Guild Wars 2

I don’t run P/D, so I don’t have an informed opinion on that issue. My personal Thief runs like a quasi-tank, so it’s a completely different play style from my current character.

Having said that, P/D had a good reputation for WvW before I stopped playing and it seems like people still like it. My only personal hesitation is about Dagger #5. If ArenaNet is slowly killing off a Thief’s stealth potential, then the reliance on Dagger #5 is an inevitable target. While a nerf on that skill would violate a majority of the Thief builds in the game, the cynic in me thinks that it will still happen sooner or later.

Case in point, just look through the past couple of weeks in the Engineer forums if you want to experience a hurricane of QQ. Almost every Engineer was built around a 10 pt trait called Kit Refinement (KR), which encouraged Engineers to use multiple weapon kit skills and for them to constantly switch between them. To be honest, the ability was brokenly powerful for a T1 trait (even though it was needed to help balance out the Engineer). Yet ArenaNet’s response was to rewrite every KR proc into a new result, to change their individual cool downs into a shared cool down (who’s timer you can never see), and increased the cool down to 20 seconds. This entire process has so horribly broken the trait that almost every Engineer in the game instantly removed it from their build because it was uncontrolled and beyond worthless.

ArenaNet likes to take a sledgehammer to a problem when a scalpel would suffice. I used to blame SOE for their point of view during my years of playing EQ2. Since GW2 has launched, it has become clear to me that ArenaNet is no better. When a slegehammer is taken to stealth, Dagger #5 is the prime target. To be completely honest, I’d feel guilty advising anyone to go P/D right now since the build is completely based on its reliance to Dagger #5 and I forsee that this will eventually run into huge problems.

Helterskelter.8490:

I’m considering dropping thief, as it seems to be crashing and burning.

In regards to this specific comment, I’ll give my personal opinion. Basically the Thief is dealing with the eternal problem of dealing with anti-Stealth whinning, which is a constant in about every single MMO. Bit by bit, ArenaNet is trying to nerf stealth as a way of making things more “fair”. People say that they hate the burst capability of a Thief who is using stealth, but it’s really the stealth that gives people a mental breakdown.

My personal Thief is a mostly non-stealth build that uses S/P and Venomous Aura. All things considered, I’m usually avoiding any of the Thief nerfs because I’m not built around stealth. If you’re willing to be a non-stealth player, then you’ll probably be fine. Otherwise I’d say that your personal play style will be slowly taken apart piece by piece.

1) Precursors – Average selling price is around 400g – 600g, depending on the specific weapon. Inflation is constantly driving the prices up inch by inch, so it’s almost impossible to catch up. The only way that people can buy those things is to chain farm Citadel of Flame: Path #1 and to play the BLTC stock market game.

2) Warriors are in the world of QQ right now. While their Banner skill +stat buffs were almost doubled (which still doesn’t make a lot of difference), the nerf of Quickness hit them hard. Their personal Quickness skill had its duration extended by a bit, but their debuff that doubled incoming damage was not changed. Now the 100 Blades spam builds are only half as effective in the burst compartment and are still as easy to kill. While the class is still very decent in PvE, they’re not doing very well against other players.

3) Guardians haven’t been recently violated and they’re still very popular. I don’t play that class, so I’m honestly a bad person to ask about it.

I was in your situation and only started back up about three weeks ago, so here’s where things are.

1) If you’re doing a Fractal, you no longer need your personal Difficulty Level to match up with the rest of your group. For example, let’s say that you’re Lvl 1 in the Fractal series. You go with a group at Lvl 8 since your group leader is flagged for being that high. After finishing the dungeon chain, you get personal loot based on Lvl 1 and your personal Difficulty permanently increases to Lvl 2. Yet at the same time, the rest of your group can possibly recieve their own personal rewards up to the Lvl 8 setting. This means that you can now tag along as a low Difficulty character, though you wouldn’t want to go along for any Fractal above Lvl 19 due to the Agony scaling mechanics. (See the Agony page on the wiki for how the damage scales by tier.)

2) You can now get Ascended gear from Laurel vendors. You get Laurels by completing the Daily (for x1 Laurel) and the Monthly (for x10 Laurel). This means that you can get an Ascended necklace in x3 weeks. Then you can craft a +5 Stat / +5 Agony Resistance infusion using the Mystic Forge. The infusion should cover you pretty well up through Lvl 19 in the Fractals.

3) The Revealed debuff from exiting Stealth just got increased by +1 second. It now lasts for x4 seconds, which has really thrown a lot of people off. (This was a very recent nerf.)

4) The Quickness boon now makes you only attack at +50% attack speed, instead of the original +100% attack speed. (This was a very recent nerf.)

5) If you’re part of a large guild, they might do Guild Bounty missions against Champion mobs. There’s a weekly bonus chest for the 1st GB mob that you kill that week. It gives you some loot and x2 Guild tokens. By accessing the new Guild vendor, you can pay 5g and x12 Guild tokens for an Ascended earring.

6) At some point while we were gone, open world zone boss mobs started to give a special daily bonus chest that give you a guaranteed Rare piece of gear. More recently, ArenaNet reduced the bonus chest to once a day for every account (instead of once a day for every character). With this in mind, people are now trying to farm both the dragons and the lower level zone bosses for the extra gear to tear apart for ectoplasms.

That’s the bare bones about what you need to know.

Toughness still applies against “magical” forms of direct damage. Direct damage covers any kind of damage source in this game. There are no divisions between “physical” and “magical”.

Having said that, Toughness doesn’t give any kind of protection against Condition based damage. Damage from any condition will eat you alive unless you have constant sources of incoming healing or lots of condition removal.

If you’re a flamethrower engineer who’s focused on doing condition damage, then I’m guessing that you’re not going to have a lot of incoming healing. In that specific case, I’d say that Vitality would probably work out better for you. Now if you were mainly focusing on the elixer gun / bombs in some kind of healing build, then I’d assume that you would be wearing Cleric gear (Power / Healing / Toughness) and my answer would be to stay with Toughness.

I’d say that some of the answers depend on your character build, but here’s some quick ones.

1) Superior Runes of Lyssa & Basilisk Venom – If you’re bothering to run Lyssa runes, then it could be useful to run Basilisk (even though the venom’s effect won’t work on Jormag).

2) Signet of Precision – This will help to save your life and possibly the life of those around you.

3) Sigil of Purity / Sigil of Generousity – This can work if you’re a Precision based build and you’re willing to switch target to any of the trash mobs. Once you generate the condition removal proc, you can switch target back to Jormag. (As a mostly non-stealth S/P build, I run one of these sigils on my SB.)

Assuming that you are looking at no forms of healing generation, that sounds about right. But for builds that are designed to generate constant sources of healing through item, food, and trait procs, your proposed Time to Kill starts to look very different.

In general, Vitality is a more useful stat and is universally good on every character build. However I will still take Toughness over Vitality for about half of my characters because their specific builds are designed for it.

(Nor does this address the issue of Agony damage in the Fractal dungeon series. Since it deals damage as a % value of your max Health score, it can actually be something of a penalty if you have a high Vitality score since your incoming damage is much harder to heal away.)

Oh My God.8423:

Just want to say a massive THANKS to all for the most constructive advice!

THANKS!!

One of thing to consider with a Venomous Aura build is your armor Runes. Once you get high enough to access Superior grade runes (at lvl 60+), it is possible to use Superior Runes of Lyssa. There is an unstated cool down of 50 seconds on the full set proc, so it would only affect you every other Basilisk use. Yet it does remove all conditions and grants you almost every boon (for a few seconds), which helps out in the condition removal department.

Another condition removal source are your Sigils on your weapons. If you’re running a character build that is Precision heavy, you can run a couple of different condition removal sigils. At the Superior tier, you can have a 60% proc chance whenever you critically hit. I personally run a removal sigil on my ranged weapons (land & water) and on my underwater melee weapon. (Underwater combat seems to be particularly heavy in the condition department, so I try to use as much removal as I can in those circumstances.)

Courtney,

I suggest that you make a similar thread in the Guilds sub-forum. (It’s one of the last chocies on the sub-forum list.) Though it’s a chaotic and poorly organized place, I do see these kinds of Looking For Guild threads answered down there and people seem to find a home that way.

Like others have stated, the closest you get to an AoE buffing build is a Venomous Aura build. This is what my Thief is, even though it is often mocked by much of the Thief forums since it doesn’t play much like a “thief” in their opinion.

My own personal version is Deadly Arts 30 / Critical Strikes 10 / Shadow Arts 30. It runs Spider Venom, Skale Venom, Shadow Refuge, and Basilisk Venom for my AoE buffing situations. (When soloing, I remove SR and replace it with Signet of Shadow. Also I remove BV and replace it with Thieves Guild.) Beyond the skills, I run a S/P & SB weapon setup and use Knight (Power/Precision/Toughness) gear. Between venom proc heals and a couple sources of “heal of crit” gear/food, you end up with a tanky Thief who can take hits and quickly heal back the damage. (Though as a general warning, my personal build needs to pack a bunch on condition removal since I don’t have any +Vitality beyond my 10 pt trait in Critical Strikes. I run Hide in Shadows, Lyssa runes, Sword #2, and a condition removal proc sigil on my SB.)

There are far too many different support builds when you look at the various classes. While I adore running my support Thief, you could easily find some other variation of this concept in another class if that’s what you want to do.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Wiser with Age.3714:

2) You would want 20 points in the Discipline line for Signet Mastery (which is vital to have by 30th for your Elite) and Heighted Focus.

You will not be able to put 20 trait points into anything by level 30. You’ll have to wait until you can buy and use the Master’s Training Manual at level 40.

I mean that the T1 10 pt trait MUST be purchased by 30th if you plan on using the Signet elite. Otherwise you’re just being foolish. (Both listed traits are T1 choices. People just have to personally prioritize which one to take first.)

Your cliche Warrior built will use the Greatsword as your melee weapon, will usually use the Rifle as your ranged weapon (though I’m really liking the utility aspects of the Longbow on my 2nd Warrior), and will run Signet of Rage as your Elite.

Traits

1) You would want at least 20 points in the Strength line for Berserker’s Power and Slashing Power.

2) You would want 20 points in the Discipline line for Signet Mastery (which is vital to have by 30th for your Elite) and Heighted Focus.

3) Most people would probably put the remaining 30 points into the Arms line to eventually get Forceful Greatsword and maybe Furious. (If you didn’t want Furious since Greatsword doesn’t have the best F1 Burst move, you could put the last 10 points in Strength for something like Restorative Strength.) Many people like to run Signet power heavy builds and take the Deep Strike trait. It’s extremely powerful, but not my personal style.

Skills

6 – Mending or Healing Signet (Use Signet if you take other condition removal.)
7 – For Great Justice (or Signet of Might for a Deep Strike trait build)
8 – Endure Pain (or Signet of Fury on a Deep Strike trait build)
9 – Signet of Stamina (for condition removal and dodging more often)
0 – Signet of Rage (which you will activate whenever it comes off of cool down)

Though I eventually shelved my Warrior, I would still recommend learning GW2 on that class (like I did). It has one of the highest Health pools in the game, which makes it very forgiving in the lower levels when you make novice mistakes. Grab a Greatsword and you can mow through things.

Some people worry about picking racial skills. An Elite or two can be a situational reason to take that race. However no class rely relies on their racials skills, with the exception of Engineer. If you’re seriously looking at an Engineer, look at their Toolbelt bonus skills section on the Wiki. You can only access those bonus Toolbelt racial skills if you pick the correct race, which can greatly influence your decisions.

Beyond that, pick a race which you know that you can stand looking at all of the time. For example, the Asura has a unique racial animation for their Dodge mechanic. You either like it or you don’t. The same goes for a Charr switching to running on all four limbs once you naturally switch into long distance mode. Otherwise just pick something that looks fun and makes you smile.

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WvW Chat:

I’d suggest posting this again in the WvW forum on this site. I know that Fergusson Crossing has its own unofficial WvW chat server, so I’d imagine that Anvil Rock has the same. If you ask the WvW players, I’m sure that someone will know.

1) Activating a NPC into an active Guild Bounty mob triggers a dynamic event against that champion. As per the rules of normal dynamic events, they can help and kill the mob. However they will only receive the rewards of a generic dynamic event if they are not currently a Representing member of your guild.

2) With this in mind, some people do offer PUG slots on their Guild Bounty runs. Create a low level membership setting called Guild Bounty. Invite people to the guild before you start the Bounty timer. They accept the invite and hit Represent. From this point, your PUG members will get the special weekly bonus chest after their 1st mob kill. Then once the Guild Bounty is over with, they switch their Represent status back to their home guild. If you’re really tight on membership space in your own guild, then you can delete these bonus members. (Yet the bonus chest does award 50 silver to each person in addition to loot, so your PUG members should be able to make a once time donation towards expanding your guild member size restrictions.)

EDIT

My own guild consists of x3 players and their various characters. I’m lucky enough to have a permanent invitation as a PUG member for one of Fergusson Crossing’s local guilds. It’s my personal goal to continue the tradition when my home guild can finally host our own PUG runs of the Guild Bounty system. I would personally encourage more guilds to offer PUG slots to their fellow server members since it really doesn’t cost you much to help them.

I’d say that it really depends on your traits. For example, you might be running the traits to increase your critical hit chance and your base damage output. In those builds, I would normally just keep my adrenaline full and would only activate it for a situational F1 weapon move. (This is what you’re currently doing.)

Also it really depends on what kind of methods you have for regaining adrenaline. Do you run our heal or signet proc that refills your adrenaline meter? How about using the trait that gives you adrenaline when you’re being hit? In those situations, I would be very willing to constantly ping pong back and forth between full adrenaline and no adrenaline.

From a purely PvE perspective, I would only advise Toughness on a build that is structured to generate constant sources of healing. For example, my S/P Venomous Aura character does run Knight (Power/Precision/Toughness) gear and it works great. The healing output of my venom healing procs and my “heal on crit” procs are usually more than enough to meet my needs. However I live in fear of conditions. Even with Sword #2, Lyssa runes, and Hide in Shadows, it’s sometimes still not enough. (There’s a reason why I put a condition removal proc on my Shortbow.)

On a side note, also remember that Toughness is actually one of the semi-hidden aspects of Threat management. From all that I’ve been able to learn, increasing your Toughness score also quietly increases the modifiers that affect when a mob will target you. If you’re built to be more of a tanky character, then that might not bother you. But if you’re not built to take hits and survive, then it might be something to think about.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ve seen people advertising for groups around 14th to 18th and I didn’t want to risk things until I got my necklace and started asking some questions. This really clears things up.

I left the game shortly after FotM was initially released. At the time, my general lack of interest in the dungeon and groups constantly falling apart from disconnects kept my Fractal Lvl at a low difficulty ranking.

1) While I wasn’t playing, I remember reading an article about how ArenaNet wanted to make it so that lower difficulty Fractal players could join higher difficulty groups. Did ArenaNet ever impliment this? (Yes, I know that my personal Fractal rewards will be based on my true difficulty level as it slowly raises.)

2) I’ve current got +5 Agony Resistance from an infusion in my ascended necklace. How far will that cover me? To Fractal 10? Or Fractal 20? I’m trying to get an idea about where things stand as I level up my difficulty ranking and eventually save for ascended rings.

3) Are there any other Fractal changes that I should know about?

ArcticRed,

1) The few Back pieces on the BLTC drop from the Fractals and use the “Spineguard” name series. For some dumb reason, the search filter on the BLTC won’t see those pieces as a Back piece.

2) Beyond that, you buy Back pieces from a NPC vendor or you make them for yourself using a rediculous recipe list in the Mystic Forge. For reference, I know that the Orr priest karma vendors did have Back pieces added to their selections. (Each vendor has x1 Back piece choice.) If you’re willing to spend gold, the standard guild armor NPC and the new guild token NPC have some options.

GreySircus.5197:

Thanks for the videos! They really helped a lot!.

What is the current meta for this game?

As a general FYI, the metagame scene has recently messed with and it’s still in the process of adjustent. Basically ArenaNet nerfed their buff that lets people attack faster and strengthened the debuff that prevents stealth players from re-stealthing by +1 second. Due to these changes, chain stealth builds are readjusting and people can’t rely on super speed attack spamming. This is going to make certain classes who relied on those techniques (aka Thief and Warrior) feel pretty wonky and every other class is still dealing with at least a partial back wash.

My only point is that any metagame guides that were written before last week’s mega patch will probably be at least a little out dated. If you keep that in mind, then it shouldn’t be a big deal.

digiowl.9620:

Actually i think that is a mistake. What is required are reports from a whisper agent, distributed in various places around Diessa and Wayfarers in much the same fashion as the refugee items. The audio logs from the periscopes are just a karma source (100 a log, iirc) with no affect on the achievements.

Well my April Monthly was updating from those periscope loot drops. You are correct that they are worthless for the Living Story achievement updates. Those updates only come from those glimmering location logs. But unless you want to ignore the audio log category of the Monthly, then you will need to farm periscopes.

1) Read the stickied threads at the top of this forum. The “OMG” thread is designed for the types of questions that you’ll be asking.

2) When it comes to using the BLTC (Black Lion Trading Company) auction system, remember that you can place a Buy Order for an item instead of immediately buying an item from the cheapest seller. If you’re trying to buy gear that is dropped by mobs, you can usually save yourself a chunk of money if you just place Buy Orders and are willing to wait a few days.

Case in point, there is a nice armor set of 50th Yellow grade gear that I want for a new alt. After looking at the existing Buy Orders, it was obvious that people were just making payment offers in an attempt to resell the items at a much higher value. My serious offers for each armor piece were made at +5 silver higher than the person under me (which is substancial), yet I’d still be saving a net of 10 silver for every piece of armor. All things considered, I’ll be saving over half a gold piece (which is a lot of money for mid level) because I used the Buy Order system.

(The auction system is connected together as a communal server for the entire game. Items are quickly bought and sold since you’re dealing with a vast number of players.)

3) There are independent websites that really make your life better. For example, there’s a website that tracks each zone’s mega boss spawn timers. (Guild Wars Temple) Another site lets players organize groups for unpopular dungeons by signing up on their LFG system. (GW2LFG) Make sure that you save these websites for your Favorites.

4) In this game, you use ALT and Drag to split item stacks (instead of the typical Shift and Drag).

Most people would say that you should use a dps proc like Sigil of Fire or Sigil or Air. Having said that, I tend to have a fondness for the Superior Sigil of Nullification. It’s rare to see someone using any kind of boon removal, which can be really useful for dealing with boss mobs. Even though its proc has a 10 second cool down, Nullification can be really useful.

digiowl.9620:

Honestly i feel it has become overly important. Btw, that thing shoots a knockback cone at least 1200 units out. And doing it so fast that unless you have swiftness up you need to dodge two times before you get close to it, only to get knocked back once the third blast happens before your endurance is back unless you happen to also have vigor going.

Never mind that they spawn in the weirdest of places, like on the hillside sporting a vista on top. Meaning that you need to get past it to get to the vista. This is on par with the sonic knockback dredge they parked on the unsecured walkway right next to a vista high above a major drege dig site.

Amen to that. If the Monthly achievement didn’t include these things as part of the monthly list, I’d permanently avoid them. The ranged knockback spam requires all of your concentration and resources to deal with. Yet all too often, they’re also placed around hostile mobs. So while you’re trying to kill the mobs, the periscopes just troll you to death. Or if you ignore the mobs to go after the periscope, then the mobs will kill you in the process. It’s all exceedingly stupid.

I shouldn’t feel the need to pull out an 80th characters in full Exotic to slaughter mobs in lvl 15-25 zone because it’s the only sane way to get things done. It’s just aggravating and out of whack for where the difficulty should be.

That charr is dang creepy! After seeing countless charr eyes, I can’t tell if Rox is a psychopath or maybe a drug addict with those insanely open eyes. It really weirds me out every time I see her and I find the whole thing to be a bit insulting. GW2 charr aren’t supposed to remind me of a LOL Cat picture every time I look at them. What’s next, giant breasts?

Tarnished Coast has the largest RP population, if things are still the same as they were at the game’s launch. However I also know that this server is also jam packed full of people. This can cause things like being forced into the Overflow server at times, possibly sitting in a que for WvW, and having to deal with tons of people (which could be a good or bad thing).

I do know that the RP players have an independent website. If you do some web searching, I’m sure that you can easily find it.

People tend to devote themselves to one or the other. For example, people using the Rifle and Grenade Kit tend to focus on +Power since it has the best synergy with those weapons. Pistol users focus on +Condition since those weapons are based around causing various damaging conditions.

I haven’t played a devoted Flamethrower Kit build. From my own dabbling and from what I’ve read, those builds tend to focus on +Power since the weapons doesn’t apply that much of the Burning condition.

Both of my builds solo just fine. Engineer #1 has a much higher dps burst, but also gets punished more to hanging around close to melee range. Engineer #2 needs movement room to cripple kite mobs all over the place, which can lead to issues in tight spaces or when my backwards leap abilities throw me off of objects / paths (or into other mobs). Each build has its own quirks and advantages.

My suggestion is to try experimenting with a few builds. More importantly, play around with each of the utility slot weapons and find one or two that you really enjoy. Once you know your weapons of choice, it’s much easier to figure a build around those weapons.

Hmm… I just dont like the human racials and their toolbelt skills are just AoE versions of those same racials. So I wouldn’t personally use any of your racials as a human Engineer. (For me, your racial choice for an Engineer is vital since each race will play differently because of the unique racial toolbelt skills.)

Well most Engineer builds are focused on +Condition for damage and tend to use Grenades as their other weapon. My build for Engineer #1 is a version of this philosophy. But many other builds can always work. Since P/P is really only effective if you’re close to your target, I’d advise picking one or two kit weapons that excell at that distance.

C) I guess we really need to know your prefered playstyle. Are you looking for some kind of support build? If so, would you be satisfied through AoE condition removal through throwing elixers (as per Engineer #1) or did it need to be something more focused on support (as per Engineer #2)? Are you looking for some kind of pure dps build? There are just too many personal preference issues for me to make some kind of blanket suggestion without more information.

I love to play against the stereotypes with I pick my secret societies. However I do also get influenced by the racial NPCs in my personal story missions. For example, I absolutely love the asuran Whispers agent and generally like the human Whispers agent. Yet I thought that the charr Whispers agent was a complete tool and I would never want to be part of an organization that used someone like him as a primary recruiter.

I believe that every secret society gear piece has the same +stat combinations, as mentioned above. You just get a different appearance graphic.

I’ve got an asura Warrior in the Priory. That’s one of my more unusual combinations. Perhaps the asuran Engineer in the Whispers too. Otherwise the rest of mine kind of fit the expected stereotypes. Each is kind of fun in its own way.

On a side note, the starting Whispers contact is still my favorite secret society NPC in the game. Even the insane party girl who is your Priory contact is kind of interesting. I just could never get into liking my Vigil contact.

1) Race?
2) Level?

Without knowing anything, I’ll just comment on the couple of mid level PvE Engineers that I have. I don’t follow the build threads and don’t worry about PvP or WvW (for these characters).

Engineer #1: Dual pistol charr. Gear focusing on Precision/Condition. Will end up with a trait spec of 0/30/0/30/10. Runs the grenade kit, hidden pistol (charr racial), and elixer B. Build focused on dps with grenades at my feet for when I get swarmed. In case you’re wondering, I use Hidden Pistol for the toolbelt skill that mimics a Thief’s Unload dual pistol skill.

Engineer #2: Rifle asura. Gear focusing on Power/Healing. Will end with a trait spec of 20/20/30/0/0. Build focused on AoE support and kiting mobs through cripple debuffs. Runs elixer gun, personal battering ram, and elixer R. I use jump shot (rifle) at my feet and acid bomb (elixer gun) when I’m getting swarmed.

Both are fun, but they feel completely different. Each has a trait spec that will allow them to just slightly tweak this utility skills choices when they need more condition removal. Engineer #2 is my more recent character and I have to say that I’m actually enjoying it a lot. Though my rifle and elixer gun moves may throw me farther backwards then I expect at time (which can lead to my death), it’s priceless to run this kind of cartoon silliness on an asura.

Condition damage automatically bypasses your Armor value (which is based on your Base Armor score from gear and the multiplier that Toughness applies to that Base Armor). While having a high Vitality score does normally help against condition damage, the Fractal’s agony condition damage is based on a % value of your maximum health score. So in that specific case, having a high Vitality can be a penalty since it’s harder to keep up with healing the damage.

All things being equal, Vitality tends to be more useful in a variety of builds. Yet having said that, my PvE Thief has constant sources of incoming healing through my traits and gear. Due to the incoming healing rate, I’ve found it quite successful to run Knight gear (aka Power/Precision/Toughness). Once you’re in full Exotic armor, Toughness starts to be actually useful. While I fear dealing with lots of conditions, I’m otherwise pretty hard to kill. The character is basically like a crab because he has claws and a hard outer shell, but is pretty squishy on the inside.

If you’re running a build that is high on Toughness, you’re better at dealing with incoming alpha strike hits and quickly healing yourself back to full. It’s only viable on a build that gets a lot of healing and condition removal through your skills, traits, gear, and/or other players. That’s a specialized situation, which is why people tend to avoid Toughness heavy builds unless they’re running something like Power/Vitality/Toughness.

Since it was added back for Beta Weekend #3, I’m not sure if anyone has gotten a definite answer. It doesn’t update your (H) Hero screen. Nor does it feel like a noticeable difference. To be completely honest, it might still be a non-functioning trait.

(My character who has that trait has been shelved for a while now. I know that people were seriously questioning whether or not the trait was working in the early months of launch. However I did take a break from the game for a few months, so I’m unsure about whether ArenaNet actually fixed the trait.)

While I haven’t done it myself, the forums keep seeing that question and the Fractal runners always give the same response. Yes, your trick of wearing Unique #1 (Standard) and Unique #1 (Infused) will work.

MrSilver.5269:

Has anyone played around with the VIII trait in the inventions line: Power Shoes 25% faster movement speed in combat?

Does anyone know if this faster than 33% swiftness in combat?

I’m working towards this trait on my Elixer Gun character, but I don’t have it yet. However based on my Thief who runs Signet of Shadows, I’ll assume that the trait works for in-combat like the signet works for out-of-combat.

The short answer is that Swiftness will always be faster. It adds +33% in your in-combat movement speed and +33% to your out-of-combat movement speed. This means that it will always be more useful in every situation and is still faster than both the Thief signet and Engineer trait.

Yet adding a permanent +25% to your in-combat speed for the times when you’re not under Swiftness (which should be substancial on my kiting Elixer Gun build) can still be very strong on a ranged combat build. If you’re not built to be always running under a Swiftness effect, the Power Shoes trait is kind of attractive. While I wouldn’t go out of my way to take it, I would take it over any of the other Tier 2 Major abilities in that tree for my Elixer Gun build.

Runes of Divinity can not be crafted. Nor can they be bought from a vendor. To get these runes, players have to find and salvage them successfully off of game dropped gear. As a result of this system, all of the Divinity runes are very expensive for their rune category.

Magic Find is a loaded question that provokes a lot of emotional responses on both sides of the fence. In my person opinion, you should keep x2 sets of gear. No one really has an issue with someone running around soloing and doing dynamic events in MF gear. However people start to get really worked up if they suspect that someone is doing an instanced dungeon run of difficult content while using MF gear.

This gets us to the gray area. Just what is difficult content? If you’re in a guild group and everyone is in MF gear for loot farming, then it’s obviously not a problem. But there are also weak geared people who PUG dungeons like the Fractals in MF gear while barely contributing to the group. There is a tendency to consider those player to be leeches who lack honor. Yet at the same time, other people endorse this strategy since they claim that all PUG situations should lack honor.

As you can see, it’s a complicated situation. If you keep a set of “serious content gear” and a set of “farming gear”, then you should be good for either occassion.

Absolutely. My P/P & Grenades character pretty much lives in melee range or kite just outside of melee. Far too many of my attacks require me to be in point blank range. It took some getting used to.

Though the Rifle isn’t that much better. It’s two high damage abilities require melee range to get full damage, so you still have to kite in and out of melee with the weapon. Though my Rifle & Elixer Gun character is built to instantly jump out of melee range, so it’s something that you can work around if you plan on it.

Yes, there are NPC Trainers located in a many locations for each class. While the cost may seem a bit high when you’re a money starved low level character that using salvage kits on everything, it’s really pretty low. If you mess up and need to switch, it’s not a big deal.

Respec: You can respec to move your Trait points. However your Skill Point choices are permanent. By the time that you complete the lvl 1-15 starter zone of your race and the other Skill Challenge events in the other lvl 1-15 starter zones, you’ll have more than enough Skill Points to play with. (Also once you hit 80th level, any excess experience will now go towards +Skill Points instead of +Levels. So your potential Skill Point gain is effectively infinite at the level cap.)

Snow White.9680:

pewp!

well, i don’t wanna be in a guild right now

cause all guilds require you to rep all the darn time.

Then you just need to find the right guild. My own guild is far too small since we’re only x3 players with multiple characters. We lack the influence needed to access the Guild Bounty missions, let alone run them by ourselves. However one evening I saw a random guild leader advertising for a Guild Bounty PUG in Lion’s Arch. It turns out that he was part of a large guild, but wanted to help out the community of Fergusson’s Crossing.

People would get a guild invite, they would accept, and their guild rank is changed to a specific member setting which the hosting guild used for its PUG members. The hosting guild was large enough that they wouldn’t have to purge any inactive members who are part of the “Guild Bounty” guild rank. Whenever a PUG is announced, people just switch their guild rep tags over to the hosting guild. Then once the event is over, people just switch their tags back to their home guild.

This whole experience was a lot of fun. I’d love to do something similar for my own guild once we finally have access to Guild Bounty missions.

Snow White, you just need to try and find yourself a guild that hosts PUG runs for these Guild Bounty missions. You may have a hard time finding one, but this sounds like the best solution for you.

I’m honestly not sure. In theory, it should work if you bothered to put the 7th superior rune on your underwater helm. However I’ve never seen a firm answer on the subject since summon proc runes aren’t the most common.

Gasp! But Meatoberfest is one of the highlights of the zone and it shows how the charr and norn could possible get along. It’s one of the reasons that I take every character through the zone. I would be kind of sad if some goofy Living Story arc destroyed such an important part of that zone’s charm.

I love playing my female asuran hammer Warrior. When combined with the Warrior signet that increases the refill rate of my endurance, my character is constantly dodge flipping through the air and leaping up to hit people in the face with my little sledgehammer.

For an Engineer, I’d also pick the Supply Crate. It’s not very fancy, but it’s very effective. While I don’t like the offensive golem for my tanky asura Warrior, they might work well for an Engineer.

Actually the elite that I’m most tempted to use on an asura Engineer is the Mistfire Wolf skill from the Deluxe Edition upgrade. The wolf summons a very nice AoE continual damage effect once per summoning and can actually take some hits. However the problem with the skill is that the Mistfire’s target(s) have to be holding relatively still for the AoE to do its damage. My own Engineer is constantly moving and leaping all over, so the Mistfire would be wasted on my character build.

One of the devs posted a response to a previous thread asking about the Training missions. The answer was that you get nothing for succeeding in a Training mission. (Things might have changed since this was posted before the patch went live, but that was their previous answer.) From his response, the idea of a Training mission is to help learn how these events operate without eating up your standard Guild Bounty slots. Other than person knowledge, there is no point of doing a Training mission (unless ArenaNet changed their mind).

Hmm… You want a viable ranged class, yet don’t like Ranger. Well if I had to give a suggestion, I’d suggest that you look into some kind of ranged caster type. Perhaps Elementalist or Necromancer.

My Engineer characters might fit your description, but you have to effectively use at least x2 weapons or more to make the class truly effective as you juggle cool downs and whether you need single target or AoE effects. I’m getting the impression that this isn’t the kind of thing that you’re looking for.

Yes, you can still get +stat stacks from a sigil when it’s in your off-hand slot. Since you’re only using a net of x1 +stat stack sigil, it doesn’t matter which hand you’ve got it in.

The only time you’d run into issues is when you accidentally slot x2 +stat stack sigils at the same time. In that case, only your Main Hand slot would cause the +stat stacks to generate. Your Off Hand slot would sit there doing nothing.

Chuo.4238:

If you could have a legendary that could only be earned, and not bought, would that be more meaningful to you?

No. It would be as worthless to me as it is right now.

1) These are weapons who force you to use a +stat combination of Power/Vitality/Toughness. Unless that’s your chosen character build, the weapon is just dead weight in the mechanics department.

2) You have to treasure the visual appearance of these weapons. To be frank, I’m not the most impressed with them. For every one of my current characters, I can find a better looking weapon skill through another means. These might be dungeon weapons, mystic forge special weapons, or other such things.

3) Legendary weapons require an immense time investment. The idea of their damage spread always upgrading to be BIS is really a gamble. At the expense of investing X time right now, you’ll save a net of Y time over the coming years. Yes, you’ll probably come out ahead of the time investment curve over the next couple of years. But that’s a big investment in the short term for a game that you might get tired of within the next 6 months.

4) There is a history of precursor weapons not being upgradeable once you use them with a Transmutation stone (in order to get a better set of weapons stats for your character). My personal guess is that people will encounter the same kinds of issues when it comes time for the Legendary weapons to have their base damage upgraded to match the upcoming Ascended weapons (when ever ArenaNet actually releases them).

5) Basically these items exist for the brag factor. Yes, ArenaNet did create an account achievement for getting your 1st Legendary weapon. But unless you care about that achievement or want to show off, the interest in these weapons are extremely niche.

Is it sad that I hear Queen’s old song whenever I read these items in a patch? And another one bites dust.

Also the Maw’s spawn timer was permanently increased. The patch notes make reference of the triggering dynamic event now happening less often. This means that the Maw will be far more rare.