Guild Wars 2

Aaron Ansari.1604:

bearshaman.3421:

Agroman.7190:

TheMagicFace.9854:

My guess is after his memory was wiped from history, 250 years later, only the order of whispers and a few Priory members would know what he had actually done and how dangerous he and his acolytes actually were.

His memory wasn’t wiped from history. That was over 1300 years ago. Nowadays, Abaddon’s story is well known and even part of the basic religious texts of Kormir.

Where can you find these “basic religious tenets”? and not just for Kormir…

I don’t know if they’re in GW2, but they were everywhere in GW1. The basic idea is that each god has their own set of readily available scripture, some small part of which used to be put on each of their statues.

I haven’t seen them in gw2, but then I haven’t really explored DR very thoroughly…

I love Druid, don’t get me wrong. In any other content other than pvp, I would say it’s an even split between the two. Thus I looked at what I’ve seen on the forums about pvp (I don’t play pvp of any kind, so I just go by an aggregate of what I see across the profession forums), and I know that reaper was one of the top three classes used at one point recently, and ranger/druid hasn’t been the entire time I’ve been playing gw2. So that’s why I suggested reaper.

Ok, I kinda feel like this is getting away from the original topic, but I am going to point out something: The Condi druid build only uses CA to proc Grace of the Land for the group damage buffs. The main point of it ISN’T HEALING! You’re doing something to beef up your and your group’s damage output. I run this build and I don’t do much healing at all, only what is incidental to me making everyone stronger. THAT’S IT.

Just because you use Druid doesn’t make healing your job. If that was the case, the build would have staff as one of its weapons, and would have healing power statted. It doesn’t.

Agroman.7190:

TheMagicFace.9854:

My guess is after his memory was wiped from history, 250 years later, only the order of whispers and a few Priory members would know what he had actually done and how dangerous he and his acolytes actually were.

His memory wasn’t wiped from history. That was over 1300 years ago. Nowadays, Abaddon’s story is well known and even part of the basic religious texts of Kormir.

Where can you find these “basic religious tenets”? and not just for Kormir…

Reaper. Ranger doesn’t seem to be doing well in spvp, but don’t take my word for it.

Jerus.4350:

Yes and No. Strait condi you’re looking at Engi or Ranger (ranger not druid) I believe. For necro to take that top spot you need minions, a second necro to epidemic bounce with, and transferable conditions. Between those 3 things you can become the top condi profession, most powerful being epidemic bounces in general (few situations where the condi transfers are just silly good).

Condi druid is actually a really good build with ancient seeds. that 5 bleed…
Also Necro doesn’t necessarily need another necro. Epidemic becomes more awesome the more conditions are on the target, and multiple classes have the ability to stack up conditions. Having another necro is useful when the target is champion- or boss- level, but overkill below that.

Condi in general has a bit of ramp up, but especially on necro, and that will be noticeable while leveling up. Also not having certain skills and traits.

To elaborate, the main issue with condi while leveling is many of the good traits proc on crit, and with the downscaling of stats that occurs on maps, your crit chances won’t amount to much until much higher levels. So you won’t see the true impact of condi until you’ve maxed out your class.

So the answer is a potential yes, but only in certain situations, which are quite common.

And, everyone loves a nice epidemic off a boss with a lot of trash adds around that just… poof, gone in a stream of 25 stacks of every condition.

Ain’t that the truth….

RyuDragnier.9476:

Mara.6782:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

We refused to be marshall, Almorra took that as our resignation, and we went along with the idea. Apparently we’re out altogether now.

Now that we are no longer in pact we can have more story of orders.

Maybe order missions. I like the idea of daily order missions. Whispers give sneaky staff, in priory you researching ruins and artifacts and vigil is maybe killing dragon minions or something. I never liked pact. Personal story become boring after order story.

This, and bring back the earlier race characters, such as the AWOL father for the Charr if you let him escape, that sylvari who wasn’t from the Pale Tree but was from a different tree, etc.

I would definitely be up for a second round of race-specific missions. The only problem is that the race-specific missions were done through the specific DE member for your race, and of those, one’s dead, and two are non-responsive, so they would need to change who they use as the contact person. They could just go completely freelance, and have random people come up with stuff that needs doing. They could even tie this into the metaplot, by having these missions point to whatever is going on next with the white mantle/primordus.

Doing order missions is pretty much doing pact missions, because they are pretty much all in with the pact. They may run missions without direct involvement from the other orders, but it would all go back to the pact in the end. I don’t see that being an option for us, as that would be a huge demotion from being commander.

Wait a minute. I forget… Did we leave the pact, or just refuse to be marshall of the pact?

Depends on what kind of play style you like.

Read: more information needed.

Cheru.2341:

Hello, I’m also a new, former wow player. I was big on raids and instanced content, and I’m still not quite clear on when players should start doing dungeons and how to go about it. Been having a hard time wrapping my head around the differences between how instanced content works differently in gw2, though this thread has been helpful.

My main is 69 now (only been playing since June), and though I’ve been seeing that dungeons have become available to me along the way, some people have said that I shouldn’t do any of the dungeons until I reach level 80.

In this thread I believe someone said to ignore them, but is that the expectation now that the content has been out a while? To enter a group for a low level dungeon at level 80 with already good gear? If I create a LFG for my very first dungeon saying “New player, etc., etc.”, what do people expect, and what should I expect? Is it like in wow when you run heroics and people flip out if you don’t already know all the mechanics, or is it more of an explore and discover kind of thing?

Thanks for any advice.

I forget how WoW works for this, but in GW2 there are a couple ways to get a group. You can just group up with people you know (guildies, friends, whatever) or you can use the LFG system (one of the buttons in the top left of your HUD). People can advertise what dungeon they are trying to run, and will usually specify if they are looking to do a speedrun, for which certain gear/builds are expected.

As far as the dungeons themselves…

The dungeons have 4 parts to them, a story mode and 3 other paths. The dungeons are all part of the backstory of Destiny’s Edge, and can be run when you get the email alerting you to that dungeon being available to your character for play (along with the actual story behind what is going on there). Once you have completed the story mode, you can access the other 3 paths. These paths are bascially going in and doing cleanup from the story mode run; for instance, in Honor of the Waves, you are going back in and taking care of one of 3 powerful icebrood that are still rampaging around (thus the three different paths). You get the dungeon currency for the paths, but not for the original story mode (along with money and other stuff).

When you have a group and go to the entrance of a dungeon, it will ask if you want to do story mode or explorable (which is the other 3 paths). Once you pick and your party enters, you are in your own personal instance. There isn’t a waiting queue, what some other group does has no impact on you, you get the idea. There will be waypoints inside in case you die, and a repair station near the beginning to fix your gear. I think there are also dungeon achievements, you can look in the achievements section of the Hero pane to see those.

If you want an archer, you have 3 classes with access to longbow, and two with short bow. Ranger is a lot more than just an archer. That’s just one of its wide choice of weapons. We are not defined by a single weapon. People need to move past this erroneous idea.

DTATL.9641:

bearshaman.3421:

DTATL.9641:

The problems with necro is and has always been our shroud. As it doesn’t scale it’s hard to balance.

Replace “shroud” with “our class mechanic” and this is true for every profession. Just how the game is.

And? I never claimed that it wasn’t. I just pointed out what for me is the reason behind why necro never got the things the “necro community” asked for. Reaper got some of it and now that’s been nerfed because it was too strong, maybe not in the way we wanted but still nerfed. All I was trying to say that because of how shroud works we can’t have the things we’re been asking for. So if we want to have those things we have to give up something in return. Which in my opinion would be better for the class. And just because this is “how the game is”, it shouldn’t stop us from trying to make it better, even if it’s pointless in the end.

I get that, but the thing is, there isn’t a unified opinion on what the necro needs or what it should give up to get it. “The necro community” is divided along quite a few lines as to what is to be done. The issue of balancing the classes against each other is universal (pvp it’s against one another, in pve its to make sure they all bring something useful for group content), but the class mechanic only proves to be an issue in pvp, when one mechanic against another has to be considered. So when discussing what we need and what we are willing to give up, you won’t get consensus because what is good for one game type usually hurts the other. (Thankfully it looks like they are starting to do skill splits, and hopefully this will continue.)

In any case, that’s what I meant by “how the game is”.

Sororita.3465:

There’s nothing saying you cant use these two together. As stated above the two weapons conflict with each other in their damage output. Condition will be your main form of damage so you’ll be wanting to use scepter as much as possible to deal your damage.

Greatsword can be a great utility weapon. Aoe blind/cripple, a pull and 12 stack of vulnerability aren’t things to scoff at. Of course focusing on condition damage will severely reduce the damage you can apply with your Greatsword. I’d suggest utilizing Greatsword as a set up to augment your Reaper Shroud. Pull them in with Greatsword 5 into a Greatsword 4 then go into Shroud to deal your damage, while the enemy is in an aoe blind/cripple.

Personally, I’d use celestial gear with Viper weapons and condition food/crystal. Increased Greatsword damage so it doesn’t hit like a wet noddle with some added in survivability stats.

… I think you are the first person I have seen suggest celestial for anything necromancer… wow… I know that sounds sarcastic, but I assure you, I am pleased that someone is willing to explore other stat choices.

Ranger condi has the advantage that we can ramp up quickly, as opposed to the slow crawl that most classes contend with. Bonfire is key for that, combined with Splitblade for bleed and possible burning projectile combo. In terms of overall condi dps I don’t know that we are 2nd, but we are pretty decent. And it works pretty well in fractals, where most bosses aren’t terribly mobile. Add on traps, entangle, Ancient Seeds (if you are going for personal dps and not buffing the group with GotL), etc. you get the idea.

DTATL.9641:

The problems with necro is and has always been our shroud. As it doesn’t scale it’s hard to balance.

Replace “shroud” with “our class mechanic” and this is true for every profession. Just how the game is.

Ascended armor is really only useful if you are doing high level fractals. The stats don’t improve that much from exotic armor, unlike weapons and trinkets. If you are doing fractals, then definitely the armor.

You might also want to craft a lvl 80 breather for yourself, and new (berserker) underwater gear at some point.

You can definitely run power builds in higher level fractals, you just encounter enemies with higher and higher degrees of toughness, which has zero effect on condi.

And if someone kicks you from a high level fractal group for playing condi, they clearly have no idea what’s going on, and you’re better off not running fracs with them anyways.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Just because Dev don’t respond doesn’t mean they don’t care. Players love to complain whenever there is a nerf sometimes extremely valid, most times simply hyperbole. I suspect most developers simply learn to tune out the noise.

^^^^^^^^^this

I would honestly also say, just keep doing the personal story, and explore the world. The in game map gives you an idea of what areas you can handle, so just enjoy yourself. The other suggestions are not mutually exclusive and are also very good ideas. Find a good guild for the game types you are interested in (you can be in up to five guilds so you can check out more than one), and the wiki does help.

AliamRationem.5172:

bearshaman.3421:

AliamRationem.5172:

New to engineer. Was looking for a critique on a potential build I’ve been thinking about trying once I unlock scrapper. But I’m still leveling, so it’s sort of theoretical at the moment as I haven’t been able to try a lot of these skills or traits yet.

I was hoping for a critique that might give me some ideas. I intend to start out in open world HoT for awhile, so this was my thought for a build that would be fun and effective for that…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUB1ahVXBGpC0ehl7ii+2j9cXsg+hQEcBjwAA-ThSDQBez0Hc0B4QlBM4CAAD1fAgZgF+AA6hSvEoEkH7PQKgLWGB-e

You may want to play around with switching between Iron-blooded and HGH. If you find that you have enough survivability, go with HGH.

Aside from Flamethrower and Bulwark Gyro, all of your utility, healing, and elite skills are pretty interchangeable, so you have flexibility there too.

Overall, I think you should do decently well with this. Your mix of Berserker, soldier, and wanderer stats should do ok, though you may find you have too much survivability lol. As you feel more comfortable with the class and the playstyle, you may start swapping out some of the more defensive pieces for zerker. Also check out Marauder if you want a good mix of offense and defense.

It’s difficult for me to anticipate ahead of time how much survivability I’ll need. But I’ll definitely go with more offensive stats if it appears the survival traits would be overkill.

HGH I would only take if I can’t hit the expected boon uptime. That’s a bit of a guess at this point as well, but I should be stacking might very quickly swapping between hammer and flamethrower primarily.

Another possibility I was considering was a pistol/pistol condi build. The mortar and grenade kit paired with pistols seems to offer access to a ton of conditions on demand. Swapping between more kits could be fun, since my current concept is more limited. I expect it’ll be almost all hammer/flamethrower, with mortar there just to offer a range option and combo field support. I also noticed condi is the recommended build for group PvE.

Thanks for the feedback!

I did see how much might you would be producing, that’s why I didn’t go as hard on HGH. I think I would recommend a different elite skill, especially since you aren’t making use of the explosions trait line.

Speaking of, if you do go condi, you will want that traitline along with bombs kit. If you like kit-switching, condi build is the way to go, with bomb, grenade and either flamethrower or elixir gun, and mortar kit. Healing turret has been the better heal skill, but with the changes to med kit, that might be a viable option, I have no idea. You could go Viper/Sinister, or Dire/Trailblazer for a tanky condi build.

I stand corrected. I guess in game I always got the sense it was more about the religion then. I will drop charr from the list for revenant then. Despite LS reasons to the contrary. (won’t say more, don’t want to spoil anything)

That’s the main benefit to siege rounds to me, the ability to double blast a field and get two combos out of it. Not sure how often the chance to do this comes up, but Fire Bomb and two orbital strikes is 6 might stacks for everyone. Depends on your party composition on whether you can leave that sort of thing to others, or if it would be useful (while clearing away some trash).

gadenp.7586:

Hi All,
Just came back after 3 years. I was near fully Grenth and Berserker Geared for both Conditions and Power exotics.

Which path is current the most viable for PvE, Dungeons/Fractals now?

Am also running HoT now and Live Season 2. Which build overall is the way to tide me over PvE content which will transfer over well to Dungeons/Fractals and Raids?

High level fractals you will likely want a condi build. A mix of Viper and Sinister ascended gear, Axe/Torch, Skirmishing/Wilderness Survival/X. Quick Draw to reduce CD on Bonfire, Sharpened Edges, etc etc. This will also work for dungeons, but a power build will work fine here as well.

Currently running a glyph + shout (marksmen, Druid, Beastmastery) power build.

Not sure if my constant pet switching (to get call of the wild) is kitten ing my dps. Also I near always am on longbow as there is no sync with melee weapons due to range differences. I mostly use sword/axe to jump away…. Will Greatsword be better? I tried Staff, but to me staff in pve is very useless (aka I do not know how to use it)

This is fine, staff is really only useful for getting back into CA form quickly, so unless you are going for the healer role, don’t use it. GS does have swoop, so you can close the gap pretty easily if you want to be able to switch between range and melee. Pet switching shouldn’t hurt you much (I never noticed) and making good use of our pet’s F2 skills is part of the class. Jungle stalker for might is always good, but there are lots of options to play with.

And other then Glyph of Empowerment, what other glyph is good? I am always too ranged for the other Glyphs. Also my shouts are Sic Em and the Elite one to increase swiftness and might.

Operating at range will make most glyphs useless, but in dungeons and some fractals, you don’t really have the option of range, especially if you want to effectively buff your teammates/get buffed by your teammates. Most group content in this game is very range unfriendly. Take that into account when making any build for group content.

Ascended armor is technically only necessary for high level fractals for the infusion (or whatever they are called now) slots, and gives such a small boost to your stats over exotic that it is generally recommended to not waste resources on it. Weapons and trinkets are where the real increases are at.

That said, the only info you have given that would indicate a stat set is your weapon choice. GS is a power weapon, so I wouldn’t bother with condition damage. From there, there are some questions.

Typically you are gonna go for phantasms over clones (more life and actual damage). Clones are only desirable for condi builds (as their base damage doesn’t matter, but they still apply conditions which will do their full damage). Most phantasms do power damage (with the exception of iMage).

So then the question becomes what pve content are you playing? If Raids, then you will need to figure out what your raid group is going to expect of you. Most mesmers in raids serve as tanks and support (with alacrity and quickness), so you might be best off with Soldier, Knight, Wanderer… some mix of power and toughness. If fractals, you’ll want Berserker (which is also one of the more universal stat sets, so you can always use it on another character). Same for dungeons.

With more information on your build and what you want to do with the character, I can finetune my advice.

AliamRationem.5172:

New to engineer. Was looking for a critique on a potential build I’ve been thinking about trying once I unlock scrapper. But I’m still leveling, so it’s sort of theoretical at the moment as I haven’t been able to try a lot of these skills or traits yet.

I was hoping for a critique that might give me some ideas. I intend to start out in open world HoT for awhile, so this was my thought for a build that would be fun and effective for that…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUB1ahVXBGpC0ehl7ii+2j9cXsg+hQEcBjwAA-ThSDQBez0Hc0B4QlBM4CAAD1fAgZgF+AA6hSvEoEkH7PQKgLWGB-e

You may want to play around with switching between Iron-blooded and HGH. If you find that you have enough survivability, go with HGH.

Aside from Flamethrower and Bulwark Gyro, all of your utility, healing, and elite skills are pretty interchangeable, so you have flexibility there too.

Overall, I think you should do decently well with this. Your mix of Berserker, soldier, and wanderer stats should do ok, though you may find you have too much survivability lol. As you feel more comfortable with the class and the playstyle, you may start swapping out some of the more defensive pieces for zerker. Also check out Marauder if you want a good mix of offense and defense.

Fluffball.8307:

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Charr = All

~EW

I wasn’t going to answer this lore lets you play whatever profession/race combo you want, but charr is actually the one that has to have some mild “role play” explanations. Since charr no longer trust magic, if you care about that stuff you’d need to explain why your charr is a light-armor profession. That said, I’m pretty sure there are some charr magic using NPCs (?).

The charr don’t distrust magic, they distrust gods and religion. That is what they have cast aside.

On a different note:

Warrior: Charr/norn/human
Revenant: charr/norn/sylvari
Guardian: anyone but charr (white magic typically is from divine sources thematically)
Ranger: Norn/sylvari
Thief: Everyone but norn
Engineer: Charr/asura
Elementalist:sylvari/asura
Mesmer: human
Necro: Human (grenth much?)

I was under the impression that life steal damage and healing was affected by power and healing power, which would mean that might would affect it. Vulnerability should also affect it. Is this some weird glitch I was unaware of? (Need to go test things…)

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

bearshaman.3421:

Devil’s advocate post here (pve only):

I don’t find necro to be weak at all, if anything the opposite. My power reaper wrecks everything that stands in front of it, and my condi MM necro has no problems whatsoever. I’d take either one into dungeons or fractals without reservation. Most of the complaints I’ve heard comes primarily from pvp main players, so you’ll have to ask them what the problem is.

The problem with power reaper is that GS auto and GD are slow as hell and pretty much all you bring to groups is mediocre dps. So why bring you, a power reaper, when they could have a class with higher dps and/or a class with more utility, especially if it’s utility only their class can bring? Our blinds are okay at best, we have almost no class-specific buffs and we don’t exactly have much else of worth either. Then there’s stuff such as CPC which isn’t even that bad on paper, but a condi necro utilizes it much better without crippling their dps and even then there’s classes which do a better job at managing enemy projectiles. Condi necro has the “advantage” as in that basically everyone can pick it up due to them surviving quite a bit while not having an overly complex rotation (even though most people manage to kitten up badly here), condis being extremely strong in a good chunk of current content and well, epidemic.

One: Who said I had to use greatsword?

Two: My build uses Blood Magic, so I provide everyone with a dps boost and healing through all the Vampiric stuff, and make use of the two good wells. So I do provide something to the group.

In any case, only raids get that picky, and at that point, it depends on who’s leading it as to what gets picked. I’ve seen some who would want a power necro, and some who don’t. And the same for pretty much every other build in the game.

My build uses Rabid for everything.

If I had to guess, I imagine this scene will come later. The only sylvari npc of note aside from Trahearne who also has strong ties to the Grove we currently have some serious trust issues with. I imagine there will be some heartfelt scene of forgiving Caithe, and that it will take place in the grove, and the Pale Tree will be a part of it. And mourning Trahearne’s passing would be a good draw to bring us there. Canach may admire Trahearne now, but it was from afar, and he’s not really the type to go running to mother as often as the firstborn do. Not to mention being tied to Countess Anise for the time being.

Why not Viper/Sinister?

Devil’s advocate post here (pve only):

I don’t find necro to be weak at all, if anything the opposite. My power reaper wrecks everything that stands in front of it, and my condi MM necro has no problems whatsoever. I’d take either one into dungeons or fractals without reservation. Most of the complaints I’ve heard comes primarily from pvp main players, so you’ll have to ask them what the problem is.

Sorel.4870:

The real problem with Anet’s politics is that the dirty rangers and the stealing thieves are always rewarded, while the hard-working engineers get the short hand of the stick. This has to stop.

I would make a reasoned response to this, but I can’t bear to be in a thread that makes me think about american politics long enough to do it.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Player race is irrelevant (well, from an out of universe perspective it just solidifies that all sylvari won’t die if Mordremoth was killed making Caithe’s line even sillier). Risen were dragon minions just as sylvari and mordrem were – there is a difference between the two, but the risen didn’t suffer any kind of drawback at all. They remained “alive” and active, and even acted as if Zhaitan still lived. They even, over time, got a power boost (see Tequatl, if not also the Orrian temple reworks that made them more challenging meta events).

And risen were just as converted and brainwashed as any other dragon minion – mordrem guard were a bit unique in how they were brainwashed, but sylvari were not brainwashed.

The line would have been far more believable from an in-universe perspective if all risen did, in plot, just collapse in a pile of undead mush. But that never happened.

I draw a difference between the risen and the sylvari. Zhaitan had to create his army from the dead of other creatures, they weren’t borrn his servants. Mordremoth’s servants are different. While some were corrupted, the sylvari were born from the start as an entire race that was made to serve him, but it obviously it wasn’t guaranteed that all of them would be his minions. I am probably not explaining myself very well, but I think there is an important difference. The Risen are more like the corrupted mordrem you see in SW to me, and the sylvari are something very different.

Regardless, this is somewhat off my initial inquiry. Interesting line of conversation, though.

babazhook.6805:

bearshaman.3421:

Zsymon.8457:

Aren’t the Venom skills themselves incredibly weak innately though?

Take Devourer for example, a 2 second single target immobilize on a 40 second cooldown. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to slot something like that? It’s like having one less utility slot and a waste of time just pressing the button to activate it. Warriors get a 4 second ranged immobilize on a 16 second cooldown, and no one slots it.

The other venoms are all incredibly weak as well, the effects add absolutely nothing to a fight, compared to the valuable skills you aren’t taking instead.

For one person sure, but when your whole team is now getting them? That 2 sec immob coming from 5 people. Stacking duration, that 10 sec. better than 4.

Do keep in mind though that if an immob 2 seconds or 16, one single immob break will cancel it.

Better to think of it kitten applications of 2 sec immob. If the target has a stunbreak, they will likely be reimmobilized very quickly, making that a wasted stunbreak.

Edit: apparently you can use “as” and the number “5” with a space between without getting "kitten"ed.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

bearshaman.3421:

Natwinter.9234:

And another thing to consider with regards to venomous aura: “venoms shared by this trait will use the thief’s attributes (condition damage, healing power, etc.) instead of the player’s to whom it was applied.”

Where is this quoted from?

Wiki, under Notes for Basilisk Venom.
Link: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Venomous_Aura

Checked out your link, and noticed something else that is amazing for this.

" The thief may trigger secondary effects off of these condition applications, such as weakening an enemy with Deadly Arts Lotus Poison when an ally poisons an enemy with a shared Spider Venom."

0_o

Edit: The only other traits I can see also getting treated like this is maybe Pressure Striking (torment on interrupt is basilisk counts) and Weakening Strikes (you take less damage from weakened foes).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The burst of magic could have been Mordremoth’s attempt to fool everyone into thinking he died – after all, Zhaitan’s death didn’t give such (then again, that could just mean Zhaitan is the one still alive).

There was no visible burst after Zhaitan’s death (though he was beneath a shroud of clouds maybe we just didn’t see it) but Savant Valis’ Research Journal reveals that the Bloodstone started growing and that this coincided with Zhaitan’s death. He also says that the Stone reacted in a similar but more exaggerated way after Mordy’s death.

So I would say magic was also released upon Zhaitan’s death, just less because the Pact starved him before. The Tequatl update pretty much confirms this anyway.

True, forgot to mention that.

But that goes into the ploy I suggested Mordremoth could use – lose magic to fool those killing him that he died.

Narcemus.1348:

Gotta wonder what Virdant Brink would look like if/when those vines start to either dry out or decay… I could see this decay eventually causing sinkholes to appear all over the place…

They may not. Dragon corruption remains unchanged with the Elder Dragon’s death, as seen with Orr and the risen.

Which is why Caithe’s “this may kill the sylvari people” fear was totally idiotic.

Not completely idiotic. This was the first time that we have seen a dragon have a connection to an entire player race, and use that connection to convert a huge number of them en masse to its service. Zhaitan didn’t do that, so what implications the dragon’s death would have for them was unknown, as nothing like that had happened before.

Guardian/Dragonhunter is probably your best bet from a lore perspective. GW2 is sadly very short on profession-specific lore in game. The reason I mention guardian is because in the personal story you play the role of the hero, the protector, the champion, learning under one of your race’s previous exemplars, and ultimately you’re going after the dragons. The HoT personal story even has another guardian making the mental transition to defend others by taking down the dragons (kinda almost not really a spoiler; doesn’t ruin anything). It also has the advantage of being able to solo pretty well and offer a lot to groups as well.

I was looking for runes that boosted precision and condition damage. Thanks for the info on the Thief runes!

Personally I’d recommend either Guardian or Warrior. Heavy armor, both have access to greatswords and hammers, so you will feel like you’re the big guy wading into battle. Both have lots of survivability and can solo very effectively, but also have alot to contribute to group content as well.

I love my reaper, but the greatsword has been receiving some complaints of late from other necros. No clue why, but apparently they feel it’s clunky. Also you’re a light armor class, so you’d be wearing pants or a dress.

Revenant doesn’t have a big weapon to use, so you will lose that there, and there are apparently a lot of kinks being worked out of GW2’s newest class.

does anyone know the answer to this? the wiki doesn’t say…

Natwinter.9234:

And another thing to consider with regards to venomous aura: “venoms shared by this trait will use the thief’s attributes (condition damage, healing power, etc.) instead of the player’s to whom it was applied.”

Where is this quoted from?

That’s what I was getting at. Condi builds are preferred at higher levels of fractals over power builds, regardless of profession. You can do power, but it’s suboptimal because of increasing amounts of toughness in fractal monsters/bosses.

Zsymon.8457:

Aren’t the Venom skills themselves incredibly weak innately though?

Take Devourer for example, a 2 second single target immobilize on a 40 second cooldown. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to slot something like that? It’s like having one less utility slot and a waste of time just pressing the button to activate it. Warriors get a 4 second ranged immobilize on a 16 second cooldown, and no one slots it.

The other venoms are all incredibly weak as well, the effects add absolutely nothing to a fight, compared to the valuable skills you aren’t taking instead.

For one person sure, but when your whole team is now getting them? That 2 sec immob coming from 5 people. Stacking duration, that 10 sec. better than 4.

Etaoin.4362:

For general PvE, the motto has always been play what you enjoy. Barring dealing with elitists about raids, you should be able to make the engineer work in any of that content. If you like it, play it

You forgot high-level fractals and speedrun dungeons.

Do the damage boost on rune 6 affect condition damage?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mordremoth’s true body is the Mouth of Mordremoth – part of the meta. What Trahearne and Canach said was largely metaphorical and related to Mordremoth’s powers over mind and plant.

Mordremoth can transfer its mind across all its corruption – so it “is” the corruption he spreads, but it is not his actual physical body. If his physical body (the Mouth of Mordremoth) is killed, he can transfer his mind into his corruption (just as he transfered part of it into Trahearne) and grow a new body – a new “Mouth of Mordremoth” as it is.

In order to kill Mordremoth, you had to destroy his mind – or rather, his connection to the Dream – so that he could not transfer his mind with his body’s destruction. And with Trahearne’s destruction, all (known) copies of his mind were also destroyed (and the magic Mordremoth consumed let back out into the world at an excessive rate).

Technically speaking it’s possible that Mordremoth isn’t truly dead – who’s to say he didn’t plant other “seeds” of his mind in various (or all) mordrem? The burst of magic could have been Mordremoth’s attempt to fool everyone into thinking he died – after all, Zhaitan’s death didn’t give such (then again, that could just mean Zhaitan is the one still alive).

Yeah I’ve thought about both of those points. I feel like while these dragons that are supposed to be tied into the very fabric of Tyria itself can be defeated, destroyed completely would be impossible. Mordremoth should easily be able to seed himself in any or all of his creations (he could still be in the mind of any number of mordrem or sylvari), and Zhaitan, as you pointed out, didn’t release that explosion of magic that mordremoth did, so the magic could reanimate him again or something…

I’m guessing you guys play pvp? I only say that because in pve you usually want to be near your teammates, so being out at extreme range is bad, because you are out of range of being able to buff/heal your group (and that might not be a concern in pvp, dunno, not my gametype). I don’t see the 900 range as a bad thing… I wouldn’t have been at 1200 anyway…

Pretty much agreed with Eastcorn. Particularly on that last paragraph. We need to play around with the changes before anything can really be definitively said, and even that for a few weeks, as everyone monkeys around with the classes. This changes party dynamics and class counter dynamics (for pve and pvp respectively), and we won’t really get a good sense of where we are until everyone has settled into their new builds and strategies with what we have to work with now.

Note: Everyone=all professions

I know I am late to the party, but I am curious about something. So if the entire jungle was basically mordremoth’s body, and now he’s dead (or at the least braindead), what happens to the jungle? is it gonna collapse as his body rots away? Will his body rot away?