Guild Wars 2

I do them if I happen to be in the zone anyway. It’s fun for me, it’s free karma, and while I’ve never gotten so much as a rare from the chests the drops from the mobs generally aren’t worthless. I won’t seek the the dragons out deliberately or anything, but they’re a fun bonus if I run into them.

Recycle.5493:

Line your utilities with invulnerability, stability, swiftness unless you’re going to do events, which I don’t suggest if you’re not with a group.

Actually, all of the stuff in Malchor’s Leap and most of the stuff in Cursed Shore/Straits of Devastation is soloable unless marked explicitly as a group event. If you farm orichalcum regularly anyway, just soloing whatever you run across on the way is a less braindead method of getting your five events for your daily in than zerging pent/shelter for half an hour. (Probably not more efficient in terms of farming, but definitely less braindead.)

Speaking of which, look up the location of the ori nodes on your server, if you don’t already. Might as well get a little bonus profit while you’re there. Same with things like diving goggles and jumping puzzles if you’re interested in those achievements.

Swiftness and stability really are a must if you want to keep your sanity. You will not be able to kill things fast enough to keep up with the respawn timers no matter what you play. That said, you’ll want some AOE ability too. You will have to stop running and clear stuff on occasion.

Youtube is your friend when trying to find the routes to difficult vistas.

It bears repeating that Ash Legion spy kits are great for those skill points guarded by undending hordes of undead. Buy a bunch and use the leftovers in dungeons.

Going through the water isn’t completely safe, but it’s generally less aggravating than overland. Plan your routes accordingly.

If you see a temple uncontested, GET IT NOW. If you see the temple event going on, GO HELP NOW. Jump zones if you have to. Grenth only knows when you’ll see it open again, even on more active servers.

My guess is that they may have been uncomfortably close to the domain of a certain Wizard on the Coast.

I don’t think it has to do with real life issues so much as the differences in game design between WoW and GW2.

In WoW, I spent pretty much all my time raiding and (once they were released) doing dailies. I easily farmed all of my own consumables. Playing the TP never crossed my mind. And I could afford everything I wanted, both in terms of gear and cosmetics. In fact, usable gear actually dropped from dungeons! Yeah, people played the TP and everyone knew it, but it never mattered because you could stay competitive just by playing the game normally.

In GW2, I still refuse to play the TP, because it’s no fun for me. I’ve had to farm relentlessly just to stay kind of acceptable in terms of gear. There are no drops to speak of. Everything has to be farmed or bought with gold. and it seems like the TP is the only way to actually earn it at a reasonable rate. I think that’s why people complain: we bought an RPG, not a stock market simulator. Most of us don’t give a kitten about a healthy game economy; we just want a fun game where playing the actual RPG content we were sold is rewarding. Right now the game doesn’t provide those rewards, and that, perhaps misguidedly, gets taken out on the economy rather than poor game design in other areas.

I have a little over 3.5k and I can’t say I’ve really done much purposeful achievement hunting. I mostly just do stuff I’d do anyway. I do my daily almost every day and my monthly every month. I try to run my daily fractal as well. I’ve gotten all the holiday titles, although I skipped the holiday achievements that weren’t fun for me (like the sPVP and the JPs.) I have 100% world completion, but that’s more because I want a legendary than because I wanted the achievement points. I got most of the explorer achievements and a lot of slayer achievements in the process.

I haven’t touched sPVP, and up until this week I’ve only WvWed for the monthlies. (Now I’m trying to get my 500 badges in, in case they rework them in the next big patch to be even harder to grind.) WvW doesn’t seem to be a very fast way to rack up achievements, though.

I would say the fastest way to get points, if you’re hunting them deliberately, is probably crafting and the JPs. The holiday events also tend to be a high reward for time invested, but obviously you can only get those during the events.

I fought this boss once. Until I read this thread, I assumed it was bugged and kept resetting. I agree that there should be some kind of indicator that the mechanic is intentional, either through a visual cue (like the karka shell) or a simply counter on the event description.

Yes, you lose it. Unless you have a huge amount of gold to burn, it’s a waste to use the good infusions on anything but the infused rings or backpieces.

I would totally buy these, provided they could be bought outright and not through RNG.

Shriketalon.1937:

Enhanced Illusion of Motion: the ability to animate the background and make it spin is a nice way to make it seem like a still object is turning. For better results, allow the background to be spun horizontally and vertically (thus allowing dipping), and use sudden movements to correspond to impacts (something hits the airship, and it shudders under impact).

I agree with every word you said except this point. A fight should be challenging because of the mechanics, not because the camera is uncooperative or the background is disorienting. Like the “shaky cam” found in a lot of action movies these days, it ends up feeling like a cheap gimmick used to disguise other flaws.

Also, there’s the issue of motion sickness, which is already present for some people in static jumping puzzles because of the wonky camera issues GW2 seems to have. Putting what basically amounts to deliberately nauseating mechanics into a ten-minute boss fight required to finish the game would be pure torture.

Until we get official word one way or the other, I’m not transmuting mine just in case. I don’t like the skins anyway, so having them become ascended (or a crafting component for an ascended weapon) is the only reason I’d use them.

It’s been confirmed that the precursor scavenger hunt won’t be out this month but I don’t think it’s out of the question to see it by February or March. And I think we’ll probably see the promised FotM, PVP, and WvW improvements by then.

Some things I think are realistic possibilities that haven’t been confirmed:

• Alternate ways to get ascended gear
• New ascended slots (i.e., amulets or weapons)
• Some sort of wardrobe feature, or at least a way to store costumes outside of the bank. There’s no way they’ll eliminate the need for transmutation stones that cost gems, but an improved interface might boost their sales enough to warrant an overhaul.
• Quality of life changes for guilds. Not something as big as guild halls, probably, but basic stuff like a “last online” indicator in the members list.

Keep in mind that different graphics settings and lighting can change the color of stuff by a surprising amount. I know the ice bow looks white to me when I put my settings on medium rather than high.

I finally got the third random line that seems off again today. I wanted to hear it in I solo situation to be sure it was coming from me before I reported it. This one’s rarer, and I know I’ve never had it trigger with anything but Hold the Line. It’s “I claim this tower for the Pale Tree.”

Peace is a lie. There is only passionfruit.

Well, if power/damage is your main concern, then you should be using ruby orbs or a more damage-oriented rune set. And if flat stat increases are more appealing to you than bonus mechanics, then you should use orbs or crests rather than runes. To some people for some builds, however, the bonuses really are worth it.

Another way to keep a passive bonus would be to go for a mix of runes for boon duration. If you want to keep the healing theme you have now, 2 water/ 2 monk/ 2 Dwayna or 3 water/3 monk are nice.

I’m pretty sure I’ve had it happen when other people buffed me though. I guess I could be mistaken, or just proccing empowering might.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Elder Dragons are far much more Lovecraftian than the karka, which are simply a deep sea lifeform.

I’m just going to leave this here: http://hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/wid.asp

Now that we know these things are intelligent, my daily ori run just got a whole lot creepier.

Well, if you wanted to use the pistol in the mainhand in both sets it would be possible. You’d leave the mainhand weapon in one set empty and just put your desired offhand swap there. For example, if you wanted to run pistol/dagger and pistol/pistol, your first set would be pistol 1/ dagger, and your second set would be nothing / pistol 2. When you swapped, you’d be wielding pistol 1/ pistol 2.

There’s no way to swap the same item from mainhand to offhand, however, because as Leablo said, they are different slots.

You know the random lines characters shout when boons are applied to them. A male human has a chance to shout “Faster!” when he gets swiftness, for example.

Well, lately, my sylvari guardian seems to have some new ones thrown in. I can’t think they’re intentional, and I’m not even sure of the proper contexts for some of them. Some are obviously meant to be engineer lines: “Turrets overcharged!” I also get “You defended this keep valiantly, but we were stronger.” Is that an sPVP thing, maybe? In any case, it’s happening in solo PVE and dungeons.

Since the shouts I run apply multiple boons at once, it’s difficult for me to tell exactly which boons are triggering which lines.

I enjoyed the reference. But really, runes and sigils already do exactly what you’re describing. There are magic find and boon duration ones, in fact.

Recycle.5493:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/10199-arenanet-next-profession-reveal-confirmation/

Kinda sad not much people in Anet care about their official forum.

Check the dates, people. That’s a link from 2010 that was initially reposted by a troll. It’s already been confirmed that there won’t be any new professions, races, or zones in the next few months.

Anyway, on topic, it’s almost impossible to find modest female light armor. If that makes you uncomfortable, you should roll the mesmer as a charr or asura (where even the females use the male skins.) If you like skimpy, well, the reverse is true.

As far as racial abilities go, none of them really seem to synergize exceptionally well for those particular classes. Charr and asura engineers do get some appealing toolbelt skills, I suppose.

The thing is, as you mentioned, there are games that let me play the current stuff without having to grind the old stuff. I liked that WoW was almost a whole new game every couple years. I went back to the old stuff anyway, when I felt like it. There were usually achievements or rare drops I missed or something. But the key is, I only had to revisit it when I was in the mood.

If I had to keep playing old content to do the current stuff, then I’d probably go back to those other games. At best, it would be an unnecessary grind. At worst, it would be a gimmick to cut back on the amount of new content they could get away with releasing with an expansion.

Rather than force everyone to replay old content, why not give them the option to do either? Employ some mechanism to get new high-tier rewards from existing content. To use your example, the hypothetical tokens earned from opening the Temple of Balthazar could be used to purchase mists essence or converted to fractal tokens. That way, nobody is forced to do anything, but players don’t have to feel guilty for not running the older stuff if they want to.

There’s also the issue of time constraints for busier players. Having to run AC before their fractal daily adds a non-trivial amount of time they need to play each day. It would only serve to widen the gap between players who have time to grind and those who don’t.

Gutek.1534:

In the chat bar you can type:

/wiki “insert gw2 subject here” (without quotes)
it opens the wiki page on what your looking for

Yes. But the thing is, that information is so well-hidden that by the time most people find out about it, it’s no longer useful to them except as a faster alternative to manually navigating to the wiki they already have bookmarked.

I play a lot of RPGs and a lot of MMOs, and I agree with the OP: there are certain mechanics that are not intuitive at all and not explained anywhere in the actual game. The mystic forge, for example, was, well, mystifying, to me as a new player. Every other day we get posts on the forums asking how to transfer items to alts because there’s nothing at all that explains that the bank is account-wide.

When I Google in other games, it’s usually to find out the answers to stuff like “Is the math on my spreadsheet right?” or “Which endgame build is better?” GW2 is the first game in a long, long time where I’ve had to Google “How does this basic game mechanic work?” I got by, but I still think it needs to be improved for the sake of retaining new players.

They already have a hint system in place. They could just add to that.

My guess is that most people aren’t taking the soldier runes for the soldier stats. They’re doing it mostly for the condition removal, which really is that good if you’re building for shouts anyway.

I agree that badges of honor would be a better way to earn these. I only WvW for the monthlies, but I’ve seen commanders ask questions about stuff that even I’ve picked up on. It makes sense that there should be some prerequisite to ensure the person has at least a little experience in WvW.

As for PVE, I think the best option would be to have a checkbox to turn the icons off. On my server, at least, a lot of people seem to leave their commander icons on in Orr even when they aren’t doing any events. A commander icon isn’t helpful if it’s off running to an ori node or just sitting at the Shelter camp. It just clutters up the map. Honestly, there are very few dynamic events where you can justify having a “leader” at all. Most people have already farmed these things a ton of times, and new players that trickle in can get by fine by just following the zerg.

No, he wouldn’t be scaled up. Your best bet is to do his quests, where you’ll be scaled down but earn almost as much xp as you would doing level 60 stuff.

Coddler’s Cove. I was awed at how much detail they put into the environment for an out-of-the way thing that a lot of players will never see. The coddler’s songs the and baby quaggans who resurrect you if you fall are awesome touches. It’s say it’s just about the right length and level of challenge as well.

The pirate one in LA is really fun too. The voiceovers make me chuckle out loud every time. Poor dead pirate dude.

For the record, you can preview these using Guildhead. The stockings, shorts, and garter belt are part of the pants. The corset and sleeves are part of the chest. In other words, the boots and gloves really are just boots and gloves.

Oglaf.1074:

Technically, any Sylvari wearing Cultural or Twisted Arbor armour is 100% naked because the “armour” is just more leaf and grass added to their leaf and grass bodies!

Only if it’s actually growing out of them. Unless you count a Buffalo Bill-style skin suit as “naked.” In retrospect, that’s actually a whole lot creepier than a race of nudists.

For those stats, you will have to transmute the skin onto the weapon and add the sigil.

Exotic carrion items can be crafted or bought with Sorrows Embrace or Arah tokens. The skins are are random drops, but they’re also Charr cultural tier 2. It’s probably cheapest just to buy one off the TP to transmute if you didn’t get one as a drop. The sigil can also be bought from the TP.

Unfortunately, heavy armor probably has the least variety pre-80. The first set that’s not a generic variation of chainmail is the pit fighter set, which happens to be sold by karma vendors around your level. That wiki link has a list of places to find it, if you like it.

Check out http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/sylvari-heavy.htm for pictures of all the skins. You can then look up the ones you like on the wiki and see when they become available. It is possible to transmute higher level skins onto items with lower level stats to wear it earlier, if you can find a way to afford it. I gave my charr alt a couple transmuted T1 cultural pieces at level 10 so i wouldn’t have to stare at tail clipping for 25 more levels.

It would help if we knew what class you were so we could recommend specific pieces. There are a few less generic sets scattered around at lower levels, but the better light ones aren’t necessarily in the same places as the better heavy ones.

Artemis Noir.3804:

You might just have a point there… and depending on the weapon he wields… :P

I’m not sure if I have ever not wanted to know anything more.

Also, did you have healing signet yet, Lichbane? Warriors are kind of a pain until you save up the three skill points for healing signet, but after that they’re probably the easiest class to level.

The other heals can be useful at high levels, but the signet is the best by far early on.

If you’re willing to consider other races, the Sylvari cultural armor is all rather revealing. T2 even makes you look like a literal fairy. If, you know, you’re into that. . . .

It looks like a thatched roof cottage. Where are there thatched roofed cottages? If there are any in the current fractals, I guess it would have to be in the urban one. I don’t remember any, though.

paragon.6543:

I think I disagree with you, and here’s why.
Make the night any darker, and it’s a little difficult to see, honestly.
If they make this game more bloody/gory, they have to change the rating from teen to mature. (And I can see they probably don’t want to do that with this game).
There are crime elements actually. Spies and sabotage. The human story line also has gangs in it.
…And the bit about mature content. Again, the game’s rating is Teen.

Are we playing the same game? I seriously think they probably added scattered lines like “ kitten your eyes!” just to push for a T rating for marketing purposes. As others have pointed out, this game is tamer than a lot of children’s cartoons. There are plenty of T-rated games with attacks that spray blood and plots that dwell on more mature themes. WoW isn’t exactly considered the pinnacle of gritty, but even it deals with stuff like sexual assault and torture.

That said, I don’t really care either way. Writing is not the game’s strong point. I suspect I’ll be disappointed no matter what tone they attempt to take with future content. If I had kids I’d probably want it to remain family-friendly so I could play with them, but since I don’t . . . Just keep the gameplay fun and I’ll be content.

As someone who sucks at platformers (and therefore the audience who is more likely to need your guide) here’s my perspective.

Goemm’s Lab is actually pretty easy with swiftness and stability on your bar. Since it isn’t timed, you can just wait for you cooldowns to come back up between wind gusts. The jumps aren’t difficult either, and while I did it on a guardian I’m sure many could be bypassed with a blink mechanic. It’s just a matter of figuring out where to go. It only took me 2-3 tries on each stage. I died to it less than a lot of stuff you have listed as 6s, let alone 10s. Heck, a lot of the stuff you have at 7 I just wasn’t able to complete.

Conversely, if Clocktower isn’t deserving of a 10, then nothing is. It’s timed. It’s disorienting due to the spinning. You are forced to do it at the same time as a bunch of other people. And for anyone who gets motion sickness. . . .ugh, forget it.

I believe Conundrum Cubed deserves higher than a six for similar reasons. It’s disorienting and seems to “cheat” physics. That should be factored into the difficulty.

Professor Portmatt’s Lab makes me sad. I love logic puzzles, but the short respawn timer ruined it. Your progress is saved, sure, but you barely have to to write anything down, let alone think things through, in the time that you get between respawns. I ended up getting fed up and just mashed random buttons to beat it.

Two good beginner’s ones that you don’t rank are King Jaylis’s Refuge and Coddler’s Cove. I actually did King Jaylis’s Refuge without even realizing it was a jumping puzzle. It just seemed like a fun place to explore, and an event triggered when I got close. Coddler’s Cove requires precise jumps, but it’s extremely straightforward with NPCs who resurrect you if you take a fall from a height that will kill you (which is only the last few orbs, anyway.) Excellent practice with really fun scenery.

Yeah, I’m kind of surprised they’ve let it go as long as they have. I always open the patch notes expecting to see the addition of an internal cooldown. Enjoy it while it lasts, I guess.

Dagger/dagger elementalists are actually considered one of the best builds in PVP right now, I believe. And I know that they’re awesome in dungeons due to their handy combo fields and damage output. They’re painful to level early on, but it’s a very different story once you get past 40 or so. Mesmer and necromancer can be good options too, of course. It all depends on what you want to do with them. What do you want to do, by the way? Dungeons? WvW? sPVP? And what type of characters have you enjoyed in other games? We could advise you better if we knew.

As for racial choices. . . magical or not, very few of the racial skills are worth using over class ones, and those that do see use are for very specific builds or situations. The human racials are magic based (although it’s more “divine” than “arcane”) and fairly strong, for racials, so that might be a good place to start. Sylvari racials are themed around plant-control magic, although they aren’t quite as useful all around. And Norn can shapeshift, which is good for a sprint ability but not much else. Charr and asura racials are technology themed rather than magic themed, not that they couldn’t have their uses for a magic-based class. Lore-wise, pretty much any race makes sense with any class.

You can also block it, if you have any blocks. On my guardian, for example, I just wait a couple seconds and pop focus 5.

Shoulders are Vigil. Boots and gloves are the crafted exotics.

The bottom one is either an NPC or not from GW2 at all. You see, the bottom one has a cloak. There definitely aren’t any cloaks for player characters. Does anyone know if there are even any NPCs that have them? I feel as though they would be constantly brought up in the posts begging for Anet to make them for us if there were.

With certain ranged auto-attacks (especially the slower ones, such as the infamous guardian scepter orbs) strafing usually causes some attacks to miss. Backpeddling will not, assuming the target remains still.

I can’t think of any mesmer attacks that are like that off the top of my head, but if there are you should take that into consideration.

They also fixed some Fractal exploits, which involved changing at least one room’s terrain. I’m not sure how much space that would actually take, but it was in there.

I laughed. And then I remembered that I play this class, so I cried.

Your username dictates that you go male norn and make him look like a certain barbarian ripoff from a certain comic. Seriously, though, I can’t remember the last time I saw either.

Use the filter function. (It’s to the right of the search button.) You can search for all the masterwork helms within a certain level range. Then you can decide which one you want based on price and stats without having to know any specific names.

Below a certain level, you might have to settle for blues or whites instead, but you get the idea.

Never bother with white gear from NPCs. Using the trading post for greens is a much better value.