Guild Wars 2

So I have 20 stacks of Black Lion Logging Axes lying in my bank from back in the day. I also have a set of those unlimited-use gathering tools.

I’ve read on the wiki that unlimited-use gathering tools have the same effectiveness as Black Lion gathering tools which used to drop from BL chests.

Question: can I safely destroy all my Black Lion Logging Axes? Or is there some use for them?

I haven’t played GW2 in a little over a year, and with HoT release I’ve finally found myself getting drawn into the game once more.

So I’ve decided to go all-in and I’m going to be crafting my first-ever set of ascended gear for my Revenant. I was wondering which stat combination to go with if I’ll mostly be doing PvE (fractals, raids, dungeons), and some occasional WvW.

Are berserker’s still the best all-around combination, or should I perhaps go with soldier’s? And should I then get all items with the same stat combo, or combine?

RoyHarmon.5398:

igneous.8153:

Lack of mounts is one of the reasons I absolutely hate traveling in GW2. Get rid of 90% of all waypoints and give us mounts. Then we’ll talk about exploration.

I don’t think I understand. Why do you hate traveling, and how would mounts do more to alleviate that than waypoints already do? The only difference I see is that waypoints are instantaneous but have to be discovered first. Do you not like to discover them? Is that why you want to discuss exploration?

Or do you just want to move faster? If so, why? This game is beautiful; I love to slow down and appreciate it. (Also, “exploration” would be over pretty quickly if we could all zip around like stylish blue hedgehogs.)
It feels like there’s so much more to the game than going from Point A to Point B. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down at my keyboard in GW2 and thought, “I’m going to go to that spot, way over there! I’ll run to it as fast as I can,” though I can’t say the same about GW1. When I explore in GW2, it’s more like, “What’s over there? I’m going to find out!” It’s not about the destination in GW2; it’s the journey.

If you absolutely must go faster, then try a speed-boosting skill. Rangers, thieves, elementalists, and necromancers all have a 25% speed boost signet, and I’m pretty sure the other classes all have some form of swiftness (+33% movement speed). Would a mount provide some kind of utility aside from speed boosts? What would they do in combat? It seems like the only thing they could do is complicate things.

Or do you mean something more akin to the sand wurms in GW1? I don’t know about anyone else, but for me, the novelty of riding in a wurm wore off pretty quickly.

If you simply want some creature to accompany you everywhere you go, try a miniature. Or a pet, a minion, a spirit weapon… Or another player.

From what I see, there just isn’t a reason anyone needs to ride something in this game. Am I missing something? Is there some other reason to want a mount in GW2?

It’s about the basic dynamics of movement and traveling in GW. Right now GW2 forces you to either move slowly, or teleport quickly. The former is annoying, and the latter takes the joy out of traveling. Why would I explore the world if I can simply discover the waypoints and then instatravel between them? In a way, I want to be forced to explore the world, instead of doing it just once with the current system, and then simply porting between waypoints

Adding mounts and reducing number of waypoints will force players to travel more. It will increase event participation, since a most players will be hard-pressed to ignore an event they’re riding by. It will make the world seem more vast and bring the thrill of exploration back. Nobody’s asking for mounted combat, it simply doesn’t work. Several MMOs have tried it, and all of them failed.

All of this can be accomplished by reducing number of waypoints, or increasing waypointing costs. Though either way, I suspect the resulting tsunami of tears and whining will be too much for the developers to bear. They’ve put themselves in the corner by having the current waypoint system since launch. And it doesn’t matter whether they add mounts or not – their enormous world will still seem small and instanced compared to other MMOs.

Lack of mounts is one of the reasons I absolutely hate traveling in GW2. Get rid of 90% of all waypoints and give us mounts. Then we’ll talk about exploration.

Anyone remember Wi Flag in Asheron’s Call? It was an aggro problem, but it followed the same dev communication cycle. First they vehemently claimed nothing was wrong. Then after the kittenstorm has gotten out of hand they were forced to investigate. After over a year they finally found the problem, but by then it was too late – most of the affected players have quit the game by then.

drkn.3429:

I find it both ridiculous and offensive that the OP can be summarised to “GH got Xaoc, now they can win and roll over us, because they got Xaoc, and it’s their fault we have 0 fun from the format”.

Chill. The whole ladder is changing, a lot of servers are undergoing revamps due to free transfers – and they always have, actually, as WvW guilds have been transfering ever since October, upsetting the balance here or there. It took a while, but everything eventually resolved over time.

He is totally right though, a single alliance joining or leaving can change a server drastically. It happened when <INT> left GH or when RUIN joined Blacktide. Examples are there, and they show that a big enough alliance can make a big enough impact on a single server’s WvW.

At least be grateful that XAOC are very decent and cooperative chaps, and they’ve very good at WvW.

I just love the sheer number of crucial features and fixes that are “low priority” or “not planned”. Makes you wonder just what IS planned and high priority.

Hi,

I’m looking for a European server with high PvE population. The server I’m currently on constantly cycles between T1 and T2 WvW brackets, and at times it feels like the whole population is working towards one single goal – WvW domination.

This has become somewhat tiring and I want to try my hand in PvE. I want to finally get 100% world completion and so some dungeons. For that I need a server with an active PvE community.

Recommendations?

Kyosji.8961:

Servers aren’t dead. Game is 3 months old. All the casual players finally got their level 80 toons now, so it seems that no one is in the low level areas any more. Nearly the same amount (maybe a little less or a little more) are playing still, you just don’t realize it because many people have gotten their toons to 80 now.

Yeaaaah, that must be why every temple in Orr on every server is contested and there’s hardly anyone there at all.

What about stats? What stat combinations should one go for in WvW?

I actually lucked out on this one. Got 4xMini Infinirarium from one batch of 10 presents. Got my baby Quaggan mini <3

So, power/toughness/vitality, 30 in water and 30 in arcane.

I’ve noticed most ele builds these days use D/D. Why is that? Back at launch most eles ran around with staves because of the number of AoE skills staff has, which are useful both in PvE, and especially in WvW.

Hi,

After having neglected my Elementalist for over 4 months, I’ve decided to give it a try again. Much to my surprise, I found myself enjoying the profession quite a lot. I quickly levelled her to 80 and found myself with the dilemma of end-game build and gear.

I do mostly PvE, with about an equal share of WvW. So I need to be able to kill stuff and still survive. I thought about going full berserkers, but figured that a full glass cannon might not be quite as effective in PvE/WvW on an Elementalist as it was on my Thief. I levelled from 1 to 80 almost exclusively using staff. What I need help with is:

1) What combination of stats to use in gear
2) What sigils and runes to use
3)Where to allocate traits

Thanks.

What about Magic Find? I must have read dozens of threads where about 50% people claimed it does work, whereas the other 50% claimed that it doesn’t.

Would I be better off buying ordinary exotic power/precision/crit damage armour instead of the minuscule extra % to find stuff with MF?

First and foremost, I play mostly PvE. So the advice I’m looking for needs to be relevant for PvE/dungeons.

1. D/D or S/P? I’ve tried both combinations for about 35 levels each, and I still can’t make up my mind. Are there any good reasons for/against D/D or S/P in PvE?

2. What stats should I stack on my armour? I’ve heard that stacking Power/precision isn’t quite as beneficial because survival is very important in Orr. In that case, should I drop power and precision altogether in favour or vitality and toughness?

3. I’m also looking for a decent PvE build which would work both in Orr and in dungeons.

Thanks.

I wonder if anyone remembers Ember Isle from Rift?

It was a “2nd tier” endgame zone relased around a year into the game. It was an absolute plasure to look at and run around. The mobs were tough, but not annoyingly so and you could easily solo your way through most of the zone’s content. There were also areas full of elites which required a group to travel through. Quests and events were rewarding, and there was generally a ton of things to do and areas to explore.

That, in my opinion, is what max level zones should be like. From what I’ve gathered, Orr is far, far from being so

I finally made my way into the first Orr zone yesterday (Straits of Devastation), and I already hate it. If the rest of Orr is like that, I wonder if the whole area was hastily slapped onto GW2 shortly before release just to have an excuse to call it “endgame”.

I must admit I’ve never heard of anyone getting it from an ordinary ToT bag. All the same, I’ve opened over 1.5k personalised bags and have yet to get the endless tonic.

Didn’t they say it was not about primetime, but rather about peak worldwide concurrency, which is precisely at 1900GMT?

I just finished it as a level 11 engineer. I also had a level 3 elementalist and a level 15 warrior in my group. Granted, it took us a while and we died more than a few times and we had to ask for help a few times (namely, in the crypt in Gendarran Fields, and just before the last waypoint in Bloodtide Coast), but it was great fun and it is definitely possible.

There are no bugs in GW2.

I loved how “staged” events were designed in Rift. There was a quest tracker which clearly displayed the current stage, what it’s about, objectives and brief summary of the story involved. GW2 halloween “event” is such a confusing clusterkitten that it makes me want to get out of LA and never come back.

A one time event, really? And on Monday morning night when entire Europe is sleeping? Why are we getting screwed again, if I may ask?

~100 chests, a single Halloween shoulder skin
Should have spend the gems on gold instead.

Be that as it may, it still makes no sense that Black Lion gathering tools are the only soulbound items that drop from the chests. All other premium consumables are account bound.

Why are Black Lion gathering tools soulbound?

Desolation is the new Vizunah Square?

Don’t get your hopes up. Expect to wait for months and months until this gets done. If it gets done.

ColinJohanson.2394:

And finally, make sure to be around on Sunday October 28th mid-day pacific time, you’re NOT going to want to miss it!

Great, Europe gets screwed again?

I gave up on my ele just 2 levels short of 78 and never wanted to return. I’ve since tried mesmer, necromancer, engineer and thief.

In essence, an engineer will net you the same flexibility in terms of defence, offence and support, but will be better at everything. It will hit harder and from longer range, be more difficult to kill, and easier to play.

My current main is a level 52 thief, and I am having an absolute blast. Though considering how possible it is that thief will be nerfed far beyond even already kitten eles due to rivers of tears from bads, I am looking at the possibility of leveling up an engineer now.

It’s like others have said, Blacktide is a lot more international than it was in BWEs. You’d be hard-pressed to find any non-English chat anywhere, and the Russians of Blacktide are without doubt the best Russians I’ve ever played with.

I’m not a huge WvW player myself, but I have tried perhaps 10-15 different servers. I transfer mostly for PvE reasons, but I do make a point of seeing what’s happening on my temporary server’s WvW landscape.

And I have to say that Blacktide impresses. Everything is very well-coordinated and objectives are executed quickly and precisely. Big guilds communicate to achieve common goals, commanders and smaller guilds work with pugs to do the same, and I found it somewhat shocking that on Blacktide pugs actually follow and do as they’re told.

There’s very little mindless zerging, there is no flame wars or drama in the map/team chats, and from what I can tell, the vast majority of players are very competent and knowledgeable.

All in all I’d say that this server has every chance of one day making it to the top EU tier.

Blacktide could use a larger night crew to kill some those RUIN buggers.

Both EU and US servers are located in Texas anyway. Only login server is region-based (EU is in Germany).

So latency is not a factor.

I think the problem is that you are playing an Elementalist. Switch to another profession and you magically stop dying to every trash mob and actually start killing things.

Guild Wars 2 is unique. Unique in that unlike other MMORPGs, a month after release it is in worse shape than it was at release.

You have a beautiful game that suffers from so many problems that it seriously boggles the mind. You are very close to facing player insurrection. More than half of all threads here are about DR, and that alone should tell you that you’re doing something wrong.

A month after release there are still professions with 100+ bugs, there are still broken skill points, Dynamic Events that don’t work, personal story missions that bug out, exploiters and hackers are running rampant everywhere, gold spammers and bots are still out and about. Economy is collapsing and people are quickly losing interest in the game.

Stop “investigating”, “looking into”, “working on”. Stop giving us excuses and start giving us results.

I sleep at night.

Some on, I can’t believe noone wants to brag about their undoubtedly pr0 server steamrolling everyone else!

I do that every day. But the chaotic nature of WvW is always preventing me from actually completing the map. I always get sidetracked to do this or help capture that. That’s why I’m willing to take a day off to get 100% PvE completion of the WvW maps.

Looking for a server, EU or US, with 100% (or close) of the Mists. Need to get my explorer achievements in peace.

The issue has been resolved. Woke up, tried to link accounts, it worked. No errors, no fuss. Thanks, Pat.

Day 2. No reply, no progress.

Pat Cavit.9234:

Strings got shuffled around and that one got missed, sorry folks. Should be fixed in a bit.

I’d say that a week is quite a bit more than “a bit”. I still can’t link my GW1 account.

Got the same issue. Explained in detail here.

When I try to link my GW1 account to my GW2 account, I get the following error at https://account.guildwars2.com/account/link/approve:

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<Error code=“48” module=“3” line=“339” text=“callback (): TypeError: Cannot read property ‘cancel’ of undefined TypeError: Cannot read property ‘cancel’ of undefined at Templates\EJS\Account\link.approve.ejs:32:49 at Object.render (Library/core-template.js:185:15) at Object.reply (Library/sugar-reply.js:85:25) at Library/lib-troll.js:111:32 at Account/before.js:19:13 at Library/lib-troll.js:107:40 at Location/controllers.js:61:13 at Library/lib-troll.js:107:40 at Object.<anonymous> (Location/controllers.js:45:21) at Library/sugar-sts.js:125:72”/>

(Screenshot)

Additional information:

I have tried 3 different browsers and 2 different platforms (Windows and Mac), I get the same error every time.

After I get the error, if I click “Back” in my browser, I am presented with the following page: http://i.imgur.com/KrcZ4.png

I can NOT, however, login to GW2 with my GW1 login, nor can I login to GW1 with my GW2 login.

If I log out of account page and login again, the “Your Guild Wars accounts are linked” message is replaced with the standard “Link your Guild Wars account” prompt.

I have bought the HoM portal stone in LA and visited it, but it’s empty, so the linking was not successful.

I have found multiple threads reporting this issue, but no solutions or acknowledgements.

I have also created a ticket (120926-002905) and will update this thread accordingly when I receive a reply.

Also my account/Display Name got changed to something gibberish like F9F1BF82-197B-4E78-etc.

OK, weirdness abound:

_Your Guild Wars accounts are linked

Congratulations! You have successfully linked your Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 accounts. In doing so, you now have access to the exciting rewards awaiting you inside the Hall of Monuments. The following Guild Wars 2 account information will now be used to log in to both Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2:
E-mail / Account Name: [GW1 account name]_

My GW1 account name (email address) is different from the email address I used to create my GW2 account. Does it mean I should use my old GW1 email to login to GW2?

I tried logging in and out of GW2 account management, and now that message is gone and I am still asked to link accounts…

I’m curious if anyone has managed to link their GW1 account recently? I’m trying but getting an XML code 48 error it Library/lib-troll.js. I wonder if, in true ArenaNet fashion, that filename bears any significance in this situation?

Vaerah.4907:

igneous.8153:

Elementalists were perfectly fine until they were nerfed shortly before the release. And the reason they were nerfed is because warriors were whining about us doing too much damage.

Name me a MMO where warriors (and rogues) are not horribly OP, easy to play, super-mega popular played classes and don’t constantly whine about them being still too hard to play and too low damage and anybody else must be perma-nerfed.

In Rift warriors and rogues are easy to play, but that is offset by mages having the highest DPS (if played right). A warrior or rogue player who mastered their class will never outDPS a mage. That is how it should be. Effort and complexity should be rewarded with appropriate results. And that was certainly the case with elementalists until BWE3 nerf.

Elementalists were perfectly fine until they were nerfed shortly before the release. And the reason they were nerfed is because warriors were whining about us doing too much damage.

You know, the profession that can oneshot us now and can be played with your eyes closed by spamming two buttons? Those guys whined up such a tsunami of bitter loser tears that ArenaNet caved in and nerfed our damage in half. Learning to evade our spike was out of the question, of course, this is warrior players we’re talking about, after all.

And now we have the Elementalist which:

• Is the hardest profession to play
• Is the professions that is easiest to kill
• Is the profession which does least damage

So yeah, I would say that Elementalist does deserve some attention, and that attention better come sooner rather than later. Most of my Elementalist friends have already switched to other professions. I myself am leveling a Mesmer now and will not even log on to my joke-of-a-profession-elementalist until they are fixed. Though my whole Elementalist experience has already been ruined to a point where I may just delete the character altogether.

And this is not a question of patience or faith in ArenaNet. Such horrible profession imbalance was always fixed in a matter of days in GW1. And yet almost a month after release of GW2 we have heard nothing from ArenaNet about this issue. Other classes have gotten buffs and fixes, we got the square root of jack.

Necromancers’ complaints are laughable compared to the state Elementalists are in at the moment. And unlike necros we get consistently ignored by the devs.