Guild Wars 2

I haven’t watched enough to see whether the orbs follow the same set of patterns every time (and it’s just a matter of which set you get) or whether they’re randomized, but they’re certainly not as predictable as the wells or the AoE field. They certainly have multiple possible starting locations, but I never bothered to track whether they all followed the same patterns thereafter. Without any onscreen timer or any real warning about their spawns you can’t predictably know where/when to look to keep track of them; that’s not exactly randomness, but being how hampered your field of view in the arena is it’s not pure skill either.

There is also of course the issue of not all arenas playing the same exactly, which may or may not matter. Just something else to keep track of if you notice it being an issue.

Look through:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Bluestone/Explorer

Comparing maps on wiki to maps in game helps, obviously.

ShunsuiKouKyoraku.9106:

cpg.7140:

You need to get her to walk into the shadow wells/vortexes/whatever they’re called to remove her invulnerability. You yourself need to step into them to gain the dark buff/debuff to survive her one-shot attacks. Depending on how much damage you can survive, it might be best to more or less stay in them the whole time rather than try to predict when she’ll one-shot you.

Not the fight in question. In fact I don’t recall that fight at all.

Suriel the Blazing Light, who is in fact the final challenge of the first tier (a.k.a the 4th challenge overall), which is most likely what the OP is actually referring to rather than Liadri.

You need to get her to walk into the shadow wells/vortexes/whatever they’re called to remove her invulnerability. You yourself need to step into them to gain the dark buff/debuff to survive her one-shot attacks. Depending on how much damage you can survive, it might be best to more or less stay in them the whole time rather than try to predict when she’ll one-shot you.

Hm… are you moving around to grab the supply crate heals? Those come in really handy when you get a big chunk of health taken at once. Those + blind means you can usually stay very high health. Though I think there might be some randomness to where the small oozes spawn and so sometimes they die and sometimes they don’t.

There are a handful of hearts that are just unbearable, and another handful that are really a pain if certain local dynamic events are or aren’t running.

TV helps for some of the more repetitive stuff. If you can find some people to explore with that might help as well.

If you can carry greatsword instead of staff, and assuming you’re getting her down almost to death when time runs out, you can switch to GS right at the end to burst her maybe. I don’t know how close you’re getting but if it’s very close then you may be able to just go all out at the end, use an invulnerability skill (shelter or renewed focus I guess) and just wail away in the final seconds.

Of course I’m with you in thinking that the time limit funnels people into dps builds too quickly. A longer fight wouldn’t exactly be easier (I know the longer I go the more chance I have of screwing up, especially with the orbs) but it would open it up for more build variety.

Immobilize doesn’t work on any of the guantlet bosses… but glue bomb and glue shot should probably still cripple, for whatever that’s worth. Tool kit has both a cripple and a pull and seems to be one of the more common methods used in that encounter. And of course grenade kit has a chill you can use… I guess I’d try to put something together around those, maybe with the trait that grants swiftness on kit swap so that you can take advantage of multiple options all at once.

There’s definitely a lot of flexibility doing it this way. All you have to do is tinker so that you can kill him fast enough, because if you use the supply crate and have healing bombs you won’t really be threatened on your own.

Issue #1 isn’t a bug, skill 3 has a chance to be a full rally (no death afterward) if you kill a mob once you use it. There’s a trait to make this a 100% chance but by default it will still happen once in awhile. (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vengeance has it at 35-45% for rally without the trait, which seems close to what I’ve experienced)

Issue #2 is common to all JP chests it seems right now. It’s not the end of the world, though, because they have a vendor value of 1s14c or something close to that, which isn’t too shabby.

Guardian
0/0/10/30/30
Scepter/Shield + Greatsword
Valkyrie armor of the Fighter
Zerker weapons
Zerker, Soldier, Magi trinkets

Vigor food, speed/armor/damage/regen boosts
3 shouts, shelter, renewed focus.

Same as many others have done I’m sure. My thoughts: glad to have it over with, will admit that it was fun now that I got it done, but I think the time limit is too short. I don’t like how invalid a more tanky approach has been made to be. A longer time limit (even if only for Liadri) wouldn’t necessarily make it easier, because the longer you go the more likely you are to make a fatal mistake, but it would make more builds viable. I also think the orb placement carries too much luck in it, and there’s maybe not enough warning for their spawn. Cheesy.

I’ll second the above. I used valkyrie armor with superior runes of the fighter (was lacking toughness, and the might on heal is nice). Use soldier, magi, zerker trinkets I think (wasn’t being too specific). Zerker weapons… I was close to 3000 attack power I want to say. I have no idea how much time I had left but I got through her, this after a couple times getting her to ~5% and running out of time with a different set of armor.

I basically stayed with the above, tried to time my stability but when I got pulled just used renewed focus to absorb the one-shot and then shield 4 to destroy the orb (saved scepter 2 for some extra damage to liadri). Then when she was down to like 5% or less just switch to greatsword and burst her down with GS2. I somehow got her before the visions of mortality reached me.

It took luck with the orbs and basically rote memorization of the one-shot patterns (especially in phase one, the better you know them the quicker you can get to phase two and every second counts), but I got through it.

I don’t think that statline exists in any form (see http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats).

Closest might be Magi (healing/prec/vit) or Cleric’s (healing/pow/tough) though maybe you’d prefer a different set if you have to compromise.

It feels like it makes you accumulate adrenaline faster during combat, but I really have no idea about the mechanics of it.

You can transmute the skin to higher and higher level armor. Normal transmutation stones are pretty abundant (from map completion and daily achievements and black lion chests) and will work for any armor that’s not level 80. Fine transmutation crystals are a bit tougher to get naturally; you can always buy them from the gem shop. You only need them for level 80 armor though.

Explorer achievements are about named areas that you unfog e.g. Taigan Groves or The Icesteppes. Many of those do not have map completion content (not POIs or vistas or whatnot) so they’re easy to skip.

Keep in mind that 50 is just the first tier of those achievements. In total each region ends up having ~160-175 areas needed for the respective explorer achievement, because you need to unfog every map in that region.

There’s always one daily that is related to the jubilee (it has a unique background on the achievements panel), so yeah just do one of those each day for two days and you’ll get the meta.

Engineer vs. Subject 7.

First 5 gambits (no extra enemy, no tremors).

Bomb kit, elixir gun (only for the toolbelt heal), flame turret, supply crate elite; your call on the heal skill I think.

Traits are 10/0/30/30/0 IINM. There’s some flexibility but I used backpack regenerator, elixir infused bombs, forceful explosives, elite supplies… the rest is probably personal preference (blood injection and energized armor were used as well I think).

Gear was mostly tanky armor, but trinkets were more berserker I think since I found I needed a bit of a push in damage. You might have to experiment.

The encounter is simplicity itself. Stand on top of him, drop the supply crate and flame turret early (the turrets should all survive the whole time so you want them going the whole time), then just do your thing. Move around a bit if you need the healing supplies, plus the elixir gun toolbelt skill and your heal skill/toolbelt. Only use the bomb, fire bomb, and smoke bomb (1, 2, 4) skills; I think concussion bomb isn’t worth it, and glue bomb is definitely a waste, and if you waste too much time you won’t finish. Throw in liberal overcharge of your flame turret for more blinds to keep the small oozes at bay. It’s really quite mindless in a rather beautiful way.

Go to the crown pavilion. Go to the outer edge. Walk around until you find a catwalk up (there’s one on each side of each spoke). The upper ring is where the ringmasters and everything are.

The gap in buying/selling is basically the same 15% tax as you get on the TP, just being applied in both directions.

From GW2spidy, 100 gems now cost 3.1436 gold. 3.1436*.85 = 2.6206 gold which is the midpoint value of those 100 gems after the 15% tax. 2.6206*.85 = 2.271251 gold which is the gold value you can get back from the second conversion, again after the 15% tax. GW2spidy has 100 gems now netting you 2.2712 gold so this seems to be the right amount.

I’ve had ok results using soldier’s armor (karma armor from temples in orr; didn’t want to spend the gold to get a more specific statline). Melandru for everything it has (which is actually Magi [HealingPower/Precision/Vitality] for helmet, but that was fine) and Narthex/Whispering for feet. That ended up being just a little too tanky for me so I ended up swerving a bit towards berserker for trinkets and weapons. It just happened that this was an easy set of armor for me to get because I had the karma to spare.

I think the biggest downside to this is that the runes waste a bit by upping condition duration, and yeah guardian burns a lot but I don’t feel like I’m getting much use out of that. Haven’t bothered to change it yet but it would be an easy fix.

T3 gear might mean tier 3 cultural armor, in some contexts. I guess they could also be talking about the tiers of the Queen’s Guantlet right now, though in that context you’d probably refer more to specific challenges than tiers as a whole.

What level are you? PvE wise you really just need to go exploring any zones you haven’t explored yet to level, and then maybe keep up with your personal story when you’re leveled enough (if you want).

You can go to divinity’s reach for the festivities but if you’re not level 80 you won’t really be able to participate in the queen’s guantlet. Should still be able to join in some of the bigger groups doing events in the arena though.

I got it very easily with engineer against subject 7 (just use the first 5 gambits, no extra enemy). Bomb kit with bombs traited to heal and backpack regenerator trait. Super easy, just stand next to him and auto-attack, with the occasional smoke bomb, fire bomb, and smoke from the flame turret thrown in just to keep the oozes from hitting too much. Had elixir gun for the toolbelt heal, and used the elite that drops turrets and heals (with it traited to have more heals in it).

Was mostly in tanky gear though I needed to go kind of zerker on the trinkets to get the DPS up a bit. But honestly it was about as brainless as you could possibly expect this type of thing to be once it was set up.

I just beat them with my ranger (wasn’t able to get the extra achievement although if I put enough time into it and really pay attention I might have a shot).

Axe/torch, longbow. Snow leopard and white moa. Signet of stone, muddy terrain (for the cripple), and signet of the hunt (could probably replace this with a stunbreaker or another cripple, but I wanted mobility). Rampage as one was the elite I chose since I figured the vines wouldn’t be effective.

Just tried to keep the dog chilled as much as possible, with some cripple thrown in when I could. I imagine I got good luck in terms of meat placement but my passive movement buff + the chilled debuff on them made a big difference. I didn’t pack a stunbreaker so I just used signet of stone to survive the immobilize once I got the 4th piece of meat.

Was running 30/0/30/10/0, had zome zerker armor (only exotic set I have for this character so something with some more survivability would probably help, since the meat can get your damage up pretty nicely).

I was very close to being downed by the time I finished, but my pets took very little damage so I think I still could have pulled it off either way. I’m debating whether I want to put the effort into trying to go back and get the achievement; I have a sneaking suspicion my success was a fluke and I’ll just get mashed any time I try again. But hey, what’s done is done.

EDIT: should add this was without food or boosters. I was repping ebonhawke (or whichever the one is that gives retaliation) but do those even carry over into the arena?

Shorty.9873:

Don’t you get those from doing dailies and map completion?

Crystals are rarely rewarded for those (those are the blue version of the transmutation stone). Might be easier to just buy them from the gem shop, thought that obviously depends on what you’re willing to spend in terms of cash or gold.

The sylvan hound poisons which is nice, but honestly when I use it (with my engineer) it’s more as a distraction than anything.

See:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Offering_of_Baelfire

and the like for the other ones. Looks like they’re all used to make accessories.

Open world areas that are kind of tough to solo that are found in the explorer achievements tab.

I had something happen where the chest would open but wouldn’t auto-loot. There’s be a “search” option which would then loot it. I don’t know if that is related but it happened a few times in various maps (I can’t remember which specifically).

Run lots of dungeons, knock out all the jumping puzzles and mini dungeons… I don’t know where exactly that’ll get you but it will help. There’s no way to get there really fast though.

I had completed all 4 torch runs prior to reset at 8EDT/5PDT. When I went to re-do any of them for the daily achievement, the achievement never made progress even though the NPC gave the correct dialog that I had finished (and I know I finished with time to spare). Hopefully someone else can come in and corroborate that this is an issue and isn’t just me.

I didn’t do all 4 the second time, and the achievement description for the daily did not suggest that this would be necessary. If it is then that would be the answer. If it isn’t then I’m worried that these types of achievements won’t be able to proc a second time which will understandably make the dailies difficult to complete (and therefore the meta as well).

Well, she didn’t have much problem with the gladiatorial fights in Lion’s Arch (from Edge of Destiny), and this is tame by comparison.

As soon as the next update is live, you’ll be able to share karma across all characters. So don’t spend any of it if you think you might want to use it later on another character (for a quick set of level 80 exotic armor from temples, for example). Of course if you know you won’t want to use it for that then spend it on whatever you want.

For world bosses:
http://us.gw2stuff.com/
(and select your server from the US or EU menus)
That site tracks the events which spawn some of the larger world bosses and has a decent map that shows you where they are.

No. If you deal 2.5% and he deals 2.5%, though, you’d both get credit. Everyone who deals any damage gets credit, as long as the sum of all that damage reaches that 5% (or whatever it is exactly) threshold. Those who deal zero damage get no credit, though.

So the obvious benefit is that you have a decent chance of getting credit from doing only ~one hit (because it’s easier to do enough damage with 5 people all contributing), whereas solo you usually need to do more.

You still have to do some damage, but the threshold is shared across the entire party. IINM it was something like 5% of HP total is required for tagging. Outside a party, you have to do all that damage yourself. Inside a party, the 5% can be spread across all members of the party, and anyone who did any damage gets credit.

I may be mangling some of the details but that’s the gist of it.

The problem with the bank is that it gives you an infinite supply (unless they can control that for specific items), which I imagine is not what they wanted when they designed the items. The salvage idea is cool though. You’d probably need to make it reasonably pricy and it would probably cause the BLTC prices to even out, but I don’t think either of those should be deal breakers.

If you previously got 100% (enough to get the medal and such) you should still have the title available. It shouldn’t have been taken away from you.

That said, the new stuff is:
Bar in Divinity’s Reach, Eastern Commons (POI)
Instanced area in SW Diessa Plateau (POI, don’t have to enter instance to get it, attached to town of Nolan)
Instanced area in NE Wayfarer Foothills (POI, don’t have to enter instance to get it, near Dolyak Pass)
Guild puzzle in SW Plains of Ashford (WP, around the Decimus Stones area)
Guild puzzle in W/NW Snowden Drifts (WP, in Ossencrest Climb)
Not so Secret jumping puzzle in S Gendarran Fields (POI, in Broadhollow Bluffs)
Guild puzzle in NW Brisban Wildlands (WP, in the Gallowfields)

Everyone seems to complain that every class has been nerfed too much, so don’t put too much stock into those. That said, Elementalist is one of the more complex professions out there and may be more than you want as an introduction.

Ranger is the easy choice to start, of those you’ve listed. Very good for general PvE world exploration. Downside is it doesn’t contribute much in group content compared to other classes.

Guardian is probably the go-to class for both easy solo play and group utility. It’s maybe not a huge contributor in a WvW setting (at least not in some of the more specialized roles) but it can hold its own everywhere.

You can make just about any class work in just about any setting though, once you get leveled enough to settle on a given build. What matters more is that you can get comfortable with the class’s mechanics.

Explorer achievements and world completion are indeed separate things. Explorer is for unfogging named areas of a given map. Go map by map, check for fogged areas, compare them to the wiki (check areas on the wiki that don’t have any POIs or waypoints etc. since you know you already have all of those).

Keep in mind that it usually seems like there are more areas than are needed, because some of them end up not counting (almost certain you can get the achievement without entering vexa’s lab, for example).

You can get the SP at Melandru without taking the temple. Obviously it’s easier if you have any kind of stealth, but if you’re patient you can sneak up to it and channel without fighting any of the enemies. Just go very slow and very carefully make sure you’re not drawing any aggro (and if you are, be prepared to sprint away or fight, whatever suits you).

Am I interpreting it correctly that the next update will feature a common bank in which karma can be stored and shared across characters? If so, I would hold off on buying boxes just for a bit, since karma would no longer be locked on characters that can’t/won’t use it.

The full wings are on TP; holographic dragon wing cover.

The shattered wings were only available from the dragon bash meta-achievement. Short of them coming back next June that may be all there is.

The scoring system isn’t so much bad, it just reinforces that there’s only one survivor and coming close but failing is still failing (and, on the other hand, the recently deceased can be total jerks? Admittedly not sure what the message is there but it’s a fun mechanic).

Since there’s no achievement or title or anything for actually winning, just marginally better loot, it’s not really worth trying unless you’re dealt an excellent hand in terms of finding rations early on. Just play aggressively, tag as many people as you can, die early after the grace period, collect motes like no other, and apply liberal use of karka as the situation presents itself.

I think it would be interesting if you could sacrifice some motes to uncover the locations of survivors (ghostly radar or whatever)… maybe even ping one of them for anyone to see (living or dead). I don’t know if that would end up being unbalanced or something though.

The callout stuff doesn’t bother me so much, since knowing the location of another survivor doesn’t give you any huge advantage if you’re still trying to survive, and really only hurts them that much if there’s a ghost with a lot of motes saved up who’s looking for blood (and I haven’t really come across that; by the time it’s down to 2 or 3, most of the motes are mostly spent).

For stonemist, what I do is wait until my server has it, then rush to discover it on any and every alt I have. Or, at least, ones I can see myself going for world completion with. If you can take care of it for good in the course of 1 hour or so you save yourself a lot of trouble.

The simplest is just to wait until the matchups are shuffled and hope you get the color you need as your home borderland, then rush to take what you can before invaders start to have an impact. Well, unless your server has periods where it can dominate a matchup and wipe out a given map (ask around in WvW or out, someone may know and give you an idea of when to get on).

Got to lion’s arch (via the purple asura gate in divinitiy’s reach, or via the heart of the mists in the pvp menu on the top toolbar). From there you can take a gate to any of the other 4 racial capitals. Each one is attached to a zone similar to queensdale, with level 1-15 content.

Explore another one of them (or all of them, whatever) and you’ll build up a nice buffer of levels. From then on, as long as you explore the zones your story takes you to (100% completion is something to go for obviously) you’ll usually be ok in terms of staying caught up in level. If not, there are going to be tons of zones unexplored for you to level in for basically the whole trip up to 80.

I don’t know if you’ll find a solution that’s “simple.” You could give Engineer a try. Very good ranged utility (traited for grenades you get good damage and 1500 range) and very useful in groups as well (can generate water fields for healing combos, has some useful ally healing skills, and with elixirs can generate boons and remove conditions at a decent rate).