Guild Wars 2

Depending on how many points you have in Power/Condition duration trait line, I’d recommend using 2 Lyssa runes (there’s one other similar rune with toughness instead of precision I think). You have to test this however, because the 10% condition duration does not always add another tick of damage (I removed mine again after realizing that 20p into power + 2 Lyssa bonus = no increased bleeding duration from the rune)

I’m using a Shortbow with Superior Fire Sigil for groups of mobs, which is the best sustained aoe dmg I know of. As secondardy I went with D/P for quite some time, because I can tank most Veterans this way. My plan is to try P/P instead though, because it should have higher DPS than D/P and I can still somewhat tank (or kite) Vets. I might actually be wrong about the higher dmg tho, because Dagger skill 1 owns so much, we will see^^

Edit after testing out 2 lv 80 exotic pistols: staying with D/P cause DPS is a joke ;/

Do you specifically only want to look at the damage over time without up front damage factored in? If so, the answer is easy: the phantasm that does the most hits does the most dot. If you want to know which phantasm does the most dmg overall when using the bleeding trait: Phantasmal Warden wins the prize

Every 10 points aka 10% more condition duration you usually get one more tick of dmg on a medium-long dot. Keep in mind though, that for example Drake’s Breath applies burning 4 times, resulting in a 16sec long dot, meaning it’s already quite long and too much more duration will yield no benefit if the mob is already dead.

Risen are nothing against the Enchanters in the zone where Shatterer spawns (forgot name), or wolves, or worse: underwater Risen using spear surge attack :p
Seriously, those mobs need dps nerfs…

P.S.: how could I forget sharks man

I’d like to add that I combined a few major runes at the Mystic Forge and received 2 soulbounds as well: namely a superior Nightmare and superior Sanctuary

I’ve been busy with other professions, so I don’t know if there is more info on this already somewhere:

When being out of range and using an enemy-targeted skill that spawns a clone/phantasm, the skill will go on full cooldown (without a clone/phantasm spawned of course).

I was happy that they fixed Sword 3 and was looking forward to not having to stare at the UI anymore, aka the little red line on my skill bar, alas I still have to.

With non-exotic gear, some vit/toughness, and specced in toughness/heal 20p + using the crit/hp conversion trait, I did 2 story mode dungeons today on my fresh 80 Thief. I got oneshot or close to it on many occasions when using D/P, no matter the blind spam. If I didn’t dodge half a second after incoming dmg I was often immediately downed, forcing me to switch to P/P or Short Bow to do mediocre but relatively safe DPS most of the time. IMO melees are totally screwed in this game compared to ranged damage dealers. It’s absurd how easily and quickly you die in STORY mode dungeons with a build that has not the best, but some defense nonetheless. If melees should not dare entering new dungeons without bringing 50% more life and armor than normal, then the frustrations many have are justified.

D/D all the way. There’s nothing more effective than doing DEs, rushing into mob hordes blowing all your aoes then get the kitten out. Alternatively you can cast a Dragon’s Tooth on the mobs that hits when nothing’s alive anymore :p

I tried Lightning Hammer while leveling several times, because I like the weapon. Never got it to work properly due to melee range being a no-go, even with frequent blind procs. Also D/D Fire does more dmg.
Ice Bow is currently one of my utilities when doing dungeons, because it has really solid aoe dmg and the heal shot is nice. While soloing I’d only switch to the bow for a short time, to burn the 2 aoes and maybe the super-freeze, then go back to regular attunements, because skill 1 lacks punch obviously.
I haven’t found a use for Earth Shield and Lava Axe yet. Lava Axe provides combo fields, but D/D Fire and Staff do that as well, and the Shield is kinda useless.

I also use GS Elite in PvP, because Ele glyph is rather gimmicky, in PvE I will use Ele glyph though, because the Earth, Water and Lightning Elementals are great.

When doing dungeons I’m enjoying what Mesmer can bring to a group and I like the survivability. The only thing I don’t like is the lack of a good sustained dmg rotation in longer fights against a single target.

Regarding Unload: it really doesn’t do as much dmg as other stuff Thief has, except on low-armor targets. Try fighting the Thief sparring NPC in the Mists with a cloth wearing profession and see what Unload does (or any other multihit burst skill of Ranger, Warrior, Guardian etc). The prob is mitigation scaling IMO, not the skill itself

IMO no single skill or burst combo should do more than 7k under “normal” circumstances. 7k is half of many profession’s life when not using vitality gear in abundance, meaning it’s still considerable dmg. Besides playing Thief, I also play Elementlist, and the things I have to do setup-wise to get to a crit that’s around 7k are absurd compared to the Thief setups, plus an Ele has to expose himself a lot to do that kind of dmg (i.e. setting up might stacks and channeling Churning Earth), just sayin’.
The burst damage problems GW2 currently has remind me a lot of old WoW days when Rogues in general, and Arcane Power Mages could burst people down almost instantly.

Short Bow is an exceptionally well designed weapon, which is why many use it. The other weapon combos are not used as much mainly because their evasion mechanics don’t work as well. Most dual skills for example are quite risky despite having evasion or stun, so people will often rather go for lower single target damage than risking too much for a bit more damage.

PS: I also think that this game is rather melee unfriendly. I rarely find myself meleeing in big DEs because it’s mostly too risky or too ineffective due to mob(s) movements.

As of a few hours ago I am unable to use these two functions and have to sell and deposit the respective items manually per right clicking. I first thought this had something to do with the update, but after relogging the problem remains. Most items in my inventory will also not show up in “Sell” tabs of vendors.

I agree with the OP except for the last paragraph. MMO design takes time, and for each bug you are aware of that is being fixed there are dozens you are not aware of being worked on and fixed. The bugs and flaws in game design keep getting more and more severe the further towards “endgame” you get, which is logical, since that is the part of the game that is least tested. Don’t get me wrong though, I’ve had my share of “WTF were they thinking?!” moments, but I see more things done right in GW2 than I saw in a long time since quitting WoW years ago and the general ideas the devs have are mostly great, and despite the bugs etc. I STILL enjoy this game a lot, which is why I have faith that the game will further improve, given a (hopefully not too long) bit of time.

A problem for me has been, that I sometimes want toughness amulets to have vitality instead. I see 15k~ life as minimum and I play Elementalist, so yeah…

I’m new to Engineer and I was wondering about a good way to deal with ranged DPS builds/professions/mobs if you do not use shield. I don’t see an effective way to have a ranged battle with any other profession, for example, since most of Engineer control tools are melee focused and the only good ranged DPS, meaning grenades, can easily be avoided due to travel time of the projectiles.

I’ve only seen this mentioned in a compiled suggestions thread during my forum search, so I’d like to make a separate thread.

I think it would be an easy and welcome improvement for everyone who is playing more than one character to allow character specific keybindings. I am currently switching between 3+ chars and they have multiple profession skills of varying importance and not all of them have a secondary weapon option, forcing me to rebind one of the most important keys constantly, for example.

Good to hear about potential additions to amulets. Sometimes the available stat combinations on amulets prevent me from making a certain build effective

good points to improve the dmg even more. thanks for sharing

It’s often unclear as to which area a heart quest belongs to, or how big the radius is where you find what you need to complete the heart. How about you would get a radius and location info similar to Dynamic Events when hovering over (or maybe clicking on) the heart on your minimap/map?

Chances are this is already common knowledge, but I didn’t find anything doing a quick forum search, so I figured I “might” as well share this. It’s a Scepter/Dagger combo that goes like:

Ring of Fire > Dragon’s Tooth > Phoenix > Arcane Wave > Earth Attunement > Earthquake > Churning Earth

resulting in a 15 stacks of Might Churning Earth that crits for 5-6k (because you get the combo effect from Churning Earth at the start of the channel). The timing is very strict and minimal delays in casting will result in only 12 stacks of Might, but that’s still a lot and normal mobs will barely survive until the Churning Earth anyway. The combo is of course only usable if you are not targeted and stuff doesn’t move a lot, but it’s fun nevertheless.

Conjured Frost Bow skill 1 says it heals for 15 at lv80, which should be either a typo and it heals for more (haven’t had the chance to test) or the healing should be upped to make it comparable with Staff Water skill 1, which does exactly the same.

Also, being Asura female and using scepter is greatly irritating, because you scream “AAAAAAAAAAAH” with every autoattack from Earth and Air attunement. Not sure where else and for which races/genders this is a problem as well.

There seems to be a bug with skill 1 from Conjured Frost Bow. The damage is the same as with Staff Water attunement skill 1 (around 158 for me at lv80), meaning it is very low, but the Staff skill 1 also heals for more than double its damage to offset that. The Frost Bow skill 1 however heals for 15 (yes 15), which I assume must be a bug.

The OP has a point. After you bought all the most interesting skills you will likely still be a long shot away from 80 and earning skill points becomes a lot less exciting then.
Crafting could be a decent middle ground reward, if it was possible to keep crafting level up to date with your character level without excessive farming. On top of that, crafting doesn’t yield much excitement currently, because pretty much everything you can craft until 400 isn’t worth selling.

I would like it, if some skills (maybe new ones in the future?) were explicitly tied to a particular skill challenge. So if you want that new kitten laser beam with piercing effect and aoe blind you gotta do a particular (harder than normal) challenge or maybe even a whole DE chain.
When I first heard about skill challenges before the game was released, I imagined them to be like this and I was a bit disappointed about the current iteration.

One suggestion, hmmm…

How about more ‘completeness’ within single attunements?
IMO every attunement (and every weapon combo across all professions) should provide a skill rotation without too much downtime (example for downtime: Mesmer Sword+Pistol) and with nice synergy between skills. Currently, I only see this happening in Dagger/Dagger Fire. Another good example of good synergy and cooldowns that allow for a good rotation would be Mesmer Staff, which was the weapon that got me hooked to the class in the first place, because it is so fun to play.

PS: I’m not saying each attunement should do it all, but I’d like to be able to pick a favorite attunement and play in that for a little longer without kittening my damage too much or making myself a free kill because I have no defensive skills.

on a funny sidenote: I recently witnessed a stream of a guy who plays 40 (yes 40) WoW accounts simultaneously. It’s quite hilarious, except for the people who chose the wrong faction on his server

you find Wave of Wrath useless, wow. I think it’s one of the best autoattacks in the game. The range and rate of fire are incredible for a spammable cone aoe. Of course only when hitting multiple targets

Sylvari female: Kate Moss

I’m taking this thread as an opportunity to say that you guys made a great game.
A great game, that has more problems than I thought it would have, but it is still miles above what I played in recent times after quitting WoW years ago, namely Final Fantasy XIV, TERA and The Secret World.
People are used to a lot of quality and quantity from playing WoW, even if many are hating on the game now. GW2’s systems need finetuning still, in certain areas like PvP a lot of it, and that takes a while, which is probably the hardest part to accept for many after all this development time and beta testing.
After following this game for 2 years now, I came to the conclusion that you cannot just release a WoW killer, it’s impossible. An MMO needs time to evolve. WoW wasn’t like this at the beginning anyway, it took years for the game to reach its pinnacle. This is why I approve of fixing the foundations of GW2 now, rather than flooding people with content that is built upon shaky systems.

If you mean the pulsating tinnitus sound that is the only sound you hear then, yeah I get that too in big events. Game will also crash after some time, bug report already sent from there.

Orr is a chore.
Like you said, way too many mobs everywhere and each one of them seems to have a pull or a stun, which made me really angry several times already while leveling there.

The most important thing that needs to change IMO (aside from obvious numbers balancing, tuning skills and synergies and fixing or removing Downed State from SPvP) is the battle spam.

I’m watching streams of good players on Twitch to broaden my horizon about GW2’s PvP, and I get the same impression from watching them, no matter which profession, as when playing myself: it’s all about spamming your skills as fast as possible. No time for tactics, no time for positioning.

GW2 PvP is advertised with being about movement, yet that movement is reduced to dodging around and strafing in small circles. Range and positioning play barely any role most of the time, which is in part attributed to map designs that allow opponents to sneak up to many capture points unseen until they are in melee range or close to it.
What then follows is a frantic unloading of skills with minimal tactical implications, because a) it happens so fast and b) none but the most formidable control and defense skills can do the job of stabilizing and slowing down combat to make room for tactical play.

somehow I cannot quote from page 1 of this thread… anyways:

the NPC dialogue was something that really stood out to me in a positive way the first time I explored cities. While completing the Lion’s Arch map I went semi-afk a few times in the middle of nowhere to enjoy the scenery, and every time I would hear NPC dialogue, sometimes far away, sometimes near. This made the city feel very alive and real to me (as does the well with the fish who make these funny sounds when spouting water, such details are just lovely).
After some time though, the lines of NPCs, who are at places where you go to often, become really annoying. I now hate the constant “WUT…… SPEAK” of the bank Charr and the two Skritt near the Trader’s forum waypoint can go live in the sewer and explore there for real. I also have the feeling that Charr faces look funny and Asura child faces like a little raisin, but as long as ideas are like cream, I will keep drinking my wine with that alcoholic girl near the Mystic Forge.

I feel that Sylvari Healing Seed and the Turret spawn Elite with 3sec invulnerability complement a staff Mesmer extremely well. I also love using Healing Seed in groups that consist of more than myself.
Asura have the 2 second daze utility and the poison field, which is OK as well.
Oh yeah, and pain inverter confusion is nice, too

this is what I do:

- lazy PvE combat:
staff, clone on dodge trait, additional bounce trait. Open with skill 2, dodge once to make a clone, alternate between chaos storm and armor between mobs, so one is always off CD. Kills decently fast and you can just stand there most of the time, which is important when being lazy.

- motivated PvE combat:
open with pistol clone that has bleed on crit trait, spawn skill 3 hop-in clone to slow mob running to pistol phantasm, use Blurred Frenzy, switch to staff etc.

IMO the key to solid damage is the bleed on crit trait for illusions with enough precision (I use 51% crit in PvP) and condition damage, resulting in bleed stacks of 6-8 with 110~ ticks. My pistol phantasm can kill a heavy target golem in 3 damage cycles, the focus phantasm can do it in 2 cycles if he’s feeling kitten, but he’s not moving even when I yell at him, so I won’t use him.

PS: GS with enough crit is very strong as well. There is a vigor on crit trait that procs all the time thanks to the channeled GS attack, feeding new dodge clones, and the clones often apply more than one stack of bleeding per autoattack channel

The funny thing is, it looks like staff is designed to be the best aoe weapon, but D/D has better close range aoe damage and better heal than staff.
I tried to level with staff two times, made a few levels each time, but I felt so weak and fighting felt so boring, that I almost gave up on the Elementalist altogether. It feels to me, as if the weapon is only good when targeting max amount of people from as far away as possible, i.e. WvW combat.

simplified: Focus Phantasm owns everything that stays in its range, a close second is the Pistol Phantasm. The Staff Phantasm is nice in group fights where conditions pile up, I had it crit for over 7500 the other day.

Ride the Lightning – Updraft – Fire Attunement – Burning Speed – Ring of Fire – Arcane Wave – Fire Grab – Drake’s Breath – Earth Attunement – Earthquake – Ring of Earth – Water Attunement – Frozen Burst – Cone of Cold, heal and aura if mob still lives and back to Fire.

Lightning Flash (and especially the Mesmer equivalent) should teleport you max range if you try teleporting to outside of its max range, then it would be a great spell.
Currently in PvP you rather teleport just a short distance that is below max range rather than having to readjust your cursor and die in the meantime. Problem is, everything below max range is not far enough.

Regarding long/strong skills: there is a reason Blizzard had to implement PvP trinkets to somewhat balance control skills. It’s not stellar design and my bet is they did not like to do this, but they had to implement reset buttons for everyone because control skills are a little bit too strong, i.e. binary in WoW.
Modern game design, on the other hand, focuses more on “soft” control skills and counters. If you look at Starcraft 1 vs Starcraft 2, that’s a good example of hard counters dominating the first game, with very strong units and many unforgiving situations where the game could be instantly lost if you had not answer B to threat A right away, etc., while units in SC2 lost overall strength (Mutalisks, Zerglings, Zealots, Sieged Tanks etc. are all weaker in SC2 compared to SC1).
Now, the control skills in GW2 are a bit too soft IMO, to the point where you barely feel their impact (many last about as long as it takes to set them up, and if you reach the point where you would notice an effect, it’s already gone). This also mitigates the fun task to figure out how best to handle CC and makes combat too much about just doing damage as quickly and efficiently as possible, because control skills don’t give enough time to win the damage back you didn’t do while using the control skill.
That’s maybe why many feel that combat in this game is too spammy and too much of the same between professions.

SAI Peregrinus.8410:

TL;DR: Swapping attunements provides a slight DPS benefit at best, possibly a detriment, and should be used primarily for utility. This seems to stem from the lack of synergy between trait lines and the presence of the timer to return to a previous attunement.

Exactly what I came to believe. Fire is the attunement you want to be in. If you cannot be in Fire, because stuff is killing you, then you switch to control in Earth and Air or heal in Water. The DPS skills in non-Fire attunements are often only used to pass the time till Fire is ready again, with a few exceptions. I’d love to be able to truly focus on one or two elements, alas currently that’s not really possible because of damage differences and lacking skill synergy within attunements.

I think one big problem with Elementalist is that there is not enough synergy between skills within one attunement. It should not be absolutely mandatory to cycle attunements all the time, because it is not absolutely mandatory to cycle weapons for other classes. For example, I can play a staff Mesmer and the staff skills alone will provide me with sufficient damage and survivability and have cooldowns that allow for a good rotation without too much downtime. Mesmer staff skills synergize nicely with eachother and it’s fun to play. If you want that extra efficiency and versatility you can then swap to your 2nd weapon set, you aren’t really kittened with using just one, however. The only comparable Ele build I found with single attunement synergy like that is D/D Fire, where spells interact nicely, but lack control.
I also see it as a big hinderance that the damage output across attunements is so varying. Water stands out as having totally lackluster damage, if you don’t skill into vulnerability, and even then the damage is not good, which bugs me, because I love Vorpal Blade. Earth doesn’t do much damage either and Air is moderately acceptable.

talking about statistics, I’d like to see a statistic which profession sparring NPC in the mists has the most player kills (my bet is on the Thief of course :p)

Since there is no global CD in GW2, autoattacking paired with skill usage can make things quite spammy. Another factor adding to the confusion is animations, like the OP said. I often don’t know if one of my utility skills fired off or not, and if not why, because of the battle chaos and lack of distinct animations/sounds of my skills. Sometimes my opponent will seemingly not take damage, which is obviously the fault of some defensive skill, but I never know which one it is, except if I’m playing against Elementalists who have nice big bubbles and rocks.

What made PvP good in WoW once, was the flow of combat. It was like a dance where you had to respect your opponent’s moves and react to them accordingly or you were just a pushover spam noob. Since crowd control in WoW is generally much stronger, aka more binary and lasting longer, the combat is less frantic. In GW2 it takes 3 skills with control to do what one WoW CC skill does, take for example the basic Mage spell Frost Nova. IMO it would help the game to make several soft CC skills and several defensive skills longer and more effective. This would slow down combat and force players to actually react to what their opponent does instead of “pressing all the buttons”.

Currently, Elementalist damage is not very good except for D/D and many skills require you to expose yourself. Attunement hopping is absolutely needed to be somewhat effective as an Elementalist, to the point where you will just die if you try to stay in fire for max damage. After days of testing I finally found a build with decent damage, decent control, and most importantly decent survivability, but it requires nonstop attunement cycling and while I somewhat enjoy that, it’s also very stressful if you play for longer amounts of time.

The other option is to make a support build with staff where you basically play with yourself, since you almost never target opponents, just spam your millions of AoEs on the ground.

currently, pvp is too spammy, there is too much damage going on and many of the soft crowd controls are too short to even notice, which limits choices of builds and skills enormously. BGs are too small and often favor melees due to line of sight hinderance on most capture points. I never felt so vulnerable capping or defending a point than in this game, no wonder that no one defs outside of tourney play and zerging is the way to go.

(did not read through all posts, sorry if duplicating)

- you can be immobilized while in Mist Form (which is quite hilarious)

- Scepter auto attack in Air attunement will sometimes freeze and the channel animation will go on even without target or your target out of range

- skills set to autocast will sometimes not fire off immediately, even if you respect the (very smartly thought out!) requirements of e.g. being in range to your target for Frozen Burst, or standing still for Earthquake. Skills not firing off immediately sometimes is a general problem and I also mentioned this in the Mesmer bug thread.