Guild Wars 2

Weird. I know I’ve gotten two gifts for second place a few times. That’s how I know about the ranking thing. And I know I was second at that point because I was only two points behind the leading score.

I refuse to buy any type of humanoid plushies, whether they’re based on a game or not. They always end up looking creepy. But a quaggan. . .Shut up and take my money!

You get 4 gifts for first place, 2 for second, and 1 for third. Note that rank is determined after “Fear Not This Night” finishes, NOT after the free play round at the end. If you’re ranked second and the top person leaves before the free play round, you’ll still only get two gifts.

Stump brings up a good point here: are we talking runes or RP?

They are permanent, but you cannot undo the skin once it’s applied (except with a transmutation stone, as you could any other armor.)

The number of skimpy female armors is already really high compared to the number of skimpy male armors. Yes, the male ones exist, but we’re talking about 2-3 per armor class. Compare that to more than a dozen female light armors.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m incredibly grateful that there are a couple of races where the females use male skins. That’s way better than most MMOs. But there’s still a long way to go in terms of gender equality, and more over-sexualized female skins in particular would be a step backwards.

If you’re after the achievement for opening gifts, the fastest way is just to farm the Tixx instance.

I got it after killing the boss, so that’s not the problem. You just must have missed something.

notebene.3190:

Must…have…bell!

This! Does anyone know? Is it a costume thing?

GraynX.8947:

Depends on what you want to do…

This. The best PVP weapons aren’t necessarily the best PVE weapons and vice-versa. Your particular build also plays a role. Scepter doesn’t do jack if you aren’t built for shattering, but if you are…

I would say Bolt and the Incinerator are equally noticeable. If anything, the flame effect stands out more in most places because of the color. Personally, I would go for whichever weapon you think you’d get to show off most, since pretty effects are useless when sitting in your backpack.

You are trying to play the two most complicated professions in the game, at least in terms of the sheer number of abilities available. And really, elementalists are just punishing at low levels anyway, since their best survivability tricks have to be skilled/traited.

My advice would be to roll something else to learn the basic game mechanics. Literally any class would be simpler than what you have, but I would recommend the warrior as the most straightforward for people with previous MMO experience. They also have the benefit of being able to survive a few hits while you learn how dodging works in this game.

Your number of turrets is actually capped by the game. The seed turret and engineer turrets will fail to spawn if you cast them while taking root. Therefore, engineer is kind of a crappy choice if you want to use those racials specifically. Not that I’d recommend Seed Turret anyway. Take Root can be okay for classes that don’t have another reliable source of invulnerability.

Okuza.5210:

Y’all have no idea how hard it is to resist the wonderful straight line in the subject about not glowing after a makeover.

Oh, but we do. The rest of us just had the strength to avoid giving in. :P

Rarespawn.6028:

What bug? I saw the glow on my sylvari when I made her. And I made her on release day.

I thought the problem most people were having was that they didn’t turn the lights off to see the glow when they first made their character. I don’t really see that as a game bug. At worst it is an oversight that they could have done more to point out with a handy tool tip.

At one point there was a bug with the makeover kit (not actual character creation) where toggling the light off in the kit interface did nothing. The lighting in the preview window remained the same as whatever lighting there was where you were standing in game. It wasn’t a matter of simply not seeing the lightbulb in this case.

Hey, the Crossing was awesome. It’s what I use. Maybe you see less of them because they cost 50 gold to buy and 100+ to craft. The shield was going for for ~15g last I checked.

I think there should be a candy cane staff because, well, it’s literally a cane, but it’s hard to argue that the staff is neglected when there are weapons that haven’t gotten any holiday love.

It was exactly like this in both October and November, so yes, the other three will be available with Wintersday.

Umm, I think the OP is referring to the fictional little kids in the game. “Your face is funny! All squished and weird…”

And after Halloween and the karka invasion, I’m pretty sure they’re already scarred for life anyway.

In other games that were more liberal with bank space, I’ve always kept a bunch of useless junk that I was amused by. In this game, for example, I would have loved to have done it with the pet rock karma accessory. “This used to be a pet for a skritt. A lonely, lonely skritt.”

I just don’t have the space in GW2 for that, though. I understand why, since they need a source of revenue and selling bank space is probably a big one, but I miss Rocky.

The shield skills look a lot like some of our utilities, and like ref pointed out, some of the one-handed sword animations aren’t all that different from the GS ones. Renewed Focus alone is has a has duration of three seconds (5 seconds traited), so that combined with blocks and blinds can keep you from taking damage for a pretty long time if you decide to blow all your defenses at once.

And why should I care what Order someone else’s character is in?

There is one thing I dislike about shapeshifting classes: lack of visual customization. You spend a lot of time unable to see the gear you’ve worked so hard on, your character’s race, anything that distinguishes you from that other guy next to you who’s also playing a shapeshifter. This could be remedied by giving the abilities long cooldowns and/or very short durations, I guess, but not being able to use your class’s unique abilities very often might get dull.

That said, for players who like the concept of elemental attunement switching but dislike other aspects of the class, this could be a neat alternative.

Dulfy posted an awesome gallery of staffs recently. Link

From memory, the TA weapons are a set with a purple glow.

TheBlueI.3486:

Why do you need a main char? What difference would it make in playing this or other chars?

Because there’s a lot of stuff in this game that’s character specific. Ascended gear is shaping up to be way more of a grind than exotics. Legendaries, obviously, even more so. Fractal level is per character, and for now it’s the only way to get ascended. In other words, if you want the best gear, you kind of have to devote yourself to one toon for a significant period of time. If you’re into it, the exploration “gold star” only shows up on that character.

So, perhaps unfortunately, you need a main.

I can’t really help choose between these classes, as I haven’t played thief or necro past 20.

Thereon.3495:

Why is it that time and time again I have to post the following? Its getting tiring so i’ll say it one more time: I am not saying less information is needed, I am saying there should be a different way of giving out the information in order to maintain surprise and/or the lore of GW2.

Please tell me what the difference is between the following events:

a) Toymaker Tixx’s robots will go berzerk. Save him and Lions Arch from them at 10:00.
b) Toymaker Tixx needs help cleaning up his contraptions at the end of a busy week in Lions Arch. Knowing Tixx, things may not go as smoothly as planned Join him at 10:00!

Both tell you the time, location and type of challenge. a ruins the surprise and lore, b doesnt. If the creators of the event cannot create ways to mask the challenges then at least create a spoiler free page for those of us that dont want to break the immersion of the game with links to find out more if you shall wish.

“A” tells me there will be combat and that it’s worth doing my best to be there, since I can expect loot. “B” suggests that it’s maybe just a mediocre cutscene and I shouldn’t feel bad about skipping it. After all, stage 3 was the real climax of Halloween, not stage 4.

I fall into the camp that’s really glad they’re clear about when, where, and what this time around, since I do have to prioritize my time.

I’m rocking the toy soldier look.

Ridgeblader.7135:

Fox.3469:

And yes it’s fun, i can take on 10 enemies, a few veteran mobs, even tanking champions is ok.

^^I really think this is all that matters in a build tbh.

You picked a fairly solid build. Any guard with 0/0/30/30/0 is solid.

I would look into the effectiveness of having the last 10 points in honor compared to spending it in Virtues, getting the extended boon duration bonus from the points, obtaining IX Absolute Resolution for the increased regen and the condition removal for virtue of resolve. With the extra 10 points in Virtues you also gain the retaliation boon each time you use a virtue, couple that with the elite renewed focus and its pretty tough to beat solo wise.

I see what you are sayin about the AH and the party boons through the staff. I just dont like it for anything other than running through a zone. That’s just personal bias though. personally if I was going to remove myself to a ranged support / heals role with your current skill allocation I would go with this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUMQNApdWlcgqDnFyKEm4ESWBDE7BG9Rb01DKKiYIA

I run what the OP runs, generally, switching out the ten point trait in virtues depending on the fight. Retaliation isn’t always the most useful thing in dungeons.

A couple bonuses that haven’t been mentioned about the staff are the control of Staff 5 (which is just awesome in a narrow corridor) and the wide arc of the AOE. It’s not a weapon you bring into every fight, but it’s awesome for the situations it was designed for. Plus, there’s nothing more hilarious than mowing down large swaths of enemies before they even reach you.

Anyway, as for your build recommendation: Battle Presence is still bugged, is it not? In any case, losing both purity and Pure of Voice might not be the best choice. Retributive armor is what you’d switch out if you were making that kind of swap, since Empowering Might is the main reason you’re after crit in the first place.

But I question that swap in the first place, since Writ of the Merciful isn’t the best choice with a Staff/Mace combination in my opinion. The mace symbol will heal anyway, and the kind of fight where you pull out the staff for isn’t necessarily one where allies are going to be nicely stacked. With the hammer it might be a different story. The beauty of a 30 honor/30 valor build is that it’s so flexible in different situations.

I agree that as a Sylvari, he’s more likeable. The issues of him “taking over” parts of the story are still there, obviously, but at least you get some sense of his motivations and personality. When I leveled my second alt of a different race, I was kind of shocked at how little character development he got outside the Sylvari racial storyline. Seriously, if you care about the story at all, it’s basically mandatory to level a Sylvari up to 30 if you want to understand the second half. It should not be that way.

Since people with real life cash to spend can already just buy gold directly, I don’t think the chest drops affect the economy that much. I actually like the fact that I don’t necessarily have to gamble and spend gems to get a skin I like.

(I do dislike the whole BLC system, though, and refuse to buy keys because of that.)

I wouldn’t even mind if there weren’t something about Fractals that seems to make my game crash way more often. Seriously, Fractals are the only place I regularly experience crashes.

Guild Wars 2 tends to be relatively self-aware for the genre. I’m hoping they address the paradox humorously.

Since people already tend to go as fast as possible anyway, I don’t see how Mithran’s idea would drastically alter anything. I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to participate, but I wouldn’t be against it.

On the other hand, you could look at the prerequisites. Inspired Virtue is more useful than Zealot’s Speed in most scenarios, so it might be worth going down the Virtues tree first.

Self healing or group healing? What type of content?

Given the somewhat sparse nature of the combat log, I somehow doubt the game is capable of tracking some of this stuff.

I’m not against a ranking system on principle, but I would only be in favor of one that was accurate and gave an in-depth look to all helpful roles in a group, so no class gets shafted unfairly by players who don’t understand the limited data they’re looking at. (Ever play WoW? Remember the issues disc priests had with the game not being able to measure their absorption?) Even then, the reality is that most people wouldn’t care. They’ll pick up the gold from their AC speed runs and be done with it. Therefore, while I wouldn’t mind seeing it, I’m not sure it’s a good use of developer time at the moment.

That’s dependent on your character’s skin color. I actually like it, because it makes your armor look like it’s growing out of you, but I understand why it frustrates some.

Alright. I’ll play devil’s advocate here. I’m an androgyne, and I do have a problem with the attitude of “of course all sylvari are bisexual/pansexual because they have no gender.” Why? Because it assumes sexuality is tied to gender (or lack thereof.) That assumption, as this thread demonstrates, is widespread, but it’s false. It’s quite common for an androgynous or transgendered individual to be attracted only to men or only to women.

Sure, you could make the argument that “Oh, this is an alien species, not humans, so different psychological rules apply.” However, the game doesn’t do that. In terms of behavior, the Sylvari characters we see more or less always conform to human gender roles and otherwise act in very human ways (indeed, sharing the same dialogue after level 30 or so.) I have played through all three Sylvari racial storylines and all three Order storylines, and I can’t recall a single hint that these characters are anything but naive humans that happen to be made of plants. And you know what? That’s fine. Most people wouldn’t want to play a character that felt extremely alien to them, and making all characters human at heart means less dialogue to write. It’s the resulting implication of “human sexuality works this way” that bothers me.

I obviously have no qualms with homosexuality or bisexuality being portrayed in the game. I applaud the attempt to do so in a positive manner. However, the way they went about it is ultimately propagating and reinforcing misinformation. Not liking the implementation does not automatically make you homophobic.

Well, we have two ranged weapons. The first is the staff, which only has a range of 900. It has great AOE damage and some awesome support abilities. Because of that, I even bring it into some fights where I know I’m going to be in melee range. Our only “real” ranged weapon is the scepter, and while it has decent single-target damage, it lacks good support capabilites. Also, due to the speed of the orb, it feels very clunky. Fortunately, all of our offhands offer some usefulness at range.

As for our utilities, most of them are more dependent on being close to your allies than close to an enemy. If you’re more support-minded, those are the ones you’re more likely to bring anyway. The same is true of our class mechanic, virtues. Of course, if you’re in a party full of melee. . . .

So, to sum it up, a guardian is far from worthless at range. However, you’re correct that many of our best tools are melee. You will be doing yourself and your team a disservice if, as a guardian, you aren’t hopping into melee in certain situations. If you enjoy being at range whenever possible, then you’ll probably find a different class more satisfying, if only because of the wider selection of weapons.

A site with all armor skins.

Anyway, it depends on your race. Asura and Charr have the embroidered crafted set and the AC set. Otherwise, the closest you get is pants under the bottom half of a robe.

Here are some close approximations that currently cost less than 1 gold on the TP and the slight tint they may have compared to the “true” color on some materials. Note that dyes show up differently on different armors, so preview using Guildhead or some other means before you buy.

Black

• Pitch (purplish, but really the darkest you’ll get on the cheap)
• Night Shade (bluish)
• Charcoal (gray)
• Midnight sky (indigo)

White

• Frosting (gray)
• Fluff (gray)
• Mithril (brown)

What Ganzo said: they claimed this game would be about horizontal progression. I personally don’t mind their change in philosophy to the point of quitting right away, but at the same time I’m also likely to remain in the market for new games for the foreseeable future. After all, the main thing in GW2 that appealed to me over the competition has been done away with.

I’d like to see a speed increase even if it meant nerfing the damage a little. At least we’d still be getting procs from sigils and abilities that way, and we wouldn’t have to deal with the knowledge that our attacks were doing absolutely nothing.

Agreed. For the record, I’m already going for the legendary focus, and I’d totally go for the teapot instead of the Minstrel if the teapot existed.

In theory, it seems like it should make the item souldbound. In practice, it actually makes the item account bound, even though it does give you a warning that the item will become soulbound.

I have done this myself within the past couple days to transfer an order specific item, and I have seen threads on this forum where people did it with starting gear. Look at it this way: even if it fails (and it shouldn’t), the most you’ll have wasted is a basic transmutation stone, which you can easily recoup by exploring the racial city on your throwaway character.

Currently, you actually can create a new elementalist, transmute the item onto another white and transfer it through your bank. It’s clearly a bug and it’s probably going to be fixed eventually, but I can confirm that the trick still works as of this patch.

mc psyko.3087:

+1 for this amazing idea , but i like the idea of the beer mugs

I missed this the first time through. Just so you know, there’s already a beer mug focus: Ambrosia. Also, a bottle of liquid Courage.

I tried all those builds and more during (strictly PVE) leveling. My goal was to learn the class as best I could rather than to plow through to 80 as fast as I could.

While, again, I can’t speak for PVP effectiveness, all of those did fine. Even sword/sword, although in terms of raw power that probably was the weakest of the three. Before Orr, PVE is not difficult enough that it matters much. If I was going for pure leveling speed, I’d say greatsword probably wins out over dual axes. For me, at least, the mobility makes a lot of difference in the open world.

I too was mislead by the tooltip. I don’t think the trait itself is underpowered (it’s a minor trait, after all) but I do think the wording should be clarified a little.

This thread makes me giggle uncontrollably every time I see it. This bug has probably given me more joy than any other video game glitch, aside from maybe the car-launching swing set in Grand Theft Auto.

Guardians really are awesome for survivability. If your goal is solo survivabilty (as opposed to AOEing things down quickly) then they are probably the best class in the game. They’re also good for new players in that, unlike some other classes, their talent trees are very well designed to synergize with one another. It’s fairly difficult to come up with a truly worthless guardian build just because of the way the traits are designed.

Elementalists don’t HAVE to be uber-squishy, but it takes until level 20-30 to really get the traits that make them less so. They also have the highest learning curve in the game, so you might want to start with something else just to get the basic game mechanics down before having to worry about you class mechanics.

Mesmers also have issues at low levels, but to a lesser extent. They have disposable pets to tank for them, which helps their survivability a lot. While they can be built glass-connon-ish, the majority of their abilities tend to focus on control more than raw damage. A lot of people claim they have issues learning the playstyle, but that was not the case for me personally. If the guardian doesn’t have enough mobility for you, then you might like mesmer.

Warrior and necro could probably also work for you, with the right builds, with the caveat that you would have to research specific builds. Also, neither of those might have the aesthetic you’re after.

I was able to complete the quest by swimming, very carefully, as close to the shore as possible without exiting, then dropping the scabbard. I then walked onto land and managed to pick up the scabbard while still considered to be wading, not swimming. This allowed me to walk to the center of the circle with it and get credit. Be careful, though: if you do accidentally surface while holding the scabbard, it will respawn at its original location.