Guild Wars 2

Lysico.4906:

So to grasp this..

You added presents that spawn op’ed mobs.

They may drop a present, that will despawn ASAP.

And said “node” might not have anything in it..

So nobody else sees something wrong with the whole thing?

Oh and the doors from halloween were zerged comment? They are zerged here. Difference is now you get a 4 sec knockback and knockdown, with big AOE mobs and a “gift” that despawns sily quick.

Oh, c’mon. Everyone knows high risk – low to no reward is extremely popular. I mean, look at all the players who fight champion events versus all…err…wait…

Dinny.5310:

But… how? How could you possibly be finishing with 0? Are you doing it right?

Fingers on 1 – 4 and 6 – 9. You have to play with the camera a bit. It shouldn’t be 100% overhead, even though the game suggests that orientation. You play the note as it touches/crosses the white circle. Doing it before that point is considered missing the note and you’ll lose health.

It’s not supposed to be that easy. I’ve been playing piano for years and it took me maybe about 4 – 5 rounds to get an acceptable score. Anyway, if you really, really suck at it, like Dra Keln said, you need 12… you can skip it.

I haz ergo keyboard so I had fingers on 1-4, thumb on 6 then other hand fingers on 7-9.

Needless to say, that added a whole ’nother level of difficulty. But, I finished the achievements so I never need play it again.

I finally decided to ‘cheat’ and went to a lowbie area to massacre them to both get payback as well as finish my monthly. They don’t have retaliation or the AoE spam below level 10

You can add me to the list of staff/wells necros who feel like a caster w/ the caveat that if ANet fixes minion AI, I’m so switching out of wells

The Last Jagaroth.1652:

One word – Stockings

I would pay upwards of $10 on the gem store for a pair of striped stockings that my Asuran engineeer could wear as “ear muffs” provided I could dye them really garish colors.

Oh, and they’d have to dangle down lower than ears and flop around the way the ears do too.

Downside is that she’d prolly get killed in a lot more fights as her player wouldn’t be able to stop falling down laughing so she’d end up just standing around wondering why her player wasn’t doing something about the zombee abomination that’s bashing her over the head repeatedly.

Go to PvP and fight a good thief and tell me you still want first-person

This game has way too much movement in combat for first person to work. There are even AI mobs that actively try to run to flank you let alone that whole PvP problem.

I suspect motion sickness would also be a problem in places like Orr where your toon can start getting tossed around like a rag doll by all the mobs chain pulling.

Marks and wells work really well against thieves since you can stand in them forcing the thief to take AoE damage if he wants to get in his licks. It’s also a great trick for sticking them with things like chill and blindness both of which completely frak up their usual attack skill rotation.

Marks and wells also care not at all about stealth since they’re not targeted on an enemy. Just spread them out nicely and there’s nowhere for the thief to go.

(and I can’t believe I’m explaining this since my main is a thief)

UKNightWatch.5742:

My goodness! I must remember to look carefully at what I am reading! For a moment there, I thought the thread title was ‘How would you make earmuffs from an Asura!’ … the mind boggles.

I’d prolly use yeti fur harvested from Hangrammr Climb as insulation with good sturdy linen thread to sew the insulation into the harvested Asuran ears. I’d then use a thin band of copper wrapped with linen to put the two ears into ‘muffs’.

Any way, lets think about this a little from a point of view of Asura(n) physiology, biology or other ‘ology’ or such that deals with the Asura(n) body. (I always get my ‘ologies’ mixed up!).

Could it be the the Asura(n) ear pinna is simply a ‘funnel’ type affair with very few if any blood cells or nerve type thingys and as such cold would not really be felt in the outer ear?

If Asuran ears didn’t have adequate blood flow, they’d suffer damage much quicker from the cold. It’s blood flow to the extremities in warm-blooded creatures that provides the necessary heat to keep the cells from being killed by frostbite.

The goal of earmuffs is to trap that heat for as long as possible while keeping the cold air away from the otherwise exposed skin of the ear. The problem is how do you make earmuffs for a creature whose ears compromise so much surface area since that extra surface area makes for a great heat exchanger which is bad during freezing temperatures.

Nice ode BTW OP.

Thanks

One other point…this is a horrible waste of an alt

In one hour, a brand new character can make 25-30s in just their racial newbie zone. Delete and repeat if you’re looking for mindlessly easy money. (I can run all three paths of AC in a PUG and get 2-3g’s in about an hour even without any really valuable drops).

Conversely, the 12-15 ori ore sells for 30-40s but is limited to to just once per day. Now, you might think that you only ever have to get the toon to the rich ori vein once and then it’s only a minute or so out of your day…but you might get jumped by the champ karka and then you’re stuck waiting for a rez.

As I alluded to above, that character slot with your newbie cost 800 gems. Right this moment, 800 gems is worth 11g49s (and rising). At 30-40s a day, it’s going to take a long time to pay that back.

In short, newbie farming the rich ori node is high risk, pathetic reward, and very high entry cost.

Uh, no.

No class should have an “I win” versus another class, and giving rangers impunity to see through thief (and mesmer) stealth would do just that.

If you really have a problem with stealth, build for AoE’s. Heck, with melee you can just keep manually hitting your 1 attack and you have a chance to hit the stealthed target.

Stealth doesn’t do anything to mitigate damage. It just makes it a bit harder to get that damage on target.

The price of orichalcum ore has gone up pretty steadily since the aftermath of Lost Shores, and that price drop was more likely affected by the glut of exotics and precursors than it was anything to do with the existence of a single rich ori node.

Because the entire player base is put into a single pool, it’s really tough for even the actions of a couple hundred players farming that node daily to have any real impact on the long term price. The extra supply they are generating versus not having that node isn’t even a blip on the market.

More than that, it’s a horribly inefficient way to spend a character slot that costs 800 gems if your goal is to make money. Heck, the gems alone could be sold for more gold than your miner alt is going to make back any time soon.

Paulytnz.7619:

Funny I seem to be making gold from crafting. I gather my own materials and I “unlock” every recipe in a craft just so I can see it in my list. I make exotics in jewellry for example and can sell some of them fo 1-2+ gold each. What are you doing wrong exactly?

And I made 25g selling orichalcum ingots to people like you yesterday. I still have the various crystal orbs I got mining the ori so I haven’t even bothered getting all the profit out of my minimal time investment (the joys of having 6 level 80 alts smirk)

You can’t just say “Item X sells for 1-2g, so I made 1-2g”. You have to look at how much it cost for you to level your crafting to 400, how much you could have made just selling the crafting mats, etc. It’s that opportunity cost people forget about.

That said, I have all 8 professions at 400. Not because I had any dreams of getting rich crafting, but because I wanted to. I also use some crafting on new alts to effectively trade gold for XP speed leveling for 5-6 levels at a time at points in a toon’s development that I just don’t feel like hacking through (early levels on mesmer, mid levels on guardian, etc).

Isslair.4908:

It’s more like “reward VS usefulness for your party”.

And this is where it becomes th real issue.

When some people do their best to have max DPS and survivability while others just have some crappy rares with MF, do zero damage, die in 1 hit and still get better reward.

Crappy rares with MF? My ‘farming’ toon is head to toe exotic MF gear with 5 noble runes + 1 pirate run, exotic MF weapons with MF sigil on main hand, all jewelery is exotic or better (cuz I haz ascended ring and karka accessory).

Oh, and because of how I built my toon and the fact that good MF gear is power/precision/MF, I haven’t given up that much DPS versus a glass canon, and I’ll bet between my skill as a player as well as traiting some survivability into my toon, I end up outperforming most of the rest of the members of my PUG parties.

Anyway, all that said, and even though I’m plenty over 150% magic find, it’s been my experience that that only translates to about 3-4 extra rares per dungeon path. It does make running AC all paths as a daily worth doing (which I could actually run naked so it’s not like the crit damage I give up for MF matters one whit), and it adds about the same extra per hour running events in Orr, so while it worth doing, I wouldn’t necessarily go way out of my way to build a toon like this except that I have 8 alts, so going all-in on MF on one was no biggie.

LordYz.8941:

The ears will freeze and break off during winter and new ones will grow.

So if a new ears grows out of the Asura, does a whole new Asura grow out of the ear?

Cuz that would explain quite a few things….

Raf.1078:

Narkosys.5173:

Although an Assuran would hate this:
Socks
Human or Norn depending on how long and floppy.

But the smell……

I know…nuthin smells worse than an floppy ol’ Asura ear (ughh)

The floppy ol’ ear of an Orian Asura?

My initial thotz on the subject ran to using a pair of Santa hats and some wire to hold them together. Not only would it keep their ears somewhat warmer, but they’d look suitably ridiculous which is a requirement for all Asruan fashion.

I was just thinking about the whole Wintersday event and Toymaker Tixx and the fact that Tixx is going to be spending a lot of time out of doors in very cold weather. Then I realized this was pretty much true of all the Asura. Well, I’ve spent a bunch of time outdoors with my human-sized ears and frostbite is a realy concern for me. So, how much worse must it be for something with ears almost as long as they are tall?

Ode to Earmuffs for an Asura

Those poor dears with their big ears!
How can they stand the cold?
When the snow falls and they’re out in their stalls
Is their plight untold?

For an Asura knows when the wind blows.
It can carry such a bite.
And they need care just what it is that they wear
To stay warm throughout the night.

But those poor things with ears like birds’ wings-
Flapping in the breeze.
And all the cold days can make the ice glaze
Upon Asuran ears that freeze.

So think of their plight as you’re resting this night-
Perhaps looking across the bluffs.
That as you can stay warm, they must suffer the storm
For there are no Asuran earmuffs!

I’ve been bouncing in and out of sPvP while leveling up my mezzy (who will soon be my 7th level 80 toon).

So far I’ve run a scepter/pistol phantasm/bleed build, a glamour confusion build, the suicide clone build, a staff shatter AoE build, and a stealth tank build.

Every single one of them worked well. This is completely different from the other classes where one or two builds really outshine the others. In turn, this makes it much harder for me to decide what I want to play. In sPvP, no big deal, I just change up to whatever I’m feeling like at the moment. But I also run dungeons, open world PvE, and WvW all on a regular basis. That means I need to equip my toon to whatever build I decide on.

Which brings up the problem…I have no idea what to go with long term. My thief-condition. Engy – grenades. Necro – mark/well combo field tank. Elementalist – signet/aura. Ranger – longbow DPS w/ spider goodness. Warrior – 5 signet DPS/regen w/ sword-axe (cuz straight 5 signet greatsword is another name for corpse). When I get to it, my guardian will be mace/shield ubertank. Mezzy tho…????

So, what would y’all suggest and why?

For the OP: Build yourself an 30 earth/30 water/10 arcane staff elementalist. Take the traits that apply stuff to allies.

Tada! You are a very, very good support healer. Oh, and you’re freakin’ near unkillable if you learn to play well.

Ruby Orb or Rune of Divity?
My answer: Yes.

Different builds benefit the most from different things. A pure glass canon is likely going to go the orb route. A build that is looking to buff survival while still maintaining good damage might do better with the runes.

Then what about Coral Orb for say an mesmer or necro who is getting a big chunk of their damage from conditions? We’re still talking about damage builds here, so we need to expand what you’re looking at.

Or how about a thief running Basilisk Venom as his/her elite? Doesn’t a 45 second recharge time, potentially even less, make Superior Rune of the Mad King look tempting?

Ultimately, it comes down to where on the scale of tank-glass cannon you want your build to fall and how you plan on getting your damage.

alcedonia.7831:

Xavori.3768:

I run a 5 signet warrior who uses sword/axe and rifle. Axe is fitted with explodies and rifle with bleedies to go with my traited bleed-on-crit (bloody bosses ftw!). Basically, in melee I’m an AoE machine, and at range (ie bosses) I stack bleeds.

Thing is, I also have 20 points in defense which means in addition to my signet regen, I also have adrenal regen and a bit more toughness.

So nope, I don’t go splat. Add in the fact I know how to play, and I’ll put my 5 signet warriors survivability up against anything short of true bunker builds with the advantage that I can still actually kills all teh stuffs.

but whatever you can do with a 5 sig warrior, you can do better with a non 5 sig warrior.

i’m not saying 5 sig = omg dead weight, our dungeon run is scrooooood.

it’s the combination of 5 sig with full zerkers and greatsword that is a trainwreck. and that is the build new players walk away with when they look for a straightforward class which is easy to play and deals good damage.

the only warriors i see who can play 5 signet decently (not even well, just decently) are those that have mains of other classes. like mesmers or rangers etc. and i swear they only play their warriors when they’re taking a break from their mains. because no one really expects much from a 5 signet warrior. no stress, no pressure. it’s like freerolling in a casino.

personally, i’ve only ever met ONE 5 signet warrior who could hold his own in arah. that in no way means that 5 signet is a viable arah build. he was definitely an exception, not the norm.

Heh. Okay, my main is a thief, and I spent a lot of time in WvW on my ranger so can’t really argue that point with ya. Heck, I have 6 of the 8 classes to 80, and the last 2 will prolly be there before Wintersday. I’ve even suggested to more than one guildie that playing a thief in PvE will definitely improve playing all the classes since you will have to learn how to dodge and strafe and basically be notdead via your own skill rather than any equipment or stats you might have.

One thing I will add tho is that my 5 signet warrior isn’t in full zerker. It’s worse. She’s in full magic find (power-precision-magic find on most, a few trinkets I’ve found that have magic find while also having toughness-vitality) and runed 5 noble – 1 pirate with exquisite opals in all the baubles except my ascended ring since it had built-in magic find. That said, I still pull aggro in most boss fights since I have very good DPS combined with double regen. I suspect most of my groups don’t even realize I’ve given up a few hundred DPS in order to make sure I get a couple rares every dungeon run.

The only time I’ve ever even considered changing her build was during a fractals run that hit Cliffside. Something about the unlimited spawn of lifedraining fanatics along with a boss with huge AoE made it impossible for any amount of player skill to matter. Then I read on the forums that that fractal is bugged with the possibility of becoming impossible, and the feeling passed

My experiences with water on my necro in actual fights (cuz mists is horrible to test healing)

My necro is a bunker running staff w/ wells (ie. combo fields for everyone!). Anyway, because necro’s have so many ‘attacks’ being counted (conditions, well pulses, etc) the sigil proc’s pretty much every time it comes off cooldown. Also, my necro has pretty much nada on chance to crit, so I’m skeptical about the claims its only on crits.

The heal is pretty meh, but given that it’s part of a build that is all about lots of little heals happening all the time, I’m okay with that.

Kholer can splatter an entire party in a single round of his AoE pull – spin-o-doom. If you fight him, its high risk / medium reward (the new bag + a chest) and very time consuming even in a good group. If you skip him, you can complete the entire dungeon in half the time for each path. You also don’t risk the breakdown of a group that wipes multiple times at the first challenge.

That said, I generally go along with whatever the group I’m in wants to do. I’ve been in groups that took down Kholer no problem, and I’ve been in groups where nothing I tried to tell them was getting through. Heck, I had one group who got the troll to fight him and still end up wiping (because they decided to help Kholer kill the troll).

shrugs

It’s not like any real people died, and I tend to find great humor in watching people melt down. So, for me, it’s a win no matter what happens.

Fun bugged run my group (a pug) just had here.

The final fight actually spawned mobs the first time we got the boss’s health down. Picked up hammer, killed a lil’ guy, and broke seal.

Then all hell broke loose. Everyone froze including me who should have been able to break out of stun. A whole pile of fanatics ran over and did steal health while boss hit his AoE’s. Everyone dies before stun is over.

So we try again. This time we kite the boss, knock the hammer loose, kill a minion, and actually make it through the apparently now unbreakable stun. Only minions kept spawning a whole lot faster than we could ever hope to have killed them. Eventually the boss wandered back from the corner where we left him, hit his AoE’s, and party wipe #2.

Party wipe #3 looked exactly like #2.

There was just no way any party is killing infinite spawning lifestealing mobs while dealing with a boss who can cover half the available floor with agony/poison/crippling/bleed attacks. I’m pretty sure we couldn’t have beaten it even with the old exploit as the infinite spawn started as soon as the hammer dropped.

Anyway, add me to the list of people who want this pulled until fixed.

A suggestion when dealing with netidiots in GW2 (and quite possibly the only use for achievement points in the game)

If you’ve been playing a while, odds are you have more achievement points than most of the people you run into, or at the very least, enough to show you’ve been playing the game long enough to at least know how to tie your shoes (TRICK QUESTION! You can’t tie your shoes in GW2)

So when someone starts ragging on you about not being level 80, simply tell them to mouse over and check your points. Or make your mom jokes about them. Really, you can go either way in that situation.

That said, I’m pretty sure everyone has died in either the spiky hallway or the flame staircase in AC at least once. And once you get killed once, it seems to just keep happening in that run. I tend to make really snarky comments about tripping over my shoelaces (cuz I can’t tie them) which means while I might be slowing down the group, at least I’m entertaining them.

I run a 5 signet warrior who uses sword/axe and rifle. Axe is fitted with explodies and rifle with bleedies to go with my traited bleed-on-crit (bloody bosses ftw!). Basically, in melee I’m an AoE machine, and at range (ie bosses) I stack bleeds.

Thing is, I also have 20 points in defense which means in addition to my signet regen, I also have adrenal regen and a bit more toughness.

So nope, I don’t go splat. Add in the fact I know how to play, and I’ll put my 5 signet warriors survivability up against anything short of true bunker builds with the advantage that I can still actually kills all teh stuffs.

Do you know what’s really unfair?

I have 8 alts (MUST HAZ ALL THE CLASSES!). Do you have any idea how much gold I’ve burned through just getting them into rares when they hit 80? And how much more the two I’ve managed to get into exotics have cost me? And how much time I’m going to spend farmzoring fractals to get them all in shiny pink gear?

cries

I want Felicia Day, preferably in her ‘Date My Avatar’ costume, and definitely not in her role as an Asura (cuz while the goggles are awesome, the floppy ears would make me giggle and ruin the mood).

My level 80 Sylvari ranger is head to toe exotics that have all be reskinned to newbie stuff and colored to look like undyed leather patched together. Her bow, also exotic, was reskinned to the basic longbow (then again, I don’t know anyone that likes the Pearl set for any weapon).

My rogue kept his hood. My necro is keeping her ‘eyes’. My mesmer is going to go full butterfly winged set because ridiculous is just how I want her to look.

I’m a big fan of asthetics over accomplishment. Heck, my Bartle type is KESA so accomplishment/achievement…not really major motivators for me.

Dude, you are not an altaholic. If you were, you wouldn’t have this problem.

Like you, I started out with a thief. But then again, I do that in every game. Xavori…ya, he was born in pen and paper D&D. Then he went to UO and I wrote some stories for him. Since then, he’s been my first character in every MMO I’ve played.

He’s level 80.

Then I have my warrior Asyntora. Back in my WoW days, she was a pally who I’d dual-box with Xavori (having a pet tank healer when you’re playing a WoW rogue is loltastic in PvP).

She’s level 80.

Next up is my ranger. She’s new to the MMO world as she’s Sylvari, and no other MMO I played had Sylvari. She’s a blast in WvW where I like sniping at defenders on walls with my longbow as well as hunting down runners with my spider, and more importantly, my spider’s web root attack.

She’s level 80.

After her I have my engineer. Another toon new to MMO’ing as no other MMO’s have Asura. My intial plan for her was to be a combat medic who’d set up a few defense turrets while running around the battlefield healing people. No dice as combat medics are pretty much useless. Instead, she likes hanging out on walls raining grenades down on attackers. Still has the turrets tho.

She’s level 80.

After that we have my elementalist. My first attempt at an elly was to recreate my ice kitten Freosana Bicce who was born in DAoC as an ice thurg. Only, you can’t really make a single element elementalist work in GW2. So I deleted her rather than put that name on a toon that used more than just ice (I need professional help). I created a brand new elementalist with a brand new name that is perfectly happy using lightning and earth even though she’s traited fire (which translates to fire which is MOAR DAMAGE). She’s also an aura build so that whole mega nerf thing…ya…she don’t care.

She’s level 80.

My necro would have been level 80 at some point tonight. However, she was killed by a bandit rifleman (who was actually a woman). Just FYI, it takes a long time for a tank necro to get killed by knockdown spam.

I fully expect my guardian (level 47) and mesmer (level 30 something) would have been 80’s before the end of the month. They’d have gotten their sooner, but I got distracted.

At that point, I’ll be a true Pokemon err Guild Wars 2 Master.

Gotta catch ’em all!

I built a pretty decent mark/wells tank. It can go toe to toe with most champs (haven’t tried it out versus the champ karka yet) while still dishing out good AoE damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQFAWjQaV6haeaM8JApHPf90TP4ecxhKsLA;T8AgzymEMJZS1kiJqmMNJay2krJZTjNOb82A

(no idea why that link keeps breaking as it works fine if you copy-paste it)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQFAWjQaV6haeaM8JApHPf90TP4ecxhKsLA;T8AgzymEMJZS1kiJqmMNJay2krJZTjNOb82A

My thinking when coming up with the build:
1) Minions don’t work. Keep them out of the build for the most part.
2) Lich is a good elite skill. Find traits that make it better (marks)
3) Be useful to a group while still being able to solo.

This build hits those three even though it does make use of the ‘freebie’ minions you get when killing stuff from the Reanimator trait. Instead of being useless, that little guy becomes a time bomb to a poison field who maybe takes a bite or two out of someone’s ankles. It’s a combo field spitting machine because in addition to your poison field, wells all count as combo fields for you and your group. Staff 1 is a decent enough combo finisher, and since Staff 4 is a blast finisher it can splatter groups of mobs.

The build has a ton of toughness and health. More than that, you end up with constant health coming back in. It’s not uncommon at all to finish a fight against multiple mobs fully healed. With Water sigil and your Well of Blood, you’re also helping heal your team. This build actually works better against groups of mobs because while the scaling of healing for siphon isn’t great, if you hit enough targets at once, and almost everything this build has is an AoE attack, you can turn lots of little heals into something noticeable.

The problem with fractals is the same as the problems with Orr. ANet has split the community into tiny little bits, and there is just not enough community to overcome that. In Fractals, each difficulty level is its own tiny little community, and since there is no incentive to run with people stuck in a lower tier, no one does.

Same thing happens in Orr. There is only one zone with level 80 drops, so that’s where everyone goes. Beyond that, there are only a couple events that run fast enough and produce reliable enough rewards, so those events get farmed and others get ignored.

Fixing Orr with something like ‘underflow’ servers that were suggested on the suggestions forum might work. Fixing Fractals requires a serious rethink of the feasibility of each and every difficulty level being distinct. There are just too many obstacles to having a reliable number of players available since a) they have to enjoy running the same handful of dungeons repeatedly, b) all be online at the same time, c) all be at the exact same difficulty of dungeon, and d) actually be in the mood to run those same dungeons.

I made it to level 9 before running out of steam on Fractals. I want the better gear, but I’m sick of the randomness of the swamp, the monotony of being force to swim for my life rather than fight as a dolphin, and the just overall repetitiveness of the very small number of dungeons. As soon as you add in 30 minutes to an hour to find a group, well, I still have a couple classes I haven’t leveled to 80, other dungeons to run, WvW and sPvP that I enjoy, etc.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.1.1.0.13.0.32.0.16.0.3.13.14.15.24.2.2.7.6.9.0.16.0.0.32.35.42.47.0.0.0.0.0.20.10.30.10.0

Gear is about power, crit chance, and toughness. You’ll have a constant stream of incoming health while you fight, so it’s more important to be able to shrug off big hits than it is to try to soak them. You should also be able to outheal condition damage. Alternatively, you could swap air signet for water signet which like air has a useful active ability as well as the condition dump. Oh, the crit chance is because most weapon sigils proc on crits, and I like keeping my options open.

How it plays:

The key bit is that signets and auras get linked via Fire IX. Every time you activate a signet, you create an aura (fire shield). This in turn procs all your aura traits as well as the signet traits. In effect, you click a signet, you get fire shield, fury, swiftness, protection, and inflict vulnerability. And because of Earth XII, you don’t lose the signet’s passive ability.

Next, the lack of any arcane points means that you don’t flip through elements constantly the way the build that shall never be spoken of again used to. Instead, you hit elements situationally. I prefer running air most of the time because it hits hard and has its own aura which gives you access to most of your trait procs. It also has my fav combo, dagger 5 which interrupts and knocks down your target while getting you out of range, dagger 4 which puts you right back in range and blasts the target. Then, while the target is still down, I hit my aura (dagger 3) followed by air’s vulnerability attack (dagger 2) and then I auto-attack for a bit. This utterly wrecks 3-4 mobs at a time if you get them bunched when you start it.

For stronger mobs, I’ll usually start by popping the fire signet at range. This gets them burning and me moving faster to get into melee without needing RTL. I use the air signet against big charge attacks. The earth signet is either just another proc on fury/shield or actually gets used to hold mobs in place based on my knowledge of the mob wanting to run away or not. I’ll toss my knockdown jump back combo in again at times, using it mostly like I do my air signet unless the mob has stability in which case, I tend to forget about dagger 5 while in air. This paragraph is also my usual approach to PvP with this build.

If I get in trouble health wise (it happens). Flip to water and dagger 5 (cleansing wave). You also get a regen while you’re in water. If you want some extra condition damage, bounce to fire for a moment or two. Keep in mind that if you used fire signet, all you’re doing is adding to duration with fire burning attacks so fire isn’t going to get used a lot. You can also flip to earth and make your target bleed. With 30 points into Earth, your condition damage isn’t totally pathetic.

One other helpful hint. Even tho we poor unwashed elementalist masses don’t get weapon swapping, I still carry a staff. This build works surprisingly well as a stand-off ranged blaster which is useful when fighting event bosses. Just have to remember to switch out weapons before you get into combat.

I love my d/d aura/signet elementalist. As an added bonus, I didn’t get nerfed into oblivion today

There are a couple problems with diminishing returns (DR).

First, it makes things more complicated for casual gamers. As you put in your post, if you double your power, you’ll about double your DPS. Pretty straightforward and easy to understand. If you put in a DR system, then theory-crafting guys like me who are good with spreadsheets will figure out all the optimums giving us a leg up on the casual gamers who just want to play the game.

Second, the game has already been balanced as is (I almost typed that with a straight face). Any implementation of a DR system would necessitate a rebalancing of most of the games more complicated fights to allow for lower damage and/or lower defenses. On the other hand, given just how out of whack some of the difficulties are in dungeons and story missions, that might not be a bad idea anyway

Ultimately, DR doesn’t actually do anything, even in other games. The game if it’s well designed accounts for optimums. It doesn’t matter if those optimums come from straight linear progression of stats or from a complicated DR system.

I’m likely going to have my 5th 80 done before Friday, and hence, be deciding on yet another set of exotics to outfit ‘em with. I would kinda sorta like to know what, if any, changes I’m going to be making to this build before I burn all those mats making equipment.

Also, I want the wild speculation of “ZOMG THEY’RE KILLING MY {insert class here}” to end.

Last, I want a puppy…already housebroken.

I disagree with the people who don’t care about them. You can seriously buff up your DPS or survival just knowing a couple combos that you can self-inflict.

For example, on rangers the easiest combo in the world is just run with a spider pet. The spider will throw down poison fields which combo with projectiles. Instant DPS boost. Mesmers ability to create fields that combo into confusion can seriously mess with enemies. as confusion is bad nasty (and freakin’ OP in sPvP…jus’ sayin’…either quit fighting which is bad or take lots of damage which is bad…you have no good choice). Thieves can create lifesteal pools. Rangers, again, can create regen pools.

The list goes on and on and most of the combos are tied to skills that you’d want to be using anyway.

Even if Lion’s Arch wasn’t meant to be the player hub, players would have picked a city and made it the hub eventually anyway. You just have too many converging playstyles that lead to a single hub.

Socializers prefer having lots of people around to socialize with so they go where the most people are. Achievers want the fastest and most efficient way to find resources, in this case other players to group with, for completing their achievements. Crafters want a single location with all the tools and such they need.

‘Course, on that last point I prefer The Grove for crafting as the crafting tables are in a compressed area and right next to the trading post. And since I have the mystic forge anywhere toy, I don’t even need Lion’s Arch for that.

The short reply to people wanting only certain classes for dungeons: They’re wrong.

I have alts of every single class. Every single one of them is useful in dungeons and to a group, and it matters very little what specific build they are using.

Thieves can do obliteration type alpha strikes and then run around waiting a few seconds while they regen initiatve during which time the party gets to beat down on the mob. Or, they can be condition damage spec’d stacking bleeds faster and poison longer than any other class. Oh, and they can pick up shadow refuge giving hurt teammates a hiding place or make it easier to rez fallen comrades.

This is part of why my guild, Crossroads of the Lounge, doesn’t care what classes people bring on our dungeon runs. ‘Course, the other part is we’re also playing a game not working at a job so maximum efficiency and productivity are nowhere near as important as having fun.

Now stuff not achievement related:

Costume brawl – (okay so it has an achievement). Silly fun. Completely unbalanced. Plastic spiders suck. The mummy and skellies rock. I really doubt anyone cares at all about the balance. The food fight never made sense. Again, I don’t think anyone cared that much.

Mad King Says – again more silly fun and you get a silly hat as a reward. I will gladly admit that every time he’d get a bunch of people to do something without saying, “Mad Kings says” I would laugh out loud for reals.

The Biography of the Mad King scavenger hunt. – I loved this bit. I’m a Bartle KESA so explore-y stuff is really big with me. I loved the little ghost scenes and reading up on just how much of a bastage the Mad King was. The reward was even rock solid as well as back items have a premium on value, and this particular one fit half my alts (I have 8 of ‘em). I even noticed the color change around characters who leave the burning book visible which led me to do run to the Lion’s Arch jumping puzzle for an experiment to see if it was an actual light source (it is…albiet a fairly weak one). So big kudos on this.

The Halloween themed weapons
I’m not a good person for giving feedback on this. While I’m huge on getting my alts to look good, I’m not making any Halloween-y looking alts. Even my necro already has her staff picked out (the one sold by the pirate karma vendor at the end of the Lion’s Arch puzzle). So I really haven’t given these much thought. I did make some good coin selling the skins and weapons I did find, so I’m happy about that. Otherwise, meh. And as for the amount of mats that go into the recipes. Whatever. even after giving all the kids in Lion’s Arch diabetes, I still have over 1000 candy corn left, several stacks of all the ‘rare’ Halloween mats, and no desire to make anything other than the food stuff using ’em.

Another note of concern, but I suspect is more game-engine related overall was the day all the event chains to open the doors bugged. But like I said, this is an engine overall problem as it isn’t just the Halloween events that keep breaking.

Overall, I’d say the Halloween event was a big success. I had a lot of fun with the whole variety of things that happened, and I think there was enough different things to do that I’m sure most people found something they liked. Of course, I do sympathize with people who got frustrated with the Mad King’s Clocktower as it does seem odd to stick something hard in the middle of something most people expect to be simple fun.

Let me begin by saying yes, I have all the achievements for the event. I even reached a point on clock tower where I finished more than I failed. So I’m going to organize my feedback around those achievements.

Halloween Hunting – killing the Halloween mobs
This was such a gimmee achievement once the Labyrinth opened that I don’t feel anyone who wanted it didn’t get it. As an achievement, I think it works really well for getting the Bartle-type achievers into the Halloween event. The Labyrinth also had some decent mini-events in it, and decent loot tied to those events which drags in people who play for the shinies (can we pretty please have Skritt as the next playable race). Heck, even socializers got something out of this as the family-sized candy corn elemental required getting a bunch of people to show up and help kill it.

Pumpkin Carving – click on all those pumpkins scattered pretty much everywhere
This is actually one of the best balanced time-wise achievements I’ve seen ANet stick in the game. I say that because I never went out of my way to farm pumpkins to carve and yet still had no problem completing the achievement. I just played like always and when I saw a pumpkin, I’d take a moment and click on it. In exchange for that little bit of effort, I have a shiny Master Carver title for my sword-axe wielding warrior even if she sees ‘carving’ a bit different than just pumpkins.

Trick or Treat bags opened
Pretty straightforward and at this point, you could complete it for about 30 silver or so.

This is a good place to also bring up the eating candy corn that was a part of an achievement. I would have done that one just to watch my sylvari ranger puking over and over again. So…gravy that it was actually part of something with value.

It’s a Mad King’s World – go see ALL THE THINGS!
As an achievement, this is another well balanced one in that you don’t actually have to do any of the events, just go find them. Pretty much aimed at explorers. As for the events themselves, the two activities were both pretty cool. They could use a lot better instructions tho as it was confusing the first time most people did either trying to figure out exactly what was going on. The clock tower…well…that’s its own achievement and really needs its own somewhat length discussion.

Mad King’s Clock Tower – run up a clock while thinking very bad thoughts about Josh Foreman
The first time I ran this jumping puzzle, I died on the starting platform because I started the same way I do all jumping puzzles. I stared at it a bit trying to figure out my path. The second, third, fourth, tenth, bazillionth time I died was because freakin’ Norn and Charr made it impossible to see my toon after the puzzle piled us all back together on that annoying pause. Now, I like Norn. I have Norn friends. Heck, I have a Norn alt. (I do not have any Charr alts as I’m not forgiving those half-cat, half-cow bastages for The Searing).
Back to the tower…I ran this initially a few times and then thought to myself, “Self, this can wait.” Then I went and did other stuff for a few days. I suspect I saved myself much stress via this decision, especially as I’ve read quite a few of the um, critiques of this puzzle.
After finally running out of other things to do, I came back to this with an absolute dedication to completing it. I put myself in my zen-mode where I simply do not got frustrated and started running it. I figured out that I could get away with waiting for the horde to jump ahead of me at the pause and still keep ahead of green chompy stuff. I figured out I could take my time on some of the trickier bits provided I didn’t screw up and go slow on the easy bits. I figured out I could prolly pay someone to sneak into ANet and put vaseline on Josh’s keyboard as payback. Most importantly, I finally figured out how to get to the top repeatedly.
So when it was all said and done, I really liked this puzzle. At the same time, I’m 100% sympathetic to people who can’t and who feel cheated by having such a difficult piece of content included in a holiday event which most player feel should be about fun.

The other achievements were pretty much just show up things, so don’t really need any feedback.

I’m feeding it Arrrrr Quaggan’s a Pirate!!!

The idea of a 500 lb Quaggan with rotted out teeth makes me giggle.

Plus, I now have tons of the magic find food, have converted my thousands of candy corn in to a couple stacks of each of the rarer Halloween mats which have significantly more value and more likely to hold that value as the supplies run out after Halloween but the demand for the magic find food in turn keeps the demand for the mats to make it going (oh, and the health regen one…and ya, I know there are regular recipes that are similar but the Halloween ones are better).

I suspect the last day of the event I’ll stock up on just the candy corn since I suspect that will show some value by July or so

I have medical issues that make holding a button down for extended periods of time extremely uncomfortable. A mouselook toggle button allows me to just click once without maintaining pressure which is much, much better.

I had been using a very simple (as in one line) autohotkey script to make that toggle, but the first of the Halloween patches somehow broke autohotkey scripting, and in turn, broke my mouselook toggle. Since then, I’ve had to drastically reduce my playing time which kinda sucks with all the Halloween stuff going on.

Anyway, this seems like a really simple request, and I suspect I’m not the only one who would benefit from it.

@JasonKing

I play with the spider pet, and 100% of the time, the first arrow that hits after my spider launches poison cloud is obstructed. Hopefully that’s easily repeatable so you can see that case in action.

Like many other rangers, I get the obstructed way, way too often to document them on a case by case basis. I’d be submitting bugs practically every third or fourth fight. I concur with Lori that it seems to be linked to little bits of detail that block not just shots, but movement as well even though they are nearly impossible to notice until after you’ve gotten stuck trying to move, dodge, or shoot.

p.s. I’d also vote to kill the invulnerable on mobs that can’t figure out how to path to you. The possible exploit value of farming mobs that can’t fight back is nowhere near as damaging to the game as the current situation where mobs routinely go invuln when you’re jumping and dodging in fights. More than that, on several occasions I’ve had to restart story missions because a mob would get itself stuck on the geometry (the best of which was the fight versus the undead you do with the Vigil where a mob got stuck at the top of a flagpole at the town gate while I was off fighting inside the town…no idea how the thing got itself up there)

Simian, when you finish a door and it disappears, look around. 9 out of 10 times you’ll be able to see where it respawned. They also tend to have spawn “clusters” so it doesn’t take too long if you keep watching to figure out where you need to look to find the next spawn when your door is done.

Also, roaming with a pack of “door hunters” helps a lot. Everyone can take advantage of everyone else’s opening a door whether they get a trick or a treat which means one door can net 10-20 mobs/bags.

I sent out an invite pre-patch to a player that went through fine for my guild (Crossroads of the Lounge – CLVG). Tonight, post-patch, I tried sending out another guild invite and was told I was at the maximum number of guild affiliations and needed to quit one of my guilds to join a new one.

I got this error with both right-click Guild Invite on the player’s name and manually typing in their ID in the guild roster page.

Seems odd that it’s saying I can’t join any more guilds when trying to invite someone else to my guild. More than that, since my guild is the only guild I’m in, not sure why I’d be at the limit for guilds anyway.

This complaint is easy to explain.

Time.

You can make a video that shows some solution or map point or whatnot in 5 to 10 minutes. Just fire up the game, hit record, and off you go.

Writing (and I should point out that once upon a time, I wrote strategy guides for computer games magazines) takes a lot longer.

For example, I wrote the strategy guide for Age of Kings for Computer Games Magazine (and I’m seriously dating myself with that admission). It took me about two days to complete the entire campaign. It then took me another week of playing through a second time while writing the article to put together the walk through and tips pieces I did for the game. (I also got to write to review of that game which was the only time I ever got to write three articles on the same game). Then I waited a day to forget as much of what I wrote as possible followed by a day (a really for real full day) proof-reading, editing, etc to both improve the quality of my guide as well as get under whatever word count I had for the magazine (because if you go over your word count in a print magazine the editor has no choice but to hack it into unreadable garbage in order to make it fit within the available space).

Now, if I’d been doing videos, I’d just have recorded my first playthrough. Maybe spend a day editing and adding some voice over (yes, I’d add it after-the-fact since I truly hate people all the extraneous garbage that works its way into the voice over part when people try to narrate in real time). Whole thing done in 4 days.

Plus, you don’t have to worry about written grammar so bonus!

Not sure how to ask this without sounding completely kittened, so I’m just going to come right out with it.

Why isn’t Queen Jenna wearing panties?

Now before y’all decide I’m some of kind of weird-kitten freak, I wasn’t running around actively seeking out this knowledge. My guild and I were running CM story mode, and I was playing as an Asura. Well, as I’m running around I run close enough to her that my camera does that fast flip when it hits something, and what Jenna was wearing, or more specifically, not wearing caught my eye, and I just had to go back because I figured no way did I just not see what I didn’t see but should have seen.

Nope. I really didn’t see ‘em cuz they were not there. She’s running around bare-kittened under that skirt.

What’s worse is that it’s obvious that whatever artist designed her legs took the time to texture her backside which hints at the possibility The Commando Queen isn’t just an accident. Now maybe there’s a totally innocent reason for her lack of modesty (which honestly, would be boring…I want a good conspiracy theory kitten it!), or maybe you ANet guys and girls are a lot more fun loving than we already suspected and want your game’s characters to get in on the action.

I mean, maybe casual Fridays at ANet are really, really casual.

Oh, which reminds me of the funniest moment of our guild dungeon crawls last night. Before this we’d run AC and our very squishy and easily killed necro was appearing in all the cutscenes. Anyway, by the time we finished his armor was damaged, and he died just before the final cutscene which broke one bit.

So, our necro got to talk to Eir Stagalkin sans pants in a truly memorable bit of cinema.

Arianna, I plan on doing all of the above with every class. It’s pretty wild to see just how different things work out. I’m hoping by the time I get my necro to 80, the worst of the necro bugs will be sorted out.

I’ve already tried the build in sPvP and as expected, the AI not fighting and the lack of life force early in fights is a huge, huge problem. But even with that, my experience playing a thief taught me GW2 mobility, and so, I’m still fairly hard to kill.

Berullos, interesting thoughts on 30/20/20 instead of 30/30/10. Also, thank you for the info on consumption. Maybe stick with 30/30 and take the wells health siphon instead and switch to the well of blood? This would also mean losing the healing minion, but he pretty much sucks anyway.

Oh, and my thief is a condition damage thief. He steals which procs poison, puts him immediately in stealth (for a backstab), and gives him might. He then follows up with a pair of death blossoms for 6 bleeds, then pops back into stealth with the last of that first burst of initiative. I then pause a moment to gain back a bit of initiative and get into position for another backstab followed by a few autoattacks which refresh the poison. At this point, most squishy builds are dead.

The fact I have a condition thief is pretty much what drove me away from being a condition necro. Don’t like duplicating playstyles (what’s the point of having two toons that do the same thing?)