Guild Wars 2

Azure.8670:

ive never noticed DR. when do this even happen? I farmed silverwaste everyday for 6 months before I stopped farming, then SW came out, and thats all I do

Most Silverwastes ‘farmers’ would never notice DR, because of how the map is set up. Over the course of Silverwastes runs, you likely will be going to different forts, escorting bulls, and being generally mobile throughout the map. And then at the end of that, you get the Vinewrath where you move to yet another part of the map, and potentially some Pac-Man.

DR affects people who try to farm a specific area to the exclusion of all others. Since the poster here is talking about farming for Charged Cores/Charged Lodestones, I’ll go out on a limb and say that he’s doing the Mite Farm in Dry Top. If he has a character planted in Dry Top at the Mite Farm and loads that character at :40 after each hour to do that timed event, then log it back out after the second event at :50, he’s going to be hit with DR eventually. He’s repetitively farming the same event in the same area with no movement whatsoever. That’s exactly the sort of behaviour that DR is meant to prevent.

If, on the other hand, he was running Dry Top as the designers intended, he’d be much more mobile on the map, he’d be travelling around and doing other events, and because of that mobility DR would never happen. He wouldn’t just be killing one type of enemy in one region of the map during one event.

Personally, the only place I’ve ever run into DR is during Hallowe’en, in the Mad King’s Labyrinth, because the whole Labyrinth is considered to be one ‘region’ on the map. As a result, even if you move around the maze and explore it thoroughly, the game will consider you to be lingering overlong in one region and the DR will start to hit you, reducing your XP from events and the drops from enemies noticeably. But in a place like Dry Top or the Silverwastes or even Orr, as long as you’re not planted to one exact place doing the exact same things for an eternity, you’re not going to notice DR.

Try to get credit for the “Defend the Megalaser” event during one of the phases as well. That means that in one battery phase you’ll need to hang around the middle long enough to get credit at the laser, then go to a battery and do enough there to get credit for it too.

With credit for all four separate events spread over the three battery phases, you should get your achievement.

I ran into a Trapper thief while trying to take a supply camp in WvW a while back. It was myself and a guardian, and sure enough the thief was staying in stealth most of the time and laying down the traps and caltrops and other assorted nasty things. We landed some hits here and there, but it was an uphill battle.

I finally thought outside the box a bit and stealthed myself so I could use the Shortbow stealth attack when he popped into sight at one point, and that brief Immobilize was all it took to land a burst on him and down him. It only worked because he’d just used Withdraw beforehand to heal a bit and drop the extra trap/stealth, but that particular Thief build has limited condi cleanse, with how Shadow’s Embrace was nerfed. Immobilize or hard CCs will give you a dead thief.

Why would you need two characters for each class, when the difference between a Guardian and a Dragonhunter is assigning points into one specific trait line, and you can change back from a Dragonhunter into a Guardian simply by reassigning those traits?

Some of them might be stronger, but the theory is that down the road, more elite specializations will be added, and they’ll all be mutually exclusive. You might enjoy the Dragonhunter with its Longbow and traps now, but a year from now they might also introduce the Inquisitor with an Axe and mantras. You wouldn’t be able to use the two trait lines together, because only the elite trait slot will hold them. That’s where the choice will come in.

In the meantime, if you have and currently enjoy your build and don’t feel that your first elite specialization offers enough to make up for the trait line you’d have to give up, that’s your reason for not wanting to use the first elite specialization.

Travelling to Rata Sum has felt off to me for a while, and today I finally figured out why. When you go to Rata Sum via Asura Gate from Lion’s Arch, you load in the southeast of the city, by the gate from Metrica Province, rather than in the north of the city by the gate from Lion’s Arch. This was introduced once Lion’s Arch was rebuilt, I believe. It probably should be fixed!

The Trickster trait in the Trickery line for thieves changes Trick skills to remove a condition on use, in addition to their normal effects. This almost works perfectly! However, the Weakness condition is somehow unaffected. While Trickster allows for all other conditions to be removed, using a Trick while affected by Weakness will not cleanse the Weakness.

This is a bit of an odd bug, but hopefully it’s one that’s easy to fix.

The points are indeed only for beta characters to progress their masteries. Some of the higher-tier masteries require many points to unlock, so they threw in some extra points from achievements to help people who grind the amount of XP needed to get them.

Talindra.4958:

thanks xiahou for your respond. I seek advice from admin not player as I mentioned in my post unless you can confirm that you are one of admin. I have too tested in game like you after only done 1 ap. but Iike I said i seek answer from admin.

You get an answer from “admins” every time you load your beta character. It tells you on every loading screen that progress earned on beta characters will not carry over to your normal account.

Ze Dos Cavalos.6132:

Xiahou Mao are you a Dev?
Did any Dev gave the answer no yet?
I they wanted to make achievements to help guide players they should make them give 0 ap.

It’s really not hard to check in-game. I finished a beta achievement this afternoon. When I go to a non-beta character, the achievement is unfinished. The beta account is a copy of your main account, things you do on the beta account do not in any way carry over to your main account. That includes loot obtained, precursors you get by throwing your free exotics into the Mystic Forge, WvW/PvP rank progress, and any achievements you obtain.

That’s your answer. No, you don’t get to keep the achievement points. An answer from a dev is unnecessary, you can see this for yourself in the game if you can be bothered to expend the effort.

The answer has already been given. It’s no.

The beta achievements can’t be added to your main account anymore than doing daily achievements on your beta characters can be added to your main account. The normal account and the beta account are two separate entities.

The zone rewards are set up like PvP Reward Tracks, though the UI for the system is lacking in its current incarnation. Some zones list 4 rewards, some 5, and some 6, but they’re all earned in the same fashion, with event/JP/mini-dungeon completions progressing you along the Reward Track, which has 40 rewards along it just like the PvP ones. The milestone rewards, at reward 20 and 40, are always the baseline reward x10. The other rewards will pop up periodically throughout the track, at set intervals but at a lesser rate than whatever the track’s baseline reward is. But it is entirely predictable and there’s no randomness to it.

The rewards per zone do cycle, I believe that cycle will happen on a weekly basis, not a daily basis. What we don’t know yet is if your progress on a zone’s Reward Track will remain even after the rewards cycle. Each zone currently has eight different Reward Tracks, ensuring that at any given time there will be a zone you can go to for Giant Eyes, or Vials of Powerful Blood, or Unidentified Dyes, or whatever else you might be looking to get.

Completing two events is enough to earn one reward. There’s also some overflow earned from that, just like playing PvP games, so eventually you’ll have enough ‘extra’ overflow to get rewards from back to back events.

bostrees.5306:

Specifically I’m wondering what’s the point on the Berserker and Daredevil, considering that right now they sound like they’re just modified versions of the meta-build for damage output for those classes. Sure, we haven’t even seen them in effect yet, but I was hoping to see either of those very melee-oriented combat classes get a role as support, perhaps some kind of Battle Medic (which could go Thief or Warrior, imo) but instead we’re getting more 120-range slugfest builds it seems…

The current “meta build” for Thief is single-target damage with heavy stealth use, engaging and disengaging as needed. Daredevil is about area effect damage without any stealth and being able to deal sustained damage in melee over time with extra dodging options. The only similarity between the current “meta build” and Daredevil is that they both hit things in melee.

Retaliation doesn’t actually reflect damage, it just inflicts a set amount of damage based on your own Power stat whenever an enemy inflicts damage on you. The incoming attack might do 100 damage, or it might do 5000 damage, but Retaliation will always inflict the same return damage on the attacker.

As such, if you block an attack, you don’t take damage, and thus Retaliation won’t trigger.

anduriell.6280:

You can not finish the dailies if you deeply dislike fractals because the community it gathers. And the punishment for that is loosing AP and Spirit shards. That i think is a big deal.

Have you tried making your own LFG, rather than joining someone else’s? That way you get to choose the community you do the fractals with. Honestly, no one who ‘speedruns’ is going to want to do a level 1 fractal anyway, they’re going to be doing level 9 if for some reason they feel they have to do the 1-10 daily on a given day. So make your own level 1 LFG, say everyone is welcome, and get ready to meet some new friends.

You have it way easier than I do. Your issue is just with the community, which you can work around by appealing to non-speedrunners, but I have no such luck when faced with those Maguuma Jungle double dailies that make me feel physically ill due to the oppressive jungle environment that assaults my frigid Canadian sensibilities. All you have to do is find friendly people, whereas I’m left to struggle with being able to make the run into the Thaumanova Reactor for Daily Fire Elemental before regurgitating my poutine.

It’s a struggle I usually fail.

The Great Al.2546:

This still doesn’t completely answer the question of, if I have a target on my head, but I can’t see where it is coming from, how can I time the dodge? Or am I supposed to just run for cover?

Well, you first need to display some situational awareness. Know what enemies are around you, pull the camera back more if you have to. Your reaction should be different depending on if it’s a troll or a sniper.

If it’s a troll, and there’s bee AoEs all over, you’re going to need to move to stay out of them since they’re going to be coming for you. Be wary of Cripple effects that could doom you, and focus-fire the troll if you can, since once it dies the bees will immediately vanish.

If it’s a sniper, then once the target shows up you’ve got about three seconds to react. If you have a projectile block or preferably a reflect, use that and watch the sniper kill itself. If there is cover to take to use line of sight to block the attack, that’s the next best step. Your final option would be to use a crowd control skill on the sniper to interrupt his charging up of the attack.

Boonstrip might also be an option, since the reason the sniper attack is so devastating is because during the charging up of the attack, the sniper grants itself 25 stacks of Might to attack with. If you can strip that away from it, even if you can’t dodge the attacks the damage will be greatly reduced. 750 Power makes a big difference.

Are you sure you can’t select them, did you load the game to check? The new boosters being sold in the gem store aren’t the “Enchanted Reward Boosts”, they’re new unstackable types.

Now, if they did go back and remove the ability to select karma from the old ones, then I’m sorry for doubting you.

I can sympathize. I feel the same annoyance when there’s other double daily achievements, like say Daily Maguuma Jungle Miner and Daily Great Jungle Wurm. Two out of four PvE dailies try to force me into a jungle biome, a place with giant bugs that want to suck my character’s blood out and that’s so hot and sweaty it gets uncomfortable. As a Canadian, I much prefer to be able to spend my time in areas I can relate to, like the Shiverpeaks, so it’s worrisome when I wind up unable to complete two out of the four PvE dailies because of the location they’re set in.

looks innocent

GummiBear.2756:

Though how the earth would you somehow get thief stealth and warrior rampage reduction on the same character?

While it’s not generally feasible, you have the Thief either use Shadow Refuge on the Warrior, or have the Thief use Cluster Bomb to blast finish a smoke field with the Warrior inside it.

The Thief’s stealth damage reduction from Shadow Arts applies to all stealth generated by that Thief, not just to himself being stealthed. Indeed, if a Thief with that specialization is stealthed by another thief who doesn’t have it, he won’t get the reduction.

There’s some randomness added to WvW matchups. Basically, a random number (1 to 50? 1 to 100?) is rolled and added or subtracted from each server’s rating before each matchup starts. That variance will allow the colours to change from time to time, but the higher-ranked server is still more likely to be green, and the lower one red.

AntiStoopMode.8942:

Why we cannot do dungeons to level up masteries?

You can do dungeons to level up the “Central Tyria” Masteries. The Maguuma Masteries only level up from XP earned in Heart of Thorns areas.

Now of course, if there will be dungeons in Heart of Thorns, you could use those.

Apparently the food basket event can be fixed by letting the “Hungry Bats” kill Itzel defenders and get at the uninteractable baskets. Once they eat some larva from them, you can deliver more to get event credit.

Of course, you need all the players in the area to allow this to happen, so it’s still not easy.

I didn’t have a lot of time, but I peeked at Cursed Shore with a beta character, where the rewards were Ancient Bone/Charged Core/Charged Lodestone/Giant Eye. Completing events made some extra sparkles go towards the top-left of the screen rather than just to my XP bar, and after the second event I finished there, an Ancient Bone was added to my inventory. The map still said that my next reward would be ‘Ancient Bone’ though, so you might need to complete several events to get to the next tier of reward?

Getting the first tier of gliding mastery seems to take about 1 level worth of XP. The second tier looks to be more like 4 levels worth of XP. If it continues rising at that rate, with each tier taking 4 times as much XP as the one before it, the higher levels will take quite some time.

Well, you can log out once the Verdant Brink story starts, and log back in to be in the zone itself outside the story.

Assuming you’re talking about the dye’s icon, that means it’s a gemstore exclusive dye. It can’t be obtained from an Unidentified Dye, it can only be obtained from special dye packs sold on the gem store or occasionally found in Black Lion Chests. Those dyes tend to be more expensive than other ones as a result.

Greencactaur.4396:

Aren’t you the horrible general who lost to zhuge liang? offtopic btw.

Nah, I’m the awesome warrior who defeated Zhao Yun! Something that no one else ever managed to do…

There might be some biased reports that go on about the overall war with Zhuge Liang and such, but I wouldn’t fall for those. It was Jiang Wei’s fault.

mikoe.6574:

I love the character classes in this game, switching from class to class gives a different feel for the game which is great. I rotate between 4 classes which keeps doing the same content over and over somewhat fun. If I have to pick one to advance forward then I will become very part time player at best. I can already see groups kicking players because they have not progressed far enough in their expertise system.

The Masteries system is account bound, so you won’t need to pick one character to advance upon. That said, the Masteries system isn’t likely to come into play in World vs. World at all, at least as it’s currently presented..

That’s probably a good question for someone to put to the devs. Will World vs. World events/experience earned count towards Pact Tyria Masteries?

You should get the item unlocked once you’ve created your character. If it’s your first character ever, you might need to unlock the Wardrobe first, but for subsequent characters just making the character and starting the tutorial instance will unlock the item for your Wardrobe, letting you delete that character and use Transmutation Charges to put the skin on someone else capable of using it.

So yes, you can have an Engineer or a Ranger with the thief hood.

I don’t have the game open in front of me to double-check the trait numbers, unfortunately. I shall have to hope the Wiki lists them in the right order! And maybe it doesn’t, because you’re talking about how Hidden Killer is OP, but in the numbers you have listed it would seem you’re using Invigorating Precision…

My Critical Strikes setup is 2-2-3. No Quarter really is the gem of the Critical Strikes lineup, alongside the minor Unrelenting Strikes. Both No Quarter and Practiced Tolerance boost your critical damage, but No Quarter works in tandem with Unrelenting Strikes to give you essentially unlimited Fury in the process. I’m not a big fan of Hidden Killer personally. Yes, it guarantees that you’ll get the big five-digit number when you Backstab, but it doesn’t do anything for the rest of your attacks.

For Deadly Arts, I use 2-2-1 right now. Revealed Training is superior for DPS, so there’s nothing wrong with you picking that. I just got used to Panic Strike via PvP/WvW, and it certainly has applications in PvE as well. I’m not sure if my numbering is right, because if you’re using 2-3-3 that means your Grandmaster is Potent Poison, which is not very optimal. Both Executioner and Improvisation are much stronger, and either of them are worthy choices. I use Executioner in PvE and Improvisation in PvP, but I can see switching to Improvisation in certain PvE situations being worthwhile, when you know there’s strong Steal skills available. Mai Trin would be a great example. What’s better than turning invulnerable for 3 seconds via Drink? Turning invulnerable for 6 seconds, of course!

My Trickery lineup is 1-3-3, so we have no overlap there at all, again assuming the Wiki has the right order. Uncatchable just isn’t good unless you set up for condition damage, whereas Flanking Strikes gives more Fury and a good DPS boost with Quickness. Thrill of the Crime can provide group support, so it’s a legitimate choice too. Bountiful Theft is strong, and I use it in PvP, but Trickster gives me some Condi removal with my heal and utilities, and with the nerf to Shadow Arts condi cleansing that led me to abandon that trait line, I’ll take it anywhere else I can. And finally, unless you’re playing Condi, Sleight of Hand is basically a no-brainer in the grandmaster slot. More Steal, and interrupting Steal, is good stuff. Applying Confusion stacks just doesn’t compare.

So maybe I’m just mixing up the numbers, but as it appears, there’s room for improvement in some of your trait choices. Try out No Quarter and Sleight of Hand and Improvisation and see if you like them. If you don’t, there’s no harm in switching back!

If you don’t want to gamble on dyes, buy them from the trading post. There’s, what, three hundred plus colours on there? You should be able to find a cheaper colour that does what you’re looking for rather than spending hundreds of gold for the more expensive/gemstore dyes.

Check their Runes/Sigils, first. If the salvageable ones have valuable Runes or Sigils, then definitely salvage them with a Black Lion kit.

Beyond the Dark Matter, you get Globs of Ectoplasm from salvaging Exotics, a greater amount on average than from rares. So beyond the Rune/Sigil mentioned above, it just comes down to your personal needs and how much you like gambling. If you’re short on Ectoplasm or gold, then salvaging the Exotics that you can salvage will get you those. If you aren’t in need of Ectoplasm or gold, and you don’t mind gambling, then you can toss them into the forge and see what happens. You might get a new skin, you might get a valuable Rune/Sigil on the new item, you might get a precursor, or (most likely) you might be left with something 1/4 the value of what you threw in.

Yakkington’s armour might not fit well, but I’m a bit more worried about Zhed’s Shoes and Zhed’s Pantaloons.

And don’t get me started on Brutus gear.

Since killing enemies has a comparatively small effect on XP gain, I don’t know that there’s going to be a lot of difference between one profession and the next for levelling.

The quickest and most efficient way to level is to spend one Scroll of Knowledge (from a Birthday Gift) and then 60 Tomes of Knowledge (earned in many places, with login rewards and PvP reward tracks the most common). That will level a character of any class to 80 in as much time as it takes you to double-click 61 times.

The advice to give hasn’t changed too much. You want a Power build, so set up around Power, adding Precision as you’re able, and Vitality/Toughness only when needed. Get used to the three defensive mechanics of Thief: Evasion, stealth and Blind. Depending on your weapon set, you’ll be depending on some of those more than others.

At level 21, you’ll get access to your first Specialization (formerly Traits). If you want some more benefits for Stealth, consider Shadow Arts. If you want a stronger offense, either Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes will help you. Acrobatics will help with evasion, though it’s not nearly as strong as it used to be, while Trickery is a well-rounded Specialization that can bolster your Steal skill in many ways, as well as offering condition removal via Trickster (in PvP, you’d always want Bountiful Theft instead, but you’re saying you don’t play PvP).

Just focus on the ways you have to actively prevent damage to yourself, and the rest will follow naturally. Whether it’s standing in Black Powder fields, stealthing as often as you can, or mastering dodge timing.

The #3 skills with no off-hand are just placeholder skills, so that thieves aren’t limited to only two weapon skills at a time when other classes would have three. Yes, one of them has a name that hearkens back to GW1. It’s just an easter egg, more than anything else.

While we’re talking about GW1 skills coming back, equipping two daggers will get you Death Blossom, a skill I’m sure you’d likewise remember. It’s also really bad in this game. Outside of very specific gimmicky builds, your Dagger/Dagger experience will be much better if you focus on attacks like Heartseeker, Cloak and Dagger and the followup Backstab instead of using Death Blossom.

It should be max level equipment if you’re max level when you open it. I believe in all the ones I’ve found so far, the resulting item has been level 80.

If I’ve just been lucky, and you can sometimes get level 77 or 78 items out of it, that happens with exotic drops as well. The item can still be salvaged or used in the Mystic Forge to get something of value from it even if you won’t use it.

For the Ultimate Edition, you should get the perks within 2-4 hours of ordering. The gems, Mini Rytlock, bonus character slot, etc.

For the extra “veteran” bonus character slot, those are being given on a weekly basis, so you wouldn’t have to wait more than a week for that if you qualify for it. You qualify for it if you bought the game before January 23rd this year.

Once it’s unlocked (however that will be attained), you can swap into or out of Tempest just as easily as you can swap into or out of Fire Magic or Arcana.

As a newer player, I wouldn’t recommend using your rares in the Mystic Forge. That’s gambling. It could pay off, it usually won’t. Either salvage them with a Master Salvage Kit for the Ectoplasms, or sell them on the Trading Post. Don’t fill buy orders with them, list them at or just underneath the lowest sell order, to maximize your profit.

You are prohibited from using repeat dyes, correct. The dye’s tooltip will warn you that you’ve already unlocked that colour, and double-clicking it won’t work.

Have you got Claw Island, via your Personal Story?

Exotics can come from it, yes. That said, I think I’ve received as many exotics from the lesser pods from running around in the maze as I have from the Greater pod in the middle.

Just open as much stuff as you can.

There will be new Legendary weapons, but not all weapon types might have new Legendaries available right at the launch of Heart of Thorns. They warned us of that in the article detailing the new Precursor crafting system.

When that picture was revealed, they posted to let people know that there are placeholder icons being used, so we shouldn’t panic.

And once inside the dungeon itself, there will be waypoints unlocked at certain checkpoints of the dungeon. You can use those to catch up to the group rather than running all the way to them.

The unlimited gathering tools are account bound rather than soulbound. However, you’ll only get the single tool. Each character you create won’t automatically have it, you’ll need to pass it through your bank from character to character as needed if you want to share it among them.

A little over a year ago, the ‘Megaserver’ was introduced to help with underpopulated zones. Mid-level zones often didn’t have many players in them at a given time, and with North American players spread over 24 different servers, that meant there were 24 instances of each mid-level map, sometimes with very few players in them. With the Megaserver, that’s no longer the case. Instances of maps are created and closed dynamically based on population demands, across all North American servers. While there’s 24 North American servers, there might only be 5 instances of the Snowden Drifts map, for example, because not many players go there. A more popular map, such as Queensdale or the Silverwastes, might have 40 or 50 instances instead.

Whenever you enter a zone, you get put into an instance based on four factors. These factors, in order from most important to least important, are: Your current party, the guild you belong to, people on your friends list, and people from your server. So if you’re partied with another player who’s in, say, Blazeridge Steppes, and then you go to that zone yourself, you should be placed in the same instance of the zone as your friend (there is a population cap per instance, so theoretically it might be full and you’d get a different instance). If you aren’t partied with anyone there, it will try to place you in an instance other guild members are in, or which people on your friends list are in. If none of those conditions are met, it will put you in the instance that has people from your server in it, though people from other servers will likely be there too.

So that’s how the Megaserver works. All guesting does now is make that last ‘server check’ for determining what instance you go to count as if you were in the server you guested to. So, all other things being equal, you’d wind up on instances with lots of Tarnished Coast players, which is what you’re looking for since you want roleplay. And once you get into some roleplay guilds, the guild preference for the Megaserver will ensure you get put into instances of Divinity’s Reach or Lion’s Arch where your roleplaying brethren are, even if you forget to guest that day.

Tzozef.9841:

Will non-prepurchasers able to participate in the Beta Weekend as well?

Assuming we won’t get the perks of playing with the Elite Specs and Revenant

Non-prepurchasers will only be able to play Stronghold, and then only with Turai Ossa as their hero. The rest of the beta content will be unavailable.

A back item gives a tiny amount of stats overall. The difference between an exotic back item and an ascended one is truly miniscule. You could just get yourself an exotic backpack with the stats you want instead.

If you’re worried about the infusion slot, craft one of the level 78 backpacks. They come with an infusion slot, and while you can’t slot in level 80 upgrades, they have higher base stats than they should have, making them competitive with level 80 backpacks overall.

It’s not likely that you’ll be able to get onto Tarnished Coast, the North American roleplay server. It’s full due to it also being a top-tier World vs. World server.

That said, you still have options. Guilds and guesting. Start out with guesting. You can activate it when logging into the game from the World Selection menu, and it lets you temporarily be on another server for all purposes save World vs. World. You can use this to get better access to Tarnished Coast instances on the Megaserver. Once there, seek out some roleplay guilds and try to join them. The Megaserver tries to prioritize what instance of a map you join based on what guilds you’re in (along with your friends list, with your server being the lowest ranking criteria of the three), putting you in instances that your guild mates are already present in. Once you join a Tarnished Coast roleplay guild, you might find you don’t need to guest anymore, you’ll wind up being put in the map instances your guild is part of, even though you’re not on Tarnished Coast.