Guild Wars 2

Kashijikito.1864:

We already have weakening shroud and enfeebling blood, as well as staff 3+4, but what if power necros had more, and easier ways to apply weakness? (weakness on crit maybe?)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withering_Precision

:P

Personally I don’t see what is so wrong about having vigor on necros. Necros suck the life out of their enemies, so it fits thematically too.

But since devs have made it very clear necros will never get vigor, how about we get an offensive version of it in the form of a side effect on our siphoning traits? e.g. Bloodthirst – steal 4% of your target’s endurance per hit.

It’ll be very different from vigor as if your target is low on endurance you won’t be getting much either, fits the ‘make-your-enemy-have-trouble-escaping’ image the devs want, and breathe some value into our shunned Blood Magic line.

I hope the main hand axe doesn’t get overlooked, it desperately needs some attention too. Remove one bounce and buff the first hit(At least 30% boost; the dmg is so low it deserves more than some measly 5% boost or such as is the norm) and change Honed Axes trait to 10% higher critical chance on axes. Presto, you’ve got a mainhand that works for both power and condition builds and becomes a reasonable alternative to those who don’t like the sword root until we get another mainhand which will come quaggan knows when.

I hope the endurance regen nerf is for pvp only…I mean, yeah in pvp where every ranger runs around with sword and/or dagger they may be dodging and evading too much in anet’s eyes, but in pve where people actually do use other weapons like greatsword or double bows/axes, it is just a senseless nerf in an environment full of one-shot mechanics.

Without sword or dagger equipped you will never have enough endurance to avoid all of Subject Alpha’s AoEs in CoE for example. Vigor when hit trait ain’t gonna help when you’re not supposed to get hit even once, and you shouldn’t waste your heal for vigor on heal. Not to mention the former trait competes with other nice ones such as 30% more crit dmg on pet or might for pet on crit.

It’s not even full vigor(100% endurance regen), it’s half a vigor(50%).

Also I don’t buy the “all classes are getting endurance regeneration nerfed” argument considering there’s nothing in those notes about the 5 point vigor-on-crit trait mesmers and guardians have.

Katreyn sums up nicely what went wrong with the light T3 changes. It’s absolutely horrible, especially the legs. I can’t find any dye or combinations of it to bring back what my sylvari looked like before the change.

Hexom is asking what to use while levelling guys.

I’d recommend staying away from GS at low levels. Even with power prec gear hundred blades and the autoattack simply does not do enough dps and you often get overwhelmed by enemy mobs and the occasional veteran mobs which hit like a truck.

I’d recommend axe/mace and longbow, and full power precision crit gear. Slot signet of fury, fgj and endure pain for oh crap moments. Start fights with full adrenaline by activating the signet if you’re low. Combustive shot → arcing arrow, then hack away with your axe if there’s anything still left alive. Combustive shot + arcing arrow is just so powerful for clearing trash mobs, they literally melt away from that simple combo. The AoE is powerful and very large so it’s great for tagging mobs for loot and exp too.

If you have trouble with stronger/numerous mobs, stay in longbow a while longer and kite inside your combustive shot fire field until they have lower health/fewer numbers.

Carry a GS around though if you want to jump in a dungeon or two to swap out with your longbow. Also, get healing signet asap.

clint.5681:

Next time free trail comes around create a new account and invite them to the guild and mail yourself the items. Thats all i can think of.

Ah, not a bad idea….just hope it comes around again soon.

Thank you guys.

Hey all, I was wondering if there was a way to access your guild bank of another server, from a different server.

In my old server I had a personal “stash” guild I made for more storage slots. Recently my main guild decided to transfer, so I transferred with them…only to find out I can’t access my personal guild’s bank because I am in a different server now.

I had no idea this was going to happen; I thought guild banks were shared among servers and there was no warning whatsoever. I thought maybe I could access it if I guested back to my old server, but it doesn’t work.

So now apparently my only options are to waste 3600 gems and 2 weeks locked out of wvwing with my guild by transfering to my old server and back again if I want to get my stuff in my personal guild’s bank. I just paid 50 dollars to buy 4000 gems to transfer (and have 2200 left over) and I must buy even more to make this happen. Or use 200g, which exceeds the value of items in the bank. A complete waste of money.

Alternatively, trust some complete random stranger in my old server to not take my stuff and run and be kind enough to mail the items.

Is there any other way?

Yes, axe needs some serious help.
Anthrage’s idea would be really great and I’d never take off axe if it was implemented. I don’t think it needs more bounces, just more frontloaded damage on the first hit so it’s not useless in 1v1 situations.

Splitblade needs the initial cast time reduced. It’s already difficult enough to use it point blank and the cast time doesn’t make it any easier. Not to mention the insult of having all 5 axes converging perfectly on you when it gets reflected unlike when we use it.

The axe trait of 10% extra critical damage should be changed to 15% extra critical chance so it can benefit both power and condi builds.

Wukunlin.8461:

I doubt it, did he even use the right signets?

I can’t remember exactly what he was running, so it was either this or the example you gave as your ‘inspiration’.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

ddoi.9264:

I ran TA the other day, and our guardian used staff for the ENTIRE run, sitting comfortably at the back spamming #1 with the occasional might pumping. I was wondering wth he was doing back there.
Now I know.

actually on TA staff is preatty good when it comes to clear the way out of that voyatile blossoms

Yes, but you usually unequip or swap to a melee weapon after you clear the blossoms. That guy used it literally the whole time, from the nightmare vine boss in the beginning to Malrona, Fyonna and all the way to the nightmare tree boss in the end. I didn’t mind too much since it’s the easy path, but even so.

I ran TA the other day, and our guardian used staff for the ENTIRE run, sitting comfortably at the back spamming #1 with the occasional might pumping. I was wondering wth he was doing back there.
Now I know.

I don’t know if this is related, but just incase.
Me and some of my guildies from Australia and US are also experiencing heavy lag and frequent disconnects, but we all agree we did not suffer from such problems prior to the Sky Pirates of Tyria content. Before that we were mostly fine, but every patch release afterwards has made our experience more and more unstable.

This, so much. The achievement is impossible for me to get. My server has been locked dead last in every matchup for the past 3 months or so. We can barely hold our own borderlands, let alone a jp in eb.

I checked the jp every hour the past ten hours; it’s always swarming with enemies and there is NOTHING I can do to get to the cache.

Why would they do this? Who in the world thought it was a good idea? The moment anyone mentioned this somebody should’ve immediately predicted people would have problems getting it. It’s really not that hard to foretell.

Either this cache needs to be relocated in a PvE area or excluded from the “Cached Out” achievement.

Edit: Oh oops, there was already a larger thread about this. Sorry!

Sacrai.6280:

What I don’t understand is, you are gearing yourself like a tank, and asking not to be one. What would be the purpose of having high armor and not being focused?

Now, don’t misunderstand me, I am not one of those “zerkers only” player, I simply don’t understand the concept of gearing towards a play style, and then complaining about the results.

No problem, it’s a good question.

The thing is, some of these characters I have are not ‘geared to be a tank’ but reach that level of armor just through traits alone and a few pieces of knights/soldier’s gear. My guard for example uses soldier’s armor and amulet but everything else is berserker’s, including weapons and all upgrade slots. I’d say it’s more of a offensively balanced gear than tanky. I used to gear all berserker for it but I discovered I held the aggro all the time even then, so I thought I might as well not be a squishy guard and added some toughness.

Then there are situations where I will get the aggro anyway – i.e, when I’m running solo and being tanky geared is beneficial, and these are not the instances I’m complaining about.

Other purposes of having high armor yet not being focused is good is when fighting bosses with lots of aoe – Twilight Arbor Nightmare Vines, Lupicus with its inaccurate aoe circles, or maybe I want to melee a boss with cleaving attacks.

Ultimately the point I’m getting at is that toughness is supposed to be stat that increases your survivability but in affect it decreases it by punishing you with aggro. There is no way to drop aggro except running far enough to go out of combat in this game, and once you have it enemies rarely switch. It’s not a playstyle issue, it’s a design flaw.

I don’t mind tanking some of the time, or maybe even most of the time. But I can’t tank ALL of the time.

I could go on and on. Once to test this I got my brother to roll a character just like mine. We made engineers of the same traits, same weapons, even the same utility skills and levelled from 1-80 together making sure we were on the same level. Only difference was I used tougness gear while he used zerker. I can barely remember a single instance where I did not hold aggro despite him being closer, starting combat first or dealing more damage than me. Not even when I took the shield off and changed to rifle or threw grenades from afar. Toughness is without a doubt the single largest aggro factor.

I am so sick and tired of this system and like the OP I feel I am being punished for gearing the way I want to gear.

The toughest player getting all the aggro so more glassy players can unload in peace…yeah sounds great on paper, and sometimes in practice too like those lupicus fights, where I regularly get comments from pugs about how it was their easiest lupi ever thanks to me hogging the aggro the entire fight. But in a game where no class is designed to be a dedicated tank, why make ONE player hold aggro the ENTIRE fight?

We only have two dodges. We can only evade/invulnerable/block so much. They do run out, and classes like necros which devs have allergic reactions to giving vigor are terrible aggro holders to begin with.

tl;dr – toughness needs to go way down on the aggro priority list, or just removed from it all together. Make aggro randomly rotate between players with a time limit. Or mob limit so no more than 5 of them chase a single player at a time. Anything, please.

ALeetNoob.4830:

What affects mobs aggro tables (for the most part) in guildwars, in order of importantance.

1.closest target to them
2.who is dealing damage
3.top damage dealers
4.who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor

I am VERY skeptical of this list on the wiki, because personal experience says otherwise. Even if a dev came here and told me that list was correct I would then say it’s not working as intended.

I have a slow internet connection so it’s difficult to get the timing of dodges right due to lags. So having some sort of toughness gear has always been a must for my characters. I have 7 different alts with varying levels of armor rating, from 2400~2900.

And they all get focused nearly all the time. Bosses, trash mobs, even objects like turrets.

Like many others have said before, I’ve been in situations where I stood out of combat, and a mob that entered combat with another player nearby completely ignored that player and ran up to me and hit me the entire fight. Or fights where I ended up dead, wp’d and came back only to grab aggro immediately again as soon as I stepped in range. Which means #1,2,3 on that list was not very important.

When I fight lupicus on my guard(2780) with scepter+shield he stays on me the entire phase 2 and 3. Every single shadow step and the occasional single projectile and life steal attack, all at me and me only. I’ve run arah several times and not once have I fought lupicus without having its aggro 90% of the fight. Considering scepter damage and my effort to keep max distance, once again #1,2,3 on the list thrown out the window.

It’s all the same. Every boss encouter experience I’ve had in this game is either 1. I have aggro or 2. I don’t have aggro, but the boss uses their special one-shot/cc attacks on me.

^ I’m not sure that’s the reason since skills retain all their own individual cooldowns. I can use a 60 second cooldown skill on land, then go underwater and swap any skill in any slot for it and it’ll still be counting down from 60 so I don’t see how people can avoid cooldowns by swapping skills. Going in and out of water does not reset the cooldowns on each skill so forcing a cooldown share is not necessary.
Unless you mean avoiding the disabling of utility skills caused by cooldowns and using a different set of skills underwater, which I believe should be allowed. Otherwise there is no point in the utility skills swapping sets underwater.

However upon further testing it seems under some circumstances the cooldowns are not shared unlike my initial observation, but I’m having difficulty pinpointing exactly the conditions which the shared cooldowns are not triggered.

Underwater utility skill cooldowns are transferred over to the utility skills set to use on land, and vice versa.

For example. If I set Slick Shoes in my second utility skill slot underwater and use it, it goes on 60 second cooldown as it should. Then if my engineer goes on land and the utility skill set swaps to the land based one, the Net Turret which I set in the same second utility skill slot inherits the 60 second cooldown Slick Shoes has, even though Net Turret only has a 30 second cooldown.

It doesn’t matter what skill I set in which slot on any other class, the results are the same. The cooldowns go over their maximum count. It also works both ways; a skill with a higher cooldown used on land will pass over its cooldown over the maximum on its corresponding underwater skill slot. This bug does not happen to weapon skills.

I noticed this bug after the march 36 patch, and since it is such an obvious bug I thought it would be fixed immediately or at least in the april 30 patch. It hasn’t. If it is not a bug and I simply haven’t noticed it for the past few months, I cannot possibly imagine why it would be intentionally be made this way. Completely different skills should not share cooldowns in anyway.; certainly not just because they are placed in the same slot.

I was wondering if it would be too much trouble to make the graphical effects of necromancer wells stand out from each other.

Yes, I know that they are actually different, but I didn’t realise that until I studied them closely to make this topic. The difference is so miniscule that it is barely noticable in the heat of battle, especially on dark terrains.

This is a problem because well of blood and power provide great support for allies but they can’t tell it apart from a well of suffering/corruption/darkness due to how similar they look and often ignore them, unlike say healing spring from a ranger which everyone can identify instantly.

Enemy players would be able to tell apart each of the wells too, sure, but I think the benefits gained from allies being able to recognise the skill outweighs the disadvantages.

Any kind of simple altering would do. A different colour for each well? A large boost in the size of the symbol that is put down in the centre? Some differing particle effects on the edges like the ones null field has?

When they designed the class traits back in release I don’t think they expected the meta to split so heavily into either power or condition for all the classes. Rather they probably assumed people would use a healthy mix of hybrid stats on their equipment and utility skills and built on that. Maybe they expected you to use power based weapons with condition damage coming from traps as a supplement than a main source of dps?
Take a look at the Orr temple karma armors for example. If you want a set of armor with the same six runes the stats are all over the place.
The problem is of course, the paltry amount of stats you get from mixing gear is often inferior to min maxing considering how dps/damage reduction/healing scales in this game.

I wonder if the change cannot be made so it serves as a meaningful compromise for everyone.

For example, nerf the confusion damage to the level they’re going to; (50% of current?) but give it an additive nature. Every consecutive damage you take from confusion does 50~100% more damage than the previous you’ve took.
This way Anet gets their nerf, confusion damage can still be a condition not to be ignored and playing smart is rewarded with less damage taken.

Our elite should be the ability to slot another utility skill into its slot. Complete with the corresponding toolbelt skill.
Cuz we’re engineers, the king of versatility.

If that’s too OP then they can add a customised long cooldown to the skills slotted in the elite slot.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m having a fantastic time with longbow on my ranger in wvw.

I lost count of how many kills I’ve gotten from enemies running back to their friendlies thinking they’ve gotten away or at least will get a res even if they get downed only to get killed by my rapid fire and barrage from 1500 or more away. No warrior can do that with their longbow; at least not in perfect safety in a group vs group fight. Even if I can’t get close, most players ignore pets so my jaguar simply prances along and finishes them off. If it does get targetted f2 gets the job done.

If they’re running away, I’m in constant max-damage state thanks to the distance between us and hit for 1~2k depending on crits even with just autoattack. And I’m not even wearing berserker gear. What’s more, most retreating players blow their dodges meant to be used for avoiding strong attacks in panic and eat the full damage of rapid fire. Predator’s instinct trait also works well for these situations.

Fighting in the front tanking and dealing heavy damage is very important in your team, but so is actually eliminating enemies from the field. I constantly see my allies get enemies downed or near-death only to fall back because they get focused and couldn’t finish them off (especially enemies capable of falling back or those that take a few seconds to stomp such as eles using mist form, stealthing thieves, mesmers…etc) so the enemy gets back up in a few seconds to join the fight.

If rangers are meant to be hunters who “prey on weaknesses of the herd”; bleeding out enemy numbers slowly but surely, instead of getting in the thick of it as a soldier, the longbow fills in that role very nicely, no matter the size of either group.

Besides, it’s not like you can’t contribute to your group with your utilities. If my group is retreating I usually run back to the tail and let loose a barrage to slow attackers so any stragglers can get to safety, along with muddy terrain and sometimes a frost trap.

It’s less effective in 1v1 situations, sure, but it does have its uses such as rapid fire homing towards stealthed targets, point blank shot is pretty much a stun+knockback, barrage for preventing retreat(very nice combo with point blank shot if aimed correctly), and of course we have gs, sword and the fantastic shortbow for duelling in close range.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

C. Lagging behind me, literally a mile away.

This. Even if I put my mini in my invisible bag + remember to summon it when i log in + switch characters + entering a new zone every single time, it’ll usually be so far behind I can’t see it in my own screen, defeating the purpose of having one around at all. A shorter leash distance and some movement speed boost would be nice too along with the other good suggestions.

Kravick.4906:

ddoi.9264:

You can get rabid armor and weapons with WvW badges now; check the merchants. Also orr temples have 4 out of 6 pieces of rabid stat armor and exotic rabid back, ring and accessories for karma in dwayna’s.

Can you transmute new skins on them? I know with the old soldiers gear you got with badges it wouldn’t let you transmute anything on it.

I have no idea about the gear acquired with badges, but yes I have transmuted the karma armor I obtained from orr temples with other armor like order specific ones and cultural pieces across many of my characters so I do believe it is possible.

You can get rabid armor and weapons with WvW badges now; check the merchants. Also orr temples have 4 out of 6 pieces of rabid stat armor and exotic rabid back, ring and accessories for karma in dwayna’s.

+1
Risen nobles are just out of hand. Get rid of morale based events or nerf the aoe damage from the sigil. Even personal story missions like “through the looking glass” have become nearly impossible to do without checkpoint zerging due to all the risen nobles chain aoe damage teleporting to you as soon as they come off cooldown. It’s just ridiculous. Dodging doesn’t do crap with 10~15 of them around.

People need something to do while wearing town clothes instead of standing around wasting time to consider buying them.
Preferably an activity that we can do to earn gold or karma or loot, even if it’s a small amount.
Like fishing. Or random “in-town” dynamic events that do not require combat. Mini games, bounty hunts, treasure hunting, etc.

Players need something more to intice them to spread out, if that is what you want them to do. And apart from those who explore for the sake of exploring, the single most important motivation for most players is of course, loot.

For example:

• Players receive a 15% magic find bonus boon for every different zone they visit. Limit one zone per 30~60 minutes and players must have spent a reasonable time/completed a certain number of events or hearts/done a JP/etc inside the zone. Capped at maximum 5 bonuses and unlimited duration but resets everyday.

or

• Rewards for completing events increase for every different zone you’ve visited in the past 2~3 hours with similar conditions as above. For example the current average rewards that give a lousy 200 karma and 2 silvers slowly increases in increments to perhaps a maximum of 600 karma and 12 silvers per event. Players must be present near the event area at its completion or they will receive the normal unbuffed rewards to prevent event tagging. Resets everyday.

or

• Similar boon/zone counter as first idea, but for every boon stack you receive a significant bonus in the chance of mobs to drop loot. Currently as it is, even if somebody decides on a whim to explore, they have no reason to bother fighting any mobs along the way; the chance of mobs to drop loot is too low and your time is better spent elsewhere. Hence everyone simply runs as fast as they can to their destination and ignores everything along the way. This kind of boon will make it worthwhile to fight everything that crosses your path and even go out on your way to explore every nook and cranny for those hidden veterans/events.

or

• Similar boon/counter blah blah. For every stack vendors now pay you more for your loot than the current default when you sell them. Found loot only.

or

• Bounty hunt. Not the guild missions, but lootwise. The attention recently given to the exotic staff Final Rest(and the thread in the general discussion forum with it) would have already given you some great ideas to pique people’s interests. Give only a few clues to its whereabouts and make the item rotate every week?

If players feel it’s too pressurising to visit different zones everyday, make it a weekly system. If a player spends most of his time in Cursed Shore on Monday but more in Frostgorge Sound on Tuesday, then the player qualifies for one stack of boon. Resets every week. Be flexible.

Any kind of method is fine. As long as you can make players feel that they are genuinely missing out on goodies if they don’t explore instead of chasing them away from popular areas, grumbling and disheartened.

Make players look foward to it.

…other zones.

Seeing daily achievement categories like “Ascalonian Slayer”, “Maguuma Veteran Slayer” got me thinking; Anet obviously wants players to stop mingling in Orr/CoF p1 and visit the lower traffic areas. Other adjustments such as the new event scaling system that destroyed penitent/shelter farming, increased cooldown between plinx resets all directly/indirectly push players towards the same direction.

While the intention behind these subtle pushes are sound, I believe they could have been implemented better.

• Increasing Plinx cooldowns simply made players migrate to the next best thing: Penitent/Shelter.

• Penitent/Shelter nerf pretty much removed the only effective way to earn gold and high tier fine crafting materials in the open world without doing dungeons or fractals, which not everyone has the time to do or enjoys.

• Daily achievements that point players to “Kill X mobs in Y zones” are bandaid solutions that lose effectiveness immediately upon completion. People will simply get it done and overwith and return immediately to their normal routine in one zone.

• Recent boosts to boss chests are working somewhat better as people seek out stuff to do while waiting for bosses to spawn, but suffers the same limitation of the above daily categories. Upon completion, everyone leaves.

Instead of negative reinforcement(nerfing of popular farming spots/events, meaningless achievement goals that are only a chore), give players some positive encouragement(buffs to unpopular events) so that they would voluntarily get their kittens moving. Don’t punish “bad” behavior, but reward good ones.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/77379-build-mace-in-their-face/

I tried this one, works great. Great dps and survivability.

Eventually got ticked off by the inability to hit mobs that run away though. Mace’s hit range seems to be really small and not benefit from that ‘invisible reach’ all melee attacks have.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAsdRl4zip3UzqGa9IyJFQ3yh6h2BefXJF82FC

Power based build I use for PvE. Warden is fantastic for farming, though you have to time your summoning for that dumb initial ‘invulnerable’ state mobs get until they move to position.

Rotation is iWarden → iLeap → dodge in and blurred frenzy → F1 or F2 when warden almost finishes whirling → mirror image → F1 or F2 (whichever you didn’t do earlier) → iBerserker → Mirror Blade → dodge → F1 → repeat. Or you can just aoe slash with sword autoattack during cooldowns if you don’t want to swap to Gs. Don’t forget to constantly change targets and stay in melee range to make use of llusionary persona when shattering.

Though honestly after levelling my guardian to Orr I felt dumb trying to farm with any other class. Just slap on a gs, use leap skill and spin2win. Great results even without partying.

Stack defensive stats in order to gain survivalbility…to result in more aggro and less survivability. No, it does not make sense.

The game already encourages glass cannon builds by being plagued with lame one-shot mechanics where toughness and vitality lose meaning. In places where there aren’t such mechanics, people eventually become annoyed with constantly being targetted no matter what and switch to builds that can pass the TARGETTMEEEE baton to someone else. i.e. something with less toughness like glass cannons.

Besides, the game was specifically designed with the anti-trinity approach was it not? Forcing aggro on high toughness players shoves the role of a the tank onto them regardless of their intention for gaining such stats and essentially punishes them for doing so. But due to that same no-tanks approach in game design no class can handle so much aggro and survive well, even the classes that can be built to be super tanky like necromancers and guardians.

I mean…I get the logic behind it; you have high toughness, you’ll fare better than those who don’t, so we’ll make you a priority target so you guys can have a better time fighting tough bosses. That’s fine. To a limit. Conditions ignore toughness to start with. Nor does everyone have perfect dodging skills or perma vigor, especially necromancers whose only access to vigor is…what, using Well of Power when you are affected by bleeding? I find myself pretty much forced to use Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew for increased endurance regeneration when I run dungeons with the constant aggro on me.

Don’t know if clones actually do more damage if closer since their attacks only bounce once; from the enemy to you or an ally. Illusinary elasticity does not affect them either. On top of that they do not bounce onto themselves unlike your attack, so the bounce does not even happen unless you or an ally is in range.

Some people got lodestones.

I’m not sure if this is an issue on my side, but just incase.

Attached screenshots speak for themselves. =) First shot is set to “Best performance” and the next “Best appearance”.
The location is the path to the vista right under Rally Waypoint in Straits of Devastation.

I play the game on my laptop, so I usually put the graphic settings that don’t really matter fairly low. Such as the “environment”.

As you can see, when you set it as low, certains objects completely fail to render at all. Normally this wouldn’t matter much, but in cases like these where the object is a platform which you must jump on to get to the vista, it does become a problem. Especially for those who have never done the vista before and don’t know if there is a place to jump to next or not. There may be other areas with similar problems too.

Band-aid solution, but for what it’s worth.
Switch your shader option in the graphics setting to ‘low’.
Light reflecting off armor…gone!

I don’t like being squishy so I run around with a bit more balanced setup with a mix of knight’s and valkyrie’s and do just fine. Full knight’s armor slotted with beryl orbs, all knight’s trinkets save one valkyrie amulet, berserker weapons and back piece.

There’s also condition build in full rabid gear, that gives you a ton of toughness which also contributes to your dps in the end thanks to a trait and quality tuning crystals. Paired with staff you can have ridiculous survivability.

You would definately want to go 5 points into illusions first to get illusionists celerity for cooldown reduction on summoning illusions. Then 5 into duelling for critical infusion so you can dodge more and your survivalbility will no longer be a problem. After that it’s pretty much your preference. Extra mindwrack damage from domination is great as well as greatsword cooldown trait, you can make mainhand sword viable by taking Blade training early for just 5 more points in duelling, Chaos for some defense and staff cooldown trait, etc etc.

Don’t worry about builds too much in the lower levels where mobs aren’t too hard to deal with. Rather, experiment with all the weapons and see what you like. =) Even scepter is quite good early on with a nice burst from 3 and paired with offhand sword you get a decent phantasm and 2 blocks for great survivability and damage + clone generation until you get deceptive evasion later on.

I wish dynamic events in orr were more…dynamic and war-like. It’s a real bore to wait out for timers to reset for events.

Before I’ve entered Cursed Shore I expected real warzone. Instead we get a bunch of risen loitering across the entire map hoping to pick off a few players that stray in the wrong direction. When places do get attacked, it’s just by a few handful of foot soldiers taking a poke at a camp. It’s boring and unexciting.

I imagined a zone something like a ruined version of Divinity’s Reach that the Pact uses as a makeshift command post, complete with mini-god statues players have to take over and secure in order to make the castle a safe-zone.
Then the dynamic events would center around risen sieging the castle with actual troops complete with swarms of simple trash mobs to giants, catapults and maybe a few risen devastators and champions. (scaled to number of players of course) Risen knights would swoop down from the sky to the walls where players thought they were safe firing away from range. Dragon-lieutenants would join every now and then just to shake things up. God temples scattered across the map would give zone-wide bonuses such as regeneration(dwayna), might stacks(balthazar) when captured.
If there aren’t enough players in the zone, there could be a few side quests with rewards that help out so events are completable even with small numbers of players such as being able to use some sort of mega weapon like the awesome golem suit from the story, receive squads of reinforcements or whatnot.
Players entering the zone can head straight into a fight instead of waiting for something to happen. When everything is done a special mini-dungeon would open up, something like a larger version of gates of arah event.
There are so many ways this endgame zone could have been made more alive, involving and immersive.

Ramiel.4931:

Blame Osicat for making the build available to everyone and their cat. It’s also ANet’s pet spec, the one that keeps getting buffed while condition dmg mesmers like myself struggle and get nerfed.

JonathanSharp.7094:

@ Mesmer: We’ll be addressing the current Mesmer build that’s spiking for insane damage. Sorry that change got through – it is something we’ll be fixing.

Note how he said they’re going to address the build, not the trait that’s making it powerful.
The end is nigh.

“…the easiest way to enslave people is to promise them freedom. Dangle that carrot in front of them and they’ll move exactly the way you want.”

Mr. Vaughn, if you want specifics, have a look near Martyr’s Tomb point of interest at Ruins of Holy Demetra in Harathi Hinterlands. All Ascalonian ghosts have insane respawn times where sometimes they will respawn as soon as they are killed. That’s just one example; the ghosts in Diessa Plateau(northen area), Plains of Ashford(The Breached Wall) and anywhere else in the entire Tyria map exhibit the same super fast respawns.

Also, this.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Having said that, its not so much a location but rather the type of enemies that I see respawn really fast in any map you find them, particularly the following: Risen, Dredge, Krait, Centaurs, Ghosts, Grawl, Ogres, Flame Legion and all types of outlaws, such as Pirates, Bandits, Separatists. There are others, but those stand out to me the most. I hope this helps in some way.
Oh yes, and I forgot the Inquest.

Go a bit of both? I run 0/20/0/20/30 with Warden’s Feedback and Illusionary Persona. I can shatter often to maintain a good stack of might, still can use Diversion and Distortion on demand, keep up projectile reflection for a ridiculously long duration with Temporal Curtain + Warden + Feedback and do decent single and AoE damage contribution with the high output from warden and blurred frenzy. GS or Staff on swap depending on situation for ranged.

Being able to shut down ranged attacks for prolonged periods of time is simply fantastic for dungeons where every attack you don’t take counts.

Also for farming outside of dungeons in normal PvE I felt shatters and iBerserker alone didn’t really do enough damage to generate loot unless I was in a group. Warden + Blurred Frenzy + Mind Wrack + Cry of Frustration combo (with iLeap and dodge for illusion generation somewhere between) is possibly the best AoE attack mesmer has now thanks to the GS nerf and personally I found great success with it even without being in a group. For once I could fill my bags up as a mesmer. =P

A short swiftness on demand is of course a nice bonus.

There are a lot of parents, caregivers, people with responsibilities and irratic play times that would like an opportunity to do dungeons in their own pace in their own time without feeling like they have to let the entire group down from having to go afk frequently. In fact, they probably don’t even attempt it due to that. Give them a chance?

I feel it’s rather silly we are continuously given Basic Transmutation stones through dailies, black lion chests and map completion when they are completely useless once you hit level 80. Even if you use it for alts eventually they become pointless as your characters reach 80, where it becomes nothing more than rubbish taking up space. So why not give them extra purpose?

Create a Mystic Forge recipe to change them into a Fine Transmutation Stones. 50 Basic Transmutation Stones + 1 Fine Transmutation Stone + 5 Philosopher’s stone + 1 crystal = 2~5 Fine Transmutation Stones. Something along those lines.

Expand their function to transmute other items. For example, fine crafting materials up to tier 5. It can be made so that players can transmute crafting materials of the same tier with diminishing returns. e.g. 50 Large Bones transmuted with 10 Large Claws = 30 Large Claws. Or transmute to create something entirely different; 50 Sharp Fangs + 50 Smooth Scales = 40 Engraved Totems. Anything works.

TWMagimay.9057:

ddoi.9264:

How in the world does giving them an OPTION to solo possibly ruin your gaming experience so much to inspire such contempt and sarcasm?

That’d be basic human nature. Most people when given the choice between looking for a group or running the dungeon solo will opt for soloing. Which in turn reduces the amount of player available for a party. Take it to the extreme. Let’s say at any given time there are 5 people who want to run dungeon A. Right now, those 5 people will come together and do it. With dungeon scaling, at least 1 of them(from my experience with MMOs who had that feature, it’d be more like 3-4 of them) would rather do it solo than bother looking for group. As a result there are 4 people sitting somewhere shouting “lf1m dungeon A”. Until another one decides to run it solo, cause it’d be faster. And them another one. Until there are 5 people soloing dungeon A and nobody is running it in a party. And that’d be how the option to solo affects those who’d rather go with a party.

While that is true, if dungeons were to scale to the number of players it would easily solve that problem. Maybe even increase the cap to 10 players and give better and more rewards for larger number of players to encourage group play. But there will always be an option to solo if desired. Give people the freedom to play however they want.

Major Sigil of Fire is super cheap in comparison. Only about 3 silvers? Like Krispera said with good crit chance it still procs quite often, and I’ve heard somewhere the damage coefficient from the blast is equal on all the sigils of fire so you won’t lose damage either.

If you are damage hungry and you know you are going to stick to specific areas in pve, it’s also nice to carry a few race-specific sigils around. You can slap on two sigils of undead slaying in orr for example. 20% damage boost right there against most enemies you’ll find in the area. There’s one for every race, and even the superior ones are cheap so you can always run around swapping. This would be better if you had some crit damage though.

I have a sylvari engineer and from my experience the lower racials are not bad, but engineers simply have better skills to put in the slots in comparison.

Healing Seed has nothing better over Healing Turret.

Seed Turret has a nice 1500 range but it’ll target yellow and white mobs even if there’s a red one in its range if it is closer. It applies 10 sec bleeding unmentioned in the tooltip but even with it it can’t even kill a firefly by itself. It fires in a huge arc so will miss targets if they move. 30 sec time limit. Terrible, terrible skill. Toolbelt skill Throw Vine can be used as interrupt though.

Grasping Vines is a bit more useful with a very long immobilise and a nice 2 sec block on toolbelt, but it only works against one opponent and has a huge 45 sec cooldown for both skills.

Take root is great for solo or when you want more dps than support. 3 sec invulnerability is fantastic, and with 5 Seed Turrets you can apply quite a lot of bleed. However they have low health and disappear after 30 seconds so it is fairly temporary.

Seed Turrets are not affected by Metal Plating trait. Don’t know about other turret traits.

It’s nothing huge, but I do earn 1~2 gold per day selling stuff I craft. I get about 20~50% more coin than what I would’ve gotten if I sold the mats + avoiding the mandatory crafting costs like spools of thread. It’s been a nice source of alternate income aside from earnings from regular play/farming orr. Just for the sake of content I maxed all crafting disciplines, and it’s given me a wider option of items to sell too.

Have a look at the stuff you can craft and check their prices on the tp. You’ll be surprised how much some items sell for, although they do fluctuate wildly so you have to check the tp all the time before you craft.

I don’t get the inherent hate displayed here for people who want to do things solo. Many have valid reasons to why they would like a way to enjoy the content at their own pace and time without being affected by others. Taking care of children and elderly, job, real life issues, etc etc. How in the world does giving them an OPTION to solo possibly ruin your gaming experience so much to inspire such contempt and sarcasm?

Even in this case, it’s nice to know these holiday dungeons are small and doable in a short time so even those who have irratic playtimes due to responsibilities have a decent chance to go at it without being disturbed, but what about normal dungeons that take an hour or more to do? They are effectively barred from that content since no one wants to do dungeons with people who go afk frequently.