Guild Wars 2

This guide takes me back to the heady days running my guard (staff w sigil of fire) on the endless pent/shelter/jofast event chain …

The problem with this guide is that it involves too much work for your average farmer, and depends on having 10-15 other players wanting to do these CS/SoD events at the same time.

On many servers, particularly in the EU region, finding 10 -15 players in any PvE map (apart from the champ train maps), let alone in CS/SoD, is near impossible. Only guilds dedicated to farming could pull this off.

So, this guide will not pull the champ trains out of Queensdale/Frostgorge and anyone expecting a glut of T6 mats/ecto to hit the TP will be very disappointed.

The reason for the premature elation over this is because many people cannot read, or, to put it another way, people read only what they want to see.

When others come along, pointing out things they failed to comprehend, is when the disappointment sets in. They think something has been taken away from them when it wasn’t even there in the first place.

For me, I was not impressed when I first read the blog. At best, the wardrobe will free up a few bank slots; at worst it will make playing dress-up while leveling an alt more expensive.

I am currently leveling my 5th and last alt, a sylvari thief, and hit lvl 62 on Monday. I then bought a full set of medium T2 cultural, and used 6 trans stones to get the skins onto lvl 62 masterwork zerker armour. Come 15 April, this will cost 18 trans stones!!

Now I need to finish leveling this alt before 15 April, so I am not pleased …

mtpelion.4562:

juno.1840:

So unidentified dyes will no longer be drops — in short these will phase out? Can we only get them via laurels?

Also with the blog post, it seems there’s a self-described exploit where every Player can go and set themselves up with 100’s of unidentified dyes when the patch goes live. NOTE: I am not describing how the exploit would occur, but it seems pretty obvious from the blog.

You’ll be able to get the dyes for Bifrost from the Mystic Forge (happy gambling!) or from “rewards” (undefined at this time).

and from crafting …. (see cooking)

This is going to crash the special event dye market ….

Rennoko.5731:

Wait… can one of you economy savvy people explain to me what is going on with the dyes right now?

2. Anyone who has unlocked a really good dye across multiple characters is going to get that dye back on patch day, resulting in a flood of the best dyes coming back on the market (see abyss dye). And a massive flood of common dyes.

If you already have Abyss dye unlocked on 2 toons, you will not receive another Abyss dye, you will receive 1 unidentified dye.

OP
If by ‘heading in a good way’ you mean Anet driving current GW2 players to other games, then yes. This is working very well.

As for Anet’s direction for the game itself, no ….

Hummm .. Locking major trait options behind content …

I am eagerly waiting the howls of rage when Anet locks certain traits behind completing world bosses like Tequatl and 3-headed Wurm! Lol!!

Mark Katzbach necro’ed an old thread in the Crafting forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/gw2-precursor-recipe-scavanger-hunt-news/first

to say this:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

We want to let you know that the ability to build your precursor will not be in our upcoming Feature Pack. The way progression and rewards work in Guild Wars 2 have changed quite a bit since we initially talked about that feature, and our main horizontal progression systems are about to get some additional updates in the upcoming feature pack. Because of that, we are looking into several ways to integrate building your precursor into our new updated reward and progression systems we’re working on, which is requiring additional development time and iteration. As always, we’ll share details on this system once it’s far enough along in production we’re ready to discuss it.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

@Ema: It seems you live behind a giant rock if you haven’t noticed the tons of buggy, crap, temporary stuff we got since release…

See what I did there?
I fixed your post …
You are welcome …

AEFA.9035:

Ranger: Read the Wind
Ranger: Your arrows are swift and deadly …

When I first read this, I immediately lol’ed and stopped reading because I knew Anet was trolling us again …

Lol! My guild fought those champs last evening!
10 level 80 champs that take virtually no damage. The only thing that works on them are reflections, they slowly kill themselves while attacking you.

You need a large zerg of guardians and mesmers for constant WoR, etc. We managed to get 2 of them before we all wiped. They throw some very nasty AoE around.

There are 2 un-programmed asura gates very close by, 1 is inside the Fort just behind the wall the champs patrol. Obviously these gates will be used for something at some point,

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

bri.2359:

Am I the only one here that thought the CDI was deliberately structured by Anet to fail??

Forzani.2584:

Agree 100%. I have said the same thing from the beginning….and I have been called a conspiracy theorist. I believe the CDI was created to let the Ranger population vent and hopefully placate them for awhile.

Welcome to the internet. I sort of share this but at the same time, if all they wanted was to do that, they could have gotten away with doing a lot less.

Please, go back to the CDI thread and count the number of ‘red’ posts.
I cannot imagine any less Anet involvement in a 60+ page CDI thread that Anet created/owned, and I am convinced this was by design.

This was the staff meeting I envisaged at Anet before the ranger CDI went live:

Staffer 1: Ok, peeps, ranger CDI coming up …
All staff: <groans>
Staffer 1: Come on guys, we at least have to appear to be interested ..
All staff: <more groans>
Staffer 2: So, any volunteers to lead this??
Staffer 3: <drops pen, ducks down to find it>
Staffer 4: Gotta use the toilet <leaves room>
Staffer 5: <spills drink on laptop>
Staffer 6: We need a way to decide this …
Allie: <arrives late> Hi guys, what did I miss??
All staff: <grins>
Staffer 1: We decided you will lead the ranger CDI!
Allie: Not fair!
Staffer 2: Don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything.
Staffer 3: Yeah, call in sick or something ..
Staffer 5: Look, this way you won’t have to do the ele CDI ..
Allie: But I like eles!
Staffer 6: We will bring you coffee and donuts for a week .
Allie: <ponders free coffee and donuts for a week> Oh, alright then …

I have 2 boxes of useless stat ascended armour wasting space in my bank.

The day when we can salvage and/or trade this stuff cannot come soon enough for me …

I have been doing Teq daily (sometime twice per day) for for the past 2-3 months now. I have:

0 Teq skin box
0 ascended box
1 rare aqua breather
3 minis

Am I the only one here that thought the CDI was deliberately structured by Anet to fail??

Anet could could have taken control of the CDI any time they wanted, but they deliberately let it slide into mayhem. Why?? Because they know full well what the problems are, but do not want to the spend the time and resources to fix them.

This way Anet can say they tried but the ranger community failed to understand Anet’s concept for the class, so they can carry on ignoring the problems.

Oh my ….
Made the mistake of reading this thread while at work !

This thread should come with a warning label …

So, so tired of being a beta tester for crappy and poorly implemented content.

Ranking this as a fail would intricate there was actually something worthwhile to rank.

The 2 sets for my ranger

Adula.3698:

It’s worth it, if you have the gold. 1-400 should get about 11 levels on average,

Not anymore …
When ascended crafting was introduced the exp lvl gained from 0-400 crafting were reduced to 7 or 8 lvls, even with craft boosters. You gain the other 2-3 exp lvls crafting 400-500 now ..

This means gaining 10 exp lvls by crafting is much more expensive now

Old way: 0-400 = 10 lvls
New way: 0-500 = 10 lvls

Even through cooking and jewelry are still only 400, they have been changed as well. I know this because I recently leveled a necro, maxed cooking and jewelry and got only 17 or18 exp lvls using craft boosters.

OP, I can tell you what class the devs are definitely not playing: Ranger

They was once a dev (worked on dungeons) who did admit to playing a ranger, but he quit or was fired over 8 or 9 months ago.

I suspect devs playing nerco and engi are few and far between as well ..

- used the sword #3 skill to evade/re-position on a mob and wound up behind a rock or tree instead.
- used the F2 on a snow leopard and watched it leap wonderfully into empty space, then stop and look back at you.
- watch your passive pet’s health bar disappear in seconds under a barrage of AoE

Ranger GS is so disappointing, particularly in PvE, because it is primarily a defensive weapon.

Take a GS on any other class that uses one (guardian, warrior, mesmer, etc) and then try ranger GS again. You will want to salvage it afterwards. I stopped using a GS on my ranger over a year ago .

Sword/xx is the only viable PvE melee option for rangers.

Eurhetemec.9052:

So basically you’re saying “As someone who directly benefits in both loot and personal prestige from the present situation, I do not feel it should change!”. Not exactly surprising or relevant, bro.

Whatever loot and/or prestige benefits I receive (and believe me, these are very meager) are because I, along with every other member of this guild, put in the time and effort to learn and practice this event.

You obviously have no idea the effort required in organising and coordinating 140+ players for this event, let alone what it takes to succeed.

Seems to me you are more jealous/envious towards players who can succeedat this event the way it is currently implemented than trying to improve anything.

Eurhetemec.9052:

You don’t seem to able to explain why PuGs are inherently bad, as they have to be for that to be a negative.

Each player at the Wurm event not on teamspeak, not following instructions, not assigned to a task, not buffed, in the wrong kit/spec, reduces the chance of success by 10%. 10 of these players and the event fails. I know this from experience after many, many failed events

Eurhetemec.9052:

Equally, can you explain how this would bring “Leechers” and “AFKers”?

Our guild has stalkers. There are at least 3-4 players we are aware of who track and monitor which server and when we do wurm. They do this to leech off our kills, sometimes trolling our commanders in whisper or map chat during or after the event.

On occasion we get a pug or 2 from the particular server where we are doing the event. We don’t mind if they want to watch or help kill the mob spawns, as long as they keep to doing this.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Finally, you say “No organised server or guild would want to do deal with this”. Sure, but it would never apply to an organised server or guild, would it? If you think it would, you need to explain how.

I explained this above

Eurhetemec.9052:

Presumably you kill Teq/Wurm very regularly, right? So regularly that this timer-based solution would never kick in for you (as we can say it would need at least a day or two of 0 kills to even start the counter). So that’s a completely irrelevant argument, and that you’re bringing it up is very strange indeed.

I answered your questions, now you answer mine.

Teq spawns, and there are 100 players at the event.
50 of those players have 100’s of Teq kills, and 50 players have 0 teq kills.
Explain how this event, in your version, would scale-up for the hardcores and scale down for the newbies?

I have 2 ascended armour boxes sitting unused in my bank because they have stats none of my lvl 80’s use.

So yes, let us trade these things!

Reanne.5462:

It is one of my biggest issues with this game, and will continue to be so until something is done to make tequatl fun for everyone, not just the entitled few who like to server hop, or were fortunate to be on a full server.

What?? So you consider players ‘entitled’ for being in guilds that can ’successfully do this event??

I hate to break your misguided notions, but 40-50 people can beat Teq. All it takes is some organisation. If you cannot be kitten d to learn the event and get 50 players from your guild, server, whatever to do this, then you do not deserve to succeed the event. Simple as that ..

Morrigan.2809:

We get new content more frequently and fixing the bugs on that is top priority for Anet- which is why we get hot fixes.

Sorry, but no. Bug fixing is far from Anet’s top priority.
There are bugs, in the permanent content, that go back to pre-launch. Go to the Game Bug section of the forum and see for yourself.

Releasing gem shop items and crappy LS content every 2 weeks is the only priority for Anet

OP, as member of a dedicated guild that has successfully done Teq 100’s of times and the new Wurm 26 times, I think your idea is terrible.

I am with the Penguin on this one. All this would do is promote more pugs, leechers, and akf’ers to pile onto these events. This is the last thing any organised guild or server doing these events want to see and have to deal with.

Please explain how a Teq event, in your version, would work if there is a ‘hardcore’ guild of 40-50 players (more than enough to to do Teq) with 100’s of kills is at the same event with a bunch of pugs from a server that has never successfully done the event before?

Does the event scale up to the hardcore level or does it scale down to the newbie version?? Somewhere in the middle?? This makes no sense.

As for Wurm, I can guarantee you, this event will never be completed successfully in your version. Out of a 120+ group of players, 10 pugs not on teamspeak, not knowing what to do, when, will fail this event every time. The margin between success and fail is that tight. Again, does the event scale down to the newbie level or scale up for the guild with 26 Wurm kills??

No one has mentioned this, so I will …

To build up some initial investment capital, try crafting for profit. You will need to follow some web sites to do this.

If you have crafted at all, you will be aware of component pieces that are required, things like boot liners, etc. These markets fluctuate quickly, but if you are quick, you can make30-40% profit after TP fees.

Look into crafting insignia or items using certain kitten insignia. These are not fancy big-ticket items, crafting 10 items can net you 60 silver here, 1g there in profit. Do this for a few weeks to build up capital.

Start small and try a few things to get a feel for certain markets while building capitol.

This again …

I solo explored all of Orr on a ranger back when Orr was actually difficult!

There were more mobs, faster spawns, with larger aggro range. There were very few places where you could stop without being mobbed, and you had to plan every point a to b run you wanted to do.

After Orr was nerfed into oblivion, it is no harder than being down-scaled in a mid-level map.

You can run though most of Orr without having to kill a single mob! I know this because I recently ran a new lvl 80 necro all the way through SoD to Dwayna temple in ML and then on to Gavbeorn’s Waypoint in CS without having to kill a single mob …

Sorry, but I have no sympathy for anyone having difficulty with this.

OP, I am at 153% and the only thing I have noticed is more greens dropping and perhaps 1 or 2 more more rares than before. That is it.

Since most of the PvE I do involve event chests, MF has has very little impact on my drops.

Siobhan
If you think my most recent post was blunt, this was toned down considerably from what wanted to post!

This situation with the Wurm meta tracker is just one many indicating to me that Anet has no interest in maintaining customer satisfaction with it’s product, and no intention of supporting the permanent content in this game. It is all about producing gem shop items they think we want to buy, and this terrible 16 month long string of LS temporary content.

Having said that, I am in a EU cross-server guild that still does successful Wurm events on a daily basis. We have around 25 successful Wurm events done, some done with as few as 115 players. The problems with the meta tracker is not preventing us from doing the event, it is just one more annoyance of many with this particular event.

People, it is not just this event causing crashes.

I have a high-end desktop, similar to the OP, good bandwidth, and I have been crashing around once per day for well over a month now. Before that, I went months between crashes, and nothing has changed in my settings.

Now, I can crash while doing dailies in empty mid-level maps. This has nothing to do with graphics settings, it is something Anet introduced with an update weeks ago, and they do not want to admit it and/or cannot find the problem. All these hotfixes for ‘fixing server crashes’ are only making things worse.

Anet needs to take down the entire server fleet and do a system-wide cold re-boot, then test to figure out what/where the problem is. However, this would be disruptive ( game would be down for many hours) and very embarrassing for them.

Yup, this happened to me last evening. Got a core with some crappy blues/greens from the first knight killed, then nothing from the second or third one killed using the same tactics as the first kill.

Seems the entire LS content is the usual Anet buggy mess …

I find these ‘red’ posts from Anet quite disturbing, because I do not believe anything they have posted in this thread.

If this was a bugged meta tracker for the LS content, it would be fixed within hours and released as a hotfix, regardless of whatever code changes needed to be made.

Testing is a straw-man excuse, because either very little testing goes on, or, it is the wrong type of testing. If Anet properly tested before releasing, the Wurm meta tracker would not have broken in the first place. Yet, here we are, and still no fix in sight.

The only conclusion I can make is this: The Wurm meta tracker effects too few players and Anet is too busy releasing buggy, crappy LS content and gem shop items to bother with something like this.

Oh, and please stop thanking me for my patience because I have none left.
That ran out over a year ago while playing a ranger!

Thanks Dakota!

15chars

In PvE , I run my power/crit ranger with sword/warhorn and axe/axe,
My attacks involve stacking lots of might that I share with my pet cats. I have a sigil of strength in my MH axe and a sigil of accuracy on my OH axe.

Axe #1:
Mainly effective as opening attack against multiple mobs and for tagging when running with a zerg. This is much better than SB #1, imo. This allows me build up a nice stack of might.
Versus single targets, axe #1 is near useless cos single-target damage is crap. You want the bounce for damage vs multiple mobs.

Axe #2:
I rarely use it. As said, you need to be point-blank, and if that close, I have swapped to sword/warhorn. Might be better for condition rangers.

Axe #3:
I use this in situations to chill moving targets so my cats can hit them. Used more than Axe #2, but not really part of my main attack rotation.

OH Axe #4:
I use this a lot. The double hit does decent DPS, and I use the pull on tougher mobs to bring them into melee range, then swap to sword/warhorn to finish them off. Very effective.

OH Axe #5:
Again, I use this a lot. I use Axe #1 to aggro lots of mobs to bring them in. then unload Axe #5. This is almost OP’ed between the damage, the reflection and the stacks of might I have up, nothing is left standing by the end of the attack. If there is still a vet mob up, then I swap to sword/warhorn to melee them down.

I just created a thief for mainly solo PvE, and for some group open world boss events., and was looking for this exact information. This is great for lvl 80, but do you guys have any advice on leveling?

Having leveled 4 80’s I know trait distribution while leveling can be quite different than a final lvl 80 build. I am lvl 31 right now, running Deadly Arts 3 and Critical Strikes 6, and not sure where to place the next 10 trait points.

Is getting Trickery the way to go, or putting 10 into Acrobatics or Shadow Arts better for survivability?

Durzlla.6295:

Actually, the logical thing is doing exactly what they want to do and nerf everyone else’s damage.

No.

This might work in WvW/PvP, but most certainly not in PvE.

Explain how doing a world boss like the 3-headed wurm will go if every class has burst damage nerfed ??

I can tell you this event will never succeed if that happens.

Still not fixed …

what to expect??

The usual:
Nerf for rangers, buffs for warriors, guardians as they were, and bugs ..
Lots and lots of bugs …

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Re-design the class mechanic and trait-lines.

Goal of Proposal
Change the existing broken class mechanic (pets), and remove spirits
Reduce the number of pets to 4 (F1, F2, F3, F4), with specific boons/support utilities on timers with cooldowns, making them optional for situational use.
Pet can follow, draw aggro, be directed for positioning, be dismissed, but is always passive. All direct damage output is from the ranger.
Improve synergy between traits, weapons skills and utilities.

Proposal Functionality
The proposed design is in keeping with the current GW2.

Associated Risks
Development and testing time to implement the above.

OP, there is some love in PvE for necros, mainly at the new 3-headed Wurm event to take care of the champ husk spawns.

Each wurm head needs a party of 4-5 condimancers, and the 12-15 necros who regularly show up to do this task are a valued part of the 140+ team in my guild.

I am bumping this, because I also am effected by the stuck 9/10 meta tracker with all achievements done.

I have submitted 2 support tickets over the past week, and Anet still has done nothing to fix it.

I guess the 100-200 players who are effected by this bug are not a priority over fixing the crappy, temporary LS content …

TP flipping …
Always has and always will be most efficient and lucrative way to make gold in this game.

If playing a market trading simulator is not your thing, and you like the great frosty outdoors, head to Frostgorge Sound and join the champ train. Making 10g / hr is a stretch doing this, but 5g / hr is pretty easy to do.

Otherwise, run lots of dungeons. Best check the wiki for dungeon changes first though.

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

I’d like to see these hammers as big as the wielders torso… I can think of maybe 3 or 4 hammer skins in the whole game where the head of the bugger is bigger than my Norns clenched fist..

Have you checked out the axes in this game??
Some axe heads are larger than my norn’s torso, and these are ranged weapons …

Thanks for the quick response and suggestions!
This was my first condition build. so good to know I was on the right track!

I looked into Dire, but figured it wasn’t worth the difference, and yes, I did want to try some other content in the game on this necro besides the wurm event. Carrion/rabid/rampager seemed the better mix.

I like the necro class so far, at least for group content, but not a fan of the minions. If I want a pet, I will play my ranger.

Thanks for the suggestions, and will give them a go when next at wurm.

spoj, thanks for this guide and your comments.
Since I am very new to necro, this info is a great resource.

I leveled a condition necro specifically for the new 3-headed wurm world boss event in Bloodtide Coast. If you are familar with this event, 3 parties of 4-5 conditionmancers are required (1 party for each wurm head) to deal with the champ husk spawns.

These champs have a huge buff vs direct damage, so the only way to take them down efficiently is with condition damage. Thus the need for a party of heavy condition damage builds with nercos and engineers. This is all we do, take down husks, then do what we can during phase 2 on the decapitated head.

I know you focus on PvE power DPS builds, but anything you might suggest for min/max necro condition build would be great.

This is what I current use during the wurm event:

Armour: all carrion with runes of the scavenger
Trinkets: all rabid with crest of the rabid
Weapons: all rampager scepter (bursting) / dagger (corruption) with staff (force)
All of the above are exotic.

Buffs: toxic focusing crystals / super veggie pizza

Build: 30/30/0/0/10
Spiteful Spirit; Spiteful Marks; Dhuumfire
Weakening Shroud; Master of Corruption; Lingering Curse
Vital Persistence

Healing: Consume Conditions,
Utilities: Signet of Spite, Corrosive Poison Cloud, Epidemic, Plague

When not doing the Wurm event, I swap out to dagger/warhorn and axe/focus and change trait options to something more like your power build. I do not re-trait as I do the Wurm event almost every day .

If you happen to log in near the end of the event cycle, all the wp’s become contested, included the 3 that feed into GF, LP and BC.

This is part of the event, it kills you and you get booted out to one of the adjacent maps (probably GF)

What Serval said …

I did this for my ranger, who now has a subterfuge hood …

Forzani.2584:

They are going to make tweaks. Small adjustments, then sit back and reevaluate. I have seen far too many posts that completely redesign a class or parts of the game. Not …going…to …happen.

Well, here is another post clamoring for a ranger re-design, because the current one has a broken class mechanic and is not fir for purpose.

I know Anet is not prepared to do this, so this CDI will be an absolute and utter waste of time…

Oh, and those tweaks and small adjustments you mention have been going on since launch and have broken more things than they ‘fixed’. The class is worse now than it was at launch.