Guild Wars 2

And I don’t care to spend the time proving it to you. Bug, glitch, goof up, whatever, I can read my combat log and will continue to enjoy it.

Even if we take the low value of 1200 dmg every 5 seconds, I am curious as to why you feel it doesn’t suit a ranger. And remeber, we are talking about a long bow here. What sigil does more damage in PvE or WvW? If you want to argue for a sigil of purity, that’s fine, but it’s apples and oranges… So far you’re throwing out negative responses without offering any counter suggestions. This is someone else’s help thread. Provide help or don’t post.

Indoles.1467:

The flame blast cannot crit.

Do you have any evidence of this? Yes, I know it says that on the wiki. However, a 1200 to 2500 damage range with the same character on the same types of enemies (WvW guards) is a little too large to be weapon or armor variance. Coincidentally, I am running at 60% critical damage bonus…

It never hits for anything in between 1200 and 2500. —- either one or the other, with slight variance. I am open to other explanations, but if it scaled to damage then it would hit the upper number on every critical, and not just some of the time.

Regardless of whether a Full Zerker ranger is viable or not, you may be disappointed with that set-up if you already have a Zerker Warrior. Rangers don’t have a big damage, 1 shot skill that really puts the hurt on people(like backstab or kill shot). The closest thing to it, is Great Sword #2 Maul. Whether it’s condition or physical damage, Rangers provide sustained pressure on their target. There really isn’t a gank build, and even if you create one, it would likely be less enjoyable than your warrior version.

If you don’t have a preference for condition vs physical power, I would let the weapon choice decide for you. If you are going with any type of power build, you’re going to go Long Bow/GS. If you enjoy using those weapons, then find some sort of power build that works for you —- there are lots. If you do go that way, don’t go full beserker. Because LB 2 & 5 are multiple hit skills (10 X 2750, 12 X 3600, etc) an extra 210 points in precision get you 1 extra minor damage crit within those 10 or 12 hit chains. Instead, those 210 points could be 2100 health, which you will need until Anet realize Rangers need more than 1 non-elite condition removal. Now that the stealth option on Remorseless is fixed, you can LB 3 — go stealth – switch to GS and then Maul or GS 5 for an automatic crit on command with 30 in marksmanship — which you would likely need on any sort of power build.

If you are going Condition damage, you really need to go shortbow as your primary and stack bleeds like crazy. My little Asura can hit up 20 stacks of bleed (w/ pet help) and a sigil of earth. The secondary is much more flexible. Probably some combination of Axe/Sword and Torch/Warhorn, situation dependent.

Some people love Long Bow, hate short bow, love sword, etc. Figure out which weapon set you like and then pick the appropriate means to damage.

Wow, if it’s down to 2 Gold on the TP, I should stock up. Usually it goes for more than 3G. In fact, if that is the case and you do plan to sell it, definitely hang on until the prices re-stabilize.

It’s probably the most effective sigil for LB out there. and if you do PvE events (like Scarlet), you couldn’t equip a better sigil.

It scales with power —- and can also critical. On my Siege buster Ranger with 2400 pwr, it hits for 1200-1400 routinely, with criticals up to 2500 dmg. However, on my little condi ranger with 1585 pwr, it only hits for 550-650. Sigil of Air also scales this way.

If we are talking about putting it on your longbow, it will go off routinely no matter what your crit chance. Remember, rapid fire is 10 individual chances to proc and barrage is 12 chances. It will go off. Also the piercing arrows trait will jack up your proc chance if you’re shooting the zerg or a bundle of camp guards. But if you want to put it on a GS or sword, you’ll need a higher crit chance to get the most out of it. (Edit: If we are talking about PvE use, the 33% will work fine for GS or sword, as you spend a lot more time flanking your enemies and auto-attacking. You will never get that chance WvW).

Either way, I would base your decision on your power rating. If you are running a power build with 2000 pwr or more, you will get great damage out either the Fire or Air sigils. If you’re running a condi build or some other sort of lower power build, sigil of earth or something else is likely the way to go.

Scarlet’s Playhouse may well have been possible solo… but putting the 5 person label on the entrance would tend to discourage people from trying. And as mentioned above, all those soulbound tickets didn’t become account bound until after it was locked. Were the Gauntlet tickets part of the loot table? Or an extra drop? Regardless, it is the sleight of hand by Anet that is worrisome. It would be a tragic mistake to design content compelling completion to participate in the next event. If you want more interest in your temporary content, make it better or more entertaining. Don’t manipulate.

eekzie.5640:

If you completed the events the gauntlet would’ve been open for you. There was plenty time to use them when they were switched back to account bound, if you needed them.

Actually, that’s half my point… In order to get back into the single player boss dueling session (which likely appeals to one kind of player), you needed to complete several of the most cluster ****** events of all time and a 5 person dungeon (which likely appeal a different kind of player). It was three days before I could even get into a Scarlet event on my server. I can’t imagine what it was like on the highest population servers. Additionally, they decided to end culling at the moment they introduced the most zone intensive number crunching we’ve seen. I have to think some people gave up on Scarlet rather quickly, and not entirely by choice.

Regardless of anything else, if they had announced the Crown Pavilion would close after the first two weeks, this post wouldn’t exist. Instead they did just the opposite, “the Crown Pavilion will remain open…” and only mentioned the closure incidentally in the middle of another, separate release statement. You could stand at Crown waypoint and watch person after person face plant into the door the first week after Scarlet. That would indicate the message wasn’t clear. Moreover, the evil Scarlet laugh they programmed to trigger when someone did run face first into the door is a clear indicator Anet knew exactly what they were doing as well.

inazuma.7021:

The pavillion will be used again in the future, like SAB. I just banked my tickets for next time.

Maybe, but they can always change their mind. Unclear whether storing them for 6 months or more is worth the space in my inventory. Still more concerned about the way it was handled, yet again. You can’t say you’re going to keep it open, then after the update casually mention you need to complete another two week living story event to get back in.

And if I remember, we could sell the Gnashblade tokens for 4 silver or so, no?

So, what are we supposed to do with the hundreds of Gauntlet tickets that were given as soulbound loot to low level characters, only made account bound after the Gauntlet was unexpectedly locked, and seem to be nothing but dead space in my inventory?

I was expecting a low value trade in at the vendors, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Better still would be to bring back the Emissaries rewards so people have a way of cashing in. Completing a two week living story event, only to have your rewards blocked subsequent to completion of a second two living story event is tiresome and deal-breaking. I would think after the Karma gaff and the immediate back-tracking, those in charge would be more careful about this sort of thing.

I am wondering about this as well. I’ve noticed my most laborious lag times coincide exactly with a spike to 100% disc usage. Not conclusive in any respect, but my hard drive is certainly the lowest piece of tech I have and not on level with my other gear. I was hoping someone on here had upgraded to an SSD, and could provide some tangible before and after feedback.

You can certainly add an SSD drive to your existing drive, as long as you have the hardware connection for it available in your rig. You need to install an internal SSD, or your just wasting your speed away through a USB cable. However, note in Reborn’s link above, his mention of installing the operating system on the SSD (as well as keeping it on your existing HD). I have heard this before, but unfortunately I can’t tell you why that is or the consequences of not doing it.

I typically run my settings on high across the board (no ultra). The 120-180 is PvE open world running (not in cities). As you would expect, it fluctuates all over the place in that range. If I stand on a high vista and swing the camera around 360 degrees quickly, I can lag myself down to 30 for a second or two —- once. But my point is those extra frames aren’t very helpful and we both still grind in the same spots. So I don’t think you’d be very happy if you upgraded your card just for GW2.

I’ve also noticed that knocking my settings down to medium doesn’t get me much. Taking textures and shadows down to medium only gets me 3-5 frames/sec. Turning shadows off and reflections to “sky & terrain” does get me an extra 20 frames/sec, but not in the places I really need it. Again, this would suggest the video card is not the limiting factor.

I don’t think a new card will help you very much with GW2. I’m running @4.3 GHz with a Nvidia 780. I get 120-180 frames/sec all over the world. But since our glorious last update, I still get lagged to death in the sames places as everyone else. My lowest frame count is about 30 in Lion’s Arch with everyone is dancing around and shooting off fireworks. More troubling is the places I get the horrible lag (any Scarlet event, big WvW, etc.), I am getting 60-70 frames/sec, but the lag is still there. Whatever the problem is, it’s not in the video card. I am curious about the SSD. Has anyone upgraded and noticed a difference in GW2?

I have noticed a memory leak since the last update. It is slow, but increases steadily. It is not zone dependent and it does not drop. Has anyone else noticed this?

Wow, so much anger in this thread and it seems to be causing too many people to miss the point. Downed isn’t dead. In fact, far from it. Anet has designed the game in multiple ways to make it easy to rally. They really want to give you a second chance to get up and fight. Personally, I think they give too much of chance, but we’ll need a separate thread for the “I shot a downed player 6 times with a ballista and he self-resurrected” discussion. If I get beat in a 1v1, the person who downed me had better have more than 3-4K health left if they are silly enough to come over and try to stomp me, because that’s how much damage I can do in the 3-4 seconds it takes them to run over and finish the stomp. At that point I rally, with more health than they had a few seconds ago, dodge roll backward, and unleash everything. I think it’s kind of lame, but that’s the game’s philosophy. Why do you think the stomp animation is so obvious and so long? Interrupt me! Kill me now!

As mentioned by several people, the issue with the stealth stomp is downed players cannot target the stamper. You probably should lose anyway, but at least you can throw some dirt or some screws at the guy for a few seconds more. However, in a 1v1 situation, that’s a fatal problem, and it only applies to one class. That doesn’t seem to be in balance and it runs contrary to overall theme of having a good chance to get up from a downed state. The stealth stomp is not the same as the invinci stomp or any of the others mentioned, as they all come with very long cool downs. That’s the balance. If somebody wants to keep their obsidian flesh in their pocket for an entire fight, just to use it on the stomp, that’s a tactical decision. I don’t mind the invincible stomp. You get to use it once — you beat me — and didn’t even have to use it. Well done. And obviously it keeps me from doing 4K of damage to you.

You can’t complain about the stealth stomp (or any other kind of stomp) in a Zerg battle. It’s a free for all, and there are no rules. There are a million ways to die once you’ve been downed and getting stomped should be the least of your worries. In fact, no one should be trying to stomp you at all, unless it’s for pure vanity. When someone goes down, everyone within 1200 should be unloading on the downed player and anyone trying to resurrect. Stomping just makes you oblivious to the action and an obvious target. The stealth stomp in a zerg battle is a smart tactical play and I don’t blame a thief for using it — no matter how much I hate it in 1v1.

The real problem is the downed skills don’t allow you to target the stealthed thief. How many classes have an aoe-no target required downed skill? At least one other person already said it, the balance to stealth stomp needs to come in the downed skills, for all classes. The stomping player will still likely win, but once again you can throw dirt and screws at them for a few seconds. And in keeping with the overall design philosophy, you still have SOME chance to get back up. At the moment, that chance is zero.

Unfortunately there is a lot of ugly medium armor, especially on the high end. I ended up going with transmutations of Rascal and Outlaw armor over my exotic emblazoned for my Sylvari male. Hardly rare, but it fit the role I imagined.

The Sylvari cultural is one of the best sets out there, but it’s not for everyone.

The better questions is why are we still using green and red as the permanent friendly/enemy colors. It would make made sense to make each player name plate their respective team color. As to the 64,000 color question, everyone could argue preferences until the end of time and never come to a majority agreement.

Wow, well now that you’ve opened a door you will never be able to close again, go home, get a good night’s sleep, and when you come in tomorrow, you can start thinking of ways to square things with the majority of your players who stopped hoarding karma when the wallet was introduced and don’t believe or care about exploiting the rewards system to the fullest in ways that weren’t intended.

After all, by rolling back the karma update, you will reduce my future karma earnings for the next two weeks by 50%. That’s an interesting penalty for not trying to exploit the karma system. I demand compensation! In fact, I missed out a couple of months back when gems for gold was trading at 3.75G/100 gems. The exchange rate should be returned to that level for the next two weeks so I can get the maximum amount of gold for the gems I’ve been stockpiling!

This knee-jerk reaction, to a game reward that was not devalued, will be thrown back in your face anytime you change anything from this point forward. It’s obvious, but I’ll say it anyway… you’ve opened the mother of all Orrian Jewelry Boxes, and it’s full of nothing but…

One way to look at it is what three attributes you can’t live without, and start from there. No matter what build you’re running, it’s hard to see critical damage as one of those, unless your building a very specialized character. You should probably select armor that includes three of the four (power, precision, toughness, and vitality).

It’s much easier to swap jewels than armor at a future date, so take armor stats that are essential regardless of how you may change your build in the future. Take a look at the “item nomenclature” page on the wiki. It should help you plan your possible combinations. Berserker and Valkyrie accessories tend to be the most expensive jewels out there. Rare Berserker’s usually cost more than exotic of other combinations. Note the math on swapping Berserker/Valkyrie jewels onto other pre-existing accessories. It may be cheaper and more viable than going full Bezerker, while still giving you a 15-20% increase in crit dmg. You can always start with Knight accessories and put a Bezerker jewel down on top of it later, when more gold is available.

I have 2 lvl 80 rangers and use both in WvW and PvE. The one most like yours is a highly mobile condition skirmisher. 20/30/20/0/0 or 20/30/10/0/10 in PvE. I don’t have have any pure Berserker gear and run about 49% crit chance with 45% damage and 900+ condition dmg, without modifiers or food. If you really want crit damage, take points in skirmishing. Most of those traits are too useful to pass up for a condition build anyway.

You could try Vatlaaw’s armor if you are committed to a condition build. (Cond/Prec/Toughness). It’s one of the less expensive exotic sets.

My first thought was server lag, especially considering the empty log. That’s why I deliberately ran back after them for a second encounter and just stood there with troll U active. I hoped that might prolong the encounter to see what they did. Nope. Still just 2 warrior hits and doom show up in the log. I am not sure why we can’t get some sort of log feedback for those types of skills. Obviously the game is tracking the data. It doesn’t have to be in real time, but it would be nice to see where my other 17K health went.

I am assuming the siege weapons comment was directed at another post. I was way out in the middle of nowhere, underneath the centaur camp. That wasn’t in play in this case. Hopefully that shows up in the combat log as well.

meep.2601:

if you really want to see how stunningly horrible the combat log is, roll a condition BM ranger

Yeah, I feel you as heavy condition/trapping ranger. Best I can figure, the necro was in death shroud form and spammed 1) Dark path —- 2)Life Transfer —-3)Tainted shackles --- 4) Doom —- and then maybe signet of spite. Still, I didn’t exaggerate on the time. 19,800 dmg in 3 seconds. The doom hadn’t even worn off and the warriors whiffed on most of their auto-attacks because I was speeding away involuntarily. The numbers don’t even come close to adding up. The description for tainted shackles is a little vague. Is it possible to generate 10 stacks of torment in 2-3 seconds (assuming 1200 condition damage)?

Earlier this Summer, I remember seeing complaints about Fear and necros for PvP, but as a non PvP player I didn’t read them. I am curious if this is the complaint. 20K in condition spike damage. Three backstabbing thieves couldn’t have killed me any faster, even if I had been afk making a sandwich.

Yesterday I had back to back encounters with a Necro/2 Warrior trio. I was roaming solo in their borderland and once cornered, the outcome always was inevitable. However, both times they took me down in less than 3 seconds and the combat log doesn’t add up.

Necro casts doom, each warrior gets in one shot in the 1500 dmg range. I’m dead. Both times the combat log shows nothing but doom (78 dmg) and about 2-3K of warrior damage. That leaves them about 17K short of my 20K vitality. That’s it. Just those three lines on the combat log. It has to be the necro, but I don’t play one. What am I missing here? Life stealing? 17,000 damage worth?

Yup, bit by this one too. Twice. So I thought I would do the daily activity instead. You can add that to the list. Neither belcher’s bluff or diving gave it to me.

Nevermind. The main battle was triggering as I passed underneath Gixx on the level below. The rest of the priory was already soft before I could get up there. Traherrne still disappeared each time. Sloppy. Very sloppy.

What am I missing here? I am supposed to solo a champion as part of the personal story? Zhim wiped the room in about 10 seconds. If I resuscitate Gixx, he dies in 3 seconds. Even one of his little locust storm can kill me in under 5 seconds. Am I completely missing the goal of this encounter? Help appreciated.

It is sad isn’t it? I re-rolled my original ranger as an Asura just for shortbow aesthetics.

I agree with everyone else, but I still find use for it in chasing down pests and knocking out control point guards. I like it better than longbow for keeping the guard in my combo field and the interrupt on heal ends the moment without blowing him out of my pets melee zone. Even with an average 360 condition damage, my shortbow takes out the guard about 3 seconds faster than my longbow.

So what do we change? It’s one of the few weapons where I like every skill.

Wait, it has to be 10 emails from other players? I am sitting there now with 13 emails, but when I open the box, it says 0/10. Last hint needed, naturally…

It is really so hard to write accurate descriptions for tool tips and achievements?

No, the total does not include patches, which I download over the 5.0 Mpbs satellite. I immediately suspected a virus or root kit of some kind, but I’ve run three different Malware programs and they all come up empty. Time to dig in deeper and run some sort of individual program monitoring app.

Thanks for the numbers feedback. I’m actually relieved the problem is on my end. I am quite thankful GW is one of the less bandwidth hungry games out there.

Has anyone else noticed an increase in the amount of bandwidth the game is using in the past 6 weeks or so?

When I started playing in January I found that I was using 10-15 MB per hour playing, which matched most of the on-line posted results from various sources. I am forced to suffer satellite internet as my only choice for standard service, which is certainly tricky to use on any game. So I use my cell phone as a hot spot for GW2, and GW2 only. With a 5 GB AT&T cap, I didn’t get anywhere near the limit for the first four months, with a high of about 2.2 GB. Then for June, I hit 10GB. Yesterday was the first day of my new billing cycle. I played a lot — about 8 hours. Total bandwidth used – 900MB.

Obviously, I am not running any non-essential background programs while playing and my phone and PC are blocked from steaming and downloading things in the background. Those 900 MB yesterday are all GW2. I turned my phone on to play and off when I was done. But to go from 10MB to 100MB per hour seems like a monumental leap. I do remember some changes in the way the game rendered distant objects a while back, but still…

Has anyone else noticed an increase in bandwidth used? I am hoping there is another answer, or it will be the end of this game for me.

1. You can also turn this into a game of tag. Run directly at a mine, and scan it before you get too close, then hit the corresponding deactivate key. Canach will follow you directly into the mine. After it has turned green, you are immune to the blast damage and Canach takes the hit. Keep running on a straight path to lure Canach onto the mine. Scan again, change direction if needed, repeat process. Try to stick to the poison and blast mines. Caltrops isn’t as damaging and Canach will reset his mines every three blasts. Better to use poison and exploding varieties than to risk more frequent full room detonation.

2. Stay off the furniture. Anytime you climb up onto the rocks at the edge of the room, or that very inviting pillar near the center, Canach goes into full regen mode (just like when you draw an enemy out of its zone). I had been trying and dying for almost 40 minutes before I caught on to what was happening. The next trip in, with completely broken gear, Canach bit the dust in under 90 seconds (about 6 blasts). I thought I was quite clever standing on the center pillar when Canach mass detonates. Definitely not the case. However, there are some safe spots around the base of that pillar, and I was effective for running Canach around it, and onto the nearby mines. Remember to watch the chat box. He will explode the room every three mine changes (or so).

Way to side-track the conversation. His point to the original poster, who is weighing the pros and cons of a condition build, is condition damage doesn’t work on structures. It is most certainly annoying in PvE, or anywhere else, to stand in front a catapult and hack away for 60 seconds to knock it down. It is something to be aware of. Whether or not stone bleeds sounds like a conversation for the metaphysical forum.

Vampirial.9056:

my level 30 engineer had no problem, even soloed a vet karka with her

With condition damage? Or did you rifle it out?

Something still feels off about it though. My then lvl 25 ranger solo’d F&F without even stopping to think about scaling or anything else. It was a complete non-issue. Now at lvl 65, she has to run from the beach with her tail between her legs? My lvl 60 S&P thief has been running over enemies like speed bumps. I hit the beach and I literally couldn’t dent the health bar of the 1st veteran wind rider. I don’t mean defeat it solo. I mean the health bar didn’t drop any noticeable amount in 60 seconds of spammed pistol whips attacks. I went back with a lvl 30 condition ranger and sapped the sucker out in 2 minutes, but to me that suggests a scaling problem for lower level players trying to do direct damage —- like my thief.

Still, it is curious to make Flame & Frost accessible to most everyone, and then make Southsun a ball breaker. Did I miss the post where the devs said F&F was too easy so were going to ramp things up?

Well, you seem to have narrowed your choices to the three most difficult classes to level. All are viable, but those three can be a tough place to start. An Elementalist requires a fair amount of practice to get all of your combo rhythms down. Your survival depends upon your ability to link them together. It can be a bit of a grind until after lvl 20 when you can stuff 10 points in fire and finally start knocking PvE enemies down in three skills like everyone else.

Necro is more difficult than Elem. You have less raw damage and more complicated healing. Condition and control builds require a higher understanding of the game. If you really like the concept, go for it, but otherwise I would save this profession for later on, unless you played this one in GW1.

I love Engineers. It’s fun and totally different than the other professions, but with only 2 weapon choices (rifle or pistol), the first 15 levels can feel repetitive until you unlock your skill kits. It’s a very different kind of playthrough —- definitely highly tactical. But that’s the part I like… Probably the polar opposite to a D/D Elementalist in terms of play style.

There’s no reason not to try out another profession and it can only help you understanding of what other people are doing out there. As for your Elementalist, you may want to stick with it a little while longer. Pre-level 20, you should opt for power+ equipment when ever you have the choice. At Lvl 8 even a 15 point swing can make a big difference. Vitality/Toughness is the secondary choice. For Elem. I like toughness early on, before switching to High Vitality later in the game, but either works. There is no reason to take critical or condition damage gear at this point in the game. It’s nearly insignificant to your overall damage. In the Elem., criticals are best for causing other effects, rather than actual damage. At Lvl 28 I thought I was all powerful running around with a D/D 60% crit rate. After I moved the 10 points from Air back into Fire, I realized I needed a 92% crit rate to equal the standard #1 base att. damage with a full 10 points in Fire. Power is king for Elementalists, at least for PvE.

You definitely going to want to install from the disk version. Even then, there will still be 5-7 GB of updates to do. You can try to download some chunks at a time over a few months, but the first suggestion is the best —- if you know anyone who plays the game, ask them to stick a copy of gw2.dat file on a drive for you.

The % completed refers to the number of files completed, not how much data has been downloaded. Thus it is not all that helpful for measuring your progress. You can stop it and it will pick up where it left off, but try to wait until you see the files remaining number go down by at least one. Interrupting it during a large file download (when the files remaining number is static) is wasteful and can sometimes corrupt the dat file (meaning you have to start over).

On the bright side, GW2 is one of the lowest bandwidth using games I’ve ever seen. I typically use about 10-15 mb/hour while playing. So once you get over the initial hump, you should be good. Also be aware there is a monthly update which can be anywhere from 300mb to over 1 GB. Something to plan for.

I got one of those emails as well. More concerning to me is that the email was sent to my secondary email address, which only ArenaNet and one other company have. It’s a non-active account I use for secondary password retrievals and has no relation to my GW2 name. Additionally, it’s with an uncommon host (not Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) In the year I have been using the account, I have received 1 junk mail, total. I didn’t sign up for GW2 until late January, so my info could not have been compromised during whatever happened in the Fall. I don’t like the odds of a hacker getting my actual name, coupling it with an obscure email domain, and just hopping that I play GW2. I find that aspect of this a little concerning.

1. When a new build or patch comes out and you are in game, the countdown of doom starts. Now it says I have 55 minutes until I’m forced out, but I know that really means 90 seconds. I have been booted out of an instance in less than a minute on the last three consecutive builds/updates. I really hate that. Since when you patch is not optional, you have to give people the ability to plan ahead.

2. There seems to be some difficulty in establishing a connection to the update server after launch. Not a real surprise there. Since updating the game is mandatory, you force everyone who was in game to do it immediately before they play again. The obvious solution would be to update the patch at 10 or 11PM PST when the most of the world is asleep. The over-zealous can get up in the middle of the night and update, while everyone else follows a natural and progressive update schedule as the world turns. If a handful of people have to come in late and work late one day a month, is that really such a sacrifice?

3. If you are going to argue “we are working on the patch the moment up until launch”, then I have a few things to say about professionalism and I’ll see you at the next NCSoft shareholder’s meeting. Or simply don’t announces updates 30 days a head of time. Do it when it’s done.

4. I was disconnected from the update server mid-stream last time around. That in turn corrupted my GW2.dat file. Downloading a 17GB .dat file is extremely problematic if you have a data cap, and a gigantic pain regardless. I was able to rescue my old .dat file, but now I am concerned about updating this time around. My solution will be to not play the game for the next three days until the update traffic dies down. As we get one of these major updates once a month, I would think a general community fear of the update process would be something to avoid.

Yes, it is a hell of a lot of files. Even if you have the disks, you will still need to download approximately 6 GB of additional files (everything since launch).

Unfortunately, I know find myself in the same position. I just started playing this game 1 month ago and had to jump through a ton of hoops to download the 6 GB with my 17.5/month cap. Now I am back to square one, essentially rendering the game unplayable for me. There was no patch crash. I simply opened up the launcher this morning, and it started in on 228,000 files.

I’ve tried the “repair” alias trick mentioned a few in another recent post. That did nothing for me. I would say this qualifies a complete disaster and ArenaNet needs to have specific help thread to address this. Telling people to re-download a 30GB game client is not a solution.