Guild Wars 2

Anyone thinks that someone who has masterwork/rare vs someone will perform, statistically, the same as someone with legendary, is naive. If theres a 5-8% difference with ascended from exotic, theres going to be even more with legendary. Get real people.

Hi,
Looking for a greatsword / sword & focus WvW build.. High damage/crit/phantasms/etc etc.

Any suggestions?

I have joined the ranks of Sea of Sorrows a moment ago. Looking forward to WvW (and PVE) with you all soon.
-Selios (thief/pve)
-Tera Wynn (mesmer/wvw)

Sirendor.1394:

ColinJohanson.2394:

You won’t see legendary armor any time soon, you will see Ascended Armor in 2013 for sure though, yes.

Bye bye guild wars 2 then. The game is getting more rubbish by the day.

I would probably follow and leave GW2 for good if this happens. I say this a lot, but another tier of ARMOR beyond even ascended…too much for me to handle within the realm of GW2. I can deal with this stuff in other games like WoW which you expect this sort of thing, but I did not expect this in GW2.

I thought exotic was max stat gear. Then they roll out ascended accessories. Now in 2013 we will have ascended armor. And they are tossing around the concept of legendary armor. No. Im not grinding for another gear set after I acquire full ascended. No way.

By the time we have full ascended, it will be end of 2013. I would hope arenanet isnt silly enough to roll out legendary anytime soon after that(and by soon after, I mean Id like to have my ascended gear for a whole year at least before legendary armor). But when they get around to it(hopefully not for another 2 years), EQ Next will be around the corner probably, and I’ll be heading to that.

Too much bullkitten here if they roll with legendary armor.

Spiral Architect.6540:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Astralporing.1957:

Sythus.2396:

^ Ascended Armour was nothing we didn’t know about already though, was it? Why are you being so upset?

He likely had hope that they realized how bad decision introducing ascended was, and that they won’t follow through with it to the bitter end.
Just as some people still have hope that ascended really will be the end of item progression.

I don’t understand why there is still any doubt. It’s been explicitly stated on countless occasions that they don’t plan on releasing any tiers above ascended stats. Ascended was a missing link between exotic and legendary. There won’t be more.

All they ever said was that they don’t plan on releasing new tiers every 3-6 months. They never said there wouldn’t be tiers above ascended.

Actually they did. They said there won’t be another tier after ascended.

ColinJohanson.2394:

You won’t see legendary armor any time soon, you will see Ascended Armor in 2013 for sure though, yes.

May I make a suggestion? Sleep on the concept of legendary armor, or just let it go. The backlash of it will be outrageous. People for the last 8 or 9 months have been up in arms over ascended gear. Even though someone in Rares could do most/any content, people still want BiS gear. Now, if you widen the gap even further with legendary armor that will probably take longer to acquire than ascended, you really are creating a treadmill. If the stat difference per piece from exotic to ascended is..5%, compounded over an entire gear set, imagine the difference between exotic and legendary.

Please please do not do this. I will be very unhappy.

Seriously though, he looks like someone that would be on the 1 dollar bill or something..an old american president. They never smiled.

Think about it… If I am going to buy another slot to level another character, dont you think it would be more inviting to have someone smiling at me when I spend the 800 gems(or whatever it is)? If Im deciding “well do I really want to level another, or not? Well, this guy here looks miserable.. I’ll hold off”.

It just hit me.. The icon for the character slot expansion in the gem store…the guy looks so miserable, so depressed. Almost like “Ugh, leveling another toon… why oh why!”

Think it can be changed so that hes smiling?

I mean no offense to anyone, but isn’t this sub-form meant to be for world recruitment, not for guilds to place their recruitment threads in? I would love to have come here to look for a decent server to transfer to but all I see are guilds spamming their rhetoric here instead of in the guild recruitment sub forum.

She is really a charr… and thanks to the efforts of that mesmer sidekick she has, she has been able to conceal it.

Oh grandma, what big fangs you have!

Its hilarious..it seems warriors and guardians are the most boring classes, yet the most played. Very funny…

You guys are great. Great playerbase. Im proud to play amongst people who exploit a game, laugh it up in voice chat, and drain every ounce of fun out of the game at every chance they get.

Namica.2951:

Jeez, seems warrior is considered thee most borin’.

It is boring if you are a greatsword warrior / zerker specced.

To 80, Ive played: Thief, Warrior, Necromancer, Guardian, Mesmer. I have a lvl 40 ele.

In order from least boring to most boring:
Mesmer, Thief, Warrior, Elementalist, Necromancer, Guardian

Are greatsword/ power&crit builds much better than staff / condition builds?

Hi,
So I think Im going to start an engineer. Reading some threads…yah itd be a nice change of pace.

-What races and genders do you think would look the least…goofy with the packs and guns that an engineer utilizes?

-What specs for leveling do you recommend and what stats to stack? I was thinking of a grenade engineer, or flamethrower/elixir gun thingy..

-Any general advice?

Kirschwasser.3972:

Engineers have a few things that make them unappealing to a lot of players. Weapons and backpieces don’t tend to show on them because of kits and they tend to do -terrible- if not utilizing some complex setup.

Elementalists are similar, complexity-wise, but make up for that by having great special effects you can toss around and having a really good game-feel. Engineers just don’t have that same game-feel to a lot of players.

Don’t take any of that as fact, by the way, that’s just my opinion on why engineers are under-represented.

I dont play an engineer… I tried, but it made my brain hurt. But I think you are right.

From the looks of your character, to the complexity and being jack of all trades master of none… People stay away.

I would like to try one some day I suppose. I liked the idea of a grenade engi, but thats a ton of friggin clicking.

I see many more GS mesmers running around than anything else. Is it the preferred build / meta build these days?

Since I have been playing my mesmer, I’ve been going Mr. Promethius style of staff/ sword focus. I like it, but I might be in for a change. I dont want to respec to greatsword if it is the run of the mill mesmer now.

Edit: For PvE

So, would you say SoS has many zergs running around WvW, a mix of Zerg/Havoc squad, or one big zerg?

Alright, so if you are burning through your ‘dps’ abilities, and weapon swap to axe/mace to do the same..how is that fun? Some people probably see it as fun, I see it as boring as anything. Just spam through dps rotation… Or am i missing something here?

Id much prefer to do an axe/axe build, with longbow for ranged situations. Back in the day, pre-80 I ran the regen build, but I felt kitten in damage and not hitting burst when I wanted to was hard not to do.

What about a properly specced axe/axe build for crits and keeping Burst on ‘cooldown’ using it whenever it is up… Would that be viable? What kind of numbers do people put out using axe/axe?

And I agree, which is another pitfall of these 2 week living story updates. I’d much rather see substantial and meaningful content updates every 3 months. I don’t care what their data showed…if played activity dropped after 2 weeks. 2 week updates for fluffy stuff, where you feel rushed to complete.. Not good design. Give us lots of stuff every few months, so we can complete it at our leisure.

Hmm..

-They are going on a 2-week “content” update cycle.
-There is something called a living story, where they tell bits and pieces of a story, sometimes connect the story arcs together, most of the time they dont. A lot of the story is viewed as fluff and inconsequential, but this recent living story is pretty good. -Theres a lot of achievements for these living stories.
-You gain rewards at certain intervals for achievement points.
-They are going to try to steer away from temp content and go toward perma content
-There was a dungeon revamp in the way rewards work.

Thats a brief on whats going on. Read some patch notes for more.

Stone.6751:

They have said that they are working on a system that will allow old living world content to be played so that players don’t miss out.

Well, if thats true, thats great. Otherwise, the OP is 100% correct in what he/she is talking about. You do feel rushed to get a lot of it done. And thats not how I wanted to play. And I thought I could play this game the way I wanted to. I want to experience as much content as I can, but at my own pace. I agree with the OP.

But… sadly it IS a video game. I wouldnt take things so personally for a game. There are bound to be many more things that you dislike with this game and other games. I understand the need to be a completionist… this game does dangle more carrots(rewards) in front of your face than any other game. But at the end of the day, if you didnt get a mini…is it ruining your world? Its a digital little thing that you can never truely touch. I never cared for minis and I still dont. But its just neat to get as much completed as I can. But if I don’t..who cares? Impacts my game in no way.

Hi,
So I tried a few different builds between the typical ‘greatsword’ warrior, axe/axe and axe/mace.

Theres just no comparing to the greatsword builds. The damage it puts out, and the longer the fight goes the better, is unmatched. Not to mention that since you spit out way more damage than other loadouts and builds, you can afford to use utilities like endure pain to mitigate damage spikes, or balanced stance so you can continue to turret.

I have 5 level 80s: Thief, warrior, guardian, mesmer, necro. I have played the thief, necro, and warrior the most. Out of these 5, I don’t think there is a larger performance gap between weapon loadouts/builds than a greatsword warrior vs its other weapons. Maybe a guardian with it’s greatsword abilities, but other than that, other builds and loadouts for other classes are more on the same playing field with eachother.

On my thief I run P/P for high level fractals and dungeon running. However, I can easily swap into a condition d/d build and infact, I could only beat one of the queen’s gauntlet fights with my condi build. It is a bit weaker in groups yes, but solo its good.

I could go on about other classes, but my point is: Isn’t it boring to see only greatsword warriors running around? And aren’t you tired of the same spec and running the same stuff as everyone else?

Do you think Arenanet needs to nerf greatswords in general in the game, especially for warriors? Would you rather more build diversity for this class?

AntiGw.9367:

cesmode.4257:

Treeline.3865:

I think OP is reffering to the Champion fix in the Pavilion. I at least asked for a nerf. And it was needed. Economy was breaking.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24351 – This should show what I’m reffering to. When prices of certain items halves in a few days something that’s not supposed to happen is going on.

Did the economist John Smith see this one? Not to put him on the spot,and this type of short-sidedness is present throughout all of arenanet. They never see things a few steps down the road.

Unbelievable…

Nobody can predict such changes accurately. Nobody.

Its simple economics though. Supply and demand. If an event has the propensity to yield a lot more of one commodity, the value of that commodity goes down. You don’t need to be an economist to understand this.

I played games like WoW and Rift for gear grind, treadmill, raiding, rewards, rewards, rewards. Not because I was in love with the content very much, but because I was playing with a group of friends tackling difficult challenges. Healing in raids was/is very fun to me.

During closed betas, I perceived GW2 as an explorers paradise, cosmetic grind, with the ultimate goal of getting a legendary some day. Mix in some WvW, and there you have it. But mostly, Id be logging into my max level character some day, finding myself alone in some forest and just..run in one direction until I stumble upon some content, some event. And hope to have a meaningful contribute to the success/failure of that event, and let it be known if I succeeded or failed…was the town saved or are the NPCs dead because I failed? Is the town gone for a little while until an event kicks off to reclaim it. Was there true repercussions to failure, other than an event immediately kicking off to retake it.

So thats how I perceived the game. But with all of the rewards, minis, celebrations…the game has changed from intrinsically having fun to going after the closest carrot.

Maybe thats not arenanets fault, maybe partially. But this isnt the game I perceived.

When the next game comes along, TESO and eventually EQ Next, I’ll have different expectations for those as well and see if the games live up. I’ll probably leave GW2 for them, not sure about how TESO will hold up but EQ next definately will. I expect a gear grind from them, a treadmill, a grindfest and thats OK for THOSE games. I didnt think it was OK for GW2. Different expectations and I FEEL let down by it.

OP: good question. Maybe…

But why put burgers and fries on the menu if you want people to check out your exquisite menu.

Again, I point to the amount of rewards and the number of different rewards in the game as the problem. If all rewards were streamlined with only a handful of currencies, people might play the game as it was meant to rather than grind and farm specific spots for stuff.

Right now people are farming the pavilion for the minis, and T6 mats that are dropping. Destroyer farming for lodestones… Not because the content is fun.

I know we need materials for crafting, and high level mats for legendaries. And thats fine. But we dont need laurels, relics, pristine relics, ectos as currency, commendations, etc.

I play Firefall on and off. You can do “ANYTHING” in game and get the same rewards: XP, currency, and resources(for crafting). And thats all you need in the game. So you don’t feel like you are missing out on anything if you are doing something you want to do.

I think arenanet forgot about this core concept. Not too late to change it.

Treeline.3865:

I think OP is reffering to the Champion fix in the Pavilion. I at least asked for a nerf. And it was needed. Economy was breaking.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24351 – This should show what I’m reffering to. When prices of certain items halves in a few days something that’s not supposed to happen is going on.

Did the economist John Smith see this one? Not to put him on the spot,and this type of short-sidedness is present throughout all of arenanet. They never see things a few steps down the road.

Erasculio.2914:

Dmzsfx.8103:

There are people asking for less o.0?!

I think the OP is misunderstanding some topics in this forum.

Some players are asking for a game less focused on rewards, and more focused on fun content that players would play for the sake of having fun, as opposed to play in order to get gold/karma/whatever.

Some players cannot understand this concept, especially MMORPG players. But it’s pretty much what people do in real life – we go watch a movie because we like the experience of watching a movie. Not because we will be paid 1 dollar for each movie we watch.

This.

And personally, I blame the ENTIRE reward system.
Karma
Gold
Relics
Pristine Relics
Globs of ecto
Laurels
Badges
Glory
Dungeon tokens
Sprockets
Crystals
Charged crystals
etc, etc etc.

Step 1: Remove it all except—
Gold
Karma
Dungeon tokens
ectos(for crafting purposes only).

Step 2:
Make gold the currency for the TP.
Dungeon tokens currency for dungeon gear.
Karma for Every-thing-else.

Step 3: Have all content in all aspects of the game reward the same things: Karma, gold, XP. That way, you can do whatever you want and get the same stuff. Even jumping puzzles…open it up and get some karma.

Hey, (im not on TC)

Anets direction with some of the updates is questionable. Im not a fan of a lot of it, I think we need more real-threat type of content rather than living story/fluff/celebration themes. I do like this update, however. More combat and less clicky-clicky. But another celebration event and I’ll lose my mind.

However, yeah it is difficult to keep people playing. I had a RL friend who played one month to 80, and promptly went back to WoW (for a stupid reason I might add…apparently he didnt acquire enough crafting mats, and i guess crafting is important to him…he couldn’t level up crafting because of this…) But I really think he just wanted to go back to WoW.

In either case, since all of the updates are theme-based or celebration based, or living story based with no impact on the world/lore/etc…no threat..yah people lose interest. They say more is going to impact the world. How they didnt see this earlier that a lack of meaningful impactful content is a bad thing, I dont know. Just like with ascended gear: How they couldnt see the backlash of not informing us of another tier beyond exotic when the game launched, I dont know. Like I said, questionable decision, shady stuff and really puts a damper on things.

Eh I dont think thats the reason…it might consume two or three more slots, some people have many alts so a bit more maybe. But I doubt thats the reason.

Id rather less rewards and more impactful content. Id rather play the game to just simply play the game, rather than a freakin job where Im concerned with rewards.

But thats just me.

Curious why these are soulbound… While some of these fights do take a bit of skill, if I acquire a ticket on a poorly geared lvl 80 I cannot transfer them to my better geared main. Some of the fights are a bit of a dps test.

-Bursting down chomper(as well as keeping him from the meat)
-Bursting down Liadri
etc etc..

I am trying to beat Liadri and I don’t want to do it on any other toon other than my thief

Is our credit card info stored in some game file on our hdd, or is it on a server somewhere at an arenanet farm. Im betting some server, but just making sure :p

Just wanted to say that I love the queens gauntlet. I like the mechanics for each different “gladiator”. And I hope you put some of these guys into dungeons. THIS is how you design some bosses (obviously scaled up for 5 ppl).

Good job.

Im curious why the zerker vs every other build debate is so prevalent now? This has been an issue since maybe 4 months after release. Why all of the sudden are more and more of these types of threads popping up? Is it because of the “dungeon nerf”/change? If so then I am amazed that people wouldn’t welcome an improvement to the dungeon system in attempt to make more paths worth running (even though arenanet did a kitten poor job at execution…1 gold for every path except a handful?)

Curious…

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

For gear, they need to give us some type of character gear ‘closet’ for ease of storing multiple sets….and then the drop down would be nifty. Store the set, assign it a name in your drop down, swap at will. Inventory space all cleared up.

Ah, a girl can dream

Along with this…split it into actual gear, and skins. If I like some crummy level 20 skin, I should be able to spend karma, deposit it as a skin so I can use that whenever I want. Maybe even a withdraw fee.

Spent about 12 k, no completion.

Yah Im saving them. I spend a few here and there, but I am saving this.

I agree that I’d pay for an expansion. Id wait several months for legit content.

Sticking by preference of traditional content updates rather than living story. I think the game would benefit a lot more from it.

Hi, curious what everyone would prefer. Continue with the two-week living story content updates that we receive, or traditional content updates?

By Living Story, I mean two-week content updates with bug fixes, quality of life improvements, one or two instanced scenes telling the living story, some temporary content, some perma content, mini games, new items to acquire, living story that doesn’t connect to the previous living story, more mini games, themed content patches, celebrations, games.

By traditional content updates, I mean every two or three months, give us a new zone, with new events or renown hearts, new mobs and bosses, maybe a new perma dungeon, more personal story, more classes and skills,new items to acquire and bug fixes.

My vote: Traditional content.

I agree with most of what the OP said. There are a few points to which I disagree, or rather feel that while they are not as polished as could be(i.e. dynamic events in endless loops), they are still great additions to the genre. I’ll also say that this Living Story is pretty good so far, on a whole. I liked the logan vs robot thing…the gladiator arenas.

I agree that shuttling everyone to the pavilion is a monumental failure at making the world feel alive. Everyone is in the pavilion or running around divinities reach(which is a nice break from boring Lion’s Arch). The world itself is empty and dull because you corner everyone to run around one or two areas.

I think that more currencies is a monumental failure. Why..oh why. Even if it isnt a legit currency, you still buy stuff with it. Why?! Im so sick of more currencies, unique currencies…I no longer have the energy to complain about it.

The fact that this living story has ZERO connection to last month, is a monumental failure at even telling a story.

And in general, I am so tired of living stories. I want traditional content updates. The old days, when..you know, we got content that mattered in the game more than a month. Im not talking about perma content, Im talking about content that MATTERED. So what if I can re-visit Moa races next month, or two months from now. That content does not matter in the grand scheme of lore, the world, life and death struggles of the NPCs and denizens of Tyria. Content that matters…Like zhaitan. Like more dragons. Like rebellous Charr and human seperatists. Inquest… Content that matters.

I’m finishing up map completion one one character and one character only for the time being…just two POs and a Vista in Eternal BG. I already have the gear look for my main, the weapons I want… After I finish up map completion, Im going to make sure I get the monthly done, living story achievemnts done, and then give another game my undevoted attention for the next week or two.

And I think this will be the way of it for me. Throughout the course of the month get some dallies done, monthly, and living story achievements..then stop logging in for the rest of the month. And I know I’ll tire of that eventually, so I’ll probably stop playing all together unless we stop with the living story and get back to work with the amazing game that we started out with.

How about this:
Add some in-game mechanic that reduces the potency of your self heal and endurance with the more berserker gear you have on.

So if someone wants to roll with a full zerker set, his self heal will only heal for like 2k and his endurance bar recharges a lot slower.

Now, this is not to discourage berserker gear completely. Equipping one piece would still enable this debuff, we’ll call it “exhaustion”, but it would only be one stack. Two berserker pieces would be two stacks of exhaustion, and so on. So that if you are THAT good where you dont need to dodge as much or heal as much you can roll full zerker.

I think this solution, to be honest, is the best one I can think of…I hope arenanet reads this one.

The idea is to discourage the use of complete berserker gear unless you are skilled enough to avoid 90% of all damage, but not to discourage the use of berserker gear entirely because doing as much damage as you safely can is a playstyle in itself…

The only glass cannons out there would be those who can really handle it. If a group is constantly rezzing the glass cannon, then we know who cant hack it as a berserker.

I think this idea promotes more build diversity and showcases the skill of some players if they can pull off full berserker sets.

Lokki.1092:

cesmode.4257:

Sadly, one sure-fire way to discourage zerker parties is to make all dungeons contain damage or debuffs that cannot be removed or are unavoidable…and that do not damage you based on % health, but by a static number. So if a thief with 10k HP is running all zerker, and this aoe damage hits him(unavoidable) and causes a flat 2500 damage each second for 3 seconds..that thief is up a creek man.

But then that opens the door to extremely lazy and boring dungeon design. But i bet you, you’ll see a lot less zerkers.

The problem with that is in PvE we are not all created equal. For example a thief or an elementalist has to go all out vitality and toughness to get the base values that a warrior gets.

In your example the 10k HP Berserker thief is in trouble, but the 20k hp berserker warrior is still fine. In fact, this is part of the reason why Warriors are the king Zerkers now.

The health / armor difference plays a huge role in PvE. but at the same time we are not delegated to rolls because the berserker warrior will deal as much DPS as the thief.

That is a problem with the different classes having such a huge gap in terms of stats. I think its the Necro that has the highest baseline HP and HP scaling, while a guardian has the lowest.

@mage: while most of your post I’ll agree with the last line doesn’t help matters and if everyone followed that line of thinking, it would perpetuate matters and break this game completely.

No, something needs to be done about this. Its a sad state of affairs, because I fully support a game without the trinity. I guess with the absence of trinity, full DPS specs ARE the way to go and I’ll explain why:

In a game like WoW you have three roles: Tank, Heals, DPS. Tank maximizes threat and survivability. Heals maximize group support and heals. DPS maximize DPS. Thats it.

In a game like GW2, you don’t have these roles. The game is designed with no tanks or healers in mind. So, if content can be accomplished in the most DPS-oriented mannar, it is. And that is where we are.

Solution:
-Tweak gear to encourage adding more survivability
-Tweak dungeon mechanics to encourage adding more survivability
-Tweak gear so that berserker builds are only for the cream of the crop players…not the 10 million zerker warriors running around now.
-Tweak dungeon mechanics so that berserker buildsare only for the cream of the crop players…not the 10 million zerker warriors running around now.

Sadly, one sure-fire way to discourage zerker parties is to make all dungeons contain damage or debuffs that cannot be removed or are unavoidable…and that do not damage you based on % health, but by a static number. So if a thief with 10k HP is running all zerker, and this aoe damage hits him(unavoidable) and causes a flat 2500 damage each second for 3 seconds..that thief is up a creek man.

But then that opens the door to extremely lazy and boring dungeon design. But i bet you, you’ll see a lot less zerkers.

Or add in some enrage mechanics if the boss senses all zerker gear =)

Reihert.1509:

The way current content is designed, there is no reason to play outside zerker.

I know there are FotM and Arah as exceptions, but still…

It just doesnt make sense how strong they hit on charr with “full control” set. They do get their aggro, but there is no way they could survive. Outside those excepcional instances, people should just be zerker and forget about it.

In my opnion mobs shouldnt be that hard hitting. They could hit far weaker but more constant to make the use of control characters more of an important addition to most groups. That wouldnt allow “zerker” survive alone and would also require a control/support to be using his skills to be alive.

If a bunker can hold aggro mostly with his toughness and his control skills (snares, stuns, pushbacks), make it so they can actually survive a far more.

The game is not meant to have tanks or healers. Although you can build your toon to be more control and maybe take a few more punches and take more aggro. But in the end, you’ll need to dodge out and let someone else take the aggro..like the elementalist or something ;p.

Lets not forget, the most popular way of gaining ‘hate’ as it is called in this game, is toughness. But that is not the only way, and bosses have different hate mechanics. Some generate hate based on player proximity, for example.

Or. improved solution: Remove Power, Precision, critical chance, condition damage, condition duration (all offensive stats) from gear. Maybe replace some of these stats with Boon duration or things like that.

Now all that you have left is vitality, toughness, healing power, etc.. Build your character for more survivability, or healing…less pressure to do the most damage. If you want to provide your group with more utility, or if you want to provide yourself with more survivability, then go ahead.

<shrugs>

Trying to think of what the next best stat combo would be…

Im not at home so i cant tell if these are actual stat combos… but

Power, condi damage, condi duration? Would this be the next best dmg combo? I have no idea if any builds are really condusive to this.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Im Mudbone.1437:

I so need TA f/u, but, with the infinite spawning spiders at end boss and 10 fails(all using repair canisters) before we called it quits I can see I may never get this path working on my dungeon completion achievement.

The problem with that boss currently is that you can’t repeat it. If you get it right the first time it’s ok, if you don’t, forget about it, it’s nearly impossible.

Same thing is true with the first boss..well I mean you can complete it after a whipe, its just stupid. The smaller worms dont despawn. so youre going to start with the entire floor covered with red circles until you can down a few.