Guild Wars 2

waka.9826:

Yamsandjams.3267:

I’m ditching Kit Refinement for Acidic Elixirs.

Then I’m going to drink my elixirs…

Farewell, cruel world…

200 damage throw elixir OP

Does more than my pistol auto-attack.

Just sayin’.

Haralin.1473:

elixier U is now a stunbreaker

Although by breaking a stun you will either take double damage for 5 seconds or not be able to dodge for awhile… much better to focus on using it for burst damage, only capitalizing on the stun break it you’ve expended all other options.

It seems like it is probably buffed from this patch. The KR change might be a bit odd. although both super speed and magnetic aura can be very useful for this build. The loss of the extra nails is probably not that big a deal, although an extra cripple field can be handy. You’ll just have to deal with having to waste the KR proc half the time.

The elixir U buff will be quite helpful as well, especially since you don’t miss out on a stealth op since you have a blast finisher on the shield for use with smoke screen.

FreekPalmer.2839:

no, you missed the point. You can use turret. you just drop and overcharge at the same time. Its a large damage knockdown. The blow it up. use it like a mesmer illusion. once it has done it’s job blow it.

Oh right, forgot about that. Haven’t toyed with turrets since the betas.

There were no patch notes that it now functions underwater…

So if you’re by water, you can go swimming, eat your stim, come back up and still have your magnetic aura.

I’m not saying it’s a good solution, just that it is a solution… kind of.

I’m also expressing my disappointment that the trait is defunct underwater still, but that’s a different issue (I’m assuming this is the case as I haven’t been in game yet).

FreekPalmer.2839:

Well if you want to know why I went with kit refinement. It is because it is the best option down that tree. It also gives u a nice 2 second missile reflect every 20 seconds. Med kit is pretty much mandatory with the 25% reset on all tool-belt skills.

Rocket turret toolbelt skill is amazing. lots of burst. Also have u double tapped the rocket turret drop? more control and burst. If you blow it up it’s aoe and procs lightning.
With the control you have. it mean you can run do a lot of controlled damage.

Seriously give it a go.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0pyWX7SfF17IxoHk+zbG0j863+KqQlB;TkAg0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1MoA

If you’d like more burst try U instead of S. Use overcharge, then hit U and you will do burst whilst they recover.

That’s about the toolbelt skils from the turrets, which I agree can have some good usability. But the actual turrets themselves are a different case. In many instances, I see people taking a turret just for the toolbelt skill and never placing the turret. It’s similar to how people take signets for the passives and never pop the signets.

Kimbald.2697:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Kimbald.2697:

Testing turrets at the moment.
Mostly net turret and rocket turret.

kittenhey still die fast to any mob hitting them.

I think they want you to repair them with the toolkit which is why they buffed the repair on it. I guess you’ll have to give up a turret to take it though.

Because, you know… spending your time repairing turrets is really the best way to kill your foes mid-fight.

Sad, isn’t it: to repair them, you need to be fighting real close to them.
Throw wrench alone isn’ going to cut it, by a long margin.

But when you fight close to them, in melee since you’re using the toolkit, than the enemies natural aoe will kill them regardless of your healing…

The best way to keep them alive is trait to put them down at range, so you can throw them up a rock or a roof.
But than you can’t repair them against ranged…
And some turrets need to be in close range anyhow.

The new buffs are cool, but you need so many traits to keep them barely alive… it’s sickening.

Not to mention I think it’s only the first attack in the auto-attack that actually repairs the turrets, so if you hit a mob around your turrets, you’ll stop repairing them… I haven’t actually bothered to confirm that though, but I believe that’s the way it works.

At least they got some CD reduction so you can replace them more often, particularly flame turret.

Well, I was attempting to make a sarcastic remark in light of the KR changes about how we would consider them leaving something alone as a buff.

More to the point, it doesn’t make any sense that this sentence is in the patch notes. Is this subpar trait changed or not?

Yes, the buff to elixir U is nice though, extra stun break if needed and full projectile block without loss of any stealth possibilities. Although I kind of consider the loss of quickening zephyr on the drink version a nerf as that was one of the more forgiving ones to get… frenzy means you’ll be hurt more and haste takes away your dodging, but I don’t find myself popping quickness to heal too often instead of bursting.

I’m ditching Kit Refinement for Acidic Elixirs.

Then I’m going to drink my elixirs…

Farewell, cruel world…

“Stabilized Armor trait: Reduces incoming damage by 5% while endurance is full.”

This was in the patch notes.

I guess this means they didn’t do anything to this trait since it was already doing what is described.

As far as anyone here is concerned, that’s a buff… no?

Kimbald.2697:

Testing turrets at the moment.
Mostly net turret and rocket turret.

kittenhey still die fast to any mob hitting them.

I think they want you to repair them with the toolkit which is why they buffed the repair on it. I guess you’ll have to give up a turret to take it though.

Because, you know… spending your time repairing turrets is really the best way to kill your foes mid-fight.

Phoenix.6149:

Super Elixir did NOT get buffed this patch, that information is left over from the previous patch, and should be ignored. The current healing values today are identical to those before the March26 patch.
The effectiveness of SE builds has been HALVED.

I repeat, it has NOT been buffed.

While I’m not saying you are mistaken, I sincerely hope that you are, sir…

Although oddly enough, I kind of had a hunch that this was the case since that sentence seemed to be exactly the same one that was included in the last set of updates.

There was also some weird entry in there about stabilized armor that just stated what the trait did without any indication of change.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

I blame 100nades for being remotely good at killing things in a timely fashion, thus drawing the wrath of the devs.

It also had to do with elixir gun relying on the trait to have proper healing and the medkit making no sense.

At least in regards to the ability effects. I don’t see any good reason for the global cooldown at all, especially since grenade kit now just drops some tiny explosive kitten on the ground that has a hitbox of maybe a few pixels in width.

I never really found the KR flame blast to be that effective. It’s definitely not a large factor in the usefulness/viability in the flamethrower though, there’s many other aspects of the kit that have significant bearing on that. If the loss of the KR flame blast has in fact destroyed this kit, then its not really so much a question of the flamethrower’s effectiveness as it is KR’s effectiveness.

It seems like they’re trying to get the new KR flame aura to promote better synergy with traits like Juggernaut, in that you’re now damaging your enemies while tanking them and building a few additional might stacks.

Furthermore, this provides us access to flame aura which we didn’t really have easily available access to before outside of combo finishers.

Lastly, I think they’re actually trying to implement something people wanted with the flamethrower all along – more burning. The new KR ability for flamethrower is a new source of burning, up to 4 seconds per attacker (assuming it works the same as other fire shields, and I’m not sure if condition duration affects this).

I think this might work out nicely with a complement of Runes of the Forge, although I’ve never been too impressed by the effectiveness of flamethrower builds in PvP (they can be fun though, just not that effective at winning).

Cube.1758:

Naught.2316:

This topic has some valid points, but I don’t buy the argument that the hit to KR’s Elixir Gun ability means that supportive play is taking a hit, not for a second.

Why don’t you take a gander outside of KR for a moment, and see that Super Elixir got a tremendous buff?

“Increased both impact base healing and scaling with healing power by 100%.”
“Increased base heal multiplier by 50% and healing power scaling by 100%.”

And why? Well, how do you tend to play a healing support Engineer? Since Super Elixir heals in a pulse, rather than giving a regen buff, don’t you tend to drop two Super Elixirs on top of each other for massive group heals? I think ANet looked at this and decided to allow us to have KR no longer be a “requirement” for support healing builds.

And if you used the two Super Elixirs separately for slightly more consistent healing pulses, you still have plenty of healing and regen options with bombs (they fixed the Forceful Explosives bug too) and such, and your single, 16-second (an impressive cooldown for an AoE healing ability that’s been buffed this much) Super Elixir is just way more powerful now.

EDIT: Forgot to note that the 16-second Super Elixir CD is with Fireforged Trigger, so if you want to run support, you hate KR and you don’t have Fireforged Trigger, put your points in that for sure.

exactly this. i wish this will end the almighty super elixer threads

I don’t think it will be quite as powerful as the double super elixirs were (numbers would have to be crunched), and it also means one less condition removed, but I think they made the right decision here. It was very common to use elixir gun in conjunction with kit refinement for the sole purpose of having the dual super elixirs, and not taking that trait essentially cut the power of that ability in half.

The way they have it now, the elixir gun is much stronger without being traited into kit refinement. The main reason I took the kit refinement trait was that I liked having the dual super elixirs, but now I think I might get rid of kit refinement for something else that’s useful, and I won’t lose very much healing power off the kit at all (if any). I will miss the additional condition removal, and sometimes it was handy having it in a wider area (it’s exceptionally tough to have allies stand in the AoEs for it), but this mean I can investigate other trait options and not feel like I’m missing out. Otherwise, I can always make use of the glue drop thing.

As far as elixir gun itself is concerned, this was a good thing. But I think the main point that was being addressed here is that this trait becomes a hassle if you want to use multiple kits, and your support utility as a multi-kit build can suffer due to these changes. That support won’t really be healing related though.

If they just had a short global cooldown with individual long cooldowns like ele attunements, I think this trait would be in a fairly good place, although there’s always debates that can be made for the durations of the abilities. I think they want to ensure its not too powerful though seeing as its a tier 1 trait.

google.3709:

Biggest hit is med kit tho, magnetic aura is great but the kit has heals, condition removal, swiftness and fury, not to mention people love to spam it for speedy kits. Also it’s a strong heal, short cool down ( that can be shorter and recharge when you hit 25% ) in other words, this skill is awesome and you’re going to go in it all the time… so KR will rarely trigger with any other kit..

people go on it every 20s for the fury, and swiftness.. and before getting to fights, so how’s this gonna work out if they any other kits ?

Basically, you have to “prime” your KR by randomly swapping to a kit for no reason in the middle of nowhere, a count down the timer in your head. Then you need to pop you stim before the timer is up, and then mid fight you can swap back to it and get your magnetic aura up.

How this was ever a good idea, I don’t know. It effectively becomes another case of RNG as we just have to hope that the situation aligns properly with our KR abilities.

I don’t really mind the changes they made to the abilities themselves even though I use the elixir gun profusely. Most of the abilities required a change (i.e. medkit), although the mine from the grenade kit is an odd choice… maybe they feel this is a better way for the mine-type skills to be used since they’re generally not used at all.

As far as I’m concerned, the only real issue with this trait is the global CD. If they just had individual 20 second CDs, it would be much better. Yeah, you can take 4 kits and get off 4 free abilities in a row, but so what? Not only have you locked yourself into a specific utility configuration without regard to any synergy between the kits, you’re probably not doing any useful work during all that swapping anyways.

Even if the global CD was reduced to like 3-5 seconds with 20 second individual cooldowns, that would probably be just fine as well. Ele attunements are handled that way. That way, you can’t just pop off a handful of free abilities in a few seconds, but you also don’t end up in this annoying situation where you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot for swapping kits. You can swap to a kit, use its abilities for about 3-5 seconds, then swap out the next one for its KR and abilities, and so forth.

I could maybe see them wanting to avoid a case where you use something like magnetic aura and super speed to get away from things (because we know how annoyed people would get if an engg could escape like an ele or theif), but the duration on the abilities is so short that it doesn’t warrant a 20 second global CD.

Please do not wish the Kit Refinement treatment on any other class. That’s just uncalled for.

It also more directly addressed the problem of chain stealthing, which enables you to be effectively invisible if you choose to do so.

For instance, if you hide in SM after it gets capped, you can easily tie up 10 people trying to hunt you down because you chain stealth all over the place. You’re not going to attempt to sneak attack anything unless it’s a sure kill, so you can just reuse CnD as the stealth is coming off, or heartseeker through your powder.

The 4 second reveal does absolutely nothing to this kind of play unless the thief in question accidentally hits something. I’ve always seen this as the real problem in regards to stealth (aside from WvW culling, but that’s been fixed as well).

When I first made a thief, I thought that stealth did apply reveal whenever it wore off, even if not attacking. It seemed so intuitive that I didn’t even bother watching my buff bar. When I found out this wasn’t the case, I was really surprised. I was looking forward to this change because I felt it would’ve been good for the game all around, but apparently I am completely out of touch with what is really going on in the world of GW2.

IIRC, they actually did count as elixir skills back in beta, which (in conjunction with them neglecting/forgetting to update the description) is why the tooltips still have them listed as “Elixir” skills.

I remember being disappointed on release that this had been done to the elixir gun, but it definitely would have been way too powerful if they had left it that way. Not that the elixir gun couldn’t use a leg up still, but having the skills count as elixirs would be going too far in the other direction.

In beta, you could have elixir F on like a 3 second cooldown or something like that with the cooldown reduction trait, it was really great for just keeping people crippled as much as you wanted. Well, great for you anyways, probably not so great for the person being crippled.

I was actually quite surprised at the relative ease of getting a full complement of exotic items, so the ascended stuff does not seem like a big deal at all for me, since it’s something else to work towards over time. They’re much more reasonable to acquire than legendaries, that’s for sure.

The system is actually very new player friendly too. On their way to level 80, they’ll be gaining a bunch of laurels and maybe guild commendations, so they can possibly get their ascended stuff as soon as they hit level 80. The rings from fractals aren’t too problematic either despite being a tad grindy, but that’s not any different than grinding for dungeon exotics.

However, I hope that there aren’t any more tiers made above ascended, as that will start to get annoying.

You can also stand on your mine if you’re fighting a thief, so they walk into it when they try to backstab you.

It’s a skill I’ve been interested in trying out since it does seem somewhat handy, but I haven’t been able to work it into any builds I want to play yet.

It almost seems to be more useful to throw it directly at people rather than place defensively. Ends up being a ranged knockback with some added perks like boon stripping.

I don’t think the toolbelt ability is that great though… those deployed mines seem kind of flaky, as in low damage and small trigger radius.

I think if 50 engineers all deployed their mortars, it might make for pretty good defense for a tower.

Sporadicus.1028:

Is the Stability boon that you gain from the Juggernaut side of Elixir X removable? I swear I’ve been nabbed by immobilize and stun effects while in giant kitty mode.

FYI, stability does not defend against immobilize, so it’s quite possible you were affected by an immobilization ability.

I don’t believe the stability is supposed to be strippable from the transformations (i.e. Rampage, Tornado), but I have had the stability removed from the Rampage form a few times. I’m not sure if it’s simple boon stripping or something else doing it though.

However, I could be wrong and maybe the stability is supposed to be strippable, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t. That’s why it disappears when you leave the transformation, as it’s supposed to be an “in transformation” boon only. Thought I had read something about that in an earlier update…

I used to be able to bunker fairly well with the elixir gun before it got fixed (although I didn’t actually know it was bugged at the time). I guess only eles are allowed to heal that much without having to use a heal skill.

Bombs are fairly common for bunker builds as well since you get BoB and you can really take an edge off of thieves or other people who try to bully you off the node. They can also be useful against people chasing you, but obviously won’t work well against people who decide to strike you from outside the node.

Rifle can also be an interesting choice because you can still put up decent ranged offence while causing the opponent to endanger themselves by getting closer, and you have a very low-cooldown blowout and immobilize on it. I’d experiment with it if you haven’t to see if you feel it fits you better than pistol/shield.

If the box of nails from the toolkit was even close to the thieve’s caltrops, it would work quite well for keeping people off nodes. I usually use it for the block, prybar, and pulling people around.

I tried using elixir U for awhile for the projectile defence, but it just wasn’t reliable. Although if you use this, know that you can stand inside your wall to reflect/block projectiles from both sides.

Lately I’ve ditched using bunker builds and tried something more offensive, which I just liked better. I haven’t played around with turrets much though (eles just always seem to outright wreck them for free).

waka.9826:

Kamahl.3621:

Bomb kit is our hardest hitting raw damage over time weapon. At least from the auto attack.

However it only has 2 raw abilities and one scatters mobs. Grenade Kit has the advantage of hitting 3 times per ability (meaning 3 vuln / 3 shots at shrapnel), and has 3 non-auto abilities that do very strong damage. BoB scatters mobs and trolls your group. I do feel Bomb Kit could hit a bit harder though, given the damage increase compared to grenade kit is minimal at best.

It’s just way too much of a hassle to do the damage with it, you will just end up on a suicide mission going in range with that if you are trying to deal damage with bomb kit (which also implies you are fairly glassy).

That’s a bit of an odd assumption. In fact, most bomb builds I’ve encountered/used are not glassy at all. That tends to be an attribute found more commonly on grenade builds. I haven’t been doing a lot of tPvP lately, but I still see bombs fairly often in hotjoin.

Additionally, the fire bomb can be useful for getting might stacks (can do a self-combo with fire bomb → BoB), and the concussion bomb can stack some serious confusion, especially if used in conjunction with static shot and prybar (you can actually exceed mesmer levels of confusion with these three). Smoke bomb also comes in handy, it’s just a bit hard sometimes to tell exactly how handy it is because it’s not always obvious what you caused to miss.

The kit doesn’t really reach it’s full potential until you get some traits into though. But even if you aren’t traited for bombs at all, it’s still a nice source of raw damage that you can swap to in PvE (I use it all the time for the Jade Maw fractal).

I’ve made decent use of elixir X. It’s actually the elite I usually run with for PvE and WvW.

I generally don’t like the rampager form, but it has quite a bit of single target CC that can screw people up. Also, you have a few opportunities to knock people off ledges with your stomp and kick, so it can be good if that option is available. The #3 charge ability can also be used as a makeshift ride the lightning, allowing you to suddenly disengage from a fight if you need to. You can also perform actions in it, meaning you can stomp people while capitalizing on the stability it grants.

The tornado can be good for interrupting a group or spreading blinds. It’s actually possible to keep someone continually CCed if the timing works out right, which might force them to waste a stun break. It’s also good at knocking people off ledges, although there doesn’t seem to be a reliable way to control which way it throws them.

It can also be lowered to a 90 second cooldown, so you can use it rather liberally. I’ve occasionally used it as a means of stability, doing the transform and then cancelling out when I’m done with it (the stability will go away when cancelling out). The cancel doesn’t really matter since it has a fairly short cooldown though.

It can also be useful for “on elite” procs, such as runes. For instance, you can use this in conjunction with runes of lyssa to transform, immediately cancel, which essentially means you’ve lost all conditions and gained all boons. Mind you, elixir C might be a bit better option for doing something such as that.

Also, elixir X is excellent underwater. The whirlpool is still quite powerful despite the damage nerf it got early on, and the plague is very useful for it’s AoE blind or other effects.

In sPvP I will use supply drop though because elixir S just isn’t as useful there. It’s kind of sad that elixir X is just a recycle of two other profession elite skills, both of which the players of those classes tend not to favour. I use elixir X underwater in Raid on the Capricorn, but that’s strictly hotjoin stuff.

Mortar is a joke though.

Well, there has to be a weapon-profession combination that is the “least DPS” combination by virtue of the skills being so different, but I’ve always felt that the damage is drastically lower than what it should be. It is possible to get pretty good damage output out of pistols (as many people have demonstrated), but I feel like you need to specifically trait for it.

I think the complaints about pistol mostly apply to explosive shot, as static shot is a fairly useful skill as it is and poison dart volley can actually be a fair bit of burst damage.

There’s 3 particular things I’d think of changing:

1. I think one of the main improvements they could give it is having the bleed apply in the AoE burst. As it is now, only the target that is hit (or targets if using coated bullets) is affected by the bleed, and the collateral targets are only affected by the inherently paltry direct damage. This makes an odd scenario where the attack can scale much better off of power even though the pistol seems designed as a condition weapon.

2. I wouldn’t mind seeing the base bleed duration boosted up to 3 seconds but it’s a delicate matter, especially since we have a number of on-crit effects and condition damage scales with precision as a result of our firearms trait. Even still, it can be very difficult to stack your own bleeds with explosive shot unless you dump a lot into condition duration, on-crit effects, or use elixir U for quickness. If you compare our bleed stacking ability to every other class (except guardians since they normally don’t get bleed), we really need to work for it, whereas it can be fairly simple for something like a shortbow ranger or sword warrior to get 10+ bleed stacks consistently on targets with less specialized investment needed. I say this mostly out of personal experience, not hard facts, so take it for what you will. I suppose the balancing factor is that pistol provides a wider variety of conditions, but the bleed damage can end up being negligible in some circumstances.

3. Poison dart volley should just focus on a single target. I’m sorry, but whoever thought it was a good idea to have them shoot in some sort of spread fashion spent a little too much time with skritt. It just adds needless annoyance to the attack with no benefit whatsoever. The fact that it can hit a cluster is not beneficial because each individual dart does not do much on its own, it interferes with your burst on single targets, and you don’t have a good sense of control over your attack (although that seems to be a theme with the engineer, with all the RNG stuff going on). If this was some sort of “balancing” effect, then I don’t understand it, especially since the ability is nowhere near powerful enough to warrant any kind of balancing.

Additionally, I’m not sure that the pistol actually fires at its stated 1/2 second firing rate. It appears to be 3/4 like the rifle and elixir gun, although I haven’t sat down to test this. Might just be in my head.

Most of the time I use elixir gun for single target scenarios because tranquilizing dart does more direct damage, more bleed damage, and applies weakness, at what appears to be the same rate of fire (although the pistol says it fires faster, I still don’t think it actually does). I switch to using explosive shot if I need to hit a cluster or I need my shield out for extra durability, but otherwise there’s no point in me using it since it’s inferior to tranquilizing dart. Coated bullets could perhaps make it more applicable since you can double strike a single target, but that’s about it.

Goloith.6349:

Tbh I’m a little curious about this as well. Currently I’m running around with condition duration runes to get 100% bleed and burn, but I’m wondering if I really need all that crit since condition duration isn’t based on crit, but condition damage. I’m wondering if prec/condition/toughness is the way to go. Only really gaining 15% mitigation, but it might be worth it.

One of the reasons I’m hesitant to go for exceptionally high condition durations is that this stat is completely wasted when a condition is removed. You can easily make a FT build that can apply over 1 minute of burning to a target within a few seconds, but all that damage potential will get lost once the condition is removed.

So if you’re fighting an opponent that has subpar condition removal, you will probably melt them quite well. But it’s a bit risky since that damage can simply disappear. As such, I try to find a nice spot where conditions can be applied frequently rather than being applied with long durations. That’s where a decent amount of precision comes into play.

The duration increase does allow you to get more bleed stacks easily, but you’re still facing the problem that the high stack of bleeds can get removed. I can’t say offhand if this is the best way to increase damage output in a numerical sense, but I think it will largely come down to individual preference. I tried going the high duration route, and I found it to be too risky and took away from other aspects of the build (i.e. extra endurance and raw damage from runes of the adventure).

It also doesn’t hurt to boost power with the pistol as the pistol is in this odd place off scaling just as well (or better) with power increases.

YES.

I thought maybe this was just in my head, but I’ve noticed exactly what you are describing here. I’ll activate my heal skill and nothing will happen, and I have to hit the hotkey once or twice more. I never have this problem on my engineer, and it always catches me off guard when I play my warrior.

My warrior does have the reckless dodge trait as well, so perhaps that is the source of the issue after all. Mine is also a male Norn, although I’m not sure race is influencing it.

Glad I’m not going insane.

I’ve often run a combination of rampager’s and carrion gear with the classic elixir-based dual pistol engg build. I essentially take enough rampager’s items until I’m happy with the precision, then fill the rest with carrion stats.

Rampager’s = precision, power, condition damage
Carrion = condition damage, power, vitality

For any ascended gear with this (i.e. rings, back item, amulet) I would use the ones corresponding with rabid stats, such as Khilbron’s Phylactery

Rabid has condition damage, precision, toughness

However, you’d have to test things out to really get a feel for what you prefer. You can get access to rampager’s, carrion, and rabid stats in Heart of the Mists, so I’d suggest spending some time there tweaking the amulet/jewel combinations and seeing which you prefer.

It will also come down to what utilities, runes, and sigils you prefer to use as well.

The sPvP version of the build I refer to above (or at least one of the varieties of it) is here: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcQQJAqalspSXHvSfF17IBoH6Nv8V0jHD5J/pAbB;TsAg1Cuo0yolQLrWOtkaNW4UwsCA (will probably have to copy-paste the link in browser to see)

You can always use those trays/feasts, but I suppose that can be very wasteful for a dungeon (WvW is a different story).

Is there still a similar problem with the chat suppression? You’d often get suppressed for like an hour if you said the same LFG message in chat twice in a row. At least the GW2 LFG website provided a good workaround for that.

All I will say on this is to please fix/balance/redesign current abilities/weapons before adding new ones.

Isn’t this kind of already handled by the story mode vs. explorable mode convention?

Not to mention that giving an easy mode that still has decent rewards would create a new fad for speed farming with less challenge.

It might be worth considering awarding a small number of tokens for repeat story mode completions though. That way, people can still get tokens on an easy version of the dungeon, and explorable mode can still be what it already is.

One of the problems with the hard mode feature in GW1 (at least towards the end of the GW1 lifecycle) was that no one would run normal mode anymore, and you basically had to have very specific builds and gear and follow pre-defined instructions to not get auto-booted/blacklisted from any party. In some cases, you even had to display proof that you had run said content hundreds of times, which made it very inconvenient for new or returning players to find groups. CoF and some fractal groups are already very selective about party composition (i.e. only berserker warriors and mesmers in CoF) and I think that the introduction of hard mode might exacerbate this.

dontrippy.8906:

upping the party member limit would destroy the balance of the game if u ask me

How so? So long as dungeon content is still limited to 5, it won’t affect the balance in any way at all. Having a larger party size would only really help you keep track of where your entire group was, which can be handy in PvE or WvW especially.

In GW2, I have found very little need to use the map drawing/pinging features. In GW1, it was very important to keep at least half an eye on the mini-map at all times, and it was even better to just watch the map sometimes instead of the actual terrain. However, I find in GW2 that observing what is actually around you is much more important that checking the mini-map.

The main things I use the mini-map for are spotting resources and events, or for accessing waypoints without pulling up the full map.

I thought I accidentally deleted my Rytlock mini when I started playing the game because I didn’t realize that deposit collectibles would send all the minis to the bank too. You can keep them in an invisible bag, of course, but it’s still a bit of an annoyance to deal with.

Well, there is a bit of reason for this.

Currently we have seen 10 different types of stats on gear.

1. Power
2. Precision
3. Toughness
4. Vitality
5. Condition Damage
6. Healing Power
7. Critical Damage
8. Magic Find
9. Condition Duration
10. Boon Duration

The last two listed were only introduced in the Wintersday update, so we’ll only consider the primary 8 for this example.

With those 8 stats, there are a large number of ways to combine each set of stats.

8! / (3! * (8 – 3)!) = 56

So there would have to be 56 different gear prefixes to handle all the stat combinations.

However, this ignores the fact that one stat is the primary stat and the other two are secondary. If we were to incorporate this into the calculation, it effectively means that each set of attribute combinations has 3 different unique arrangements, meaning there would have to be a grand total of 168 different gear prefixes to satisfy an exhaustive set of gear stat combinations.

For comparison, including the Boon Duration and Condition Duration stats into this equation would yield 120 different stat prefix combinations, and there would be 360 different possible prefixes if we also considered that one stat will be a primary stat.

We have approximately 20 different item stat prefix combinations currently, so you would have approximately a 20/56 = 36% chance of finding the gear set you wanted provided you pick one at random, ignored Condition Duration and Boon Duration, and didn’t care which one was the primary stat.

As such, you might have to combine different stat sets to approximate what it is you want.

As seen in the Wintersday update, ANet is not adverse to adding more gear combinations, but it would be rather impractical to try to include an exhaustive list of combinations.

What would be interesting is if they introduced a mechanic where we could somehow select which stats were placed on a piece of gear (i.e. via crafting), allowing for more customization. But it doesn’t currently fit in with any model of gear acquisition they have, nor do I think that’s something that would be highly prioritized.

1. Flameseeker Prophecies
2. I technically have the Gift of Mastery done. I have all the necessary resources for it, just putting off actually creating it until other things get done (ensures I don’t have cash tied up in non-liquid resources when I need it). Gift of metal is almost done too.
3. Working on clovers at the moment. Well over 300 ectos into it and I’ve got 45 so far.
4. Lodestones (currently have 5/100 onyx) and precursor are going to be the toughest things. I think I might just hold out until this new method for precursors is unveiled, and hopefully lodestone prices will drop (although this mystic binding agent seems to be a flop). Getting 500 crystalline dust will be a bit arduous as well, although it’s luckily not as expensive as the other stuff.

Ryoki Hokishami.2756:

But at least you did it….for science.

Those raccoons don’t stand a chance.

Best way I’ve found to collect them manually so far (as opposed to buying them from the TP) is dungeon running. From CoF I’ve been building up molten cores at a slow but steady rate, and two cores will give one lodestone with small additional investments into the transmutation recipe. So you can just look your desired lodestone/core up on the wiki, find out what dungeon it drops in, and try to do some consistent runs of it.

Some of the WvW enemies can also drop them in their loot bag items, so you can go farm some of them too if you’re looking for an area with easy and free access. For instance, I think the borderland centaurs and skritt can drop loot bags that have a rare chance of having a core or lodestone. But dungeons are would probably be better since you’re getting other stuff anyways from doing the dungeon instead of just mindlessly farming stuff.

Fractals also, but I haven’t got a ton of lodestones/cores out of fractals.

I wonder what would happen if you threw 4 dusks into the forge… would it wrap around the item tiers and award you with a grey junk item?

Thank you to the generous souls who decided to test this. I’m not really sure what the logic behind 10 daily achievements equating to a 15-30 minute dungeon run was, but it seems a little… off, to say the least.

Unless there’s some other secret formula that hasn’t quite been figured out yet involving these, but maybe that’s just being too hopeful.

FYI you can actually do both. Build up bloodlust stacks and then switch to a weapon with the sigil of might in it.

That won’t apply to tPvP of course, but you can get the best of both worlds in other gameplay modes if you really want to.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Hm… this made me wonder…

How do Inertial Converter and Automated Medical Response interact with each other? Automated Medical Response will recharge bandage self, whereas Inertial Converter will recharge all toolbelt skills… and both activate on the same set of conditions.

It seems to me that Automated Medical Response is rendered a redundant and useless trait when you also have Inertial Converter and are using the medkit… unless Automated Medical Response also recharges the cooldowns of the skills in the medkit, but I don’t think it does.

Actually it does! It’s only marginally useful, but it’s actually noticeable when you have the automatic elixir S trait. Hit 25%, become small, boom! you have all your bandages back. So great for surviving those 1v2s, just pop your three bandage heals while small and try to dodge into a bandage self when elixir S ends. By that time your gear shield is probably back up…I love it.

Hm, interesting bit of synergy from those traits then. They’re all from different trait lines too. What’s especially interesting is that they all have the same CD timer as well, so whenever Self-Regulating Defenses kicks in, you know your heals are recharged without having to check. Nice little all-in-one survival package.

Eviator.9746:

I have not played an ele beyond level 15, but I’ve seen a bunch of D/D ele videos and they all play the same. No build or gameplay variety. Our forum seems to have a larger influx of potential builds recently, and one could argue build variety is one alternate definition of versatility.

If we do have a larger influx of build idea, it’s probably because people are still trying to figure out what the hell they can do to compete with something like a D/D ele. It’s basically a watered down evolutionary process.

Engineers may have difficulty living in a competitive space, and so people need to constantly explore and adapt existing ideas in order to find new ways to excel and thrive.

In contrast, the D/D elementalist may not see much challenge in regards to its competitive dominance, and so there is neither force nor incentive that would promote evolution.

Sporadicus.1028:

Technically, you can affect someone up to three times with the Coated Bullets trait on a #1 auto attack. The affected person has to be in between two other people, though.

1st hit is from the AOE of the bullet hitting the person in front of the affected person.
2nd hit is from the bullet hitting the affected person.
3rd hit is from the AOE of the bullet hitting the person behind the affected person.

In other words, we are the bane of conga lines everywhere.

You heard the man. Shut down all the servers immediately, cease product sales, and spend another 7 years in development.

Also add in perma-death, which leaves your corpse permanently rendered on the landscape for others to find and laugh at.

It was even tough to find people to do this event before the lower level areas lost their population density. One of the main obstacles back then was finding the entrance to the cave. The boss icon on the map causes a lot of confusion as to where the cave entrance is, so even if someone wants to wander in there it’s a bit of a search through waters with veteran krait in them.

It’s a similar problem to other group events that never get done. For instance, there’s that on boss on the south side of Fireheart Rise in that little fort that I’ve never seen killed, and the only reason to go near the champion karka in Southsun Cove is to ninja-mine the orichalcum vein (which they nerfed to not be rich anymore).

Best you can do is just make a shoutout in map chat. There’s been some cases where I’ve been able to scrounge up a handful of people to handle a group event that would otherwise be ignored.

I’m sure the devs have an idea about reinventing that bounty hunt system or whatever it was from GW1 so that bosses like the Bloodwitch get some attention, although I’m equally sure it’s a “blue sky” item at the moment.

Well, dual swords seems to be mostly about the bleed stacks in terms of damage output, so you’d probably want to put some focus on condition damage/duration and maybe the Arms trait for some extra bleeds. You’ll kill in a bit more of a passive style this way, although the immobilize from the burst skill can be useful at times (even the 1 second one).

Your damage would need to be reduced by 30% to compensate… Be careful what you wish for XD

I think the banners are a bit more akin to engineer turrets at the moment, in which case the banners are much more generous in allowing you to pick them up and move them. At any rate, that’s one of the tradeoffs of using banners… you get a nice passive buff, but you have to stay localized. If they were to be used in such a mobile fashion, they’d need a different tradeoff.

If it’s WvW you’re concerned about, I’ve found there’s no shortage of people willing to pick up your banners and run around with them (or sometimes off a cliff with them).

I find the elevation it’s used at influences this a lot too. If I’m standing at a higher elevation than my opponent when I use this, it has a greater chance of failing. I assume it’s because it hits “above” the opponent (you kind of land on the air above the ground first). Not sure if going up an incline has the same problem, just noticed it jumping down.

It’s kind of the same problem that engineers face with their flamethrower and such, and I think other jumping abilities suffer in a similar manner (i.e. sword #2).