Guild Wars 2

SnakeRedEyes.1725:

So , i just bought the game , and its awesome , but i do not really know what each class does or what race does so here are my questions :
- Do races change something exept physical appearence and story line?

- What class do you reccomend for a guy thats playing for the first time , loves high damage and pvp?

Thank you all for your replies , <3 you all!

You love PvP and high damage ? → Thief all the way. Ele is strong but only has one competitive build. Thief has more replayability in PvP.

Your race only influences the story from level 1 to 30 and your racial skills. Racial skills are not used in PvP and are generally considered subpar in comparison to “normal” skills.

While the GW1 mesmers feature hexes that worked the way you describe, doing the change in GW2 is a risky move that will require a lot of work without being sure the “problem” will be “fixed”.

Currently I only see a problem for confusion in PvE, but this is a “condition problem” rather than a “confusion problem”.

In PvP it works alright. As the old saying claims : “don’t waste time trying to fix something that is not broken”.

Blude.6812:

2 fractals AGAIN. Sorry but anet really messed up the PvE dailies, not only that but they don’t seem to care about it.

2 fractal dailies you say ?

Well, do the swamp at level 1, leave and ignore the other daily. There you have one daily in your Pocket.

PzTnT.7198:

My fear is that the expansion will go the way that Star Trek Online did. Increasing difficulty to the point where pugs are more usually a liability and make your mission fail as well as making the whole spec thing grindy as hell.

A harder game would likely make the whole toxic/elitist thing a lot worse while driving away a lot of people.

Mordrems are fine in my humble opinion as open world mobs. They require you to stay focused on the fight and to use more than just your AA to defeat them.

For instanced content however, the difficulty could scale up a bit.

LymeKat.9401:

Hey everyone! I’ve been trying to make a good look for my female norn guardian. What armors do you folks like to use? Mixed sets are welcome. I usually go for a Paladin-like, or dark-knight kinda look. Thanks for the tips!

Process I go through when designing an armour for a character :

• grab a drink (a real one)
• get to the bank and open the wardrobe
• open your favorite web browser and look for armour set galleries
• focus on a set that meet your eyes. Try to indentify in the set what parts of the set match the idea you have of your character.
• Once you have identified the “core” of you armor try several combinations with parts from other armour sets
• Don’t hesitate to take screenshots, save them and compare them later. You want to eliminate clipping as much as possible and try to have pieces that blend seamlessly as possible.
• Do the same with the dyes.

After a week or two you’ll have a unique set you’ll keep for life and that will make you stand out.

dobri.7820:

I dont get it. how’d it mess the economy?
and if I’ve max MF the only thing left for me to do whit greens and blues is selling to vendor/tp.
and as time passes by more ppl will be on this state -max MF
I myself am close to max and not shure what I’m gona do when I get to 300mf

Reason 1 : it will be much easier for people with high wealth to max out their MF. IIRC, the most efficient method to increase the MF is to recycle ectos and sell the dust while consumming the essences of luck. It’s not that efficient in practice but it’s possible. And these people with high wealth will now receive even better loot while farming the SW. Can you see the snowballing effect coming ?

Reason 2 : the economy of GW2 is made of 3 different groups that trade with each others :

• Farmers : generate raw materials used to craft various gears/Equipment/prestige items. Sell these raw materials at the TP for gold.
• Dungeon runners/gold creators : run/sell their dungeons daily. They generate the gold that keep the economy functionning. They need however the materials that the farmers have gathered.
• The flippers : have two functions. They transform the immediate need of money of the farmers in immediate item disponibility for the gold creators. They also act as a gold sink to prevent rampant inflation.

Note : a player can belong to all the above groups during his career. Yet we all have a preferred way of playing. I personally belong to the gold creators since I gladly do my dungeon tour every single day to accumulate gold. Sometimes, I’ll spend an hour or 2 in the SW just for fun and thus, be a temporary farmer.

Farmers (especially the SW ones) are the ones who generate blues and greens the fastest. Making essences of luck sellable will increase their source of income, especially for those who have the copper fed salvage kit since it is less costly to use. This will disturb the equilibrium between gold generators and farmers.

Reason 3 : it will also result in drastic changes in the blue and green item pricing at any level. Nowadays, a blue or green object is valued using 2 criteria :

• Expected rate of return of salvaging (will increase a lot if we make luck tradable)
• Usefulness for a character who can use this item (won’t change)

A lot of very low level blue/green gear is now dirt cheap, allowing newbs to purchase adequate armour for cheap (because we don’t need jute/copper for ascended materials). With your changes, the prices of these will skyrocket (since expected return from salvaging will increase), preventing characters below level 25 (e.g new players from the expansion) to be able to purchase armour/weapons/trinkets at an affordable price. And we’re not even talking about higher level gear.

I understand this is cryptic (because it’s one in the morning where I am and I should be sleeping by now). Just try to wrap your head on the structure of GW2 economy and how it will react to the change you’ve proposed.

Dave.2536:

tl;dr—the “evil stacking meta” groups would take 1-2 hours to get around this joke of a mechanism, and the only people left behind QQing will be the casual yolo runs

While what you say is true, stacking all the time in a corner or licking a wall all the time gets old.

I’ll be delighted to see an encounter where we are incentivised to spread out just to break the monotony. I’m not claiming we should make stacking impossible anywhere. Just to have one or two nice encounters that are done better by spreading.

dobri.7820:

I had an idea:
Why dont we make Luck sellable on TP?

so new ppl that don’t have MF can easy buy the stuff
and ppl whit max MF can still do somthing whit it?

The essences of luck have been introduced to encourage people to trade and recycle greens instead of selling them to an npc.

Unbinding the essences of luck would undo this and massively destabilize the economy. So no it’s not even an option.

BFMV.3198:

Chances of Revenant getting stealth??

We have a lot of blast finishers so hoping for some sort of access to a smoke field or a way stealth.

Yes or no?? >:]

How do you know rev have no blast finishers ? DO you know the entire list of utils/weapon skills of the profession ?

Oh wait! Baseless speculation…..

Ok, it seems there is a misunderstanding about tanky/support gear. Here is something everyone should keep in mind when posting :

• Requesting Anet to design boss/world bosses/raids that feature some mechanics that require a tanky support set is understandable and a reasonable suggestion (similar to the TT wurm that includes mobs vulnerable to conditions and not direct damage).
• Requesting Anet to rebalance skills/traits such that tanky gear is as efficient as glass canon gear is a nonsense and foolish.

Thay can still broadcast a trailer on specializations.

Having the hype train running out of fuel is usually bad for Anet.

My guard has a full set of zealot armour. I slapped runes of the ranger on this set.

I still don’t know why.

I suggested to my guild to spend an entire evening trying to do the aetherblade goggles. They actually loved the idea.

I still don’t know why.

silvermember.8941:

Yes the boss is too easy because it was weaken to allow the press to be able to beat the content.

colin on wooden potatoes.
/thread

I guess wait and see then.

Also, your signature is very true, especially in these times of HoT pseudo hype

spoj.9672:

Actually no build depends on gear (excluding runes/sigils). Gear contributes to its effectiveness and nothing else. Obviously using condi gear for a healing build doesnt make sense. But it does still work. Its just far from as effective as it could be if you used appropriate gear.

What you said is very true if we were not talking about build efficiency.

However since we are discussing about effectiveness of condi builds (among many other PvE meta related stuff), gear does matter. It’s not the be all end all like trait setup or rune setup is, yet it still matters.

Think about this as how the tiny Lilliput in Gulliver’s Travels bind Gulliver by using hundreds of ropes. Each rope contributes individually to a tiny fraction but it is still important. If a build in GW2 could be represented y 1000 ropes, the weapon would be Worth 250 ropes, the traits are worth 250 ropes, the runes 250 ropes as well and the gear covers the last 250. By downgrading your beserker to valkyrie, you lose 100 ropes out of 1000.

I talked about gear throughout the thread because it’s the most visible and easily understandable side of the problem. (Also it’s what people have been complaining about for ages, ignoring that berserker gear is the only tip of the iceberg). Ultimately I’d like to see more optimal (or quasi-optimal) traits setups and weapons in use. As I said before, when you want to optimise (i.e, get to 1000 ropes), you can’t have one without the others.

hybrid.5027:

A second point I’d like to make on variety.

You are looking for variety in gear. Why not look for variety in traits? Or weaponsets? that all exists. There are plenty of PvE viable builds using weapons that aren’t strictly meta. Or trait set ups that are completely viable and outside the meta builds. Why is gear variety the goal you wish for? Ask yourself this: would the game be better if more gear types were near-optimal, or if more trait choices were near-optimal? which answer would result in greater playstyle and gameplayer variety: more gear prefixes, or more viable weapon/trait choices?

Think carefully before you answer that.

Here is my carefully thought response :

Some builds rely on gear to work properly while others don’t. Since we are talking about “quasi-optimality” in PvE, it’s safe to assume that stats will matter all the time. Thus, in my eyes, asking for more gear “near-optimal” variety in PvE is equivalent to asking for more “near-optimal” trait sets and weapon sets. I apologise for the confusion.

In the realm of optimality or quasi-optimality, statistics have their role to play. All damage oriented builds rely on power or condi damage to function properly. If these statistics are too low, the build cannot work. Other builds (namely support oriented builds) do not rely on healing power that much, since healing comes from blasting water fields and the heal skills do not scale very well with healing power.

Direct damage builds have one or two optimal gear sets : berserker and assassin (assassin for mesmers to be precise, berserker for everyone else). They also have their “near-optimal” sets : valkyrie and knight. (Some say zealot for guards but I’m not really sure about this).

Now when I say : "Sinister gear should be near-optimal " it also means that the condition glass canon trait set that synergise with it AND the associated weapon(s) set(s) should be near-optimal as well in any party setup. I’m not claiming sinister should work on direct damage builds because it’s counter intuitive and not the way the devs intended it. Corollary : carrion/rabid/dire are alternative (and less efficient) options for sinister.

What about weapons ?

I understand that some weapon sets are designed to be tanky or CC oriented and these have no place atm in PvE, but they have their moment of glory in PvP/WvW. Condition oriented weapons should however see more use in “near-optimal” environment as per their associated gear and trait setups.

TL;DR : When I say : “more gear variety”, it implies more trait setups variety and weapons. In PvE you can hardly have one without the two others.

Note : you have a point when you say that the roaming scene is not very competitive. However ranked arena is.

rotten.9753:

Shame that some professions have the highest dps specs that are not melee.

Let me guess ? Elementalist and rangers ? Yeah, they have nice dps somehow. If you are using a staff build, you’ll rely on others to blast your fire fields to get to 25 might stacks. Rangers don’t have enough blasts for this unfortunately. In the end you’ll hang in melee with the big guys like you do in GW2 vanilla.

And most discussions on who’s having the highest dps spec on world bosses is mostly theory and speculation anyway.

Diovid.9506:

Muesli.9104:

GW2 needs new people, not you, you’re already on board.

Living story is not there for new people, it is there for customer retention. So yes, it is for us.

It’s for both, you’re foolish to think otherwise. Living world generates news on specialized websites that potential new players will read. Old players return to see what happens after the cliffhanger.

Algreg.3629:

don´t worry, as soon as the content is available, you will have enough people in here declaring how this boss is totally unbeatable, though it is not hard, of cause, it just haves some unfair/gimmicky/annyoing mechanic :P

Oh of course I’m expecting qq from the entitled crowd. Yet after having my share of tequatl runs and TT on a lesser extend, I can see what makes a boss dangerous and what does not.

With this wyvern, I saw lots of attacks threatening people in FRONT of the wyvern but not so much threatening people on its back. I saw no tail swipe, back breath or claw attack. That means that the safest position to take down the wyvern is melle on the back. As soon as it turns around, just dodge and here you go. I’ll feel safer if the wyvern had some sort of security to make meleeing more risky.

Or we’ll end up with this but with 100 players instead of one.

My worst fear : I don’t see the wyvern performing melee attacks. In the end lots of dudes will end up attacking at melee range in the double damage zone and will just dodge through the wyvern when it breathes or flaps the wings.

Tequatl and the TT wurm have mechanisms to prevent that : the shockwaves and the invulnerability respectively.

It’s important Anet makes meleeing the wyvern very dangerous. Otherwise this will just be an other HP bag that’s gonna be torn to pièces in no time.

Also make the fire zones on the ground last longer, on such a large platfroms (yes I know there will be smaller ones as well), they do not have a significant impact.

Vortok.6975:

Guys it is possible to brainstorm new weapons set that was’nt in GW1? We’re not in GW1 we’re in GW2.

Sure, you’re welcomed.

Wanna brainstorm about weapons that are not in GW1 ? Here are a few trails you can start investigating :

• Pole weapons : i.e melee weapons with a longer reach → Main problem : balancing this vs 600 range distance weapons and classic melee weapons. Ideas are welcomed
• Other 2handed weapons : greataxes are a good candidate. Now ask yourslef, what niche could the greataxe fill that is not already covered by an existing weapon right now. Sword (or axe for the warrior) is the usual cookie cutter direct damage melee weapon. Greatsword is the usual damage+mobility melee weapon and warhammer fill the CC niche. → Rangers could get greataxes as a melee+mobility condition damage weapon if you can balance it vs the shortbow. Thoughts ?
• double weapons (see this if you don’t know what they are ) → Again, tell what can they do other weapons can’t ?

In the end, it’s not about designing new wepons, it’s about finding new uses for them in the first place.

About my gripe with staves as melee weapons :

I’ll just remind the devs that you don’t even need to change the attack animations by using pikes instead of staves, since a staff (in real life) is just a pike without the metallic head. What you can do with a pike you can do it with a staff.

In GW2, staves are designed as sticks with a somewhat large head at the top. Spears are sticks with a pointy metallic head at the top. Switching from one to an other should be possible.

tfcgeneralkmk.9508:

- necros have more ultility than people seem to think have you played one that isn’t a MM? wells, marks, signets all provide some cool effects as good as other classes maybe not but not nonexistent and even MM have some good abilities to add just pathing problems make it hard

The problem is not that necros have no utility. It’s that what they can do for a party, someone else can do it better while having a higher dps, which is sad but forseeable : Necromancers are in concept selfish dark casters.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I don’t want to kill the brainstorming….. but, there are no new weapon types being added in Heart of Thorns. Though, specializations will allow professions to use existing weapon types which they currently cannot use.

While I understand that creating new weapon types takes time away from more important things and its goes against the NPE, I’d like to raise some concern.

A lot of people saw the revenant meleeing a mob with a staff. While staves have been used in real life for centuries as a melee weapon, the staff design in GW2 (which was tailored to spellcasters) make them very clunky and weird as melee weapons. Seriously, that attack rytlock was performing in the HoT announcement trailer would have looked ridiculous with an ascended staff, or even a wintersday staff. Spears, though they are underwater wepons seem much more tailored to melee attacks.

What could be done is to create a new category of weapons (say “pikes”) and copy paste most of the spear models in this category. Spears remain UW weapons while pikes are terrestrial weapons. It’s not like half of the tridents are copies of staves anyways, so I do not see a problem here.

DeathPanel.8362:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I would disagree with your assessment that encouraging mixed groups to do things optimally is “solving a non-existent problem.” The problem exists, whether you want to believe it or not. That’s why threads like this keep popping up in the first place. What you are saying is “because someone doesn’t like the Zerker playstyle, they can’t feel wanted.” They may actually be a better player than you, but because they don’t conform to your view, they are inferior.

You have yet to show why it is a problem. You just asserted it.

I have pointed out a few resons why one can consider the actual situation disappointing, just browse a few of my posts in this thread.

I said this before and I’ll repeat it again : nerfing berserker is a nonsense. However, buffing condition and deeply reworking how conditions interact in a party is important if one wants to have a variety of optimal or roughly optimal builds/party setup.

3/4 of the stats sets are irrelevant for PvE, some are for good reasons (Nomad is irrelevant in PvE for a good reason : you don’t need to be this tanky) some are for bad reasons (Sinister is irrelevant for a bad reason : your fellow players will overwrite your bleed stacks thus lowering your dps).

If we could have just 1/2 of irrelevant stat sets (i.e the tankier ones) that would be an amazing progress in variety. More variety means it takes a bit longer to get bored of content, players can find a playstyle adapted to them more easily.

The actual situation can be fine for you. However, what if we could keep the builds you love and play relevant while opening new opportunities for optimal play ? WvW and sPvP feature rich and varied meta builds, why can’t PvE have the same variety ?

rotten.9753:

Last gamecon they said that aether dungeon was way too much work and that we shouldn’t expect any new dungeons for now. They sacked the dungeon guy like 1,5 years ago.

I knew they didn’t like the way the original dungeon format at release, but for me that aether dungeon was worth the effort.

Sad story I guess

Mastery system: Content veriety or exp Grind?

Maybe a bit of both.

One way or an other, every MMO ends up having grind in it. The difference lies in what you can access without grinding too much. GW2 has been pretty generous in this regard.

Windsagio.1340:

They’re also trying to make it so high DD isn’t the best way to kill always, but I’m sure we’ll agree they’ve had a harder time with that. They had to nerf the mordrem hounds, and husks end up being just dull as fight opponents.

No worries, I’m sure they’ll get their retaliation back but only in instanced content ^^

rotten.9753:

VodCom.6924:

I’m not sure all content will be open world. They are expanding on the whole idea of megabosses that’s for sure, but I believe they’ll expand fractals and dungeons as well.

Yes, we’ll get story mode instances as well. But you shouldn’t count on any new dungeons or fractals since that content was abandoned long time ago. Just check the newest interviews about that topic.

Anet focuses on an open world content where cooperation is forced and where everyone is happy. And a happy customer spends money happily.

I’ve heard about some fractal mastery(ies) not so long ago, so I’m not ruling out new fractals yet.

The release format of dungeon with a story + 3/4 explorable paths all in one was a bad decision. Takes too much development ressource and leaves the door opened for bugs and glitches. However the approach they took with the molten alliance factory and aetherblade retreat was a good one IMO. Just one path, clear objective, no story path that nobody does. It’s like an XXL fractal without agony.

Windsagio.1340:

NoTrigger.8396:

snipped

Well… that was insanely combative…

And you’re arguing against points that I’m not even making.

You have to understand that NoTrigger and others have had this argument with random dudes for years and sometimes bad habits and frustration take the better of them.

Also, not everyone has a clear view of what is going on. Saying the actual lack of variety of optimal builds is bad because it is the result of a bad game design decision makes sense. It is a constructive opinion that I personnaly share.

However, more childish people claim the meta is bad because it does not correspond to the way they are playing. In other words, some people want to change the meta instead of adapting themselves. Arguing with these people (who often claim that “because everything should be completed by everyone, every gear/build should be equally effective”) is like arguing with a wall. It’s frustrating.

There is a consensus on this “more variety of optimal builds is better for everyone”. Even though there will always be a “best build/party setup”, there could be alternative setups that would be almost as effective as the optimal one. I would be delighted to see the game moving to this direction. Keep berserker the way it is and make condition glass canon parties almost as effective.

Now the true problem is : how do you implement this without breaking the servers nor breaking PvP ?

Personally, when I 1st picked a class in GW2, I did it out of the fluff and concept.

And truth is, the concept of a mage capable to spit fire on a victim was very appealing.
When it was the time to pick an alt, I also looked at the concept and lore and the guardian got my attention.

Nowadays my guard is gathering a bit of dust while my ele and necro see a lot of use. Why ? Mainly because I don’t play the guardian well. I know I have to give aegis to my group but I always do it too late. I’m a very bad guard.

rotten.9753:

VodCom.6924:

snip

This whole topic is beating the wrong horse. Berserker’s gear is used strictly for instanced content which isn’t present in HoT. Since in open world everyone is welcomed by this warm community as long as you contribute there is no issue of berserker’s gear. You play how you want and no one is going to force you because you cannot kick people from an open world content. Therefore, there won’t be any toxic community and everyone will be happy.

I’m not sure all content will be open world. They are expanding on the whole idea of megabosses that’s for sure, but I believe they’ll expand fractals and dungeons as well.

cyst.3108:

All this chit chat and yet no one recognizes that a team of good players can do EVERY dungeon without any armor, but a team of the “Dwayna” Players cant even imagine doing the same thing without their sacred Nomad gear.

Lets be honest and focused:
All about Nomad stats AKA almost every toughtness, Vitality and/or Healing power armor is 1. Useless. 2. Learning armor for new players 3. To min-max builds.

I think you are beating the wrong horse here. This is not about berserker vs nomad, this thread is about the question :

“Will HoT bring new content that will encourage people to use other stats sets than berserker ?”

Then the thread derailed into the usual discussion : “Is this normal/justified/fair/whatever that in PvE, the only optimal way of playing is to maximise direct damage inflicted by the team with the bare minimum active défenses to survive”

Now I see some of us are derailing the thread further to : “Players that want nomad to be as powerful as berserker are crazy”.

Let’s make this clear, asking for nomad to be as powerful as berserker is bullcrap. It’s not even a problem and no game designer in their right mind would push the game in such direction.

Lyp Sao.1375:

VodCom.6924:

The problems you have with new dailies come from barriers, fears and limitations you are imposing yourself.

Not true! You dont know me.
I will not fight other players.
I bought a PVE game to fight monsters not humans.

anet wants me to PVP, WVW and esports (ha ha). Not with me.

True, I don’t know you. However I’ve met tons of people in game who had the same reactions as you. They said they didn’t like PvP/WvW because the very concept of player killing other players is absurd to them. I introduced some of them to rankfarm and dolyak hunt and in the end they had a lot of fun.

I never said you have to fight players. I never fight players when I go in borderlands, I just kill guards and the dolyak then leave. Most people from other servers I met while killing veteran creatures in WvW were not interested in fighting. They came, got their kill and everyone left the borderland happy.

As for Rank farm, it’s not a fight, it’s a “I cast a big AOE then I suicide by jumping into a giant hole”. A match takes 5 minutes (and you can switch your brain off during the match), there’s good coin and a quick PvP daily at the end.

The only person that is suffering from the new dailies are the ones that do not want to try something new, which saddens me a lot.

NoTrigger.8396:

VodCom.6924:

Having condition glass canon builds viable could be nice. Just look at the “dungeon builds” section of metabattle.com . Compare it with roaming or ranked arena builds sections. It’s a bit empty isn’kitten That’s a problem

Just to make sure that nobody gets it wrong : the problem is NOT berserker. The problem is lack of variety.

metabattle….

glass canon condition builds are viable

…

With all due respect NoTrigger, condition builds are not viable in PvE group content right now.

You CAN play a condition glass canon build just like you CAN play AH hammer build and call it a day. However it does not mean they are “viable”. Why ?

Because for a roughly equal amount of risks taken by the players (i.e glass canon) the reward given is much lower. It takes twice as much (if not more) time to complete the same dungeon with a full glass canon party than with a direct damage party. And I’m not even talking about shoehorning trinity in the party (besides trinity has no place in this game and it’s good riddance).

Lyp Sao.1375:

Tiger Ashante.1792:

…

Every single of your words mister is sooo true.
I am a PVE-only girl and I hate the stupid new dailies.

I am a PvE oriented player that despise PvP and do not enjoy getting backstabbed by thieves in borderlands.

Yet I do spend 5 minutes of my time in WvW to get my dailies. The problems you have with new dailies come from barriers, fears and limitations you are imposing yourself. If you don’t want to roam the WvW alone, ask one of your guildies to come along.

My 2 cents :

Since the introduction of the new dailies, getting my 10 AP has never been so simple.

It’s simple really. I’m going to explain this to you in a few steps :

1. Do the gathering event and/or the mystic forge one in PvE
2. Go to a glory farm arena and do the daily capper or daily rank points or daily PvP reward
3. Get to a borderland and either : kill 5 guards/kill a dolyak/cap a ruin

There you have, your dailies are completed in 7 min. Just make the effort to look outside of PvE for just 5 minutes and you’ll see how easy it is. It’s not had to kill a dolyak. Just get here when it’s not rush hour and you’ll be fine.

Hooray, trolls on both side are now polluting this thread.

I’m grabbing my popcorn waiting moderation to close this mess.

More seriously : Some people (or should I say trolls ?) are confusing good and bad players with “player using berserker” and “player not using berserker”.

Some forum members should also remember that not everyone is capable of dodging everything, nor does everyone has the master race PC or a nice and lag-less internet connection.

Large events like the wurm or tequatl put heavy constraints on some users’ PC. Meaning that you can experience lag/framedrop. Thus you CAN’T DODGE EVERYTHING because you cannot see the bloody attack or shockwave or poison pool. In this case, it might be better to have something tough enough not to be one-shot by everything.

Also, this complain about berserker problem arise from a simple observation :

• In WvW there are CC builds, tanky builds and glass canon roaming builds (direct damage or condition). All of them are considered “meta”
• In sPvP there are bunker builds, dps builds, condi builds. “meta” is a wonky notion here since battle awareness and skill are what makes the difference. The build helps but there is always room for variation.
• In PvE only maximum direct dps is considered “meta”. Lots of builds have “offensive support” and “defensive support”, but in the end you have one (sometimes two) optimal templates to follow.

So there’s not a lot of variety in PvE leading to boredom and a bit of frustration. Having condition glass canon builds viable could be nice. Just look at the “dungeon builds” section of metabattle.com . Compare it with roaming or ranked arena builds sections. It’s a bit empty isn’kitten That’s a problem

Just to make sure that nobody gets it wrong : the problem is NOT berserker. The problem is lack of variety.

Windsagio.1340:

The weird thing is that the aggro is actually shockingly consistent. You’re right though, the honor tree is mostly balls. The only real reason to go into it at all is that AH makes tanking possible because of the massive passive heal.

I am wondering why the aggro has been so consistent tho’, I figured the build doesn’t get used for DPS reasons but if people have threat issues that makes more sense, I just wonder why that hasn’t been a problem when I’ve seen it, do fracs have modified aggro tables?

I use the AH hammer build as a training wheel for low level players in dungeons. You teach them how and where to pack, you attract mobs and you heal them while they deal miserable damage. Then they thank me for taking the time to teach them.

Then the painful lesson takes place in TA aether once they are level 80.

Marthkus.4615:

As someone who does run celestial armor + trinkets + weapons + divinity runes + birthday cake, I can say it works just fine.

You are a monster of stats. I run sigils of strength and bloodlust to boost the lacking power stat which makes my attacks hurt.

It’s not zerker damage, but it’s close enough that I do not mind. (I don’t join zerker-only LFGs with it, but I will join speed-run lfgs)

If that’s working for you, good for you.

That fact you use a bloodlust sigil confort me in my opinion though.

Shiyo.3578:

I feel like venom share is what’s holding venoms back entirely, they’re balanced around that trait so without giving them to 4 other people they’re extremely weak. I want venom share to not be a thing at all honestly.

In this case venoms would compete with signets in the category of self buffs/utilities.

Venoms naturally shared could open up more support options for the thief who is currently lacking in this regard.

PiroTecnik.5346:

2 weeks isn’t exactly rushing. A friend and I only took a couple weeks to get 80, and we didn’t try to leven, just ran around, explored, completed maps, and towards the end we started doing daily bosses and a dungeon a day. But 80 is FAR from the end of the game. We feel like we just got started.

As for what to do, being new, we found ourselves in diff goals. He started on ascended gear, and I went after another char, as well as we’re not even halfway done with the map even now.

So much to do….and no subscription pressure……feels so nice.

Man it took me a month to get to the level cap at launch. I wasn’t playing a lot though.

Shiyo.3578:

VodCom.6924:

• Buffing or reworking traits : Which ones and (again) in order to fulfil what goal ?

Venoms and traps for thief, especially venoms not basilisk, extremely weak and not worth using. 1s of chill x3? 1s of vuln x3? Remove venom share and rebalance venoms around only the thief having them applied, shadow arts is already the most bloated tree in existence, no reason for it to have SO many good traits while a tree like acrobatics doesn’t have anything past 3 points.

Now we’re talking.

About acrobatics : I’m no PvP player by any mean but I understand that some builds have 6 points in acrobatics.
In PvE it is barely useful, but again, who invests a lot in a defensive line ?

About venoms. Yeah I get it, same problem as the rangers signets not so long ago.
However, I’m in favour of replacing the venomous aura trait with something completely new and have the sharing component of venoms made permanent.

spoj.9672:

You can backpeddle and max melee bosses when they are perma crippled/chilled. Its also very helpful if they have 600 range leaps (first arch diviner). And if you immob them you can stand behind them and they wont be able to turn to hit you. Also helps if someone just needs to get away to recover or res in slightly more casual groups. Soft CC on mossman and archdiviner are the best examples. Both very difficult melee fights even for experienced players. So using soft CC will often save your bacon more times than you can count. Chill is also just good to increase the cooldown of attacks so you dont have to dodge big attacks as frequently.

http://youtu.be/iKAQ4fvPIkw

In terms of hard CC its usually to set up deep freeze safe bursts or to freeze to res someone. But for fights like Mai Trin its used to pull her into the electric fields faster.

Ok got it, thanks for taking the time.

spoj.9672:

@Vox

Soft CC’s are incredibly useful and important in high level fractals. Its another case of most players dont realise the benefits of using it so they think it has no value. Because all they see is the dps meta and think theres nothing else to it. Organised groups use it all (hard CC and soft CC) and for good reasons. Maybe new content in HoT will educate players a little better with their uses. Especially if certain break bar mechanics force it.

I’m curious about this use of hard and soft CC in fractals. Can you give some examples ?

I mean… I get that weakness is very important in order not to get 2shot by anything. I also understand the importance of blind fields.

How about cripple and chill ? Where can they be used in an efficient way in this type of content ?

Now that’s a question I did not see coming.

I’m also interested by the response.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Astral Projections.7320:

Erukk.1408:

I never have more than 10g-20g in my wallet at all times. Whenever I get anything more than that I put it into my gbank at the end of the day.

It adds up fast.

Just a comment on this. Personal guilds are not covered by account restorations. If someone is hacked and their account and personal guild are stripped of everything, an account rollback will restore your account to the state it was before the hack with all your items and gold but any gold and items in the guild bank and vaults are lost forever.

I’m not sure I’d want to keep playing if my account was hacked… Because then I’d not be sure anymore that ANet is safe (considering I use the mobile authenticator…)

The mobile authenticator is vulnerable to “man in the middle attack”. If your computer or network provider is compromised, Anet can’t promise anything.

Argon.1563:

If you like it, run it. Nobody has the place to tell you what to run and not run.

Unless its Berserker. If you run Berserker, you’re a bad person, because people with no defence die, and dead people do less damage than ones who are alive.

I see what you did here.

I don’t like the meta personally, however I’m fine with the people playing meta. It’s called “having his own definition of fun”. Stop trying to impose your definition of “fun” on the others.

Some people don’t like the meta builds and don’t play them → It’s ok, GW2 has content for them
Some people like playing meta builds → It’s ok, GW2 also has content for them.

About celestial + divinity :
You usually want to use either one or the other but not both at the same time. Also there are much better runes than rune of divinity.

Usually your combo : armour + trinkets + rune, you want to have at least two of these that are specialised toward either tankiness or damage. Don’t put everything in celestial, otherwise you’ll end up with something that is efficient at nothing.

Aomine.5012:

Warrior does has a pretty rough time because most Mordrems can spam PBAOE lasting field, as well as constant KB, and tend to run around too!
It is basically nightmares for all the melees.

However, range dps classes can safely go full zerk Scholar and dish out some crazy damage in that map without getting hit! (My ranger can auto around 4.8~6k with auto, and RS 16~20K on Mordrems)

THIS! That’s why I always said to noobs I met to always have a ranged and a melee weapon on their active sets while not in dungeons.

POTDOG.1765:

Um well hit lv 80 in 2 weeks and still wondering what to do? I have gotten to personal story but have had more than a few WTF do i do moments as well as being thrown around like a rag doll in those moment’s . This is really frustating in im in a place and clueless as what to do . Any Help ? Bumded and no clue ?!?

Things to do at level 80 :

• Get titles like “been there done that” or “dungeon master”
• Craft a legendary
• Finish the personnal story and the living world + achievements
• Find a way to look cool
• Get to rank 80 in PvP and/or rank 1000 in WvW
• Finish the treasure hunter collection
• going stat-cap
• getting to level 50 in fractals
• Maxing the crafting levels

However it’s a shame you got so fast to level 80. What makes GW2 a unique experience is it’s leveling system and exploration and it seems you missed that.

Zoltreez.6435:

they should buff the scaling of healing power to begin

snip

ALLOT of traits for allot of classes need buffs or TOTAL reworks.

Ok, I’ll say it strait about these two suggestions (for ferocity, I have no constructive opinion to post here) :

• Buffing Healing power : WHATFOR ? What function will a boosted Healing skill perform that is not already covered by more active defenses ?
• Buffing or reworking traits : Which ones and (again) in order to fulfil what goal ?

Usually, when a dev team decides to rework a trait it’s because said trait does not work as intended. Tell me precisely which traits do not work as intended and then we’ll discuss what should be done.

Right now you’re flailing the emptiness with this kind of post.

You have an option to hide emotes from your chat window.

Unless you are roleplaying, in this case report and describe the issue in lenghtly details.

Or simply ignore the troll, it’s the best way to get rid of them → You don’t feed them → They die.