Guild Wars 2

Like most people I take Arcane Wave instead of Icebow.

Instead of Tempest Defense, I now use Inscription for lower CD on my glyph of Storm. It’s pretty handy. I might get back to tempest defense with HoT because of the stun from break bar. We’ll see.

Instead of Piercing-Shards I use Stop-Dodge and Roll. Decent in some situation, but nothing better anyway.

I also like the Arcane variant, which is more on par with water now. The difference in dps is near unnoticeable in pugs.

1) Most people use meta build, great/good build or personnal variation of those build. Both in PvP and Dungeon. But there is still a lot of people that prefer build of their own.

2) http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

You are both wrong in my opinion.

- You are the guild leader so you have the authority to do whatever you want with the guild.

- But at the same time you have a responsibility as a guild leader to make thing work in the guild and to promote it. Guild Missions is pretty basic for a guild, you only need 5 people online to do some and with 12 you should be able to complete almost all of them. So if you didn’t bother organizing them and you went to another guild for the missions, you are not really a good leader anyway.

IMO. Be a leader and make your guild work, or put you aside and give it to someone else so that they can make something with it.

Personally, I found that SW is a bit out of balance. I’m not a cry baby, i’m just an advocate of a good Reward vs Challenge/Effort vs Time and GW2 kind of lack that.

It’s hard to making an accurate ranking because it depend on individual and how well they play that content, but still.

For exemple. Silverwaste should be on part with dungeon pug run, but not with proper speed run.

Dry Top Tier 6 and Fractal 50 should have more reward per hours than Silverwaste.

Kevan.8912:

But yes you’re right.
that’s just like any other mmo, with grind2win, vertical progression and so on.
I just want people to admit that, that it’s just different name and aspect to something that is common with ANY other mmo.
Grind to keep at the right pace with other players and content.

grind to have gold, grind to craft stuff, grind to raid and other “endgame content”.
And if i not grind, i’m left behind: just a perfect definition of vertical progression + treadmill

The thing is. We wouldn’t have this conversation if ascended was in-game since day one. IMO agony resistance and ascended was mistake from Anet, especially the way they introduced it. But at the same time, it’so small that it doesn’t matter at all tbh. I think that a lot of people are QQing only for the sake of QQing.

In the end, ascended trinket are easier to get than exotic one and those are the most important. Ascended weapons are the only place where this could create problem because they are worth it and can be costly. But for back item and armor, there is NO WAY they are needed raids because they often such a small advantage only over exotic. I have 5 characters full ascended and in raids I’m planning on using mostly Herald and Druids at first, both of which I’m gonna play with ascended trinket and exotic everything else and I’m probably still gonna be more usefull to my group than most of my guildmate, except a few.

Unless anet tell us that there will be a hard gate for ascended gear, then this 8 pages conversation is kind of pointless.

So if on the 29th Anet had buffed Heal as One like it is right now, everybody would be happy.

Since Anet buffed it a little too much and then nerf it partially, while still being superior to the HaO pre-29th, people are QQing?

I understanding if people want to have a constructive discussion about does this nerf was needed? Or was it overnerfed? But to act like this was a nerf to the core propriety the profession and that ranger is garbage because of that or that all other profession should be nerfed for some strange emotive vengeance, it’s kind of stupid.

There is Lag with the guild bank. Sometime you put something in the guild bank and it disappear from your inventory without going into the guild bank. But that’s usually just a lag and the item will appear after a couple of seconds in the guild bank (happen both ways).

Now, maybe your game disconnected at that precise moment and in that case your ambrite is probably gone forever. Bad luck for you. It kitten big time for you, but at least it’s not something expensive. Maybe you should do another ticket and specific said that it’s because of the lag in the guild bank, which is 100% Anet fault. I doudt that they will give you back you item, but I could be wrong about that.

For the future, try to not move thing around a couple of second before a patch go in. After all, they give you fair warning before they kick you out of the game and update the game.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

I dont think they would implement something like this simply because it would be too easy for a person running multiple accounts just to stand the other toons in the area and get credit for it. They would have to figure out some way to force interaction on more then just a single hit then afk, way.

No it wouldn’t. At least not with the system I propose. First of all he would need to take all his character (5 at max to be in the same party) around the area of the heart. Meaning he will need to move all 5 of them for each heart.

After that the amount of work would be equal. If he need to do 10 actions to complete the heart in solo. He will need to do 50 actions to complete the heart of all 5 character at the same time. It’s the same amount of work.

Pikachu.1829:

ironfrodo.7625:

bladex.9502:

So, 10s slower than the previous 38 seconds, that means there’s basically a 20% DPS loss.
How does that show that the meta will not be changing? 20% is a pretty big amount, which can be made up by swapping at least 1 ele out for a class like engi, which does in fact change the meta

I tested already Engineer and Ele DPS after patch for around 3 hours and elems still better.

Are you sure you are testing out sinister Engi with the right rotation? According to the spreadsheet, sinister Engi have higher DPS even before this patch. Zerker Engi probably caught up Ele in DPS as well. Not saying Engi > Ele, but I highly doubt Ele has higher DPS, if you mean higher AoE burst then I trust you.

Power Engi vs Power Elementalist shouldn’t change. When people calculate the dps of different profession for Dungeon they usually use a 30sec rotation that exclude Frostbow because it’s on a 60 sec cooldown. So power engineer should still be near elementalist, but not caught up with Ele.

Anyway. Most people won’t waste much time trying to calculate or test stuff up until HoT. No need to take a couple of hours for something that will change in 22 days.

Rabid is the best alternative. In typical condition build around 80-90% of your dps come from condition damage so you want to maximize your Condition Damage as a stats. That’s why rampage isn’t the best alternative even if it has 3 damage stats compare to only two for rabid. Yes rampage have more direct damage than Rabid, but it such a small portion of it’s total dps.

Carrion is good, but the lack of precision hurt it because a couple of trait give condition on crits and that’s very important for condition build.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Ascended-Gear-to-be-Required-for-Raids/page/7#post5553855

No need for several tread on the same topic.

Beldin.5498:

And then 4 of 5 people go suddenly AFK and you have to work 5 times longer
as you would have normally needed .. and as soon as you are finally ready ..
oh wonder .. those other people all come back at the same time

If that happen, you leave the party and you can complete the heart normally.

As a guild leader I always try to find guild activities to do. There were some attemps at map completion in guild, but this usually don’t go well with hearts. Like other said, you usually end up with a couple of people at 100% waiting for some people to finish their hearts. This is boring for people that always have to wait in-between hearts (can’t really help much) and this can be stressful for player that ain’t as quick and who know that they slow down the group.

My idea would the following. If you are alone then heart work the same way they do now.

But if you are in a party then all the action you do will fill the heart less, while all the action of the party will fill the heart of everybody. So let say we are 5 doing the heart. Usually, doing the action would fill around 10% of the heart for exemple. Now it will only fill out 2% of the heart, but it will fill the heart of 5 person. So if 5 person do one action, the heart of all 5 will reach 10%. That way, everybody should finish around the same time and everybody will work toward the heart from start to finish. Faster people will take on a bigger part of the work load, because they will help the slower people to fill out their heart.

This system should only work with party member in the region of the heart so you won’t share your heart with someone in your party doing something else. It will only work with people doing the heart with you.

The way some heart work, this system could create some problem and they should be reworked a little. TBH I doudt that heart will receive any love in the future and I’m ok with that. Yes allowing us to make map completion in group more fun would be nice, at the same time Anet know that heart weren’t their best success and will likely work on something else. Something that will be more fun anyway and I’m more than ok with that.

It depend on which mobs. The threshold between Power and Condi is 14 sec. So all fight lower than 14 sec will be at the advantage of the Power build. That mean all the trash but also all those high damage vetaran like in Ascalon. The place where condi shine is against bosses.

Adamantium.3682:

Also there isn’t really such a thing as “an encounter immune to conditions” unless you’re talking specifically structures, of which there are 1 or 2? (Ice Elemental and Charr fractal doors?) Maybe Mai Trin? In that case you’re not doing damage of any kind and it’s a different kind of fight anyways.

In fractal you are right. But in dungeon some bosses like Alphard are immune or pratically immune to condi. I know OP talked about fractal only, but usually people that do fractal also do some dungeon.

Phoenix.8215:

Still don’t work. I can use the ability in the PvP loby but it returns to gray whan i leave it.

That suck for you sorry. It’s a weird bug tbh. Did you try in your hero panel? If that doesn’t work I think you only have one option. Continue to level up without your healing skill until you reach level 11 where you gonna be able to swap any skill.

Maybe sure to do a ticket. Maybe Anet will have the time to fix it soon.

You don’t play against PvE only, but just normal player just like everybody else that maybe just PvP, maybe do both PvP and PvE. Some try out new profession, not only because of the daily, but because they want to use other profession. Maybe they come back to an old profession because of daily or because they want to. They can have a bad day. Maybe they disconnected or someone knock on the door or they got a phone call, or plenty of other reason. Maybe someone party up with a friend, which is very lower in rank and screw thing up a little because he’s against way better player. Or sometime the matchmaking just put you against better player. I remember a couple of match against people from the Abjured. I can’t do kitten about that and I know I’m gonna get smack. It’s easy to think that everybody except you is doing anything remotely useful in a game. But keep in mind that you don’t see everything and that maybe they have the same opinion about you after a defeat.

I’m not saying that people going afk isn’t frustrating or that bad teamate is fun. But I play with a lot of friends of different level in PvP and they all make that mistake. They blame something, but they don’t have all the information and when I provide with such, then they suddenly realize that they don’t alway have the whole picture.

Donari.5237:

Thaddeus, I think you misunderstood. Or I’m misunderstanding your request. Because the multiple guild chat does just what you seem to be asking, it lets you see all your guild chats even if you aren’t repping. So long as you are a member of the guild, you will see all the messages even if you are in your bank guild or your speed run guild.

You won’t see messages from a guild you’re not in, of course. So if you are in guilds A, B, C, D, and E, and your friend is in guilds C, D, E, F, and G, you will be able to share messages only in guilds C, D, and E.

Are you sure? Because I was sure that the next chat was sending your text into the guild chat of all your guild. So if for exemple, i’m in guild A which is the guild that I represent. Another person is in guild B which he represent. I’m not in guild A and he’s not in guild A.

But we both love to do duo/trio dungeon/fractal so we are in a guild for that named C. If I type in the all guild chat then everybody representing Guild A and C will see it. But the guy representing guild B won’t see it.

Maybe I wrong, they didn’t specified it in their post. Do the next channel allow you to talk to everybody in all your guild or it’s simply guild chat of all your guild merge together.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Well, looking at that shaman’s map, verdant brink is definitely bigger than Silverwastes or Drytop, but not bigger than them BOTH.

I remain skeptical.

Dude read pls. When I said 2 normal map I was talking about the ’’RAID’’ map. Not verdant brink.

Like a lot of person said it already. She use the words

’’probably’’ and ’’should’’. Remember that it’s suppose to be the hardest content in GW2. Trying to get the most advantage on your side (bets gear, best food, best build, best composition, etc) will help you a lot. That doesn’t mean that exotic geared character won’t be able to complete it, but the lack of additional stats won’t make their live easier.

There is nothing so far that make me belive that ascended will be required or mandatory.

JediYoda.1275:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Just because you made a guild does not make you privileged. A successful guild is a community of players that like gaming with each other.

Playing with yourself is something else altogether.

I never said I was privileged or come off as I am and I have had the same guild name since GW1 so it’s not like I just made my guild yesterday. Nothing wrong in asking to give 1-2 players guilds a chance since NOT everyone likes or wants to be in big guilds. Having to TEMP invite players to help me to do guild missions to get credit then kick them each week is the way to go for small guild or 1-2 player guilds>?

There are other players like myself just that they don’t speak up on the forums because of the backlash like that I’m getting from my OP.

Draknar.5748:

A single person guild….really? That’s not a guild. That’s a normal player that wants guild tag, nothing more. Or a couple that want to have their own 2-person relationship guild. That’s not a guild, that’s a couple of people that want a guild tag to show they are together.

Yes really and I’m not the only one, I just want a guild tag? agree to disagree, Several married couple have their own guild and nothing wrong with it. Look like I’ve already said some players would rather not put up with other players nonsense, guild politics etc so at least have some respect for that?

I bet many of you here don’t always want to group up with other players and just go off some place in game and do your own thing?

There is nothing wrong with having a guild for a small group of friend or just a couple. But don’t except access to everything a real guild have (from small (10 players) to big (500)).

You are right. We all want to do stuff by our own. But we do single player stuff like map completion. We understand that content were created for different amount of player. I like to solo dungeon, but I accept that the game isn’t designed for that. You can play guild mission with 2 players, but accept that the game isn’t designed for that.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

With only four, they better be enormous.

Hope so. There is 2 things that are working for us.

All 4 maps are suppose to have 3 layers. I doudt each level will range on all the map, but those 4 maps could be equal to between 6 and 12 normals maps.

Secondly, that shaman datamined the new raid maps and it’s HUGE. Don’t know if all of that space will be fill with the raid, but it’s impressive with around the size of 2 open world maps.

A in-game VOIP? Breeeeee I just had a cold feeling down my spine. How could they possibly do something better in-game that you can have right now with a 3rd party program. I’m not against it. It could be fun, but it would be more for giggle than anything else.

Under 5 people, it’s not a guild. It’s a glorified party.

Keep in mind that they will divide guild mission into three range of difficulty so it will be easier for small guild to do guild missions. But 1-2 people now you are just trolling.

Small guild ISN’T suppose to gain favor at the same pace as bigger guild. It’ just like saying that someone playing 2 hours per months should gain gold as the same pace as a someone playing 500 hundreds hours per months.

Solaxo.7409:

This is the 4th Week in a row that I am running a Community Event to get 70 Hero Points for the NA Region:

Reddit Thread on Event!

Event is Tonight 9/30 @ 9:30pm EST!

Come join the fun on alts if you already have enough Hero Points!

Btw I saw you event a couple of week ago and introduced it in my guild. It was a hit and we are doing it each week too. Thanks for the idea.

Menadena.7482:

Thaddeus.4891:

Everybody will have 213 points if they complete all Hero Challenges (exluding the Krait obelisk). We can guess that HoT will give at least 37 hero challenges in their maps.

You are assuming everyone has 100% world completion. I am sure I am not the only one who is not so obsessive as to feel a need to complete EVERYTHING in a zone. I would hazard a guess that many players do not have 100%. No, asking here does not count as anyone with a casual interest in the game most likely does not post to the forum.

Pls read.

Everybody will have 213 points [[[[ IF ]]]] they complete all Hero Challenges

I just thought of something reading another thread. Will now be able to talk to all our guild chat at the same time. It could be nice, but I don’t much use of that tbh. I know that for some people it will be nice, but well.

What would be far more nice is that you can have a way to talk to everybody in a specific guild (or all guild) that they represent or not. Here a couple of situation where this would be so good.

- In main guild where some people are not representing because they are in their guild bank or in special temporary guild. Officer could now talk to everybody representing or not. So that everybody in the guild would have the information. Same go with normal member who ask for people for a dungeon. Sometime someone in his guild bank would still want to join if he could see the demand.

But more important. Guild could be created as glorified friend list. I have a guild, but sometime I want to speed run with full meta zerker. Create a Full meta zerker dungeon guild. Nobody is representing because they all have their guild. But you could talk in that special guild chat and everybody in that guild representing or not would see that you want to start a dungeon group and could join.

So many of those guild could be create for all type of content and regroup people that want to do the same thing without having forcing them to quit their main guild.

Kunikakitty.3185:

This is so cool, I’ve only explored 17% of the grove but I’ve gained 3 bars of experience! in the matter of minutes.

XP is very easy to get in this game, but some people get lost around the same level as you. They don’t know where to go because all around them is either too high or too low area. It’s a design flaw, but not a bit one. Once you figure it out, there is no problem anymore. Anyway here some ways to get xp.

- Explore the map. Like you found out Lion Arch allow you to travel to any racial city and from there you have access to pretty much all the maps you need.

- Crafting will give you a nice boost if map exploration is starting to bored you. Gathering material also give you some nice xp. So if you gather everything you can will doing map exploration you probably gonna have enough material to craft and gain a couple more level in a couple of minutes.

- Dungeons give you 70% of your level, whatever what is your level. You can’t start to do dungoen until level 35. At that point you can ask in the LFG tool for a party, but make sure you precise that you are new so you get people that want to help you, not people that want to go fast. That way you gonna have a way better experience.

- EotM : It’s a kind of WvW map where you gain a LOT of xp. Probably the fastest way to gain xp without using gold. XP there is so good that you can see entire zerg of low level character farming their level.

- PvP : If you like pvp you won’t level up. But you will gain tome of knowledge that give you a level each time. It’s not the fastest way to level up, but I find it the most fun way to do it. You have access to everything on your character like if he was level 80, then accumulate tomes of knowledge while doing PvP.

Vespula.7318:

Can anyone tell me what endgame is like in this game? I’ve recently quit wow after 11 years, and Iam very interested in exploring the GW2 world. Can someone recommend a good class for me to start with? at end game I’m looking to do mainly PvE with some casual PvP.

Regards

End game at GW2 is very very different then WoW. The final gear in GW2 is relatively easy to get and isn’t that more powerful than the tier just before it.

We often talk about Fashion War 2 because that’s a pretty big part of the end game. People collect a lot of things. Armor skins, Weapons, Legendary, outfits, tonic, etc. They give you no advantage whatesoever, but just make you look cool.

There is also updgrading your account. Those are mostly Quality of life improvement. You can pay for those with real life money or farm gold to buy them in-game. From unlimited tools, to more inventory or bank space to unlimited access to vendor/bank/TP, etc.

So for most people the end game is to grind gold to make their account prettier and more fun to use. From skins, to music instrument, etc.

But there is also end-game for content itself. Those are more about challenge and accomplishment.

Achievements : Some people like those things. I waste to much time and into that, but I love it

PvE : I would say the biggest end-game content for PvE would be dungeon/fractal and eventually Raids. You can run them normally with pugs and friend to get money/rewards. But you can push yourself to go through them as efficiently as possible. Several guilds competition to get a records on those instanced content. Other prefer to challenge themself by doing a solo run of that content that is suppose to be completed by 5 people. Again there, there is also record speed for solo run.

PvP/WvW : Well the end-game there is pretty strait forward. Getting better, having a better team and winning

As for which profession. They are all pretty good in most situation. For PvE, Necromancer is a bit behind everybody else, but we hope that they will fix that with the incoming Xpac.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Most of my characters had spent the majority of their skill points for ascended crafting and such.

It doesn’t change anything. You received less spirit shards, but the number of hero challenge is the same as if you never bought anything with skill point before the patch.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

One of my characters currently has 170 skill points but can only get 22 more from the world. Another is also at 170 and can get 33 more. They’re both at level 80. Since all characters get the same number of hero points from leveling, and get an additional 213 from world completion hero challenges (214 with krait node in home instance) shouldn’t my two different lvl 80s have a different number of hero points but consistent with their world completion? Each of these characters had a different number of skill points on them when the Hero Point updated came through.

How do you know you can only get 22 and 33 on those characters? If you only checked the World Completion numbers you won’t get the right number. Not all hero challenge are part of the World Completion. In reality if you have 170 pts on both character, for both you can still get 44 pts from Hero Challenge. It’s just that for one character you have 22 from world completion and 22 from other maps/WvW, while the other character only have 11 hero challenge outside of World Completion.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

IF 250 actually is a requirement, does HoT have enough Hero points available to give out? What about other players who already had map completion, had nearly 0 skill points on them once the Hero point update landed, and can’t get any more hero points at all? How do they get to 250 or even 170?

I’m thinking I just misunderstood something, so can someone please clarify?

Everybody will have 213 points if they complete all Hero Challenges (exluding the Krait obelisk). We can guess that HoT will give at least 37 hero challenges in their maps.

Dara Potocska.8196:

I totally failed on properly discussing the MoTD today. So I have some information I think you’ll enjoy (or hope you and others enjoy) concerning it.

1. Whenever you log into game you will see the MotD broadcast to your chat for that guild you are representing at the time of log in.
2. Whenever you represent a guild you will see that guild’s MotD broadcast into your chat.
3. Whenever someone in your guild edits the MotD (they will need guild permissions to do this), you will see your guild’s MotD broadcast to the chat.

Also, to touch on the concerns about the size of the field for the MotD: The “Attributes” section I spoke of at end of stream will only be as wide as the roster tab. We will still have a fairly large field to work with for the message of the day. But should the player(s) miss the MotD, they will have that message broadcast to their chat each time they log in and represent, and when someone edits it.

I hope this is an encouragement and thank you for bringing the subject up. And thank you all for your feedback for the Guild Halls content and for joining us on the stream today!

Thanks for those info

But I need to mention something. The MotD will be broadcast each time someone modify it? I’m bad at writing some about half the time I modify it, it’s mostly to fix some minor error. I don’t want to spam the guild chat each time I want to fix a little thing or two. I would prefer to have a button that broadcast the MotD in the guild chat when we want. That way we can broadcast it only when the modification is worth it.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Message of the day. Seriously. Took the opposite direction by shrinking it. We need something to draw attention to it when it changes. It is already to easy to ignore and it is our only in-game means with communicating with the entire guild offline and online.

Well, I’m not sure I got this right. They talk about putting it to the side, but in the image we can clearly see that it’s bigger than now. So I don’t know what the hell lol.

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/29/gw2-guild-week-day-one-livestream-notes/

What do you think about the first day of Guild Week. Here my feedback

- Expeditions : I was hoping like a guild activity that we could do on a regular basis, but it seem to be a one time thing. Don’t get me wrong it seem like an nice guild activity, but it doesn’t there is any reward or even the possibilty to complete it more than once per guild. This seem like a wasted opportunity and probably that several hundred people in my guild won’t be able to experience it the day we choose.

- Guild Panel : YESSSSSS. I’m so hype that you will be able to talk to different guild without always swaping representation. It’s also nice to see more place for the message of the day.

- Guild Missions : I timer for the next reset is a nice little addition and the Instanced Puzzle/Challenge will fix a lot of problem. The easy/medium/hard thing is super cool. That way small guild won’t be excluded from some missions, while big guild won’t find them boring because of their numbers. Now I just hope that favor will be more important than influence so we have a incentive to always try to do the hardest one.

- PvP Missions : I had doudt, and those doudt are confirmed. They don’t look like guild mission at all. They seem like guild achivement. For PvP, one officier will try to do it with 2-4 other guild member and that’s it. It doesn’t feel like something that need to be done with the whole guild.

- WvW Missions : THe same problem as PvP. At least we probably gonna do this in one shot with several guildmate going into WvW to complete them. The jumping puzzle will probably nice with 50 member of the guild tring to complete it at the same time. Time to dust off my Roaming Mesmer.

Seriously. For PvP and WvW missions I would had prefer a kind of Weekly achievement list. Each week, you receive a list of accomplishment for both PvP and WvW and your guild have a week to complete all of them. The more you do, the better the reward for the guild. The system they seem to propose just sound wrong IMO. But maybe I’m wrong. We’ll see at the xpac.

Treemoon.6538:

Feeling like I wasted my money. Wish I read your post about loading and playing as usual. I thought I had to reinstall GW2 with the new expansion. At first I was going to say it will not come up. On the Apple It shows up in the dock but does not come up at all. On the PC it says “Connection error(s) detected. Retrying…” But I found out it comes up but it takes about 4 or 5 minutes for the LOG IN screen to come up. This did not happen before I installed what I thought was the new GW2 onto the old GW2. The internet speed is okay. And the files from Arenanet will not all download.

Should I delete and install again? And wait again for all the files to download again? There should be directions on what to do with expensive “Expansions” to install it. Probably just missed seeing them.

The expansion is not up. It’s in a month. Right now, it,s only a balance path for everybody. F2P, Core Account, and people that prepurchased HoT.

I didn’t downloaded the path yet, but like any patch there might be some problem. I heard about some people have the same problem right now. Leave you game, don’t delete anything. Just let Anet resolve the issue. It happen sometime when a lot of people are trying to download a patch all at the same time. It should be resolved in a couple of hours max.

New launch are always difficult. We can’t ask company to quadruple their infrastructure just for one or two day. There is this thing called reality.

I’m planning a small LAN with a couple of friend for Launch, but we prepared other stuff to do in case server shutdown or something. We’ll have fun anyway

Why would you want to duo with a random pug? I understand your frustration, but you really didn’t gave you any chance lol.

Purple Miku.7032:

It depends. What path are you talking about?

There is no such thing as a general all-purpose meta. Each and every path requires specific things to optimise with.

Pls don’t start that. We all know that there is modification to the meta depending on specific map. But there is always a general purpose meta.

Boozy.4397:

I just purchased GW2, and read right after that it will be going free. So, did I just gip myself? Or will there be some sort of benefit to having paid for it?

Did you at least tried to find information? F2P have like a mega list of restriction. Think of F2P account as permanent trial version of the game. Limited access to about everything in the game.

But did you purchased HoT or found a normal gw2 game from a 3rd party seller?

This is so brilliant

bladex.9502:

I wonder if it will even be worth to take water over arcane in fights where there isn’t need for aurashare.
Your main source of DPS comes from fire attunement now, so swapping to water for the damage modifier prevents you from doing optimal damage for 10s
In an average group you will pretty much always have 5 boons for 10% extra damage, so the only damage modifier you lose is 10% while in water, but on the other hand you will gain DPS by not having to swap out of your fire attunement

True. Without Icebow, there is not really need for Piercing Shards. It might be come down to Healing (Water) vs Vigor (Arcane) and 10% damage when higher than 90% hp (water) vs 3-6% damage (Arcane).

Water might still be the better choice in optimal situation, but I think i’ll like Arcane more in most situation.

Iris Ng.9845:

Icebow itself is still a huge amount of cleave against elite trash mob. It will still be there to carry DPS against structures and large hit-box foes. It also stacks quite a bit of vuln. It will be useful, just moving from essential to optional.

Doudt it. Like I said. If they really nerf it by 50% Just using Laval Front on cooldown will be better and Laval front hit 5 targets, not 3 like the Ice Storm will. So I see no situation where Icebow will be usefull except for skill 5. Laval Front will still have better DPS against structure and large hit box foes since the math I did was if all 24 attacks for the Icebow hit.

What will be the different modification of the meta less than a day before the incoming Icebow Nerf? With Nemesis and other people claiming that the meta is ALL ABOUT Icebow. I’m almost happy that they nerf Icebow just so they see how wrong they were.

First of all, will Icebow still be useful? With 21.12 damage coefficient and a cast time of around 3 second, the Ice Storm have right now a coefficient per second of 7.04 CPS (just to make it easy in this post). With a 50% nerf, we can assume that it will be around 3.5 CPS after Tuesday. Traited Lava Front by itself have a 4 CPS, excluding auto-attack in-between those laval front. So, it’s obvious that Icebow isn’t worth anything DPS wise.

So what will be the changes?

- Tempest Defense : I’m not sure this trait is worth anything now. We still can burst with a Deep Freeze or something else, but will the coordination be worth it? Maybe, but I don’t think so. My guess will be that the trait Inscription will take the place. The boons isn’t important but the cooldown reduction on Glyph of Storm will be pratical. Especially, in harder content with HoT for more frequent blind or Vulnerability storm.

- Icebow itself will probably be replace by arcane wave.

- Will 2 Elementalist still be the best choice? A lot of testing will be needed at the xpac to know what exactly can bring the elite spec, but for the next month? Maybe 1 ranger could replace 1 elementalist to increase the overall dps of the group.

What do you think, the Icebow nerf will change to the meta?

imagangsta.1349:

Why doesn’t protection decrease condition damage by 33%, it always bugged me from the start that protection didn’t PROTECT you from condition damage its still a form of damage so why shouldn’t protection work against conditions. With the change to vulnerability working with condition damage I think its fair that protection work against condition damages.

Protection is for direct damage.

Resistance is for condition damage.

170 skill for skills/trait and 250 for everything isn’t too bad. It’s a bit of a grind for alts, but not that bad. I actually started a guild activity around that and it was pretty fun. I still tink it’s a bit too high, but manageable.

Where is start to be insane is when you think that we are suppose to have other elite specialisation in the future. If it take 250 pts to unlock everything, does that mean we gonna need 250 additional point in a year or two when the second set of elite will hit the game? Most players have around 200 on their main now, but for the second elite specialisation we gonna have to start from scrap and that will be a HUGE grind. Even for our main.

We’ll see at the expansion I guess. IMO around 100 to unlock all skill/trait and 150/200 to unlock everything would be better.

frifox.5283:

Never was a fan of burst-it-before-it-can-react playstyle so I’m quite happy with the nerf, very happy actually.

Ya, but the Icebow was never the problem.You can’t burst-it-before-it-can-react the Archdiviner in fractal 50. Even in record run situation this fight take around a minute and the icebow burst last for a couple of seconds at the beginning. So clearly the Icebow wasn’t the problem. It’s low level dungeon with super easy boss that can be destroyed by icebow that was the problem.

Anet just destroyed a part of the game simply because part of their content is too easy.

That will be fun.

1) At best, around 1/3 of the LFG ask for zerker or something like that. So please don’t imagine a problem just because you don’t like a situation. Yes zerker is predominate and you can find that bad. I’m playing the game for the last 3 years and I went into a maybe 3-4 LFG with zerker requirement. I’m a zerker myself and prefer to play with zerker (or sinister), but saying that ALL LFG or that the MAJORITY of them are zerker is just a plain lie and don’t serve your point by sapping your own credibility.

Now as for the gear diversity. There is argument on both side. Personnally, they could remove the gear all together if they want. I prefer gameplay diverisity with weapons, skill and trait over gear diversity. But that’s just my opinion.

2) You are right. Engineer, Ranger and Necro were in that situation. Engineer is now in a good place and don’t have this problem anymore. Ranger is also in a good place but for other reason people don’t like them. Mostly because LB and Pet can make things go bad in the wrong hands. Still, kicking or asking for no ranger is more and more rare. I didn’t saw that in a very long time. It’s almost non issue now and will fix itself over time. Now for Necro you are totally right and it’s all on Anet fault.

3) Did you played the game in the last couple of months? Yes conditions were in a very bad place, but the situation was mostly fixed a couple of months back with the condition update. I’m not saying that the situation all good. Bleed is still lagging behind and there is plenty of PvE encounter where condition is at a disadvantage, while situation where direct damage is at a disadvantage is really really rare. Please don’t say that that condition is useless almost everywhere when the highest dps build in PvE is a condition build and that 3 of the most powerful build is sPvP are either condition hybrid or strait condition build. Maybe the situation is bad in WvW, I didn’t play there for a long time.

4) True. But all game have them and I really don’t think that it’s a huge problem in GW2. Keep in mind that you maybe don’t know everything. For exemple, you talk about engineer kit’s. But the only kit that no popular build use is med kit. Every single kit except med kit is use in a META build. So ya this problem exist, but I don’t think that they can make everything good. And the fact that you pointed in a skill type that is actually in a really good place right now, make me doudt your knowledge of the game.

Keep in mind that I’m not saying that you are wrong about the problem. Anet should work on making more and more skill good. But the problem isn’t relatively small and physically can’t be fix 100% anyway.

5) Minions master in PvP is pretty decent. Not one of the best build, but in the right hand id can hold it’s own. You are right that minion need some help, but why would you put that in a list of problem with GW2 before Spirit Weapon for exemple? Minion have a couple place where you can be good with them, not spirit weapons.

6) True and False. They were more active at the beginning but that bite them in the kitten so they decided to tune that back down a it. Also a lot of the complaint in the forum are from people that didn’t search for very long. Anet won’t answer a question 1000 times because 1000 people ask the same freaking question. The game is 3 years old so there is a long list of question that Anet already answered and won’t answer again. But you are right, Anet isn’t as active as other company. Maybe it’s because GW2 don’t have a montly fee to pay the staff, I don’t know. Some people complain about it, other don’t care, but I guess that the majority of us just learn to live with it.

Ryou.2398:

Why does everyone think they are experts in mmorpgs? Maybe someone needs to come out with an mmorpg that encourages people to think they are. Just saying if people are constantly try tearing apart the mmorpg they play then why play it?

Because you have

1) People that stopped or never played GW2 because it wasn’t their kind of game. They are coming back or getting in the game now with the incoming expansion and want the game to change to fit what they view as a better gamestyle.

2) You have people that were playing the game for a long time because it’s a good game, even if they were not satisfied with how the PvE combat and build diversity work. Not because you love a game that you like every aspect of it.

3) You have people speculating about each little thing Anet said in the past few months even tho Anet constantly showed us over the last 3 years that they know what they change, but never know how the meta will respond to it and how the majority of their player will play their game.

4) Most people that actually know the game and have decent opinion usually either speculate just for the fun of it or wait until we have actual information. Because now we have only vague opinion from the devs of what could of couldn’t happen.

It could be a nice idea but Anet officially abandoned dungeon so it won’t happen. This won’t push people to kill the first burrow at AC because the graveling there respawn at infinity. Those graveling wouldn’t be part of the your system or people could farm them for higher reward.

As for Fractal, it’s not like most players skip everything there. There is some skip, true. But most of those are designed to be skip like outside the city in the Ascalon fractal or during the snowblind fractal.

This would still be nice for the down/death penalty. But I rather that they limit the effectiveness of the rally system in higher fractal and raid so that people can’t just die and rally on stuff they kill fast enough. Right now we just ignore down people because they gonna rally and your system wouldn’t change that. People will be kitten off at people that down, but will probably won’t rez them unless there is nothing to rally on.

If they limit the rally system in the harder content, then rezzing would play a bigger part.

Zanarkand.2987:

So are you telling me that is more performant the dps build and with experience I can survive with only 11k hp and 2500 of armor in high levels of fractal? XD

I came back after an year and half of stop and I’ve played with a warrior until lvl 36 of fractal. I started fractal with a full dps build and gear. When I arrived about the 30th lvl I replaced a berserker ring with thougness instead of ferocity and if I remember correctly I changed traits. I didn’t have a fix party for fractal expected that two people.

Yep that would be your goal. You can do most fractal with a meta build. I use some variation in trait and skill and keep range weapon for archdiviner because the second phase in the last fight is a bit suicidal in melee with most group (but i’m sure that some people melee it all the way). But otherwise i never take anything else than zerker.

But like i said you can take some other gear while you pratice. I just prefer to keep my gear zerker and swap trait when i need it. Don’t push it. If you can’t survive in full zerker take what you need. Better that you do a little bit less damage but survive the fight.

Here a list of what I had fun to do with my friend.

- Jumping Puzzle : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jumping_puzzle
- Mini Dungeon : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mini-dungeon (a bit of overlap between JP and Mini Dungeon
- Diving Goggles : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Diving_Goggles
- Lion’s Arch Exterminator : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lion%27s_Arch_Exterminator

Duo dungeon is also nice, but can be hard if you are not experimented in them already.

First of all about your gear.

The survivability from vitality and toughness is not worth it. You can use some if you lack confidence in your skills or you are relatively new, but your long term goal would be to have zero vitality and toughness. For Healing power, it’s debatable. It’s not a bad idea to have some healing power for high fractal. Especially if you want to trio them. It won’t be the best, but will make your running easier. So in the end. Zerker would be the best. Maybe some soldier pieces while you practice, but some zealot or cleric could be ok to put some more support.

Runes : Hp regen sould nice, but it’s pathetically low. The best choice would be Scholar or Flame Legion by far. If you want to support your party with heal, try Rune of the Monk. If you want pure surviability with AH build then try Rune of the Trooper. In my opinion take Flame Legion. Cheap, almost as good as scholar and easier to maintain the buff.

Sigils : Intelligence won’t help you much, while water heal is low unless you have a lot more healing power. Accuracy and Energy are good choice. You should try Force/Frailty. Probably the best choice for fractal in pugs. You could take Force/Energy or Frailty/Energy on your secondary weapon.

Weapons : GS + Hammer don’t work well together. Their dps together is low. You should GS or Hammer with a Mace or a Scepter with Torch or a Focus as off-hand.

First build: If you go for a shout AH build then here some modification. Pure of Voice over Force of Will. Way more powerful, it will give you less CD on shout and they will remove condition. You can even put rune of the trooper for more efficient shout (if you really want, but i still recommend flame legion as a rune). Take Receive the Light instead of the signet. With reduce cooldown RTL will but a big support skill for your party. TBH I don’t like AH.

Here my version of a Shout Support Guardian build for fractal. Radiance could be swap for Virtue for more support and the signet of bane can be swap for something else depending on the situation.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVMQNAR5dl8AhShYvQwQIQQEHxDVNAag6F3D/XWY3g89RB-TxRBABXp87m9HwT3TFXEAAeCAUq+jZKBDAcA87v5bfDO/8zP/8z78AA-e

Second Build : I’m not sure what’s the goal of that build. He seem a little over all over the place. First of all Signet of Courage will get you kill. It’s a 4 second cast time while you are root. I tried to use it and it’s never a good idea in combat.

Anyway, here my version of a Valor/Honor/Virtue DPS/Surviability/Suppor kind of build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVMQNAS7dlsAhqhYvQwZIwPEHNE1dY3yAAPBH3IkXh7rDA-ThhGwACV+Ja/hx6eAcQA+r+TUlgBAOAC8N48zP/8zPvzDAA-e

The goal here would be to have high personnal surviability because of monk’s focus, a bit of support with the consecration, perma protection while in melee, and still having a decent dps (but less dps then the first build). This build would be better for harder fight like Mosman and Mai Trin. But you would take Shield of Avenger for Mosman and Replace WoR for Mai Trin.