Guild Wars 2

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Offhand I can’t remember if I’ve ever actually affirmatively claimed that any build other than the formerly super broken Kit Refinement spamming engineer, and the current Fire Staff ele build, was the best DPS in the game

Well, you were right on kit refinement engineer build. Don’t know if it was the best DPS of the game, but that build was totally broken. But for the staff ele. Again, the first time you talk about it, it was in september 2013. But it was only in October 15 that persisting Flames was fixed and at December 10th, that Burning Rage was buff. When you first talk about that build, its was a good build, but not the TOP build it is now. Back then, LH S/X was a superior build all around, right now both these build are equally good. 1 give more might, while the other have better DPS.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

As far as I know I was the only one advocating DPS guardian back when everyone was on the Strife anchor AH/EM meta, and the responses back then were basically:

1) “u dum guard cant dps like hundred badle”
2) “lol lets see u survive in fractals 20+ without anchor”
3) “post 5guardian cof speedclear vid plz”

Then DPS ranger:

1) “lol show ranger vid beat hb damag”
2) “post 5ranger cof speedclear vid plz”

Then DPS staff ele:
1) “lol ele for lh blast, warrior for dps not other way around”
2) “post 5ele speedclear vid plz”

So now we’re just waiting on DPS engie to catch on since we got through the “post 5engie speedclear” phase already. I think some of the DnT guys were testing it and getting good results? I don’t really know or care, I know I’m right.

I was on Guru back in these days. You used Sw/F and Scepter/F in this Guardian DPS build. And it wasn’t the facts that Guardian could do good DPS that bugs people out. Its the facts that you said that he was the best DPS of the game. Even now, a DPS guardian only bring more DPS than a Warrior if he have Aegis on (but keeping aegis on, is not an easy task in harder content when you need Aegis to survive).

DPS ranger : I miss that one from you. Didn’t know you were advocate of Sword Ranger at the beginning so i won’t comment on that.

For Ele Staff? You were partially right. I think (but can’t confirm) that we were one of the first to advocate that the staff ele that camp fire is one of the best dps. But it wasn’t until December 10th, with the boost to Burning Rage that this build received more attention form people like DEKeyz2Chaos. After December 10th, it was definetively one of the best Ele build, before that, that’s questionnable. But since you started to talk about it in september, we can leave you the benefits of the doubt.

Engineer? Again, people didn’t like your post about that, not because you shown a good DPS engie build. But because you talked about how much the engie is the best DPS build of the game.

You usually bring good idea to the table (them that was hard to admit), but you are so full of yourself and alway scream how much THIS IS SO kitten, ITS THE BEST BUILD AND THIS PROFESSION IS THE BEST DPS OF THE GAME. This is the kind of bullkitten that make people jump and decide that they will attack your build right away.

Winterchillz, here some information on the weapons you can use.

Sword/Focus : Its a great DPS set. Sword have higher dps than greatsword on auto-attack, but lack the burst dmg from Whirlwind and the GS symbol. You also lack the condition removal that Light Field + GS attack 2 and 5 can give you (combo field that remove condition). You have access to 2 blind with Sw/F compare to only 1 with GS. Also the Sw/F give you access to a really powerful block. Sw/F give you good constant DPS with the best surviability in melee.

Greatsword : Like i said, you can Light Field + Whirlwind finisher for some condi removal for you and ally. Its also have great burst dps with skill 2 and 4, with access to 1 blind with skill 3. One of the 2 best DPS set of the guardian, it have less survivability than Sw/F. But the Skill 5 is powerful to group up mobs to cleave more of them at the same time. Its hard to choose between GS and Sw/F and that’s why a lot of people choose both.

Hammer : In PvE, the strenght of the hammer is the constant protection for auto-attack. But for that you need to change a bit the typical meta build. Not that useful in dungeon (you have plenty of survivability already), it is consider a great addition in high fractal since boss there often hit hard and have high amount of hp. Having constant protection for your party can allow your party to melee more things in Fractal and not range with lower dps.

Staff : Some people use it BEFORE a fight, so you don’t waste time on swapping cooldown never. But a lot of better way to have might. Personally, I use it only in TA for the blossom. Other than that, a lot of better weapon.

Scepter/Focus : Use to have that on me all the time. It a backup weapon set when you learn the game. But keep in mind that you can melee everything in dungeon (in fractal that can be a bit harder), if you can’t melee something in dungeon and you need to go in range, its ok, but you are doing something wrong and you have room to improve. Anyway, even now i keep my scepter in my inventory for some specific stuff in dungeon.

I would recommend you to use the meta build right now. Why? This will push you to learn how to use all the blind, aegis, reflect, etc which is a big part of the gameplay. Keep your current gear while you learn the weapons and build. Once you are comfortable with all that, then begin to change 1 piece at the time to berserker. Take your time, there is no rush.

You can do the otherway around like Lillith said. (I did it the same way Lillith did actually). But i had a hard time get used to F1 spamming and apply the blind/aegis on a good rotation. Using the meta build change the way to play a lot, making thing a lot easier after that when you change to less defense and more dps. Both ways are good, choose the best for you.

winterchillz.2564:

Hello, Lilith! Thanks for the kind reply, I was, in fact, expecting to be bashed. Indeed, you’re right but I still won’t underestimate it considering the fact that I rarely see any other might stacks except for my own staff, virtue of justice and crit hits.

It depend on your party. When i play with my guild, we always have 25 stack of mights while fighting. Elementalist and Warriors are far superior to give might than the guardian staff.

winterchillz.2564:

I main an AH (inb4youareuseless) hammer & staff/greatsword guardian

Can I get a place in a party or should I hop on my “meta” thief?

You can, but you will be a burden to most party. As long as you don’t join any zerker, experienced or speed run party you will be fine. And are you at least using full berserker gear with that setup? If not, then you really don’t want to be loved man. Using a WvW build, with WvW weapons and whatever gear you use in a Dungeon settings is pretty bad. Don’t get me wrong, you will complete the dungeon just fine, but the rest of your party will be carrying you through it and the longer fight will put additionnal pression on your teamate, who may die more often. You will rez them back up, thinking that you are doing just fine since you don’t die and they do, but you would be fooling yourself. I use to play AH Guardian with a mix of knight and zerker gear (but with GS and S/F). Eventually changing that to AH Guardian with full Zerker gear. Other characters were full offensive for PvE (Ele and Warrior), but i was always hesistant to go that direction on my Guardian. I used to loved that he was a bit tankier for some situation. But the truth is, i stay alive A LOT more with the typical full dps build on my guardian. With all the blind, aegis, etc i have a more fun gameplay, stay alive more, keep my hp higher than 90% more often and keep my party alive way more often by supporting them while doing a lot more dps.

You shouldn’t go for Ascended gear if you only do Open World and EotM train. There is really better at that, since its like the easiest things to do in the game (like Champ train). You better experimenting with exotikittenil you figure out what you want to do with your necromancer. Dungeon, fractal, sPvP, WvW pug zegging, WvW raiding, WvW roaming? There are the kind of content where crafting ascended gear make more sense. But the won’t need the same stuff. Dungeon and Fractal will need full Beserker, WvW raiding will need a mix of Berserk, Soldier or Knight (depend on what balance in stats you want), WvW roaming is more about conditions so things like Carrior, Dire, etc.

Sauzo.6821:

Staff is a horrible weapon for any class in PVE unless you are just tagging mobs in open world events. About the only one that it makes a semi decent weapon for is Ele but there are much better weapons like scepter/dagger or scepter/focus. PVPwise I cant speak there but from what I’ve heard there are better choices in PVP for classes that can use staff as well. So I’m not really sure why The Legend is so expensive other than it is one of the nicer looking legendaries, not too gaudy yet noticeable.

Like Lillith said, the Staff Ele with proper gear and trait are one of the best DPS of the game. S/D and S/F is popular because even if it have less DPS than Staff, it bring a kitten load of might. But on the other hand Staff Ele bring a constant fire field under the enemy that he and other member of the party can blast of a regular basis to keep 25 might for the whole fight.

Several talking points here.

1) Legendary is technically a superior Tier of gear. But the point of being against a new tier is because of the power creep it create. Legengary only bring cosmetic and quality of life advantage (stats swapping) over ascended gear. So i really don’t why there would be an argument against Legendary Armor because it a new tier.

2) Personnally, i don’t think that directly introducing Legendary Armor is a good thing. Legendary are pricy, but not that much. We see legendary on a regular basis now. I use to be exited and talk with my friend on Mumble each time we saw a legendary. Talked to the guys or just saying nice Sunrise or whatever to him. Now, even our newest players are used to see legendary at every corner of the game. But there is a good numbers of Legendary Weapons. Ya of course there is only 1 per weapon (except for GS), but still each profession have several choice of weapons meaning that not all profession have the same legendary. So even if Legendary weapons bring a problem now (since we see a lot of them, making them less than legendary), the problem would be worst with legendary Armor. They use 6 pieces to form a complete armor set, meaning that it cost anet roughly 5 or 6 times more money to create a set of armor compare to a weapons or a back item (that’s why back items and weapons are more often for free during even, while new armor are usually in the gem store). This mean, that if legendary armor would hit the game, it probably will be 1 set of armor per armor type (1 heavy, 1 medium and 1 light). It fine during the first months, but after a years, you will see a couple of Warrior that look exactly the same. I would prefer to have something like an Legendary Amulet that create a special aura or effect on my current armor so that you don’t eliminate mix-matching in everybody style and looks.

Greatsword used to be the priciest precursor of them all. But since them, i suppose that a lot of people already have their GS so they go for other legendary, while new players already see that many Sunrise and Dawn everywhere so they go for another legendary weapons. At least that my guest based on nothing, but my opinion

Anyway, staff precisely is also a really good PvP weapon for the Necro, Mesmer and Guardian, while being a ToP weaons for the PvE Elementalist.

In a speed run, you can do all of them in 3 hours if you are quick (remember you have to change map, salvage or sell stuff, etc.), but you need a freaking good group for that. IN A PUG. No chance that you can do that in 3 hours.

Between 5 and 9 hours is a more realistic time for a pug.

I think some WvW gear can, but most of them can’t. Karma can’t, but Dungeon its ok.

Keep in mind that armor in mytic forge don’t give you any chance of getting a precursor.

You should check out the wardrobe. Preview every single pistol and shield on your character until you find out which one fit the best. It can take time (but not that much) and that way you are sure which skin looks the best for you.

- First, you mean trinkets, accessory is a specific trinkets (also known as Earing).

- Second, keep in mind that accessory trinkets are unique so you can only have 1 of each kind. If you want to berserker rings you need 1 with offensive and a second with defensive infusion.

Here the way you find get trinkets :
- Rings : You can buy it with Laurel at a Laurel Vendor, you can buy it with laurel and badge of honor at a WvW Laurel Vendor or you can buy it with Pristine from Fractal. The best way would be fractal pristine. You only need to do 20 fractals, which is a good amount and anyway like you’ll see, fractal is also the best way to get a ascended back item so do both at the same time.
- Accessories : Laurel + Ectos from the laurel vendors or guild commendations. The laurel vendor is a scam, its way too costly. If you can do guild missions, guild commandation is the way to go 100%. If you can’t do guild missions, then go the the laurel + ectos i suppose.
- Back items : Fractal back item or mystic forge recipes. The normal recipe in the mystic forge cost a lot. Go ahead if you like the skin or you hate fractal, but other than that, fractal is the way to go.

You can drop a ascended rings while doing daily fractal. It may not be the ring that you need so watch out.
You can drop any ascended trinket except for a back item when you get a level chest from WvW or a chest from guild missions. But its really random, and you shouldn’t plan on getting what you want with that.

Well I remember that during the first couple month of the game, there were no legendary on the TP at all. Then 1 by 1 over a couples of weeks they began to appear in the TP. It was a long time ago and at that time i wasn,t really interested in Legendary (now i have 3).

So I don’t know if at first the legendary initially were account-bind on acquire and souldbind on equip and then at some point they remove the accound-bind on acquire so people could sell them.

Or if it was never accound bind on acquire and it simply that everybody making legendary during the first months were keeping them and then suddently people start to sell them. It’s possible, but I find it unlikely since I remember that they all start to appear on the TP in like 2-3 weeks after like 3-4 months since the game release.

I don’t seem to be able to find out any information about Anet changing the legendary status last year, so i don’t know.

Some advice

- Don’t do 1 part of the game repetitively, except if that’s what you want. When factal was realease, i use to play with 2 of my friends. We were doing fractal 1 to 2 times per days until we reached level 49. I had a great time then. Now, it good if i do fractal once a week, but each time I do a fractal run, i have a great time. You don’t need to do fractal each day, but you neither need to stop fractal completely. Same with each part of the game.

- Bigger guilds are not personnal if you make it impersonal. ALWAYS BE ON VOIP. I can’t talk for everybody, but when I play, i talk with the people in mumble and decide with them what we gonna do next. We give all our idea of what to do next. Someone I don’t know and follow someone else that want to do a specific dungeon, other times nobody know and we discuss to find out, other time we all have different idea and after a discussion we spit everybody in 2 groups to do 2 differents things and other time I end up playing alone because i want to do something specific that nobody else want to do. Once we figure out what to do next, then we ask on the guild chat to complete our group. And most of the time, when someone else in the guild chat ask for a specific dungeon or something else, we are already doing something, so we either don’t see it or answer no thanks. For someone in the VOIP my guild is social and personnal, for someone no in it, its pretty impersonal. And remember that guild is not either big of small, a lot of medium guild out there.

- Be proactive or lucky. I’m proactive. So I give a lot of time for my guild, make it grow and get people closer together and now my guild is closer than ever. I wanted to get better in dungeon and make speed run. So i formed a speed run group, identifying people that wanted the same thing in my guild and we agreed to specific build and learn together the best way to run specific dungeons. I wanted to do more WvW, so I found a raiding guild, join it and now 6 of my guildmate are in this guild with me doing raid 5 times a week (this became my main activity in GW2). See, I’m proactive and got the stuff I wanted and several of my guildmate are lucky and now they can do stuff that I did and they also want to do. You can be proactive or lucky, your choice. Its all about the people you play with and if you are willing or not to find those people are play the stuff that you prefer. It the same thing with life. I like to play hockey, but the hard part is to find a team, and get it organized so we can play together on a regular basis.

Its too vast to explain something in a post, you will need to play the game with a character to learn the base. But there some things to help you choose a profession to pick. There is basically 3 modes you can play in the game. PvE (dungeon, fractals, world boss, etc), sPvP and Roaming (small encounter, 1v1, etc), WvW Zerg vs Zerg (Big encounter, raid, organized group or big pug blop, etc).

In each of these ’’mode’’ you can get things done with any profession. There is no profession that so freaking bad, that you can’t complete any stuff with it. (whatever some ppl say, if you are a good player with a good build, even the worst profession can do better than most people in this game) But there is better profession at some of these modes.

PvE : Warrior, Elementalist, Guardian, Thief and Mesmer are the best for that. Engineer can do a decent job, while Ranger and Necro have a really bad reputation.

sPvP and WvW Roaming : Mesmer, Necro and Thief are some of the best at this, but pretty much any profession can do a great job. Keep in mind that things move around a lot in sPvP with some build being flavour of the month before people figure out how to beat the new build more frequently. So things can change a lot even with no new patch.

WvW Zerg : If you are in a pug blop, numbers is the way to go, so you want only someone that survive and do AoE. Profession like Warrior, Guardian, Necro, Elementalist, and Engineer are the best at that. If you want to go more into organized group, Warrior, Guardian, Necro and Elementalist will form the core of your group with Thief and Mesmer filling some specific roles.

Well you don’t seem to enjoy too much the game. It’s normal to get bored at some point at that kind of game. But the last time i got bored i had play for 6 months and my guild was dying so I was most of the time alone. I quit during the summer and then get back in april.

But you played 3 weeks only. And not much more a year ago. You only touched the surface of the game and you are already bored? Its really not a game for you it seem. I can understand someone that did dungeon master, get 2-3 alts level up and gear up in exotic, reach level 40-50 in fractals maybe got 1 legendary and don’t like WvW and sPvP. For this kind of people, ya get bored is normal even if you like the game and this person should take a break of the game for a couple of months. But again you seem more like you don’t really enjoy the game except for a tiny part that get done in a couple of weeks only.

Sadly in PvE, Bezerker is always the best options.

In PvP (sPvP or WvW), this is not the case. But for PvE, conditions is bad since the stacks is cap so you will always dimisnish the dmg of someone else. Healing Power is bad simply because its scale horribly. Toughness and Vitality is good, but you don’t need them in PvE. You can do a great job at surviving stuff in PvE wihtout them, you just need to use your active defence and get a better knowledge of the encounter. Boons duration is good, but exempt with trait and runes, you will only get a really small amount of boons duration at the expense of high amount of other stats that are better. You can use other stats than Beserker, mainly if you are learning you want a passive defense to keep you alive, when you are simply casual and don’t really want to have a difficult time playing for only a couple of hours, or if you are simply not good enough to play full Berserk, and several other reasons (good or not).

DonQuack.9025:

VideoGamermike.5813:

FenrirSlakt.3692:

The game isn’t antisocial, a part of its community is.

I kind of didn’t want to say it but…well, I certainly didn’t help things a few days ago but yah…theres a group that seems to want to farm as much gold as fast as possible over enjoying the game and making friends. I would happily add 2 weeks to my legendary farming if it got me good friends.

Id hate to be those guys. I farm as fast as I can and enjoy the game and make friends.

Same thing here. But I have a secret. Shhh. I made friend with a lot of people in my guild. Shhhhhh. And then we figure out together what we want to do and it end up that most of the time we just want to play together and that we play the same thing and do the same thing together and have fun and make gold and its like it was a game all along. SHhhhhhhhh. Its a secret.

Like i said SkyFierce go on gw2crafts.net if you don’t want to waste material, gold and time.

For your question, the answer is no. People that craft their armor as they level up are usually new players only. Its one of the worst way to gear up. By playing normally, you should get some gear anyway and I usually complete that with gear that I buy on the TP. This gear is either things that other people had craft or pick up while playing. There is so many people crafting to level up that the price of that kind of stuff is less than the cost for crafting it, so you win there and you don’t need to waste time and money to level up your profession before crafting the item you need.

Crafting is in a weird place in GW2. Right now :
- Chef is good to have a 400 to craft food that cost more on the TP.
- Artificer is good at low level to combine essence of luck and fractal infusion
- Aritifcer, Weaponsmith, Huntsman, Armorsmith, Leatherworking and Tailoring is good at 500 to craft end game gear.
- Legendary always need some crafting to level 400

And that’s pretty much it. There is some other specific things you can craft other than that, but for the most part there is always a better way than crafting to get the stuff you want.

Any profession can be used to complete everything in PvE and have a lot of fun while doing it. Its just that some profession are better than others.

PvE : Ele, Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer and Thief are better, while Rangers, Necro and Engie are at the bottom

sPvP and Roaming : Mesmer, Necro and Thief are at the top, but pretty much any profession can do a great job.

WvW : Guardian, Warrior, Ele and Necro dominate here with the Mesmer are a top class addition (but only in small number). Engie can more than a decent job and thief have specialist jobs (but other than that, they don’t bring much).

Keep in mind that Power damage is king in PvE and Beserker gear with offensive build are what you should looking for (if you can handle it) and that is for ALL profession. Necro is better at condition, but condition is bad in PvE and that’s why its not the best profession in PvE, but is one of the best in sPvP.

There is mean people everywhere. And maybe they simply had a gold seller harassing them in the last couple of days with a similar names to your friend. Maybe that’s why they did that.

Anyway, the best reaction is not letting that get to you. Its only word on a screen after all. She could had block them, so she would not see what they were saying after. A report of what they already said was easy after that.

1) Exotic will be your first end-game gear if you want. That will be one of your first step as a level 80. Its relatively easy to get and do the job for pretty much anything you can do in the game. Ascended is a bit better (but not that much if you compare it to the higher price), but cost a lot more. You can craft it, or hope for a drop that will fix the stats you need. That is only for ascended armor and weapons. If you talk about ascended trinkets, then for several of those, its easier to get the ascended version over the exotic (rings and amulet at least). Legendary is at the same level as a ascended (stats wise). The two advantage of a legendary is the possibility to swap stats when out of combat and the look of the legendary (THE main reason to craft a legendary is the look). But they cost even more than ascended. Usually someone that play on a regular basic (like 40+ hours per week) will get a legendary in about 3 months. But this can range from 1 month to 1 year depending on your luck and how much gold you can make when you play.
2) In sPvP, its all about skill. If you are better you win, if you have worst you lose. In WvW, a lot more come into play (for the better or the worst). If you can go into a big kitten Zerg, your errors won’t really change anything. You’ll only be 1 part of a big machine. As you get better in WvW, you can do more. Scout, Upgrade, etc. You also get better at fighting and can start to Roam for some fight against less people or join a raiding guild for organized fight on a larger scale.
3) Mist is like a alternate dimensions. Its only a nice escuse for Anet to do pretty much anything they want. WvW, sPvP and Fractal don’t really mix well in the GW2 universe, so all of that are in the ’’Mist’’. Its blurry, its hard to tell what it is, so nobody will ask questions. And if they do, well its in the mist guys, no need for explanation. For Fractal specifically. Its like a pool of several smaller dungeon and a pool of 3 different boss. Each time you complete a fractal, the game choose 3 random small part and 1 boss and that’s what you gonna do. It also scale in difficulty from 1 to 50. I suggest you to find out about the mentor topic on the dungeon forum for people to show you fractal since its kind of complicated. Also, its really hard to go into one by your own and figure out everything by yourselves. Fractal is not really hard, just a lot of information to figure out at the beginning.

go on gw2crafts.net

It will help you to level up your crafting as fast as possible, with the less quantity of material possible.

If it affect the auto-attack or not is irrelevant. The cooldown on auto-attack is zero, so event if you reduce that of 20%, you still have zero cooldown.

1) Balance in sPvP and WvW. I only play my thief and guardian in these two mode, so i can’t talk about other professions. For the thief, i’m still using the D/D power build, but it harder now. You can’t burst down people as much so fight are longer. But i’ll still comfortable with it. A new trait for the thief give confusion on steal. This give a huge advantage for a cheesy Condition Damage Thief in sPvP. Its even worst in WvW if you had perplexity runes. Its a intelligent move to use this kind of build since condition wasn’t nerf compare to direct damage. But i feel it cheesy since you simply pact the guys on confusion and poison and let him kill himself. I couldn’t do kitten against my friend that was using this build the first times i played against him. But over time you are limited in this build since you mainly have dps from you steal, which have a long enough cooldown to leave you vulnerable if the guys can evade or clear the condition fast. Mesmer and Necro are still some of the best profession for PvP content.

2) Economy. Precursor prices rise of about 25-40% since the announcement of the wardrobe, making Legendary way more expensive that there were a couple months ago. Ascended prices stabilize a bit, so you can get the material you need at a lower price. But it still time gate as hell so you’ll need a couple weeks or month to get 1 full ascended gear, except if you don’t mind paying A LOT more gold to have your stuff fast. But if your patient and play a good amount of time, you can accumulate the stuff you need for your ascended at about the same rate you can craft with the time gate. Meaning that if you take your time, ascended gear is really not that high in price.
3) Making gold. Playing the TP is always the best way and more riskier way to make gold. Other than that, Dungeon is pretty good, champ train is ok (but i find it boring).
4) Transfer and guild. There is so much option for that. The server your in don’t change a thing when it come to sPvP. And with the new megaserver, this change almost nothing in PvE neither. Server is really about WvW right now. So if you are really into that you can change specifically for that. BG, JQ, TC and SoR are the top competitive server, but mainly because they have people all the time. If you can join them (sometime there are full), you probably gonna have to be in a queue most of the time you wanna play in WvW. MAG, DB, HoD, FA, YB and SBI have good numbers too. Except in prime time, you shouldn’t have difficulty with Queue and for some of them, even in prime time not all maps are full. For most of the other server, you usually won’t have enough people to queue a map except on some occasion like in reset night or things like that, and its usually only 1 or 2 map that are queue. You can try to find a good guild for you while still staying in your server. And when you feel that you found a good guild, then transfer.

GW2 in PvE is all about not getting hit. You need to use everything in your kitten nal to evade, dodge, block, reflect, be invulnerable, etc. These are the keys to survive in GW2 PvE. Toughness, Vitality and Healing Power are only training wheels in PvE. A good numbers of players, once they are comfortable with their character use almost zero of these defensive stats.

Its not about your build or your gear, its about the way you play. But its ok, its normal to not really know what to do at the beginning. With time you get used to dodge these big attack.

hedix.1986:

Max Lexandre.6279:

That would be possible, but when something goes wrong when doing the dungeon, it’s blame the “non zerker” phase as the boss didn’t died fast enough and we wiped.
The elitism on this game it’s only growing and only damaging the community itself, being very un-friendly for new players.…

I’m sorry, but it is not elitism, it is just a) reading the LFG post, and b) understanding how GW2 works. Usually if a problem starts in PUGs, it is because the boss didn’t die fast enough, and that’s because DPS wasn’t high enough. That is why when people want smooth and fast runs, they write “zerk only”. If you don’t agree, don’t join them. If you want to play something more suitable to say a PVT build, go to WvW.

Again, it isn’t elitism, it is just adapting to requirements of different game modes.

The friendly thing to new players is to teach them how to play the game in the best possible way for everyone – and that is often telling them to ’zerk up.

Sometime ya. When its about good player that want to run full zerker. But a lot of people out there don’t know what they are talking about. They hear full zerker, full zerker, they change their build and think that they are soo good. They use do a certain strategy in dungeon, but they don’t understand everything that need to be done so that the stack work. They go on their own way, brining people in a run that they will screw up without knowing it and then blame it on the other. Because it can be them, they have zerker gear and they do as usual and its suppose to work. So they simply put the blame on the others.

Exemple : Someone who don’t let the Agent Spire agro the champion Wolf first so he make the group wipe. And then blame everyone about it.

I never talk about that with pugs.

- If they are new, they need to experiment the game like we were able to.
- If they are casual, they usually don’t give a crap about stats. They have fun with a build and any build can work. So I usually, just let them have fun.
- If they are not new, not casual, but still run some staff healing build. Then trying to talk to them will only result in clash and ruin the run.

I concentrate on the people I can change, which are my guildmate. Even there, I never approach them with the information directly. I never say to them, in PvE take full zerker and learn to play. No, I let them ask me. They are not stupid, if they join us in our VOIP, they will hear us talk about zerker and build, and criticize and laugh at these clerics guardian. Usually, a lot of them eventually ask me or the other officer for some help for a build or simply to explain them why conditions or healing power is so bad in PvE.

Personnally, I find Dragonite already easy enough to get.
- You got Keep for WvW, which not is good enough,
- You got World Boss for PvE. You could make a lot of them with a world boss train, and now its easier to do the normal world boss with the megaserver (not talking about Teq of Triple Wurm)
- You got some reward track in sPvP. Which is the least efficient way of doing it, but it better than the nothing we used to get and its fun to play.

Dungeon is already a good way to earn gold and gear up in exotic, no need to make it a good way to earn dragonite. You need a balance of reward between the different things you can do in the game. Not concentrate everything in 1 aspect, making it the only efficient thing to do in it.

Rasimir gave you a great answer. I’ll only add a few item.

- Find a good guild for you. This can be hard and you’ll need a bit of luck to find the right guild. Guildmates (if they are the right ones) can give you a LOT of advices, help you throught content, give you information that took them hours to figure out by themselves, and simply make the game way more fun to play (its a MMO after all, its designed to be played with other people, not alone like in a normal RPG). Big guild, will give you access to more buffs and usually are more organized. They will make some guild events like WvW raid, Guild Missions, World Boss train, etc. But usually, you need to make a place for yourselves in this kind of guild. If you are new, they gonna answer your question, but they have plenty of people to play with, so if you stay in your corner, they will usually forget you there. On a smaller guild, you will have less stuff, but more chance that they will get out of their routine to help you and they will try to show you stuff you don’t even know exist. But for that, you need to make a bit of effort. If you stay in your corner, they will eventually, just let you there too. Say hi in the guild chat, talk with the other when there is a discussion in the guild chat, GO INTO THEIR VOIP that make all the difference in the world.
- Jumping Puzzle are freaking awesome if your into that. Its better when you can do it with 1 or several friends. When I did this with my friend , we hard a really good time. Of course he and I are fan of jumping puzzle in every game we play together, but still. Its a really nice way to go around Tyria.

I could say, like everybody else, that AP doesn’t matter. Don’t give a crap about those who say something because of your low AP, it mean almost nothing. Play as you want and that’s it. But i don’t think that its what you want to hear.

Will you catch up with the rest of us at 10k+ AP? With the 4k AP from the temporary content that you can’t do anymore and the 7k AP from the daily and monthly since the beginning of the game, no there is no chance that you can catch up. That said, you don’t necessarily need to catch up the top of the chart. To be honest, most people care about AP only if you have less than 1k. Because at that point, you are basically new at the game, and that make people worry when it come to dungeon. At 3K AP, nobody will say anything, except for some specific speed run that ask for a specific amount of AP (but even if I have 12k AP, I went into only 1 of those run). Here two advice for you.
1) Find you another guild. Pugs that don’t know you, you can understand. They don’t have much to figure out if you gonna slow them down and make their run a living hell, or if your ok. That’s why they use AP, its a terrible indicator, but that’s the only one they got. But in your own guild? Either, they really have a high opinion of themselves or you simply play so little with them, that they know you as much as a pug. Anyway, changing of guild is maybe a good idea.
2) Go for the AP if you really want to have a good amount. Not all of them are easy to get, but a lot of them are. The bosses achievement are nice to do, except maybe Triple Wurm (it can be hard to do if you never done it before). Jumping Puzzle were a blast to do with my friend. If you are into that and you do that with someone else, it a couple of day of fun while doing your AP. The WvW season 2 is up, its a 259 AP easy to get if your into that. Map completion is something that most people try to do. While doing it, you can complete several achievement. And of course the monthly and daily is a great source of AP if you do them everytime.

BEST
- No Subcription : I can give Anet some money if I want and get things that I want. I’m happy to give them my money when I do.
- Cooperation over Competition : There is no competition between player for ressources, rewards, events, quests, etc. That give us a better in-game community.
- Visual : The design, the style and quality is pretty good for a MMO.
- Alt Friendly : Character are easy to level up and gearing up in exotic take almost no time. Even casual player usually have more than 1 character and that’s great.
- Level Adjustement : You don’t end up throwing content and maps in the garbage because they are too low level. Worlds Events, Dungeons and other, even at low level are still done on a regular basis, while map like Queensdales are some of the most popular maps.

WORST
- Game optimization is horrible : All on the CPU, if you don’t have a good computer, you WILL lag.
- WvW poor organization : Fight for your server is a great idea, but the way they did it, you always dominate or being dominated. There is some exception when you can find 1-2 servers that is similar with you in numbers and coverage, but that rare and usually don’t last long.
- The Personal Story : Even the first time, its not best time of the game when you complete that. Bad storytelling, long boring actions, etc. And all that end up with one of the worst final boss fight ever in the video game history.
- New Content : There is bad choice in that. For me its simply a waste of precious developping ressources. Temporary content, achievement hunting, boring content. Not all new content were bad (fractal, Tequalt, Marionnette, SAB, etc). But a lot of money and ressources were thrown out the window.
- Bad Balance in PvE : With Necro and Rangers being so bad in PvE, with direct damage being the only way to go, with several gearing option being useless, with condition damage so useless, there is a lot to fix there to improve the game.

Stooperdale.3560:

There’s an attitude amongst many players, not the hardcore MMO players usually, that the game is there to be experienced. Challenges are there to be faced. Some sort of skill and capability brings success and fun. This is quite different from an attitude that believes the game is there for virtual gold and the challenge and experience is boring. Selling dungeons relies on the second attitude and it offends people with the first attitude. The natural question is why people would spend their real life time buying a path for virtual gain and virtual rewards if they don’t actually enjoy playing the game themselves.

That is so wrong. But its ok. People of a particular group usually have problem to figure out how a second group work or think.

Usually the people that buy are not people that don’t like the game or find that challenge and experience is boring. That would be silly and that is just an untrue, lazy explanation. These people all have motivation of their own. Usually, either they don’t like Dungeons in general (the game is huge, they could prefer to do WvW or sPvP, etc and they could be casual or hardcore), or they like dungeon but don’t have time or don’t want to do someone specific. Here several legits reason to buy a path :

1) I want to level up a character fast. Because i already level up 3-4 characters, i don’t really want to do the leveling again. I did the content like 3-4 weeks ago and I don’t want to do it again. I just want to have a level 80 quickly so i can do the stuff i like with it. So why not just buy a couples of dungeon to level up fast so I can spend my time playing with other character that i prefer to play with and when the new character is level 80, then i can start to play the content I like with him and not forcing myself into 20-30 hours of content I don,t want to do anymore.
2) I’m a hardcore WvWers. I play several hours per days to help my server and my guild to outperform the enemies. But i really hate PvE and just don’t get how people can be interested in playing againt NPC when you can play against real human that react differently each time. So except a couple of stuff with some friend i never play PvE. But i’m an hardcore WvWers and I want my looks to be epic so I want a legendary. But kitten , i’m suppose to do 8-9 path of a single dungeon over and over again. I don’t like PvE, i don’t even have a PvE build, i don’t know and don’t want to know the dungeon. Then i’ll just buy a couple run of the dungeon and get the thing done without forcing me into a content that I don’t appreciate.
3) I’m casual players and i play with my casual friends. It took us several months to get to level 80 and we started to go into dungeons We only play together and we usually have only 1-2 hours when we play. We tried Arah once, but after 3 hours everybody were really frustrated and we all had to go. But still, we want some pieces of equipment from Arah to gear up our characters or some of us want the Dungeon Master title. We do everythings else for title, but Arah is just too long for the time we can put in the game. We can simply buy some Arah path and be done with it, so we can continue to play the part of the game that we enjoy.

These are some pretty good reason why to buy a path. For the sellers, they just like to solo (its a challenge for them) and they can make money out of it, because there is a market for that.

Vespero.6180:

Sadly all what had to be said to produce something good was said. and nothing happened.

No, you mean that you said all you wanted in the game, but none or only a small portion of what you find the more interesting was done. So you feel that the game suck and it’s not worth playing.

And that’s ok. Its a game, after all, with millions of people that played it at some point (for 5min or for 18 months). Its not designed to be perfect for everybody, and It can’t be designed that way anyway. Some people find it perfect for them, other like it even if they would prefer to have several things done differently, and for other this game it really not right for them.

Now complaining about something particular its something that is interesting. I don’t like the megaserver because that make my life harder when i try to do Tequalt, but they could fix that by several ways and you can have a discussion about which way is the best. Its an interesting discussion.

But when you come in the forum and say, its a freaking beta game, so much things is missing in this game and 90% of the players are just waiting for the real game. They done NOTHING in the game to improve it. Then you don’t sound like someone looking for answer or to engage in a discussion. You just sound like you need to shout your frustration with the game on the forum. If you don’t enjoy the game because some stuff that you want is not in it, or you feel that the game don’t get enough new content, then you can complain about that in particular. If after 18 months nothing change and the game is still not going in the direction you would like it to go, then let it go and change of game.

Here a list of stuff you can do to get your legendary.

- High Level Fractal : If you have a reward level of 50 and completing a level 40 you get the most Karma out of it, which is 9600. A level 40 can be done in about 1 hour with an average group.
- Dungeons : Won’t give you much Karma, but you will need much other stuff and the best way to get those are usually by buying them with Gold, and dungeon will give a good amount of this. Also, dungeon token is a really good way to get Ectos. (btw CoE is priceless to get the charged core and lodestone that you need for your Bolt).
- Edge of the Mists Train : In edge of the mist, you will usually find a zerg and Its a really good way to earn karma and level up some alts. Karma is directly good for your goal, alt is also a good thing to have. Several alts can help you a lot to get money or gathering stuff a bit each day. Don’t really like Edge of the Mists so i don’t really know if you can level up your WvW level in there.
- WvW Zerg : You can do several things in WvW. I prefer by far Zerg raiding or Roaming, but these are not the most efficient way to get some level (except if you have a good raiding team). A easier way is to get into a karma train (a huge zerg that flip tower and keep). For me its boring, but you gonna level up your rank and gain karma at a good rate.
- Daily : this seem weird, but daily are really good for a legendary. You get some mystic coin, but they aren’t that important, the best is the laurel that you can use to buy Tier 6 for you might and magic gift.

Here some advice from your specific question.
- Pacing? A journey to a legendary is a marathon not a sprint. For a regular player it gonna take about 3 months to get a legendary so take your time and don’t rush into it.
- Favourite farming spot? I really don’t like to farm. Don’t do a specific farm only to get a specific material for your legendary. Usually, you just gonna get tired of it and quit. You better to play area of the game that get you most reward and buy the things that you aint getting.
- Farming rotation? Do as you want, its a game don’t impose you a schedule.
- sPvP? It a lot better than it used to. But still not a efficient way to get rewards for a legendary. If you like sPvP, play it. But don’t go there is you only search for more ways to get the stuff you need.
- Artificer? Make an alt. Like i said, they are really useful (are they are fun to build in my case). gw2crafts.net is a really good website that give you all you need to craft your way to 400 or 500 if you want. Artificer is one of the easiest and cheapest profession to level up so its really not a big deal.

I think the best way to level up in PvP would be by following the Zerg in Edge of the Mist. I don’t level up any of my character anymore (have 1 level 80 for each professions), but a lot of guildmates started to use that method and they usually all get like 5 levels per hours.

Just to clarified what some people said about the banner not working on player that have poison or agony. Its not totally true.

The Banner revive for exactly 100% of the hp of a downed person. So if that player have poison you will only revive him of 66% and if he have agony, you will only revive him of 50%. So you can still revive someone that have agony or poison, but you need to be really quick before his downed hp drop below these value.

Zylonite.5913:

Thaddeus.4891:

Ya human being are so rude, Anet should ban them, they are toxic to the community.

No where on my post I mentioned that ANet should ban anyone. Not sure why you got that impression. I don’t think anyone should be banned….just saying this kind of behavior should get more attention from ANet, otherwise what is the point of LFG tool.

But that’s my opinion. Since when I can’t say that don’t like human. But ok

Ya human being are so rude, Anet should look at all LFG post and make a moral judgement and delete in real time all of those that don’t fit their values.

But seriously. That’s what normal people do, they are not bad people or good people they just don’t think about everything that could happen and just play the game as they want.

Hey I want to do a casual run, lets post a LFG. Oh kitten a level 38 join my AC run. Didn’t think of that. But I don’t want to run with a low level. I don’t want to carry him, i don’t know all the other guys in the group, maybe they are all bad and the run could end up a nightmare. kitten that, i’ll just kick him.

Hey I want to do a casual run, lets post a LFG. Oh kitten this guys don’t stack like the last 30 pugs did? People still don’t know or want to stack here? Didn’t think of that. That screw up things since we are not on the same page and now the party get wipe because of that. I can either have a conversation or 20min with the guys in the middle of a 15min run or …. kitten that i’ll just kick him.

Hey I want to do a speed run, lets pots a LFG where i ask for Zerker. Oh kitten, a lot of other people ask for zerker without asking for gear check, but I want to gear check because in the past a lot of people join me on kittenty build and leach on my run even I a speed run is exactly what i asked for. Oh but ya, the LFG description is not all shown if its too long, so nobody saw my the gear check but i don’t know that, so i get upset so kitten that i’ll kick.

Ya Anet should really look into all those random events and do something about normal messy human interaction that happen all the time.

8 characters
8 level 80
2 World Completions, 1 other at 50%

Ya channelling skill are a weakness when you stealth. And even if I find that pretty annoying while i’m playing my thief this is not a reason to change it. I’m pretty annoyed when someone kill me, that’s not a reason to nerf everything that kill me.

Stealth is already powerful, either on Thief or Mesmer. Some say its even OP right now. Not sure about that, its more that people don’t know how to play against stealth in most case, but that’s just my opinion. So I don’t see why they should change that particular thing. If they do, stealth will become more powerful that it already is, maybe too powerful since you could use stealth to basically block any channelling skill, that would be really powerful when you figure out how to use it.

Ya human being are so rude, Anet should ban them, they are toxic to the community.

Veril.9408:

You don’t need to kill stuff underwater. You just need to start with 2 bloodlust and after getting 25 switch sigils on land weapon (switch weapons).

I assumed that because Strength and Bloodlust count as attribute enhancers they don’t stack (it says it right in the tooltip). Are you sure they both stack together?

It don’t work since the patch, they changed that. You need to have the weapon with the bloodlust equip on your character if you want to keep your bloodlust.

At first I didn’t get why you asked for feedback, but only giving us your stats, not your build. But i know why now.

You went all the way to give yourself the best stats possible, but by doing that i’m pretty sure your build overall is probably bad. But i’ll give you the benefice of the doubt if you actually can post a link to your build. That’s the only way we can comment on it.

You have the effect from the signet of Might even if you don’t have it equipped??? Either bug or BS. For PvE, your build have terrible stats. At LEAST stop using the dolyak signet in PvE lol. You already have such a high amount of defensive stats. Overall, this is build is not even a hybrid and I recommend to nobody to use it in PvE. Especially, since you need to add the fact that you use Hammer so probably your trait are pretty bad for PvE. For WvW its seem better, at least stats wise.

I just don’t get why you would use almost the exact same things in WvW and PvE. You really need to change weapons and trait (with is something really easy to do now). The best would be to also change your gear, but that’s not for everybody I know. So you could have end up with a compromise gear with different trait and weapons for PvE and WvW.

Again i don’t know what you are trying to achieve here by now putting any link of you trait.

Before the path, with sigil, good, oil and gear you could reach a good balance of power and precision from several combination. During the last month a lot of people were using 3 pieces of assassins and 3 of berserker. But with the patch and the nerf to crit damage, assassins become less and less attractive so most people simply stop using it.

Like Hayashi said, if you are serious about it, you need to calculate it. He gave you a lot of information to do so. A nice little shortcut was the golden ratio of precision over power. The ratio help you to balance the two stats quickly to reach the best damage. Its not perfect, but its a quick way to do it if you don’t want to do the math over and over for several character and several build. Didn’t do the math since the path and I don’t know if someone posted a new version of these ratios yet, but i’m sure someone will.

I’m not complaining about the new formats for the daily. Its actually better I think. I love to be able to do a dungeon, then 1 sPvP match, then a bit of WvW and daily done.

But what i find strange is that now we have 12 daily total for everything. We used to have 12 daily for PvE/WvW and 4 for sPvP + 2 for Arenas. So for these day where I want to do PvE only, then i have less choice and for the first time in a long time, i had to watch out for my daily because by only playing like i normally do, i would not had completed the daily. Same with sPvP. Some day I would only have 1 hour to play, so i went into sPvP did 3-4 matches and when by the time I logged off, the daily was completed by sPvP alone. But now you can’t do that anymore.

Its nice to be able to complete your daily for different game mode, but why force people to play these different modes? I won’t affect me most of the time, because i like all three mode. But sometime will only want to do 1 part of the game and other people dislike some part of the game.

Most of the people that post against the nerf (and I’m one of them) is because of 3 reason.

1) They get that Anet nerf crit damage as a step to have more build diversity and not only direct damage build for PvE. But its such a bad and ineffective way to do that. They need to fix condition damage in group or bring a support that need more link to you build. Nerfing crit damage don’t help to bring more build diversity. Its just a useless nerf.
2) The 10% nerf to damage was a half truth. Yup it work for some build. But a lot of stuff wasn’t count and a lot of people end up with a 15%, 20% or even 25% nerf.
3) Divinity stuff was not only nerf harder, but it lose its identity. Its was an hybrid gear that got most of their damage from crit damage. And now its only a hybrid gear will small damage. With the low power they have, Divinity NEED a high amount of crit damage to be worth something.

This post is so bad. There is people that actually did the math and there is an issue with their statements of 10% nerf. Its a real issue that Anet need to hear. But that post is simply non sense.

You check the critical damage nerf, not the damage nerf. So right there, you have no credibility. You also compare different gear like a weapon and some trinket. OF COURSE THEY NERF THE ASCENDED TRINKETS MORE. They said it clearly that they want to balance the critical damage so that every piece of gear was equal. Before the patch, the ascended trinket were far better to give crit damage than any other piece of gear. So they nerfed crit damage for armor and weapons by a smaller factor and nerfed the ascended trinket by a far superior factor so they get equal. That’s not news, that a good move actually.

Its bad because like i said, the 10% damage nerf for a full DPS toon was a lie (or more of an half truth) by Anet. But that kind of post don’t help us at all.

Extractors work, but they cost SO MUCH. It cheaper to buy another one than buy an extractor for all runes and sigil except 1 (the sigil of generosity).

If you buy 25 upgrade extractor it will cost you 200 gems for each of them. (If you buy less it will cost you more per extractor).

200 Gems cost 19.42 Gold to get right now. Even the Sigil of Bursting (the second more expensive upgrade) cost ’’only’’ 15 gold if you buy it directly. Why would anybody buy an extractors.

Now, the facts that you can’t transmute a rune like you were able too in the past is a bit annoying.

There is a lot of stuff wrong here. First of all they always said that the 10% damage nerf was for a full zerker toon. And for that specific statement, they are right.

For most toons. If you go full zerker, you gonna get around a 10% nerf to your damage (or about 25-35% nerf to your crit damage). But its not a 10% nerf for everything.

1) Celestial Gear is another problem. Since most of their damage come from crit-damage, then the nerf affected them the most. They made some adjustment to limit that by boosting the stats, but now the nature of the gear is completely broken.
2) The 10% nerf don’t take into account only the gear, not the skills (like banners), not the traits (like arcane lightning), not the food (like buttersquash), not the nourishment, not the sigils, etc. Overall, if you min-max your character and your party and and add the nerf to the sigil that stacks (which I think is a good thing, even if I’m a bit sad about it), then you look more into a 15-20% nerf of your damage.