Guild Wars 2

On top of the Bazaar we get the Crown Pavilion and the Queen’s Gauntlet, I’m excited.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one hoping that the Blade Shard merchant is coming with the Sanctum. It’d also be great if they brought back the old line up for the Gauntlet (should require no new programing there), and maybe some new ones. Maybe I’ll got play Sanctum Sprint again, haven’t really played it since they removed Daily Activity from the lineup (unless you count the 1 time it’s been up since the 15th).

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I really only have one concern. Around the time that these releases first came out is when a big wave of inflation hit. The Queen’s Gauntlet had lots of destroyer/champ farming (and around the same time we had the Scarlet’s Invasion champ farming). Noticeably, the last few LW releases had a lot less loot (along with huge sinks introduced- ascended armor, for example), I assume to compensate for it. Now, I’m not saying I don’t want loot, but I just hope the rewards justify the means. Players will take the path of least resistance for the best loot. I hope we can find a happy medium between the torrent we got before and the trickle we’ve been getting.

I’m also guessing they’ll use the Sanctum’s merchants to eat up more candy corn, hopefully Blade Shards, by proxy Watch work Sprockets, and maybe some others. I just hope if they introduce new things they won’t be as grindy (and random) as the more recent introductions.

Alacrity.4312:

Repair Canisters seem pretty redundant now that repairs are even more trivial.

Perhaps it would be better to remove armour damage altogether? It’s now an annoyance rather than any real penalty.

It is still a penalty to anyone in fractals, in WvW (without a WP/services a long battle could potentially leave people armorless). Also it is a penalty if you don’t have a repair NPC nearby on a map.

To balance this, ressing should only work on Downed allies; Defeated will need to WP (or use Res Orbs).

Do you have any idea how this would effect so many areas of the game? WvW, leveling in PvE, falling down a cliff/JP near a friend, etc. Also since they made armor repair free, Anet’s economy balancer was to reduce event rewards. You are adding an additional cost (being forced to WP) for no reason and with no counter balance.

On the other side of the coin, if armour damage is designed to be a penalty of sort, and this concept is set in stone, then make it real, for example:
one damaged piece = 6th rune slot bonus no longer effective
three damaged = 4th, 5th, 6th slot bonii gone until repair.

This already happens when your armor is broken.

Right now, the canisters are just more inventory pollution and I too would be peeved to get one from a BLC.

Well you can just delete them if you don’t want them. I’m sure many people have no use for tonics, others with many of the boosters, etc. It’s really down to personal preference. Anet already lowered their price because they admitted that their use is more niche now.

So far besides my main, I’ve leveld up everything except for a Guard and Thief. And I’m working on an engi now. I use whatever weapons/traits that I find fun, and stick them in random drop gear as they level.

I had lots of fun with my sb/axe&horn Ranger, minion master Necro, and my turret Engi. My staff ele I kinda got sick of when he hit 30-something (really don’t like any of their elites for solo-PvE), but after a break I was able to play him again. Honestly the only thing that I didn’t have that much fun with was my scepter&focus/staff mesmer, it felt as squishy as my ele but did a lot less damage.

But honestly any class can do a ton of damage or have a ton of survivability.

We went from

6 (to 8 ) dailies for PvP and ~12 dailies for PvE, of which 3 were WvW focused.

Now we have 10 daily options.
2 PvP focused, 2 WvW focused, 6 PvE focused

I thought the main reason was to slow people down in terms of AP. Especially now that there’s a cap of 10k on daily achievements. I was hoping that we’d have more daily options not less, but oh well.

I just unlocked this skill and haven’t had a chance to test it, maybe I’ll try tonight if I have some time.

But sadly even if the trait did go off with Endure Pain (which it should), you’ll never gain any benefit from it. Endure Pain lasts 4-5 sec, while the trait only lasts 4 sec, so you’ll never get the extra toughness to matter since your invincible anyways.

They can’t just increase the heal. They need to do something different with it.

If the active gives more hp/sec than the passive then it just becomes a spam-able heal skill because of the low cd. If it continues to give less hp/sec then we will just continue to use it for the passive.

It needs to have an extra effect, maybe a boon, block, or cleanse. But I can’t think of one that would actually make sense, not be redundant, and not be too strong (don’t say protection, we don’t need that).

The most recent thing I noticed was in the Scarlet Holo Fights.

If I recall the Blue holo knight’s big AoE cone would knock you down but not damage you if you were shield blocking.

I think there was another attack in that fight that wouldn’t knock you down but would still hurt you if you blocked, but I can’t remember which.

Rabbi Rick.3194:

Windwalker,

The Dev Curtis Johnson just posted ..

Curtis Johnson.8456:

“Yes outfits are all or nothing.”

Meaning — No more Santa Hat with Wintersday outfit. (A regular ingame character does this)

No more Wizard hat with Witches outfit. (I absolutely HATE the male witches head gear).

So, “No,” you cannot have mixed “outfits.”

Nooo!!! I agree, I don’t like the male witches head gear either. Aw man :/

Dang….wish i knew that ahead of time. Well there went 250 ectos, oh well.

250 ectos vs 10 Crystalline Dust to (infuse) an item.

or

250 ectos vs. 20 Crystalline Dust & 10 cores (~8.5g for the cheapest ones right now) & 4 wine to both color and infuse.

I have to disagree, this idea is a complete nerf to the shield.

You basically want a much worse version of #5 to be our 2nd burst skill, but to not benefit from any other trait that rely on blocking or adrenaline loss. This is closer to an engi “tool belt” skill than it is a warrior burst one.

If this was a 1st person game, or a slower paced combat game I may agree with you (about the directional bit), but when enemies can turn 180 in a couple of frames things like this aren’t that great. The ranger/thief skills that rely on direction can at least be used from range (which arguably makes initial positioning worse) or have other skills that can put you into the right place.
—————————-
To be fair, I would love an F2 skill for off hand/2 handed weapons, but they should be like our other burst skills. I don’t know 100% if they should be “defensive” in nature, some argue we have too much survivability as it stands, but it should help us be more diverse.

My initial thoughts for a shield burst skill would have been a captain america style shield throw, maybe 1/3/5 targets with a 0.5/1.0/1.5s daze (then I realized that engi’s already have something like that). After thinking about it since then I think I’d like an AoE block skill. maybe: 150/300/600 range, 1/3/5 targets, 0.5/1/2sec block all [or block the next1/2/3 attacks for 1/2/5 sec ] (if this is too close to a guard skill, sorry. I haven’t played one of those yet)

Regardless of how much the nerf is, zerker gear will still have the highest dps of all the armor sets, so if that’s all you cared about before, it shouldn’t matter.

The only other time they’ve let people reselect armor stats was when they removed magic find completely from the armor. But since this is just a retooling I’m leaning towards them not letting a reselect (maybe 60:40). It’s somewhat similar to whenever they release a new stat set, they don’t let everyone who already has an ascended piece choose the new stat for free.

Rizo.9534:

I want more f1 skills than one.
For example: GS F1 – Gives fury F2 – put 5 bleed on target or Daze target for 1-2sec. F3 – something else
Hammer: F1 – Stum 5 Foes F2 – Smash the Ground and establishe Earth field for 5 sec witch will give protection each sec for 1sec for 5 ally.
F3 – for example block projectiles.

But if you use F1 F2 or F3, then all skills will go on 7-10Sec cooldown and you lose adrenaline.

So you’ll allways have to chose witch skill you have to use and use it depends on situation.

Sorry for my bad English.

Personally, I think an F1 and an F2 would be all we’d need. One for the main hand, one for the off hand (2 for 2 handers). Though I don’t really like your suggestions. A daze on the GS would bring back the problems with Hammer/GS. And warriors do not need protection (let alone near 50% uptime on it) because we have the highest hit pool with the highest armor, and a good number of block/invulnerable/condition immune/stability/etc. skills.

But the question is why (and which ones would even make sense)?

Look at the (total) amount of combo finishers we have: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_warrior_combo_skills

11 Blast Finishers (most are banners though)
21 Projectile Finishers (obviously most on ranged weapons)
5 Leap Finishers
7 Whirl Finishersz

You can kind of say that we have lots of finishers but very little fields.

Necros, eles, and mesmers have the other problem, lots of fields but not as many finishers. Thieves have some fields, but almost exclusively projectile finishers. Guards have a decent number of finishers, but almost exclusively just light fields.

Of the fields, which ones would make any sense?

Water would make people crying foul of our sustainably even more numerous. Smoke would also be way too broken. Thematically Dark and Ethereal also don’t make much sense. And I’d say giving us access to Lightning (and being able to stack more vulnerability) would just cause too many balance issues.

That relatively leaves, Ice, Light, and Poison. Some would argue that we have enough access to cleanses, so no to a Light field (plus I don’t think that make much sense).

Honestly I can see an Ice field of some sort on maybe the GS burst. But it’d have to be carefully integrated. I can see it becoming the new “go-to” combo for anyone using a GS. Burst (create an Ice field) —> Bladerail (applies cripple and chill) --> Rush/Bull’s Charge —> HB.

Also the warhorn is already a good off hand weapon for those traited, and still great for mobility for those who aren’t. And I’d argue banners are already pretty strong (at least the passive), giving them fields on top of that might be a bit much.

Don’t get me wrong. It is very noticeable that warriors are lacking in fields, but I don’t know if we need them. Rather, where they could go/what they would be to keep balance.

Edit: The whole point of combo fields is to promote team work between players/professions. We have great access to finishers while others have great access to fields, and some have good access to both.

Autumn Frazee.3158:

Thank you for your continued reports, I’d like to update that we are currently working on issues with:

• The ‘In Tune’ achievement
• The map wide Health Display for the three Assault Knights
• The ‘Six Minutes to Knightfall’ achievement
• Assault Knight rewards

Also, is it intended that if only one group kills their knight, only that group gets loot, and all the players at the other knights get nothing?

You can play lower level fractals to get some good karma (and can work on some more fractal relics at the same time)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_Karma_Reward_Table

Also, I wear an amulet with a karma infusion all the time unless I’m in a high level fractal and need the extra AR (less so now that armor is out). If you do lots of events, it does add up over time.

In addition, if WvW is your thing, you can gain a good amount of karma from following a commander and going on a train. Lots of events in a fairly short amount of time, but you need to have a group running and capping at the time.

Also if you’ve been doing the last two LS events, you can trade in the Found Belongings for an Oby shar at a ratio of 50:1. Not the best, but its the only use I can think of for them.

Basically a combo works like this.

You need two things,
1) A combo field
2) A combo finisher

A field can be something like a Water Field or a Fire Field

A finisher can be something like a Blast Finisher, Leap Finisher, or Projectile Finisher

The effect you get depends on what combination you make.

If you use a Leap Finisher to move inside of a Fire Field you gain a Fire Aura. If you use a Blast Finisher on a Fire Field you instead give might to nearby allies. If you use a Projectile Finisher your ranged weapon will do additional damage.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Gives a nice list of all of the combos.

For example if you use a ranged weapon to get a Projectile Finisher and shoot through a Water Field you will get a regen boon.

I hope that helps.

haviz.1340:

People were saying same thing about old simin yet anet dev claimed he had watched their QA team doing it without any issue and we are all aware how their teams play and zerks are definitely not involved.

Yet a group of ~30 people still can’t seem to kill one in the full timer (with minimal downs/rez time). Plus we still have/need to have people from the first knight down rush to the other two to help kill it before the timer hits.

Moreover, how do you even do this with full zerk warrior with gs when go down after 1 chain of autoattack and standing behind the knight to avoid the damage is pointless? It’s easier and more forgiving to go with more tanky setups.

While I wish you could not be forced to use Zerk or even PTV gear for this fight, just equip a ranged weapon. Before the patch that stopped all loot from dropping, I had a very hard time tagging/doing enough damage in my knights armor. I switched from my armor to a zerker set (with no runes) and my condition weapons of sword and longbow to power ones of riffle and axe. My damage more than tripled. It just takes 1 dodge ~8-10 sec and a ranged weapon with zerker gear and you do more damage without having to think about anything.

The issue is with people going down and not respawning, using condition-focused weapon sets in both phases and generally autoattacking because the rest does the same.

I won’t deny that wp’ing it is still a problem (or going afk/hiding during the holo fights). And if I didn’t have spare weapons/armor what should I be expected to do? The warrior long bow only let me use my AA and number 3, and the warrior sword only lets you use number 3 to hurt the knight (without having to worry about conditions). At least with rifle I can use 3 of its attacks. A good amount of weapons among all the classes have conditions on the AA which become pointless for most of the fight time wise.

Wasbunny.6531:

I’ll re-post this as well
Unfortunately for me and for anyone else who’s main goal is to get a particular color back piece upgrade the best strategy for this event is now:

• Camp early the particular Knight you hope to get the core from, assuring you one of the 50 max spots.

• Stay there irregardless of the status of the other knights, you will get the loot as soon as it is downed whether or not the event fails.

While this seems to be the only way to have a shot at loot (unless you get lucky and have a max map with everyone wanting to do the knights) it can’t be their intention. This is worse than zerging and makes me feel that I need to be selfish if I want any loot (honestly to a lesser extent the same can be said about the previous patch, if you went for civs to save you got far less loot than someone who was doing events).

And that doesn’t even really even mention that this boss is just another big dps check (I’ve been against these boss timers since the teq patch) It’s depressing when 30-35 people can’t kill on boss in 15 min. If the event upscales everyone to 80, why can’t it be designed to be beaten by upscaled/non-ascended gear/non-food buffs/etc. characters. I want my friends who haven’t hit 80 (or who are 80 but still trying to get their first exotic set) to actually be able to help and enjoy this event. Plus it makes some weapons useless, and makes conditioners only useful for ~15% of the time the fight is active.

But all that is an aside. Why doesn’t anyone who gets credit for a fail on a knight also get loot from any knights that were killed?

kokiman.2364:

CHIPS.6018:

So I just tried that “Kill 3 Legendary Clockworks” quest. It is nothing but a DPS test. Can we please stop having quests like these?

These quests are saying:
If you are not using berserker gear, go home.

No these “quest”, they are actually called events, are not a DPS check, they are events that encourage people to play together. The biggest problem right now is, that there are way to many “unique snowflakes” around that keep shouting “I PLAY HOW I WANT AND YOU PLAY HOW YOU WANT” which is something that just doesn’t work in a genre that is all about playing together.

Any boss that has that much health and a timer is pretty much a DPS check. While I much prefer my Knights gear, I thankfully have a zerker set for things like this, but when events don’t scale (or have a very high min number of people required) how can it not be a dps check?

Why can’t the event scale down so 10 people in exotics (maybe even rares) can kill a knight in ~12 min? We had 30 or so, and still only managed to get it to ~30% in the full 15 min (and got no loot at all for our trouble even though one of the knights was killed). Not all servers are packed at all hours of the day, and low pop servers/off time players shouldn’t be forced to guest to have a shot at beating content.

Miflett.3472:

In my opinion it would have been much better to reward bags map wide and scale the reward based on how many knights managed to go down. That way people are more likely to split up and not get screwed for it.

Well that’s exactly my question because I thought it was suppose to work exactly like that.

We just got done failing the knight event. We only managed to kill the blue knight (most likely had the most number of people there), and got the red and green to about 30% or so. When the event was over though, no one at the green or red knight got any loot.

The patch notes state.

A reward chest will now be awarded after all three Assault Knight events have finished, and will be given to the corresponding participants even if only one Assault Knight was defeated.

The phrase above to me implies that everyone who participates in a knight event will get loot even if only one knight was defeated. If that isn’t the case, this doesn’t stop people from zerging in the slightest. Afterwards when we realized that only people at the blue knight got drops, people already started stating, “why don’t we all go to one and grab the buff when someone else dies”. This isn’t promoting team work at all.

Is this a bug, or is this intended? I figured this would be similar to the Scarlet Invasions where everyone (who participated) on the map got the ending chest, same for the Marionette. Did other people have this problem as well?

You don’t have to choose right away, and with your other character slots you can easily have one of each crafting professions, so if you decide you want something else you can just use an alt (or just switch professions on your main).

If you eventually want ascended armor or weapons, I’d suggest going for those instead. They aren’t necessary (really it depends on what your build is) and they are expensive/time intensive, so make them a long term goal instead of something to focus on. Technically for your profession leatherwork (for armor) and then huntsmen or weapon smith makes the most sense, if you wanted to craft your own weapons. The down side, on my first character I had the problem of not having enough materials (through normal gathering) to keep my crafting level up to date with my actual level. So it wasn’t well after I hit 80 did I actually hit 400 in my crafts to give me gear with the stats I wanted.

Also if you are trying to make money, it’s hard pressed to do that with both of those professions. Most people go for ascended trinkets with fractals/laurels/guild missions and don’t have a use for jewelry. As for cooking, the vast majority of items sell more to a vendor than to other players.

That being said, there really isn’t a wrong choice. Just go with what you think would be the most fun. If you find you don’t like it you can always just switch to another profession (and use an alt to cover that one if you decide you want to get it at a later date).

Honestly, you do receive an increase at every percent. But I doubt many (if any) have spent hours trying to tabulate the loot drops. There are too many things to keep track of when trying to crunch those numbers, ie find out a loot table.

If something has a 1/10 chance to drop at 0% MF, then it has a 2/10 chance to drop at 100% MF, so you do really need a lot to notice a difference. I assume rolling onto a higher quality loot table is similar. I’m just not sure how getting multiple items would work with MF.

I just hit 150% and I do notice a rare or two drop every hour or two of game play from mobs. I rarely see white items any more, and get more green than blue, but your mileage may vary. MF also does not affect champ bags or chests in the world (to my knowledge).

I got 2 from my 3 strikes last night. I just hope that they have a use besides the back items (in a reasonable amount). If we could trade them to the same vendor that takes the belongings (or whatever you can get oby shards/sprockets/level tomes from) I think most people would be happy.

Mortifer.2946:

Omg! They did not fix it yet?

It’s currently 2am for them, I think the patch hit around 6-7pm their time, I forget exactly when it hit. They most likely went home afterwards and won’t have another patch for it for about another 8-12 hours depending how major/minor the problem is.

While I understand that they will never give us an hour countdown like for monthlies and dailies, it would be nice to know what “day” something ends on.

Here’s a tip I’ve picked up DragonWhimsy. Going from EST, the reset is 7pm and the patches normally hit sometime between 11am-2pm on Tuesday. On Monday night after reset if I don’t see a daily related to the meta, it usually means that, that Living Story is over and a new one will come when they patch it (along with a daily related to that meta). Not a sure thing, but it works most patches.

On the plus side, I’m happy that the daily metas are included. It may force you to log in every day to get it, but it can make up for not having the time to try to get each achievement. Also you didn’t miss much in terms of meta rewards, just 100 bags.

Ummm you can just as easily make an argument about humans.

The 1 year mini was Queen Jenna, we had a month long event that involved DR (along with gem store items for special access in DR), the bazzar of the 4 winds was another city of humans, etc.

Honestly, I bet just the dev’s making the rounds from race to race/it fits with the current story. In another year or two when we get to the next dragon, I’m sure it will have at least a couple of months build up with something relating to that racial area. Besides, we’re the ones who killed Zhaitan, he just go credit for it. Also, I’d say that the elder dragons hold the title of “biggest threat since Abadon”. Besides I’m sure many players are just happy that the story is taking a turn towards another dragon, I know I am (not the dragon I most want to kill, but I can wait. But please, when I kill Jormag, I want his tooth to hang in my home instance like in Holbrek).

Before the patch my friend and I were getting loot from the knights 2-3 times in a row. After the patch hit (even after going to a party of 5 from 2 and having good dps and minimal stopping to rez) no one got anything for about the past 3-5 runs I’ve been a part of.

Mungrul.9358:

I think the central problem with any kind of gear progression is that it distracts the userbase from what should REALLY matter: gameplay.
You can argue about ascended being fair/unfair all you like, but the real point is, it draws your attention away from the fact that the actual gameplay isn’t evolving at all.
While gear and achievements are what the community obsess over, ArenaNet will continue to deliver them, as they’re easier than providing interesting, challenging gameplay and redesigning broken systems.

Well to be fair, the gameplay is becoming more complex. At least in terms of how to beat enemies.

Look at this patch, conditions reflect 50% of the time versus the knights, need a buff that goes away quickly versus the holograms. The previous patch: the first time that I can think of that actually punished zerging (thank you!). We’ve also been getting (in pervious LS patches) Champ spiders that heal when they feed on someone, a lot of interesting boss mechanics in the Queen’s Gauntlet, some then-dungeons, now fractal bosses that all have their own quarks. So I’d say the enemies are going in the right direction.

The only thing I’d love is choose able #1-5 skills to allow a lot more variety for us. After that, try to fix conditions in PvE somehow, and work on the balance of the current skills/traits (before adding more). And they have already said that they will be making another balance patch soon (I think the March 18th patch, unless that was changed).

And back to the OP and that discussion, though to be fair I skipped over most of the stuff after that as it seemed wildly off topic. You can still easily get the exotic level of the back item without any crafting, just a bit of coin to buy the ingots. But as it stands every bit of ascended gear introduced has been time gated/cost prohibitive. Rings can be obtained from lvl 10+ fractals (1 chance per day, at most 10 days for 1 ring) or laurels, earrings from guild missions or laurels, amulets from badges & laurels or just more laurels. So while not expensive (besides the 100 ectos needed) all of those take a lot of time. Then we have armor and weapons which both have time gated materials which take either a lot of time/mats or even more money, plus account bound mats which need a decent amount of time to get the first time (and then just seem to take up a ton of bank space).

I did some math a couple months back with projected numbers for the armor, I think I estimated a ~5% increase over exotics, but the power difference between a exotic zerker stats and ascended zerker stats is about a ~20% increase in dps. I think it was ~14% increase for PTV stats, and maybe…. ~5% increase (for direct damage only) for condi users, and even if you took conditions into account it was maybe only +5-15 damage per bleed or something like that, but I’m going from memory.

All that being said. It really comes down to

“you can do everything in exotics, you don’t need ascended to play the game. it’s meant to take a lot of time/be a massive gold sink”
vs.
“why can’t everyone have the best stat gear easily obtainable”

personally, I’m with the latter line of thought, but sadly if you want the final form of the back item you’ll have to craft it.

If you want the cheapest method, go for leather. The cord of eloian leather (or whatever it’s name is) is the cheapest to buy.

Nick.6972:

Here’s a question.
After almost 2 years, do people still find these dungeons fun?
I know I don’t, I just want get my loot asap and go back to WvW.

Some people do it for loot/money or for tokens to forge. Personally I never really liked the “stack in X spot to win” & “skip 60%+ of all mobs”. Speed dungeon running is still a good source of income, maybe 2nd (after champ farming but better than world boss farming).

To the OP, personally, I’d never want that much oppression (a bit extreme, but I’m tired) in a LFG tool. If I see a post that asks for zerkers only, I happily stay clear of it. Personally I hate the zerker game play, so I avoid it whenever I can. But at the same time, I have gotten people in higher level fractals with less AR than desirable. But I’d rather have (and have to pick up) a good player with less AR that loses ~50% of their hp every agony, than a dumb one who dies from the bosses attacks every time (not saying that, it’s you personally or even a zerker, just random people I’ve played with who don’t know how to dodge). Besides, I’m usually happy to teach new people mechanics to a fight. And based on the PUGs I’ve played with so are most people. Many people are willing to spend 30 sec to explain a fight if someone just asks.

Honestly it sounds like you should just get 4 like minded people (or 3 more based on your post) and just play together. Or just join other “zerk only/speed run groups”. I can’t see most people wanting the level of control that you do, just so you can get your dungeon runs done a couple of min faster. It would just cause a greater separation in the player base and we really don’t need more of those.

I’m pretty sure the event is not bugged (in terms of getting loot).

The same thing can happen in world boss events if you join very late; you can get gold for the event but not do enough damage to actually get loot. If you just auto attack (and sometimes it’s limited to that because of the condition reflection) you may not be doing enough damage to get credit for the kill. It’s happened to me a couple of times, but when I play more dangerously to get more damage done (or spend less time rezing people) I usually get loot.

My suggestions are to try a different weapon/utility skills that let you do more damage (and lets you use more attack skills). Others also say to also form a party, I’m not 100% sure of the mechanic, but I think as long as you do some damage, your damage is combined with your party for determining loot drops.

Sadly, zerker builds will end up doing more damage than condi users, but I hope that will change in the future (both because zerker builds are getting a bit of a nerf and I hope that they return condi damage soon).

That being said, I use a Knight/Rabid build in PvE and haven’t gotten too many complaints. I do more fractals than dungeons, but it seems to work fine in both. I prefer the more tanky feel, but I’m sure you can go to pure Rabid to increase your condi damage. It’ll also lower your armor and your direct damage by a good amount though. I’m still trying to decide if sigil of bloodlust or corruption is better for my build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vIAQNAseTjMdU5ZfH2ewJagA94KVZLnHJZKkXVwOA-zACBYhCiEEgkFAEGQJQFRjtspIasqbY6YER1AA-e

You can try this with a S/S and change Shield Master to Dodged March, I just prefer a more tanky feel and I like the Sword/Shield fighting style. I usually keep my number 9 as Sigil of Stamina/Dolyak in PvE and Banner of Disc/Strength in Dungeons/Fractals. Also Battle Standard has it’s places in certain fights too.

I prefer Longbow to Riffle because you can help stack group might and it gives you access to another condition, which is good if there’s another condi user in the party. Furious also lets you keep near constant fire fields up or between 12-18 stacks of bleeds, peaking at about 24-25 if you keep using Flurry.

I don’t know if this is exactly hidden and its just a single event. But there’s a Lagos Assassin that appears and attacks you in Frostgorge Sound. I have no clue what triggers it/what the timer on the event is, but it’s underwater and triggered for me bit north west of the jp at random times when swimming through. Roughly in between the Slough of Despond Waypoint and Ice Floe Waypoint.

Seetoo.9316:

I don’t know to what this will lead to (buff, nerf, change, nothing) but here goes.

I like tinkering my rifle warrior. Specifically tinkering it to see if I REALLY need crackshot (since in a highly mobile fight, lining up targets is pretty hard).

So I read the trait again. Rifle and Harpoon gun shots pierce. Reduces recharge on rifle and harpoon gun skills.

So with the exception of rifle butt and AA, all rifle skills pierce AND get a recharge reduction. Now, killshot gets only the piercing effect.
- on the one hand it received the piercing shots so anet acknowledges that it is a “rifle or harpoon gun skill”
- on the other hand it didn’t receive the reduction recharge so anet acknowledges that it is NOT a “rifle or harpoon gun skill”

If all burst skills got the recharge reduction, not only would it be way too strong (up to 50% time reduction would be way too strong), it’d screw over sword users even more.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Keep in mind that the HPS with surge will only be remotely comparable to HS at full adrenaline. If you spend the whole time sitting on your adrenaline, you won’t benefit from cleansing ire or attacking with your bursts. But if you try to keep your condis off or go all out trying to kill them you won’t have the high healing when you might need it.

As such, it might not be a simple matter of just swapping healing skills. You might need to make other adjustments as well to maximize the potential of surge.

Yeah but some builds can easily get full adrenaline rather easily.

Look at Furious (even after it was “stealth nerfed”/never addressed), Cleansing Ire, Sig of Furry, weapon swap, etc.

I’ve been using Healing Sig with Runes of Dolyak since launch, and I doubt I’ll change. Personally I don’t think it was too warranted, 50% uptime of poison make it equal healing surge, (if I remember correctly), but it was very weak to burst damage, which most classes do anyways. When combined with invincible skills it allows for some stalling, full healing builds still have their shouts/banners, and people can still use their invincible skills, but now get a mostly full heal with surge.

The main benefit of healing sig was just against non-champ mobs, those that don’t use poison at least, not much else.

I’m only sad that healing sig’s active is just getting a boost. Look at all the other signets. Besides Sig of Might (before it was changed) they all do something different with their active effect. I was really hoping healing signet would get something else to make us want to use the active, not just an increased heal. If the passive is higher, you never use it (like now). If the active is higher you can just spam it. But if the active had some kind of strategic use then we could at least get passive healing and then activate it when we needed.

I was always hoping for maybe group regen or something similar to that effect, heck before the new stance heal even that effect would have worked. I can’t think of much else right now besides, protection would be too strong.

Scottd.5764:

I am pretty new and just leveled to 80 I want to start farming for the mats for a legendary. Thanks and any other tips would be appreciated.

I’m not a farmer by any means. But I did notice a good drop rate of t6 mats from casual WvW. The champ bags have a chance to drop all the T6 mats. I’ve also noticed some from running fractals, but the return there is pretty slow.

Also, promoting was how I made a lot of the T6 mats I needed for my own leg. T5 mats drop a plenty, but it does take a long time.

Dondagora.9645:

deathTouch.9706:

Sages.3496:

deathTouch.9706:

Sages.3496:

Everyone stop raging about The Edge of the Mists map being down, you dont know how hard anet is truely working on it and should give them credit for even trying. they do not have to do so at all. it will be up when it is up, stop crying about it.

And yet in my profession, no matter “how hard you try”, at the end of the day if you have a bad outcome that was entirely preventable on your part, you are usually on the receiving end of a 6-7 figure lawsuit.

We are consumers of a product who have paid, and continue to pay, hard-earned money for working and functional content. The release success rate of these pieces of content are unacceptably low, usually causing high degrees of collateral damage to other aspects of the game, and simply represent rushed timelines in the interest of maximizing quarterly earnings.

I’m tired of being abused by company executives who are banking on this bizarre notion in gaming that completely unusable content is somehow acceptable as long as “it’s eventually fixed”.

Look buddy, if you have a problem with it, fix it yourself or just let them do it as best they can. Anet has been hard at work on alot of content, they do not have to put out another living story and they could just shut down GW2 entirely if they felt like it.

Fix it myself? Are you unaware as to how a basic economy is designed to function?

Let me clarify. I don’t care how hard they work, I care about results. I work 8-12 hour workdays with periodic 20-30 hour overnight calls for which I am paid to do my job well and obtain good results. Working hard is a basic prerequisite to obtaining consistently good results, not the end metric by which I am assessed. I then use this money that I earn in part to pay Anet with the expectation that they will do their job well.

The 2nd half of this agreement is consistently failing. This is not an isolated incident, it is yet another chain in a repeat of incidents that has happened with every major content update, since and including, release.

You paid for what you got; Guild Wars 2. Now, they’re giving you free extra content with even a monthly fee. Even expansions for most games have to be bought. But not here. If their gifts to us aren’t working properly at first, it isn’t our place to say that we’re not getting what we paid for. We already got that. We should try to be supportive of the efforts ANet put into Guild Wars 2 to keep us interested instead of leaving the game to die, which would simply be giving us what we paid for until we got bored and left on our own. Be thankful for the Living Story and ANet’s hard work instead of giving nonconstructive criticism that does nothing to further the situation.

Agreed. Does it suck that everything doesn’t work perfectly at launch, yeah. But still, I’d much rather have this system. If this was a pay per month game I never would have bought it (despite loving gw1). Besides the dev team is usually pretty fast in fixing any major bugs.

If i had to make a blind guess I’d say ~32 min (the current time remaining on the match up) or less.

Edit: Then it went to 0 sec for me in a split sec and said I needed to check my internet connection before going back to 31min…

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Hey all. I know you’ve all seen the new build, but the team hasn’t opened up the map just yet. I will update here when it’s been opened up. Just a little more patience, please

Ah, that’s reassuring. Thanks for the update. Fingers crossed that most things will be working.

Oh hey a new build. hopefully that means it’ll be up now. Thanks Devs for the hard work. It sucks that it didn’t work when it launched, but thanks for working on it since then.

killahmayne.9518:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

healing surge can be used twice in 40 seconds? It has a 35 second CD. So I am assuming you’re using it at start of fight to gain full adrenaline, even though you have full health and again on cool down? Also with my current set up, even if i did use it twice, that would only need me 14K w/ the assumption being made I am never at full adrenaline for long and adrenal healing scales only with adrenaline and not your healing static.

It has a 30 second CD. And within 10 seconds it isn’t out of the realm of impossibility to take 10K damage by say a class like a thief, although you really shouldn’t in a 1v1. But in group fight scenarios that can be definitely the case if you are getting focused. It isn’t also out of the realm of impossibility to have full adrenaline by then. So that is a 10K Heal within 10 seconds. Then 30 seconds later you use it again for another 10K Heal, that is 20K. While it may be the case you are not at full adrenaline by the time your heal is up and you need to use it, one would hope a Warrior would save their burst mechanic when the heal is coming close to off cooldown.

So 20K in 40 seconds is about 500 HP/Sec, compared to the healing signets 400 HP/Sec.

Yep, and healing surge is able to get around poison (assuming you cleanse before you heal of course) a lot better than healing sig.

Also there are utilities that can get you to full adrenaline just as a fight is starting if you really needed it, so gaining adrenaline shouldn’t really ever be an issue.

If you mean sPvP then you can get there by the crossed swords icon at the top of the UI, and then click “enter the mists.” PvP gear/build is different from PvE and you can set it up once you get inside.

If you mean WvW (which you can enter from the …tower? icon at the top of the UI), then you use your PvE gear, but you get upscaled to lvl 80, but you can only use the skills/skill slots that you’ve already unlocked from your level.

macon.4065:

I’ve been looking at this magic find total for how much luck essence that you actually need for the 300% and I’ve seen some posts that indicate that you would need like 4,800,000 points of luck essence to equal to the 300% in magic find that would top this skill off. If this is the case holy smokes this seems really unstable to me and pretty ridiculous, I mean I wonder how long it would take someone to farm that much luck essence and is it even possible?

Well it is meant to be a long term goal. And also for most people, a gold sink (aside from people like Aberrant). I play fairly regularly (usually 2-4 hours a night) except for the past 2 weeks or so and mostly kill world bosses. I’ve managed to get my luck to roughly 110-115%.

Personally, the daily/monthly luck rewards are what annoy me the most. 500 is a decent amount at the lower levels, but that drops off quickly. It would be nice if at a certain luck threshold the dailies/monthlies awarded a special type of luck that gave you 1%/10% of your current level. It can’t be from the start because people will just hoard it like we did the karma jugs, but once it takes the same amount to get each new percent it would be nice to have some slow, but steady progress.

iniside.4736:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

If I recall a dev (maybe Colin?) said that the players got exotic gear way too fast for your liking. My question is, why is that a bad thing? In gw1 you could reach level cap and get the best gear in under a week.

It’s bad thing for the reasons that I posted in previous post, but make “short” summary:
1. There is no other progression, beyond stats and skins. Skins didn’t worked, so they tried increasing stats. We all know how it went.

2. There is no skill collecting/hunting. You can get all skills extremely quick. It’s not bad thing on it’s own, if not for the fact there are very few skills to play with in the first place.

3. There not much to play with in terms of customizing your character. I’m not talking about looks, I’m talking about gameplay. Very simple itemization combined with very few skills, and tiered traits, prove to not be enough in that terms, and people got bored quickly. Those limited options can get you only this far in terms of experimentation.

4. Add on top of that that items lock you in single build, and customization is even more severely limited. I personally could get over it, if the items were not boring in the first place.

Thanks for summarizing, with how fast these CDI threads expand I doubt I have the time to read everything.

1) I guess that’s my point. I can enjoy this game as is, I don’t need “progression” (outside of trying new content every so often). I hit lvl 80 in less than a month, and I actually really like the craftable heavy armor, so I’ve been using that for over a year now (and ~1.5k hours of him). I much prefer having to “grind” for a skin than stats.

2) I agree that there are not many skills in total. And even less for a particular playstyle, and again even less that are viable. I posted above how I think skills/combat can get more interesting.

3) While I can see your point, wouldn’t horizontal progression (ie, more skills and traits) help solve this problem? Also I don’t see how the trait system can be reworked. At most, you can maybe give players access to 10 more trait points (or maybe just the traits and not the stats associated with that line).

4) I’m confused about this part. While exotics aren’t free, they also are much cheaper than ascended. I’d say the vertical nature of ascended gear is what locks you into a build more so adding new stat combs, etc. I agree with others above that for the amount of time/mats required to get ascended gear they should have changeable stats.

Horizontal progression

This is where gw2 can really shine and stand out as a game.

I still believe some things need to be addressed in terms of balance (direct damage builds versus condition builds), but I don’t believe this is the place for that discussion.

I am very happy that we did receive a new healing skill per profession. (I really was hoping for more, but it’s a start). I understand how hard it is to add new skills that both have meaning (not redundant and possibly unique) and are balanced. The same goes for traits.

I know you guys are working hard to give support roles more options, I say keep going. I really dislike the somewhat prevalent mentality in PvE of “go zerk, or go home”.

Honestly, the biggest suggestion I can make towards horizontal progression is:

Swappable weapon skills.

The two ways to implement this is to
1) give each 2-5 number, 2-3 different selectable skills (much easier to balance)

2) let us select 2-5 skills from a pool of skills. (2-3 from the main hand, 4-5 from a different pool based on the off hand, or all 2-5 for a 2h weapon). Much harder to balance, but I think would a lot more build versatility and could give some great options for further development.

Weapon skills could have a subtype, which would allow new traits to affect those subtypes (instead of taking the “sword” trait, you could take the “snare” trait)

Possible synergy between the skills: I’m mostly drawing from the Assassin from gw1 here, where 1 skill would be an “initializer” another a “combo” skill and then a “finisher”.

Or innate balance “synergy”: if you take 3 burst skills, you could have a cool down increase +% on all skills.

Vertical progression
Another old gw1 player here, and I’ll throw my hat into the dislike of vertical progression, but to be fair I didn’t even really notice it until weapons came out.

You can make the argument that you don’t need stronger gear unless there is some harder content that requires it. Personally, I don’t ever want a level cap increase or another tier. I play this game for fun, and I love the fact that anyone can do anything even if they take month long breaks.

Vertical progression is also bad for any new players.

For a fresh new player to get fully ascended gear:
30 (Amulet) + 70 (rings) + 80 (Accessories) + 5 (weapon) + 30 (armor) = 215 laurels
If you get rings from fractals and use badges of honor (which a new player wouldn’t have access to in large supply) this drops to 135 laurels.

Over 3 months to just gear one character seems way too excessive. And not to mention the extreme cost it takes to get to 500 crafting. I have maybe 1.5k hours of casual play, I’m not rich, but I can afford these massive gold sinks, but why are they here. Going from 400 to 500 in crafting should cost maybe 25% more than it costs to go from 300 to 400.

If I recall a dev (maybe Colin?) said that the players got exotic gear way too fast for your liking. My question is, why is that a bad thing? In gw1 you could reach level cap and get the best gear in under a week.

Also exotic gear was obtainable through: Crafting, Drops, Mystic Forge, Dungeon Tokens, trading post.

Ascended gear can only be reliably gained from time gated materials (laurels) and crafting (which is also time gated).

To me vertical progression isn’t fun, it’s a grind. And in this case it is very expensive in both time and gold.

Leamas.5803:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Leamas.5803:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That said, condition damage also should not be reduced with 2 or more condi specs attacking the same target.

Right here, this one statement, is by far the one thing that is most broken with condition users. “Play the way I want to play.”, except that I can’t play in PvE groups and groups don’t want me because of my build.

This is a cop out. You CAN play however you want…..but how you WANT doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to be desired by other players. I’m not saying some sort of change or solution doesn’t need to be investigated, but turning this issue into some sort of, “ANET LIED TO ME!!!”, situation is pathetic.

It’s no cop out. Sure, I can play how I want…if I want to be useless. They included classes which were intended to be condition builds, the necro being the prime example, then made it all but useless in groups and made it essentially impossible for condition build to group with each other since such a group would be a waste of time. No such limitations are imposed on power builds. This is not balanced.

I’d argue almost any class can be a condition build. The sword and long bow on a warrior. sb and sword (or axe) on a ranger. Ele can do burns in fire and bleeds in earth. So it is more than just making necros useless.

Also the way the stats/condition damage works:

+19 power will increase your damage ever so slightly
+19 condition damage will do absolutely nothing if you use bleeds
and +0.9 sec bleed duration will also do absolutely nothing for your dps

Aside: I don’t know how accurate gw2 calculates precision. While I know +0.5% crit chance won’t show up in the hero menu, does it still factor during damage calculations?

Plus the weapon damage increases mean more in a power/crit build.

5% weapon damage means +5% more total damage for a power build
+5% weapon damage means ~0.X% more total damage for a condition build

Soundwave.8739:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

That being said, it’s only 16, +1s (plus some silver) to get a +5.

Oh that’s not nearly as expensive as I thought it would be. Thanks!

Yeah getting the +5 is not bad at all.

The problem comes with getting a +10 (or multiple +10s), those start to get pricey (but are still obtainable).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony_Infusion

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you want to experiment with different builds, you shouldn’t be doing it with the most expensive gear. Use Rares or Exotics if you want to run different builds. BiS gear is gated, and thus takes more effort to obtain.

Why should BiS gear be gated? What reason is there other than to separate the community? Before anything ascended came out exotic was the BiS. If you wanted to get exotic gear it was “easy”, you could:

1) Craft
2) Dungeon tokens
3) MF rares
4) Buy it off the tp
5) Get it from a drop

You can only (reliably) get ascended gear from time gated options

Trinkets (combination of Laurels, guild commendations, daily fractal rewards)
Weapons/Armor (time gated crafting)

And as many others have pointed out in other threads with you, they don’t feel that there is any effort in time gated mats. Ascended weapons/armor are only as expensive as it is, because they needed to find a way to sink gold (same with the AR infusions). If ascended weapons/armor were say 1/10th or less as what they are now I don’t think I’d be complaining.

Now as for build nerfs or rebalancing, I hear your complaint. Buying expensive gear to use for that one specific build, and then having to change, can be a valid complaint. BUT… on the flip side, the gear can still be used. The stat combos, while not what you’d prefer in a different build, is still top of the line.

I tried to use this argument (or at least a variation of it) when ascended weapons first came out. On day one I got a cleric weapon box, and was excited/happy (and it has been the only one I’ve received and only one of <6 that I’ve seen drop for people). Someone at the time was complaining saying that they’d rather have the weapon drop and let them choose the stats. I was saying I’d rather have stats I didn’t want than a weapon I “couldn’t” use. I did the math, my ascended cleric bow (which I’m still using) does 5% less damage than an exotic level zerker bow.

So lets say you use conditions and you have to switch to a power build. You are better off using an exotic power weapon than your ascended condition weapon. So, no, a nerf/balance change can make your gear not top of the line.

Anet rebalances all the time. In GW1, certain metas forced Anet to rebalance, because certain niche metas were really over powered. My 55 Monk was destroyed, because of Ecto farming in the Underworld.

I’m happy they balance the game, I’m just pointing out that the insane grind to get a full set of gear (the ~150 laurels, and all of the mats) can be “useless” and there is no way to make up for that. Also to compare to gw1, there you could get the BiS gear in what, 1 week for a fresh lvl 1 character? 2-3 days (or less) if you wanted a spare set with different runes/insignias. That is what a good number of people are asking for here. I’d rather do what I want to, than grind out gold/mats to craft some gear.

Honestly, right now I’d be happy if they lowered ascended stats down to exotic. And removed all non-AR and utility infusions from the game. Ascended gear started as something for fractals, if it returned to that, I wouldn’t complain. Bring back easily obtained BiS gear and only horizontal progression.

Edit: Also why should casuals feel the brunt of this? They are the ones who most struggle to get the gold for ascended crafting. Someone who doesn’t get that much time to play should not be at a disadvantage versus someone who has the time to grind gold/mats (besides having more time to hone their skill in the game).

Leamas.5803:

I didn’t say warriors should be able to do more damage, but that warriors should be able to deal it faster. Warriors pay a price for their DPS, they typically have to be right next to the mob taking the brunt of the attack where a condition user can sit back and enjoy the show, so to speak, so I’m OK with slower damage. The biggest problem with condition users is that their damage does not stack (Well, not beyond the 25, which is VERY limited) making more than 2 in a group redundant, where power users are completely unlimited. And…typically, condition users cannot use marks, a primary attack for necros, against world bosses nerfing their effectiveness even more.

But what about condition warriors? The main benefit I have is long lasting bleeds, and able to keep stacks ~18-21 without any condi druation. But my direct attacks still hit like a wet noodle. If you are just looking at the same class, why should a zerker warrior do x2-5 dps as a condi warrior (I’d give a better estimate but I don’t go full Rabid gear so I don’t know how much damage one would be able to do). Plus there is the long start up time to actually start doing full dps, and that only works if your enemy is willing to just stand there for you (which only happens in PvE, where your damage is nerfed because of the caps).

Doesn’t it make sense that under ideal conditions condi damages should do more damage than zerkers?

See the “problem” they faced before they implemented the cap is that they had large groups of necros roaming around doing the champs and taking them down like nothing. I remember seeing upwards of 80 stacks of bleed.

When was this? At least in the last beta the cap was already there (at least I remember it being there). And it was certainly there on -3 day launch.