of those are needed
- All Potions
- All Drinks
- All Food
- Intermediate Crafting Items

Here a list of single items. No reason to be in material storage
- Continue Coin
- Music Instrument
- Gizmos
- Legendary Gift
- Toy Box

Those 2 items will never get used in the game ever again. Better destroy them
- Ellen Kiel Representation Buttons
- Evon Gnasherblade Representation Buttons

I think it would be better if they got the same treament as Oufit or Minis
- Tonic

Can’t because they are soulbound
- Proff of Heroics

innocent ouarior.1954:

but the presence of skill is not at all related to the fact healing sucks and all PvE is about DPS.

This sentence remove all credibility you could have.

1) Healing is OP, just not needed. You can create an immortal party that heal itself more than anything the game can throw at you so far. You can think it’s just semantic, but it’s really important. Buffing Healing Power or Healing skill WON’T change a thing since healing will still be not needed. It could if content was too hard for our active defense, but dungeon don’t move and fractal is actually less demanding on our active defense than it used to be.

2) Really just DPS? Yes DPS is the main factor, but it’s not the only one. Otherwise we would see only Engineer or Elementalist in parties. You need banners, fury, might, reflection, blind, aegis, condition removal, etc. If they could give us hard enough content, protection, vigor, weakness. Their break bar system isn’t good in all situation, but CC is also important now for a lot of fight. What you want to say is that PvE is all about glassy GEAR. Because gear only bring you three thing. Healing, Passive Defense and DPS. Two of those thing are not needed. But a lot of thing that are needed and are not in the gear? Support, CC, Active Defense.

At higher level, it’s kind of Anet that push us to exploit. Did you tried Molten Duo at 80/90/99? We are not the best group so maybe it’s use, but it’s the champion before the boss that is crazy.

He have so much toughness like everything else than we had a half condition party, but he’s immune to fire. So direct damage hit like noodle, and condition damage build hit like noodle too. (Got the same problem with the dredge boss since condition ain’t buffed by the aura). The fight is so long that the mobs attack us in the back, so we kill them, get back on the boss which is killing us one by one because we can’t don’t have perma reflect with our party comp. We still manage to rez each other, but now it take so long that the mobs respawn again and the champ isn’t even at 50%.

Absconditus.6804:

How is Fractals a chore now compared to before? They are over with so fast, which to me is a welcome change, and you can jump into the same and/or a different one much faster than before. You also know exactly which scale to go to, in order to do a specific Fractal instance, meaning you can do, e.g., 56-60-61-67 for some quick runs. Salvage the various Rare/Exotic you should get, sell the Globs, earn some Gold. Use the 13600 Karma you gain (assuming your Reward Level is at least 77 in the example above) and make some additional Gold—figure out where to best spend it yourself.

It’s a chore because

1) There is only 1 daily for 51 to 100 so there is absolutely not reason to run level higher than 70 after your first time. It’s just longer for about the same reward.

2) At higher level the defense scaling is so much up to roof, while they don’t even hit as hard as they used to in the old level 50. This make for long, easy, boring fight, rather than the fast pace hard and interesting fight they used to give us.

3) The gold reward is unintuitive and all about RNG, making is hard for people to see their reward, and frustrating people that from time to time feel like they lost gold.

4) They nerfed so bad the drop at ascended box and fractal skin that they are pretty much inexistant. Especially bad in a moment when we need to salvage ascended for balls of Energy.

5) The fact that you get more reward out of the daily 21-50 than the daily 51-100.

6) The fact that the fractal collection have the same exact bug as 18 months ago when they first put it in the game and they choose to remove it because it was broken.

7) The fact that they nerfed the amount of relic received from fractal, while increasing their use.

8) The fact that if you crafted +5 AR with +5 stats infusion for around 400-600 gold, you now have to remove them from your armor and let them take dust in your bank, while using normal +7 AR to get to higher fractal level. With your only 2 other alternative is to pay A LOT of gold to get 5 +16 instead of +11 and +10 to reach the good amount of AR or to forget about level +70 all together, which by now seem to be a good idea.

9) The fact that Anet took the lazy way out with instability and just use the same for 10, 20 even 30 level.

10) The fact that a lot of these instability are terrible without any counter. There is no counter about random condition. I can have 1, 2 even 3 break stun or condi removal on certain profession, but when you get immobilize and fear each 5 second (Hell I even got feared 3 times in a row) there is nothing you can possibly do. Annoying and dangerous at some level, completely stupid when you get feared down a platform or into lava. Or when the instability just make your crits give boons to mobs. The migh and Love. They hit like crazy and you need to pay attention. The perma protection? Not so much. If you could rip or corrupt it, then it would be great, but you can’t. They get back so freaking quick.

Is that enough reason for you?

Belzebu already answered most of your question. I’ll just add some additional info.

#1
You are more than fine with exotic. But ascended trinket are easy to get. Weapons is a bit harder but worth it if you value stats. Armor not so much, they add little for their price. Most people work slowly toward their trinket, then maybe weapons, but leave armor alone or take that as a long term goal. But as long as you don’t do Fractal 20+ or Raids, you will need zero ascended to enjoy the game.

#2
The LFG is home of a lot of people. Some will be elitist that won’t be kind to you if you join their meta full dps experimented run without knowing what you are doing. But there is plenty of group that don’t mind and are even happy to help you. The best if you don’t find any group that fit you is to create you own LFG.

#3
If you value Lore, Story, Achievement or you are a completionist then yes it’s worth buying. If you prefer gameplay/content and skip through all cutscene, then no you better spend you money elsewhere. And like Belzebu said, it’s a lot better than your personal story.

#4
No need to complete all jumping puzzle, but some vista and hero point will need you to do some jumping to reach them.

#5
You said you like big map events? That’s the biggest success of HoT in my opinion. Each map have a big meta events and they are super awesome, some if not the best of all GW2. Just to give you some idea. VB the first map have a day/night cycle. During the day there is 5 chain of events that need to be complete to prepare for the night. Then the map need to pull together to defend as much rally point as possible in 20min, then helicopter come down to bring you on the top of the canopy where the map need to fight 5 differents boss. If the map finished all 5 chain events, defended enough rally point and killed all 5 bosses, you get a bigger reward at the end. The second map have 3 pillars to defend, then a series of challenge to secure, then a bigg boss with 4 different areas using different strategy. And the other 2 maps are also like that with big map wide meta event involving most people.

Dragonhunter is awesome, you should slowly work toward unlocking it. It’s not only about bow, it’s good with other weapon too. It’s just that Bow is a great weapon too.

ZachAttack.3957:

You also have to remember that the order was randomized back then- so you won’t consistantly get the easiest fractals, and if you get unlucky and hit three long fractals, you could be in there for 25 minutes each fractal.

Wait what? 25min for 1 fractal? WOW. If you took 25min for any fractal in 50 then it will take 1-1,5 hours to do fractal 100.

I remember about the randomization. That’s why I said between 25 and 45min for pre-hot Fractal 50. And like I said right now I only saw between 40 and 60min for fractal 100. It will probably drop to 30min as people get better. 30min is still less time than a 45min fractal 50, but not that much and about the same time as a normal fractal 50 when you don’t have the worst case scenario.

ZachAttack.3957:

I’ve also seen a lot of discussion about the bosses getting tankier and dealing less damage compared to before at higher levels, so that’s a negative too. Basically, the high level fractals are much less tedious but way more of a snooze fest it would seem.

I still stand by my point that they have less of a time investment though, as no matter how tanky the boss is, assuming you do not wipe, one fractal will always be shorter then 3, and especially 4. That’s what I like about the new fractal system. But the old one definitely gets the plus on rewards and is more fun compared to now at higher levels (I think we’d all prefer the higher damage and less tankiness over lower damage and higher tankiness).

And let us not forget that gold/ascended rewards were the only benefit. There was also a solid exp reward (if I remember correctly)- which is actually useful now with masteries. But you literally get so little exp in the new fractals that you feel like yoo are falling behind in mastery levels by playing them, which sucks.

And in response to your first statement, I will admit that I played low level fractals. The few I played were fun with decent rewards, but I didn’t have enough time to sink into a 3/4 fractal run every night for my dailies, which prevented me from getting into them as much as I would have liked.

Just to give you an exemple. The last Mosman that I did it was so long and so boring that my and my friend started to test his blast finisher on his revenant with my engineer water field. These field and low duration and his blast is long cast time so we trained maybe 10 times in a row while fighting the Mosman. It was on level 76 if I remember correctly. Noboby die because he was hitting like a noodle. At 50 we used to need a lot of reflect to protect from his axe and needed to pay attention because he was able to kill us in second. Now, we were testing thing out and we were talking about diverse topic because otherwise it was just so freaking boring. The first are so painfully long, while giving no challenge.

1 Fractal at high level will take less time than the old level 50 with 4 islands? I’m not sure about that. For now I saw level 100 be done in 45-1hours. I guess that it will be done in 30min as people get used to it, but we used to do a fractal 50 in 25-45min. So around the same amount of time really.

That’s totally Anet fault (and partially the community). Anet is suppose to fix those exploit as fast as possible. They could also communicate with the community to indicate what they consider exploit or not. And optionally, they could ban for 24hrs people using this exploit. But they do none of the above. They abandonned dungoen completely so nothing was fix and they let people do whatever they wanted there and I can understand since they don’t want to put energy and ressources into them. But the same is true of fractal even if this is suppose to be their 5 man instanced content of the future. Underwater Mosman wasn’t fix for more than a year, don’t know how much month the rock for Archdiviner was there, the molten duo new exploit is there since HOT launch 3 weeks agos.

Anet give so little kitten about these exploit that people also don’t give a kitten. Even people that usually don’t use these, start to think. Hey nobody care, even Anet. I know I won’t be ban or anything so why not. Anet by their inaction push a mentality into the community. And maybe they think it’s not a big deal, because Dungoen and Fractal are old content. But this will happen in Raid for sure because this mentality is now spread all over the community.

- These exploit should be fixed in a couple of weeks, not months/years so that not too many people start to know about it.
- Anet should post about those exploit (wihtout explaining them) and tell clearly to the community what are the exploit that will be fixed eventually. So now people know that Anet watch these and they can hide behind the (Anet will fix it if it’s really an exploit)
- And put temporary ban on people using them so that people don’t want to use exploit in fear of a ban. This last one should have been in the game from the beginning, but now it’s a bit too late and will create too many ban and drama because people ain’t use to that. They should do the first 2 steps first, then give a head up like we gonna start temp. ban people using exploit in like 2 weeks or 1 month.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Thaddeus.4891:

1) Why? The point of is that Crafting Precursor is less costly in total than to buy the precursor on the TP. It’s a fact.

No, it’s a fact that crafting precursors (at least some of them) costs more than buying them off the TP. Here’s the one I’m familiar with:

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/29180-The-Legend

Notice something? 950 sell order, 1118 cost to craft. That’s nuts.

Yup. In that case it’s bad. Spark Cost me less to craft than to buy. But I just notice than to craft a Deldrimor ingot went from 4 gold to 5 gold since yesterday lol.

Right now, it’s unbalanced since price are driven by the players. I’m sure as people figure out that it’s not worth doing some legendary crafting, they will start to buy from the TP again, driving the price up. Remember that Bifrost was 1200+ gold for around 12 of the last 18 months.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Give it up already. kitten happens.

True. Completly true. But 2 years and we get only 3 new legendary? My point is that this, and fractal reset/leaderboard were a mess from Anet. I do mistake at my job, but mistake that take 2 years to solve? Not that often.

The expansion was 50 dollar. For that amount of money and the 2 years of wait, there should be a complete new set of legendary weapons at HoT Launch or near launch. Now we gonna have them 3 each 1 or 2 months? At best we get all new 16 weapons in 6 months. We are getting closer and closer to a 3 years delay.

kirima san.3760:

“Collections for the existing legendary weapons will be available on launch day, while the first three new legendaries will become available shortly after launch, alongside raids.”

I suppose its not easy to actaully read the post announcing the new weapons.

True enough. But there is also this.

‘’ On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013’’

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

Can’t really blame people for getting tired of that kitten. We were suppose to get that 2 years ago and we get only 3/16. I know that in the recent month they were correct. But over the last three years, a lot of broken promises.

In that post, there is several other beautiful gems like

- We’ll begin regularly adding new skills and traits to the game for each profession to expand your characters and builds! (not the same definition as me of regularly)

- In order to make playing all of our unique dungeons more rewarding, we’ll give you a bonus gold reward for each dungeon path you complete each day. (Oh wait, that’s right)

- We’ll expand all crafting professions to allow them to reach a new milestone: 500 points! (Really All??)

When talking about PvP, they said this ‘’We’ll also expand the competitive options for game play: providing a queue and leaderboards for solo rated play separate from team rated play, adding new map types,…’’

Wait what?? If you already crafted the Legendary how can you get a second Essence of Rainbows? You get that from the chest of the third collection and you can’t complete the collection twice.

Did you crafted the Legend already and if the answer is yes, how did you got a second Esscence of Rainbows?

Or did you crafted the Bifrost with a precursor pre-hot and now that block you from completing your first Legendary Precursor crafting of the Legend.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Thaddeus.4891:

Again, we all know that it’s better to craft, sell ascend material and then buy the precursor.

Then we have no factual disagreement and further analysis of costs is irrelevant.

Thaddeus.4891:

But crafting it, is more about material that you slowly get and slow but steady progression, compare to the big amount of gold to farm. It’s all how you perceive the cost of your precursor than the true cost. It’s psychological, nothing else. It’s more enjoyable and easy to reach for certain person.

This is awful design. Like, just truly terrible design. It makes sense to apply an impatience tax so you pay more if you want to rush things along, but it doesn’t make sense to charge people to make things take longer and require more effort. The dynamic is exactly the opposite of what it should’ve been.

1) Why? The point of is that Crafting Precursor is less costly in total than to buy the precursor on the TP. It’s a fact.

It’s also a fact that you can use the time gated item to make gold by crafting them each day and selling them. But that was always the case, whether or not Legendary Crafting was in game or not. But how many people are doing those thing since day one and are doing a profit with all of them?

2) What? No no. If you are impatient you either buy all 60 Deldrimor or the precursor on TP and it cost you more gold. If you are not impatient it cost you less because you save the added value from the timed-gated ascended material.

It doesn’t cost you more to craft the Legendary. It’s just that if you use your daily ascended crafting for the legendary crafting instead of to sell them, then you lose an opportunity for a kind of flipping. Buying basic mats, crafting them daily and selling them on the TP. Now it’s obvious and in your face for legendary crafting because you need a bunch of them and the market is overprice right now making a huge difference. But that was always the case.

Did you eve sold Quartz Crystal? You lost money because you can use them to craft item and since they are timed gated you could had earn more. Did you ever sold copper doublons, suntone lump, Watchwork Sprokets, Venom Sac, etc? All those are material used in time-gated item and can make you more profit. But these are less profit and less in your face than Ascended Mats are right now. A lot of people don’t want to play the TP, try to make profit out of those and just want to play the game and craft their legendary. Other don’t want legendary at all, but will gladly use these time-gated item to make a profit and buy what they want and other will use the market at their advantage to make a profit to buy their legendary.

Legendary Crafting is a good thing because, it help all three groups of players who can choose whatever way fill their needs the best.

UnbentMars.9126:

To be fair, when you say “dead” you make it sound like no one plays them, but fractals are more active now than they’ve ever been

True, but that’s only temporary. I can only speak for my team, but we used to do a 50 each day we could. It was fun and rewarding. Now? We started by doing all 3 daily + 2 recommend each day. Then we finish all 1-20 for the achievment and we stop doing it because the reward was so small even if they were so fast. But that’s ok, we didn’t do level 1-29 before too. It’s normal.

Then my friend stop doing 51+. It was just not worth it for him. Some night we got to harder fractal like 74 (that fear, immobilize, cc + the freaking double spawn bug again was a pain). So we decided to do the 74 and 56/60 for the daily. But now, if we don’t have time to do two new fractal, kitten the 51+ daily. Less reward than 21-50 and a bit longer.

What will happen when we reach level 100? We’ll stop doing 51-100 completely. Other group will probably simply do 56/58/60 for a chance at golden skin or relics.

What will happen when we all have our legendary back item? No more recommended? Maybe we want more fractal skin? But the achivement and bugged and by that time we will have enough chest to get the skin we want. Why push for the whole collection if there is no collection. In a couple of months, only Fractal Skin and Golden skin will attack people.

There is stuff to do in fractal right now. Achievement, collection, etc. But there is no value in the long run, or at least less value than it used to have.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Thaddeus.4891:

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

60 Deldrimor Steel 600 g

Ok, right there is your problem.

How in the world 60 Deldrimor Steel Ingot is equal to 600 Gold? You have three way to look at it.

1) It cost 4.97 gold to craft each Ingot and it will take you 60 days. Meaning you will have to pay 298 gold to get the mats and slowly craft your way to your legendary.

2) It cost 4.97 gold in material to craft each Ingot, but you can sell them 9 gold each one they are crafted. So for 60 days you craft them and sell them for a profit of 9 gold x 0.85 – 4.97 gold = 2.68 gold in profit for each Deldrimor. For 60, that’s 160.80 gold of profit that you can put on your precursor to buy it off the TP.

3) You don’t want to wait and want your legendary fast. Buying 60 Deldrimor Ingot isn’t worth it because it will cost 540 gold. At that point, you are better off buying the precursor off the TP.

You gotta add the two sides of the equation together, though: either you spend 298 gold crafting your precursor or you gain 160 gold selling the mats, putting you at a 456 gold difference between the two methods. Do the latter and you’re more than halfway to your precursor. Do the former and you still have a really long way to go, because those 60 Deldrimor Ingots are just the start.

Wait what? Ok I,ll take the number from Spark because that’s the one I know and It also take 60 Deldrimor Ingots.

So if I buy all the material it cost be 578 Gold to get the precursor in 60 days of crafting Deldrimor ingots.

Of in those 60 days, i can buy material, craft deldrimor, sell them for profit and buy Spark on the TP. So after 60 days, I have 160 gold less to pay on Spark which is 625 gold in buy order. The difference is 465 gold between 625 and 160.

That mean that for 60 days. I can craft the precursor for a total of 578 Gold. Or buy it for 465 Gold because I used those 60 days to make a profit. Of course, selling Ascended material and buying the precursor is the best ways gold wise. I’m not disputing that at all. If you want to maximize your time right now, you should always buy your precursor, not craft it. But..

1) Right now, the value of those crafted ascended material are HUGE. Why? Because so many new recipe need them and the demand is increasing. We had the same thing when they first introduced ascended armor/weapons. But over time, the number of people starting to notice that and doing daily crafting to sell will increase and less people will buy them as they complete the precursor they wanted. Selling ascended mats will give less profit. Not enough to make crafting precursor the best way, but still.

2) It’s not the total value in gold that give it’s importance to legendary crafting. It’s the way you get there. After 60 days of crafting deldrimor ingots the first person only have 280 gold of materials to get and if some are like me, they probably gonna have a big portion of those material already in their bank. I only had to buy 51 Karka Shell and 1000 Tier 5 leather for my Spark. I had already everything else. So I started the collection with 300 gold on me and finish it by spending some time, account bound currency and maybe 10 gold. On the other side, if I had sold those 60 deldrimor ingot I would have needed to farm 165 more gold.

Again, we all know that it’s better to craft, sell ascend material and then buy the precursor. But crafting it, is more about material that you slowly get and slow but steady progression, compare to the big amount of gold to farm. It’s all how you perceive the cost of your precursor than the true cost. It’s psychological, nothing else. It’s more enjoyable and easy to reach for certain person.

Aidan Eighthrain.8612:

60 Deldrimor Steel 600 g

Ok, right there is your problem.

How in the world 60 Deldrimor Steel Ingot is equal to 600 Gold? You have three way to look at it.

1) It cost 4.97 gold to craft each Ingot and it will take you 60 days. Meaning you will have to pay 298 gold to get the mats and slowly craft your way to your legendary.

2) It cost 4.97 gold in material to craft each Ingot, but you can sell them 9 gold each one they are crafted. So for 60 days you craft them and sell them for a profit of 9 gold x 0.85 – 4.97 gold = 2.68 gold in profit for each Deldrimor. For 60, that’s 160.80 gold of profit that you can put on your precursor to buy it off the TP.

3) You don’t want to wait and want your legendary fast. Buying 60 Deldrimor Ingot isn’t worth it because it will cost 540 gold. At that point, you are better off buying the precursor off the TP.

Yes the stats on Rune of the Traveler are a bit underwelming. But the 25% run speed is a huge quality of life that a lot of people prefer. That’s why Traveler sell for 2+ gold, while divinity sell for 29 silver. Traveler isn’t a good combat rune, but the quality of life is good enough for a lot of people. Mostly for people playing open world or WvW roaming. That’s 100% an opinion issue. Do you prefer to have the 25%, allowing you to swap a signet for something more useful or you prefer to have the best stats for combat. Nobody can answer that for you.

Stealth isn’t a boon so no the 15% doesn’t affect it.

nacario.9417:

Are there viper stats for rings amu back trinkets?

Yes, but only in exotic. You are better off with Ascended Sinister trinkets. Rabid or Rampager for your Back item.

Here my numbers for Spark.

- Buying all the materials needed for the collection : 578 gold. To be clear, that the price of basic materials needed to craft everything.

- If instead I sell all the materials, I make a profit of (after TP tax) : 737 gold. The main difference is from selling ascended crafting material. The time gate give them more value when selling than buying the basic materials.

- The price of Spark right now on buy order is 625 gold.

- The price of Spark if I buy right now is 749 gold.

I think that spark is near perfect balance right now. It will cost you less to craft it than to buy if off the tp, whatever if you buy or do a buy order. That said, if you want to maximize your gold, you are better off crafting ascended material each day for a profit and buying your precursor from buy order. People with comfortable wallet would prefer to use the market to make gold with the price of ascended materials, while most of the population would prefer to make small step with the material they already have in their bank, doing their ascended crafting each day they can and at the end only buying a small portion of what is needed.

It’s simple. All condition duration count toward the cap except for weapons specific condition duration. So Lingering Curse and Chemical Rounds.

For now, it’s the only exception that I know of.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/enter-spirit-vale-on-november-17/