Guild Wars 2

Here some tricks.

- If you want might just before a boss fight and you have someone in your group for a fire field (don’t use longbow for fire field), you can drop a banner then grab it and plant it on the ground again for 2 blast finisher and 6 stack of might).
- If you use Axe/Mace and GS. Use axe auto-attack and right before switch weapons use skill 4 and 2 to put vulnerability, then switch to GS for your hundred blades. That way you put your max vulnerability just before your best burst.
- GS skill 3 allow you to evade an attack. Time it well to evade without decreasing your DPS and even better if you can do it on a wall.
- Other than that, its the same as every profession. Learn to play with the less defense possible (to max DPS) and learn your best skill rotation (depend on your build).

Well the Weapons of the Sunless are pretty much the less accessible and most rare weapons in the game. I think that legendary are way more present that these weapons. So you can try to get one of those, but good luck.

Anicetus.1253:

An elementalist with purging flames (s/x) would increase the parties overall damage more than a warrior, even if doing nothing but stacking might

Purging Flames is a Guardian Utility skill. I suppose you mean that an Elementalist with scepter can give 2 blast, and a third with Arcane Waves. But that’s not something that only the elementalist can bring. You can have a Guardian, Elementalist, Ranger or Engineer to create a Fire Field (i don’t count the Longbow Warrior, because its a longbow lol). For the blast, most profession have access to it, but only Warrior, Elementalist and engineers have access to more than 1 blast finisher in their meta DPS build (i can be wrong on that one).

guardian.6489:

You do know you can taxi guild members into an overflow your on just like a PvE map right? You only run into a problem if the instance is full.

True, but for my guild this take about 10min to complete each time. Its not that big of a deal, but still. And after that we form party, if all our party are full and someone want to get in, in the middle of our raid then its not as simple as with normal WvW. Overall these are minor problem, but they exist.

Anyway for me EotM combat is way less fun for guild. You fight in continue against wave and wave of pugs. We fight until we don’t have any CD and we run to recharge all, before going in again. But EotM is better that WvW when your server either Win without opposition or loss outmanned everywhere.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

I’d like to see their testers do Dredge lvl 49 without a thief. That would be fun to watch.

Then use a Mesmer, or an Engineer or spy kit.

0/5/30/30/5 is good for zerging. Myself i use 0/0/30/30/10 to get master of conscreation because in my guild we use Wall of Reflection in some situation (choke point).

For gear, i use full soldier armor/weapons with divinity runes, 3 Zerker trinkets and 3 Cavalier’s trinket. I use Staff for Empower, Line of Warding and Auto-attack against spread out group. I use Hammer for Banish (next to a cliff), ring of warding for cc and auto-attack against tight group.

I don’t really have a problem with dredge fractal. Its just weird that there is a so huge difference in difficulty between each fractal. You can be lucky and finish the level 50 in 1 hours or unlucky and it can take 2-3 hours. Anyway, even if dredge is hard, its not like its impossible to do. Plenty of people already did it.

Carpboy.7145:

In a nutshell. But warriors can bring defensive support and boons and guards can do offensive.

I guess yes. But really, its minimal. Yes 2 Guardian with staff can give 25 stack of might for a short period of time and 5 guardian can give constant 25might. But the Warrior can do that better and give constant fury.

Warrior on the other hand don’t have any reflect, aegis, and most defensive boons is for themselves and not the party, except if you trait your Warrior for support (which is not the best choice for PvE). So ya each profession can do a bit of everything, but Guardian shine in defensive support while warrior are better for offensive support.

I didn’t follow each post about a kill, but from what i know. Desolation killed it 3 time (the third time was like a couple hours before our TTS kill). I know BG killed it too, but i don’t know how many times (more than once i think). I may be wrong but i think we did the 5-7th kills of the wurm and we are the 3rd group to kill it.

Anyway i don’t really care at this point. Yesterday it was super fun. Several of our leader (I’m looking especially at you Feo) were about to fall asleep on their keyboard, but kept going until we killed it. We stayed during 30-45min in the OF to celebrate and create a nice TT5 sign (those who were there will understand). I have only good memories from the last 3 weeks with you guys.

Like Sacrai said, precision help for condition on crits. That help for some build that use a lot of condition on crits like Grenade Engineer. Your mesmer will have a lot of condition on crits so Precision will be important for your build. The best gear for that kind of condition is Rabid (Condition Damage, Precision, Toughness). Carrion and Rampager are not better gear for condition (wrong information on that Sacrai). Carrion is better if you don’t really do condition on crits (like a Condition Ele or some Necromancer build). For Rampager, its a bit more difficult to answer. Ya it have 3 offensives stats, but condition is not your main and you will have less of that with Ramapger. Some build are better with rampager, but its about min/maxing with a particular build. No general rule here for rampager, so you are better with Rabid (safer choice). But watch out, condition in general is not that good in PvE and Mesmer condition even less. Because you will mainly giving confusion and PvE mobs don’t attack really fast, so your DPS will be bad. Condition Mesmer is for PvP (WvW and sPvP).

Right now the biggest issue is not the balance of each professions. Its the lack of gameplay diversity.

Right now only Direct Damage is good in the game. Condition interfere with each other making that less powerful in a group, and the best support come from normal utility and not from build. In a game where Direct Damage is the power, its normal that the best Direct Damager, AKA the Warrior, is king. And the other profession that bring the best support skill (without using any trait or stats ) AKA Elementalist, Mesmer and Guardian, form the most popular and powerful profession. By making Condition Damage not interfere with each other profession like Necromancer and Engineer will become better profession in PvE. By making the stealth usefull against Mobs, the Thief will get more spot in dungeon. Leaving only the Ranger with some difficulty. But that’s another story.

For PvE you are building a really bad warrior. For WvW its not that bad if you are in a Zerg. A build that you can use in PvE and WvW will be bad everywhere, whatever you do. Several Choice for you :

1) Don’t give a crap. Stick with what you want and accept that you won’t have a good build for some stuff.
2) Make your build partially adaptable. For exemple, find a trait setup that work for both WvW and PvE (usually its mean half defensive, half offensive trait). And get 2 set of armor. 1 Set Soldier for WvW and 1 set Beserker for PvE.
3) Change completly your build each time (meaning changing gear and trait)
4) Level up another toons. 1 Will be your PvE main and the other will be your WvW main.

For celestial stats, you could simply have white jewel that give you 1/3 of the stats celestial give you right now. So if you put 3 White Jewel you have celestial gear.

And this would not be 100% lose for Anet : If the only way to get back your Jewel is with the Extractor from the Gem Store? If someone don’t use a gear anymore and want to get back his Berserker Jewel to put on another gear.

Some misconception here. Berserker is the best stats for pretty much everybody because Direct Damage is the best choice right now. Other option?

Condition Damage : Its Rabid Gear (Condition, Toughness, Precision). Some profession are great for that (Necromancer and Engineer on top). But still, how condition work, yours powerful condition will diminish the condition from others (even if they are full Direct Damage, they will still give some condition). Meaning that even if you have good DPS with condition, overall you gonna decrease the party dps.

Healing : Most build (even full zerker one) can survive most encounter if you know what to do. Meaning that your heal won’t help at all except to give some breathing room, when things go bad.

Tank : Well that just don’t exist. You can really control the aggro. One way to partially do that is with a Guardian with a balance Toughness/DPS build. Most of the time he gonna have the aggro, but its not 100% sure. So not a good way to go.

This mean that your ultimate goal is to become full DPS (meaning Full Beserker Gear and Full DPS trait). Of course not everybody can do that, especially when you are new and don’t quite yet know the game. The trick here is to create a build with some defensive stats (from trait or gear pick your choice). Just enough defense so you can stay alive. As you become more comfortable with the game you decrease your defense gradually until you reach a point where you can’t go lower without dying too much. Hopefully you will be full DPS at this point, but maybe not. And you know what, its not a big deal. If your final build is dps trait and full Berseker gear with 3 pieces of Knight (Toughness, Power, Precision), this is good. You are better with a bit less dps and enough survivability to stay alive, that full DPS but always down. Your lucky, because Mesmer is probably the easiest profession to go Full DPS. Some really good DPS trait also give you defensive stats and your illusion will take most of the beating, leaving you alive.

for PvE i prefer : 20/30/0/0/20 or 10/30/0/10/20

for WvW (group) i prefer : 0/0/30/30/10

Of course some event are dead. Most player have a limited amount of time in game, you can’t do everything. The most rewarding or fun events are still done on a regular basis like : Teq, Wurm, World Boss, Champ Train, Temple, events that spawn a Vendor NPC (like for Embers, Skale Venom, etc). For the rest, its all about random people walking into a random events and want to do it.

Nobody knew about the scaling. I was only there for our first kill (i had to go to sleep at some point ). But this was the first time we saw that, we were trying to push the wurm into a wall so he stop moving, because its when it move that we lose most dps. When the life of the Wurms Head dropped so fast at the end, nobody knew what just happened. Some people talked about scaling, other about our embers that attack all at once, etc.

Like some already said. Wait until you know what you like to do in WvW. Here some information on the different skills

Useless :
Mercenary Banes (Nobody really need that)

Guards :
Defense and Killer. They need 115pts each to complete. Its a nice buff, especially if you roam and don’t die a lot. If you zerg, they still add a nice buff, but more useful option out there.

Siege Mastery :
Don’t start with those, but this will come rather quickly if you start to play WvW on a regular basis. Find which siege you better use and stick with it. If you play usually with the same people you can choose a mastery that your group lack. Otherwise here some tips. Arrow Carts is for defensive gameplay, Ram is for a character with survivability, Trebuchet is for people that don’t mind attacking a tower from a safe spot during several minutes alone, ballista is not a great choice (its useful in specific time only), catapult is a great choice for any character that follow the zerg. Canon, Mortar and Boiling Oil can be good, but not as starting choice. Usually you are expose when you use them and they can be destroy pretty easily. You also need to upgrade the tower/keep before having access to them.

Siege Bunker : a good choice is you plan to attack a lot with the zerg. Otherwise keep it for latter.

Siege Might : Don’t start with that, but its a great choice once you fully upgraded 1 Siege Mastery.

Supply Capacity : Don’t start with that. It take 300 pts and don’t give you that much of an advantage. Its a really nice thing to have but you won’t feel that you evolve as a character, especially at the beginning, since it take so much time to max it.

Supply Master : its a good start. A few points only, you won’t regrets it.

Repair and Build Mastery : I like to put 2 level on each. That way it take me 2 shot to repair or build something with 10 supply. This should be your first or second choice. Don’t go father than 2 level at the beginning, since it won’t really change anything except if you have 15 supply on you.

So my advice is :

1-2) 9pts in Build/Repair Mastery
1-2) 10 or 15pts in Supply Mastery
3-4-5) 1 Siege Mastery (you don’t need to max it, for exemple the 5th level of AC is pretty bad for the number of points)
3-4-5) 230pts in both Killer and Defense Guards if you roam
3-4-5) 30 pts in Siege Bunker if you follow the zerg but see that there is always someone with mastery or don’t really want to use any siege that much.

By this point you should have enough experience in WvW to have your own idea of what is better for you.

Lishtenbird.2814:

with zerker warrior being the top DPS class with more innate survivability than other classes, anything that is lower than this in both damage and HP is considered (and, well, often is) less efficient. And we get this mindset as a result:

That is just strait false. I have way more survivability with my full zerker Guardian or full zerker Mesmer. Ya the Warrior have defensive stats that the other (Heavy armor and high vitality), but that all. The guardian have better healing, access to numerous block/invulnerability and defensive boons, without sacrificing any DPS. And the Mesmer’s illusion give a huge advantage in survivability. With the Warrior you kill or you’ll be kill. Once your endurance is empty and you use your Whirlwind then you are screw. Nobody care if you are in a good group, but if the group fail, then you better be a good Warrior player to survive in rough situation (if you want to stay full zerker). The better stats give a starting advantage for the warrior. Usually a big enough advantage to survive long enough to melt your enemies. But in the long run, if thinks don’t go well, the warrior could have some difficulties.

Change in which way? Because i don’t see your point. With my level 80, most loot is useful. Exotic get you money, Rare for ecto, green and blue for luck, and most crafting material can be use.

Tibstrike.2974:

Geez. If you actually WvW long enough to get 500 badges you probably will have 30 levels of WxP.

No you won’t. You get a ton of Badge of Honor from achievements chest.

Francis.9415:

Here is my suggestion to maximize your farming time

After crafting 2 legendary (third on the way) and helping 3 guild mates with 4 more legendary, i really don’t agree with your method.

1) Find what will need more time to acquire. For bolt its gonna be Charged Lodestone, for Frostfang nothing really (a lot of stuff take time but not 1 item that will take more than the other). Of course for both gold will be a big issue and Karma if you didn’t accumulate it before the nerf. For Gold, dungeon will be the best way to gain it. For Karma the best way is by doing Tequalt (join TTS) or high level fractal (Get to level 50 and then do level 40 for maximum karma). For Charged Lodestone, do CoE and use your charged core to create lodestone. This should be your long term goal since day 1.
2) There is no perfect or optimal order of which item to focus first. But here some general rule to follow.
-Mystic Clover should be done early, because they give you Tier 6 and Lodestone, which gonna decrease the number of these material that you need to get.
- Keep the stuff with a fixed price to the end. This mean : Recipe and Icy Runestone.
- All the other stuff come from the TP and their price may go higher or change so you need to focus on them first. Check their price on a regular basis or even better create a spreadsheet dowloading all the price from the TP (gw2 spidy) and create some basic formula so that you quickly see if the price of one the material you need is going down. If you don’t wanna do that, just check with low price you could expect from a material (check spidy for that) and post as soon as possible a order for part of what you need. That way, if the price go down you will have your material at this low price without too much effort.
- Not all material are worth specifically farming for them. It depend on the method you farm and what is the price of the item. Usually i only farm Orichalcum, because it can be done really quickly and its not from random loot. But for most of the other stuff, its usually better to farm the gold and buy it on the market. Charged lodestone were good to farm a while back (gold was harder to get and these where selling for 3 Gold, but its not a good idea anymore).
- Don’t buy Glob of Ectoplasm. By doing dungeon you should have enough rare to salvage to get all you need. Keep your money for stuff more difficult to get.
- Like other material, your precursor should be bought at the Market. Some people can make money out of precursor but you need huge amount of money and you need to do that with several precursor you limit the RNG effect. With 1 precursor its all about luck and you could run out of it and of gold because you get your precursor. This is one of the biggest expense so watch the market carefully to get the best price out of it.

General tips : Do what you prefer and don’t rush. Its a long journey. For normal people its between 3 and 6 months. So don’t make the mistake to farm and grind where you dislike it.

The change to ferocity is a good one. Balancing the critical damage across your gear like any other stats make sense. It will be easier to change your trinket to change your build over changing your armor with a skin and a rune on it. But the 10% nerf won’t bring anything better to the game. The Zerker will have the same spot and other build will be at the same place. Ya build with defensive stats won’t be as far away of zerker as now, but since every point in defensive stats is useless right now for most case, this won’t change a thing.

Here two idea that could bring some build diversity.
1) Nerf basic defense (meaning dodge and healing skill), but put boost for them in some trait line. This way a full zerker won’t be able to live if he don’t use some defensive trait. This would bring build diversity as people try to get the most DMG out of a build that allow them to survive. You could go for high vigor uptime build to dodge, or a bit more healing to stay alive, or boost your active defense skill. Maybe that a support character will help zerker survive at this point.
2) Put a hard limit on stats. If for exemple you can’t have more that 50% crit damage. Then people will try to create a build that give you exactly 50% but no more so you don’t waste stats. Will you get that in your gear, so you can choose whatever trait you want, maybe you can be an hybrid direct damage and condition damage for maximum dps, or you could bring boons duration to boost your party.

@ Zaw. You said it yourself. Its 20Gold + loots.
- From Tokens you can get about 7 more Gold.
- From usual loots you can make about 10 Gold by vendor/TP
- From exotic loots you can make between 0 to 30 Gold per day.

In total you should make between 12 to 25 Gold per hours in dungeon with a good groups. Probably more 10 to 20 Gold per hours.

Usually a typical legendary that you craft will cost you between 1500 to 2000 Gold. Meaning that you can craft your legendary in about 130 hours. At 3 hours per days, its 44 days.

CM doesn’t have a bad rep. Its just that like TA its one of the less rewarding dungeon. With CoF, HotW and CoE you can transform your token into rare to salvage (+ CoE have some sweet loots). With AC and SE you can transform token in exotic to salvage (for Soldier Inscription/Insignias). With Arah, well its challenging and if you are good you can make good money out of it.

CM and TA on the other hand don’t bring any of these advantages. Yes its rewarding, yes you can run them pretty fast, yes you have good gold bonus at the end. But all that can be said about any dungeon.

Making the Confusion do DOT just change completely the nature of the condition. I would prefer that the confusion make dmg proportional to the attack the ennemy perform. Right now it a fix amount of dmg per stack.

This way a big attack from a PvE boss would make huge dmg to him, forcing player applying confusion at the right time for maximum efficiency. Basically, you time you confusion at the biggest attack.

skyhawk.5149:

It never seizes to amaze me how some ppl have so many legends, and yet others struggle to even finish one.

It simple. If you know how to make gold fast and enjoy doing it, then you gonna have a lot of money and crafting a new legendary won’t be that long.

If you don’t know how to make gold in this game or don’t enjoy doing this kind of stuff, then its gonna be a long journey.

It take me 3 months to craft a legendary, my friend take 6 months and my other friend 1 years. And we pretty much all play the same amount of time.

@ alejhondo

I use a similar build (as your shout build) for my guardian. The only difference in trait are : In valor i use VI over your II. In Honor i use VIII over IX and in Virtues i use VI over your II. Also i use full berserker for my gear (armor, trinkets, weapons) and superior rune of the scholar. Because seriously from you trait alone you have crazy defense already. Well thats for PvE at least. And at last i use GS with Scepter/Focus. For my utilities i use Hold the Line, Stand your Ground and Retreat. For elite i use renewed focus

When i go in WvW is switch 3 traits (i don’t retrait i just switch stuff). In valor i switch my retributive armor for strength in numbers. In Honor i switch my VIII for IX. After that i switch most of my gear. I keep 3 berserker trinket and swith the other three for cavalier. I switch my armor for Soldier armor with superior rune of divinity. For my weapons i switch for Soldier Staff and Hammer. Usually it take less than a minute to change everything and be ready to go in WvW or PvE. For my utilisy i only switch retreat for Wall of Reflection and my elite for Tome of Courage.

Edit : For staff in PvE. I don’t like it, but i don’t mind my friend using it. The scepter have better single target DPS and the focus block is a powerful tools to rez people. While the staff have poor range and poor single target dps, its good for AoE, CC and give might. Anyway both should be avoid as much as possible. If you can’t melee for the whole dungeon you are doing something wrong. For fractal its another story.

PvEer are complaining since the beginning of the game about the WvW part of the map completion as part of their Gift of Mastery. With the ninja requirement of WvW Rank 30 for the Gift of Battle, the situation is not getting better.

Personally, i don’t really mind all of this. I love pve and wvw so rank 30 is done a long time ago. I didn’t had that much difficulty to complete wvw map on two character and the 500 Badge of Honor (before we get them so easily in achievement chest) was one of the coolest part of my first legendary. But this is not the case for everyone. For some of my friend, the WvW is a pain and just don’t want to put a foot in it anymore. So my idea is to have 2 recipe for the gift of Mastery. 1 PvE version and 1 WvW version. I tried to keep the stuff equal in term time to acquire.

Gift of Mastery (PvE)
- Bloodstone Shard
- 250 Obsidian Shard
- Gift of Exploration (only PvE map completion)
- Gift of Dungeons (500 Dungeon token of each dungeon)

Gift of Mastery (WvW)
- Bloodstone Shard
- 250 Obsidian Shard
- Gift of Scouting (WvW map completion only)
- Gift of Battle (requirement for that one need to be work on)

For my idea to work, some balancing need to be done for the Gift of Battle. Several example could work. But i think that right now a requirement of Rank 60 in WvW with a cost of 500 Badge of Honor would be good. The problem with that is that only the first legendary would take time. Once you get to rank 60, its pretty easy for the second legendary. So at this point, maybe each legendary make this requirement go up. At your second legendary you need 120 Rank, at the third its 180 rank, etc. On other option would be to nerf the income of Badge of Honor from achievement chest. With only loot, capture and Jumping Puzzle to get your Badge of Honor and with a requirement of 750-1000 badge of Honor with no rank requirement, this would be more balance compare to PvE version. The dungeon token would be faster to get that 1000 Badge of Honor, but in return WvW map completion (for WvWers) time less time that PvE map completion.

These numbers are probably not perfect, and maybe other ways could be better. But the good point of that would be the possibility to eventually add a sPvP version of the Gift of Mastery. Anet already talked that they want people to be able to have Legendary skins in sPvP.

Actually, most dungeon are freaking hard the first few time you do it. I remember the first time i played AC with my guild. This was at the very beginning of the game so nobody really knew what to do and we were all between level 35 and 60. That was a mess. After 3 hours we were still at the room, protecting hodgin, and we simply gave up. Now, we can do the all path in less than 15min and the path was change to be a little be more challenging. Once you understand how to play your profession and that you understand how to go through the dungeon its really easy.

And as for the reward. Its the faster way to gain gold in the game without playing the TP.

First of all. This change won’t affect me at all. WvW is a great game mode and i’m currently between level 30 and 150 on 3 different character. But this change really Anet. WHY? I’m almost a fan boy most of the time, defending your idea and change, loving most of the stuff even if a lot of people hate it. But on this one i feel like you just don’t have the slight idea of what your community want and like.

1) How many post on YOUR forum talk about the requirement of WvW for map completion. This is a regular topic that come back over and over. Ok the WvW for map completion is there and we deal with it. (Personally, i don’t mind it, but i understand that some people hate it).

2) This is a small change in term of coding. Its not like you were working on that for months and you couldn’t change anything because too much work was done on it. Why on earth didn’t you take 1 freaking minute to post a CDI Topic on that. Its a small change with huge consequences.

Finally, i would like to know the reason behind this change. It can seriously be to make legendary a bit more difficult. Everybody playing WvW is already past level 30 and at the end its not that long to do (it should take about 20-30 hours to reach that rank, 10-15 hours if you use your birthday booster, not that long compare to other stuff you need for a legendary).

I hope Anet won’t answer to push people into WvW. Because if it the answer its a huge fail. This requirement is the best way to make people hate WvW. As a WvW player, i would love to see more people coming to help us, but this is one of the worst and ineffective way to do it.

Depend. If you are looking into upgrading and making your guild bigger, with more guild missions, more people and more activities. Then you better stick with your one guild.

If you think your guild is not really for you and you are putting too much effort for so little. Then maybe switch guild entirely.

If you are good with your guild as your main guild but are just missing some specific stuff, then multiple guild would probably good for you.

For exemple. I have my main guild that i represent most of the time, run dungeon with, guild missions, etc. But not a lot of them are into WvW, so i have a WvW raiding guild that i represent only during Raid. I also have TTS guild for the Wurm and Teq runs. These two guild bring something specific that my main guild can’t bring me. Of course make sure that any of these guild don’t ask for 100% rep or you may be kicked from it.

Vol probably meant that your sentences don’t make any sense.

see looking?

I suppose you mean that it would be interesting to see new legendary because the old one are getting well old.

I don’t get the : ‘’It does shows respect either way’’. Context pls.

The next sentence you mean what?? Maybe you mean that a legendary don’t mean you are a good player and you see bad player with legendary??

I suppose English is not your first language. Its not mine either but pls that was hard to read and don’t even make sense.

The ranger hate is not because more bad player play it. Its a combination of factor.

1) Its probably the weakest profession right now. I’m not bashing the class, i have one. But still the weakest of all 8. Mainly because part of your DPS come from pets which are AI. Same problem with Mesmer which get part of their DPS from their AI phantasm, but phantasm are more predictable than pet and Mesmer bring more group utilities. Which is limited from a Rangers.

2) The profession is view as a range profession. Its advertise as such and his the only profession with two bow. This is perfectly normal that most people playing the range expect and want to play range. This is perfect, except that currently people have master the game enough to melee pretty much everything and someone in range can’t participate or receive the party boons and support that melee have when they stack close. They are not bad player, they just want to play their profession as it should be.

3) Some weird thinking among the PUGs. Ranger is not optimal that for sure. But if you gonna kick a Ranger you better have yourself a optimal build. I’m talking about full zerker in your gear and trait. If are kicking a Ranger but you are a Warrior running shout heal, knight gear or even soldier gear then you got some balls as the ranger will probably have better DPS than you. Also if you gonna kick someone only because its a ranger you should put that in LFG.

Overall, the ranger hate don’t come from Ranger player. Its come from a Bad designed profession that just not fit into the game design (a range profession with AI pet in a melee game, really). And that on Anet.

And freaking stupid pugs that think ranger = bad even if themselves use a bad build, combine with bad information (or lack of information) put in the LFG tools .

The only group that should kick a Ranger on sight would be a full zerker group that ask for a particular profession/zerker.

Permanent stuff :

- Fractal of the Mists
- 1 TA dungeon path
- Guild Missions
- 2 Mega World Boss (need about 150 organized people)
- WvW skills
- Ascended gear
- And a bunch of other small stuff add there and there.

Well if you are doing dungeon speed run (Especially good in guild speed run since with pug you can be unlucky) you can get between 6 and 10 Gold per hour. Lets take 5 Gold per hours because its a round number and to take into account that you will switch dungeon, bio, doing other stuff, etc. This mean that you gonna need 400 hours. With 4 hours per day it mean about 100 days or about a little bit more than 3 months. I did my first legendary in 6 months and the second in 4 months so this make sense.

I disagree with some of your point.

Your Pros:
- Fair Market (no pay to win) : There is some hint of P2W. They are really tiny and usually don’t change nothing in the game, but I hope it stay like this or remove them completely.
- Removal of the Holy Trinity : Its really a pro for me, i like way more this combat system. But they lost something in the transition and this combat system feel incomplete. I want condition damage and support to be as good as strait Direct Damage build.

Your Cons :
- Guild War name : Actually the name of the game is a reference to the Guild War a event in the universe. So its a lore reference not a gameplay reference. Still GvG is missing and your point is valid.
- WvW : That is a opinion (and i have nothing against that) by someone who seem to be a casual WvW player that never really get into it. Of course number is important in a fight, but saying that tactics and skill change nothing is just false. When i raid with my guild we can kill a zerg twice our size depending on the skill of the players and their organization. Its true, it take less skills that sPvP, but it take way more organization and synergy in the group. I don’t say that WvW is perfect, far from it. But thinks like no skills, no challenge, numbers is the only important thing, etc are just false. It can be true for a pug vs pug, but not for roaming and GvG zerg, which in my opinion is the heart of WvW.

2) 3 things gonna influence the length of the fractal.
- Which fractal do you get. If you are lucky you can get 3 fast fractals, but you can also get Swamp, Colossus, Dredge, Mai Trin.
- Your team. Always better to have a guild group or play with people that you know and are in a VOIP. But sometimes you don’t have a choice and you can get a really bad pug and pugs.
- Your level and instability. Some fractal can become more difficult in higher level. For example : Volcano is one of the esiest and fastest in low level, but in high level this can be wipe after wipe after wipe with a not so good group. Also some instability can be a pain in some particular fractals.

Usually a Fractal run should take you 1 hour. But i saw some run take as much as 3 hours. You need to have at least 2 hours a head of you if you gonna go in fractal. Just make sure that if you have a limit time don’t start the fractal so you can quit while the rest of party can finish it.

Some obvious end-game content.

-Map completion
- Alts (there is 8 profession, and its easier to level them all and play those you prefer)
- Personnal Story (some are boring, but still its nice to see the story for all race and each order)
- Dungeons : there is 25 explorable path and 8 story path. Did you do all of them?
- Fractals : there is 50 level of these. How high can you reach?
- WvW : Zerging, Roaming, scouting, managing the updates, or be a commander. There is plenty to do to help your server.
- sPvP : PvP what i can say more.
- Go for a Legendary, its a long quest but rewarding at the end

I’m sure some of these don’t really interest you, but that a good list to start.

If you completed already what you wanted and don’t care about the remaining. Then you have pretty much 3 choices. Master 1 of these part of the game.

- Dungeon Speed Run : Form a dungeon team and push your profession and your team to the max. I how much time can you complete a path? Can you melee lupicus? And if yes can you do it in less than a minute?

- Guild WvW Raiding: A small Roaming group of 5-10 ppl or go all the way for a Guild Zerg of 15-30 ppl. Make sure your build work together, stay close, support each other and push in the middle of a enemy zerg with twice you numbers. Find other guild for some epic GvG.

- sPvP tournament. : If you prefer sPvP go all the way. Find you a team and again push yourself to become even better.

If you are too casual for that, but have still finish all in the first list but then maybe GW2 is not for you? Remember its a MMORPG not a single player game so you better player with some people if you want to appreciate the experience in the long run.

I think Elementalist and Mesmer are good choice for you. They can be really powerful in PvP but they are hard to master.

Mesmer is easier to be good with if you use some particular build. But still, if you want to master this profession, you gonna need a lot of work.

Elemantalist focus on mobility, fast pace gameplay, and skill/CD management over their 25 skills (you don’t see the CD for 15 of them so that’s what you need to manage).

Mesmer focus on pumping illusions, stealth, location, CC and burst.

Mesmer : In Dungeon they bring useful utilities. They are not the strongest profession overall, but 1 Mesmer in a group is awesome. Similar for WvW Zerg. 1 or 2 Mesmer in a Guild Zerg do miracle. But after that or in pug Zerg, they are weaker that a lot of profession. Where the Mesmer shine is in WvW roaming and sPvP. They need a lot of work to be good on them, but they are one of the best profession out there.

Necromancer : They are weak in dungeon. You can still do good with them in a power build be still. Like Mesmer they can shine in sPvP and WvW roaming. But unlike the Mesmer they are always usefull in a WvW zerg. Pug or Guild zerg they work good as backliner for range DPS.

Elementalist : They don’t shine anywhere, but they are good everywhere. In WvW zerg they bring support (combo field) and backliner range dps. In WvW roaming and sPvP they can be freaking annoying to the enemies with their mobility and in dungeon they do great, especially right now with the Fiery Greatsword. Expect them to be less useful in dungeon in a future update since the Fiery GS will probably nerf at some point (but i may be wrong).

GW2 isn’t about drop guys. Its about gold that you accumulate to buy what you want and frankly that’s a way better system than the usual MMORPG.

I never drop a precursor. I don’t care i don’t go for the mystic toilet even for some people that a awesome way to gain money and precursor.

I drop some nice exotic from time to time. Dropped the Entropy once and a couple exotic with expensive runes in it, but thats rare.

I never dropped a expensive dye. Well that’s on me i never use any unidentified dye since they reach 10silver and more about a year ago.

I never drop a ascended chest even if i’m playing in the high level since the beginning.

I played the TP for about 100 gold, but then stop because i found that boring.

I bought some gem from unlimited gathering tools and copper feed salvage machine, but never for gold.

But still after 1500 hours i have 7 toons in full exotic/ascended. 1 in full ascended. 2 Legendary and a commander tag. I repeat, GW2 is not about drop but about the gold you get rewarded and you use that gold to buy what you want. Hell, in my guild even some casual player started to craft their legendary, they are not that hard. If you complain about the reward in GW2, then its because you do it wrong.

Anyway, i know that some part of the game are not that rewarding compare to other. The TP, dungeon and champ farming are really rewarding while WvW, sPvP and open world event, not that much. Some balance could be work on, its true.

I think the AP are a kind of indicator. This give a really bad view on how much time the guys spent in the game. But it only work for the extreme. Someone with less than 1K AP probably just have level 80 so he probably never really done dungeon (at least the higher ones). But someone with 5k+ is probably in the game for some time at least. But for dungeon that don’t really help. Like some people said themselves, people with 10K AP can never had put foot in some dungeon, while some with 1k AP could had went directly into dungeon and have more experience. The AP can give you a rough estimate of the time spend in the game, but its won’t help at all to check if someone is good in dungeon or not. The only reason why i check the AP is when i ask for a speed run and someone with less than 1K AP show up. I just ask them if they know that’s a speed run and do they know the path well enough.

There is nothing wrong with these three events. Sure they can change some little things but the concept is good. There is already plenty of easier world that only need a minimum of coordination (read, have enough ppl and thats all). Why bash on the only 3 events (only 2 permanent) World Boss that actually need organization. TTS is a great example for the community to organize. Other organization like this could be create depending on what everybody would prefer. Right now you can find a way to kill Teq, the Marionnette and the Wurm pretty much each day, but…

1) It take times. If you are going in the map and AFK during 1 hour and then complain about how much time you need to wait for the event, well you are doing it wrong. Help the commanders and organizer of the event. It always take time to create Condi and Power party for the wurm. Same thing with the Marionette that need to fill each lane and the same thing with Teq that need Turret party, protection party, etc. And each of these events start with a complete explication for those who never did it. When i have nothing to do, its usually for 10min maximum. If you don’t participate in the preparation how can you say that you have to wait too long.

2) You may still fail. If you search for guaranty event success and reward then you didn’t pick the right thing to do. At this point Teq is pretty much guaranty, but not the wurm yet (even with TTS and 150 ppl in the TS). These are hard fight and everybody is still learning stuff each time they do it. Its true for the new people who have no idea up to the commander that organize the event or part of it. And that the fun part of it.
3) Need to active participation. The organize event won’t just appear in front of you at the moment you want. These events are organize by normal people that take their time to prepare everything. They do that for themselves, their friend but also for everybody. After that its your job to find where and when they gonna do the events and participate in it. Guys the information is there you just need to dig a little bit. I don’t know anybody from TTS at first and still i was able to find out all the information i needed so far.

The name ranger is not for Range only btw. See it more like a Warrior in medium armor with a pet.

Warrior, Ranger, Thief and Engineer are ‘’none magical’’ profession, while Ele, Mesmer, Necromancer and Guardian are ’’magical’’ profession.

Some weapons could be share by more profession that for sure. But not every weapons for every professions.

My advice is that you think of what you want to do with this character and then choose. For example a Mesmer is good in PvE and sPvP. For WvW the Mesmer is good at roaming and in Guild Group, but if you run with a PuG Zerg this ain’t the best choice.

The Engineer will be good at everything but will be the best nowhere. So it a good choice if you want to do a bit of everything with your character.

The Elementalist is good in PvE and WvW, but usually need a lot of change in your build for each different part of the game. Also the Elementalist is probably one of the profession the more link to the player skill. If you are really good the Elementalist can do wonder, but if your bad you can’t do anything with it (too squishy, you will die).

The Necromancer is really good DPS for WvW. With the elemenlalist it a prime Backliner that most Guild in WvW will search. But other than that not much people really like that profession. You can do a lot with it, but most people prefer other profession because its mainly a condition profession and condition damage is broken in the game.

There you go. These are all great profession. Choose which one fit the most what you want to do.

Its not about feeling cheated. The sprocket are freaking useless and will bring a ridiculously low amount of money to anybody that buy the mining pick. This mining pick in particular won’t change anything at all.

But this is a step (even if really small tiny step) in the dangerous direction. Up until now, the unlimited pick only bring convenience. It don’t really bring saving because you really need to pick the hell out of tyria to get even with the initial cost of the pick, its don’t bring you any advantage over other player except the convenience of having only 1 pick to carry forever.

But this new pick also bring something that nobody else can (in a couple week at least, when the marionette won’t be there to give socket anymore). If you push the concept to the extreme and the mining pick could give you a chance to gain weapon from Halloween 2012. I know its extreme, but the concept is the same. Sprockets and Halloween 2012 Weapons are item that was only available during a specific event and then were only available by buying them on the Trading Post. The difference is that one sell for 30 copper and the other for more that 1000 Gold. So my question is at which price we start to care? If at 30 Copper we can just don’t give a crap we certainly do at 1000 Gold so where is the limit where Anet will be going too far? Personally i don’t know, and there is as much answer to that question as there are players in the game. So why go into that uncomfortable situation at the first place. For me Anet was sure it was a good nice little idea that fit the concept of the current update, but didn’t not thing of the precedent that this create.

I was in the same spot a couple of time. The first time I started doing Fractal with a small group of friend to reach as high as we could. The Second time i went for 1 then a second legendary. The third time (recently) i joined a guild for Hardcore WvW. I still have my main guild with my friend, but with the other guild I raid a couple of time during the week for some epic and organized fight in WvW. And right now i’m building a team with my friend to go more into speed running in dungeon. We always do speed run, but we never pushed ourselves and our build to the max (except when we did CoF path 1 farm). With these two objective (WvW Raid, and Speed Run team) i had enough to occupied myself for the last month without feeling any grind at all. Right now i don’t play for any reward, just for the fun of it and its really nice.

Edit : And I have yet to do sPvP for real, with a team and all. But that’s a project for the future.

Well i think some people need to lower their expectation with pugs. I understand the part where people don’t read. Its a freaking plague. How many time people doing the path for the first time joined my Speed Run LFG.

But I don’t agree with people kicking or screaming over pug for things that wasn’t in the description. If the Elementalist don’t put Fiery Greatsword, tagging Banner to make sure each warrior have its own, LH Elementalist, Battle Standard, etc. These are some specific stuff that not everybody do. In my guild i have people to do speed run and we do all those things, but i don’t expect them from pugs even when i ask for a speed run. I may ask for them, but I’m never mad if they don’t do it. It a pug, maybe its someone that have an hard time with English, someone that just don’t read the chat often when they play, someone that don’t know what FGS is (you can know Fiery Greatsword but not FGS).

But again this is only my point of view and everyone have its own. Some people can’t stand any requirement, other are like me and other want pugs that join speed run being able to play and know as good as they do.

First can you use the real name of the capacitor you have? Because offensive fractals capacitor can’t be upgraded. Its the last version of the capacitor that shine and all. If you want to infused your capacitor you probably have a Prototype Fractals Capacitor (Ascended) and you want to infused it. Then you have the wrong recipe. You used a mix of Exotic to Ascended recipe with the shard which is to make your capacitor shine. The recipe to make a Ascended Capacitor into an Infused Capacitor is :

- Prototype Fractal Capacitor (Ascended)
- Gift of Ascension
- 250 Glob of Ectoplasm
- 1 Glob of Coagulated Mist Essence

BTW Wiki is your friend. Read before trying a new recipe.