Even with berserker jewelry and weapons, I question whether you’ll have enough crit to make empowering might worth it. Consider switching out empowering might for two-handed mastery or going for the crit/vit/healing set instead.
As for runes, people with AH builds typically go one of two routes. First, there’s 6 soldier for the extra condition removal and survivability. Alternatively, you can go 2 water/2 monk/2 dwayna for the healing and boon duration.
In MMOs, I’ve always had the most fun with those rare classes that offer a combination of stealth, mobility, and healing. The SWTOR smuggler and the WoW druid are probably closest to my “ideal” playstyle (A shame that they aren’t in my ideal game.) Superficially, it doesn’t seem like GW2 offers anything like that, so I rolled a guardian. I’m happy with it, but lately I’ve been wanting to start another alt, and so I gave the thief a second look.
It turns out that there are traits do allow the thief to put out a little bit of healing and buffing. However, I don’t really have any way of testing whether those traits are viable in PVE. I’m not sure if everyone seems to focus on damage because thieves aren’t good support or just because support-oriented players just gravitate toward obvious support options like guardian and elementalist.
Should I give the thief another shot, or should I give up on decent stealth in this game and continue tinkering with my fledgling engineer?
Don’t worry, there’s no bug. Guardians actually have the lowest base health in the game (along with thief and elementalist.) This is confirmed on the table that Era linked. The guardian’s high survivability comes from other factors.
The OP specifies karma equipment. At this point, you can’t salvage equipment bought with karma.
You can, however, transmute the item and choose to keep the rune or sigil. Note that if one the items is level 80, then you’ll need the fine transmutation stones instead of the basic ones.
A lot of people go 2 monk/2 water/ 2 (varies) to max the duration of a particular boon. For regeneration, for example, you’d fill the last two slots with runes of Dwayna.
I also fell through the floor before the event ended, along with several others. Those of us who just waited for the boss to die ended up in plain sight on the ground after the cut scene, able to be easily resurrected. If you’re unsure about being able to make it back, just stay put.
My real life complexion is closest to light 9. I am physically unable to tan, so “washed out” is a pretty accurate description. When I’m cold, I turn purple, so I’m also hesitant to call any of the reddish tones “too bright.” Neither color you mentioned is unrealistic. Which one is prettiest is, of course, subjective.
I guess if I had to pick the WoW class closest to the guardian in feel I’d say enhancement shaman. (Not vanilla, infinite Windfury crit shaman, though.)There’s no perfect equivalent, but the focus on buffs and the short/mid-ranged abilities are there.
And if you want a difficult “rotation”, then guardian is no better than warrior. If anything, guardian is more slow-paced. In all seriousness, have you tried elementalist?
I have both a warrior and a guardian. I love my guardian and consider it my main. However, the warrior is way more fun in WVW for the reason you already mention: they get ranged weapons.
The whining you’ve no doubt heard about the scepter really does have something behind it. The auto-attack is too slow to be effective against other players and the other abilities have a long-ish cooldown. The staff, while powerful, just doesn’t have the range for a lot of situations. That means that as a guardian you’ll be spending a good deal of time playing support because it’s the only thing you can do at the moment. If that’s worth it to you to be able to hold up a little better once you do get in melee range, then go for it. However, if I, someone who does play full support in most MMOs, get frustrated with the lack of range, then I can only imagine how a more damage-oriented player would feel.
1-handed sword actually is viable on both guardian and warrior, at least as a secondary set for the gap closer. Check out Yojack’s build in the warrior forums for one way it can work. However, if you like the greatsword, you should go with that. As with all MMOs, you kind of have to put mechanics above cosmetics to a certain point if you want to do well.
Well, Take Root requires a land-based fight where it’s safe to stand still, which is kind of situational. Yeah, it’s still arguably better than the elementalist elites, but that’s more because the elementalist elites are weak compared to most classes than because Take Root is all that great.
Grasping vines can be useful for ranged builds that don’t otherwise have a good way to immobilize (e.g., rifle warriors.)
The turrets die too easily to be worth it.
Neither of the summons is all that great when compared to human or asura, but hey, they’re still summons. They can be useful in soloing if your class doesn’t offer any.
You can use Guildhead to link the dyes to yourself in-game (and thus preview them.) Just hit the blue link button in the upper right corner and copy it into your chat box. My guess for the other two colors would be abyss and gold, but it’s hard to say for sure.
Weeks or months from now most people will have reached a relatively high difficulty level and be unlikely to run lower. New players, or those just reaching 80 will have a very tough time finding groups to work their way up the ladder. Having people who still need to grind up their alts at least provides a small outlet for group formation.
These two reasons are why these things should be per character. I haven’t done any dungeons on my alts or invested in their gear, and it would be crazy to expect them to perform on the same level as my main. Realistically, I’m also not as good at playing them, since I have less practice with them in a dungeon environment.
The in-game mail that gives you a vague idea of where the objectives are is really well done. The Halloween clues were far too vague to bother with, and I went straight to looking the locations up. This time, however, I was sure enough about being in the right ballpark to do the hunting and puzzle solving on my own.
First of all, it’s going to depend on the armor. Different sets display colors slightly differently. However, in general, I wouldn’t say either shade is the best match for the shades you want, and you’d need ones that lean toward more pure yellow and orange.
If you wanted a more “realistic” approximation, you could use both together, gold for the yellow and illumination for the orange.
Gaming mice really are awesome: my DPS went up by 20% when I got my first one. You can buy a Naga or G600 for around the price of a new AAA title. In my opinion, it’s well worth skipping out on a game every couple years to let you play the others with more comfortable controls.
However, if you don’t have the money or simply don’t think a ton of mouse controls are for you, then the thing to do is get rid of the default WASD bindings. Mouse turning is better anyway. Bind dodge or autorun to your mouse wheel and one of the keys you’ve freed up. Now you have prime keyboard real estate open for skills.
Can I make a request if you decide to add further improvements? It would be nice if there were images of the Sylvari cultural armor at night, to display the glow (or lack thereof.) Not all pieces do, and from the sylvari forums I know that’s a factor for some people deciding which ones to get.
Of course, the amount of work you’ve already done is impressive. Thank you!
It’s not just that you’re in the wrong part of the zone. This gap happens with every 15-25 zone, at least for me, and I’ve gone through it with every race. Between the starting zones and the 15-25 zones, there’s not quite enough quest content to keep you on track. It pays off to do part of another starting zone before heading to that next area.
In contrast to Jman, I think i favor my guardian for PVE and my warrior for PVP.
The warrior does have more options as far as range and gaps closers (not that the guardian has no options at all), but the guardian offers more options in support and defense (not that the warrior sucks at those.)
I think it’s one of those situations where you have to get your own feel for them and decide. Make one of each and level them to 20ish, or go mess around in the mists.
Getting WvW out of the way at opportune times simply cannot be emphasized enough, so I’ll repeat that advice.
Other than that, I have one more suggestion: never be intimidated by the amount you have left. At all. This is easy, nothing like, say, the original Loremaster achievement in WoW. Every single point you need is labeled for you, and there’s really not that much content. Enjoy it, because it’s over before you know it.
Oh, and do the jumping puzzles and diving achievements as you run into them. It saves you a lot of running around later.
Elementalists can get perma-switftness in multiple ways, and they also fit the ranged requirement. They can focus more on sustained damage than burst, if you build them correctly.
Alternatively, believe it or not, warriors can be insanely mobile, although this mobility comes from melee weapons instead of ranged ones. (The ranged ones pretty much root you constantly.) If mobility is your thing and you dislike thief, I’d definitely give warrior a try.
I’m on Yak’s Bend, because it’s by far the friendliest server I tried. It probably ranks in the top five across all MMOs I’ve played. Believe it or not, people are generally called out for trolling. Whether or not it lasts, I’m enjoying it for now.
I have seen no mention of My Little Pony in chat, positive or negative, so I suppose that could go either way. We’re also not the most organized when it comes to PVP, although we’re not utter crap either. Other than that, though, I’d say that the positive reviews you’ve heard are accurate.
I question how much you’re really getting from the condition damage on the shaman gear, especially in WvW. None of you traits really focus on improving it, and even though you’re presumably not sitting in water attunement all the time, chances are you’re switching into it fairly frequently (and subsequently giving up the chance to lay on the condition damage.) You might get more out of the power and higher healing bonus of straight cleric.
I thought the answer to this should be easy to find, but I’ve searched the wiki and these forums to no avail. If you delete a character, do you keep the achievements they earned? I’m sure stuff like kills with certain weapon types probably stays, but what about achievements for finishing a racial storyline?
I created one of each race for the achievements, but now that I’m finished with that I’d like to reroll a couple of the characters as races I’m more fond of.
I distinctly remember people using the word “toon” in some of the MUDs I played, although I continued to play them awhile after graphical MMOs became popular. It might have just been spillover from those.
The least frustrating thing to do is wait for a week where your realm is completely dominating . If your realm sucks at PVP or always seems to be evenly matched, find a realm that’s dominating their match up and temporarily transfer there. I finished one of the maps without even seeing an enemy player, and even though I’m not very skilled at PVP I only got killed a total of two or three times over all four maps.
Yes, the waiting isn’t much fun, especially if you have to transfer, but for someone who dislikes PVP it ended up being a much better option than doing it with a ton of hostile players around.
Actually in this game it seems like everyone pronounces centaur as sen-tar. Which is weird to me, I always hear sen-tor. It makes me wonder if they pronounce taurus as tar-us O.o
About some of these vowel sounds (centaur, golem, etc.): a lot of American dialects have less vowel sounds than British English, or even other American dialects. In some cases, we are literally unable to hear the difference, because the human brain is programmed to stop distinguishing differences that don’t matter. (That’s why people raised speaking Mandarin have issues with L and R.)
So yeah. The actors most likely say “sen-tar” and drive home in a Ford “Tar-us” because they hear no difference from “sen-tor” and “tor-us.”
I gravitate towards androgynous characters, which are unfortunately pretty rare in most games. The combination of a character model with no secondary sex characteristics, non-gendered armor skins, and non-girly-girl voice acting are a dream come true. While it could be that anet was just cutting corners, I like to think that the developers really did have non-binary identities in mind for once.
I have one of each race for completionist purposes, but once I get all of the achievements, I just might reroll a couple of them as Charr.
Inspired Virtues is not mandatory. Yes, it’s good. There are some builds that it helps immensely. That doesn’t mean that it’s worth it for every single build out there. If you have no focus on virtues or buffing, there may well be another trait that gives you more utility. If you’re solo leveling, it will rarely pay for you to use it. If you’re using altruistic healing or have the points to go around, awesome, but otherwise weigh your options before taking it.
For the metal, I used a combination of Icing, Ash, and Charcoal (and Chalk on the sleeves of the chest, since its colors display as a little off from the rest of my pieces.) For the cloth I used Lava and Sunset (which display as the same shade.)
The cloth used to be Oxblood to match her leaves, but due to a bug, equipping the silly Halloween backpiece deleted my old invisible one and forced me to carry a burning book on my back. I had to make my gear a smidgen more orange so nothing clashed.
Plants react to the environment without needing a brain. In the animal world, octopi have an individual “brain” controlling each arm. It’s possible that the Sylvari nervous system could be decentralized in this way, with a lot of tissues reacting without conscious input.
In any case, I’m sure the moment some poor human first ran across one was right out of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
There is no “best build” for leveling, since different people find different things fun and low-level PVE content is very forgiving. That thread explains everything a beginner needs to know about the class and how to choose the best build for you.
An honor/valor build is nice because you’re not really chained to any one weapon, although the valor line does offer benefits to using a mace or shield. Really, the best thing to do is to carry a few different weapons in your bags and switch them out situationally.
Staff is nice in that it has some great support abilities, awesome build synergy with ability 4, and provides a bit of range. Mace fits in well with the goal of defense and support, as does the focus. The shield also buffs defense and provides a knockback (although whether that’s good or bad is subjective). The hammer is all about control, if you’d rather go that route. Sword is good for mobility and, due to its faster attack speed, getting more crits, which works well with empowering might.) And whether we like it or not, there are some situations where range is absolutely necessary and we’re best served by pulling out the scepter.
Most of the time in PVE, I run with mace/focus and Staff. In WvW I typically run with hammer and mace/shield. I don’t do sPvP, so I can’t really speak for what works there.
I run with the build Robolee posted at the moment. I prefer it to the one in the OP (which I’ve also tried) because, as he suggests, it tends to be a little more survivable and equally supportive.
You should be switching out your utility skills situationally, so it’s not really a question of whether to “keep” Save Yourself. There are times when you’ll want to ditch one of those shouts for Wall of Reflection or perhaps Purging Flames. If you don’t happen to be running with a consecration, you can always switch out “Master of Consecrations” for “Vengeful” or even “Unscathed Contender.”
5 points in zeal is very situational, and you have little control over when it triggers. Often, the symbol created will be rendered useless by whatever brought you to 25% in the first place. Virtues 10 has a couple attractive options that can be switched out at will. Even radiance 5 is arguably more useful, because you can choose when to deploy it.
For those who are curious, Mouse 4 and 5 are the two buttons near the front. This setup probably wouldn’t work well for people with larger hands, and I get why the OP left room for redundancy in his bindings. Luckily, my hands are on the small side and just the right size to be able to reach everything comfortably without mashing the wrong buttons accidentally.
Unfortunately, I make a terrible sylvari as I’m always threatening to brutalize various NPCs and I’ve yet to find a sylvari outside the nightmare court displaying such traits.
Depending on your character creation choices (I think it’s “All things have a right to grow.”) you do get to work with a Sylvari who illogically threatens to punch everyone he meets in your personal story. There’s also a random NPC in one zone who’s preaching to his shocked friend about how violent death is part of nature.
I agree that it’s hard to justify taking any of the racial utility skills over our class ones. We already have a wide variety of juicy utilities, and the fact that they tend to benefit more from traits is icing on the cake. And while I can see how some of the racial elites would benefit certain playstyles (like the Norn snow leopard stealth mentioned earlier), I think I personally prefer the tomes of courage and wrath for most fights.
So yeah, I ended up basing my decision on lore and appearance. Sylvari for me. Their summon isn’t the greatest, for when I need one, but it isn’t horrible either.
I had a ton of fun with the dungeon: it was short and sweet with a novel layout. The “Mad King Says” mechanic was cute too.
I know a lot of people were disappointed with act 4, but listening to the horrible, horrible puns was actually one of my favorite parts of the event.
I never was able to finish the clock tower after hours of trying. My only complaint is that there was no indication that it wasn’t required for the title. I could have spent that time on aspects of the game I did enjoy.
Candy corn mining was the most hilarious thing ever. While I know on an intellectual level that it was no different from farming regular ore, I somehow never stopped being amused by it.
In that vein, I really liked the implementation of the labyrinth, a separate zone to farm holiday stuff for as long as you wanted whenever you felt like it. Having a separate zone also (mostly) kept normal leveling from grinding to a halt due to constantly spawning champions in the open world, which was kind of nice.
I bought bank space purely to store the holiday items. If I’m still playing at Christmas, I might do that again. The actual pets and costumes this time around didn’t really appeal to me, mostly because they were really only relevant during October, and only out of combat. Some of the weapon skins really appealed to me, and while I probably would have bought them at a set price I wasn’t about to gamble for them without knowing the drop rate. If they have non-random weapon skins for sale at Christmas, I’ll definitely be tempted to purchase them.
I honestly wouldn’t have been mad at all if I knew that the clock tower wasn’t required for the emissary title. I think it’s good that there are challenging puzzles for the people who like that sort of thing. I just don’t think they should be mandatory for achievements that focus mainly on more traditional PVE content. So far, they haven’t been, and that’s probably my favorite aspect of Guild Wars. For the most part, different activities are nice and compartmentalized and don’t screw each other up.
