Guild Wars 2

I would also add that the players who had their dailies and monthlies reset appear to be getting the full rewards a second time, even if they had completed it prior. That’s a lot of extra Laurels and stuff.

It looks like you probably haven’t “had” your Twilight for a pretty long time now.

The reason it showed up as purple before and not exotic is because it used to look at the rarity of the “skin” item and the rarity of the “stats” item and display whichever one was higher. So since the Twilight “skin” is legendary and your “stats” item is just exotic, the name showed up in purple.

They changed their mind in this patch to have the color be the rarity of the “stats” item. This makes it a lot easier to figure out what the stats numbers actually are on your gear. If you’re wearing exotics, you’ll know you’ll have exotic stats and not ascended or rares.

I’m guessing if you actually looked at your stats before the patch, it was exotic numbers rather than ascended numbers, and you weren’t able to change your stats by double clicking.

This isn’t a bug and this is just how it always worked. When they added transmutation splitters months and months ago (September?), they told you to use splitters to get your original legendary back. They also warned you in the last several weeks when they announced the wardrobe, as others have pointed out. It’s very unfortunate you didn’t understand these warnings. Your best bet would be to contact customer support, but there’s no guarantee they’d be able to help you.

Your other characters should definitely have the Twilight skin unlocked. If not then that definitely would be a bug. I’d look harder to double check. You can look at the greatsword section in your bank as well. Even though you lost the legendary “stats” item, you should still have the skin unlocked.

Can confirm that this is an issue for myself and my entire party as well.

We completed Arah story last night: we did not get any reward track unlock popup notification, and the reward track UI still shows the countdown timer and the mouseover still tells us we have x time left and need to do story mode to unlock permanently.

In contrast, I also did CM story last night: I got a unlock popup notification at the end, and it looks like it unlocked correctly in the PvP UI.

World Boss schedule rollout clarification

Since the blog post does not say anything explicitly about this, and people have conflicting ideas, do we have:

1. World boss schedule hits everywhere all at once on April 15, entirely separate from the gradual MegaServer rollout
2. World boss schedule hits maps gradually starting April 15, tied to the gradual MegaServer rollout

Which is the case?

Also, the ability to right-click in chat on players who are emoting, in order to facilitate reporting the spammers.

Currently, the only way to report emote spammers is to find their character so you can target them and right-click their health bar.

Question: PvP Cultural Armor (glory vendor) and the Emperor achievements

Currently (as far as I am aware), purchasing a set of cultural armor from the glory vendor does not count towards the Emperor achievements. Based on the Wardrobe FAQ, it sounds like under the Wardrobe system, PvP cultural armor will unlock those skins, so it is really no different from purchasing them in PvE. Will this be addressed to award Emperor progress? If I purchase a set now (before the vendor goes away presumably when the Feature patch hits), will progress be awarded retroactively?

Angel McCoy.1832:

Hi, guys…and Veron in particular. I just wanted to let you know that I hear you. In-studio, we talk a lot about how to make the experience unique to each player via branching conIversations and the like.

… snip …

Thanks for the response, Angel. I do appreciate the current efforts towards branching dialogues, and I definitely see how the complexity of it could easily get out of hand.

I do think though, that some of the major milestones that currently don’t usually get branches, e.g. Claw Island, Commander of the Pact, slayer of Zhaitan, come off as especially jarring when dialogue not only doesn’t reference them, but end up saying something that seems absurd when considered with those milestones.

I think maybe something that could be considered without having to add additional branches is making sure that non-branched dialogue sounds more agnostic to these milestones, i.e. characters who realistically would know about your accomplishments (e.g. your friends, or leaders that would be informed about Pact activities) don’t say something that would sound disrespectful or weird.

I do also think that branches just for these major milestones would go a long way towards making many conversations feel less awkward and more rewarding for players. It doesn’t even have to be during the major scenes with voiced dialogue — purely textual dialogue would make a big difference.

Anyways, I appreciate the hard work you all put in to create new content at such a rapid pace. Thanks for reading my feedback.

Responses to frequently made arguments

Stop being so vain and egotistical. Are you so special in the real world?

I play this game as an outlet for my vanity and ego. That’s why I enjoy doing heroic things in the story. That’s why I made myself a Sunrise, why I crafted ascended armor, why I hunt for achievements and titles. Why do you play this game?

This is an MMO. There were tons of other people there on the Breachmaker. Why should you be treated differently by the game?

This argument gets used all the time as an excuse to dilute stories in MMOs. But don’t forget that this is also an RPG, which places a great deal of emphasis on personal progression and story. I am special because I experience the game uniquely from my point of view. All of the other players are just there. I don’t care who they are or what they’re doing. The other players on the Breachmaker are no different to me than the Lionguard NPCs. In fact, that’s who other players are: non-playable characters, because I am not playing them. So it doesn’t matter that they were in Battle for Lion’s Arch, the same way it doesn’t matter that a bunch of unnamed Lionguard stand around the rally points. I’m the one in the instance who killed Scarlet. I’m the one who went to the Dead End to celebrate with Marjory, Kasmeer, Rox, Braham, and Taimi. It’s not like the game doesn’t already tend towards personalization in many ways. Marjory never talks about the “one hundred and forty-nine other heroes who storm the Breachmaker”. Trahearne never says anything about there being other #2’s in the Pact. Logan doesn’t have any other Hero of Shaemoors he’s mentoring. You are the only one in the story who fills these roles and forms relationships with these characters. Why should some of the dialogue then not recognize these roles and these relationships?

You’ve never talked to so-and-so NPC before. Why should they magically know who you are?

Sometimes it’s reasonable for them to know who you are, and sometimes it isn’t. For the reasonable times, it’s weird when they don’t. I, a multiple-time savior of Lion’s Arch, Commander of the Pact, confidant of Magnus and Kiel, fought alongside the Lionguard to retake Lion’s Arch. I think it would be fairly reasonable to say that the Lionguard rank and file recognize my name and face. All of the Captain’s Council does. Presumably, people who live in Tyria don’t sit around and twiddle their thumbs in silence all the time. People talk to each other. People tell each other news. How is it more realistic that they know Scarlet died, but don’t know how she died? Isn’t this what everyone would be talking about right now? So why don’t the Lionguard in LA right now know I killed Scarlet? And honestly, generally this isn’t a good reason not to have personalized dialogue. Here’s a good check: in an alternate universe where the developers did put in NPC recognition, would you be complaining that it’s unrealistic?

Of course, this isn’t to say that there is completely no personalization. After having stomped Scarlet, I was able to talk to various refugees, Captain’s Councilors, Magnus, etc who thanked or congratulated me on defeating Scarlet. This is nice, and makes me feel like my participation in the Living World has an impact on my relationships with the characters and the world.

Sometimes the personalization is thrown in, but is not entirely complete. These cases are often kind of jarring and ruin an otherwise nice personalization. For example, a few releases back when you are looking at evidence to figure out Scarlet’s plan, you tell Marjory to name-drop you at the Priory. But Marjory herself is a member of the Priory. If she is in any way active in the Priory, how does she not know I am a Magister, and that I was/am Commander of the Pact? Even if she’s been living under a rock, how is it that I haven’t discussed my fairly exceptional Priory status with this friend that I’ve gone through multiple adventures with until now? Or for another example, in the new instance in the Dead End, Belinda Delaqua tells me that Logan has been “impressed” my “progress”. I found that to be very awkward phrasing, given that I am #2 in Tyria’s defense force, and that Logan and I killed Zhaitan together. Or how about the Pale Tree? In this release, we can go talk to the Pale Tree about how we were the ones who killed Scarlet. The Pale Tree expresses her deep gratitude and then proceeds to say “I must know your name.” Um, hello? Your son Trahearne and I came to see you before we went and cleansed Orr, and you gave us a fancy vision. Here are a bunch of examples where personalization was put in, but the incompleteness just makes the problem more noticeable.

The one really good example of a well-executed personalization was the instance where you meet Rox for the first time. You are in the Black Citadel’s Command Core, and Imperator Smodur and the tribunes are having a meeting about dealing with the Molten Alliance. The guards around the conference table refused to let me in at first, but I could respond “Not even for Pact Commander Veron Oakguard?” after which they say they do indeed have orders to let me through. Talking to Smodur, he says something along the lines of “Commander of the Pact? What are you doing here?” and actually briefly gives me the time of day, treating me as an equal. This kind of interaction makes my previous completion of the PS feel that much more rewarding, and is exactly what I want to see more of.

I recognize that writing multiple dialogue versions and programming in conditional checks for PS/LS participation takes a lot of effort. But this functionality exists in the game, as the examples I gave above and countless other examples of personalized dialogue to race, Order, and PS completion show. As a player, I put a great deal of value into personalized dialogue. Immersion is important to me, and the alternative is highly immersion-breaking. Furthermore, I play this game in large part as an outlet for my vanity. After all, what else is the point of legendaries, achievements, titles, and fancy armor? The unpersonalized dialogue feels like it belittles my accomplishments. I would like to see increased attention put towards personalized dialogue in future Living World releases.

I want to feel “This is my story” again.

==

(continued…)

This post is plea to the developers to put more emphasis on personalized dialogue and immersion. I’m not here to argue about things like why the Pact didn’t show up to Lion’s Arch.

TL;DR: There is glaring lack of personal recognition in the bulk of NPC dialogue in Living Story releases. Much of the dialogue treats all players the same, regardless of your personal history in past content. As a current example, most of the Lionguard in Lion’s Arch don’t even recognize you as a comrade who stormed LA with them or as the slayer of Scarlet and just treat you as a random tourist. For me, this is immersion-breaking and feels like it devalues my accomplishments and my participation in previous content. I understand that writing multiple versions of dialogue and coding in conditional checks takes a lot of work. As a player, I value personalized dialogue very highly and would like to see more attention paid in future Living Story releases.

==

“This is my story.”

The opening cinematic on character creation is very powerful. When I made my character, it got me pumped up. I was ready to return to Tyria, to fight against whatever evils threatened the lands. I was ready to be a hero, to live my story.

Whatever your opinion is on the execution of the Personal Story, there is no doubt that it was about you and your endeavours. You first become a hero in your local region, then you join an order and work your way up the hierarchy. Eventually, when Zhaitan makes a major attack against Lion’s Arch, you lead the counteroffensive to retake Claw Island from Zhaitan’s forces. Afterwards, regardless of Trahearne’s role and what you think of it, you become Commander of the Pact. You are number two. You are a leader, not just in name but also by your actions. You make decisions, and you personally execute daring and dangerous operations in Orr, culminating in the death of Zhaitan himself.

Hero of Shaemoor. Magister of the Priory. Hero of Claw Island and Savior of Lion’s Arch. Commander of the Pact. Slayer of Zhaitan. I am a pretty big deal. I have formed relationships with many notable characters, and I have accomplished some mighty things.

All of this gets pushed aside when the Living World hit. The dialogue treats you as a random adventurer who happened to answer the call for help. You can make whatever rationalizations you want about NPCs never having interacted with you before or MMOs having many heroes, but the fact is that it’s really a practical consideration. There will be new players who haven’t done the PS who are going to be doing this new temporary content. At each step of the way, there will be new players in the current LS release that haven’t done previous LS releases or the PS. The simplest and least work-intensive approach is to have only a single set of dialogue. Who does the dialogue target? It would be much more disruptive to have new players hear about things they didn’t do or some mighty Pact that they haven’t yet seen form, than for veteran players to have their past accomplishments ignored.

But what is the dialogue there for, if not for people to go out and discover and read? I’m the kind of player who normally makes an effort to experience all the content and to actually go read NPC dialogue, and it really discouraged me yesterday when I explored Lion’s Arch. The bulletin board lists me as the one who stopped Scarlet, but it doesn’t recognize my very relevant exploits as Commander of the Pact, the hero of Claw Island, the hero who stopped Mad King Thorn from coming out of the fountain, the protector who saved several Ship’s Council members from the Aetherblade attack, and the captor of Mai Trin. All the Lionguard say something like “Get out of here, random guy. We don’t need any more tourists or looters,” despite the fact that I spent the past four weeks fighting alongside them, rescuing citizens, defending their rally points, taking down Scarlet’s generals, assaulting the Breachmaker, and being the one who finally killed Scarlet. Normally, I would really enjoy talking to the NPCs, but this is isn’t really very fun. How can my comrades in arms not know who I am by now, after all I’ve done for them on multiple occasions?

(continued…)

Malediktus.9250:

Stop using imgur and upload pictures to these forums. All these 3rd party sites are getting on my nerves.

Just for you.

Nilkemia.8507:

On topic, so the huge meta-guild killed them in 3 minutes. So?…was this before the patch that made them even more annoying?

This happened at 11pm server last night, which is after the patch that supposedly fixed all the problems and forces the 50-50-50 split.

Singer.8740:

Picks or it didn’t happen. :p

Waldir.2571:

I call b.s…

15 letter,

Here are your pics.

http://imgur.com/a/KjSV4

Note the server time in the minimap, and the lack of achievement credit in the tracker. Excuse the justifiably angry people in map chat. We had been doing trying for this for a few hours, and it sucked that when we finally did it, it didn’t count.

Hi there,

It sounds like Vintage Gaming [VG] on Jade Quarry might be a good guild for you and your brother. We’re a medium-sized (~200+ members, with at ~40 online throughout most of the NA day) PvX guild, with an emphasis on PvE.

Our guild has players across the spectrum, from wide-eyed new players to casuals to people with >5 legendaries to NA top 1000 achievement hunters. We maintain a friendly and helpful environment in the guild, where everyone plays for fun. You’ll see a lot of joking around in guild chat. Puns are especially appreciated.

Our guild has an emphasis on PvE: we do a lot of dungeons, fractals, world bosses, Living Story content, etc. We have guild groups forming to run dungeons and fractals every day. If there’s anything you don’t have experience with and want to learn, our more experienced dungeon runners are happy to teach. We also have a lot of world boss hunters in the guild. Aside from regular world bosses, we have a solid representation at JQ’s Tequatl kill every day, we were a driving force in JQ’s recent (and late ) tri-wurm attempts, and we had many people doing Marionette every day.

As for WvW and sPvP, we have a lot of players who are individually interested. We don’t do anything organized for either as a guild, but many members will group up if they see each other inside.

We have guild missions twice weekly, on Saturdays and Wednesdays. We also do goofy guild activities for fun every few weeks, like hide and seek and rescuing Santa Quaggan.

We also have a Mumble server for voice communications. There’s no pressure to join in if you don’t want to, but it’s a great way to get to know guildies better.

I’ll send you a message in-game to follow up. You’re welcome to try us out, and no hard feelings if you decide we’re not a good fit.

I feel that there has been a marked lack of communication on when Marionette ends.

Everyone in the game is convinced that it must be going away because for whatever plot reasons, but that isn’t really good enough. For temporary content with achievements and unique rewards, there should be very explicit communication from Anet about when this will no longer be available. I have not been able to easily find any official information on this, and no one in-game has been able to answer satisfactorily.

• There is no mention of when it goes away on the Origins of Madness release page
• There is no mention of it in the Origins of Madness patch notes
• There is no mention of this on the Edge of the Mists release page .
• There is no mention of this in the Edge of the Mists patch notes
• The news article introducing Escape from Lion’s Arch has a teaser video and nothing else

The wiki article for Origins of Madness states that it ends on February 18, but I have no idea what the source of this is, or if it can be trusted.

All I can easily find is a dev post saying that the secret lair will not be going away with the Escape from Lion’s Arch release, but it says nothing about the Twisted Marionette encounter.

Even with the last release, I had no idea whether or not Marionette would be staying until the Edge of the Mists patch went live, and I could go physically check that it was still around.

Please Anet, make sure to remember to communicate when temporary content ends. I don’t actually care when Marionette goes away in this case, but I do care that we have clear and transparent communication between the playerbase and the developers. I appreciate the new strategy you guys are trying by withholding release pages and keeping things a surprise, but when existing content departs shouldn’t be a surprise. You did a great job with this last year with temporary living story content, but I feel it has been going the wrong direction in the last few weeks.

UPDATE: February 18, 10:00am PST
Rubi made a post about the Escape from Lion’s Arch patch being delayed, and this is the first time I have seen anything by a dev that suggests Marionette will go away.

I don’t think anybody is really addressing OP’s question since they are comparing Longbow/Shortbow/Axe on ranger to general melee weapon damage across all professions. OP wants a comparison to Thief Pistol/Pistol.

I do not have any math to back up this statement, but I think the reason OP finds ranger ranged weapons to be worse than Unload is because a thief can burst a lot of damage out of Unload (because initiative) but then have to wait for initiative to regenerate. Ranger weapons do not really have any equivalent burst, but probably do at least comparable sustained DPS. Frontloaded bursting is a profession mechanic for thieves because of initiative and when comparing with other professions’ DPS, some care needs to be taken.

Another Mac user. Can confirm that I also saw a drastic FPS drop since the patch, doing the same things I’ve always been doing on the same machine.

Like Kioshi, I also cannot find the lines

“VideoRam” = “128”
“AGPVertexRam” = “64”

in my config file. It seems that they have since been removed.

If you are guesting, you currently cannot right-click “Join in __” into the guested server’s main map. This has been an issue for a long time (both Mac and PC, no functionality difference), and the work-around is to physically walk from an adjacent map into the portal for the zone whose main map you want to join into. If the main map is only softcapped, you will be able to load directly into the main map to join your party members. If it is hardcapped, you will have to keep trying and hope that a space in the main map opens up.

JJBigs.8456:

3. Her Name:
Asura’s socially accepted norm is to have two of the same letter in your name in a row. Taimi. She only follows the almost mandatory female rule of having her name end in -i sound.(1 of 2 possible sounds). There are seldom, but some asuras have no two same letter in a row, however there are almost no females who disobey the last letter sound

Disagree.

If you look at the official wiki category page which lists pages for characters tagged as asura, you will see that there are tons of characters who do not have double letters. Some prominent examples include Agent Batanga (OOW personal story), Warmaster Efut (Vigil personal story), Tzark (AC explorable), Teyo (Inquest villain), Kudu (Inquest leader), all six members of the Arcane Council … list goes on.

I wouldn’t call that “seldom”.

aspirine.6852:

Except, i have seen more times than a few only 3 or 4 on my platform, lots of players on already finished or dunno what they are doing just standing there.. It does not make any sense, he is my teammate for the dps, why would I want to split this up?

Your entire lane must succeed on all five platforms. They are all your “teammates for the DPS”.

Another thread was recently made about the same Warden that came to the same conclusion: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/madness/Bugged-Marionette-Dodger

This is also consistent with my dozen or so attempts at Marionette Dodger for Warden IV. Didn’t get hit by the sword – chain severed – got downed by boss – no achievement. Finally did one where I also didn’t get downed, and I get the achievement.

For those who are still trying to get this: standing in the safe spot the whole time can be kind of dangerous. The boss will regularly scream there (confusion) and put wells there (torment) and if you just stand in front of the regulator there is a good chance you’ll go down. If you kind of move around a bit near the regulator to avoid boss attacks, and dodge towards it whenever you see a sword swipe, you’ll stay alive much better.

No.

This is just how the game works right now. I agree it sucks and is really annoying, but it affects everybody, and there has been no indication that it will be changed.

I received some whispers about my guild from someone at around 8pm server time on Saturday. I think the name began with an “M”. I’m really sorry I disappeared on you, and I lost your contact info by the time I remembered to get back to you. I presume you found me from some old posts here, so hopefully you will look here again. If you’re still interested, whisper me again or send me a mail in-game.

etbmusic.3965:

Hi, just so I’m clear (and forgive me if this is obvious or has been said already), but does the reinstall fix posed by Felicja require that I buy the game again to “get a new copy”, or is there a link I can use to apply to this fix instead of re-purchasing?

You do not need to repurchase the game.

At the top right of any page on guildwars2.com (including this one) where your account name is shown, there should be a link called “MY ACCOUNT”. If you click there, it will take you to a page where you can redownload the client.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

I think the first thing to do is check if this is specific to that command, or if all commands don’t work in Mavericks.

Make sure your game is running in Full Screen mode, then exit the game and put “-windowed” in the command line, then run the game and see if it runs in windowed mode (it’s one of the easier to check commands). Then let us know if that works or not?

Great call. It looks like -windowed also does not work for me either. I know a lot of others on the forums have Mavericks/TG 1.009524, and I would be interested to see if they can reproduce this problem.

(To clarify, I removed -maploadinfo when I tested -windowed.)

I recently upgraded my operating system to Mavericks. I downloaded a fresh GW2 client and followed the instructions posted by Gaile to manually update the TG wrapper to v.1.0.009524. After doing this, I did not have any issues with the TG update.

I tried to enable the -maploadinfo flag in CiderSettings.plist. Unfortunately, it does not seem to actually enable the info to display in-game. I have attached my CiderSettings.plist file.

I’ve checked this against the CiderSettings.plist in my old copy of the GW2 client on my backup from before my OS upgrade, and they are identical. I’ve also tried changing the case of the flag to “-mapLoadInfo”, but that did not help.

I have deleted both sets of GW2 temporary files as detailed in this post, and that also has not helped.

EDIT: To clarify, I had to add a .txt extension to the plist file before the forums would let me upload it.

Durzlla.6295:

I run full clerics with a 0/0/20/20/30 build or something like that and I’ve been having little issue, I run a sword/horn and a longbow (primarily the bow) with Mercy Ruhes, LR, HS, SotH, Stone Spirit and Elite Spirit, my utilities get changed up every now and then but the general theme behind the build (tanky supporter) stay the same.

Pet is a fern hound and a brown bear, the bear just eats up everything and doesn’t give a kitten, so many times him tanking as I rezzed the idiots in zerker who died again has made us not wipe.

I’m curious: what level fractals do you run and how long are your runs?

Bad players are bad players. A bad player in tanky armor will die almost as much as a bad player in zerker armor in high level fractals, given that most things that kill you will do so very quickly.

As Bambula said, you won’t get maximum possible ranger damage using GS/LB. Maximum damage uses mainhand sword. Signet builds also aren’t very good for sustained DPS in PvE.

If you’re set on using GS as your primary weapon, you can do several things to improve your DPS. At a minimum,

1. Take Spotter (Marks VII) instead of Beastmaster’s Might (Marks IX). This gives a partywide increase in damage and is one of the three saving graces that rangers have.
2. Take 5 out of Skirm and 5 out of Wild Surv and put them into Nature Magic. Take Vigorous Spirits (NM IV) and bring Frost Spirit instead of Signet of the Wild. This also gives a partywide increase in damage and is another saving grace that rangers have.

At this point, you’ve got the ranger build I run (30/25/5/10/0). This is still not maximum DPS for greatsword but gives you some survivability in the form of Signet of Stone with Signet of the Beastmaster. You can still further increase your DPS by ditching the signet build entirely.

1. Switch Signet Mastery (Marks IV) for Steady Focus (Marks I). Try not to dodge if you don’t have to.
2. Take an additional out of 5 out of Marks, 5 out of Skirmishing, and 5 out of Wild Surv. Put that all into Nature Magic, so you have 20/25/0/25/0.The 25 point minor trait Bountiful Hunter increases your damage by 5% since in most group situations you’ll have a boon. Take Two-Handed Training (NM IX) for increased Greatsword damage.

This will be roughly the best you can do for GS/LB. Also consider taking Jungle Stalker, which gives your party Might from its F2 skill. Also, Healing Spring is much better than Heal as One, because it puts down a super long water field that other people can blast, and also cures conditions. (Another saving grace of rangers.)

Hi there,

It sounds like Vintage Gaming [VG] on Jade Quarry may be for you. We’re a medium-sized PvX guild, with a greater emphasis on PvE. By medium-sized, I mean we have 200+ members with 30-50 online during North America waking hours. Our guild has a fairly wide spectrum of players, from casual or new players to NA Top 1000 achievement hunters. You’ll also find that we’re a pretty fun group, with frequent joking around in guild chat or on our Mumble voice communications server.

Our members regularly group up for dungeons, fractals of all levels, and world events. Many of our members are regulars at JQ’s daily reset Tequatl. We do sPvP and WvW to a lesser extent – many of our members do those on their own and will sometimes group up if people are interested in going together. We run guild missions twice a week – Saturday and Wednesday evenings. We also do goofy guild events every few weeks. This past weekend, we rescued Santa Quaggan and his reindeer from the evil white charr. Zombie hide and week is also a staple guild activity.

We have no problems if you need to take breaks from the game. You are free to participate in the guild to whatever extent you feel comfortable/are able to. As a note, we do clean our guild roster monthly and remove any members who have been inactive for longer than a month. If you end up getting kicked for inactivity, we will send you mail in-game, and you should easily be able to get back in touch with us and get reinvited if you want to return.

I’ll contact you in-game later today when I get online. You’re free to give us a try, and no hard feelings if you decide we’re not for you.

Hi Karawicz,

If you haven’t found a guild already, it sounds like Vintage Gaming [VG] on Jade Quarry might be for you. We’re a medium-sized PvX guild with an emphasis on PvE. By medium sized I mean that we have ~200 members total and typically ~30-50 players online during North American waking hours each day. Our members are a wide spectrum of players, from beginners to NA Top 1000 achievement hunters. You’ll find that our guild is a friendly place, with conversations and joking frequently going on in guild chat. We all play this game to have a good time.

Most of our members primarily focus on PvE. We have groups forming all the time for dungeons and fractal of all levels throughout the day. We also regularly run world bosses together, and a good dozen or so of us are a core part of JQ’s daily Tequatl crew. If you’re interested in learning a new dungeon path or anything else, our more experienced players are always happy to help. No speed runs or zerker-only here.

We don’t do anything organized for WvW or sPvP/tPvP, but many of us enjoy those game modes as well and typically do them on our own. Sometimes we’ll group up in WvW or form a team for team arena in PvP.

We hold guild missions twice a week, on Saturday and Wednesday evenings. We also frequently do goofy guild events every few weeks, like zombie hide and seek. Just last night, we had to rescue Santa Quaggan and his six reindeer from the evil white charr. We have a pretty good spread across all American time zones, so you’ll find plenty of west coast players (including yours truly). We use Mumble for voice communications. Voice chatting is a great way to get to know the guild better.

I’ll follow-up with you in-game. You’re free to give us a try, and no hard feelings if you decide we’re not for you.

Poison Volley (2) is kind of a de facto melee attack.

I dunno, Short bow still has 900 range and is supposed to be a mobile kiting/flanking weapon. Generally speaking most ranged weapons in this game do not mix ranged and melee attacks. I don’t think I agree that I’d want a melee attack. If you really want to get out of melee range, use Quick Shot (3).

Taverius.8645:

These days my lbow has 2 uses, the thaumanova fractal final boss and tequatl.

Funny, I actually find the Anomaly in Thaumanova to be much easier using Shortbow than Longbow. I usually kite close to the center because everyone else likes to kite on the outside, so there is a lot more room close to the middle. And since shortbow autoattacks more quickly, you’re don’t disrupt your autoattacking as much when you have to turn away from the boss to dodge a hole.

I’ve been running GS/LB in dungeons, and 30s fractals for several months. This is the build I use:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJARTjEVV1FWCWsWCi1DCt/B1FwZwfG5KUqUuzJe6F-jQxAklhol8KiGbboIas6aMlLRUNA-e

One of the key differences between what I’ve been using and the 20/25/0/25/0 builds the others have been posting is that I have 30 in Marks for Signet of the Beastmaster. That way I can bring Signet of Stone for a 6 second invulnerability to use as a panic button. (Also good if someone goes down at the boss’ feet and you have to res them.)

Certainly, my build is not optimal by any means. As people will tell you, mainhand sword gives better DPS and DPS is king in PvE. It’s not an optimal DPS build for greatsword, either — running 20/25/0/25/0 like what the others suggest will certainly give you better DPS. I’ve mostly stuck with SotBM/SoS to help keep myself alive. I’ve definitely been considering switching to 20/25/0/25/0, especially given that Two-Handed Training was buffed in yesterday’s patch.

eldris.8461:

Not really fair to those of us who didn’t own the game last year

I’m not sure fairness is really an issue here. The title has no functional purpose; it’s purely a cometic status thing.

The word “Journeyman” when compared to “Apprentice” signifies seniority, which is exactly what we are talking about: people who were there last year completed the meta, and people who were not there last year did not complete the meta. So it makes sense that people who have completed the meta twice should have their status symbol signify seniority over people who have not completed the meta twice.

Personally, I don’t think you should delete any characters you’ve invested a significant time or amount of money in. You never know when in the future you might want to go back to it. (Doesn’t even have to be soon, could be months or years from now.) You’ll also be missing out on birthday presents.

If you’re really out of character slots, I would buy more.

Tip for those who need a quick one more: daily fractal runner is currently bugged in that it will randomly give it to you when you enter a fractal. So if you go roll fractals, you’ll be able to complete it without having to actually do the fractal. Today I got it on my first roll; yesterday it took six rolls.

I don’t have a good answer for you for how to get karma quickly, given that you don’t want to do fractals or WvW. Honestly, I agree that this is a weakness in the current system.

As for Balthazar, it gets opened more often on the weekends. I recommend checking during peak times (afternoons and evenings) on Friday and Saturday.

You’re just having bad luck. All fractals appear at all levels.

nmoral.3876:

If i do it i will lose the +5 vers. simple infusion but i will gain a +5 AR due to the infusion that the infused armor bear “per se”, right?

This used to be how it works, but is no longer the case. It used to be that it would come with +5 AR inherently and an empty offensive/defensive infusion slot, which you could then put a new versatile simple infusion in for a total of +10 AR.

Now when you infuse your backpiece, you get a new second “Agony Resistance Infusion Slot”. Both of these slots start empty. (So you start with +0 AR). You can still put a new versatile simple infusion into the offensive/defensive slot for +5 AR. With the second slot, they take the new Agony Resist Infusions which you get at least one of a +1 AR at the end of every fractal, can buy more on TP, or upgrade lower numbers into higher numbers via artificer crafting. These two slots are separate and stack.

I made this infographic a few weeks ago. It shows rings but works essentially the same way for the backpiece. Dulfy also has a good guide with a lot of detail.

Also, players running at Fractal Scales lower than their own will receive bonus karma at the end of round. The consequence is that playing at a scale higher than one’s level increases difficulty but not rewards, while playing at a lower scale decreases difficulty and rewards, but gives karma in exchange.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal

Bombsaway.7198:

Then, it will trigger on the activity of a pet too which adds more interrupts and a couple which are controllable F2s. Good ability with the knockdowns of the hyena.

Wiki

Interrupts caused by your pet do not trigger the effect.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Moment_of_Clarity

Hi there Tide,

I’m from the guild Vintage Gaming [VG] on Jade Quarry. We’re a medium-sized PvX guild, with a primary focus on PvE. By medium-sized, I mean that we’re ~200 members strong with 30-50 players online during typical NA waking hours each day. Our guild covers a wide spectrum from casual or new players to several NA Top 1000 achievement hunters. You’ll find that our guild is a friendly and fun environment, with frequent chatting and joking in guild chat.

We regularly have groups forming to run both dungeons and fractals every day. Many of our dungeon and fractal regulars are highly experienced and competent, but we also play to have fun and don’t typically do speed runs or anything too intense. We’re also very willing to take new players and show them the ropes. We also do world bosses and new Living Story content together.

We run guild missions twice a week on Saturday and Wednesday evenings.

We use Mumble for voice communications. If you’re looking to make friends in the guild, chatting on voice while playing is a great way to get to know people.

You’re welcome to give us a try. If things don’t work out, no hard feelings. I’ll follow up with you in-game when I get on in a few hours.

awge.3852:

How many interrupts do we have and is having moment of clarity worth the cost? Does moment of clarity work if my pet interrupts an enemy? Hey all I see is skill 5 on short bow and greatsword, lightning reflexes, what else? longbow 4 and the target is far out to do much about it. Could be worth it in PvP 1v1 fights though and some roaming if you can put up with it, still rubbish.

Short bow 5 – Concussion Shot
Greatsword 5 – Hilt Bash
Longbow 4 – Point Blank Shot

Possibly Axe 4 – Path of Scars if you’re lucky.

It does not work with pet interrupts., and Lightning Reflexes does not interrupt the enemy.

Best of luck to you and your friend. 150 gold is kind of a large sum to pay for a stranger. I don’t think there will be too many guilds willing to front that kind of money.

If your friend ends up making it to JQ on her own and still needs a guild, my guild’s doors are open and you or she are welcome to ask me about it then.

There are two different infusion slots that accept two different kinds of infusions on infused rings. See this graphic I made a few weeks back:
http://i.imgur.com/w7cZQZn.jpg

The only mistake in the graphic is that you are actually guaranteed at least a +1 new AR infusion per Fractal complete (at least 4 in a full run).

It sounds like you are either trying to place more Versatile Simple Infusions (+5 AR) into the ring when you already have one slotted, in which case it will replace the old one with the new one and nothing will change. Your new AR infusion slot remains empty because it cannot take Versatile Simple Infusions.

Or its the other way around and you are trying to place a new +5 AR infusion into an offensive or defensive infusion slot, which are not compatible.

achensherd.2735:

(Shrug) Last few dungeons I ran people requested Frost Spirit (with Spotter) and we pretty much always stacked. In those circumstances HS would still probably be more viable, but given our lack of practical information about this new skill, specifically how much it heals per attack and per activation, and what (if anything) it might synergize with, all we know without a doubt based on its description is that it lacks condition cleansing.

This isn’t at all the same though. Frost Spirit is just for increasing damage. If your Frost Spirit dies or it gets left behind, your DPS will go down but it (generally) won’t kill you. If your Water Spirit dies or gets left behind, you can’t heal anymore. Healing is much more critical than 10% more damage.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

The part where you might run into trouble is with the 2GB of RAM. GW2 is a resource hog, even more so on OSX.

You have misunderstood the tech specs and therefore provided a very misleading statement.

It’s the graphics card that has 2GB of RAM. The laptop itself has 16 GB of RAM. So RAM will not at all be a problem here.

Sad Swordfish.9743:

That makes me incredible sad to read:(

Don’t be sad. He just misunderstood.

Latinkuro.9420:

unless they take previous progress into account I see no reason what so ever to go beyond 55 AR which is reachable w/o making any of these infusions.

That’s only true because you already have +5 infusions in those slots. Any new infused rings have empty slots and so you’d have to make them to get to 55 AR. (For now.)

In any case, once ascended armor comes out, you’ll have 6 new slots for versatile simple infusions. You can get to 70 AR without any of the new infusions, or in your case since you already have three +5’s, 85 AR.

They are moving spirits unbound to Master so the mobility shouldn’t be too bad if you have that

I feel like you shouldn’t have to use a master trait just to use a healing skill.

1. I believe cast time for this will be same as other spirits.

In the last patch, all of the spirits got a “Summoning the spirit will now put its activated skill on a 1-second cooldown; this will fix an issue that caused the skill to begin recharging without firing when activated immediately.” change. This has been super annoying because you cannot cast the spirit’s active effect immediately after you summon the spirit. This would suck especially if you’re depending on it to heal you.

Consider this scenario: you’re running around, thief pops out of nowhere and backstabs you. No water spirit down yet. It takes you 1.5 seconds to summon it. Now you have to wait another 1 second before you can heal. So it takes a total of 2.5 seconds for you to heal yourself. Engis don’t have this problem with healing turret because it heals when it deploys.

3. Recharge on skill is 20 seconds, but the uptime is unknown. I’m guessing it will have a recharge time, since all healing skills have a recharge time in game.
4. Spirit radius is 1000 range, if you go out of that then you get no healing from spirit. This build as i see it now is more for spirit rangers it seems, tournament builds, and wvw havoc crews.

There has to be a finite uptime, otherwise your spirit would sit at the beginning of the dungeon forever if it doesn’t die and you can’t cast a new one. But this gives you significantly less flexibility – if your fight ends and you want to move on but your spirit is still alive, you have to wait for it to run out and THEN wait another 20 seconds before you can cast a new one. If you don’t even get the heal when you leave 1000 range, that essentially traps you where your spirit is if you want a heal skill to be available at all.

Several things concern me a little:

• Is the water spirit subject to the 1 sec cooldown on the active skill after summoning that they added in the last patch? I can imagine that situations where you need a heal, put down a water spirit, and die before that you can heal yourself.
• Is there a range on the personal heal on the active skill? What if you place the spirit, run out of range, and then try to heal yourself?
• What if you’re in a mobile fight or moving quickly through a dungeon? Would you have to wait for the spirit to run out before you can cast a new one?
• What happens if the spirit gets nuked? Or if the spirit just runs out in a long fight like lightning said? Are you just SOL? Would you not get a heal upon spirit death unless it’s traited?