Guild Wars 2

I just came to post about this as well… Trident was epic underwater due to confusion. Bummer for this nerf.

Scepter is a kitten in WvW compared to the ranged weps of other professions. You’re never going to kill someone 1v1 with a scepter. PvE is ok because the shots mostly hit but it’s still not epic.

I love staff, but it is NOT a single target DPS weapon (it’s great at AoE mob tagging though in PvE — hands down the champ at that).

So, if ranged DPS is your thing, skip the guardian.

If you like soaking up damage and feeling like an indestructible hero — guardian is for you. Engineer can also be very very good at soaking up damage.

I could have gotten keys from Lyns?

Another gravey train I missed out on. Somehow folks make money off of this stuff and I find out about it only after ANet shuts it down…

It never ceases to amaze me that the number one way to make money in GW2 is off of developer burps. I swear the economy is skewed every time some new feature is introduced.

Fiontar.4695:

X The Manimal.5293:

The common armors are the ugly ones. That’s why you run dungeons for the juicy armors. Or save up for cultural.

There is not a single dungeon set I like enough to work for. Most I wouldn’t even wear if I could get them for free. Most of the T3 Cultural Armors are nice. The T2 is hit or miss. Most T1 are just as bad as most of the other armors in the game.

I’ve been able to mix and match looks I’m happy with, but to my eye, a huge percentage of armor skins in the game, even the skins you really have to work for or pay big money for, are just plain bad.

This is so true.

Medozorz.5920:

Getting 1k+ kills (probably being modest here, it depends from class to class) after a good raid is nothing unusual for top organised guilds. So that 133k kills number must be correct:)

hehe “…must be correct” — This made me laugh a lot. How about this: “It’s not unusual for a player to get less than 10 kills an hour, so the 900/day number must be incorrect”.

I think anything less than a screenshot is just wasted text at this point.

Depends upon what you want to achieve in the game. Aspects of GW2 are a grind. It was the same with GW1 (luxon faction ftw!).

Some grind is to be expected. I think the discussion should be centered around how much grind is acceptable. If it takes a casual player “years” to achieve, then the grind is probably too high.

The players I’ve met that have a legendary did so my purchasing some of the materials. Some did so by purchasing everything that could be purchased (including the precursor). I haven’t met anyone that actually purchased the legendary itself though. I haven’t met anyone that obtained 100% of the materials through grind.

So legendaries imho are not about grind — they’re about cash.

The current limit is too low.

Example: I have a stack of potions that I want to share with my dungeon team. I cannot send out 4 mails each with 5 potions. I can send out 2 or 3 mails, then I have to wait.

It’s a bit silly. Please change the rules, or make them “smarter”. Examples of “smarter”: A higher limit when sending mails to players on my current team, or in my current guild.

A great topic was deleted from the forums today. The reason was the original poster requested a deletion.

While I understand this is nice for folks who “talk first and think later”, there were many good points made in the topic.

I suggest the forum rules for topic deletion should be modified:

1. Deletion not allowed for topics where other players have responded

- OR -

2. Original poster can be made “anonymous” in the topic, preserving the original discussion thread while sheltering the OP from further scrutiny.

- OR -

3. Simply lock the topic so everyone can still read it, but further contributions are prevented. This is the least appealing option imho, but better than all-out-deletion.

In this specific case, there was nothing embarassing about the original post or the responses. In addition the conversation was constructive. It’s sad that this is now gone just because the OP felt it should be.

Most of the light armors are uninteresting to me. My favorite is the HoM Heritage skins for light armor. They look excellent on a male human mesmer.

However the other light armors are unappealing to me (granted this is purely opinion, beauty in the eye of the beholder after all).

My biggest disappointment would be the crafted light armors. All but one are just fugly. The “I dream of jeannie” set (level 10-20 crafted). Just horrible with the pointed shoes and baggie pants.

Heavy armors are a bit better but none have been 100% appealing to me on my guardian. Currently I’m wearing AC set except for Legs and Shoulders which are Archon. This is a good look as the legs/shoulders have spikes (not too horribly big) but the other pieces look more functional and gothic.

I love this topic — math ftw!

EasyModes point is that yes it buffs shatters but shatters are not 100% of mesmer damage. When comparing to other GrandMaster traits, the damage oriented ones tend to buff output by total of 10%.

So yes, IP buffs shatters a lot, but the overall damage output of the mesmer is something less. Easy’s point is that the overall effect is closer to 10% which is what other GM traits do (overall).

I agree that IP is a great trait, but I don’t think it’s OP. However it’s probably a “must have” when going shatters. Just like the dodge-clone trait.

Power/Vit/Tough does have a name — “Soldier’s”

fishergrip.4082:

From what it sounds like laurels can be used to buy infusions but not the actual ascended gear itself, so no you probably can’t get ascended stuff simply by dong daily achievements.

ANet has already stated that ascended rings and amulets will be available with Laurels. They’ve also stated that the gear will not have any agony resistance. However it’s still unknown if the ascended gear can be “infused” in the Forge like the ascended rings from Fractals. Most of that was conveyed in this topic already.

I’m not sure I’d call it “fun”. It goes by very fast and has very little in the way of “skill” or interesting game mechanics.

It’s popular mostly because it’s a quick way to nail 5 events for the daily. It helps that there is a chest reward as well. This is similar to the reactor in Asuran starting zone where an event chain finishes with the flame elemental (and again a small chest).

I think those are the only reasons you see players there at all.

@iruwen: Did you even read my post?

I stick by what I said. Turns out the discussion was never really about laurels and AR ascended rings. It was actually about preceived “unfairness” because some players spent time grinding in fractals and want that as the ONLY method to get AR ascended rings.

If you enjoyed fractals, then it doesn’t matter where folks get the AR gear, because doing fractals was your true reward.

If you didn’t enjoy fractals and agonized through it to get your AR gear, then your reward was AR gear before anyone else could get it (outside of fractals).

Either way you “won”. It doesn’t matter how other players now get their AR gear — that’s just your false sense of pride being hurt.

Woosha!

FateZero.8536:

Alright, let me get this straight. You want Agony Resistance to be available via the infusion which could be bought using Laurels. You want Ascended gears to be available outside Fractals.

So what about Fractals players who spent hours saving up just to get our first Agony Resistance infusion? First you guys complained that it isn’t fair that PVE players do not have the options to get BiS ascended gears. Now that it is available with stats, you want an easy way to obtain Agony Resistance via Laurels. Really??

Comparing daily/monthly achievement to Fractals run, daily/monthly is a cakewalk but you want the same reward as players who painstakingly save up for Agony Resistance infusion via Fractal runs. For once, run the Fractals. Earn your Agony Resistance. Stop being self-entitled.

True colors shine through!

So your issue is that you personally ground out fractals for your ascended gear and you want everyone else to do it the same way otherwise it’s not “fair to you”!

If you enjoyed fractals, then you shouldn’t have any issues with who has what ascended gear and where they got it from. If you didn’t enjoy fractals, and instead were grinding for gear, then you should be happy that alternate avenues will soon exist to get said gear. No reason to be upset, you did get your gear before anyone else who chose to wait. There is a price for being “first”.

The argument made previously regarding the changes to fractals is legitimate. If a lowbie (lvl 80 with low fractal progression) wants to tag with their friends in lvl 12 fractals, they really should have 5 agony resistance (yeah they can scrape by without it, but it’s a detriment to the team as a whole). They won’t receive a lvl 12 fractal reward (which I have mixed feelings on) for completion, so their only opportunity to play with friends is to grind away (like you did), or spend laurels on a ring.

If they spend laurels on a ring, that’s laurels they didn’t get to spend on something else (and it appears there’s a lot of “something else” to spend laurels on). So yeah they paid a price. Don’t be upset about the price you paid and expect everyone else to pay the same price. You made your choice and if you are not happy with it, then not much will make you happy at this point.

You skipped my questions… if ANet provides DX11 support will it make your situation magically better? Somehow I suspect not.

Zenyatoo.4059:

domxnik.1453:

I just started getting into WvW. My only problem right now is people being “obstructed”, but they can hit me. -.-

Other than that, I can’t wait for the fractal change, reward system, and them to start improving boss encounters.

the knee high walls are absolutely stupid.
They block nothing, you can get pulled over them, and if someone is standing at a non-perfect spot (which is always) your character shoots straight down into it and gets obstructed.

Defenders on the walls should have an advantage over the attackers, not the other way around. A knee high wall should NOT be stopping my “vision” of a ram at the gate that I can clearly see. (I die a little inside when I see “not in sight range” of something that’s less than 10ft away and clearly within the range of my skills)

Actually the defenders do have an advantage. Most classes (more than 4) cannot hit a defender on top of the wall, while the defender can shoot down.

Also the knee-high wall does keep you from getting pulled (I know, I pull people all the time). It’s when players stand on top of the knee-high wall that they are vulnerable.

I think LoS on walls is annoying (which I think is your main point). If you can shoot down, players should be able to shoot up. You already have the advantage of only being hit by ranged which does less dmg (even further reduced when AoE corrections are implemented in the future).

Kromica.2831:

Pinch.4273:

Malediktus.9250:

Pinch.4273:

GW2 will get DX11 when they have nothing better to work on. It’s low priority, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Considering working on the engine is probably a seperate team I dont see how it can be a low priority for a game released in late 2012.

The engine team is working on culling right now. After that, they probably have a ton of performance optimizations to do, and who knows what else.

Adding DX11 at this point in time would not be cost effective. It’s fluff, and they have bigger fish to fry.

Since when is optimizing the game to run on hardware that has been around since 2009 fluff?

If your rig can run DX11 without issue, then it should be plenty fast for GW2. What’s your angle exactly?

Is the game too slow on your PC?
Is the game not pretty enough on your PC?
Will DX11 change your answers above?

soma.3812:

I play WvW and just wvw i was told by a dev that i need never leave wvw for gear progression, yet i now have to do dailies and monthlies for laurels. I dont think i have ever completed a daily in my whole time of playing GW2. I dont even know what they are.
-1 Thumbs down for me.

Throwing the flag on this post. WvW is the easiest place to earn your daily achievement. I guarantee if you did anything at all in WvW you’d know what the daily is because each tier of each achievement category pops up as you commplete it. Somewhere between 12 and 16 total popups — every day for as long as you’ve been playing WvW.

cesmode.4257:

So what you’re saying is, you want to be able to purchase already infused ascended gear via a nice, easy, calm, no pressure way via daily and monthlys. You want to be able to sleepwalk through these dailys, which they most likely will be if current dailys and monthlys are any indication, in order to SIDESTEP a fractal grind for infusions that are only relevant to fractals.

I dont see your logic.

All I see is:
I want to be able to get BiS gear without grinding fractals so that I can join high level fractal groups.
I dont want to fractal grind. This means, I dont want to spend 1.5 hr per day to grind out fractals against RNG. This is too hard because fractals CAN be difficult at times, and RNG does suck.
I want to walk through the green fields of Kessex hills, kill some centaurs, and complete the monthly achievement. Then I can get the infused ascended, to go do those high end fractals.

Sounds like you want the easy way out. Not trying to be rude or insulting, but that is pretty much how I see this.

And I know arenanet said ascended gear has always been planned. Just making a point that the vocal minority/majority that wanted gear progression got their way, and these are now probably the same people whining that its too grindy and too RNG based.

Typically multiple avenues exist for BiG gear. They trade off between “excessive time to complete” on one end of the spectrum to “excessive difficulty to complete” on the other end of the spectrum. The avenues support the diversity of the player base.

ANet has stated many times that multiple avenues will exist to obtain ascended gear. Sounds like you may be upset if it doesn’t include fractals — maybe you feel entitled to grind fractals?

Honestly I’m not tied to any particular avenue of obtaining ascended gear. However I felt compelled to respond to your post because it was really off the mark. Also, stating “Not trying to be rude or insulting” doesn’t make it true.

One problem with Thief getting portal is the perma-stealth trick (not related to culling). Granted a perma-stealth thief gives up a lot to establish the perma-stealth trait build — however that doesn’t impact the role (perma-stealth thief doesn’t exist to DPS).

So imagine the sweeps that would have to happen to find perma-stealth thieves after taking a keep. Although a mesmer/thief team can accomplish the same thing (thief rez on mesmer after the keep sweep).

Greatsword can feel like easy mode at times — GS4, dodge, GS2, F1, auto, repeat. But that’s only when I’m playing lazy-mode in PvE.

Sword on the other hand puts the “blur” effect on my fingers as they work the skill buttons on my Logitech G13!

This topic has been beaten up a lot in these forums. Searching for Greatsword or Staff would yield more results than you probably care to read. I recommend taking a look.

The complexity of Mesmer is what makes it so appealing to many players. It also keeps newbs from flooding to the Mesmer after getting pwned in WvW or PvP.

Personally I enjoy the least played professions (although this means I should really dig Engineer… I’m trying… really!)

I’m excited about the whole package.

Will we be able to put the Laurel Ascended Rings into the Forge to add Agony resistance similar to the Fractal Ascended Rings?

EDIT: I guess the correct term is “Infused”. So will we be able to Infuse the Laurel Ascended Rings? (described here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ascended_equipment)

Over the weekend I switched from a 20/30/0/0/20 build to a 20/20/0/0/30 build to pick up the Illusionary Persona trait. This build matches the Hybrid in this guide for trait distribution and utility skills. Although I use the GS power trait instead of the +15% illusion dmg.

I’ve played mostly GS so it took a while to get use to the closeness of the 1H sword. I have to admit I really like it. Having an on-demand F3 and F4 for emergency situations is very nice.

I still prefer the range of the GS, but switching into 1H sword for up-close battle is very satisfying. I found myself handling 5 mobs in PvE without a problem. Mirror images really shines to dump out extra shatters.

Played a bit with Arcane Thievery this weekend — I have to say I like it. I’m not sure it’ll win out over other utilities, but I can see its usefulness against a condition heavy or boon heavy opponent in WvW.

I’ll goof with Mimic a bit now and see if that can be removed from my personal “underutilized” list.

Runcore.5107:

juno.1840:

So now that portal will be homogenized, can Mesmers get a +25% passive movement skill/trait?

This door should swing both ways…

Im very happy that you speak about this that door should swing both ways….If I remember well, +25% speed signet was on the begin privilege ONLY of thief and now this same speed signet have more classes like necromancer or elementalist so what thief get as compensation for “stolen” +25% speed signet? I think that thief is best candidate for mesmer portal skill. I would like to get portal skill instead of Shadow trap which is broken and work only on perfectly straight ground.

As you said this door should swing both ways and this is exact example of thief and his original +25% speed signet which was stolen and given to other classes. And btw portal is not damage skill so stop QQ about OP thief if he has portal etc…. The door should swing both ways but for all not only for mesmers.

Completely agree — I didn’t imply the door should swing only for mesmers (this just happens to be a conversation about a mesmer skill -- but yeah it is equally applicable to all profs imho).

So now that portal will be homogenized, can Mesmers get a +25% passive movement skill/trait?

This door should swing both ways…

You don’t have to be a glass cannon. I run a 20/30/0/0/20 build with the following exotic gear:

Armor: Soldiers (power/tough/vit) with ruby orbs
Jewels: Knights (crafted)
Wep: Zerks with sigil of fire

With that build and gear my Toughness is 1551 and my Health is 17322. DPS is still very high with Power 2122, Crit Chance 47%, and Crit Dmg 51 (for 201% dmg crits).

It’s definitely not glassy, but it’s not tanky either. Don’t lump everything into those two, there’s a big middle ground between them.

As was already mentioned, we don’t take as many hits because we have illusions, combat mobility, and stealth. So we as Mesmers can get away with a bit more glass than other professions.

Guardian can soak up way more damage than a warrior. A guildie in my group hates running fractals on his warrior without me present on my guardian. I soak up damage that would faceroll other professions.

That being said, my warrior guildmate can out DPS me without even trying. On the dredge-suit fractal, I crit for 8k-13k on my scepter. He’s dodging in and out doing 100k hundred-blades.

Throw Binding Blades onto a tenticle that’s about to die. If the tenticle dies with the DoT active, it will spawn about 8 crystals instead of 2.

The DoT is visible as the bindinng blade icon when targeting the mob. It lasts about 10 seconds, so that’s your window to land the binding blade and have the tenticle die.

Remember that the tenticles have an AoE knock-down so you may want to pop a stability before trying to throw the binding blades.

Dan.8709:

lol, you people complaining about veil… It can be really useful and has helped me tons of times, I don’t run with it on my slot all the time, but again, things are situational and we prepare when we see the need… And for that it is great, as it should be.

The argument that having mass invisibilty just make it useless is simple senseless, you can use both + decoy + torch to make sure you’ll remain unseen while waiting to portal people inside a keep you hid…
You can use it so you’ll get to use another elite that may be more useful for you at a time, etc.

Seriously, learn to use your utilities, there’s tons of different situations in the game that can be faced differently.

That’s sort of the purpose of this thread — to learn where a skill might be useful (and we just don’t realize it).

For some strange reason you decided to attack everyone on Veil — instead you could have taken the role of “mentor” and passed on some rich knowledge nugget. Unfortunately any “knowledge” in your post was lost because of your tone.

EasymodeX.4062:

Hehe yep, Mimic wins the award for most misleading tooltip in the game.

That is definitely true! From this discussion thread I learned that it reflects all ranged for 4s — so I may give it a try again.

I tried it for 15 minutes a few months ago and was highly dissatisfied with the initial hit that converts the skill to echo. Based upon the description I thought the initial hit would be avoided. It seems illogical that the first hit will be taken. Otherwise you can’t use it to avoid a big range hit you know is coming.

If it helps, I always thought the most cool light-saber was Mace Windu’s which is….. yep purple. I think the purple is awesome on the GS auto-attack.

The butterflies put me off when I read about it on the wiki (before BWEs), but I honestly don’t notice the effect when playing the game. My brain processes it as purple illusion particle effects. Honestly, what would you use in place of the butterflies (try to visualize your suggest as a semi-transparent, luminescent, collection in the shade of purple — you can’t think of anything that fits!)

I was running solo in eternal last night and had an epic moment. I saw a single invader as I was rounding a corner (a cliff of some sort) and charged in to attack. As I cleared the cliff on my left, it turns out that this single invader was just one guy standing at the very back of a pretty big zerg — roughly 30 players give or take.

I thought I should run and for whatever reason I did, forward through the zerg. Clones and shatters flying along with GS 5, 2, and 4 for AoE. Three invaders downed and folks started to notice me. I popped mass invis, blink, ether feast, and decoy to get to very front of the zerg.

At this point I’m at the base of a keep with another important decision, try to run along the sides to get inside the keep, or just turn around and take my lumps. I’m out of cooldowns at this point except for my last utility which is… yep Feedback.

So I drop feedback and renew my assult (this time from the front of the zerg). All I have in the tank are GS skills which are on a pretty short c/d. After a few seconds I start to wonder “why am I still alive?”. Some Yak’s Bend players were on top of the keep and they jumped down like snow flakes to where I was. Now it was a counter-push and the zerg broke and ran.

I don’t think my role was that significant with regards to busting the zerg, but I’m sharing because it was one of those super-happy-fun moments in WvW where you feel like some sort of fantasy novel hero in the end.

After reading a lot of the posts, I think I will try Veil in WvW. I like mass invis, and Veil is almost identical with the advantage of more players + combo field, but disadvantage of shorter stealth duration (and you have to run thru it). With the same c/d as Mass Invis I think it may be worth trying. Then I could slot Time Warp instead.

I did benefit from playing a thief through level 30. I wanted to understand the seemingly permanent stealth a P/D build uses. When I figured it out, I dropped the thief because it just wasn’t for me lol.

I use to run 3 mantras in WvW when soloing (and with the +4% dmg trait). I think the condition removal mantra is very good with reasonable recharge. The daze mantra was great for solo fights just to irritate my oponents when I see them winding up with some big uber skill. The stability mantra seems pretty good on paper but the stability is just not long enough to be useful. Instead it’s just a 2-time stun break.

I dropped that build ultimately and run with decoy and blink when soloing in WvW.

So there’s a bunch of utility skills I don’t use on my Mesmer. Rather than just write them off, I thought it would be good to share with other Mesmers. Maybe someone has an ubur use for a skill I think is useless. Worst case we end up with a “popular vote” of perceived worthless skills for the developers.

Here’s the list we can pick from (NOTE: only utilities discussed here. NO healing, elite, or weapon skills).

Arcane Thievery
Blink
Decoy
Feedback
Illusion of Life
Mantra of Concentration
Mantra of Distraction
Mantra of Pain
Mantra of Resolve
Mimic
Mirror Images
Null Field
Phantasmal Defender
Phantasmal Disenchanter
Portal
Signet of Domination
Signet of Illusions
Signet of Inspiration
Signet of Midnight
Veil

And from that list, skills I never slot are:

Arcane Thievery — this one might be pretty cool, I’ll have to try it in wvw/pvp.
Illusion of Life — looks cool but have never slotted it.
Mimic — reward doesn’t seem worth the effort on this skill.
Signet of Domination — condition dmg not significant, and I already have a daze kitten
Signet of Illusions — health boost just not worth it, and on a delay. I dont’ run legion.
Signet of Inspiration — don’t like RNG on my skills.
Signet of Midnight — don’t see much value in this (passive nor active).
Veil — never use because if I want it I take mass invis instead.

Share your list or counter mine. All constructive discussion is good

Everything in the blog post looked good to me. Also nothing presented violates the manifesto — which is good.

I do like the paid server transfers. That was the original plan with transfers, but they were made free during the BWEs to help compensate for lack of guesting (which was also a planned feature).

IMHO there’s no reason why permanent server transfers need to be free. If you’ve hopped servers for any reason other than to consolidate servers with your friends, then you probably should have paid for it (like any other MMO). I personally know players that have hopped servers multiple times only to be the “big man around WvW” for a few weeks. No reason for that.

Daily is the best karma for your effort — especially if you pop a +50% karma booster before consuming the jug.

After daily, I’d recommend a mobile zerg in WvW. A good zerg in this case is one that keeps moving from camp to camp in WvW, killing dolyaks, capturing camps/points, etc. It nets fast karma and decent coin (unbelievable I know).

I read it differently regarding achievement rewards. I think Collin is specifically referring to daily/monthly achievements… not your achievement “points” for all achievements available to you.

So it can be implemented cleanly, starting on day X everyone is on the same page — you get achievement rewards for the daily/monthly starting on that day.

Poison is the bane of Guardians. It’s required if you want to beat a guardian bunker. Scepter is a good weapon for this.

Guardians can purge conditions rather easily, but not forever. If traited they have 2 condition removals every 10 seconds (on a clock they can’t control). With scepter you’re applying poison every 4 seconds (maybe 3 depending upon the full attack chain speed). A guardian will be without poison for 4 seconds at most if using the passive removals.

There are other removals too, like condition removal on shout and condition removal meditations. Depends upon their build, but no build is going to be 100% immune to conditions.

Use poison often, throw on other conditions, and you’ll win the war of attrition. Condition builds are the “paper” to the bunker build’s “rock”.

Mesmer is really the best thing going atm (2nd maybe to warriors). If mesmer is not good enough, then dropping GW2 entirely is the best route. The other profs will make you lament your shelved mesmer.

That’s because searching for “mesmer” brings up 555 results and the forum engine doesn’t show you that many. If you search for “pvp mesmer” you’ll get the topic I linked.

Reflection in a choak point for WvW is very powerful — be it WoR or Mesmer Feedback. It makes for an instant push by your zerg.