Guild Wars 2

Been playing Guardian for a long time now and I think what it boils down to is that there’s really only 1 way to play a Guardian in most aspects of this game: Support

And obviously support is super helpful. My allies love it when I facetank and grab aggro, or give them boons, or passive heals, etc BUT for the Guardian it sucks that you’re forced into that role.

If I want to provide some nice DPS I sacrifice so much survivability that I’ll die. I don’t PvP, so I won’t comment on that, but in PvE and WvW the only time you can go full DPS on a Guardian and be successful is a very well organized WvW roaming group. For Dungeons/Fractals, gotta play bunker. For WvW larger groups/zergs it’s super effective to play bunker.

I like my Guardian because I don’t die easily. But even the skills are boring. No flash, nothing fancy. Just safe. I guess that’s how Anet wants it. Guardians are support bunkers and that’s it. Unfortunately it leaves us with like 10 traits total out of 60 that are useful and I’m left staring at the other 50 thinking “wouldn’t it be nice if I could use these and be effective”.

Bunker Guardian also = not much skill needed to be “effective” enough in GW2. Warriors are the same. They’re safe classes that the average person that pick up and play well enough right away. Anet probably likes this as well.

I think the Commander system in GW2 needs a pretty big overhaul.

First of all, I think you should be able to purchase a PvE commander tag, and a WvW one. PvE one should require a certain number of hours played or achievement points or something. WvW one should require a certain WvW Rank. Make them 50 gold each so it’s not more expensive if you want both.

Secondly, they should be Account wide. Commanders are basically forced to play one character, or maybe 2 if they buy a second one.

Other changes:
– There should be a “/comm” command that lets commanders use Commander Chat. Different color and cannot be suppressed.
– They need a commander bar across the top of the screen that gives them access to “Stack”, “Moving out”, “Don’t attack”, “Stay on tag”, etc. Would make commanding groups via the chat much easier. The commands would appear in the /say but would be a different color of green
– They need different color tags, so they can put in chat “Yellow tag taking keep, blue tag flipping camps”
– /supplyinfo needs a larger radius or should show at all times at the top

There’s so many improvements they could make. Too many to list. Yet it’ll probably never happen.

Rangers need more condition-applying and boon-stripping options:

Longbow
– #1 should apply bleed every shot
– #2 is fine how it is
– #3 should cripple
– #4 should remove all boons from target
– #5 should immobilize for 1 sec and cripple for another sec after

Greatsword
– #1 should apply bleed
– #2 should be a knockdown
– #3 should apply confusion
– #4 is fine
– #5 is fine

etc etc etc, you get the point. More conditions, more CC, more boon stripping. This is what the Ranger needs if they are supposed to be focusing a single target with high, sustained damage.

They also need a power boost overall. Pick a percentage that seems fair and increase all base weapon damage by X%. Start small and see how it affects the class.

Of course none of this will happen, so I don’t know why I posted this. Oh well.

Not sure why they did it when the servers were probably at their busiest. Kicked everybody out of WvW. I know on my server they ruined a pretty big golem rush. Just seems like a silly idea to pick the time they did.

To be honest, the Personal Story should never have revolved around an event that is actually supposed to effect an entire zone because it leads to this exact question, and it’s a valid question. They talk about the cleansing of Orr like it’s supposed to mean something, but it’s never actually been brought up in any of the Living Stories since.

They probably should have made the Personal Story take place on a less-epic scale, or made Straits, Malchor’s, and Cursed Shore completely locked to players that have not completely their Personal Story. Either one would technically make more sense, but I think the first option is the better one.

The Personal Story could have had us defeating something culturally related to our character’s race, on a much less epic scale, and it wouldn’t have this “but Orr should be cleansed” problem.

AND, then they could have worked the cleansing of Orr into the Living World and changed the map as we went. Would have been awesome.

Precursors are too important to the “end game” for so many people. They never should have been random drops to begin with. Massive mistake on Anets part.

I’m not sure you want to hear another post from another person on NSP, but I can confirm that the PvE community is strong on NSP.

I’m not in [ZoS] but joining that guild would be a good idea if you like primarily PvE content. Their leaders/commanders run most of our PvE server events such as the Temple Zerg that runs through all of the temples in Orr every night , the Tequatl fight, regular map completion zergs, and the current Living Story.

NSP has a high number of people that do dungeons/Fractals/etc as well.

Maybe we’ll see you around

I would suggest guesting to the various free servers though, just to check out their PvE presence. Maybe you and your guildies can all guest to different places and compare notes

Hey everyone,

My long-term goal is to make both Bolt AND Mjolnir. Unfortunately I need a bajillion Charged Lodestones for this.

Does anybody know any current, somewhat reliable way to farm Charged Cores at least? Or am I honestly better off just farming for money and buying everything?

Thanks.

So much fun on Warrior:

1. Sword 2
2. Shield 4
3. Bull’s Charge
4. Signet of Rage
(wait 3 seconds)
5. Sword 2 again

You can cover an absolutely massive amount of ground with that combo in a very short period of time.

Obviously you don’t always have those skills up at once, but it’s pretty fun nonetheless.

Legendary Quest.

The quest would involve traveling to several different maps, completing tasks/mini-dungeons, collecting things, etc. At the culmination of a small quest arc you would receive a reward from whatever NPC was driving that particular quest arc.

Once you’ve completed several quest arcs and collected the rewards you can put them in the Mystic Forge and make a Gift.

Once you’ve received this Gift you can progress to the next phase of the quest, which involves the quest to find your precursor. Again, this involves visiting several maps, and completing a variety of tasks with a story as backdrop for the whole thing. Once you have completed this section of the quest you are given your precursor.

Gift of Mastery would remain the same.
Gift of Fortune would remain the same.
Gift of (Legendary) would be integrated into the quest
Precursor would be integrated into the quest

Doing it this way would allow ArenaNet to control the hours needed to complete the Legendary Quest, thus still making it very difficult to complete and very rewarding once you finally do. Adding in the story/lore component would make the process far less grindy (and dare I say, fun).

If they’re hesitant, or unwilling, to spend the time reworking a dozen different skills, why don’t they just do 2 things and see what happens:

1. The damage split is supposedly 70% / 30% between ranger and pet. Change that to 85% / 15%
2. Increase base health to Ranger by 3,000

Will increase damage and survivability and then the community can test it out and see if it works.

I agree that the class needs a complete overhaul, but Anet will probably tell us that would take 6 months to a year to do. This is simple, could be done tomorrow by changing a few numbers, and could be implemented into the game for the players to test.

Bottom line is they need to do something and do it quickly to show they acknowledge there’s an issue, and that they care.

We have the option to switch to Simple Party UI, which gets rid of the head images for party members and compacts everything nicely.

This is exactly what we need for the mob info at the top-middle. I think it should still be at the top, but there is no reason to have the large image on the right like they do now. Without this image we would just have the boss name, HP bar, abilities list, and boon/buff/condition bar. This would take up significantly less space.

I am 100% behind this idea.

When fighting the new Knights bosses in LA I should not have to crane the camera way up to see the hammer animation so I know when to dodge.

This can’t be too hard of a fix.

General question to progress this discussion further:

In PvE, the pets do not generally die that quickly, except for in dungeons when stacking. Pets can tank mobs pretty well.

In WvW pets almost insta-die and can be easily ignored (ran past) due to the fact that they can’t hit a moving target.

How can Anet fix this issue to make it work in both game modes?

Can’t make the pet way tankier (for WvW survivability) because then they’d be basically OP in PvE and Anet doesn’t want to separate WvW from PvE. Could make them a little bit tankier, but that doesn’t really help WvW since they need a huge boost to keep them alive.

Maybe a pet’s vitality and toughness could scale with the number of enemies around them. Not sure if that would fix the issue.

Specific Game Mode
WvW (PvX)

Proposal Overview
A simple fix for pet AI.

Goal of Proposal
To make the pet function in a useable way

Proposal Functionality

Simple:

- Pet should naturally stay by the side of the Ranger, and not run off
– While next to Ranger pet provides a buff depending on type of pet such as added toughness, power, etc
– If Ranger chooses to activate pet using an F1-4 skill the pet will charge at the Ranger’s target
– There should be 2 types of pets: Melee and Range
– Melee pets should have incredible closing speed and apply bleed and cripple to the target when they attack
– Ranged pets should have powerful condition-applying attacks such as poison, confusion, torment that last for a short duration
– Melee pets should have 300 range melee attack with NO cleave
– Ranged pets should have 600 range with NO AoE
– Ranger will lose the buff while pet is in attack mode
– Pet will melee target until Ranger calls it back, at which time Ranger would gain the buff back
– Pets should get a toughness buff in general

Advantages of this:
– Pets are easy to control
– Pets are less likely to die by mindlessly running into zergs
– Pets are useful (gap closing, cripple)
– Ranger gets buff for having a pet, loses buff when pet is in attack mode, but since attack mode will be quite useful it’s still a positive

Associated Risks
None if you get the buff, damage, and range numbers correct

That’s it. Hope you like my idea. I think it solves a lot of issues and simplifies the pet situation.

What level are you?
What zone were you in?
What event were you doing?

Very important questions that may help solve the original post.

I’ve never noticed quick respawn being an issue in this game. It’s all about knowing what you should attack and what you shouldn’t.

Champion loot bags drop Scrolls of Knowledge. Each scroll is a skill point. This is a pretty effective method for acquiring them quickly.

Go to Frost Gorge and start champ farming

There’s other ways too but this way is consistent and you can theoretically do it forever, which is nice.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scroll_of_Knowledge

Zerged for hours last night and I’ll be making my Ascended version today when I log in later. It’s gonna make my Necro look so awesome

I voiced my concerns regarding the move to the Vigil in another thread, but as for the actual content and the action in Lion’s Arch:

It’s amazing! I couldn’t be happier with what they’ve done. I love that they torched the game’s main city, I love how the designers made it look like a war zone, I love the new creative pathways through the map. I love the events, the mob scaling, the champs. I love the fact that we have to save citizens, sift through rubble, etc. And I love the loot.

OH, and the backpiece! So good.

Amazing work Anet!

I guess I’ll weigh in on this….

Lion’s Arch was great because it was a central area where you could literally do anything you want, and do it for free due to no waypoint costs.

Anet said that they would be moving the services available in Lion’s Arch to the Vigil Keep. Sounds great I thought. Now we find out that there’s some services conveniently left out, and coincidentally there’s a special pass you can buy that will give you access to these services. Seems awfully fishy.

Last night I used a crafting station 4 separate times and went to the mystic forge in the VK 4 separate times. Wow was that ever frustrating constantly having to zone in everywhere. But, it was also “expensive” considering the waypoint costs went from free to approx. 2s per WP.

I think they screwed up here. ALL services should have moved to the Keep. Either do that or put a Mystic Forge in all the cities. Either one. Just don’t try to pull a fast one on us. It isn’t working.

On an unrelated note Gendarren Fields is going to be a nightmare now with the people trying to go to the Keep, getting booted from the LA instance, lining up to start the LA instance, and those who just want to explore the map. Constant overflows.

Personally I think that whenever something new is added that should be part of world completion any player wishing to keep their world completion should have X number of days to get it or they’ll lose their title.

Can’t take away the Gifts of Exploration because that would be impossible or higher unfair (depending on whether they’d used them yet), but I think losing their title makes sense.

I think it’s silly that I didn’t have to map out Southsun for World Completion. I should have had to. Same goes for all other permanent things added since launch.

I tried playing a Sylvari. Couldn’t find a single armor set that I liked. Deleted it.

I would love a new race too, but I’m not overly confident that I would like it even if they implement one.

So excited! I’ve talked with guildies for months now about how we want LA to be attacked somehow.

1. Long term goal that is very hard if you grind for it
2. Stats will always be best in game. If other weapons come out with higher stats, Legendaries will have their stats increased
3. Unique look and footprint effects that lots of people like
4. Change stats whenever you want when you’re out-of-combat

But, more importantly, why would you bring up a 7-month-old thread?

Going for Twilight is a huge undertaking, but here’s some tips:

1. You will need 1-2 million Karma for all the Obsidian Shards you’ll need. It’s impossible to tell how many you’ll need because the recipe for Mystic Clovers fails 67% of the time.

2. You need 77 Mystic Clovers. When the recipe fails you receive Tier 6 material instead of a Clover, so it’s always a good idea to make your Clovers before you collect all the Tier 6 mats, because you’ll get a ton of them for “free” this way and you’ll know where you stand.

3. Create a spreadsheet showing yourself everything you need and what you’ve already got. It’s good to know where you stand and it helps you stay on track.

4. Get 100% World Completion. You need this to get Gift of Exploration. Remember that it includes WvW too, so get out there now and start getting what you can (each week there’s a chance your color changes out there, so you’ll get it all eventually).

5. Focus on 1 Gift at a time.

6. Decide for yourself right away if you want to save money for the precursor, or try your luck in the Mystic Forge.

It’s a huge grind and a long process but it’s nice to have a long term goal.

Good luck!

Simple question.

If you use Melandru runes, the warrior trait for reducing “movement impeding” conditions, and food that reduces condition duration you can end up with this:

Melandru runes: -10% cond dur (4th rune) and -15% cond dur (6th rune)
Warrior Trait: -33% movement impeding cond dur
Food: -40% cond dur

My question is this: How are the percentages calculated?

Are they all lumped together for a 98% decrease?

For example:

5 second chill
-98% total = 0.1 seconds

Or are they calculated separately somehow?

For example:

5 second chill
-33% (from Trait) = 3.35 seconds
-25% (from Runes) = 2.51 seconds
-40% (from food) = 1.5 seconds

I’ve tried looking around, but I haven’t found the answer yet. I know the “easiest” way to find out is to spec a warrior out this way and test it, but I clearly haven’t done that yet :P

Any help is appreciated.

My wife also plays GW2 and she transmuted the Lightning Catcher skin onto her Ascended backpiece awhile back. Yesterday she attempted to infuse the backpiece in the Forge and it removed (and deleted) the skin.

Is this supposed to happen?

In theory it doesn’t make any sense why it would.

She has submitted a ticket to Anet. Is she going to get her skin back? Can this be done?

Thanks guys.

This question is for those of you that run your Warrior in WvW (solo or small-man roaming) and PvE…

Do you run 2 different builds or is their a build that you like for both modes?

A quest would be great but it would definitely have to be longer than 5-20 hours imo and I think that if you do it with more than one person it would need to scale up so that it doesn’t take any less time. Lots of time they mess up the scaling and it significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to complete an area, which shouldn’t happen with a precursor quest.

One major issue with Precursor crafting is Anet will be setting the market for the value of each precursor, based on the crafting recipes they implement.

Someone looking to craft Dusk should expect a huge grind that will take a lot of time and effort (and that’s perfectly understandable), but someone making The Bard should definitely not be subjected to the same grind since the current demand for The Bard is significantly lower than Dusk.

As of this posting The Bard is selling for 90g on the TP whereas Dusk is selling for 900g.

Nobody is sure if Anet is happy with the current precursor prices, so they may intentionally bring down the price of Dusk and other high-priced precursors, but bring up the prices of the cheaper ones like The Bard is tougher because if you make it too hard and expensive to craft The Bard, people will just buy it from the TP instead.

I think it’s important to make the crafting take a certain amount of time, just to provide a sense of accomplishment, but you can’t include too much monetary cost simply because of the huge discrepancy in price on the TP.

This is why I am suggesting the following:

1. Every Precursor should require the player to obtain all the dungeons Gifts, the Fractals Gift, and the WvW Gift. Allows for grind and a process that takes time, but involves no actual gold cost to the player.

- Gift of Ascalon and Gift of Baelfire should give you the “Gift of Flame”
– Gift of the Forgeman and Gift of Sanctuary should give you the “Gift of Ice”
– Gift of of the Nobleman, Gift of Thorns, and Gift of Knowledge should give you the “Gift of Excess”
– Gift of Zhaitan, Gift of Battle, and Gift of Ascension should give you the ’Gift of the Soldier"
* Putting all 4 of these newly created Gifts together should give you the “Gift of the Slayer”

2. Each precursor will have it’s own special Gift. ie “Gift of Dusk”, “Gift of Spark”, “Gift of The Lover”, etc. This is what allows for each precursor to cost whatever the developers want it to. Legendary crafting already has this step and precursor crafting should as well.

3a. Ascended weapon based on what you’re making. I like this idea in principle, however…. If you factor in the cost of leveling up crafting in a given discipline, it may no longer make sense. For example, The Bard can be bought from the TP for 90g. Making the ascended focus requires level 500 Artificing and it takes approximately 140g to craft Artificing from 0-500, plus then you’d still have to actually make the ascended focus. This presents a problem.

3b. Craftable exotic weapon that only needs level 400 crafting. They would have to introduce new weapons, recipes, etc for this, but it does make sense. This also lets them control the price of the precursor even further.

Once all this is done you should have to buy the necessary Precursor Crafting recipes and end up with:

1 Gift of the Slayer
1 Gift of Dusk
1 Crafted Exotic Greatsword

= Dusk

Thoughts?

I think that certain mobs should have the ability to scale up over time. ie, it’s just a Troll now, but in 10 minutes it’ll be a Veteran Troll, then some time later it’ll be an Elite Troll, and then later a Champion Troll. Anet wouldn’t have to change the loot dropped over time, just find a way to exchange a Vet for an Elite, etc.

I’d also like to see the addition of mobs that deal Agony in the open world, but that’s a different topic altogether.

I think there needs to be a very obvious warning for the instance owner of a dungeon or fractal as a failsafe just in case.

For example:

We were in Fractals last night. We were on the last boss. Everybody wanted to repair their armor, but since there’s no armor repair in the Fractals instances, the idea was to drop party, repair in Lion’s Arch, and then rejoin the group. We’ve done it before, it works well.

I had started the last 5 or 6 Fractals we’ve done because I only have 1 character and it just seems to make more sense for me to start it since there’s zero chance I would need to leave to swap to a different character midway through.

Anyway, I agreed to stay in the Fractal last night while everybody else repaired. Unfortunately what we forgot was that for some reason I hadn’t actually started this one, and we were booted from the Fractal.

I think it only makes sense to have a warning pop up on the screen to warn the person trying to leave party or exit the Fractal that they will be ending the instance if they continue.

Thoughts?

An “easy” fix for this is to switch places with the person on the mortar halfway through or something. Damage done while controlling the mortar counts, so try to coordinate with the other player and let them defend you for the last half of the fight.

Or, don’t even both defending the mortars and let the players controlling them fend for themselves. Sometimes it isn’t too bad up there. I’ve been on a mortar for the entire boss fight and barely been attacked at all without any other players anywhere near me.

Looking at the map I notice that Claw Island and the Floating Castle (Isgarren’s Castle) are showing up on the map now.

Anybody know if this is definitely new or if I just never noticed? Any idea what’s going on?

Started my Volcanus crafting this week Probably be done this weekend. My plan is to transmute it onto my Ascended GS.

If you already have the Skill Points and a decent amount of gold, it’s quite easy to do, so I say do it

I’ve got to Maw with like 45 seconds left when there’s more than 50 people there, got like 5-10 hits on him, and still got a bag.

So, I’m pretty certain it’s not limited to the top 50 players. Especially since you’d hear a lot more of this “I didn’t get a bag” stuff if it was.

Sometimes the bags glitch. Sometimes the chests glitch. It happens.

To be honest, Anet screwed up Fractals from the very beginning. There should have been a Jade Maw-like boss at the end of every single fractal run, not just even numbered levels, and they should have made Agony an account-wide stat like Magic Find is now. Then it would have had the opportunity to be infinite like they originally planned, with players just having to work hard to buy their AR and continue through the high levels.

I’m not a high enough level in Fractals to lose any of my personal progress, but I can sympathize with those that will lose dozens of levels because of this. But, at the same time we all know that Anet did not intend for people to level up as high as they have, so in their eyes they’re not rolling back 50 levels (if you got to 80), they’re just rolling back 20 levels, since they only expected you to get to 50 anyway.

But, the real mitigating factor here is this:

What percentage of the GW2 community have reached above level 30? Level 40? Level 50?

It’s such a small percentage that I highly doubt they would be at risk for any bad press or negative feedback through word of mouth. It might be such a small group of players that it just doesn’t make sense for them to care.

If I make a decision at work to change a policy and 148 people are ok with it and 2 people hate it, then unfortunately those 2 people are screwed because they’re in such a small minority that their opinion essentially doesn’t matter. Sad, but true and just a fact of life.

Buy some of the Ascended materials off the TP and negate the time-gated issue.

And someone with many alts will easily be able to collect the mats needed, whereas someone with only 1 character will be limited to the number of nodes in the world that day.

To be honest, I think a lot of the people that just stand there are newer players that don’t know about the pre-events and they’re significance to getting the world boss to pop.

Nobody explained it to me the first month I was playing so I just thought that “pre” implied some sort of countdown timer. Sounds stupid, but the boss always popped up shortly after so I didn’t think anything of it.

As for providing more incentive, I think that either a small chest or a decent amount of Karma would be incentive enough for most people.

I keep playing because there’s so much to do and the group from my guild that’s on TeamSpeak is great so we have a lot of fun.

Because I don’t buy gems and I don’t play the TP it takes awhile to accumulate money, so there’s always something to work towards. I’m working on equipping my characters with full Ascended weapons and trinkets right now, while also leveling my crafting in anticipation for the new armor.

We also run a lot of dungeons, world bosses, and we’re getting more into fractals. There’s a ton of stuff to do in this game, so it feels like there’s always something to look forward to.

And when they come out with precursor crafting I’ll start looking into a Legendary as well, just to add another long-term goal.

Oh, and there’s always the Achievements. Thousands of them to get and for the most part they’re fun to get.

I’ve been doing some research on the different infusions for Ascended weapons in this game and I thought I knew which ones I wanted, but now I’m not so sure.

I was originally thinking of making the infusions that add +5 Power/Precision plus the +5 AR. It looks like if I have to buy all the components it’ll come out to about 35-40 gold total.

Then I noticed that you can buy just a simple +5 AR infusion from the FOTM merchant for only 75 Fractal Relics.

Doesn’t this seem like a massive disparity in price for only +5 Precision?

Am I missing something?

I’ve only been playing this game for about 2 months so there’s still a lot I don’t know, but if I’ve researched it correctly the “Precise Infusion” for example, seems like a complete ripoff.

Thoughts?

Question:

If you remove many of the ways that players can make money/mats quickly, how are players supposed to stay motivated when grinding for Ascended or Legendary items?

Based on the current in-game recipes for everything, they need to provide certain “quick” methods for acquiring gold, karma, mats, etc. Otherwise, so few people would actually bother to make an Ascended or Legendary item, the game would become too casual, and it would fail.

What I wish they did was come out with specific currency for each zone. Then, when you complete the hearts in that zone, you unlock the merchant which only deals in that zone’s currency. You can only get certain items from certain zones and you can only obtain the currency for those items from that zone.

Then all the devs would need to do is scatter the materials needed for Exotic, Ascended and Legendary items evenly throughout the zones and it would spread out the population.

But, there is a problem with this, and that’s that players love working together to complete “missions”. Obviously you have Guild Missions and Dungeons and other instances, but many players love the zerg. Either you could place the opportunity for a zerg in every zone, or at least several zones, or you could limit the zergs to the Living Story.

There were many options, but it’s a little late in the game to make the changes I suggested above because the economy is essentially set and might break if it’s tampered with too severely.

Guest on a server that beats Tequatl regularly.

= approx. 12,000 Karma for about 30 minutes of work.

If you have 2-3 hours, here’s something you should try:

1. Guest on Northern Shiverpeaks
2. Go to Meddler’s waypoint and do the Temple Run

- NSP does the run 7 days a week
– It was being run just before reset, but when the time just changed it’s now being done after reset. It’s a good idea to get there about 30 minutes after reset.
– You can get about 120 Dragonite ore from the run.
– When you finish the Temple of Balthazar you can get Obsidian Shards from the merchant.

:)

Also, they usually head over to the Karka Queen in Southsun Cove when the Temple Run is over… just for fun.

I think that ArenaNet needs to start expanding on the “Agony” condition.

Players are finding reasons to want Ascended Weapons (and soon armor) that don’t involve playing Fractals, but since Agony is limited to fractals the Agony Resist built into the infusions is worthless unless you’re in Fractals.

Personally I think that they should start adding Champions into the game that deal Agony. Maybe even have the Agony scale up with the number of players in the fight.

These Champions would have to be obviously named so people knew whether or not to attack.

I’m thinking something like: “Champion Risen Giant of Agony”

or something like that.

I’m not saying I enjoy the Agony condition but I do think it’s necessary to expand on the idea and make Ascended gear a little more useful.

Thoughts? Any ideas for how Agony could be expanded on?

On the Northern Shiverpeaks server we do the full Temple run, including Balthazar, every single night. Group meets at around 7:45pm Eastern Come join the fun.