Guild Wars 2

Hammer is the best out of all of them, by far. The CC that thing can churn out is insane, and it makes it quite powerful in dueling.

Sword is good for some nice damage, although it’s AoE thing could use a radius enlargement.

The shield can be quite useful when it decides to work properly. Sometimes it’ll position itself off a node and form it’s bubble there when I really want it on top of myself. It has also been known to chase after enemies, which makes no sense. It should really be focused on staying at the player’s side at all times.

The bow has somewhat weak condition clearing, although there isn’t any other weapon that will clean or support, so it’s what you have to use. I think it could be a bit more potent at cleaning, especially since people can kill it and deny you your condition cleansing. You also can’t direct which of your allies you want it to shoot at with its auto attack, although it would be nice if it could hit multiple people. I think the active ability is fine since it was upgraded in the patch.

I generally like to take both the hammer and sword, so I’m left picking between the shield and bow. I could always drop the sword and take both shield and bow, but that does take away a fair bit of damage. I feel dropping the hammer (pun intended) really isn’t an option since it’s just too powerful a tool. Perhaps having both the shield and bow would be better in a larger scale encounter since the pure damage and CC might not be as necessary.

Also, I don’t know if they fixed the leash range issue on these things yet, will have to try. Previously, you could be sitting on the home or far node and have your weapons chase a guy to the middle node and fight them there.

Doctoris.2675:

• First and foremost, I would absolutely run Ether Renewal (or even Glyph of Elemental Harmony) over Signet of Restoration as the primary heal displayed for this build (I know you suggest it as an alternative).

I’ve also found that ether renewal works better on the whole. It has the low cooldown, but it also counters a lot of condition assaults, which this sort of build can be a bit weak too, especially if you’re more heavily invested in rabid gear instead of dire.

I still like running the signet since you get the signet bonuses (plus I like gimmick builds), but I think ether renewal is overall better if you’re solo roaming or some such. Just have to be wary of incoming CC so it won’t get interrupted.

It’s nice that there’s at least a bit of flexibility in this style of build to allow for personal or situational preferences.

Doctoris.2675:

• Heavily consider starting fights in a different attunement and then swap into earth.

I usually like to start in air, which can get some quick damage and blind in on the 2 and 3, and then I can pop the 4 for some initial projectile defense if I need it against the enemy. Then I usually go for a knockdown with 5 and swap to fire to make them respond to a dragon’s tooth combo. It also gives me a chance to drop the fire wall for blast finishers and use the fire aura, and then I often swap to earth and go for the bleeds and such. On my vairant I don’t run stone heart and do run sigil of doom, so I tend to swap around a lot more, but it’s usually a good idea to just pop some stuff off before camping in earth.

Also you get a 10% movement bonus in air attunement, so that can be useful if you’re walking between nodes in PvP, and then swap once you get there.

Fries.9234:

I feel like karma stuff should be account bound AND soulbound on use, in case you accidentally bought something and wish to sell it back before soulbinding to character or just stash it in the bank for later use.

This would definitely be the most appropriate solution, aside from the “selling back” part since you can’t generally sell things that you buy with karma.

The “soulbound on acquire” for such things is very much linked to the old karma system, in which each character had to build their karma separately. Ever since karma became account wide, the “soulbound on acquire” property for many of the karma-purchasable items simply does not make sense anymore. I know they’ve converted a lot of them to being account bound (i.e. the runes) possibly with soulbound on use, but there’s probably still some that they haven’t managed to convert yet.

It’s a similar case for the mesmer mantra bug that reduces your 3 charges down to 2 on every level scaling transition.

I’m curious now if it will happen to things like spirit weapons, elementals, and turrets.

I still feel it needed a redesign, but I don’t really like the redesign. Instead of novel functionality, it’s something less interesting that is very redundant (and in many cases worse) than something like arcane thievery. There’s just too many other useful utility skills to have a boon copier take up one of those slots.

Kaz.5430:

Something like this would need to require you to already be level 500, and be used to just unlock all the other recipes that you’ve not got discovered.

If you could use it on a level 0 cook and get all the experience that you would have got by making the discoveries for real, your cook would gain 10ish character levels and would most likely also instantly reach level 500 in cooking.

Well you can only have 400 in cooking currently, but I do agree with what you say. If such a thing were to be implemented, it would have to require the maximum crafting level. Thus, it’s not used as something to level you, but something for you to discover the discoverable recipes that you “missed” or whatnot on your way up to the maximum crafting level.

I didn’t experience this bug, although I did this much earlier. Perhaps one of the recent updates somehow borked it.

The only other thing I can suggest is that you make sure you used the “Recipe: Feast of Truffle Steak Dinner” and not “Recipe: Feast of Truffle Steak”. I believe the recipe should specifically say on the tooltip that it is part of the collection.

The game has only been officially released for barely over 2 years. It won’t reach it’s third year until August of 2015.

The spoons are based on RNG. I can confirm they will drop, you just have to keep killing NPCs and such. I don’t believe they can drop from players, but I’m not 100% sure on that. You might be able to kill stuff in EotM for them too.

As for the mini achievement, I’m not sure. By latest patch, do you mean the latest small update they did or are you referring to the actual feature patch?

barrek.1826:

Can the enemy see your traps??

No, although there is an animation for you placing them, so if they see you place one they can have a sense of where it is and can possibly play around it.

I don’t know if you’ve taken this into WvW yet, but it can work pretty well there for roaming too (the 62600 version anyways). The particular variant I use is: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJArdhcMKbW3wtBf0ACAS4ANSMu3uii2A-T1RHABGp8Dm9HYR9nO0TAwDCI4TIQUKBJFAMTjA-w

I feel it becomes much more important to have signet of air since you need the mobility and stun break in WvW style combat. I usually take it over signet of earth, but swapping out signet of water could probably work as well, especially since the passive effect isn’t profound. Signet of fire is a must have though. As a result of this, I feel stone heart has to be dropped in favour of written in stone so that you can preserve your mobility even after popping the signet. It also makes signet of restoration less costly to pop as well.

I haven’t unlocked blinding ashes yet, but I’ve been using burning fire since it affords extra condition clearing. I’m a little wary of blinding ashes since it might make me too vulnerable to conditions.

Also, I usually do FGS in WvW for obvious reasons. Haven’t really toyed around with the elemental too much.

I’ve also just stuck with undead runes for now, although I think almost any of the condition damage-based runesets would work out. I’ve been tempted to try out the runes of Grenth or the runes of the adventurer, personally.

I also use the doom and torment sigils to add condition variety instead of dumping things heavily into bleeding. This requires swapping attunements, but I feel it’s something eles should be doing in general. Camping an attunement can end up being quite damaging in the long run, though it’s obvious why you would want to stay in earth attunement in you’re running stone heart. Combat can differ quite a bit between WvW and sPvP though.

Necrotize.2974:

Keep in mind that it blocks only what its animation covers. It usually will block grenades, but if they arc high enough, they can fall through the top, completely avoiding the winds. That’s why it sometimes helps to jump as you cast it, IIRC that makes the animation appear higher up and block projectiles from higher elevations.

Things like grenades can also hit just outside the wind and come in contact with the ground, thus exploding, meaning you can be hit if you’re still close enough to them to be within the AoE.

Usually you will just want to stay inside of the winds to protect yourself, or drop it in a choke point so that they can’t shoot you while you’re moving away.

Note that I believe unblockable projectiles aren’t limited to things like seige weapons. If a mesmer uses mirror blade, it should go through since that skill is unblockable. Similarly, if something like a rifle warrior pops signet of might, they may be able to just shoot through the swirling winds with whatever they want since their attacks are now unblockable. I haven’t actually tested that out yet though, so I’m not sure if that’s how those things will work.

Silv.9207:

in a pve axe+mace dps build, swapping with GS, you can add to that +5% a lot of other +X% of damage when… like +5% by dual wielding trait, or +10% whit GS trait, +10% if the enemy is bleeding, etc.
add to that trait other traits and you obtain a lot of free damage.
But all alone it’s a weak trait, yes.

In that build you mentioned, you’re also dependent on someone else applying weakness for you as neither axe+mace nor GS has any form of weakness application. If you were going to run such a build, particularly for PvE purposes, there’s much better places to stick those 2 trait points instead of the defense line for a trait that you can’t even benefit from unless someone else in your group is running a weakness applying ability. So I wouldn’t even say it’s good even combined with other damage increasing traits.

It agree with the notion that it would be a better option for that trait slot if it had a more novel effect on it rather than “here’s a small conditional numerical bonus to your damage”.

Vurse.9873:

Yamsandjams.3267:

I go ultra cheese p/d with 5 venoms and all venom traits. It makes the set funner for me because the build has so many flaws but can still absolutely demolish almost anything with a few button presses. It’s also nice in teams since you can give people your venoms and spread condis all over the place.

Can you link me the build? I’m interested…

I’ve used something like http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqYVlsMpopNNxrJsPNRMhw9uf986s2NWEA-TlyCABA8gAwb/hjPhCoovZiDBwNq/koSQGOABUcEAyS5HpAgZaE-w, which is a solo-roaming variant of the build (it’s not really that great for solo roaming though).

Note that I use carrion, but you’re probably better off with dire. Carrion gear is just much easier to get than dire, and it is actually higher DPS. I also put scavenging runes on it, but those aren’t necessary. Perplexity, aristocracy, nightmare, &c. can all work fine. Sigils can be changed around too if you want some crit procs or something. Traveler runes will also be good if you can’t stand being so slow.

The basic way to engage the enemy is to land the typical CnD+steal combo, and then pop your thieve’s guild once you’re in stealth. Once the thieves are spawned, pop all your venoms at once to share them to your NPCs, and then use sneak attack on your enemy. All your venom charges will effectively be applied at once, and your NPC buddies will dump theirs onto your enemy as well, so they get overloaded with condis. You can then go behind them (since immobilize prevents the enemy from rotating around to face you) and hit them with whatever you want. I usually do one or two shadow strikes and then a body shot or two when the immobilize is almost worn off so they’re still locked down. Or you can just do some more sneak attacks on them to stack bleeds.

As you can see though, you have very little defensive utility, especially little condition clearing and no stun breaks. If you waste your venoms or someone is able to break out of your long immobilize and clean off their conditions, it’ll probably be tough for you to win unless you play it perfectly. Of course, this build’s potential is maximized in a group since you can give them venoms.

The 5 venom version is http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqYVnMJSRT20EeNB/TmImQ4e3veedW7GLCA-TlyCABA8gAwb/hjPhCoovZiDBwNq/koSQGOABUcEAyS5HpAgZaE-w. This is much more useful in a group scenario since you can give your venoms to your allies, and your buddies from thieve’s guild aren’t as necessary. The skelk venom can also work as a group heal, so it’s supporting them as well as enabling them to do more damage/apply long duration immobilizes/interrupt with basilisk venom. Once again, there’s little defensive utility, so you’ll just have to be careful not to get crushed by a rampaging zerg or whatnot.

EDIT: I haven’t played around with ice drake venom, but you could possibly swap it out for spider venom if you feel the excessive amount of poison is going to waste. Keeping someone chilled for 5+ seconds with a group barrage can be pretty devastating in some cases.

I use it in PvE sometimes with my hammer build since it effectively has 100% weakness uptime off of fierce blow, so it’s like having an extra force sigil pretty much.

Of course, both hammer and mace are relatively poor choices for PvE, as is the defense line, so only crazy and stubborn people like me will likely find any value at all in it. Besides, someone wanting bonus damage on their mace could take sundering mace to get +10% vs. weakened foes in addition to recharge reduction and not even worry about that +5% from cull the weak.

The only adept trait in the defense line that is worse is vigorous return. All the other ones provide much better benefits.

I think extra adrenaline off weakened foes could be a pretty cool addition. Kind of like how fierce shot on the rifle gets bonus adrenaline from vulnerable targets, except this would be against weakened targets… maybe with a short ICD so as not to generate a butt load of adrenaline, or only on application of weakness instead of being exactly the same mechanic as fierce shot. It would also give additional inherent adrenaline generating options for the mace and hammer, which tend to be the worst for building adrenaline quickly. Could even make it apply to only hammer and mace as well if they didn’t want it to benefit the other weapons.

I go ultra cheese p/d with 5 venoms and all venom traits. It makes the set funner for me because the build has so many flaws but can still absolutely demolish almost anything with a few button presses. It’s also nice in teams since you can give people your venoms and spread condis all over the place.

I did see some fine (blue) versions of the pendant listed on the trading post for 100ish gold. They don’t count for the collection though, just people trying to use the trading post to scam buyers who don’t know any better. I have yet to see the exotic one on the TP or drop during a run.

IMO it seems like it’s a bit bugged up. Getting Sam and the manifesto were bad enough, but they’re basically asking you to get a precursor to finish this collection. Not one of the cheaper ones either, kitten thing will cost you about as much as dawn.

It should function just as a normal hair style kit does, except that it has unlimited uses. This means it should be able to access all new hairstyles and colours currently in the game, in addition to ones added later.

I haven’t tested it with the unlimited kit myself, but I don’t see why this shouldn’t be the case. The normal hair style kits will allows you to access new styles and colours, even if you acquired the kit before they were added to the game. As such, I can’t see why the unlimited one wouldn’t allow this. Account binding it shouldn’t cause it to not have access to added styles or colours in the future.

Well, if you want a healing-oriented build, it won’t be considered “PvE” style because healing-oriented builds are generally poor choices for PvE content.

That being said, if I wanted a PvE healing-oriented spec, I might use something like: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDW9AWOAfEGADwIHDeBfQRBgyHhbQPA-T1xDABEqEs4LIwNq/80+DXp8DFdEA8gAIFw3KjA-w

This allows you to get a fairly heavy investment in healing with outgoing healing to allies maximized. Arcane brilliance and wave are used to blast in your water fields for AoE heals (or can be used to stack might with your fire field), and the ice bow and FGS are just useful for places like dungeons to burst down clumps of enemies or certain structures. Mist form is just there to save you if you get in a pinch or have to power rez someone in combat.

I use a similar spec in WvW, except with ether renewal and 3 cantrips, as well as cantrip mastery instead of soothing wave.

Another common configuration uses mostly cleric/nomad gear with 2 in earth for earth’s embrace instead of 2 in air, also traited for cleansing water and cleansing wave for the master and grandmaster water major traits.

Like I said though, it’s not really a good option for PvE since the name of the game there is just to kill stuff, and kill it as fast as you can.

It’s the same deal with any armor and weapons purchased from the WvW merchants (the ones that sell it for gold and badges of honor).

I imagine they’ve specifically designed it this way so that you can’t directly convert currencies like badges of honor or guild commendations into gold via salvaging (i.e. buying up items and salvaging for ectos).

With the old transmutation system is wasn’t as big an issue because you could transfer over sigils/runes while transmuting, but the new system doesn’t allow that anymore. This means any sigils/runes are stuck in these non-salvageable items, and only the upgrade extractor from the gem store can get them out. However, it’s generally better to just repurchase the sigil/rune since it’s generally cheaper than the upgrade extractor.

Unfortunately, the game does not tell you up front whether a particular item is salvageable or not, so it can “deceive” people who don’t know, making them deal with the hassle of replacing their runes and sigils after the fact.

Personally I feel like they should make such items salvageable, but they have their reasons not to. At the very least, there could be a “non-salvageable” tag on all non-salvageable items so that players were correctly informed before they irrecoverable runes and sigils into them.

messiah.1908:

i went with power p/p set and traps as i was playing around it before patch and now with the stealth abilities the p/p set much needed is nice too
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqaVlsMpvplNxuJsPRBPBtdCmdA4qEeGlm01PA-TVCEABFqEMKlHcv/ABPAADOBASpErD9BAcEAcR9HSBMwEA-w
also the 10 might stack buffing your condi dmg so the aa also does nice condi pressure

I tried this in sPvP (with berserker amulet and scholar runes), and it went so-so. Obviously the whole crux of the build isn’t there (trapper runes), but I just wanted to see what I could do with the traps and such. Shadow trap can actually do some nice things since it’s basically a personal (and invisible) portal.

With the trapper runes, you get access to stealth using the traps, which can really benefit p/p with its complete lack of mobility, evasion, and stealth abilities. It’s just too bad p/p is the crappiest weapon set in the game.

One of the nice things about ambush trap is that it doesn’t damage the enemy, so it won’t reveal you if you drop it on someone while in stealth, or if you put it out, stealthed, and then someone ran into it.

The main sort of problem I had is that you don’t really have to much options with p/p after you, say, CC them with the tripwire. I mean, anything with offhand dagger could land an easy CnD, p/d could also get some shadow strikes in, d/p would just go into stealth while they’re CC’ed or use shadow shot to close in on them, s/p could use it to combo into pistol whip or infiltrator’s strike for extra CC and damage setups, &c. But with p/p you can’t really do much but sit there and continue to spam unload, which you’ll be doing anyways.

The other main problem is there’s no real stun breakers. Shadow trap is not the most convenient thing for that purpose, although it can be pretty powerful. Even still, if a necro just decides to chain fear you, there’s not much you can do about it, particularly if no one actually stepped on the shadow trap. I suppose it should be easier to manage with the trapper runes since you’d have the stealth access.

The traits are also a bit restrictive. Obviously the 2 in acro is needed, and the 4 in trickery is too useful to pass up. Taking 6 in SA would be nice, but that would miss out on a lot of the damage that you can get from CS. Plus there’s no trait points left for DA… I would kind of like to take the corrosive traps trait just to have both the trap related traits (even though corrosive traps isn’t very good), but there’s just no room.

It think a p/d condi version would still be better overall though. If p/p stopped sucking so bad, this build could actually work out a lot better though.

I’ll probably try and set a similar build up for WvW instead of my current p/p build (also crap, but any p/p is generally crap), and see what happens.

It’s always been that way.

Note that if heal skills inherently remove poison, they tend to cleanse the poison before the heal occurs, thus they’re immune to poison. For instance, consume conditions, hide in shadows, and mending all behave that way. I’m not sure if this applies in all instances (i.e. haven’t tested something like healing spring), but it’s common for them to work like that.

However, if the removal is acquired via a trait or other effect, it tends to perform the heal before removing the poison. This is the case with mender’s purity, and it is also the case with things like cleaning formula 409.

It’s just a convention that has always been used. To remove poison before healing is a powerful thing, so I think it works to keep those traits balanced out a bit. If they allowed you to more easily avoid the effects of poison, they could drastically increase the power of a particular healing skill.

I used to use it in an experimental burning-burst hybrid build that took signets, but I swapped it to a medi build instead since that just worked way better. It generally very hard to justify taking those traits simply due to the other stuff you have to not take in order to fit them, and also the fact that signets are just not as all-around useful as most other utilities.

They could perhaps combine those two traits into something (i.e. put both effects on the grandmaster perfect inscriptions trait) and just insert a new trait to do something else (whether relate to signets or not). That way, you wouldn’t need to devote two traits to get those benefits and could fit more of the good stuff in your trait selections.

Personally I’d prefer 10 in air magic for the swiftness and fury as opposed to the vulnerability, especially since you have low power. It synergizes better with burning precision and provides you with some much needed mobility that is otherwise absent from the build.

Lupanic.6502:

can you enable AED while in fear / stun/ daze?

No, it has a cast time.

I’ve tried using A.E.D. in my SD rifle build, but I found it to be not as useful as med kit. With medit, you’re looking at low cooldown heals, so you can pop them quite frequently to keep your health high. Additionally, bandage self will auto-recharge with the inertial converter trait, meaning I don’t have to dump that much in inventions and can opt for more damage/mobility. A.E.D. simply has too long a cooldown, and trying to proc the 25% health recharge is just not that reliable. An adept player will also try and counter your A.E.D. by simply letting it tick itself out or trying to lock you down with CC so you can’t activate it when you need it, meaning it can just be better to heal yourself normally.

Furthermore, I don’t really feel the static shock ability is that great in conjunction with SD to warrant the use of A.E.D. It’s only really useful as an interrupt, and you need to be in melee range for it to work properly. It also can’t fire behind you.

The med kit also provides a source of fury outside of the utility goggles which is very useful for the initial strike. Plus it also has an active, albeit crappy, active source of condition removal. A.E.D. won’t do anything for you if you get immobilized.

I haven’t noticed the first case you pointed out, but I’ll be sure to watch for it next time I get downed with mantras prepped.

The second case you’re observing occurs when you cross a level scaling transition, which will only happen in general PvE areas. For instance, if you’re in an area where you’re downscaled to level 10, you can prepare your mantras to three uses as normal. However, if you then cross into a zone where the downscaling changes so that you’re now level 11, your prepared mantras will be reduced from three to two uses. You can use these and reprep the mantras to get your three uses back, but it’ll keep putting them back down to two uses everytime you cross a level scaling transition.

Since there are no such transitions in PvP, dungeons, fractals, or WvW, I don’t expect that particular cause to come into effect in those places. I don’t believe leveling up has any effect similar to this, but I haven’t bothered to take note.

pdavis.8031:

@yams

Although you make a very good logical argument, it seems that you are using a very loose definition of “multiple” as in: having numerous aspects or functions.

I feel it would be best to err on the side of caution, and stick with a more strict definition of multiple (i.e. consisting of, including, or involving more than one)

I concur that it is best to err on the side of caution in these matters, and not use any sort of macro for even benign purposes if you’re not willing to accept the associated risk.

As for my use of the definition for “multiple”, I use it loosely because it is loosely defined by the linked source material. The examples used to illustrate the point specifically point out situations that concur with my use of the definition, those being ones “having numerous aspects or functions” as you mentioned. If it is to have a stricter definition then ANet should provide a stricter set of definition and limits that concern these matters.

Yaj.5973:

simplesimon.2084:

Since no one else has said it you could bind your click to mouse wheel and just spin that

It wouldn’t let me do that. I could only do “scroll up/down/left/right” as mouse options through naga.

If you have a programmable keyboard, you might look and see if you can bind mouse 1 to several keys and then just piano those keys over and over to effectively produce a faster rate of “clicking”.

The only issue I have with the cast time is that it seems a bit sluggish, almost like it has additional pre-cast frames or something that end up making it longer than a half second. It might just be in my head though, but I sometimes get a feeling of unresponsiveness when using it.

I still think having a cast time on it is warranted though. If they were to remove the cast time, it should not receive its stun breaker functionality back though. That was just way too strong.

Shaogin.2679:

I keep voting for FT 5 to dish out a short duration smoke field. Especially now that FT 2 has a Blast Finisher.

I just want backdraft back.

I had one drop from Arah last night.

They’re a bit rare to find, annoyingly enough, but they are there.

As far as the goblet of kings is concerned, I wouldn’t stress out about the bag of jewels. Keep doing dungeons to try and get it. If you’re not able to get the jewel bag, you’ll easily have earned enough gold to straight up buy the goblet of kings from the TP. Easy, peasy.

Behellagh.1468:

Since the punishment is banishment, care to try your theory Yams?

Do you really think they would feel such a punishment is necessary in this case? The player is not doing anything malicious or providing themself any unfair advantage. All they would do is lose a prospective purchaser by banishing them.

Furthermore, I’m not even confident they could definitively prove the use of such a macro. Can they, without any doubt, be sure that I’m not manually providing all those clicks? One could even set the macro to have delays between the inputs to be closer to the speed of an average human.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, would it be acceptable to gain Achievement Points using such a macro? If you can use a macro to open Karma consumables, is there a difference opening Alcohol consumables? There’s an Achievement for consuming alcohol, so where does one draw the line? Macros are ok for getting APs? Macros are ok for winning mini-games if you are using instruments? Macros are ok for ….?

Again, it’s performing the same action over and over again to consume the alcohol items. This does not constitute “multiple actions” as exemplified in the linked dev post.

For winning the instrument mini games, I believe that one could be outlawed because you would be considered to be performing “multiple actions” by playing different notes. Such a thing is not done by repeatedly performing the same input over and over, but requires several different timed inputs (unless it’s simply a song that constantly spams one note, but that doesn’t exist in the game yet). Furthermore, the person is using the macro to subvert the “challenge” that is present in such content, thus receiving a reward for not actually doing the work.

There is no challenge in consuming a stack of consumables, it is simply tedious clicking. It’s a similar reason to why they added purchasable stacks of 10 obsidian shards and icy runestones, to reduce such tediousness.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

It’s probably best not to have any grey areas in such matters, as it makes it more difficult to determine where the line should be drawn.

Of course, it’s not my call, but it can lead to confusion where it’s ok to ‘win’ at some things using a somewhat automated process.

ANet has left it deliberately grey because they do not want to take a black and white stance on such a thing. I believe context to be very important when it comes to these matters. As described above, consuming the alcohol items is not subverting the gameplay in some manner, it simply reduces mindless clicking. Automating something like the Wintersday bell choir mini-game is subverting the challenge of that game mode that rewards something. These are very different situations that should not be judged the same.

It is also because they cannot regulate what sort of hardware is being used. If you look at Seera’s earlier post, it is stated that

Seera.5916:

If it is more than one action per click it is not allowed. No matter what the action is.

Many mice for home use posses a button that perform a “double-click” so that users can perform a double-click action on a GUI element with a single click. According to Seera’s post, use of this button should technically be illegal when playing GW2 since it is “more than one action per click” according to them. This button is effectively a macro, and can be used to consume stacks of items in a more expedient manner similar to how the OP desires to do so.

So is your answer to tell players which hardware they can and cannot use to play the game? I believe that ANet realizes this is a ludicrous notion and thus does not take a black and white stance on the issue since they would simply end up contradicting themselves.

I believe the only truly important thing in this matter is whether or not it allows the challenge of the game to be subverted in some manner, if it affords a player a competitive advantage over others, or if it allows the individual to automate the playing of the game at large (i.e. botting).

I think telling someone that “yes, you need to actually play the bell choir game to get rewarded” is very reasonable. I think that telling someone “yes, you need to do nothing for the next 10 minutes but click a mouse button 2000 times to consume all your karma items” enforces tediousness for tediousness’s sake.

Realistically, this whole thread extends from the issues of someone with a ton of consumable karma items and no fast way to consume them. The developers could simply provide a “fast stack consumption” feature into the game and such threads or debates as this would no longer exist, though I imagine that’s not high on the priority list. I imagine the “automate bell choir game” feature will never see the light of day though, for reasons outlined above.

Seera.5916:

If it is more than one action per click it is not allowed. No matter what the action is.

So one click to get rid of 250 karma giving items in a stack which normally takes 250 clicks would not be allowed.

I would provide an argument against your point, though I feel the matter is a bit grey.

A “click” or a “keystroke” is really just an input action. Such a macro would, in reality, be initiating 250 separate inputs in rapid succession. Each of these inputs would be performing a single action, that being the consumption of a karma consumable in the aforementioned stack. As such, it would be acceptable.

I believe the examples in the dev post you linked do not apply in this case. For instance:

1. “You may not program a single key to perform multiple functions” – The inputs performed by the macro are not performing multiple (different) functions, they are performing the same function over and over again. It would not, for instance, consume items from multiple stacks at once, consume the items from the stack while also setting up TP orders, or consume the stacks while the OP is using attacks, dodging, and gathering nodes.

2. “For example, if you Press A and it results in the casting of a single skill, you’re ok. If you Press A and it casts multiple spells, you’re not ok.” – Similar to the above point, it is not performing “multiple spells”, it’s simply doing the same thing over and over again. Technically speaking, I could write a macro that spams the “1” key to continually attack, which, according to your post above, would be illegal. However, the game already provides similar functionality by way of “auto-casting”, thus my macro would not be doing anything that the game does not already allow me to do. Similarly, a macro that would consume items from a stack is effectively “auto-casting” the clicking of the stack. Furthermore, this could technically be achieved by a human being if they were able to click at that speed.

3. “You cannot program an “auto-clicker” macro that, for instance, opens chests while you play elsewhere.” – The example described here is again highlighting “multiple actions”. In the case of the OP, they would not be setting up a macro that would allow them to consume the stacks while they play other parts of the game or do other things. It is simply to expedite the process of consuming the stacks and not enabling them to do anything else.

As always, OP, you do take some inherent risk if you decide to use such macros, so just don’t use them irresponsibly. Personally, I do find it unlikely that they would be bothered by such a macro since it is not providing any real advantage as far as game play goes, although I obviously can’t speak for them.

I wouldn’t try applying real life physics to something in a video game.

Technically speaking, it’s a different world in a different universe, so physical laws can operate differently there than they do in our universe.

In terms of game play mechanics, there’s a few reasons for why the skills work as they do:

FT #3 increases burning duration because the #1 ability does more damage to burning foes. This allows you to extend the burning duration to receive extra damage. For instance, if you channel the full #1 on an enemy, it will burn them for 1 second. If you then immediately use #3, it will extend the burning duration by 2 seconds, meaning you can then again channel #1 and gain bonus damage for the full channel since the enemy will be burning for the length of the channel. If you simply chained two #1s together, the burning from the first would wear out at the beginning of the channel of the second, so you would not be maximizing your damage.

FT #4 sets a field on the ground, and there aren’t really conical field effects in the game. Thus a wall was probably chosen since it was already used in an elementalist skill. One can try to use it to kite enemies into, and the fire field presents combo opportunities with various combo finisher abilities (i.e. flamethrower #2).

FT #5 doesn’t apply burning because it would probably be considered too powerful to have an additional source of burning on top of everything else that is available. It is meant as a defensive ability that works to relieve melee pressure or prevent something like a downed person from landing their interrupt. Having it apply burning would turn it into an offensive ability, and it would either need to have the defensive portion removed or the burning duration to be minimal as to not make it too strong (although IMO flamethrower #5 is a bit weak for what it offers).

I haven’t been noticing an increase in the frequency of these sudden trajectory alterations in rocket boots, but I guess I’ll keep an eye on it.

I’m fairly certain such things are linked to terrain interactions, but I’ve found it’s a hard thing to reproduce. If it’s happening very consistently off cliff dives, then that could be a sign that something got changed under the hood.

If it gets that bad, you can try using mines to strip the retal (I assume this works, haven’t actually tried it), or switch over to something like bomb kit which is inherently less vulnerable to retaliation.

I still use it for roaming, although I find the medi burst builds to be more fun. It’s not really the best at killing things, but it can hold out for quite awhile if you make the proper moves.

It’s a bit slow unless you’re using the traveler runes, or unless you have someone to give you swiftness. I like using the trooper runes since it helps a ton with condi clear.

I guess you could always slot retreat if you wanted to ensure more mobility though.

If only it was a bit better at condi removal.

In my spirit weapon build, it always comes down to picking between this and the shield. I guess I could always take away the sword, but that’s a lot of damage potential gone.

Hammer will always be the best spirit weapon though, but maybe bow can be second best.

Just be careful with permeating wrath. Note that it makes it an AoE around you, not your target, so it’s only truly effective if you’re staying in melee. I believe that only affects the passive effect of VoJ and not the active.

I don’t know if you’ve ever considered putting 4 into radiance, but that’s another possibility. Having the blind and VoJ recharge can be very valuable, as well as the burning duration increase with torch recharge reduction. Can also work some boon removal in that way. Could even make some crazy signet build for condi removal if you wanted. I think this would mean taking 4 out of valor though, but it might be worth the exchange.

I’ve never understood the 30 second recharge on this skill. For what it provides, it seems a bit excessive. I mean, in PvE you can coax mobs to sit in it and thus keep them burning for the full 10 seconds, but in any PvP or more mobile PvE encounters, it’s not going to be worth any damage at all.

The main benefit you get from using it in the later formats is the long duration fire combo field. Now you can use flame blast in it for a blast finisher, but it’s also handy to combo it with rifle. You can try to immobilize them in the fire for a bit, and use jump shot through it to gain fire aura. Tool kit also works well because the throw wrench ability is a guaranteed projectile that can hit twice for decent burning.

Lowering it to 25 or 20 seconds would make it better at providing it’s utility more frequently without altering the inherent power of the ability. That way, you could have the fire field to combo with more frequently. If you’re not comboing with the field, it’s pretty much a waste of a skill.

The only other thing I can think to add to it is the application of an additional condition, like applying 1 second of cripple as well as burning so you can use it to control enemy movement.

Actually, the big mine from the throw mine skill is actually invisible to the enemy in much the same way traps are. In that way, they’re very much equivalent to traps, just with a very inferior trigger radius.

The mines you’re referring to are the smaller mines from either mine field or the auto-deploy mines from the explosives line. I don’t know why those ones were never made invisible, but other trap classes don’t really have this extra sort of functionality along with their traps (i.e. mini traps). Mine field is often used as a spike ability anyways, much like a point-blank grenade barrage.

It’s very sensitive to your camera orientation, and has been around for a long time. Try to ensure that your camera is facing the targets you are trying to hit, and it should help flame jet hit more consistently. It also helps if you’re not rotating around so much while using it.

Alternatively, I believe if you just stand perfectly still and not hold down the right mouse button, your character should auto-rotate to a degree so that the flame jet gets pointed exactly at the enemy, but I’d have to test that to be sure. Obviously this technique would not be that feasible in most PvP situations.

It’s linked to transitioning to an area that has a different level scaling cap.

For instance, if I’m on my level 80 character and I’m in a zone that scales me down to level 4 (i.e. at the start of the plains of ashford), I can charge my mantras up to 3 uses and do this as normal.

However, if I have my mantras charged and I walk over towards the next area (i.e. heart quest) and it adjusts my level to 5, my mantra charges will all be reduced to 2 if they were at 3 before entering the area.

If I use up those 2 mantra charges in the level 5 zone and then recast the mantra, it will give me the 3 charges again. However, if I walk back to the level 4 zone, it’ll put any that are at 3 back down to 2.

I’m guessing the same thing is being observed by you two. Furthermore, I would predict this happens on any sort of level scaling transition, meaning it should happen quite frequently in PvE areas. However, I don’t think it should be happening it places like WvW, fractals, or dungeons. If you’re observing it there then there is likely a secondary cause for this.

ellesee.8297:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Mortar is terrible! Vee Wee just likes running it because the game is boring! Vee Wee has been running nothing but this gadget build and 5 elixirs!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqalcTp6q1XxCLseNCbBBqNI6jEln85IGglC-TJhAwATeAAkLDA4EAwb/BA

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks like 4 elixirs and a crate to me.

Yep, just gotta make sure to pop it before you get hit under 25%. AMR will proc even if your healing skill is not on cooldown, wasting it.

This makes it a bit inconvenient to use with A.E.D., although if you manage to pull it off it can be pretty powerful. I’ve had it so I got the A.E.D. lethal heal twice in a row, so the enemy effectively had to burst me down three times to kill me (A.E.D. nearly fully heals on my glassy gadget build).

I find the combo of A.E.D. with AMR is best utilized on glassier builds since you will be bursted down more quickly. This makes it so that it’s easier to get the lethal heal from A.E.D. even if you activated it before the 25% threshold. Alternatively, the activation causes your opponent to relinquish some of their pressure, allowing you to either escape or apply pressure of your own, and you can get your A.E.D. back at the 25% mark even if you don’t get the first lethal heal. It still requires a bit of finesse, timing, and luck though.

Ehecatl.9172:

Black widow spiders are available to anyone in Heart of the Mists, actually.

Oh, did they change that? They’re supposed to be exclusive rewards from HoM points. I can’t actually tell since I have them all.

Ehecatl.9172:

Substance E.4852:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

can’t use two of the same pet for the same reasons , now warroirs can’t use f1 axe, f1 hammer.

applying two bouts of cone burning , or Double long spider immobilise in addition to other mobile impairing condis , that will become Op.

-5 points for not realizing we can already use two immobilize spiders.

-10 for not realizing the jungle spider and black widow spider share an F2 cooldown, so you can’t get two immobilizes even with both immobilize spiders equipped.

Black widow spider also requires HoM points, so it’s an exception in terms of what pets are available. It obviously won’t be available to any non-GW1 players. You can contribute however many negative points you feel that’s worth.

I think the shared cooldown thing is a similar reason why you can’t equip two greatswords with a warrior and do 100b->ww->swap->100b->ww. They don’t want you just chaining the same skills over and over.

The only other reason I think they may prohibit equipping the same pet twice is because you only start the game with a single pet, and gaining a second pet as well as the swapping of pets is something you need to acquire. So they made it so you can’t equip the same pet twice so that you can’t just have one pet and be a “complete” ranger. I dunno, that’s a bit of a stretch, I guess.

The adrenaline changes are actually something that does nerf your garden variety “coward” warrior, which I think was a better way of going about it than hacking away at their mobility on two of their weapons.

Nuu… this sucks for my GS/rifle quickness build that has 16 seconds of quickness.

Well it’s a crappy build anyways, but still.

Typically you won’t want to use shield in a dungeon because it’s a defensively oriented weapon. It can perhaps be handy in situations where need to run past mobs since you can block a lot of their stuff, or if the boss has a certain attack that you just can’t seem to dodge.

The only two traits that are really relevant for shield are the shield master and missile deflection traits, which are both in the defense line (also not really used for dungeons). Distracting strikes in strength is another possibility since the shield has an interrupt on it, but the way defiant works prevents it from really being that useful on dungeon bosses.

Any situations where you need projectile reflection/blocking is generally handled by mesmers and guardians, and the warrior is much less effective at it anyways.