Guild Wars 2

if your macbook has a thunderbolt port like a rMBP you can get eGPU (external GPU) set up (sonnet echo express pro expansion chassis) that would allow you to get a mid-high ranged card. its a very very pricey ($500 chassis + whatever your card costs) set up but allows you to still have one machine in the end while still retaining some form of portability. Though in terms of cost, you could easily get a dedicated gaming pc for that kind of money.

on the other hand an external setup allows you to do some serious design work and computation on a MBP.

As the other posters said, fiddle with your ccc settings a bit, do a repair of the gw2 install and see if it gets better. You could also try a reinstall of the driver and possible roll back to 13.10 or 9. i think 10 is the first one that has support for the r9’s not sure though

other than that i could see a 2500k having problems at anything past high on the character limit in game setting. though your gpu load shouldn’t be at 100% if that was happening.

Check your drivers. Amd has a special version for the r9 200s. Also make sure you gpu is properly coming out of its 2d mode

Yeah changing a psu on a hp should be ok, but not guaranteed especially in the length dimension. I would suggest buying from a retailer with a good return policy. Tbh if you are gonna change the psu, might as well buy a new case as well.

Also be careful about upgrading motherboards on a pre built box like a hp. A lot of times the OS is locked (OEM license vs retail) and you might have to get a new os. If that’s the case you might be better off just buying a new low end computer (esp with black friday coming up) and sticking in a 7750 since the big builders are cheaper at the low end due to higher purchasing power. Total cost should be similar as you proposed build + 100 for windows. Just another option to keep in mind.

intels are your best bet for lower power systems. you get the same performance but uses less power, which leave more power for a better graphics card. However intels are much pricier than their amd counterparts.

Rated total power draw of a 7750 is 55W while for a 640 its 65W. However under test conditions its pretty much a wash with a minor difference of a few watts either way. The performance on the other hand is significantly better with a 7750

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5969/zotac-geforce-gt-640-review-/12

the 7750 is by far the best low power card for gaming on the market today, in terms of power usage and performance. Hopefully amd makes a decent successor to it, since it is a bit old.

By far the best low power card (doesnt require aux power pin) is the radeon hd 7750. It is significantly faster than a 640 and uses less power to boot(only 45w compared to the 60-70 for the nvidia).

Specs say it need like 3-400w but runs fine on a 250- 300w psu (peak system power while playing is 150ish watts). Gets 60 fps on high in low pop areas, 30 ish in zergs/cities with a core i3 cpu.

The trinity/richland apu’s are very nice if you dont go with a dedicated graphics card, but redundant if you decide on discrete graphics. IMO the performance gain even from a low end card like the 7750 is significant enough to make them not worthwhile.

The total part cost for and i3+motherboard and a 7750 and would be around $250. You can keep costs down by going with a fx 4000 and compatible motherboard, but it offers slightly less performance but pulls alot more power, which can be significant for a 300w psu.

You can technically reuse the cpu, but the athlon II x4’s cant really handle any more than a low on the character limit. on the other hand this would reduce the cost of a build to around 125 usd(new mobo and gpu).

Xinthai.6175:

TC to win leagues. Dat golden dolyak…

secretly feeds cookie to dolyak. hopes my guild doesn’t notice

you guys are also forgetting something very important. Staff 1 = bags.

if teq (or any world boss) is up, the zone should change to spvp afk rules.

Sorry, we swarmed your server for a bit ET. Hope we didn’t leave any big messes behind (so many fun boxes and fireworks!) You guys were great hosts, especially to that guild that dropped those crafting stations.

At peak hours, the guesting and overflows are so bad at the moment that it could be possible a group of coordinated BG will guest onto a low pop server (like ET) and attempt it there. Or just kill it on a overflow if we can concentrated enough numbers (pretty hard to do).

As for crystal desert queues, some times the overflows happen without the map being 100% full. have a person inside your servers sparkfly form a party and ferry people in.

Nokaru.7831:

Here’s a story:

Today BG was fighting Tequatl about an hour before the reset on the BG’s main Sparkfly Fen map. Many were there helping repeat the kill for those that needed it for the day.

The problem came with the the patch that was pushed mid-attempt. You see, there are many players actively trying to Guest onto BG so when they saw this patch they immediately snagged it and joined the “new” BG Sparkfly Fen map, shutting out 100+ BG players who were helping kill Tequatl at that moment.

Tequatl spawned shortly thereafter and no Commander was willing to help or use any strategy. This would not have even been so bad, but the players who guested were also very rude, especially the Commanders. One Commander from Darkhaven was very abrasive and telling everyone they were terrible for no reason.

Yup this happened. We got locked out. However, if you were on TS you would have known we took our zerg, guested to Eredon Terrace and proceeded to attempt and kill him there.

As a side note: there were 3 channels (BG, Overflow, and ET) with 170 people doing teq on our TS. Crazy

new buffs gives points for spikes.

GvG is all about spiking the other team down.

Result: Score padding to the detriment of the third server who is not GvGing.

its a great bonus to legendary owners. They should put in a feature like this for the sigils as well, since switching builds usually means a different set of sigils as well as stats

I think he has to throw out 4 meats first, i killed chomper with only 3 meats thrown (all eaten by me) and did get it. Did it with 4, then got it

also factor in weapon damage which plays a big part in damage calulations

30 30 10 is so standard because of its flexible utility switching, you get access to improved mediations, shouts and consecrations (our best utilities) without having to port somewhere and retrait, just flip around a few major traits and utility skills.

Damage is good, and survivability is high and self healing is decent. Not the best at any specific thing, but very easy to succeed with in a variety of situations.

Spike armor is a decent trait, however if you have a guardian in your group (hard to find a non guardian party these days), then it seems a bit wasted as they can provide a lot of retal uptime without trying hard. You are better off with something else like cleaning ire or last stand imo.

Staff +scepter/focus guardian by far, swiftness, condition cleaning, vigor, stability, immobilizations/line of warding, and blocks from aegis and focus 5, make p2 pretty manageable

I do think Liadri can be challenging, but not mechanically harder than Heroic Lich King. Sunwell, or Firefighter. While as i don’t believe all players are able to complete this, previous raiders should have no problem

1) don’t stand in the red circles. They may be hard to see, but the pattern is set.
2) range kite the mobs to a certain place, typical of many raid encounters.
3) kill the orb. Projectile obstruction is annoying but timed spawns and bursting down specific mobs are not that new or difficult for raiders.
4) avoid the big attacks from boss in p2. basic tank cd management skill.

For liadri you don’t have the crutch of boss timers so you have to practice and learn it old school. Also you have to do all these things at the same time. For tanks this should be second nature, but for some healers and dps this maybe new for them.

As for one shot mechanics, GW2 has a more action oriented combat system (dodge) and has no trinity. Spike damage for raids is meant to be tanked via, cd’s or brute healing throughput. If the tank misses a CD, he dies, raid wipes. If healers mismanage mana and fail the HPS tests, tank/raid dies and wipes. In GW2 we have dodge to completely mitigate any spike damage, and its on a 10s cd. This is no different than managing tanking/healing cds. If you don’t dodge correctly, you die. The timing is not terribly hard, as you have 2-3 seconds to move, standing in fire for 2-3 seconds will get you killed in a lot of raids.

You have your minor damage from liadri that is easily healed through using yourself heal. The cripple is cleansed via managing your cleansing cds like any good healer should be able to do, or use a sigil of purity/generosity). Liadri is by no means “easy” but if you have the skills to complete Heroic ICC, then liadri should not present too much of a challenge

Also, with the farming, legendaries are now reachable for more people, and those that always wanted one but couldn’t afford it are now dumping gold into the components to make their legendaries. Driving up the price of precursors and t6 mats.

I think people farming the champs will die down, people will eventually realize that they are permanent additions. They need not farm like madmen and return to a decent farming pace like the old world bosses.

The Subject 7/Deadeye one though… I highly doubted Anet expected us to farm a T3 boss like that. They expected T3 bosses to be a challenge, which is why those bags are worth so much

Elentari.9156:

BrunoBRS.5178:

*taxpayer silvers

Haha good point, I’ll edit

Edit edit: So this is going to be really dorky but I decided to change it to “gold” because even though most citizens of Tyria are probably poor and thus can only afford to pay taxes in silvers (or even coppers in many instances), there are enough of us that the Tyrian government gets enough taxes to operate on the scale of gold currency.

This makes us the terrible 1% ers, since we buy items at hundreds or even thousands of gold “because they look nice” or are “cool”.

I don’t think the trickle down effect is working here Anet!

Nick.6972:

I’m quite interested in this.
How do you farm him? Are there any videos out there explaining the farm?

Prepatch, 5 gambits (fire, frailty,outmanned,crippled,exhausted)

He ported to you if you didn’t move. The quaggan did not aggro. Pop everything and burn him before he ports again. Reflect/evade/invulnerable/blind the kill shot. Win.

Post patch, 4 gamits (same but not outnumbered)

He ports more often and he doesnt port to you anymore. So you either port to him or pull him, dps while reflect/evade/invulnerable/blind the kill shot, he ports again, pull/port to him, kill.

Eurafrica.9307:

What you call “situational awareness” and “countering mechanics” are actually skills that you’ve acquired while playing other MMO’s with raid content. Assuming everyone possesses these basic skills because they are second nature to you is a problem. Raiding does not typically correlate with casual play/players, which as we know, is what GW2 was designed for. I watch players eat kitten to AoE rings and not understand these basic concepts on a daily basis in all parts of this game.

I agree, I didn’t mean to say or imply that all raid skills were basic and that every player “should” have them, for I know how much effort and time I and my guildmates have put into honing them in other games. My point was merely that the level of difficulty of gauntlets is comparable if not easier than a lot of end game raid content in other games.

Eurafrica.9307:

All good points. Though with “basic raider” comes the assumption that people possess the basic skill set that is required to raid. If I had to bet I’d say the vast majority of this player base has not raided, especially those having difficulty with challenges like this one.

I hadn’t thought of this. I concede that from this point of view that the difficulty of the gauntlet is incongruous with the rest of the game and its designed playerbase.

However i believe the rewards for completing gauntlets is acceptable. Only some gold, points, and a mini for getting all the way through. My only suggestion is that other minis could be rewarded for finishing t1 and 2. This way, its not all or nothing, and those that got through those tiers, but could not finish liadri, could have something as well.

I’m finding the new content really enjoyable. T4 Trials was difficult but not impossible if you stood in the middle and face tanked everything with reflects, pulls, blind spams, and cond removal. Really epic and fun fight when it was done right; rewards were kinda crap though. But it was indeed silly that you could solo that stuff.

I do agree with the pace of the content. Its nice for the solo stuff, but for the harder stuff, I feel pressured to learn and do it before it goes away. And I really hope the Anet staff doesn’t burn out from this.

I personally loved those dungeons. But a lot of people were complaining about not getting the meta without doing the dungeons. Which is why gauntlet is in its own category now, but those complaints still persist.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

What do u mean by farming ?
Keep killing him again and again ?
How much gold do u get from each kill ?
I finished the meta achievement btw.

you could kill deadeye with 5 gambits about once or twice a minute, 60s gross income from the bags, 40s net if you buy the tickets. 20-40g per hour depending on how fast you could queue up and fight him

Same with subject 7 pre nerf. Over the past week i averaged about 25g/hour for a total of 230 gold.

Ruby Highfarm.6073:

Hey you guys with 10k achievement points.. How the heck did you get that many? Did you do tons of dailies and all monthlies, or did you complete every part of the game?

A lot of points from the holiday/temporary events. Then monthlies and dailies. plus a whole crap ton from Hall of Monuments. I think you can only get like 6kish? by doing permanent achieves.

OP means that some of the most meaningful, difficult content in the game is solo. I agree, the complexity of the bosses are similar to raids in other mmos, but without that gratifying feeling of accomplishing it with a team its just not as epic.

Plus the true depth of GW2 combat is its group synergies, not in solo builds.

Gauntlet is pretty much a combination of simple raid mechanics in any other mmo, except solo. (Don’t stand in front when boss does lethal move. Avoid the red circles/mobs. Stand at a certain places. Tank boss to certain places. Buff/debuff management. Tank/target switches. Kite adds to certain place. Gear checks for dps/tanks/healers. Phase shifts. Kill orders for council type fights. Hard/soft enrage timers. MANY WHELPS HANDLE IT). None of the mechanics are innovative nor even that tightly tuned compared to many other mmo raid encounters.

Other than various bugs, farmability issues and the camera, I have no real problem with the difficulty or mechanics. It not random, nor is it that skill based, it is mainly a test of situational awareness and patience to learn mechanics and change your toon to counter said mechanics, and the will (to invest gold and time) to make multiple attempts at a same encounter.

Every basic raider in every other mmo seems to be able to grasp this concept. And for those who find raiding not fun, they don’t raid. In no way shape or form are you required to play gauntlet. They didn’t even lock any BiS gear, titles, or skins; just a mini. I am honestly surprised at the complaints about reward minis/achieves. In no other game have I heard this many complaints about the “rightness” of locking exclusive rewards (mounts titles weapons) behind difficult content.

After having completed all achievements, my biggest issue with gauntlets is that it is solo. A core concept of GW2 combat revolves around group synergy and coordination (builds/combo fields+finishers). This allows for amazing group synergy and complexity. IMO having a solo event removes one of the greatest parts of the combat system.

Meriem.3504:

Reminds me on Mimiron in WoW. Everything he did 1 shotted you lol but it was an awesome fight regardless and he like 10 different ways to 1 shot you along with 4 phases of one shot. X D

PRESS THE BIG RED BUTTON

Firefighter FTW. Still one of my favorite encounters in any game.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

im supposed to start changing build and my gear just for this fight? no thank you. i shouldn’t have to.

Then gauntlets isn’t for you. These are difficult challenges that require not only skill but patience in learning the fights. You are supposed to use all of your class, which includes other builds and the gear that goes along with them, to beat these fights, not just the parts you like to use. And since the progress is account bound, you can even use different classes. Theres a few random bugs out there, but for the most part, if you die, it’s usually the result of player error or bad strategy.

Plus theres plenty of content in this patch that doesn’t require you to change anything. Zerg the bosses below, go do the queen’s champs out in the world, help the balloon people, etc.

Jahn.7019:

HolyMolla.6582:

And what I really like about BG environment is that
no one guild nor one alliance is carrying the server.

I dunno about that. There’s one guild I can point to easily that without, BG would be in trouble.

MERC? They are critical to BG’s success as they are (or lead) the only consistent organized force during our off peak hours. It’s just the way things worked out due to BG’s coverage cycle and MERC’s own playerbase.

Manoa.5897:

After touting the virtues of build diversity with their big balance patch, it’s frustrating and disappointing that ArenaNet throws in achievements that pretty much can only be obtained if you’re full zerker + immobilize. I’m all for difficult content, but this is ridiculous (as is the response we received).

It is meant to be done as a group with a lot of builds/gear combos and group compositions. Not easy by any means but can be regularly beaten with reflects and/or blinds, weakness, pulls, properly used combo fields and finishers. Just requires some basic group coordination and understanding of class skills and game mechanics (which most pugs don’t have. I have to explain combo fields to new guildies like every other week.) There is a video in the thread somewhere of a group completing it without much trouble by killing everything.

However, if you choose not to enjoy the content as intended, you may gimmick the system solo, but only with specific builds and gear. Anet has graciously still allowed us to solo it rather than add automatically aggro all mobs to the player. As they say, “creative use of game mechanics”.

As for difficulty of the achievement, if it is too hard for you to obtain T4, there is already an easy mode for you. Its called T2, and you even get an achievement for completing it.

The only complaints I have with the trials is having to do the whole sequence twice, one for each candidate, that sometimes the achievements are bugged, and that they didn’t reset the achieve for people who exploited prior to the patch.

the only real bug is that the spiders do not reset once you wipe, but it’ s still doable nonetheless.

2 ways to do it:

1: stack under the boss, chain projectile reflects, and dps him down before you run out of reflects or are overwhelmed by spiders. This is the easiest way to do it (typically under 40s), but only works on the first try as the spiders don’t despawn if you wipe.

2: should you wipe on the first attempt, you basically have to run around in circles as a group, kite the spiders while dpsing the boss, again reflects, heals and condition removal is useful. Biggest thing is don’t get hit by the green bombs (when the tree does that shaking thing) as they spawn more spiders. When done properly, you don’t even need a full group of 5 to do this, I completed this with 3 people (guard mes engie) after we wiped the first time and 2 people left.

As the boss is non critable, PTV armor is really nice for this fight.

Lucky.9421:

Alur.7510:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEMynZ-prUY

Great work. What build/gear make-up was your team? I assume Guardian was DPS?

Edit – I also notice you guys were blind/weakness spamming like crazy. How was this done?

This exemplifies how some key mechanics, such as combo fields and finishers aren’t explained well by in game hints.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Ths guys in the video did a great job, but were by no means perfect. They analyzed the situation, changed a few skills, and beat the content solidly. Some coordination was required on the reflect and pull rotations, but other than that, these guys just knew how to play all aspects of their classes and had decent situational awareness. The only part of the video where “leet skillz” were shown were the mes pulls.

Dodgy Cookies

Shoulders: HoTW
Chest: Whisperer’s
Gloves: AC
Legs: Vigil
Boots: Vigil

Dyes: Abyss Blood Illumination

Shady Muffins

Shoulders: Invader’s
Chest: T3 Human
Gloves: Exalted
Legs: Feathered
Boots: Masquerade

Dyes: Celestial, Blood, Illumination

styx.7294:

I am tired of hearing about uneven population, people just need to stop. There is no magical fantasy land where people log in and log out at the same time and ArenaNet won’t and shouldn’t force people when/where to log on. We’re not victims of an unfair system, we’re all band wagoners. Face it, if all the servers were even population across all timezones, people would transfer off the 1 server that lost by 1 point to the server that won by 1 point.

At least in this new system, the top 3 tier 1 servers can stop being in a non-stop recruitment race that just leads to people havin sissy fits and abandoning their server.

The large WvW guilds don’t transfer to win, they transfer to have even match ups and good fights. If they transferred to win, large guilds would actually move down the tiers where they could blow out opponents.

What my point was that the old system encouraged people to congregate into tiers of similar populations to find balance, which naturally resulted in stale matchups and bloated ratings. The new system fixes the stale matchups and ratings at the expense of balanced matchups, which in the opinion of many was a bad tradeoff.

The server ratings will become closer with the new system. The math says that, in the long run, the ratings should even out. However, as close the ratings may be, it doesn’t change the fact that the WvW populations are vastly different. All the servers could end up being within a small range in ratings, but will still be vastly different in game.

This is because of the effect of the OLD system which encouraged server stacking and wvw population concentrations. This made it so that the difference between consecutive tiers could be huge. Thus the ratings shook the servers down into tiers with similar populations with very little movement in rankings.

The new system is trying to address a symptom of the old system, stale matchups, without fixing the core problem which created the symptom in the first place: the uneven distribution of WvW players. The system should be first fixed in a way as to direct player behavior towards the ultimate goal of evening out the WvW populations. The dynamic matchups will happen as a natural result if the majority of the coverage/populations are similar.

Fixing that problem is a much larger task. And keep in mind that the players (despite very vocal denials) clearly supported uneven populations under the old system through their actions.