Guild Wars 2

Find a guild, get a group of guildies to run through the scavenger hunt and help you out.

The game’s mechanics are anti-griefing, they promote helping random players out, but the guilds and friends made in-game are still the pinnacle of social and actual help.

I got across to parts where no other people were there with me – as an asura. I never got to the top as the small critter, but only because i’m not used to jumping as them, not because other people ‘blocked my view’.
Done it all on the shortest human female, had 3 big charrs and 2 norns in my group – again, no problem.
Dye yourself pink – the more standing out, the better.

The ONLY problem with the tower is that people with passive speed buffs from traits have it much easier – and the banners being omitted, probably by mistake. Some people have it much easier with their 25% faster running as thieves or nigh perma swiftness on warriors.
And that’s it, really.

And about the chest…
You get a soulbound-on-acquire, non-salvageable exotic with so-so stats. Nothing to whine over.

If you can’t beat it after playing 9h straight, take a break and get some sleep.
That’s what i’ve just done and whoo – completed the puzzle on second try this morning.

If you want to solo through an MMO, you’re doing something very wrong.
It’s true that GW2 is soloable more often than not. But sometimes it isn’t – and that’s completely fine. Join a guild, shout on /m for a pug, wait for others to go there – problem solved!

Second time with the same char is just some ToT bags.
Haven’t managed to do it on a different char yet.

Can’t salvage them and they’re sb on acquire

An obvious oversight, but stacking swiftness since the beginning helps A TON – just steal one of the spawned banners before entering the puzzle…

The Tower is gorgoues. Absolutely amazing.
Both of the PvP minigames are terrific. Great mood, awesome jeepers-creepers atmosphere, tons of fun.

There’s so much to do i wish i could do it all at once… and all the time.

All the other Halloween achievements, i guess.

The Costume Brawl is great – so much fun, and finally makes the chest tonics useful!
The only pain, though, is the poor character response after using a summoned Cauldron – you can’t move for a few seconds, eating all hits and losing health stacks, meaning that anyone with 10+ stacks of King of Costume Brawl is not likely to risk using a Cauldron.

All in all, i’m nearly as hyped for this update as i was for the game’s release – Halloween was my first event ever in GW1, on a trial account back then, and it will always have a special place in my nerdy gamer heart. Can’t wait for the next acts!

Since i can’t edit any of my posts anymore for the moment, here’s a handful of useful links:

Shadow of the Mad King meta-event, scavenger hunt guide, kudos to Dulfy:
http://dulfy.net/2012/10/23/shadow-of-the-mad-king-scavenger-hunt-guide/

I am pretty sure that we can’t do the Tower, Party or Mad King’s World achievements yet.
Focus on getting the scavenger hunt above done, farm Halloween Huntin’, carve every pumpkin you can and open all the tot bags you find until you hit 60. Eat 150 Candy Canes for the monthly achievement.
Have some fun with Costume Brawl in the meantime, but as i said above, it can be easily farmed later in duo with someone who has the witch costume – though obviously not as fun.

Besides that, wait for Act II and if you want to get the most out of Halloween, and not necessarily fun-wise, mine Candy Canes and farm mobs for tots (Orr events? dungeons like CoE2?).

Costume Brawl is farmable in duo if at least one person has the witch costume – spawn a cauldron, enter the brawl yourself and let one person farm points off the other.
I’m already nearly done with 6th tier by legit play in LA, using the black lion tonics i’ve gathered all this time and cauldrons dropped by random people, but since it’s here to stay, i think i’ll focus on other achievements first.

Any tips in regard to the carving pumpkins?

Thanks! Was about to ask if we can interact with the doors or do they just spit monsters.

I guess there are more people like me who, while enjoying the festive mood, would like to get as many of the event achievements out of the way and as fast as possible. Call us achievements kittens, nod politely and move away, but there are people who first and foremost enjoy getting those points

What do we know so far:

• the new Explorer achievements are here to stay – no rush doing them;
• the new Costume Brawl achievement (under Community!) is here to stay, as is the Costume Brawl, but you will need a costume or an animal tonic to participate and get the achievement post-Halloween;
• the four new jumping puzzles are here to stay and we have a while to figure them out, no need to ‘spoil’ those yet;
• the new Bosses achievement stay as well, and are mostly tied to world bosses;

A whole other tab, Event Achievements, is my main focus right now.
What do we know about those achievements:

• Emissary of the Mad King is awarded for maxing out all the other achievements;
• Trick or Treat bags can be obtained out in the world, and can also be bought on TP; you need to open 60 to max out;
• Pumpkin Carving requires you to run up to any interactable pumpkin and hit F; they spawn randomly all around the world for you; you need 150 to max out the achievement;
• Halloween Huntin’ requires you to kill special Halloween monsters that spawn from Haunted Doors; a good spot is jut NW of Broadhollow wp in Gendarran Fields;
• the monthly achievement requires you to eat Candy Corn which can be looted, mined or bought off TP; you need to eat 150 Corns to max.

It raises a few questions, and if anyone can answer them, please do so – and in as much detail as you can:
1. answered
2. What and where is the Hydra Queen boss under the Bosses tab?
3. answered
4. Where are the locations of Halloween Events? How many do you need for max tier?
5. What and where do you need to do for It’s a Mad King’s World?
6. I guess the party mentioned in Attend the Party is the Halloween Finale, but has anyone found out anything different?
7. And the Mad King’s Clock Tower – where to start? Is it even in-game yet?

I would appreciate an official ArenaNet nudge of ‘this and that is not implemented yet, come back in a few days’ so that i don’t waste time hunting something non-existant.

Just did it today with 2 eles, a warrior, a necro and an engineer. No problems whatsoever.

You’re still missing the point then – if you want to sit on one attunement and dish out damage to mow through trash faster, swap to S/D for that group – i guess you already have an exotic S/D set aside of a staff, so it’s no biggie to open inventory and do so. You’re kittening yourself by staying in fire on the staff because S/D set is much better if you really want to do it (and you can stack 15 mights and dish out even more AoE damage with fire/earth on S/D). If mowing through trash asap without cycling is what rocks your boat, just don’t use staff for those encounters.

Pow/tough/vit → dungeon rewards.
And it’s the thing to run as an ele.

I swap attunements to cleanse 2 conditions from my whole team. Just from swapping.
I swap attunements to quickly pop long-lasting swiftness on my whole team.
I swap attunements to reflect projectiles, allowing me to clean A LOT of trash mobs with just one aura skill.
I intentionally stay in something else and swap attunements before a fight to provide everyone a stack of might – and the first stack gives you most.

If i were to maximise my DPS while staying on one attunement, fire, occasionally popping air/earth for some control if needed, i would play scepter/dagger – and i sometimes do. S/D fire skill outclass the staff’s DPS by a mile.
If you’re sitting on staff’s fire and talk about ‘parsers showing my uber mega l33t DPS’, you’re doing something VERY wrong.

Perma chill on bosses means facetanking them by the whole team, even the squishiest thieves, because the bosses’ DPS and annoyances are halved.
Chill/cripple/daze on annoying groups, like the Leurent fight, is a life-saver.
If your more DPS-oriented (aka non-elementalist) teammates don’t have to dodge that often, slot that many defensive utilities or worry about conditions on them that much, your WHOLE TEAM can get much higher DPS than you’d get if you were just a fire-sitting staff ele.

A staff ele that doesn’t swap attunements is a bad ele.
If you want glass cannon DPS build, go S/D.

Also:
“But switch when you need high DPS for standing target is just pointless.”

I believe you are simply oblivious to DPS-boosting combos like Eruption quickly covered by Lava Font, granting 3 stacks of might to all your melee allies. Also, keeping perma chill on boss > dealing damage with A STAFF, because not only eles are not the damage dealers right now, but the staff is not devised to be a single-target damage dealer.

+1, 1k badges obtained by the new Commander rather than 100g collected within the guild to equip just one of the leader’s character with a fancy map icon. At least that icon would then mean something.

PLEAAAAAASE dear ANet!
With some random dialogues thrown here and there, quotes of his.

Best. Character. Ever.

Go get a Combat Healer to revive you and read it for you in a deep sexy voice!

Somewhat tanky flamethrower build is quite good, with grenade kit on your bar to switch if you need more range or fight a stationary target. In the meantime, you can dish out proper support or swap to turrets if you need some extra damage soaking – even if they’re quite squishy and not traited, they still can be deployed to just eat up the initial burst from a boss or trash, or to quickly burn through some annoying dungeon mechanic.

Still, you have to be on your toes all the time, juggle kits, quite often change your major traits and utilities, and i wouldn’t recommend doing most explorable dungeons with 3+ engis in a party – it might be and possibly is fully manageable, but just not worth the time and hassle. Unless the other two party members are warriors…

Hit the post limit again! :p
Anyway, thanks for reading my walls of text – i know i have troubles with forming my thoughts in a more compact way.

GADefence – take ele and warrior to 80, get them into explorable dungeons. As those are the only circumstances where it really shows. Then we’ll talk – but then you will have felt the discrepancies yourself and will go back to the warrior.

I’m not asking to nerfbat warriors into oblivion. But it’s obvious that if they can take more to the face, they should dish out less damage than a more squishy profession. It’s only logical. Or they should be kitten poor at support, as in – banners/shouts being the warrior’s least useful utility skills.

If you build a warrior all in berserkers, trait them into full damage output etc, you will have more health, more armor AND more damage output than an elementalist built the same way. Or an engineer. Or a necromancer.
If you build a warrior in pow/tough/vit, trait them for survival and slot survival and support skills, you have not only more health and more armor than an elementalist, but you can also dish out more damage (with 100b alone!) AND provide AT LEAST as good support using shouts and/or banners.

I’m comparing eles with warriors simply because those two professions, in my – and not only… – opinion are the two verges now, warriors being the cream on the top and eles being the worst to play in high-end PvE right now. Sure, eles are better at SOME roles than SOME professions, and warriors are worse at SOME roles than SOME professions, but across the whole board, that’s the current situation.

Eles are mediocre at everything right now and require a lot of active speccing as well as player skill to keep that way, with low hp, low health and mediocre damage output.
Warriors are awesome at those things that matter in the game – keeping your numbers up and taking down the numbers of your targets…

This all comes from a 300h ele player who’s rerolling from ele right now simply because has done everything on ele, in PvE, there is to do. 100% map completion, all story dungeons, most explorable dungeons, loads of karma – on ele.
Then i have felt the power of high level other professions and just got frustrated with the discrepancies. It’s not the matter of me being bored with the ele, because i love the way it’s played, i love attunement-cycling, and it’s obviously much more fun than spamming 100b on recharge – but i’d like it to show in numbers, too. Not just to see those numbers myself, because i couldn’t care less as long as i can get stuff done (mained a mesmer in GW1 and got GWAMM on it, pre-mesmer-buff), but simply because i feel like not contributing in my dungeon team, especially not as much as others can and do. Not being accepted to pugs if they already have one ele is not helping either…

It’s also about WHY and WHAT FOR we need the changes.

Personal story is doable with no problems as long as you’re geared on your level, as long as you are the required level, and as long as you’re not trying to faceroll your way through quests. If you know just a tiny bit about your profession and don’t sit on autoattack ignoring everything, you can do personal story just fine. Kitten easy – that’s fine!

Open-world PvE is pretty much the same. As long as you are geared – and i really only mean having masterwork items of your level, not a specific build even – and as long as you’re not trying to do a heart 4 levels over yours, you’ll be fine. That’s cool!
There are some differences, though, and visible. It’s about how professions handle doing it all, and limiting AoE to 5 targets is one of the greatest things introduced in GW2. Please more things like that! So, it’s about time – time required to run somewhere (some professions can keep perma swiftness up – everyone, with proper easily-accessible traits and utilities, should be able to, but giving up on other things!), time required to fill a heart (aka – how fast can you kill). It’s also showing in general profession difficulty, but not much – i don’t mind having to dodge three times more than a warrior to survive in open-world PvE, or to use a healing skill once more during a temple event.
More so, it’s nigh impossible to balance open-world PvE keeping numbers in mind, simply because of the amounts of players present, of its unpredictability, of its general design. This is partially why open-world PvE is so easy, as long as you don’t overaggro and keep to the BASIC stuff – if it can’t be balanced to provide a manageable challenge, it’s better to make it quite easy for everyone rather than make it faceroll-easy for some while still difficult to others.

Story-mode dungeons? That’s where the fun starts. They still are easy, but they require more active play, they require more resource-planning during longer fights (learn when to dodge, when to use skills X, Y or Z, and when it’s not worth it because of something), they introduce some puzzle parts (LOVED the CoF story mode ending! even if it was way too easy, it was VERY enjoyable), and so on.
They are still manageable when you’re geared in greens of your level. They are still manageable if you run your favourite PvE build, but are somewhat proficient with it. No min-maxing needed. 5 eles can do them just fine, so to speak.
And that’s cool – first of all, they are for story, so everyone should be able to complete them with relative ease. Second, they introduce some level of difficulty because they are an introduction to explorable-mode dungeons – so they need to require some level of player skill, but they’re still doable for everyone.

So, it’s the explorable-mode dungeons.
And, guess what! – this is where the discrepancies between professions are showing. This is where 3 eles, 1 mes and 1 guardian fail where 3 warriors, 1 nec and 1 ranger pass in flying colours. And it’s not about player skills, but general profession capabilities.
And guess what, again – explorable dungeons are probably the easiest to balance out, since you can go there only with 5 people. You can not only balance professions to be equally viable in all routes of all dungeons, even if they still are inherently different, but you can also change the routes themselves to fit the acquired profession balance as well.
They are also a decent – and the only needed! – indication of how a profession fares in PvE. If you’re useful in CoF1 and CoF3, you will surely be of use during temple and dragon events, even if only on one build – well, that’s a start! Still it’s better to have one imbagon than nothing, so to speak.

It actually doesn’t require that drastic changes, imho.

Revamp elementalists – mostly because their profession mechanic, attunements, are not a boost to you, an additional thing you can use, but it’s something required to stay in the loop and be useful at all.
DS is a panic button. Adrenaline is more % of damage or a burst hit from time to time. Steal can be traited to be useful, but can be totally ignored. Pets are useful even when completely ignored, aka not traited and you’re not using pet-specific utilities – of course they’re less useful, but imagine a ranger without a pet altogether – still viable. Attunement swapping is there as a requirement, and the whole elementalist is balanced around having access to 20 weapon skills – that’s why most of them are so kitten poor, why they have long recharges, why even the autoattacks have INSANELY LONG casting times.
And if you want to spec into some passive survival, aka trait earth, you’re also getting condition damage, which would be quite nice if you had more options to apply maintainable conditions than burning from 1-2 skills and bleed from 1 (one!) skill.

So, eles call for a revamp and a serious one, and ANet has already done so with mesmers in GW1, no one raged because of that. If done relatively quickly (next 6 months), i’m sure people won’t rage about changing a class, especially if it’s buffed and not nerfed.

Now, about nerfs – you really only need to hit several things.
Take some health and armor off the heavy users; make the class differences a bit smaller.
Take some passive survival options away, but also the ele’s regen-when-in-water could be nerfed a little – because why not? If we’re toning down a whole mechanic, tone it down even on eles.
Tone down damage output on some specific skills. Tone down 100b – make it so you enter frenzy (take double damage) when you use it, even if only in PvE, so that you lose out on passive survival and HAVE TO slot more active survival utilities if you want to run it. Nerf other i-win skills a bit, either by toning them down or by introducing a special condition to them – requirement or cost.
Balance out some boons, conditions and effects. Make burning more worthwhile (shorter duration, more damage – more burst like). Tone down poison a bit – both because it’s usually the only thing that kills players in dungeons (‘omg! we need to make this dungeon more difficult! let’s throw more poison in!‘), but also because it’s the cookie-cutter way of dealing with some bosses. Tone down quickness. Make control conditions and effects generally more useful – blind should land at least 20% on bosses, and not 10%, etc, so that support is actually viable rather than going all damage.
Nerfbat some specific builds. For example, nerf LDB thief’s spam – it provides insane AoE damage, insane bleeding and makes the thief invincible for the duration of the spam, with only short windows when you can be hit. How to nerf it? Apply an additional cost on it; make the evasion effect last shorter, not for entire duration; make it more expensive on initiative; make it a chain skill with 2 identical skills, but add a higher cost to the second one… and so on. Or do something with the way thieves regenerate initiative, so it’s not THAT spammable. There are more specific builds like that – identify them, single out one part of it that would make the LEAST impact on other builds, and nerf that element.

How to tackle it then?

I believe each profession should be balanced out, keeping the above things in mind, with others, not just within itself, or we’ll get GW1 HM eles being only warders/tanks/healers again, not to mention the pre-buff mesmers in PvE. That’s a start – don’t just balance a profession to be ‘fun’, but to be somewhat equally viable with other professions.

Then i’d think about introducing two ‘thresholds’ of playstyles. Whether we like it or not – and i hate it – there will be ‘best builds’ for any given profession out there, simply because the game is about numbers; you will have builds having enough survival numbers and dishing out the most damage numbers. Whether we like it or not, and whether other builds are more or less fun, effective-wise we will have best builds.

So make them hard to play. On every class, not just engineer and elementalist. It’s outrageous that those two have to juggle everything they have, utilise every single skill, think long about every trait point they spend just to be on par while heavy users can just bash and smash, maintaining a minimum of active survival, and still dealing more dps.
Identify the cookie-cutter builds of professions, tone them down a little and make them require some serious player skill. One wrong dodge with the cookie-cutter warrior and you’re down. I’m afraid that is not possible with how the game works now, but you get the idea, and surely it can be expanded that way. Bottom line is – make the most powerful and useful builds hard to play, rather than making a profession hard to play at all just to be mediocre.

That’s the upper threshold. But introduce also the lower threshold, with its own builds, with its own ‘good’ and ‘bad’ builds, but easier to actually play. THEN balance the game’s content so that open-world PvE and story mode dungeons are manageable with somewhat decent lower threshold builds, while explorable dungeons require more and more upper threshold builds, aka the player skill involvement is getting higher.
Scale your player input with the numbers you have or are dishing out.

Right now we have professions which are easier to play than others, both on lower levels and on lv80; both to just ‘have fun’ in PvE and to squeeze the most you can from your character.
It’s fine, really. But, first of all, make those differences a bit smaller. If not, we’ll have GW1 sins all over again, as one profession will dominate the whole PvE scene – and while i’ve never ran SF sins in GW1 for over three years of playing, i did feel like losing out in the game on something, not being accepted into pugs, not making coin as those who decided to run the cookie-cutter, most dev-loved profession.
Second, turn those differences around. The easier professions to master should have a little bit lower numbers, in the end, than those which are harder to master. Think that warriors are hard because of melee range and being immobile during 100b? Try playing an elementalist, properly cycling attunements and trying to stay alive with low armor/hp, while also trying – just trying, unfortunately – to deal damage or support your party.

Playing an engineer or an elementalist, and playing them correctly, should be more rewarding not only because of fun, but also because of numbers – simply because they’re much harder to drive, even when not going after the top-notch build.

Then again, eles have their own problems, inherent to their profession mechanic (constant attunement dancing defies the passive bonuses of attunements, for example), but that’s for a whole new rant…

Then it’s about figuring out a variety of playstyles based on the professions’ feeling, within the game mechanics, and keeping the above in mind. So give everyone a way to deal damage, give everyone a way to keep themselves alive and give everyone a way to support the party. Various mechanics fall into each of this category, and most mechanics are a bit of everything. Control keeps mobs from hitting you and your allies, while usually still dealing some damage. And so on.

I’m not a game designer, so i won’t provide details on those playstyles now. This is more or less covered, but the current way is out of touch with the primary issue. First off, game mechanics should be balanced, so that condition builds are equally viable, in the long run and keeping everything in mind, as pure direct damage builds; they might deal less overall damage, but benefit the party with more control (blinding, poisoning, chilling), providing constant damage over time rather than bursts; direct damage might provide quick bursts but be able to do so only once in a while (rather than nearly spam 100b in front of a champion in dungeons). Balance out combo fields so that they’re not spammed out; let us spam finishers instead (the worst thing here: guardian’s gs2 skill – at least make that symbol last shorter, because that symbol alone makes it impossible to use any other combo field near a guardian gs-ing a boss – unless we want a teammember to refrain from using one of their skills…).

The differences should be about playstyle and the feeling, not as much about profession capabilities. Sure, some niches are fine, but granting warriors high armor, high health pool AND high burst dps with nice party support via shouts and banners is going over the top, especially when compared to low armor, low health, mediocre damage elementalists. If you want to make warriors more durable than everyone else, make them lose out on something and be weaker in another field than everyone else – that’s balance with discrepancies.

Still, as the game actually works, with its current mechanics, it’s about having just enough survival to, well, survive, and putting everything into dps. By survival i mean personal heal/buffs, party support and control, and possibly other things (dodging, utilising terrain, etc).
In general, the more survival you bring with yourself, the less you need others to fill it for you. The better player you are, the better at dodging you are, the better you are at keeping proper range, the less support you need from your party members. That’s obvious. We all are required to bring some survival in our 6th skill slot, and this is the basic, most useful and most important active survival skill.
Active survival – that’s important, too. If you have a lot of health and armor, if you have MINOR traits speccing you for survival, if you have some WEAPON skills for survival – you have passive survival. Why are minor traits and weapon skills passive? Because you don’t choose them. I mean – yeah, you do choose your weapons and trait build, but you focus on getting the major traits or the stat boosts, not minors; minors are also, well, minor boosts, so they come ‘by the way’. If you get anything useful ‘by the way’, especially for passive survival, you’re better off than half the professions and 90% builds out there. Same goes for weapon – even if you choose a fully defensive weapon, you still are required to bring damaging weapon skills.

Having passive survival lets you ignore utility defensive skills and slot only offensive ones, contributing to taking the enemy numbers down – because you have your own numbers already secured by the game’s mechanics (and, to a degree, your own player skills), and not your choice of build.

What has to be balanced out, in the long run, across the professions, is the total capabilities AND requirements when it comes to passive survival (health, armor, minor traits, weapon skills, ‘side effects’ of skills, dodging, etc), active survival (healing skill, utility skills, building up your equipment for toughness and vitality) and damage output (everything else). The variety of mechanics should be taken into account, too, keeping the control/support/direct damage/condition damage differences in mind.
For example, if you already have high armor and high health, why on earth should you get passive health regen from your healing skill? Sure, Healing Signet is not the optimal 6th skill now (because of the usage of adrenaline – or actually not using it, but keeping it constantly up, as flat % more damage from a major trait is better than hitting a mob for a bit more from time to time), but it’s there. We shouldn’t have tanks, just as we shouldn’t have healers, so don’t let a player build to be nigh invincible in the open-world PvE – both warriors and guardians can, still dishing out insane damage (mainly because you still get +power on your gear even when going tough/vit).

You can’t keep the elementals up 100% time. They die quite fast, both because of short lifespan and low health (bar the earth one). Make at least the elite elemental more or less maintainable, with like 20s downtime total, and it might be compared to engi’s turrets or ranger’s pet.
Only fire elemental’s dps is somewhat nice, especially that it’s AoE, but it’s pretty much paper – it has evading attacks, but it’s quite random and once it eats a hit in a dungeon, it’s down. Welcome to the skill recharge!
They could be a bit more durable. Or with less downtime. Or at least make the proper skill recharge start once you have summoned them, and not once they have died.
I’ve been running double elemental build since the beginning but it feels lackluster except for solo play; both for dungeons and event running, arcanes are probably much more useful.

I’m not saying that all classes should be equal; especially not in their playstyle, not their feel. ANet once said that all classes will be equally viable, though, and you should pick the style you want, the general profession feel, not the way it deals damage or handles survival. Pick what you feel you like the most and go with it to be on par with everyone else.

I think it’s still attainable. It would require a lot of changes and a change in the basic approach, but this potential is still there.

First off, accept what the game is about – numbers. It’s about keeping your numbers as high as possible while reducing your targets’ numbers. In the least time – again numbers.
There are three things you can do – dish out damage, keep yourself alive or keep your teammates alive. There are lots of ways to do it, and stacking might on your warriors contributes to the first thing as well, and keeping mobs disabled contributes to the third thing. There are lots of mechanics, direct and indirect, but essentially it’s down to those three things.
The case of GW2 is the shift of keeping others alive and buffing them to keeping yourself alive and buffing yourself. The 6th skill is, usually, all the heal you need. I’m not ignoring the usefulness of Healing Rain, don’t get me wrong. But your traditional MMO with healers have specific people who heal OTHERS, keep OTHERS alive and beef them with boons, buffs, whatever. GW2 handles it differently, making YOU primarily responsible for your own survival, and doesn’t matter what profession are you.
Party-wide support is mostly available via combos, and while proper and FULL utilising combo fields is really awesome, it’s also not only hard to coordinate, but also takes you away from doing something else. Example: one blast finisher in a water field is cool, but it’s 4~6 blast finishers that will substantially heal your whole party in a quick burst. As a staff ele providing the water field, you may throw two blast finishers at most, and you need your teammates to keep their finishers for that particular field, aka refrain from using some skills until they are allowed because of the combo field. As a staff ele in dungeons, i also ran into the issue of field overwriting – i throw in my water fields and try to hit my both blasts in them to provide some k health to everyone only to see that my teammate mesmer has thrown his Chaos Storm at the very same spot. So even when voice coordinated, you purposely refrain your teammates from using their fields or finishers, waiting for you to pull that one field off. Of course proper coordination will come over time and it will boost the party-wide support viability, but it will never surpass the personal survival – you will always be responsible for your own kitten even if you’ll be able to support others better once we have learnt it.

1380 tokens for a full armor set means a bit over a week of doing all three routes once, daily. That’s not THAT much for an exotic set, with runes, while still making money from drops.

Yeah, CoF1 final boss is nigh unkillable unless you got a specific party setup. Still, you can do CoF2 and CoF3.
If you want THAT particular skin, farm THAT particular dungeon, with its difficulty and setup (and wait for bugs to be fixed). If you want the stats, farm one of the other dungeons that offer a similar armor set.

By doing all routes twice a day you still get 240 tokens, which is quite a lot for an exotic item – while not spending even a coin except for repairs.

Up, because why not.

Master Sickles work just fine with everything, omnomberries included, while both Master Axes and Master Picks work as Steel equivalents.

Well, that’s quite a wall of text, and while it’s not the enlightened word of God everyone should agree with and follow without question, i think i’ve managed to present the main problems of profession balance for PvE right now and the route to take to keep that balance more or less proper. PvP is a whole different story…

One more thing – the better way might be to actually LIMIT the passive survival of warriors and everyone else, and then tone DOWN the dungeons so that it actually is based on player skill but doesn’t take 10 min to kill a boss (because everyone would have to spec some survival, so less dps).

I’m actually pretty fine with how ele plays out in a dungeon team, as long as there’s only one ele – they can boost the dps substantially and keep others safe from conditions, slow mobs down, immobilise them and so on, letting others dish their full glass cannon damage out. It gets problematic with more elementalists present, though, as they lack the personal survival AND the dps needed to mow through content well enough. Same goes probably for having too many engineers in the team, but teams with 3 warriors are the cookie-cutter matchups right now.
Introducing a dps meter would only hurt the ones already subpar, balance-wise, and beef those classes which are superior because of their inherent mechanic (like N/Rt healers back in GW1 – you get the idea), especially that there are professions and builds which allow others to get their dps even higher, or at least to keep their dps stable and uninterrupted by silly mobs killing you.

And keeping all the above in mind, dungeons shouldn’t be based solely on dishing out the most dps while maintaining the least possible survivability, just enough to survive and dish out that damage, because professions with passive, inherent survivability are simply superior right now. That’s how CoF1 works, with poison or not.
I don’t think this might be changed, though. I mean – sure, you can tone down CoF1, but in the end the game is and will be about keeping your numbers up and taking enemy numbers down, no matter what you do, what interesting mechanics you introduce and what puzzles you add to dungeons. That’s how games work – you have some failure condition and some win conditions, and it’s always down to numbers – for some games it’s about timing and collecting stuff, for some it’s about your health and damage vs your target’s health and damage.

What does have to change, or get toned a bit, is the relative balance of the classes WITH keeping their inherent class mechanics and WEAPON skills in mind, as well as MINOR traits – because those are the things that you get, whether you want them or not, involuntarily and can’t leave them behind when speccing up. A better spread of survival/dps minor traits, weapon skills and inherent mechanics is required; not only within a specific profession, but also all across the game.

An example would be the ele’s arcana minor trait granting you 20% crit chance on attunement swap. It’s ridiculously short. If you’re building for crit hits, you will have high crit chance from gear already – you won’t base on the minor trait to get crits, right? It’s redundant, and getting protection or even another copy of Elemental Attunement major trait would be much better. I’d make Elemental Attunement a minor trait in place of Arcane Fury, and then add a new major trait altogether. It’s just an example, and since i’m not a designer i haven’t given it much thought in regard to overall balance after such a change, and so on – but you get the idea.

Give eles and engis A BIT more survivability and support on weapon skills, minor traits and in the general profession mechanic, so that we can focus on active support and dealing damage. Balance the passive survivability and support potential across all classes, and balance the ‘numbers total’ across professions – i totally understand that warriors and guardians are and should be more durable than eles, but not while dishing out more damage and having enough support/control altogether; if you want eles to be squishier, boost their dps output, or make party-wide support more viable (no idea how to do it, though, without revamping the whole game).
Make all profession-based mechanics actually worthwhile – buff attunement-cycling eles, because right now you HAVE TO cycle attunements all the time only to stay somewhat on par, and still deal less damage while having less survivability than a gs warrior. Same goes for engineers – they have to juggle with their kits, kit skills, potions and everything they have just to stay in the loop while other professions have it much easier AND still more effective at the same time, by using their profession mechanic (or passive high hp/armor pool) and going full damage.

That’s the essence of balancing – between personal survivability while going out on damage and throwing in a control or support skill when needed. Problem is, right now there are professions clearly better at it and it’s showing in the dungeons.

Now, there are eles. Low health, low armor – the only class like that. Pretty much no defensive minor traits and barely any defensive major traits.
Staff, the only weapon with 1200 range, has decent AoE damage output, but is more of a support way in PvE – most skills are control-based or very slow – not to mention that Meteor Shower hits quite randomly and it might happen that a long-cast immobile spell hits a group of mobile trash just once. D/D is not the way at all unless you slot all utilities with cantrips, aka using up all your utility skill slots for pure survival, potentially wasting the dps you could have slotted there (and you do as another profession). S/D is the only way, especially for single-target, long boss fights, but it’s mediocre at it’s best, except for stacking might on the whole team and providing really good blind cycling. The problem with S/D is that while you get enough control from the weapon skills to get through general PvE (launch, 2x blind, knockdown – along with Arcane Shield, you don’t need more for anything but explorable dungeons), the control skills are kitten poor against champion bosses, not to mention legendary bosses met in explorables.
As an ele, you can’t go FULL dps, because you will die in one hit, being a burden for your party rather than aid. Even in glass cannon builds, you have to slot all utilities for PURE survival (can’t compare Armor of Earth to the mentioned PD of mesmer’s, as the armor deals no damage in the meantime, etc), as you don’t get ANY from weapon skills or profession mechanic. Mind it, i’m not saying that warriors with their high armor/hp can just stand there and soak in damage, ignoring what’s going on – but it’s already MUCH more than what eles have (and still warriors can dish out more dps!).
The sad part is not only that you have to forego dps potential as ele because you lack any survival elsewhere, but that a glass cannon specced ele has less armor, less health AND deals less damage than a glass cannon specced warrior. Again, not saying that a glass cannon warrior is invincible and easy to faceroll, but the numbers are on their side, simple as that.
And i’m not even going to mention that to be somewhat mediocre as an ele, you have to cycle attunements properly

You NEED some sort of personal survival way, be it inherent mechanic (as nearly every other class has, be it in Distortion, DS or high hp/armor pool) or weapon skills which ARE THERE along your normal damaging weapon skills, if you want to spec for dps, unless you want to waste utilities (aka sacrifice real dps potential) for it. Neither ele nor engi has anything like that, even a 2s invincibility panic button or more armor to stand longer. Especially in fights like the CoF1 effigy, where you WILL eat some AoE hits and knockdowns, even with lightning reflexes on dodging.
And while the whole above comparison is aimed at showing how eles suck in PvE atm because of wrong profession balance, pretty much like mesmers in GW1 before their update (or even as eles in HM, except that eles in GW1 could go e/mo for bonding or go warding, could spec beneficial party support, and it’s not an option here, as you need dps), it also shows the inherent profession discrepancies. As the game is pretty much about numbers – keeping yours up and taking enemies’ down – you need to contribute your numbers to the overall equation, and keep them as high as possible.

Guardians are somewhere in the middle of that road, as they have low health and high armor, but they’ve also got LOADS of defensive/survival traits, weapon skill and utilities, with the most supportive elite skill in the game, even not traited or statted at all. More so, they can build their damage around retaliation, so even when specced into pow/tough/vit they still can dish out high constant damage, via both high power and by just keeping retaliation nearly 100% time up, eating damage. Yes, i know they can’t stand there and let a boss hit them for long, they’re not invincible tanks, but they can get a few more hits on them, they have support and survival mechanics built-in as well (each or nearly each weapon skill-set has some utility stuff), while still being able to dish out decent constant damage, as 1) they don’t have to spec stats into survival thanks to minor traits and weapon skills, which they have whether they like it or not (no need to waste utilities unless it makes sense), and 2) even when specced into survival they can do reliable damage via retaliation, while still stacking might on crits and so.

I can’t say anything about high-level mesmers as i haven’t played one, but from getting my mesmer to lv30 it seems that Distortion is the main panic button you need, along with defensive illusions which still deal damage in the meantime (Phantasmal Defender ftw). Still, their support is dps-oriented, with Time Warp being a we-win-quickly elite at most boss fights in dungeons, as it boosts the others’ dps potential A LOT. From what i’ve seen, though, proper dodging and Distortion are enough to stay alive even after being hit, knocked down etc; they also still have some survival skills on weapons – primarily stealth which is an i-win button in most survival PvE situations.

I’m only starting an engineer now and haven’t played a high-level one yet at all, but it seems that engineers are at a loss when compared to everyone above. Still, medium armor and medium health combo is a bit useful, and the turrets are the GW2’s rit spirits all again – even if not so powerful, they draw aggro, provide dmg/support and can be blown up for bursts.
The damaging potential of an engineer is there, but significantly lower than of anything else, and the primary problem is their lack of, let’s say, involuntarily defense – and by that i mean defense or survival mechanic that is there, with no speccing needed (Death Shroud, Distortion, high hp/armor, LDB evasion, stealth/evasion/block on WEAPON skills). Sure, they can go pistol/shield, but then they lose out A LOT on damage and are kept away from using their kits. Their minor traits are not providing any survival either, so even traits require speccing into for some defense.
They can also build as a very nice party support, while still maintaining a constant dps output, even if not that high. They can also maintain poison on targets.

So i wrote this post for Guru’s thread regarding the difficulty on dungeons (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/67240-dungeons-are-too-hard-i-know-i-know-thousandth-thread-on-this), but i don’t think the dungeons are overly difficult at all – but they’re the only way to see the discrepancies between professions at the moment.
I took a while to think about it and got even more englithened during the whole writing of the comparison, and i think i nailed the main reason why we see so many heavy armor users out there in PvE.

Again, please keep in mind that all the below is from a PvE perspective, and shows only during dungeons, and harder fights at that.

I think the main problem with thieves and warriors is that they actually can go full dps, nearly ignoring speccing into survival or support, because of their profession ‘mechanic’ – thieves got loads of stealth, evasion and other survival stuff built-in (LDB spam, anyone?), and warrior have the highest hp/armor mix in the game, that solely making them more durable than anyone else, with a similar overall build.
Then there are medium hp and medium armor rangers who fight at 1200 range most of the time, and both bows are capable of dishing out insane dps. Pets can be used to only boost that dps or provide some fractial support or survival needed for the fight; they can also tank for a while, take damage on them from the ranger providing a while of invincibility, clear conditions…
Necros have high health and while they still are quite squishy and lack any superb survival utilities per se, Death Shroud is the only panic button they need in PvE, allowing them to survive anything and kite away until their healing skill is recharged or they get to a better position. They too can go full dps build, ignoring survival because of having it built-in in their profession mechanic to some degree – much greater than others. Sure, their dps potential is probably lower than that of an elementalist, but an elementalist can’t go full out on dmg ignoring their own survivability – and that’s the point here.

For some it is, just a matter of taste – same as most obsidian armor sets were fugly in GW1, but still prestiguous. Still, t3 cultural armor is the armor worn by Destiny’s Edge members, and dressing up as Eir is quite cool

The cultural stuff is meant to be ‘exclusive’ and pricy, the top-of-the-notch skins out there.

It’s not the price that is ridiculous but the rarity.
Make the lv80 cultural armor exotic.
Make the lv80 cultural weapons exotic and possibly a bit more expensive.

You need to do the lv39 personal story quest to unlock banners.

Risen Grubs are being worked on, it seems, as people farmed Champion Risen Giants spawning endless Grubs in Orr, getting ridiculous amounts of t5/t6 venom sacs.

I’m personally curious about this issue, so please post more details on when exactly you get such a message. Thanks!

Quote:
Though it seems most areas are impossible to find everything, people keep getting stuck on the same amount, like 175/178 in Kryta for example.

That’s not true.
Feel free to PM me here or whisper me in-game if you’re struggling with finding those last locations.

First off – i know it’s a minor bug, but for an achievement kitten like me (while i’m playing for fun and fun only, i focus on getting the achievement while playing, first and foremost, as it’s the biggest source of fun for me) it is really irritating.

So i got all Hints ‘ticked’ but my achievement bar is stuck at 81/82.
The last hint i needed was Ranger Pet Swap under Skills & Traits. It took me a while to figure out what i actually need to do for it to pop, as i haven’t played a ranger yet at all (tip: you need to get your pet killed and wait a while before swapping pets while still in combat). I finally made it on the Svanir training fight in the Heart of the Mists, and while the actual hint popped just fine, the achievement bar hasn’t recognised it.

I’m attaching a screenshot of the Hints panel open, with everything ticked, and the Hero achievements panel with Hint Completion stuck at 81/82.

If anyone has any questions ‘how to make hint X pop’, feel free to PM me here or in-game and i’ll try to help you out.

Again, i know it’s a minor thing but it’s quite vital for me

Sorry to delude you, incisorr, but all AoE skills have a cap on targets they can hit and that’s 5. Even with the powerful s/d ele’s combo (ring of fire → phoenix at point blank → tooth & arcane wave → earthquake → churning earth under arcane shield – 15 stacks of might then), you will kill quite quickly 5 mobs at most… but then you’re left with the cooldowns. You don’t have enough trait points to spec into reduced cooldowns on all elements and you NEED to use all elements as an ele. You can’t just go fire+earth, trait fire and earth, and ignore water and air, as you can with any other profession – just pick your favourite two weapon sets as warrior and roll with them.
Got my warrior to 20 now, but i’ve seen lv80 warriors PvEing in Orr and my fully-exotic ele comes NOWHERE NEAR to what warriors can do; the dps they’re dishing out is literally insane, all along with high survivability even with just high passive hp/armor.

Not to mention that all groups successful in suicide missions like CoF1 had at least 2 warriors (and a thief) in their lineup, and never an ele…

I have TA Master just fine.
Have you done the route with the Tree spawning oakhearts? Spiders? Turrets?

I’m online every day for a few hours or so, the limit hasn’t been an issue yet
And yeah, i’m seriously fine with any kind of tip as long as it’s not outright 2c or something similar. Just any excessive mats you might have or some spare gold.
If i’m online and can’t craft at the very moment i receive your materials (dungeoning quite a lot lately), i’ll let you know that i’m busy atm and will craft your stuff as soon as i’m available.

@Cassium:
It’s all partially true, but life shows there are people interested in an offer like that, mostly crafting exotic jewelry and sending 10 spare bones as a tip.
As i said, i don’t expect much traffic in this ‘service’, but i’ve already had some orders and that offer stands for people who do see some sense in it. But it all really boils down to the problem that it’s much better and more profitable to be a supplier rather than a producer in this game, right now, especially that there are no ‘gathering skills’ or other investment beyond gathering tools, and there are plenty of nodes out in the world, while the demand is still pretty high.

“I never said PvE is hard, but using the best build in the game makes you farm gold and materials for WvW efficiently.”

Farm Dynamic Events (mainly temples and defenses in Orr, but also dragons) with mf gear, using s/d and AoE utilities only to tag mobs for loot. Single best way to make gold and materials.
Also, as an s/d ele in mf gear and avoiding berserker’s items like plague, i usually aggro 5 mobs in Orr at once only to AoE them down in one cycle – if i feel like ‘regular farming’ that is. I can also totally ignore mobs on my way while gathering.

The problem with your build is that it’s too heavily focused around one skill, the hammer. I mean your traits. Go into explorable dungeons or into W3 with it and then report back; if it doesn’t really work well, it’s not worth speccing for those traits unless you feel like retraiting before each dungeon/W3 trip.

Eles are the cc/support class. S/D has great single-target damage potential and a handful of nice ccs (2 blinds, launch, knockdown – and with proper traits, you can cycle them!) and lots of blast finishers; staff has great combo fields (bring two eles and keep the group’s health at 100% using s/d’s blasts in healing rain, coupled with blasts from others) and awesome mobility (you can ‘tank’ 30 mobs or so, aka run in circles with them on your back, with no problem!). But don’t expect high numbers, don’t expect to one shot everyone; you can apply very nice pressure though (staff aoes in W3 make people scatter) or shutdown single targets with s/d, but never spec purely glass cannon (except maybe in specific groups in sPvP, but that’s a totally another matter).

Thing is, cc and party-wide support are quite underrated and underestimated in this game, where you can just kill a boss faster rather than controlling him. Why would you waste time for any cc if you can just kill it twice as fast? The same problem was in GW1 – direct damage with some mitigation from spirits/minions owned every other PvE build, making all support and cc skills just useless.

It’s not THAT useless here, as proper cc can save your party from 10k+ hits in some dungeons, but people are still within the mindset of ‘high dps is best and fu everything else’.
I’m thinking about getting a voice-coordinated group of 5 eles into explorable dungeons, and then compare it with something like 5 thieves. It’s still a plan for a bit further future, though.

The ele’s real problem, though, is that it’s a jack of all trades, with nothing really worth speccing into except for mf in general PvE.
You can’t really go full glass cannon because of the lowest hp pool and the lowest armor. You could use your skills (utilities and weapons) to survive, but then you’re wasting your glass cannon potential, aka not dishing out damage.
You can’t really go full support (cleric’s), as group heals are quite rare even with staff and the green numbers are not THAT high if you’re on your own – if you can coordinate blasts in rain with your group then it’s different, but then you don’t need to go +healing.
You can’t really go full vita/tough, because you’ll still have lower hp/armor than counterparts (like warrior or necro), while dishing micro damage.
You can’t really go full condition damage as you have only a few condition skills, and going full carrion/rampager’s may tempt you to autoattack with earth s/d rather than cycle through attunements as you need it.
And if you do go one of the spec paths, you’re still outclassed by every other profession running a similar build.
Still – you’re good enough to play the game and get things done, as the game, right now, isn’t really that demanding.

This comes from a lv80 ele, with 100% map exploration, half of explorable dungeons done, all personal story done and quite focused on W3, as well.

Hey, sorry for taking a while to reply.

@noobdestroyer:
I don’t mind crafting low level stuff, as i have all recipes available. Just please follow the rules posted in OP – check what you need for the items you want on gw2db.com or similar site and send me some spare materials as a tip!
Truth be told, though – it’s not really worth buying or crafting low lvl stuff. I’m open if you want it (for skins for example), but don’t advise it

Zak is right – i have all crafting professions maxed on different toons each (only my main is a cook/artificer), but it’s still a matter of relogging, getting to the proper crafting station, clicking everything etc. While i don’t pay for changing my craft, it does take a while – hence the tip.

@Maurier:
Yeah, crafting isn’t really worth it now – it’s much faster and usually better to just sell raw materials. There are some niches which might generate more money than selling mats, but then they take time and prior investment. Way too many sources of items, way too many people focused on crafting, way too expensive materials.

I got Master Crafter mainly because it was something to achieve in the game – in games i’m what people out there call an achievement kitten, and while i enjoy playing games just for the sake of playing for fun, i’m focused on getting achievements on the way (trophies on PS3, all kinds of badges, medals and other whatnots everywhere). Having Master Crafter out of the way, i’m now collecting minipets…

The actual usefulness, so to speak, of maxing crafts comes second for me. Apart of crafting items for myself and guildies (who don’t really craft stuff all that often as there’s rarely need to), i rarely ever visit crafting stations now.
So i thought i might take it to the public, make some use of it – after all maybe a bunch of people out of hundreds of thousands GW2 players would like to use my service. I already got into a cooperation with one person (check the twin thread on Guru) and while i’m not expecting too much traffic, maybe someone some time will want to craft something for tips – so here i am