Guild Wars 2

All the trolls always come out for this one. Like any game that isn’t WoW or a ripoff thereof, the end-game is whatever you make of it (shy of crafting…I’m thoroughly disappointed by the end-game crafting potential).

You’ll need to decide whether you actually like playing or not. I haven’t played WoW since vanilla but I bailed as soon as AQ came out with better gear than MC. The gear treadmill to follow was pretty clear. I thought it was a little insulting to be required to keep doing busy work just to keep up (like…a treadmill) and didn’t think people would fall for it. Apparently my busy work was several other people’s ‘compelling content’.

/shrug. There’s definitely more WoW-like “end-game” here than in Planetside2 or Eve or SWG (rest in peace) but that’s not the expressed goal of the game. I decided that I was going to save Keg Brawl for the day I logged in and didn’t know what I wanted to do. Don’t know my playtime but I’ve got 3700+ achievement points and I’ve still never played Keg Brawl.

If you’re an unskilled player (that’s as diplomatically as I can put it) then you can get away with a lot playing ranged. You will not have so much room to maneuver with melee.

This is a pretty old subject and unfortunately the best answer (from those of us who play melee in dungeons all the time and scratch our heads at these types of posts) is going to be L2Play or some variation thereof.

yeah, i’d never heard of a passion vine and hadn’t really payed that close of attention to the issue. i thought people were just talking about the passiflora nodes and passion fruits. As far as I’m concerned that says it all.

I played that game for a while with silk to gossamer…made like 7 gold after a few runs then lost it all by not stopping. I recommend not using anything rng-based to make money.

There’s a reason that the “crafting” forum is almost exclusively gear-grinders talking about their legendary weapons… I’m glad I 400’ed them all but more often than not it’s more appealing to just buy something on the tp than make it.

Before hearing that people actually did this, I would’ve assumed that the ‘legendariness’ and therefor the color is tied to the stats and not the skin. When you put a blue skin on and exotic item, it’s the stats that determine the quality tier so it doesn’t seem like a bug…just maybe something that a lot of people might want as a special option.

I think that’s something to do with veterans in DEs with a lot of people. I don’t even attack veterans in Orr events anymore since any event with more than 10-15 players seems to give me no xp or loot for veterans.

I only really noticed this on my ele who I’ve got there now. I don’t remember if this happened with my other characters who’ve been there. It might also be something to do with condy vs direct damage? It ‘feels’ like something to do with something that guages participation. During events where I’m not getting veteran credit, if the zerg splits up (I forget that one base defense in Orr where they come from the front and the side…Shelter?) I’ll start getting xp and loot again. It’s definitely based on the number of people there.

I thought this was common knowledge or I would’ve bugged it long ago.

I have been leveling alts since release and I’ve noticed that events that aren’t labeled ‘group’ events are soloable. Some of the ‘group events’ are actually soloable.

PS. don’t miss the zerg.. spamming auto-attack is boring.

I’ve been leveling my thief (d/p and sb) and can’t think of what ‘not direct damage’ would be be (poison field I guess?). Kiting and AoE work great on all of them except the dolls. Those are some hearty little broads.

edit: haven’t found scorpion wire effective in single-pulling.

So I’m a legit solo player (made a guild just for the extra bank slots) and…yeah, seriously dude. Just join a pug of 80s (or at least mostly 80s). Tixx goes quick and you don’t really need to coordinate with your group. Most of the holiday content is soloable…That’s the one thing that isn’t and I’m kinda weirded out by the suggestion that it be tailored as such.

I think there’s a difference between solo player and misanthrope. As a solo player (and only part-time misanthrope), I don’t get offended by pugs and I’m STOKED by the anonymous hookups out in the wild. those are my favorite kind of pug.

Tsubaki.2508:

“Did you see what she was wearing?”

I think these wouldn’t be so bad if only they didn’t fire so often and perhaps cycled through variations.

It’s probably telling that without thinking, my brain added, “I was too busy looking at HIM.”

You get one “good” end of mission reward per visit (I’m guessing it resets daily after he goes to LA). These are mostly mats for crafting minis (each city’s mission seems to feature a particular mini). The actual chest just drops vendor trash like almost every other chest from what I’ve seen.

I have noticed that I just can’t open some chests in dungeons now and again. There’s a pretty regular bug that does that and I’m guessing it’s the same thing here.

What I don’t get is why it’s in the monthly. I’d be happy to wait multiple months for a fix but I beat my head against this last month and I don’t fell like waiting the hour to get a lvl 1 group going just to either dc or lose 2 people by the 3rd fractal.

The last time I thought about crafting dye was a couple months ago when I noticed some of the recipes were pretty accessible so I went around and amassed a huge stockpile of mats and was ready to go to work (literally…going to my job IRL)

Upon returning home from work, they patched and changed these recipes. I have no idea what I’m going to do with 2500 account-bound peaches but I have ’em.

I learned pretty early on that Crafting is not a priority or even a ‘thing’. It’s only been reinforced by the fact that the most significant things you can craft are account-bound and the best-in-slot accessories are exclusively looted (though I have a faint hope that part of these 275 new recipes were going to make crafting at least on-par with not-crafting).

I have all 8 disciplines @ 400 and have been grabbing up the new recipes when I can find them but crafting is the one thing that GW2 has done that’s left me feeling pretty discouraged and disappointed.

It is Goldcrafting.

windspirit.5630:

understand, but this type of bonus on armor that drop are normally not see any reason why then can not get the recipe

Because there’s 8 craftable combinations. Pre/Tuf/CD isn’t one of them.

depends on how you build. i’m fine with a 3-4k damage auto-attack. I hit a dude in WvW once for 5106 with long-range shot but I probably had might stacks on me at the time. I wouldn’t mind a little less stipulation on that damage and should probably jump on the ‘buff longbow’ bandwagon to see if we can get ourselves the ability to 2-shot someone with the auto-attack.

Think of LB as a semi-auto sniper rifle. It’s good for what it’s good for (which is unfortunately not spvp) but it’s not a universal weapon. I run a SB for my off-set for when things get close (since I had the piercing and LB/SB CD traits anyway). The bleed is pretty unreliable (unless grouped and not aggro’d) but the CC abilities (and the heal debuff in WvW/PvP) are pretty sweet.

Complaining about adding content? Seriously? Who are you?

Unspecified.9142:

…Suddenly my excitement for this signet improvement dropped dramatically. It’s still kind of nice and all but if everyone can go the same speed it’s not so useful. It just becomes one of those “Take it or you’re the slow guy” rather than “Take it and you’re the fast guy.”

Well, that’s assuming that everyone will equip it. I’m definitely keeping it as an option on my ranger though I don’t have any use for SoAir on my ele (well, if given a 4th utility slot I would).

MysticoN.5068:

But if this is a speed buff fix for signet for all classes, do it realy help Rangers? See that there is a post on the necro forum about the same.

I don’t think it’s intended to make rangers feel special. I think they’re just working toward making all skills viable.

Are some of you getting confused with warrior GS skills or am I forgetting a ranger skill? It sounds like people are thinking about bladetrail (which is stupidly OP but that’s another story) when they mention the “throw”.

I hope they have a good view of some of the more interesting player housing ideas (from SWG’s player cities to Rift’s dimensions). I’d buy Rift just for the housing system if I didn’t find the game itself so tedious.

SWG…well, SWG seems to become more appreciated with time. Regardless, they should impliment something that can be its own hours-of-gameplay experience. With the culling and latency issues we’re having here, I’d recommend instanced and easily accessed too.

Not to get my hopes up but…what’s in this “expansion-worth” of content being released in January and February? That has me excited.

Is it refused as a drug reference? Owsley maybe? Pretty abstract to anyone who didn’t exist in the San Francisco scene in the 60’s and 70’s or read a particular Tom Wolfe book.

edit: Oh, I see…LSD is in the word. Yeah, that’s a stretch.

I can’t get behind this. I would love there to be something that disadvantages the zerg but killing downed isn’t it. I would like to see the downed states somehow more equally useful. Ranger is pretty nichey.

I like hearing someone playing a thief complaining about mist form (or vapor or w/e the downed version is called). That was pretty funny.

I heard there was actually a whole game out there that doesn’t necessarily have to do with ‘being a warrior’.

I’m kinda partial to my guardian and engineer. Running around in a circle with bombs on my engy still makes me giggle like i did with psychic distraction on my mesmer in GW1.

With ranger and guardian being my first 80s I’d have to say that both are pretty easy to level (you can get away with playing a lot lazier anyway).

Since you’re asking on the ranger forum, I’ll describe how ranger gameplay seems to me:
Longbow: semi-auto sniper…currently kinda awkward for certain situations (sPvP especially) but can be geared/traited around to provide consistent dps/defense debuff @ 1200-1500 range.
Shortbow: rapid-fire conditions and some control. The bleed on the auto-attack only works when flanking but some traits make that the thing you’d be doing anyway.
Axe (thrown weapon, not melee): 3-target bounce auto-attack and chill. Good off-set for a shortbow but the damage is /shrug. Offhand axe gives a pbaoe self-root that also reflects projectiles and looks like something out of a Star Wars game. The other move does damage in a line away from you and back.
Sword: the weapon that makes you learn how to turn off auto-attack. Good sourec of poison. Beyond that I give it style points. Think thief sword without the damage.
Greatsword: the toolbar is full of great ideas. I don’t know how well they go together though. The 3rd swing of the auto-attack evades and the 4 button blocks but trying to coordinate them with my dodges gave me a headache. It’s also good as an off-set for traveling like thief shortbow.
Warhorn: buff off-hand. One skill’s a swiftness/might/fury buff which is cool and the other’s just for using on REALLY huge bosses.
Dagger: poison/dodge move and a short-range cripple.
Torch: fire field and a ranged burn move that lasts a LONG time.

Pets: bears tank, cats and birds crit. After the new drake was added, I think we now have pets that do all conditions (at least most of them). If you can get used to thinking about them and using the function keys, they’re another way to make up for something that’s lacking in your build. They’re somewhat more questionably useful in dungeons but I’ve mostyly been playing my guardian in those since I’d be tempted to run in all berserker’s with my ranger.

Rangers are pretty good for power builds and condition builds. The out-door pve’s cake with a dps build and a bear. I’m not convinced by the spirits. Traps are great for the conditions (control and damage) and can be traited to be set at range. The damage utilities seem to focus on burst damage (quickening zephyr’s like haste). The signets are weird (active and passive effects are unrelated).

As for guardian: that’s the class where you can make your character say, “Receive this light! Receive this light! Receive this light! Receive this light! Receive this light! Receive this light! Receive this light! Receive this light!”

I get a feeling that the fortold ranger class update will have some significant changes for gs. The skills seem like good ideas, just not implemented quite right.

Were you doing those massive trap spikes or something like gw1? I suppose that would be fun. Unfortunately it’s pretty clearly a bug-fix though and not a nerf. Those 2 things are mutually exclusive.

I think as long as you’re doing 2 of the support/control/dps successfully, it’s all good.

I think that unnamed objectOrrian mirror wasn’t the only thing like that. There’s some Asuran stuff (I’m not going to “spoiler” lvl2 personal story stuff) like the VOED that shows up in Orr too when going to the place and doing the thinggoing to the Temple of Grenth to find out the ritual but I haven’t gotten that far on either of my Asura yet so I don’t know if there’s any acknowledgement of it.

On a side note, since I finished the personal story on 2 characters before starting it on my Sylvari, I can’t tell you how stoked I was to get some Carys time that early. That chick is truly the AWESOME.

BobbyStein.2315:

The voices on the Mad King costumes were purposely different. They’re supposed to sound like novelty masks voiced by people other than the Mad King himself, hence the tinny processing…

That was a bullseye. Those were reminiscent of the old laughing boxes and maybe something that most people younger than me may not have ever seen or heard.

Parthis.2091:

…The Voice acting…when combined with the relatively generic backdrops that take you away from the scene…GW2, for me is a fantastic MMO and an average RPG. TOR was a very good RPG and a woeful MMO. I’d just like to get a little more “world” into the RPG part, and a little more emotion into the journey.

That’s a pretty good point. Both companies had to prioritize some aspects and put less effort into others. Bioware emphasized a cinematic cutscene and phoned in the gameplay by throwing a lightsaber skin on WoW. GW2 emphasized the gameplay and activities; making the choice to do that weird fidgity Noh thing with most of the cutscenes. If I thought it was that important I’d be doing something about my Sith Sorcerer’s goofy Rakata gear right now and not listening to Jennifer Hale yelling, “This rose has Thorns! Come at me, Bro!” or whataver that line is.

This pretty much sums up my complaints about the voice acting in the game. I don’t think it’s a universal thing for me. It’s pretty much only Trahearne’s bland intraspection that makes my skin crawl. A lot of that is the writing too.

I also didn’t have high expectations for the personal story either as MMO’s in general have a hard time putting that kind of thing into the context of the rest of the game (some would say TOR is the pinnacle of storytelling in MMOs and I’d say their bar is too low…excpet the Imp Agent…that one starts getting interesting right before the end). I’m pleased with a lot of the Asuran voices (Metrica Province as a whole is pretty hilarious.

Back in my days as a non-prolific post-modern composer of minimal skill, I experienced the difficulty of bringing in voice actors (singers/actors in my case) and attempting to record the dialogue for each person independently. It’s pretty hard when the actors have a series of disjointed lines that they need to perform out-of-the-context of the line before and after.

That being said, I have been trained to hit escape at the first sign of Trahearne’s voice. Not to be down on Matthew Brenher…I’ve listened to some of his other stuff and it doesn’t make me want to punch him at all. Just Trahearne.

Check this out. This isn’t really a list of lightweights (and I’m now forever going to associate Stan’s mom from South Park with my ele…)

it was on there…just not with such loaded language.

Yeah, I’ve hassled enough trying to get into the unpopular dungeons so I decided that I’m going to wait until they add this before I even bother again. Guess I’ll be waiting a long time.

I seem to remember that waiting for a group was part of the features of not having class roles.

Since I’ve also been holding off on doing FotM until my weekend (since I work at night and have been staying up late for the noon pdt events) it looks like that’s not going to happen now anyway as waiting 2 days has left me behind.

Reminds me of being r2 in heroes ascent in gw1 when everyone was calling for r9+ min groups. that’s why I never did that again.

Seems like a bummer of an unintended consequence.

a lot of people have found that not sucking makes a pretty significant difference.

i think they’re not likely to ever make something substantial a one-time event for that reason. so far the only things that have given us something was the end of halloween (and there was a bro in LA giving out the hats for 2 and a half weeks after that).

so i’m probably not going to stay up late for these things anymore. on sunday i’ll be sure to go to bed as soon as i get home from work so that i can be up relatively shortly after the on-time event then. i’m assuming it’s going to be another end-event like halloween that went on for a while.

i think they got enough crap about a 5-second cutscene that they know not to make missing the events punative.

even though it was discussed to the point that i thought it was common knowledge, i think they have a rough time getting messages to the entire player base. i don’t know if there was a way to throw something up on the launcher or what.

if it helps, i think it’s safe to say that anyone who showed up for it (and it was way past my bedtime as i work at night) missed it too. the lag was COMPLETELY out of control (i spent 40 seconds at one point trying to pop my courage and then gave up because…that and dodging are kinda irrelevant if they have a 40 second+ response time.

i’m not sure what was going on but it was pretty disappointing to see people’s work and planning essentially ruined by network bs. it seemed like it would’ve been fun.

i gave up after about 20 minutes since there was no achievement tied to it (thankfully) and went to bed. sooooo yeah; that’s what you missed. i’m hoping the npc’s are fixed when i get home tomorrow so i can pretend that today never happened.

NoOneShotU.3479:

Almost positive there is a Mystic recipe for Rifles

1 Scroll
30 Mystic Coins
5 Orichalcum Rifle Barrels
5 Ancient Rifle Stock

That would at least get you on the board.

yeah, i made one of those and they are one of the better-looking mystic weapons. they’re more classy than flashy.

if you are unaware, the mystic weapons all follow this pattern (as opposed to the other mf recipes like foefire weapons).
1 scroll
30 coins
5 t6 crafted component A
5 t6 crafted component B

all weapons have a mystic skin (they are called “arcing” in the pvp locker) cuz they’re all electricky-looking.

yeah, that’s why i quit doing that. i got 10-16 back 4 times in a row.

impliment a toggle-able mouse-look so you don’t have to hold down the right mouse button at all (essentially the combat-mode mod).

that’s wild; no designated healers except in costume brawl.

I would and do avoid it. The only binds I’ve made on my G19 is to launch the game.

I’ve thought about making a quicky bind for going afk that would keep my dude attacking in case I got aggro’d or whatnot (spoiled by ranger main’s pet) but decided not to because automating attacks is pretty explicitly against the eula. Similarly, multiple-key-binds-in-one would also be pretty explicitly out of the question.

I just finished BTDT on my main and a few things that might be helpful:

I’d make sure you’ve gotten all wp’s in all borderlands and eternal battlegrounds (even though the borderlands are essentially the same map, they are separate completions). If all of those are good, I’d look at your explorer achievements. The first 4 or 5 are map discovery; though they don’t directly correlate to the completion, if you’re missing more areas in one region, that would be a good place to start.

Despite having 100% completion though, my ranger’s got 3 missing regions in the shiverpeaks so it’s just a guide. I’d also avoid wp travel while doing it (aside from spending a lot of money on nothing, you are likely moving to quickly to see what you’re missing.

Also if you said waypoint and meant poi, there are a lot of options for what it could be (including all the instances inside cities and chantry of secrets).

If all else fails, look up each region’s complete map and compare.

edit: after reading your response to wvw closer, i’d say it’s probably there. the wvw maps count towards btdt. go to each individual map and check (though i’m surprised all you’re missing is the wps).

Diggin.8921:

Electro.4173:

Diggin.8921:

I thought the Halloween event as rubbish personally. Limited special events, those special events that were on were focused only on the US player base…If aNet want to take anything from my comments, don’t just have the “major world event” for Nov at a time that only suits the yanks. Give everyone else a go.

Every single event was repeated many times except for the single one-time event on Sunday at 12 PST. And that “event” was nothing more than seeing the Mad King break the statue in Lion’s Arch…the statue breaking and cinematic camera angles would be the only things missing).

I wasn’t going to say anymore, but the sheer stupidity of your answer has promtpted me otherwise. …you need to consult a map and find out just how many timezones there are on the planet.

I know, right? Sure the entire holiday event happened non-stop throughout with the only exception being that cutscene…but that cutscene was AMAZING! I work nights here so noon PDT is past my betime but I stayed up for that and it was completely worth it.

If I had missed it I would think the entire week of activities that were constantly available were crap too. It’s also definitely worth personal attacks on anyone with the SHEER STUPIDITY to explain that the only thing not available throughout the week was a 20-second cutscene.

I mean really. Who does that? Using facts to debunk a troll’s rant..Unbelievable.

So inasmuch as the whiole thing was AWESOME, the soulbound books are TERRIBLE.

I haven’t even taken them out of my mail since I’m seriously hoping that they become account bound.

I’d completely wear the books on my ele, guardian, necro or mesmer. Unfortunately my main is my ranger and I did this stuff all on him without realizing that the rewards would look a little silly on him.

Is there some reason they’re not account bound?

agreed. this is ideal. because of how awesome keg brawl is, i’ve been saving it for that day when i ‘run out fo things to do at 80’. after 600 hours i don’t see that day coming any time soon.

I agree that these are important things…I just don’t understand how you could think it’s not happening. I’m also not sure how you can expect things like balance changes to be announced so far ahead of time as the process to determine how to approach an imbalance takes significantly longer than implimenting the changes.

Granted, not much has obviuosly changed in spvp since release though there was a significant post about their short-term plans. I would have to say that’s the downside to playing a portion (only spvp or only wvw or only farming the same 3 events in orr) of the game to the exclusion of the rest of it. if you only see a part of the whole, you lose perspective on the big picture.

i would like to know more about the period/pricing of ‘rental’ on guild spvp servers though…

and i’m guessing stability doesn’t work on this one.

Zietlogik.6208:

I’ve got 7 BL Salvage kits just from zone completions

got one for finishing my daily today.