Guild Wars 2

As a Venomous Aura (VA) S/P build, I feel that the Fractals explain the VA situation the best. If I get a Fractal group that’s mostly melee oriented, we burn through content like a hot knife through butter. We’re Basilisk interrupting, self-healing, dps debuffing, and doing a noticeable amount of extra dps. Yet if I get one of the more common mixes of ranged players who like to scatter all over like roaches when the light comes on, then I’m relatively worthless. Self-buffs are nice, but I’m lucky to be able to buff x1 other player at the same time. This results in no real added benefit for the group and I’ve had to invest a ton of spec points to achieve that result.

Yes, running a VA spec is a god send for the informal zergs that run around kill god priests in Cursed Shore. With that kind of mix, I’m always bound to get enough melee players to make my spec more than worth it. (In those situations, I never see anyone else playing a VA spec.) But when you get to instanced group content, a VA spec is very hard to gauge. You need the right kind of player group to make it viable, which you can only guarantee with pre-made groups.

HiddenNick.7206:

Wiser with Age.3714:

I’ve not played for the past couple of weeks. For me, it was a combination of the Fractal + Ascended + Reddit AMA. It’s kind of ironic that it was the Reddit that finished pushing me over the edge.

I think that people like you just look for excuse to leave and go back playing what you used to… If it wasn’t about ascended gear or not getting the exact answers you expected, it would be about something else.

I have a friend who stopped playing because he didn’t like the fact that there are quests like feeding cows which he considers it silly. How is that any different then your case?

If this hypothetic MMO was about some kind of high adventure setting and the MMO developers threw in a random cow quest as an abberation that went against their design philosophy, went against their stated intentions, clearly offered the best equipment available in the game, required extreme repetition, and basically acted as a forecast of what was to come, then that analogy would be accurate.

I’ve been without a MMO for over half a year because I didn’t like any of my options on the market. Each MMO was left after the devs started to noticably change their games or produced content that was clearly against their stated goals for the game. At this point, I’m even crazy enough to think about getting into The Secret World since it meets many of the criteria points that I care about (regardless of the enforced trinity requirements and the hard mode dungeon grinding in the end game scene). While I certainly don’t agree with everything that Funcom is doing, they are being consistent with their concept and haven’t tried to make any kind of substancial promise that they have no intent of keeping.

If Ascended was added with an expansion after they reset the gear ceiling in a level cap raise, then I’d have much less of a problem with it. Or if it was added at around the 6 month or 12 month mark based on numerous months of consumer feedback from the live state of the game, then I could be understanding. Yet to switch things up in less than 3 months of the live game in a move that clearly seems to be a deviation from their stated intentions sends all kinds of warning flags. Either ArenaNet got over ruled by corporate, they completely misjudged their target market demographics, or they intentionally engaged in a bait ’n switch situation with their advertised product. None of these potential answers are very comforting.

EDIT

What would have satisfied me with the Reddit AMA? If ArenaNet had truly acted ignorant and clueless, then I could have at least accepted that they were just naieve or foolish. Had they admitted that they were wrong because they were out of touch and made quick steps that were visible in the game to correct their previous actions, then it would have been easy to forgive them. Instead ArenaNet presented an image that they knew exactly what was going on and still did what they wanted even when they knew that it would cause serious problems. That is either extreme foolishness, arrogance, or simply a company lying its rear end off in an attempt to save face (which only makes them look even more foolish).

I’ve not played for the past couple of weeks. For me, it was a combination of the Fractal + Ascended + Reddit AMA. It’s kind of ironic that it was the Reddit that finished pushing me over the edge.

Based on Chris’ responses, ArenaNet knew just how volatile the Ascended issue was going to be. With that in mind, they agreed that a great amount of communication would be needed. Also the Ascended gear access would have to be offered through multiple venues when it was released in order to avoid fragmenting the community. Yet when it came time to act, ArenaNet basically rolled out Ascended in a way that was pretty much 100% the opposite of what they had agreed upon internally. Does this mean that ArenaNet had some kind of temporary amnesia that caused them to only release Ascended through the Fractal dungeon while giving almost no communication on the subject? Or was ArenaNet greatly “stretching” the truth in their Reddit AMA answers?

No matter how you look at it, I’d say that there’s a real disconnect. I no longer have any clue about what ArenaNet’s vision is for GW2. Their actions and lack of communication say one things. Then their Reddit responses say another. You’d have to be psychic to sift out the truth from that garbled mess. As a consumer, I no longer have trust in the long term prospects for the GW2 product. Either the supplier (aka ArenaNet) is completely at odds with itself or the supplier just thinks that I’m an idiot. Neither one of those scenerios are very comforting to me. I’d much rather play a flawed MMO that has parts which I disagree with, assuming that I felt confident about where the designers were mentally and knowing that their actions matched their words.

I keep track of the GW2 forums in the vain hope that I’ll see some kind of ArenaNet response that will change my mind. There are still many features that I love about this game. But in the mean time, I’m seriously looking into other MMOs and will probably slide back into a subscription-based soft trinity MMO within the next couple of weeks. My time is just too valuable to invest in a game which I don’t feel confident about.

Beefcake.9032:

Uhh did this get patched down from 1% to 0.1% ? Or is this planned? Didn’t see anything in the patchnotes…

This was gutted down after around Beta Weekend #2. People in sPvP were getting 1-shotted, which was the problem. The chosen combo was 30 pts in Discipline, wielding an Axe for Eviscerate, and using the Sigil who makes you auto-crit after a weapon switch. Warriors would switch to the Axe and hit F1 to just murder the glass cannon builds in a single hit. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

ArenaNet responded by:

1) Nerfing the damage of Eviscerate. They may have gone too far, but it was a mostly fair change.

2) Nerfing the +1.0% Burst Damage of the Discipline line down to +0.1% Burst Damage. This was considered to be an over reaction in the Beta forums and it’s still considered to be far too extreme of a nerf in the current Live version of the game.

3) The Sigil… Actually the Sigil wasn’t changed at all. At the time, many people brought up their opinion that the Sigil and the raw damage of Eviscerate were the true problems. By reducing the damage of Eviscerate, nerfing or removing the Sigil would have finished fixing the problem. However since this Sigil chance would have also affected other classes, ArenaNet just chose to nerf down the Warrior’s Discipline line instead.

1) Towards the outer range of his AoE polymorph effect, there are occassional holes in its coverage. If you’ve got 1200 range attacks (which let you stand outside the AoE range) or use 900 range attacks within the few obscure holes, you can ranged burn down some of the outer undead healer mobs. This speeds up the rate of killing them, which means that the Priest will heal less.

2) If you get a ton of people present, it seems like a coordinated polymorphed character assault is more viable. Basically your collective dps output will increase faster than the trash mob healers’ Health score do. As a result, having a ton of people will make it faster to kill the healer mobs (which means that the Priest heals less).

3) Depending on who is present, it can be possible to interfere with his AoE polymorph / channeled heal ability. If you can hit him with control effects at just the right time, you can sometimes interrupt his healing script and make it reset to the next healing interval. (Please note that this is just my personal observation and not anything that I would consider to be a hard fact.)

For example, I play a Venomous Aura Thief that uses AoE buffs to help out my fellow melee players. One of my AoE buffs is Basilisk Venom, which lets a bunch of us effectively “stun lock” the mob through chaining the Petrify effect of that buff. While I don’t have down the timing, I have observed that a Petrify spree at just the right time seems to help us skip a polymorph round since we end up interrupting the Priest at just the right time (which is just too hard to accurately time on a regular basis).

EDIT

4) I almost forgot to mention that the Priest’s AoE ability seems to be on a timer and not on a specific interval of % health. If you can get enough heavy dps players present, you can speed burn down the Priest much more than you could through a lower dps group. It can be the difference between reducing the Priest’s health by 20% in a lower dps crowd and reducing the Priest’s health down by 40% in a higher dps crowd. These higher dps crowds can kill the Priest easier since it doesn’t hurt them as badly if the Priest ends up healing +20% of its health back before you kill the trash mobs (since you’re still making a net gain of -20% health from every dps & healing cycle).

As a Venomous Aura spec, I personally love getting “stuck” with a bunch of melee oriented Warriors and Guardians. They’re actually in range for my AoE buffs and I can help us shred through content at a rediculous pace. It’s your average PUG who constantly scatters like roaches that frustrates me since it makes it nearly impossible to buff my fellow players (which is the whole point of my Trait spec).

Pack AoE utility purposes skills like Shadow Refuge. Don’t play a glass cannon build with your average low dps PUG group who runs all around and lacks general party cohesion. Make sure that you’re using some kind of defensive +Stat to keep yourself alive. If you can cover these things, then you should do relatively fine in PUGs (beyond the occassional PUGs which are just inherently hopeless).

As Shaylani already stated above me, use the Search feature for the name Spineguard. These are the Back pieces which are dropped in the new Fractals dungeon. Other than that, there is not a filter choice for Back slot items since you normally couldn’t sell the Personal Story / Guild Armorer ones on the BLTC.

It could work, but your dps output would be much less than Zerker gear. If you’re looking for something in the middle, you could always use Knight gear. That’s what I use on my Venomous Aura S/P build. However Knight is really too dangerous to use on a Thief unless you’re getting constant healing (like I am through Leeching Venoms and crit proc heals).

To my knowledge, there are no NPC vendors who sell Exotic weapons for karma. This subject comes up every so often. The best suggestion is to make a Mystic weapon from the Mystic Forge (which is explained under the Mystic Forge entry on the GW2 Wiki) or to just buy one. The Mystic Forge coins sell for around 3-3.5 silver each, so it’s often just easier to sell things on the BLTC auction system and then buy yourself an Exotic weapon with the +Stats that you prefer.

ASP.8093:

Wiser with Age.3714:

I’m running x2 Superior Sigils of Blood on my melee set for the crit proc’ing heal

I’m pretty sure those don’t stack. The cooldowns on crit sigils lock out other crit sigils for their duration.

You are correct in that they don’t operate as (2) individual heal procs on a 30% proc rate. Instead they combine together to create (1) heal proc on a 51% proc rate since they are multiple copies of the same exact Sigil. While I wouldn’t do this with a 10 second recast Sigil, the recast timer on Blood is only 2 seconds. I find that to be acceptable.

lordkrall.7241:

I love the fact that people seems to think that they don’t test their stuff.

Of course they do. But there will ALWAYS be issues with things, no matter how much you have tested them. And it is impossible to do a test that is identical to the live environment without actually doing it on the live environment.

My issue with that subject is that ArenaNet has always known that this would be a problem. On every Beta “one time only event”, they had to deal with this. Zones would slowly become lag filled and you’d have a 2 → 10 second delay on each skill’s activation. People would go link dead from all of the lag and those still playing would die when the game froze on their screen. None of these events seemed to go off smoothly, which would lead a person to believe that these kinds of “unique” events were a poorly implimented idea.

The final Karka fight was no different. ArenaNet should have learned from every problem that they had previously experienced with these events. Instead they repeated all of their past mistakes and they were compounded by making ArenaNet look bad during their Free Trial Weekend. I didn’t even try to participate in that buggy lag filled mess because I knew exactly how things were going to play out. It would have been great if ArenaNet proved me wrong, but they didn’t.

For me, it all comes down to what game environment (PvE, Wvw, PvP) that you’re talking about and what kind of character build you’re using.

As an example, my Thief is only getting around +95 Vitality from a T1 Major Trait in the Critical Strikes tree. Every single piece of my gear is using Knight stats (Power / Precision / Toughness). I’m running x2 Superior Sigils of Blood on my melee set for the crit proc’ing heal and using Omnomberry Pie for the crit proc’ing heal. Through the Leeching Venoms trait in my Venomous Aura PvE build, I’m getting a constant supply of healing. Conditions are removed through Sword #2, Superior Runes of Lyssa, and Hide in Shadows.

In my build, Vitality isn’t worth very much. I’m built to constantly heal, which means that investing in lots of Toughness is far better for me in the long term. However I would never use my gear choices for a character that has little to no healing potential.

The only Karma increase that doesn’t affect the Jugs of Karma is the WvW bonus for being out numbered. Other than that, it’s all fair game.

Reaver.9256:

How’s that a troll? I absolutely LOVE vertical progression and I mean every word I say. Is it wrong for me to hope these trolls get the point and go back to gw1?

It’s about as “right” as people telling everyone who LOVE verticle progression to go back to WoW. ArenaNet gave the impression of one thing, then did another. Were the Player Base #1 people correct since they bought into the most consistent message of ArenaNet, which was about Horizontal progression? Or were the Player Base #2 people correct for hanging in there and eventually getting the Vertical progression that they desired, which didn’t really exist at the game’s launch?

The end result is that we’re all at each other’s throats. ArenaNet’s wishy washy responses in the Reddit AMA about trying to find somewhere in between Vertical and Horizontal progression really didn’t help things. While people may be hacked off at ArenaNet for not making a clear and consistent stance on things, let’s try to not tear into our fellow players and make pseudo-personal attacks.

Honestly? No one knows.

Already the Difficulty Level # in the Fractal dungeon is dividing people faster than a standard MMO raid progression system. In Monday’s Reddit AMA, ArenaNet admitted that this was relatively accurate and they’re trying to figure out how to solve this problem. One of the ideas which they put into their Reddit response had to do with lumping people into x5 Difficulty Level tiers. However that still won’t help people 6 months from now if they’re still in Tier #1 (aka Difficulty 1-5) while the majority of players are sitting at Tier #6 or higher.

While ArenaNet have mentioned previously that they don’t want to raise the level cap unless it’s through an expansion, they have started the gear escalation game through Ascended pieces. On the one hand, they said in the Reddit AMA that they didn’t want to make insane grinds for these since they were something that you were supposed to do on the side while you grinded towards your Legendary. But at the same time, they also mentioned that they wanted Ascended pieces to have a time commitment that was somewhere in between Exotic and Legendary gear. Since that’s a heck of a large window, no one knows where ArenaNet will eventually fall within that range.

ArenaNet also stated that they were going to add Ascended gear into the WvW and open world PvE scenes. They also wanted to increase the rewards of the original PvE dungeons. Currently everyone does the Fractal since it’s clearly the best reward for your time. While ArenaNet has stated that they wanted to balance things out, they obviously can’t make things too balanced. If they did that, then people would start to ignore the Fractals and would just grind the Cursed Shore zone again (or the new Southern Cove zone). So with this in mind, it’s kind of hard to predict just how ArenaNet is going to “balance” things.

To sum things up, it’s kind of impossible to know where the game will be in 6 months. Within the past few weeks, ArenaNet has made a noticeable shift from their original game trends. I honestly have no clear idea about where GW2 is going and don’t know what I’ll find in 3 or 6 months. The Reddit AMA really did nothing to clarify ArenaNet’s long term vision. Nor did it answer things in a way that restored my faith about knowing what GW2 wanted to be.

xiede.8543:

I’ve only been playing since Sunday. I haven’t hit any bugs yet, so what kind of stuff do you encounter? One of the things that recently annoyed me greatly in WoW was the fact that throughout MoP there are tons upon tons of quests that completely bug out badly if you do them in a group (me and my wife level characters together so we hit tons of them).

Some of the major known bugs include:

1) Class Bugs – A lot of Skills or Traits are buggy. Every class has a few that just flat out don’t work either 100% of the time, only work with specific weapon combinations (which is not indicated by the Trait’s text), or inconsistently bug out. There should be a sticked thread near the top of each Class Forum that lists those bugs. In particular, a few classes are know for having an extreme amount of bugs. Those buggy classes have gotten partially cleaned up since launch, but have remained mostly remained unresolved.

2) Personal Story Bugs – Many people like to play together. One of the known issues is that once you get into one of the Secret Societies (which is chosen at around lvl 30 in each player’s Personal Story), you can severely bug your fellow player out if they let you join them in their Personal Story instance. While there will be no problems if you’re part of Secret Society #1 and they’re part of Secret Society #2, it’s a real problem if you’re both in Secret Society #1 (or any other choice). One person’s choices in the Personal Story instance that they control will causes bugs in the other player’s instance when you try to help them since your own previous choices try to override the choices that they’re actively trying to make. <If you make sure that you’re in different Secret Societies, then you can avoid this issue.>

3) Dynamic Event bugs – Some of the game’s Dynamic Events (DEs) are notorious for bugging out. They’ll get locked into a position when they still look like they’re functioning, but you can’t update the DE’s current objective. Often these bugged events will also prevent people from failing. These events end up in a kind of limbo status which prevents them from restarting. While not a major issue for some of the more minor DEs, there are a few notable ones in the final zones of the game that interfere with gameplay since you need to complete these events. (Sometimes people need to access a special vendor that only spawns after the DE is completed. This covers the Temple of Balthazar in the Straits of Devastation zone. Or you might need to finish the DE to cause the next DE in the chain to spawn, which is neccessary for you being able to access some of the dungeon instances.)

No, I would not recommend the game. That’s not to say that I haven’t gotten my money’s worth out of the game, because I have. My fundamental issues have to do with the distinct lack of faith in ArenaNet’s ability to fix numerous class bugs and being very unclear / unsure about where they want GW2 to go. After everything that has shaken out from the various things associated or introduced with the Lost Shore weekend, I’m finding that I really have no clue about how GW2 will look in 3 months and the Reddit AMA did absolutely nothing to clarify that.

Would I recommend the game in 3 or 6 months from now? Maybe. I’d need to see how things work themselves out over the coming months before I put my personal reputation on the line by endorsing the game to people I know. If ArenaNet can put up a consistent set of actions over the next half of a year and quickly squash the numerous class breaking bugs (which are far more important than resolving buggy Dynamic Events), then I’d probably recommend the game to people based on their specific tastes. This doesn’t neccessarily mean that GW2 would still be the game for me at that time, but I could see myself making a recommendation for a well done MMO.

“When hit” refers to an attack successfully hitting you. Therefore those 5% proc chances might happen more often when hordes of weak mobs are hitting you at the same time, but it’s rather worthless against a Champion mob when you’re just dodging their few mega hits.

Now some Runes like the Rata Sum have a 50% proc chance when hit. I could see that proc rate actually being useful, even though I dislike the recast timer on that proc. However most of the 5% proc Runes are very unpopular since they’re so hard to trigger and rather unpredictable in terms of their game performance.

I agree with Babelfish on the Pistol Whip front. As a mostly full time melee Thief who’s willing to slug it out with Champion mobs, the built-in Evade of Pistol Whip is life altering. Also while it does do about the same damage as our Sword #1 auto attack, the multiple mini-swings are great for delivering Venom procs and for triggering crit-based procs. Even without any +Initiative abilities, you’ll be able to permanently alternate between Pistol Whip and a full attack swing cycle of Sword #1.

Umm… Okay, I’ll admit that I’m inherently biased since I don’t think that a Venom spec is worth it unless you’re commiting into Venomous Aura as well. Having said that, here’s my opinions from what you’ve got linked.

1) I don’t like your choices for Deadly Arts in the 10 pt & 30 pt slots. You should immediately switch your 10 pt slot to Venomous Might. Without even looking at +% Boon gear, you’d be getting x2 Might stack @ 26 seconds every time you use a Venom skill. Venomous Might has great synergy with Acrobatics, so it baffles me about why you’re not using it. Then for your 30 pt slot, a 60 second cool down proc isn’t the most impressive choice. I’d really suggest looking for something else to take in the Deadly Arts tree.

2) I find your 20 pt Acrobatics choice questionable and I really dislike your 30 pt Acrobatics choice. Now since you’re not running condition removal (via your Heal slot or through Signet of Agility) beyond Sword #2, I can understand the reasoning for the 20 pt choice. So I’ll leave that one alone. But your 30 pt one is really not that most useful. Acrobatics is all about +Initiative generation, yet you’re not using a single trait that gives you that advantage. If I were you, I’d seriously re-think the 30 pt choice and switch it out for something like +2 Init every 10 seconds or +3 Init every weapon swap.

plasmacutter.2709:

Actually, he did. Specifically this, in regard to one of the questions which included mention of agony vs skill based progression:

Chris Whiteside

In regard to gated content via gear then i think that this is something we are going to give more thought to.

When I read that quote, I can’t help picturing Whiney the Pooh. “Think, think, think.” It’s funny and kind of ironic at the same time.

JarekCyphus.7068:

That’s the point I made exactly. They should have waited. It wasn’t ready. They didn’t have the clairvoyance to prepare for the repercussions of crowd envy with loot.

What’s even sadder is that people could predict all of this happening within 5 minutes of reading ArenaNet’s 1st article on the subject. On top of this, Chris on the AMA basically admitted (or claimed) that ArenaNet did pretty much everything that they had internally decided to be a bad decision. This makes the whole situation even more confusing since none of ArenaNet’s actions have made any sense.

The short answer? You transmuted your Appearance onto an Exotic weapon. (This is what most people do, so you’re certainly not alone.) When the Legendary weapons get upgraded, your weapon’s +Stats will remain unchanged since you’re no longer using the enforced Power/Toughness/Vitality that are normally found on a Legendary weapon.

Is this dumb? Yes, it is. There’s a reason why I refuse to waste my time grinding for a Legendary weapon (aside from the fact that I never even liked those Appearance skins in the first place). Now in a perfect world, ArenaNet would throw a bone to the countless players who transmuted their Legendary skins onto more functional weapons. Yet after how things have been playing out over the last few weeks, I’m rather cynical and wouldn’t bet on ArenaNet doing anything to help since they currently don’t do anything to help people who transmute their Exotic (Legendary Precursor) weapons.

Mirta.5029:

As a tier I imagine it will be tradable on the Trading Post too. So, where’s the problem?

All of the current pieces (game drops or made) are bound to your account. They are effectively No Trade, which is the whole point of Ascended. You can get them for yourself, but you can’t give them to other players. If they want these items (or need them to keep up with the pack), then they’ll have to jump through the neccessary hoops on their own.

That’s one of the key issues. At the moment, every crafting recipe is a bit insane. Unless ArenaNet changes their philosophy mid stride, which is still extremely possible at this point, then Ascended can only be made or acquired by yourself. This has been severely freaking out people who craft Exotics and sell them on the market. The same goes for people who sell game dropped Exotics. From a buying power standpoint, crafting components will become the new price gouging area.

My fundamental issue is that ArenaNet has started a Cold War era arms race in the one MMO that advertised itself as not being part of the system. Based on my experience with many past MMOs, Ascended will become the new gear standard for guilds and PUGs. If you want to keep yourself from being excluded, then you’re going to be forced to keep up with the rest of the Ascended grinders. The chasm will slowly grow between the Haves and the Have Nots. New content will be designed around the gear level of the Haves. Etc etc. I’ve seen this dance play itself out in too many MMOs to expect different results.

That’s my issue with the whole matter. If you’re going to be a gear progression MMO, then say it up front and say it proudly. I’m very weary of the passive aggressive double speak from MMO designers and would rather put up with a flawed game which is run by people who have a consistent vision and are relatively up front with their customers about how things are going to be. At this point, that’s no longer ArenaNet to me. While I’m still trying to keep a close eye on things for the next week or two as the last of things plays itself out, I’m not expecting any happy surprises that will prevent me from looking for a new MMO.

It was thrown in as a gear check. I thought it was rather blindingly clear about how things were going to be. Yet Chris’ response in the AMA implied that ArenaNet is inherently against gated content that would result from the requirement of such gear checks.

What does all of that mean? Not a dang clue. Chris mentioned that they were “carefully observing” things and that they would “adjust” as needed. If you can figure out what all of the contradictory double talk means, then you’re more skilled than I am.

Mirta.5029:

I doubt it will ever go widespread, because having ascended instead of exotic puts you on a great disadvantage in WvW and PvP mainly because ascended never has toughness or any other actually useful stats, so it’s only good for the high level dungeon.

Actually this was just Phase #1 of their plans for Ascended. Originally they were going to roll out Phase #2 in mid December (per their original news articles on this site). Also based on what ArenaNet’s Chris answered in the Reddit AMA on Monday, Ascended will be added to every part of the game. It would be probably safe to assume that since they’ve announced intentions of basically making Ascended into Exotic v2.0, we’re likely to see more varied +Stat combinations within the coming months.

The cash angle comes from buying tradeable crafting parts and using them to get Ascended items from the Mystic Forge. Since the current Phase #1 gear pieces can’t be Salvaged or sold / traded to someone else, this will force people who don’t want to grind the Fractal in a RNG gamble for ring drops to instead make things (like Offensive & Defensive Infusions) in the Mystic Forge. This leads to either mega mob grinding for crafting drops or with people buying them from the BLTC (which means that trading Gems → Gold would speed up the process).

Now the AMA responses did have ArenaNet say that they basically did everything 100% wrong with how they wanted to release and handle the Ascended gear subject. In theory, every single thing they did was basically the complete opposite of what they internally agreed were the best ways to handle the matter…. Does that even make the slightest bit of logical sense? Is it even that possible to mess things up so royally when you’ve already decided on a general course of action?

No matter how you cut it, ArenaNet has just messed up. Either they were complete morons by ignoring 100% of their plans or they never had such plans and think that we’re moronic enough to buy their new PR back stepping. Under either scenerio, I don’t have a lot of faith in ArenaNet as a business savy company. As a result, I’ve become extremely cynical about the entire matter and doubtful about the future of GW2.

Agony is simply a gear check. In order to survive Agony, you need Agony Resistance. But to have Agony Resistance, you need Ascended gear. Then in order to get Ascended gear, you have to grind your brains out. By grinding your brains out, you’ll be forced to spend a large amount of time online. Since you’re going to be online for much longer stretches, you’ll be more inclined to spend money on ArenaNet’s gems to make your life easier.

In the end, the point of the Agony system was to make ArenaNet’s customers spend more money. However due to the negative backlash from the Lost Shores and the Fractals, it’s ironically cost ArenaNet money instead of making them money. Now after Chris’ AMA speeches, it seems that they’ll be “soon” released Ascended gear in many gear. If that happens, it may be easier to get Agony Resistance. However this might also mean that Agony will become a more widespread part of the game.

Mesmer is historically hard in PvE and often slaughters in WvW and sPvP. While there are still many successful Mesmers in PvE, they specialize in confusing players (which is far easier than confusing a computer AI program) and locking down an opponent while they mercilessly kill them. As a result, the class naturally lends itself towards hunting down other players and isn’t the easiest choice for dealing with hordes of PvE mobs.

That’s an ever changing subject since WvW battles are always changing. As a general rule, look at the WvW Forum under the red stickied threads at the top. ArenaNet just released a new server ranking list this week. By looking at it, you can see each bracket of x3 servers and which server is the dominant one in each bracket. My advice is to pick one of the servers that are clearly the top contender in their WvW bracket, since they’ll likely have the most controlled territory in WvW (which is what you’re looking for).

Second chance? Doubtful. On the AMA, Chris did a lot of classic MMO double speak. It reminded me of my days when I still worked for Chase Bank and when I had to deal with SOE for my MMO needs.

To paraphrase, he admitted that they had always “intended” to have Ascended as part of launch. They all agreed internally that introducing Ascended after launch would be a fiasco. With this in mind, they wanted to assure people that you wouldn’t have to dungeon grind for them and wanted their acquisition to go in harmony with slowly grinding towards your Legendary weapon.

Yet by Chris’ own admission, ArenaNet did the complete opposite of everything that they were planning to do. Ascended gear was released in an extremely limited and ultra grindy fashion. To get Ascended pieces, you pretty much had to give up grinding towards your Legendary in exchange for the Fractal grinding. As if this wasn’t bad enough, ArenaNet gave little to no communication when they all had agreed that communication would be world shatteringly vital.

…..What? Whoops, my bad? From all of my years of working in the corporate sector and watching how SOE ran their MMOs, the only time that a company says something like this is when they’re dealing with a PR disaster over something that they had expected to stealth release without any real objection. When the situation first starts to go nuclear, they keep intentionally silent in the hopes that people just shut up and go away. Only when things truly implode do they make some kind of lame PR statement after the fact and “promise” that it was all an accident or miscommunication.

Did ArenaNet placate me? Not in the slightest. I’m expecting them to carefully dance around hacking people off for up to 3 months. By that time, they’ll expect that the usual customer forgetfullness will kick in. As a result, they’ll likely resume this same kind of crap within the next 6 months. If we can make it past the 6 month mark without any more noticeable shows of stupidity, then I might spend money on GW2 again (instead of my usual $15-$20 per month that I’ve been spending).

However in the mean time, I’m already MMO shopping. At this point, I may give The Secret World (TSW) a serious try using their trial system. If I really like things, then I might switch over to them full time. I find that I’m far more willing to return to a subscription fee and trinity class roles. While I like the Dynamic Event system of GW2 and their lack of hard trinity roles, I’d much rather be part of a game where I actually feel comfortable with how the devs are running their game.

RoRo.8270:

So what exactly is the point of doing other dungeons now since fractals gives better gear?

There’s no reason to run other dungeons beyond wanting appearance gear. That’s another point that people made when the Fractal dungeon came out.

lacrimstein.5603:

And yet instead of coming out and saying what you said, ArenaNet has been dancing around the issue, and even releasing an endgame-dedicated video to calm down the rumors by stating that Orr was supposed to be their endgame. The description sounded great on paper, but when players got there it turned out it was just another area, and a terribly designed one too.

Yeah, I completely fault them for that one. On the one hand, it would be a completely truthful statement about how the game was being released. Yet at the same time, it would be PR suicide. While I can empathize with ArenaNet being between a rock and a hard place, it still was a kind of bait ‘n switch that they did for the people who hadn’t been following the game for at least a year and were willing to read between the lines.

(Here’s a copy of the response I made to someone last week on this exact subject.)

If you’re dirt poor and starting from scratch (as I was with my 1st 80th about 2.5 weeks ago), my personal suggestion is to run around Malchior’s Leap. With the Plinx event in Cursed Shore only spawning around every 30 minutes and its usual farmers now farming the Fractal dungeons, you need to think outside the box. I’ve always prefered Malchior’s Leap due to the visual variety in scenery and the mob variety (which helps for filling out your Daily).

1) Did you know that Unidentified Dyes are currently selling for around 6-7 Silver? If you’re getting Dye drops, it doesn’t hurt to sell them for some extra income.

2) Did you know that your Daily rewarded Mystic Forge Coins tend to sell for 2.5-3.5 Silver? I found that it was more worth it to sell my Coins in a massive chunk and just buy the Exotic weapons I wanted. While you can use Coins to make the Mystic Forge starter Exotics, you won’t have control over which +Stats you’ll get.

3) Beyond that, harvest like an idiot. As a general rule, I use Mithral Picks & Axes for most of the zone and just switch to my Orichalcum Tools when I hit one of the appropriate nodes. While the massive amount of Wood nodes have their price currently devalued, Mithral Ore is still worth your time to farm. (Still farm and sell the Wood. Just don’t expect to get more than 13 Copper for it.) Then for the Gathering nodes, I just permanently use an Orichalcum Sickle since there are just so many nodes around. Once you’ve harvested your heart out, sell that stuff. The top end Wood sells for around 70-80 Copper each and the top end Ore sells for around 2.5 Silver. Even Omnomberries sell for around 2-2.5 Silver.

4) While you’re roaming around looking for harvesting nodes (which will usually spawn in specific areas that you’ll learn over time), kill everything in your path. With the increased drop rate in Yellow grade weapons, you can always sell those for around 17 Silver or you can gamble at tearing them apart for the rare Ectos (which I have terrible luck with). Once you’re starting to get more geared, you can just run past the mobs. However you’re in real danger from a 2v1 or 3v1 when you’re starting to gear out, so I tried to kill every mob individually to prevent them from ganging up on me.

5) Make sure to do any Dynamic Events along that way that you can solo. While you might lack the people to take over a god’s temple, there are still many events that you will be able to complete on your own or with someone else who’s in the area. The 1.8 Silver for each Gold completion will add up over time and it will continue to give you the chance at Yellow drops.

6) Otherwise just tear apart your Cloth and Leather drops for crafting components. If you’re desperate for cash, the top end Cloth material sells for around 3.5 Silver. I’d suggest just saving those two material categories unless you hit a financial emergency. Then just vendor sell the non-White gear drops for the Metal and Wood items.

EDIT

7) I almost forgot to bring up the Bones. While I wouldn’t sell the top end rare drop Bones, you’ll get plenty of high end Bone drops from the countless undead in that zone. Currently those Bones are selling for around 70-90 Copper. Since you’re getting them on a regular basis from just fighting your way through the zone, they’re a nice source of bonus income.

In one of the Dungeon forum threads, someone posted the following link.

http://gw2lfg.com/lfgs

This is a 3rd player site made by a GW2 to act as a LFG tool. While I’ve never used it myself, people say that it’s getting increasingly popular and they’re finding groups within 15-30 minutes from it. If you’re stuck, take a look over there and see what you can find out.

lacrimstein.5603:

100x this. Yet somehow fanboys managed to trick themselves into thinking that less is more, and when someone brings up the question of what exactly there is to do at 80, they cover their ears and chant “No gear treadmill! No gear treadmill! No gear treadmill!”. Every single topic on endgame has been derailed, with fanboys putting words into people’s mouths, even when raiding or gear progression hasn’t been mentioned at all. I’ve seen countless posts accusing critics of having a “hidden agenda” and “secretly wanting a treadmill” (these exact words!), namecalling, and slogans like “go back to pandaland”, which stalled any meaningful discussion on the topic.

Everything that ArenaNet had always implied leaned toward the idea that there was going to be no end game of any real kind. This game would be about “the climb” and not “the destination”. I got the impression that ArenaNet wanted to make an alt focused game with a minimal end game population that grinded for style appearance items (before starting up yet another alt).

I’ve always considered GW2 to be a niche game. They seemed to make it very clear that they weren’t trying to grab most of the existing MMO customers. It was my assumption that they were looking to draw in a lot of non-MMO people in a way that would be similar to how WoW did it years ago. However it seems that I misjudged ArenaNet for making such a dramatic flip in less than 3 months.

Fractals aren’t about “fun”. They’re about an endless series of progression through gaining access to the next Difficulty Lvl. People are more than willing to exploit or just train through mobs into a Thief’s Shadow Refuge. Anything that can shave minutes off of the countless hours needed to acquire the new Ascended gear is completely “fair”.

Now I don’t agree with that philosophy. It is a symptom of everything that I expected to see once I heard about the Fractal dungeon. However this is where ArenaNet wants to go and people are going to play however they need to. The key is to continue advancing until you hit at least LvL 20 in your Fractal flagging, which gives you access to the Infused Ring drops. Beyond that, every dirty trick in the book should be used as a means of circumventing parts of this moronic time sink.

1) If you have x2 Kill Stack sigils, then only the Main Hand slot will work. For your Off-Hand, you’ll need something with a static effect (like +% Damage or +% Duration) or a Crit Proc sigil.

2) If you have x2 Crit Proc sigils that are off different types, then only the Main Hand slot will work. For more information, see Response #1 above.

3) If you have x2 Crit Proc sigils of the exact same type, then it just increases you Proc Rate and doesn’t cause a 2nd individual proc to fire off seperately.

Ascended items have a bit more in raw +Stats and you can currently get +5 Stat from the Infusion upgrade slot on an Ascended item. No matter where you go in PvE or WvW, those +Stat advantages will remain.

As Veltoss already said, the Agony Resistance is only found in Fractals (for now). This means that while using Exotic gear means that you’ll be a bit weaker than an Ascended player who’s gear style fits within the limited options for the current Ascended +Stat combinations, it’s not a full requirement to have Ascended gear at this present time. However the more cynical of us doubt that Agony Resistance and the new for Ascended gear will contained in on the Fractal content over the long term.

ASP.8093:

Sword/* thieves don’t actually need initiative to do damage at melee range. Flanking Strike and Pistol Whip don’t add much DPS over your regular auto-attack chain.

True. The main reason that I use Pistol Whip on my VA crit proc build is for the extra chances to trigger my procs. Also the built-in Evade helps a lot. As a VA spec, it also helps to quickly deliver my Venom skills (which I can activate as my Pistol Whip is starting up).

There are many good reasons for me to use Pistol Whip, but its raw dps output isn’t one of them.

chubbs.3189:

If you were to run a VA spec, it would also eat your utility slots as well; you might not be able to run the sigil/refuge you want if you need to put some venoms there.

Now I certainly can’t argue with that. My group oriented skill selection is always Hide in Shadows (for the condition removal), Spider Venom, Skale Venom, Shadow Refuge, and Basilisk Venom. To using Venomous Aura effectively, the only skill in that mix which I could realistically change is Shadow’s Refuge (which I don’t want to do).

One of the severe drawbacks of my build is that I’m weak on the condition removal area, which is why I rely on my HiS heal so much. Now Sword #2 does help a bunch, but that’s still -5 Init for a single condition. My S/P set is using dual Sigils of Blood for the heal proc, so I was forced to put a Sigil of Purity on my SB for the condition removal. Heck, I’m even running Runes of Lyssa for the condition removal. Though I do have to admit that my fear of conditions is based on the fact that I’m only getting +Vitality from a T1 Critical Strikes trait.

Venomous Aura specs are extremely demanding. ArenaNet recently changed the dps output of the Leeching Venom proc to being based on Power (instead of a flat value based on level), which means that a maximized VA spec needs to have Power as a focused stat. All things considered, my use of S/P might be one of the better PvE options for a VA spec. This means that there are even more invisible requirements for a specialized VA build, which is probably why we’re so rare.

(For reference, I’m running Deadly Arts 30 / Critical Strikes 10 / Shadow Arts 30.)

TakaEagle.9486:

The lowest level medium helm is level 10, to transmute does the new character have to reach at least level 10? Because at the moment it wont let me transmute the hood and the lvl 10 helm.

Yes, you have to be lvl 10+ since you can only transmute item that you can currently equip. The same goes for adding Runes / Gems / Sigils to gear.

An offensive infusion is something that would give +Power / Precision / Condition / etc. This would be in addition to the +5 Agony Resistance. For example, a current Mystic Forge offensive infusion would look like +5 Agony Resistance & +5 Precision.

A defensive infusion is something that would give +Vitality / Toughness / Healing / etc. This would be in addition to the +5 Agony Resistance. For example, a current Mystic Forge defensive infusion would look like +5 Agony Resistance & +5 Vitality.

It really all depends on the type of Thief that you like to play. For a dps glass cannon, the Thief is potentially replaceable by another class. But if you’re looking for things that a group focused Thief has available to them, then we’ve got a few options.

1) Shadow Refuge – Everyone’s already covered this skill. Yet it still blows my mind that far too many Thief players still refuse to take the skill when in a quasi-group situation. All too often, I was the only Thief using the skill when a mass of us were assaulting a boss mob in the Cursed Shore. Even when I ran Arah: Story over the weekend, the D/D & P/P Thief in our party never once cast a Shadow Refuge even when he saw my Thief using it all of the time.

2) We can steal a mob’s buffs through our Trickery line. I’m still eternally amazed that so few people use the sigil that despells buffs on a crit. Nor do Thief players take Bountiful Thief. A prime example is the Eye of Zaitan in the final push for Arah, who owns people when it has x25 Might stacks up and Retaliation. Whenever I see that happen (on my server), no one ever has a dispell or buff steal to keep things moving.

3) Venomous Aura is a game changer. Yes, a devoted VA spec eats up 60 pts worth of trait abilities. (After much personal experience, I do have to admit that Residual Venoms is pretty much required for the spec.) As a S/P melee build using Power/Precision/Toughness, the self-healing from Leeching Venoms keeps me up (in addition to my crit heal procs) and it noticably keeps the other melee players up. During my Fractal runs, there is a night and day difference between a mostly ranged group (who I can’t effectively buff very well) and a mostly melee group (who are closely packed enough to get all of my shared Venom buffs and abilities). People seem constantly surprised to run into a VA Thief during Dynamic Events and PUGs. It seems that the VA spec isn’t very common.

As a Venomous Aura spec in PvE, I also run Lyssa since I use Basilisk Venom in group circumstances. My only issue with that set proc is the unwritten 50 sec cool down on the mega proc. (On a side note, I care more about the condition wiping benefit and not as much about the buffs. Though the Stability is really nice for helping me land a Basilisk hit to break up a boss mob’s rythme.)

There are multiple ways to build a support spec. I’m personally running a Venomous Aura offensive AoE buffing spec, which also gives some decent healing as the people I buffed are attacking. Another route is taking the AoE buffs from the Trickery trait line. Both AoE buffing routes have their strengths and utility skills like Shadow Refuge really are amazing.

Correct. While the Divinity Runes are odd because their set bonus is a static effect instead of the usual increasing effect, they follow the same principle.

Example #1
You buy x6 Superior Runes of Lyssa at 65th lvl. Here’s a general break down of how things look.

Rune #1: +25 Precision
Rune #2: +10% Condition Duration
Rune #3: +50 Precision
Rune #4: Gain a random boon whenever you use your Heal skill. (10 sec cool down)
Rune #5: +90 Precision
Rune #6: Whenever you use an Elite skill, remove all Conditions on you and gain every Boon for 5 seconds. (50 sec cool down)

After equiping a Rune in every Armor slot, you’ll have a net of +165 Precision and all of the other benefits listed above.

Example #2
You buy x6 Superior Runes of Divinity at 65th lvl. Here’s a general break down of how things look.

Rune #1: +10 to every Stat & +2% Crit Damage
Rune #2: +10 to every Stat & +2% Crit Damage
Rune #3: +10 to every Stat & +2% Crit Damage
Rune #4: +10 to every Stat & +2% Crit Damage
Rune #5: +10 to every Stat & +2% Crit Damage
Rune #6: +10 to every Stat & +2% Crit Damage

After equiping a Rune in every Armor slot, you’ll have a net of +60 to every Stat and +12% Crit Damage.

In your specific circumstance, Major runes limit the wearer to x4 Runes. This means that while you’ll get +20 to all Stats and +8% Crit Damage once you’ve added your 4th Rune, the 5th and 6th Runes won’t do anything since you’re over the set bonus limit for that middle Rune tier.

Well the only Conquest I could find in the GW2 Wiki was the look below. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for or not.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Conquest_Armor

Eventually people will get tired of the dungeon and they’ll do some side runs to older dungeons for alts (while still primarilty grinding the new Fractal). Otherwise you are pretty much stuck. This always in any MMO that receives a content expansion and GW2 won’t be any different.

The “1 of 4” refers to how many can be placed in various Armor slots to gain various effects. Each specific armor piece can only hold x1 Runes / Gem by itself. So if you just got a Chest piece, you could always throw up to x3 more copies of the Greater Rune of Divinity into your Head / Shoulder / Hand / Leg / Feet slots.

Now all we need is a Human Engineer with the Merchant background to come wandering into this thread holding their pseudo-shotgun Rifle and muttering about SMart.