Guild Wars 2

A “stomp” is a finisher. When you reduce an enemy player to 0 HP, they enter the downed state. When an enemy player in a downed state is near you, you can push F to interact with them, with a “FINISH HIM” prompt. That will let you wind up for several seconds, leap into the air, and then “stomp” the enemy, killing him instantly no matter how much downed health he had left.

You don’t always want to stomp an enemy. It depends on the class and the situation. Most classes have at least one method to avoid a stomp, so you have to be mindful of what that is. There are precautions you can take to help you stomp successfully, too. Classes like Warrior, Engineer, Guardian, Necromancer and Ranger have crowd control skills on their #2 downed ability, so if you have Stability you can ignore that and stomp them successfully. Classes like Thief and Mesmer have teleportation abilities while downed, meaning that if you try to stomp them they can wind up moving out of range of it, wasting your time. Elementalist has Vapor Form while downed, which can basically counter any stomp attempt with invulnerability, so stomping them generally isn’t recommended unless you know their Vapor Form is on cooldown.

So that’s when to stomp or not to stomp based on class. Situation is also a factor. In some cases, while you’re winding up to stomp, enemy players might be reviving the downed character, and if they’re fast enough they can get him revived before your stomp occurs. That is bad! Similarly, if your health is low, you might get focused while you’re trying to stomp and wind up downed yourself before your stomp triggers. That is also bad! So, in some cases rather than stomping you’re going to want to ‘cleave’. That means inflicting damage on the downed enemy, and on other nearby enemies who aren’t downed but might want to revive him or damage you. Lava Font as a Staff Elementalist is a great ‘cleave’, a way to continually damage your downed foe while also discouraging revival attempts. But depending on your build and the enemy’s build, it might not be enough. Now, three or four of your teammates using ‘cleave’ on a downed foe usually will be enough! So you have to react based on the situation as well as the target downed class.

SkullProX.7083:

Good point, but if A and B would be better, everyone would use C and D at some point, untill they get A or B.

Technically that already exists, it’s just done over rarity tiers. A level 80 blue sword with Berserker stats isn’t as good as a level 80 green sword with Berserker stats. And so on up the rarity chart. So the best item, A, is the Ascended sword, and people can use Exotic sword B or Rare sword B- until they can get the upgrades.

(edited because Rare Sword C led to some kittening)

There’s just no difference within the rarity tier itself.

SkullProX.7083:

Oh, got it thanks

2more questions: 1, i saw it on the wiki that ‘gift of fortune’ an item for legendary needs world rank 14 to do, why is that?

The Gift of Battle is purchased in World vs. World by spending badges. It simply isn’t available until World Rank.. 15, I think. Maybe it’s 14. It’s because to earn a Legendary weapon they want players to play all game content. For a while, you actually needed rank 30.

Before World Rank was a requirement, you actually needed to fully map all the World vs. World zones for world completion, which was sizably harder than just gaining ranks, and sometimes required luck for which colour your server wound up getting. People on lower-tier servers often couldn’t get world completion as a result, back then.

3, I know that each class got some better weapon options in each mode (pvp, www, pve) but there are more viable options, according to playstyle right? Like e.g warrior pvp got at least 2-3 decent weapon combination, depending on skills and playstyle, same for warrior www, it got another 2-3 etc? Or im wrong, and usually there is 1 best weapon build?

“Best” is rarely so good that it completely invalidates other options. There are people who play in PvP or WvW with, say, Pistol/Pistol Thief, which is a decidedly underpowered weaponset. But in the right scenarios, they can still enjoy some success.

Now, “some success” is subjective. When the PvP championship events occur and get streamed on Twitch, you’re not going to see any of the top ranking teams there using a Pistol/Pistol Thief. You probably won’t see any Mace/Shield Warriors or Rifle Warriors either, or Mace/Shield Guardians. But that’s okay. You’re not a top ranking PvP player. So play what you enjoy and learn from that. If you can make it work for you, great, if not and you get frustrated, try something else. You don’t need to follow a cookie-cutter build if you don’t want to. The game’s not so complicated that you can’t find something that you like and that works for you on your own.

And there are PvP players out there who pick classes and/or weapons that don’t see a lot of “meta” use, and make it work for them at high levels through exceptional skill. Those players tend to get some extra attention, though I’m not going to name names here. You could try watching this weekend’s event to see!

Donari.5237:

I’m a bit sad to only have one slot. Now I have to choose whether to test one thing and advance its masteries enough to give feedback on higher tiers, or to smorgasbord the start of multiple things.

I think I’m leaning to testing Chronomancer in as much depth as I can.

While the revelation of four character slots might invalidate this a bit, remember, Masteries are account-bound. Even if we only had the one beta character slot and had to delete/restart it to try different things, the earned Masteries would be carried over.

Your thief utility layout is identical to mine right now, though I use Withdraw to heal instead of Hide in Shadows. For situations where mobility isn’t as important, you can swap out Signet of Shadows for another skill (Shadowstep or Blinding Powder, maybe), and then swap the Signet back in when you’re ready to travel again. I’m usually too lazy to do that in the open world, but for dungeon runs and the like it’s probably wise.

Hide the interface before you take the screenshot.

I believe the default keys are Ctrl-Shift-H to hide the interface, it’s in the game’s controls. I personally remapped it to just Ctrl-H.

Account bound and soulbound items cannot be stored in guild banks, no. Besides that, the storage would be safe, as long as you never click “Leave Guild”. If you abandon your personal storage guild, everything you’ve stashed in it is going to poof.

Music is split up largely by region, yes. Kryta has certain tunes, Maguuma has certain tunes, the Shiverpeaks have certain tunes, and Ascalon has certain tunes. There is some overlap from time to time, but there is definitely music exclusive to each region.

The only zones with specific soundtracks are Dry Top, Silverwastes, Lion’s Arch and Southsun Cove. Even in those zones, after their unique soundtracks have played through, the game will shift to some more generic tunes or tunes from other regions before eventually getting back to the unique tracks.

Orr is a bit of an odd case, as it usually has gloomy music, but every now and then a Maguuma track like Temple of Tolerance will show up and be unexpectedly cheery.

The crafting isn’t as complicated as it looks, with the discovery of recipes being the same for most of the disciplines. Combine monster part crafting components like blood or bones with raw materials to make insignias or inscriptions, then combine the insignia/inscription with weapon/armour parts to make a finished product. Discover many different types of weapons and armour to earn XP more quickly and reach the next tier of crafting, where you can start to discover new, stronger items or refine new raw materials.

Cooking is the most complex crafting discipline, because it goes all over the place with ingredients, not following the same pattern as the primary six that produce weapons and armour. Jewelry is likewise a bit different, but it at least remains consistent within itself. For Cooking, you sometimes need to produce an item at skill 125 and then use it as a component for a skill 400 item. It just goes all over the map.

Mutilate.2796:

any other chests affected by MF besides pvp reward chests?

While it hasn’t been outright stated to be so, the loot bags you get from doing Living Story instances should be affected by Magic Find like PvP reward chests are. PvP reward chests are set up to be like normal rolls on loot tables for given monsters, to simulate having killed five or ten or however many of them and give you the resulting items. Some of the Living Story instance rewards operate similarly, where the enemies in the instance give no loot, but you get a loot bag related to those creatures at the end of the instance that gives a random assortment of things the creature type can drop, ranging from junk items to rares or better. With the similarity in how the items are rewarded coming out of the loot bag, and with them showing up just a few months after the PvP reward tracks were added, it makes sense that they behave similarly.

World boss chests, champ bags and other such boxes are definitely not affected by Magic Find.

All the skills are different in their own respects.

Adrenaline is only built up in combat, and depletes while outside combat. Boosting it up lets you use a single skill tied to your currently equipped weapon, which has varying levels of power depending on how much Adrenaline you have when you use it.

Life Force builds up through skill use and having things around you die. It does not deplete outside combat. Activating it puts you in Death Shroud, which swaps in a new set of 1-5 skills, regardless of the weapon you have equipped. When active, Death Shroud serves as a buffer for your HP. You don’t take actual HP damage while in Death Shroud, your Life Force instead absorbs any damage you take, and it slowly depletes over time while active.

Initiative is the pool used for Thief weapon skills. It replaces the traditional cooldowns. A Thief can use the same non-auto attack weapon skill repeatedly, so long as his Initiative pool allows for it. Initiative regenerates at a set rate whether in or out of combat, replenishing itself at a decent rate. However, unlike other classes, a weapon swap won’t necessarily give a Thief a whole new set of abilities to use immediately. Initiative is shared between all Thief weapons, so depleting your Initiative on one set and changing to your backup weapon will still leave you with depleted Initiative.

Energy for the Revenant applies mostly to their 6-10 skills rather than their weapon skills, though some weapon skills do have small Energy requirements. A Revenant’s Energy defaults to 50%, and can only rise above that during combat. It depletes when activating skills with Energy costs, and returns to the 50% equilibrium when swapping Legends. Many Revenant utilities/elites have low or no cooldown, due to the Energy requirements, but it’s not like Thief where there are no cooldowns period. The Energy mechanic allows the Revenant to have some skills as ‘upkeep’ skills, which can give a constant effect at the cost of Energy degeneration. With the pips of regen/degen, it has the most similarities to the GW1 Energy mechanic, but is still different in several ways, mainly that you don’t start at 100% and that you can replenish some Energy via the Legend swap.

In their own ways, yes, they’re slightly different methods of restricting certain skills or opening other options. But that’s how class diversity is made. That’s why Engineers get extra skills on the F1-F5 for each skill they equip, that’s why Elementalists get access to twice as many weapon skills as other classes. Different classes play different ways. Variety!

For some more detail…

The Eye of Zhaitan event chain begins in the southern part of the Blighted Battleground, in the middle of the swamp. If you want to check the status of the event, that’s the best place to go. If you see a tower pulsing with light but no event indicators, then the event chain is on its cooldown phase and could start at any time (or not for a half hour). If you see an event “Destroy the Risen Anti-Aircraft Gun”, that’s the start of the event chain, so complete it. If you find a Sylvari NPC present (she’ll likely be defeated, so look for the skull icon on your minimap), then the event chain is underway and talking to her will mark it on your map. If there is no Sylvari NPC present and there is no tower, then the event chain finished but the follow-up Catacombs events need to be cleared before the proper cooldown can begin to reset the event.

The chain goes as follows.

Destroy the Risen Anti-Aircraft Gun > Escort the Pact Team to the Catacombs > Search the Catacombs for Artifacts > Defeat the Eye of Zhaitan > Escape the Catacombs

The world boss loot is awarded after the Eye of Zhaitan event, so it’s possible that after that all the players present will leave, which will leave the NPCs unable to complete “Escape the Catacombs” and cause the event chain to stall until someone heads in to revive them and finish it. But even when that happens, the reset isn’t complete. There are four more events to complete before it goes back to the beginning.

Ten minutes after “Escape the Catacombs” finishes, a new event will pop up in the Catacombs, “Destroy Orrian Coffins with Pact Flamethrowers”. From there, a new mini-chain starts.

Destroy Orrian Coffins with Pact Flamethrowers > Kill the Risen Wraith > Kill the Risen Noble > Kill the Risen Abomination

The Wraith will be just east of the Flamethrower event, and the Noble a bit further east. The Abomination is at the western exit of the Catacombs. Once all of those events are done, the tower/anti-aircraft gun will respawn in Blighted Battleground, and there’ll be a wait of roughly a half hour before the event chain restarts.

When players can be bothered to do all the involved events, the Eye of Zhaitan should be roughly an hourly spawn. If any of these events sit undone for a while, it simply will never spawn until players take it upon themselves to do them.

If 15% of each Trading Post sale weren’t deducted by fees, everything would become far more expensive because there would be more gold in the game, particularly concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest players, those who use the Trading Post the most. It would be catastrophic for players with less money, who would see items being priced further and further out of their reach as the rich just keep getting richer.

The 15% fee is the single strongest hedge against inflation the game has. What other ways can you think of that the game has to remove gold from the economy? Buying cultural armour and Ascended recipes only go so far, and they’re things that not everyone will do. The gem exchange is there as well. But everyone uses the Trading Post.

There is no non-disclosure agreement for any of the Heart of Thorns beta events, as things stand. You may freely share any footage you took on Twitch or Youtube or any other site.

Well, Ascended accessories can’t be crafted, so there’s that.

It’s generally worth it to get Ascended accessories ahead of exotic, particularly if you want to try Fractals someday.

The Ascended Amulet should be the first one you get. It can be obtained for 30 Laurels from a Laurel Merchant, or less Laurels and some Badges of Honour if you go buy it in World vs. World. You should do the latter if you can, as Badges are more plentiful and not time-gated like Laurels. Even if you never do World vs. World, you’ll have some Badges from Achievement Chests. When you buy an Ascended Amulet, make sure you get the version that has a Utility Infusion Slot. Each stat combo will have three versions, but the Utility Infusion Slot is exclusive to Amulets.

Your next ones to obtain should be Ascended Rings. Those cost 5 more Laurels than the Amulets, offer less statistical bonuses and cannot have a Utility Infusion Slot, so get the Amulet first. You can also earn Ascended Rings without Laurels by playing Fractals, either by collecting 10 Pristine Fractal Relics from complete Fractal runs/doing Fractal dailies, or as random drops from finishing Fractals at Reward Level 11+. Bear in mind that Ascended Rings (and Earrings) are Unique, so don’t buy the same one twice as you can only equip the same one once. If you want two Ascended Rings with identical stats, buy one with an Offensive Infusion slot and one with a Defensive Infusion slot.

Ascended Accessories, the ‘Earring’ slot, should be the last one you get. Not only do they give the smallest stat boost of all the ones you can get with Laurels, they’re also the most expensive by far, costing at base 40 Laurels and 50 Globs of Ectoplasm. That’s just not really worth it. You can get them at a much reduced price if you can earn Guild Commendations from doing Guild Missions. See if your guild runs those missions at certain times, and if you don’t have a guild, you might want to consider finding one. You can also earn them by getting World vs. World Tournament Tokens, from the World vs. World Tournament events that occur periodically. It’s been quite a while since the last Tournament, but that might mean that we’re due for one.

Ascended Backpacks are much rarer and cannot be obtained via Laurels at all. There’s a variety of different ways to get one of those, but the statistical boosts they give are miniscule, much less even than an Accessory, so it shouldn’t be a high priority for you.

1: There’s an option in the Gameplay Settings for that. Push F11 to access your Settings. If you’ve never been into there, you probably have a few other things that you should check out there, such as enabling AoE Looting and tinkering with your camera settings.

2: More/bigger bags let you hold more things. Holding more things lets you play for a longer time before needing to find an NPC to sell to or take time to use the Trading Post. The type of bags you get is up to you, of course. I have two Invisible Bags on my main character to hold alternate sets of equipment, food consumables, and other things I don’t want to sell by accident. To note, it’s much cheaper right now to get Candy Corn from the Trading Post, convert it to Cobs, and use those to get 20 slot Hallowe’en Pails than it is to actually craft normal 20 slot bags. But 18 slot bags are even cheaper still, so consider carefully what you want and need.

3: I’d just play it, but that’s just me.

4: “Best” is a bit subjective. The best option is usually whatever does the most damage, but that has to be balanced against your own personal survivability. You don’t deal any damage when you’re dead. So sometimes people might take a more defensive trait line instead of an offensive one to ensure they survive, or they might equip a few pieces (or more) of defensive gear to give them more staying power. And then there’s some traits that are taken as matters of convenience, such as passive speed boosts/Swiftness traits, falling damage reduction traits, and so on.

It’s also worth noting that the way you spec a character for PvE is quite different than for PvP/WvW. Defensive stats become much more important when you’re fighting players instead of AI.

Oxidia.8103:

I have around 370 mf. I addition to that, while i’m doing a world boss i pop mf food, utility, some kind of metabolic/utility primer, banner mf and a mf booster. And if there is bonfire somewhere i use it of pop one myself. I have then over 500 of mf. And if i am on sw the mf is even higher becaise of the buff. The only thing i noticed is that i get more rares. I can’t remember what was my last exotic i got. So there you go.

Well, so you know, open world chests don’t care about your Magic Find, so boosting it while fighting world bosses doesn’t really do anything. You’d improve the chances that the Champion Svanir Shaman might have a rare or exotic on his corpse to loot (if you’re one of the ones lucky enough to get credit and a lootable corpse from him), but it doesn’t affect the goodies you get in the big world chest or in the bonus rare wiggle chest.

Similarly, in Silverwastes most of your rewards are coming from event chests. Your Magic Find is only going to matter for opening Lost Bandit Chests (which don’t actually have exotic equipment on their loot tables) or from the random enemies between forts that the vast majority of people ignore. So unless you’re going on sprees killing devourers and earth elementals and hyenas in Silverwastes, you won’t notice the Magic Find too much there either.

If you have a lot of Magic Find, you should be going to events where you can kill huge quantities of loot-dropping enemies. Spend some time in Orr, do the Temple events there where dozens of enemies will feed themselves into the players thresher for loot drops. Try out Dry Top during the sandstorm and slaughter all of the Dust Mites and Devourers from the events there to pick up some dough and Charged Lodestones. Basically, fight lots of critters that you can kill quickly and that drop individual loot. Then you’ll see your Magic Find pay off.

A couple of things I haven’t seen anyone mention in this comparison yet…

First, Jade Wind isn’t a skill that can be pre-cast like Basilisk Venom. That means that the Revenant attempting to use it needs to be near his opponents, and has a one-second casting time to deal with, something that can be reacted to and which will have a distinct animation. If I see a Revenant casting Jade Wind, I’m going to dodge it or try to interrupt him. If I see a thief, he’s probably already used Shadow Shot from quite a distance to petrify me before I spotted him, to say nothing of actually approaching in stealth with the venom pre-cast.

The second factor is the Energy system. It costs 50 Energy to cast Jade Wind. That’s half of the maximum resources of the Revenant, resources that he needs to do other things. If the Revenant is using Jade Wind, that’s five seconds of Impossible Odds that he’s giving up, for example. It’s depleting the Energy pool he might need to restore his health with his healing skill. It might even lock out some of his weapon skills for a little bit, as some of them have small Energy costs attached. When a Thief uses Basilisk Venom, it in no way impacts our ability to Shadow Refuge or Shadowstep or Hide in Shadows or Withdraw or Signet of Agility or Heartseeker.

With those factors in mind, the difference in the skills winds up being less glaring.

Ardid.7203:

People doesn’t hate threarne because “he” is a bad leader or because “he” took credit from the player. People hate Threarne because the story fails to deliver focus on the player, puting instead the interest in Threarne.

His role in the whole story IS bigger than the role of the PC. The player make some chices, but it is Threarne the one that offer those choices. The player influence the world, but is Threarne the one that make that call. At least in the second half of the PS, the story revolves around him, much more than around your character.

That said, I thing people shouldn’t blindly hate Threarne, but instead vocally hate the whole second half of the Personal Story. Threarne is just a symptom of the real problem.

And do you know why that’s the case? It’s just a symptom of an MMORPG storyline.

This game has five races to play as, all with the same storyline end goal, the fight against Zhaitan. With a lengthy story like GW2 launched with, that’s a lot of potential differences. Asura, Charr, Sylvari, all those races should wind up handling things different ways. While the low level stories focus on those individual races and have a lot of character as a result, it winds up becoming an unfeasible level of voice acting/story writing to have the story remain diverged at the higher levels, not to mention the question of “Which one is canon” if each race winds up with their own way to slay Zhaitan in their own dedicated story. So instead, the player character does not take the primary leadership role, which makes it easier to write the story coalescing at higher levels, first via the Order mentors and then via Trahearne.

But even so, is it really that different from the low levels? You had Destiny’s Edge then to guide you along, they were always more important than your character then.

And what about Guild Wars 1, which so many people look back fondly upon? We’ve already seen people mention Kormir, but it’s not just a Nightfall thing. In Factions, you’re following the orders of Togo and Mhenlo all the way through. In Prophecies, you’re following the orders of a series of people, from Prince Rurik to the White Mantle to Evennia to Vizier Khilbron. The changes of “Who’s giving us orders in this mission” often wind up being very quick and arbitrary, too. For all the complaining about the “Trahearne was just introduced at Clawr Island, and now he’s replacing our mentor”, the introduction of Khilbron in the middle of Sanctum Cay is even more sudden. “Good, you’ve made it to me with the scepter. But Evennia’s just been captured. Lets go to the docks to escape.”

At the end of the day, it’s an MMORPG. Some shortcuts need to be taken with the story because it’s being designed for many different characters, and having some NPCs around to serve as a focal point is one of the tried and true ways to handle that. I’m curious to see what they’re coming up with for Heart of Thorns to try to alleviate some of that. Even some of the little things like giving the player choices for how to handle a given mission, or just extra dialogue while moving around in the world, should help. But the NPCs are going to remain, just because it’s easier to provide plot hooks with consistent characters than via the PC who is by nature incredibly inconsistent. If my main character is an Asura Warrior, he’s going to be very different than your Charr Elementalist, but Braham and Rox will be our adventuring buddies regardless so they’re key to the story.

In addition to the Separatist Caves in Iron Marches, killing Flame Legion anywhere in the zone will also give Ritual Bags that can have Linen. In addition to that, the Flame Legion can also directly drop salvage items that will turn into Linen, making them a bit more attractive to kill than the Separatists that lack such salvage items.

You can range all the way from the southwest corner of the zone all the way to the far north fighting different groups of Flame Legion to avoid DR, and maybe even kill the Fire Shaman world boss while you’re there just because you can.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I’m like 90% sure that HoT will remove the last few remnants of underwater content.

It has been removed from PvP, WvW, all starting zones, and a few mid level zones already.

You were already proven wrong on the WvW point. Now’s the point where I get to tell you that every starting zone still has underwater combat.

Do you actually still play the game, or is complaining on forums your full-time job now?

Average gameplay certainly does not produce more Dragonite Ore than Princess is capable of eating. No steps need to be taken to make Princess more rewarding, nor any of the other Ascended material consumers.

Ascended materials are meant to have no cash value at all. That’s why they can’t be sold to merchants. These items assigning them some (albeit small) cash value is something that has to be monitored very closely, hence the limit on daily consumption.

Sorann Peace.9056:

The Evon Gnashblade Look-Alike?

Also, about the second Evon Gnashblade, I suspect that to be a joke about how players will often make lookalikes of prominent story figures. Hell, I once saw 5 players all dressed up and named after each member of Destiny’s Edge respectively. It happens all the time, and people have even made Scarlet Briar (AKA “Ceara”) look-alikes.

The Evon lookalike isn’t a joke about players making their own versions of characters. Rather, for several months before Lion’s Arch was officially rebuilt, Evon Gnashblade was in two places at once in Lion’s Arch. He was standing in the north by the trading post there as he always had, but he was also in Fort Marriner in the south enlisting Hero-Tron to be his spy. It was an oversight, when they plugged in the Evon in the fort to take part in the dialogue, they just forgot to remove the original Evon who’d always been there.

So the lookalike is their way okittennowledging their mistake in tongue-in-cheek fashion.

It’s a bit of a long story, so bear with me.

About a year ago, a major patch to the game tinkered with the Personal Story as it had been laid out. A whole chapter was removed (Your Greatest Fear) and the final story steps had their order altered in an attempt to make it seem more like your story and less like Trahearne’s. While the original game had “The Source of Orr” as the second-last story step, where you fight the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan to be able to cleanse Orr, the rework moved it much earlier, before the Pact armies began to march over the ruined land.

People generally did not like these changes.

The patch three weeks ago restored the Personal Story to its old order. You were caught in the middle of it, apparently, so you will need to redo some steps. I don’t think there’s going to be a solution beyond replaying those steps, but fortunately it’s not a lot of them, if I’m remembering right. And your reward from the patch is that the final story step, Victory or Death, is now possible to solo, whereas before the patch three weeks ago it was a story dungeon requiring five people.

You can unlock dungeon reward tracks for permanent access by completing that dungeon’s Story Mode in PvE. Now that Arah no longer has a Story Mode, you’d need to complete one of its Explorable Mode paths (any one) to get it as a permanent reward track unlock.

Well, there’s world bosses in the game already that spawn at irregular times. Dredge Commissar, Ogre Wars (when it works), Fire Shaman, Eye of Zhaitan, Rhendak the Crazed, and all the Temple events in Orr. Should you want to have a world boss that might not be there when you go looking for it, you can seek those encounters out.

When the event is working, you want to pay attention for the Attack on Bloodgorge Watch or Reclaim Bloodgorge Watch events. After whichever of those events runs, you need to wait in the northwest part of the camp for a while, and the NPC Maybri Shadowstalker will emerge from a building and talk about how she’s prepared for an attack on Foulbear Kraal. Talking to her will start the world boss event chain, as she and a couple of NPCs will run east and blast through the gate to enter the Kraal.

After starting the event, most players will run ahead and kill the designated champions to finish it, leaving Maybri and company alone to fight the ogre trash. The ogre trash will defeat them, and this will leave the event hanging. As such, when you kill the champions to succeed at the event, you need to run back to where you entered the camp and revive the fallen NPCs to make the event move again. If you don’t do that fast enough, that might be one of the causes for it to bug out.

The event can also be started at Sapper’s Delve by doing the events there, but it seems to bug out more frequently on that side. Captain Gregory and Vanguard Scout Finley are the relevant NPCs from the human side of the event taking the place of Maybri and Slashclaw. After killing the champions, they need to be revived to keep the event moving. The event might also be broken by people advancing the human side events while the Charr side is already attacking the Kraal, or vice versa.

If Maybri/Finley are just standing around inside Foulbear Kraal giving you dialogue as if they can start the event chain, then it’s bugged. It might get fixed should Bloodgorge or Sapper’s Delve fall to the enemy, but it’s just as likely at that point that neither of those locations will get attacked due to the bug.

At the moment, the plan is for Svaard to be available to everyone as a reward from a PvP reward track, while Nika will remain exclusive to people who purchase Heart of Thorns.

Bear in mind, people who buy Heart of Thorns will also have access to Elite Specializations that people who don’t will be unable to use, and those are likely going to affect the game much more than the Mist Champions. Turai is pretty good as a baseline option!

You can’t break your character, so don’t worry about that. When you hit max level, you’ll have enough Hero Points for all of your class features, so at worst if you wind up buying things ‘suboptimally’ you’re going to be inconveniencing yourself for a few levels until you get more points. But spending no points at all because you’re scared you’ll make mistakes is much more suboptimal than spending them.

The specializations are the most point-intensive investments, so looking them over and figuring out which one looks the best to you might be wisest. You’ll get access to utility skills a full ten levels before you get access to specializations, so your first points should likely be going into filling out some skills to slot between 6-9. From there, you can save up some points to be ready to buy at least partway into a specialization come level 21. You won’t have enough points to finish it, but you’ll be able to get some neat abilities regardless. You can then bolster that specialization line as you gain more levels, and prepare yourself for when the second one unlocks so you can use two at once.

It’s a good thing you’re not mentioning underwater combat, because GW1’s underwater combat was clearly superior to GW2’s.

That said, the real issue GW1 had was that you had to type in an emote every time you wanted to jump. That made mountain goating my way through Shards of Orr kind of repetitive…

The vast majority of Reward Tracks are repeatable. After completing one, mouse over it to get to the “activate reward track” button to select it again and it will reset so you can earn the goodies a second time.

Right now, I believe, only the Balthazar Back Item and the Silverwastes reward tracks cannot be repeated. The Maguuma Wastes reward track that gives Dry Top rewards can be repeated, as can all dungeon tracks and all other regional tracks.

You’re probably not actually at the part where you have to choose, that’s why.

Over the course of the 5-6 missions of your level 30 story, you’ll get to know all of the Orders and pick tasks to do for each of them. At the climax of the story arc, you’ll then get to pick which Order you want to permanently join, and the game will make clear that this is a Major Choice. When that time comes, you’ll know it’s there. In the missions before that, you’ll be picking between two of the Orders to do different story missions while the third takes care of other things.

So if you can’t follow the Order of Whispers right now, they’ll be an option after your next story mission, and it might be the Vigil that sits out.

The weapons and armour you can buy from the Orders will be Soulbound to the character buying them. That said, the purchase will unlock them as skins for your account, and you can then use Transmutation Charges to put those skins on other pieces of gear to ensure that whatever character you want can use the skin, regardless of their Order.

You’ll likely be using Transmutation Charges for those skins anyway even for the Order your character chooses, since the Order weapons and armour are only Rare quality at level 80, and you’re going to want at least Exotic quality equipment when you get to that point.

You know this is why they have betas, right?

You feel that the revenant has low DPS. (You’re right) So you post and offer your opinion. The devs read your opinion and have a chance to change things.

You’re right, we are a long way away from completion. But isn’t it better to be able to say “The revenant’s DPS is too low” now while we are a long way from completion, and get it fixed before release, rather than getting your completed product, creating your new revenant, and being stuck with low DPS? That’s what beta tests are for.

Well… it’s a beta test. If it was done on its own separate server as beta tests normally are, then there’d still be no rewards, no progression and no guild.

I’m not really sure what you’re expecting out of a beta test? If you want rewards and progression, you’ll have to wait for the release of the game. The beta tests will help get us there by providing feedback on the concepts and features the expansion will have.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

But the OP was saying guild chat should be open for him/her to use, and if it were open for him/her to use it would be open for the rest of his/her guild as well and thus guild chat would not in fact be empty.

He’s right, sharing what we see could make for a lot of good word of mouth for the class (with the opposite also true to be fair)

Revenants can’t represent guilds, because then they’d be able to place items in guild banks, which would circumvent their current “No Trading Post/Mail” restrictions to keep them from moving items from their soon-to-be-deleted inventories into the wide game world beyond.

It’s something they might work on in the future, but right now that’s why you can’t represent a guild.

You can still party with other players. It’s not quite getting to share with a whole guild, but chatting with four others is better than chatting with none.

Bear in mind, a lot of your guild is going to be testing their Revenants too, in all likelihood, so even if you have access to guildchat it might wind up being emptier this weekend anyway.

Jumping puzzle and other open world chests are tied to the level of the opening character, yes. The general types of items remain the same. As an example, the chest at the end of the Sharkmaw jumping puzzle in Lion’s Arch gives two pieces of equipment and two upgrade slot items. For a level 20 character, it’ll give level 20 equipment, but a level 80 character will get level 80 equipment.

There are some places where it’s advantageous to have lower level characters open the chests. Silver Doubloons are upgrade slot items that happen to be required for a Legendary weapon, and can only be looted from chests by level 20-35ish players. Similarly, level 50-60 gear can be salvaged into Linen, Platinum and Hard Wood, which are more expensive than level 80 Silk, Mithril and Elder Wood due to scarcity.

You don’t. There is no beta map this weekend.

Jitters.9401:

1) Rangers can trait for more stealth then a thief and no reveal. Just saw a ranger doing that today . He would attack me from stealth then re-stealth right away. I stomped him, but we are talking about stealth. He was a dire /condi set up so had I not run any condi removal I would have lost.

Sounds like Runes of the Trapper to me, something you have access to as well as a thief. They stealth you when you use a trap skill. Since rangers have no ‘stealth attacks’, they can just wait for the stealth to wear off to attack you again, and thus not suffer Revealed.

“But traps suck!” Maybe they do, but you’re saying you beat this ranger, so is that really an issue?

The Trapper Runes work really well for thieves anyway, when you factor in the new thief trait that generates a Needle Trap when you use a healing skill. This lets you use Withdraw as your heal and still stealth from it anyway as if it were Hide in Shadows.

2) Mesmers now have easier to use stealth with better cooldowns.

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Cloak and dagger= Useless in many cases.

Maybe you need to use Dagger/Pistol if you feel Cloak and Dagger is unreliable? Black Powder into Heartseeker costs more initiative but doesn’t require you to hit anything.

arenta.2953:

o.o
ok did not know that

when did they change it?

Residual Venoms was folded baseline two patches ago along with the major overhauls, so all venoms last an extra hit now. Devourer Venom had its Immobilize duration nerfed to compensate for that, but Basilisk Venom remained unchanged.

So when you talk about ‘venom traits’ enhancing things, bear in mind that there’s now only two of those. Leeching Venoms, which lets you siphon health on hit with a venom, and Venomous Aura, which reduces cooldowns and lets you apply venoms to nearby allies.

Basilisk Venom lasts for two hits now, so it’s really two one second stuns on either one or two targets each 45 seconds.

Verata recipes are only available in the Silverwastes zone, west of Brisban Wildlands. You can find them rarely in Lost Bandit Chests there, or alternately purchase the recipe from the Trading Post from another player who’s found it.

Oizrop.7465:

all classes have been weakened substantially

Once upon a time, in PvE, my Thief had very limited means to gain Fury. There was one trait in Critical Strikes that would give 4 seconds of Fury on hitting an enemy below half health, with a 30 second cooldown. The Trickery trait line had Thrill of the Crime which could also grant Fury, but that wasn’t a good trait line to pick in PvE because of the poor stats associated with it. I had to accept that unless I was running with Warriors, Fury would be a boon I’d largely do without.

For the last two weeks, things have been different. Rather than the old major trait of 4 seconds of Fury each 30 seconds against 50% health, the Critical Strikes line now has a minor trait that gives 4 seconds of Fury each 10 seconds against foes under 90% health. On top of that, I get a new major trait that converts 10% of my Precision to Ferocity, and another new major trait that extends my Fury by 2 seconds each time I land a critical hit while under the effect of Fury, with a 2 second cooldown. The latter trait also boosts my Ferocity by 250 more.

I am scoring more critical hits and doing a lot more damage than I used to as a result.

I’m sorry that you haven’t figured out how to make a strong new build since the patch. The strong new builds are out there, though. As others have said, the issue might simply be the downscaling changes. Go run Citadel of Flame instead of Ascalonian Catacombs and see how you fare there.

Characters should be much stronger now than they were before.

For the trait lines (now called Specializations), they work as follows.

The first trait you unlock in the line is a passive trait, whose effect will always be in effect while you have that Specialization active. The next three traits you unlock are ‘exclusive’ ones, where you need to choose one of the three to be active, via the Build menu. After that comes another passive trait which will always be in effect like the previous one, and then a second set of three traits where you pick one to be active. It repeats like that once more. Thus, with a full Specialization unlocked (for 60 Hero Points), you’ll get three passive effects that are always on, and three trait choices each made from a pool of three options.

When you open up the second and third Specializations, they’ll be treated the same way. Once you reach level 80 (or before that, if you do a good amount of Hero Challenges), you’ll have earned enough Hero Points to fully unlock every Specialization, and will be able to freely swap your active three Specializations among the five available to you, changing your build as you see fit.

Just to note, over the last year we actually have discovered a new non-hostile group of centaurs, so that takes care of that part of your question.

Theoretically, centaurs could be a new race somewhere down the line. It’s probably not as likely as the Tengu, given that the centaurs are a strong racial enemy of humans and the major adversary in several zones, whereas the Tengu have a sectioned off part of the map that serves as their homeland and are not actual enemies in any zone, as far as I’m aware (there’s the one hero challenge…).

It would be a big hassle to rework armour for centaurs, though, just because their gear would be very different. Tengu, on the other hand, have the same model/build as Charr, if you look closely, so while there’s definitely be some differences in their armour it wouldn’t be nearly the same overhaul needed.

For some more background, in the original Guild Wars game (which had Heroes, NPCs who you could recruit and customize as you progressed the story), there was a single centaur Hero to obtain, Zhed Shadowhoof. Unsurprisingly, he was xenophobic and abrasive, but he was a Hero no less. As with most GW1 Heroes, his equipment is available in GW2 as level 80 exotics, which always makes me wonder how exactly a GW2 character can properly wear “Zhed’s Boots” or “Zhed’s Leggings”. I mean, shouldn’t they actually be called “Zhed’s Shoes”?

Purchased the original game before January 23rd.

If you purchased the original game after January 23rd but before the Heart of Thorns pre-purchase went up, then you can instead get what you paid for it deducted from your purchase price for Heart of Thorns. Since that purchase price is going to be at least $10, with the game not being sold for less than that, you’ll be able to use those savings to get your character slot anyway if you want.

Cyvien.8049:

How do you know the character in picture is not a staff wielding druid? Is the medium armor not druidic enough or the quiver? Please quote the source of your finding.

The reason it’s not a druid is because the colouring scheme is identical to the current five Thief specialization backdrops you can see in the game. That’s why on seeing it, everyone is assuming that it’s the Thief elite specialization, and it shows that the Staff will be its weapon.

The Dragonhunter and Chronomancer specialization backdrops were also included in the client download and have been seen as well. Sure enough, they match up in colouring with the normal Guardian and Mesmer specialization backdrops.

The formulas for the various conditions take your level into account already, whereas the formulas for direct damage via Power don’t. That’s why your Power increases steadily as you gain levels but your visible Condition Damage stat doesn’t. Rest easy, because your conditions are becoming innately stronger anyway.

Emptor.9148:

i doubt it’s kits unless they remove weapon swap with the elite spec (if you didnt know engies dont have weapon swap and kits are why).

Well, a Thief with kits could keep weapon swap and not be broken. Why? Initiative. Engineer is perhaps at its strongest when it can rotate through several kits to use a lot of cooldown abilities in succession. For Thief, that’s not an option due to the Initiative pool being shared among all weapons.

If Thief kit ‘weapon skills’ still use Initiative, as I assume they would, then that pool would serve to balance things even with the weapon swap remaining.

Shortbow is a tremendous utility weapon that lets you keep distance from your enemies. It has evasion on #3 Disrupting Shot, a spammable blast finisher with #2 Cluster Bomb, and teleportation on #5 Infiltrator’s Arrow. Whatever main weaponset you pick, Shortbow is a great backup weapon, because there’s going to be some enemies you just don’t want to get near.

Pistol main-hand is a condition damage weapon, best paired with off-hand Dagger. It will play differently than the other weaponsets above, looking to bleed out enemies with Vital Shot and the stealth attack Sneak Attack, using Cloak and Dagger to enter stealth and Shadow Strike to keep your distance. Pistol/Pistol… is just not a weaponset to use. It is the one thief weapon that lacks damage mitigation entirely. While it has Black Powder on the off-hand Pistol for the blind field, there’s no reason to stand point-blank in a blind field firing weak pistol shots when you could be cleaving enemies with a dagger or sword instead. It has no ability to enter stealth, and its #3 Unload is an attack intended for Power builds, while the auto-attack Vital Shot is intended for condition damage builds. The weaponset simply has no synergy and no survivability, and should be avoided. You can still use it to solo, it’s not like it’s unusable and a death sentence, but it’s noticeably inferior to every other thief option.

As for stats? The more Power, Precision and Ferocity you can stack, the better, unless you’re using Pistol/Dagger (go Condition Damage, then). Focus on those stats, specifically Power at lower levels and expanding to the others as you get higher level and more stats open up on equipment. Toughness and Vitality should be sprinkled in if you’re still having troubles surviving. If you can get by without them, great, you’ll do more damage and kill things before they can kill you. But if you need them, grab them. Your own experience will teach you how much you’ll need them!