Guild Wars 2

Basically every post here has told you to gear up in full Berserker and Learn to Dodge. I can tell you from experience that maybe 5% of my PuGs have had people in full berserker who know how to dodge. After ressing them 6 times because OMG WHAR DID DAT MOSSMAN AXE EVIN COME FROM?! WTF?!?!! we just let them eat the floor for the whole fight. It’s a waste of our DPS to res zerker-geared people who can’t time their dodges, and a dead zerker whatever does zero DPS.

Maybe the forum is full of people in berserker gear who know how to dodge, but trust me when I say that 95% of the zerker-geared people on gw2lfg.com are not worth having in your party.

That said, it’s the reason why I run PVT gear on my guardian for ‘harder’ dungeons like Arah and FotM 40+. If I want damage, I’d bring my zerker warrior along. If I want to make sure that we don’t wipe 20 times because one person in the party is made of paper and can’t dodge to save their lives – literally – then my PVT guardian draws aggro while the zerker whatevers can do their DPS.

Everyone says just run zerker for DPS but the truth is if you’re a zerker anything other than warrior, your damage is going to be subpar. I’m not telling you to reroll a warrior – if you like a ranger, you should play it – but PPT rangers work just fine in dungeons.

If you want to go zerker, I suggest you try getting in melee range in PPT to learn how to dodge well. Consider PPT gear to be like training wheels. Watch for those boss signs, time your dodges and when you are very comfortable with the dungeon(s) you enjoy doing, slowly swap out to zerker. Don’t just follow everyone blindly and go full zerker on Day One – you’ll be dead for half the dungeon and the remaining party members won’t have much sympathy for you.

EDIT: One last thing – dungeons are part of the game. Dungeons are to be enjoyed. There are plenty of people who treat it as a farm where you must have zerker gear and ruby whatevers to complete it under 10 minutes, but there are plenty of people who just go in and talk about the latest episode of Game of Thrones and have a lot of fun. Don’t ruin your dungeon experience because you’re talking to a whole horde of people who want to “farm farm farm farm farmfarmfarm TOKENS AND GOLD YES I got my full exotic/ascended set + my legendary, now I’m bored…”

While it may be the case right now that DPS is more valued in dungeons than survivability, there are actually some of us dungeon runners who love to take first timers along, who don’t mind spending a few more minutes at bosses, cracking jokes in game and sometimes over teamspeak half the time. It’s a game. It’s meant to be enjoyed. If you want to farm the hell out of a dungeon, you’re welcome to join the zerker DPS whatever. But that doesn’t have to define your dungeon experience if that’s not what you’re looking for.

How about you follow me like a bad omen?

I usually do 48 and it takes maybe 4 shuttles of bombs. I’m a guardian though and I usually swap to PVT gear for the bomb/cannon part (let’s face it, most of us use MF gear for Dredge), so I don’t really understand the concept of suicide run lol. Just depends on what kind of party you end up with. Stealth and speed boost makes the entire thing a joke.

Welcome to the game and we’re glad you’re enjoying playing your necro.

You are correct in that bleed stacks up to 25, but each application of bleed ticks away on its own timer, so your BiP will keep the enemy bleeding for half a minute but your scepter-applied bleeds will disappear much faster. The nice thing about the scepter is that it continuously applies bleed-bleed-poison bleed-bleed-poison through autoattack, so on something with high HP, you should maintain around 9 or 10 bleeds just from autoattacking with scepter (if you have traited for this, I think it’s a grandmaster trait).

If a ranger applies 20 stacks of bleed and you put on the other 5, the enemy’s HP will drain according to 25 stacks, but you only do damage from your 5 stacks of bleed. And as you know, scepter autoattack without the bleeds is pretty underwhelming. This is why it is not ideal in a party to have more than one condition-based party member. I’ve been in parties with people who can maintain 20 stacks of bleed by themselves, in which case my damage over time is effectively more than halved.

You won’t always know who you’ll end up teaming up with, but if you know in advance that someone with a condition build is coming along, it’s better for you to adjust your traits and go with dagger/dagger to do more direct damage. You can still bring along skills like Epidemic to spread your party’s bleeds to nearby foes, but directly applying conditions yourself is not going to make the enemy die faster once it hits the 25 bleed limit.

I think the only part of the legendary that is soulbound is the bloodstone shard.

But once you chuck that into the Mystic Toilet for the Gift of Mastery, the gift is accountbound. You can do the obsidian shards, 100% map complete and WvW components on other characters if you like, but it makes sense to do at least the 100% map complete and bloodstone shard using the same character.

Yes you can transmute them. You click on the skin you want, the stats you want and the rune/sigil you want, then click transmute.

You’re asking us questions we cannot answer, because we have no ascended armour/weapons and we can’t tell you in the future if agony is Fractal-exclusive or not.

My guess is that it will remain a FotM mechanic, for the simple reason that those of us who have 45 AR will already have a huge pre-existing advantage compared to people who don’t do FotM. When they introduced temporary content, you can easily access those places (to take the most recent examples, either from Lion’s Arch for Southsun or low level areas for Flame and Frost like Diessa and Wayfarer) and in Southsun and that Molten dungeon you’re scaled to 80. It seems silly to release some new dungeon in the future that requires Agony Resistance because some players, especially new non-80s, won’t be able to access it off the bat.

There are a few useful skills depending on what class you are to help you survive the onslaught of flamethrowers and sword-wielding Charrs. Stability is useful regardless of class because sometimes you get pulled, and I think every profession should have some stability skill so you can use that.

Obviously speed boosts are useful too as the faster you get up on the ledge, the sooner you lose aggro. If you are trying it out as a future zerker warrior CoF farmer, try skills like Endure Pain or Fear Me. Guardians have Renewed Focus although Stand Your Ground and F3 to give aegis to whole party would be greatly useful for everyone. For Mesmer, you can Blink your way towards the tunnel, or Illusionary Leap and/or iWarden can distract them if you’re being chased down by one or two.

Eles have that Earth Shield and Lightning Flash/Mist Form, sometimes you can summon an Elemental to take aggro as well. Thieves can use Blinding Powder and other stealth/shadowstep techniques. Nice thing about Eles, Thieves and Mesmers is that if you’re halfway down the tunnel and then you get downed, one of your downed skills can move you further down the tunnel, closer to your party members who can then res you in a group.

Necros have Death Shroud to absorb damage, Spectral Walk for added speed. Engineers and Rangers have Glue Shot and Muddy Terrain respectively to slow them down, and Rangers have Quick Shot to get out quickly.

If you told me your class or your party composition I could give you something more indepth. Some classes have it easier than others but it’s normal to get downed while you’re still getting your head around it, and sometimes even if we’ve done it a hundred times before, we go down too because we get knocked back/pulled and flamethrowered or some unfortunate combination, so don’t feel bad about it. Once you get the hang of it you usually only need the speed boost to get you to the ledge and none of the other skills, but while you’re figuring it out it’s good to have a backup skill in case you find yourself eating dirt and the flamethrower is coming straight for you.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

The gem store sells cosmetic items. Skins are cosmetic items. Your exotic pearl greatsword will not do less damage than my exotic whatever-skinned greatsword. You do not need to have the skins in order to be on par, combat-wise, with people who spend real money on gems, or buy gems with gold. That was the intention all along and they’re not going to change it just because some players feel they are entitled to have skins that employees have spent hours drawing and modelling without paying real money for them.

Since everyone can hit that power ceiling easily why must everyone spend more cash to look good? Entitled means receiving without work or effort from work. It wouldn’t be entitlement if players had to kill something in order to get a reward. Hell Anet could make a scavenger hunt or something…….Look at the Sclerite Karka backpiece!

The point was that everyone could hit the power ceiling easily, so that a casual player who can only play a few hours every other day or over the weekend isn’t severely disadvantaged because of their game time. This game is supposed to be casual-friendly. But ‘looking good’ is optional. It’s like asking why should people pay more for a Louis Vuitton handbag when you can have any old handbag that’ll carry your stuff.

Your original post is saying that it’s not reasonable to get a skin through various methods involving gems and/or RNG. All I’m saying is that you don’t need a skin to hit that same power ceiling that everyone else can hit, so it’s not unreasonable for them to charge for these extra shinies (that you want, but don’t need and are not disadvantaged by just because you don’t have) through the gem store.

If it bothers you so much, there’s even an option that most other games don’t provide to convert in-game currency for gems.

The gem store sells cosmetic items. Skins are cosmetic items. Your exotic pearl greatsword will not do less damage than my exotic whatever-skinned greatsword. You do not need to have the skins in order to be on par, combat-wise, with people who spend real money on gems, or buy gems with gold. That was the intention all along and they’re not going to change it just because some players feel they are entitled to have skins that employees have spent hours drawing and modelling without paying real money for them.

http://us.gw2stuff.com/events/us if you are in NA, http://us.gw2stuff.com/events/eu for EU.

colesy.8490:

Everybody please run COE p1 and make charged cores/lodes drop, I need them for sunrise and they’re expensive as hell right now.

I think the reason most people avoid it is because while it’s a faceroll, you need to actually learn mechanics unlike COF p1.

Actually there’s very few mechanics involved in the submarine path. Kill a few things, jump over some resident evil lasers, kill a few more things, and in the meantime for each iteration of Subject Alpha I get asked to knockback him into a corner/crates. Then it’s just a DPS race.

At least with the other two paths you have to count 1 Mississippi and dodge.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

What Mossman should simply do is face a player, stand still, raise his arm in the air and yell out “BEHOLD! MY AXE!”, while lightning flashes around him, and then simply throw a brightly glowing projectile at the player he’s facing.

I burst out laughing in the middle of a library. Thanks for that.

I don’t think you could see the flying axe with the lightning flashes or the flames coming out of his kitten or whatever, but at least you’d hear BEHOLD, MY AXE and have half a second to panic wondering who he’s throwing his axe at.

I agree though that at 48 most fractals are unforgiving – you will die if you don’t dodge every single agony attack – but is Mossman going into stealth for half a minute, then unstealthing long enough to throw an axe before going back into stealth for another half a minute over and over again if you’re trying to kite while someone else is ressing or whatever really working as intended?

You’d be surprised. Doing Arah P1, 2 and 3 in a PuG everyday can be much smoother than a single FotM 10 run in a PuG everyday. From my experience, any FotM under level 38 in a PuG is a nightmare. I’m happy with 38~48 PuGs; most of the people in your party can’t have been carried that far and at least know how to dodge out of red circles.

I’m a semi-casual player from SoS but all I have to say is that some players are really sore losers. After months of dominating SBI and CD over and over and over again week after week, we lose for 2 weeks in a row and suddenly it’s table flips and ragequitting the game.

Have you guys ever stopped to think how SBI and CD players feel about losing for 2 months because we really should have moved up a tier a month ago? And you can’t handle it for 2 weeks.

Teething hurts. Give the new system at least the same time SBI and CD have been losing consecutively to us before popping a vein.

AndrewSX.3794:

Another thing i’d add in.

Restrict the rolls of stages to even the time spent.

I mean:
-set 3 tiers of stage lenght. ex: dredge and cliff side are longest ones. swamp and underwater shorter. ascalon mid.
-every fractal run will now be composed by 3 stages, one picked off each of these categories.

What does it mean:
-no more incredibly fast runs (swamp/underwater/ascalon)
but
-no more endlessy frustrating rolls (dredge/grawl/cliffside)

Being every run made of 1Short/1Med/1Long stages, you keep up the random roll on challenge (stages are divided on lenght not difficulty) and bosses/mechanics, but at least you’ll have an average “estimated time” instead of a daily fractal run taking anywhere from 30 mins to 2hrs.

People do this manually by rolling for swamp/underwater first. You are at least guaranteed one short/easy fractal even if you get Cliffside, Dredge and/or Shaman later on.

While I agree that sometimes skipping stuff leads to more trouble later on if you have to run back (I’ve had some terrible experiences with pre-nerfed TA when it had just the one WP at the beginning and my non-80 at the time didn’t have access to elite stability skills), once you know the dungeon then it’s not really worth the time invested to kill silver mobs just to get like a blue cabalist hood.

I also have some weeks where I only play for 2 hours every other day – you can’t expect me to waste my 2 hours killing every single thing along the way with you just because you want to slog through everything the hard way. If you have the time to work through the dungeon in its entirety, that’s great, but some of us have deadlines, jobs and lives outside the game.

I always buy my gems with real money – I’d rather just pay 10 bucks than farm CoF for hours on end to get a character slot expansion or whatever. However there have been a few occasions I’ve converted my gems to gold. I was something like 10g shy of my precursor so I just converted some of the gems I had left over from my last top-up.

However with the things I want to buy being so expensive, it is not worth it for me to pay 10 bucks for 8 charged lodestones or however many you get when I need 100 of them. The conversion rate may seem really high for you with gold to gems, but it’s totally not worth it for me to convert gems to gold unless it rises some more. I’d be happy to pour tens of thousands of gems into the market if I can get 5g per 100 gems. It’ll save me hundreds of hours of lodestone/CoF farming. But many people would probably be happy to do the same if they can get 4g per 100 gems, and that way the conversion rate will stay stable at something that both the gold and cash buyers find acceptable.

DrWhom.3105:

Sorry, but this is hilarious to me. I wouldn’t go into work for an extra day this week if my boss offered me a fused weapon ticket. You’d really feel well paid on your way home after that?

Bottom line is if they were sold straight up for gems, but at a price that conformed to their drop rate from the chests, it’d be right up there in black and white how much they’re gouging you for a bunch of pixels. Which is exactly why they don’t publish those drop rates, a bit of quick math would put any sensible person off them instantly.
Just let those who like to gamble pay for the game and work with what’s available.

Also I’m not entirely convinced by the “the rarity is why people want it” argument, but there’s an interesting comparison case now with the Southsun eye weapons. Similar method of acquisition though these crates will probably be dropping more than keys with so many people in Southsun, they also can’t be traded. Key difference is most of the eye weapons are pretty dumb looking, whereas the fused weapons definitely look cool to a lot of people. Personally I doubt will anyone will bother blowing hundreds of dollars to get a sword that blinks.

To each their own. I have nothing else to spend the money on anyway. If I were skipping out on mortgage payments to buy keys then that’s clearly a problem, but my income is expendable and I’d probably pay the same amount of money for a pair of jeans I’d wear once or twice and never again. At least this weapon skin gets much more use.

If they were sold ‘straight up for gems’, less people would buy them. How many people do you see now running around with that Braham and Rox stuff? The fact that anyone can buy them for 600 gems will deter those who are of the OMG I’M A SPESHUL SNOWFLAEK mindset, and those are the people who are willing to spend all the gems to cover the handful of people who are like lolboycott. I’m sure most people would have bought maybe 5 keys, either with gems or gold, and decided that it was a stupid idea after not getting the ticket. You won’t get that kind of small transactions if you just sold the skins straight up.

The bottom line is that RNG earns ANet a lot more money than selling the skins on the gem store. RNG is why people will keep running content like Fractals, so that they can get the skins they want. RNG is why people will buy into the goldsink and pour thousands of rares and exotics down the Mystic Toilet. They’re not going to change RNG just because a handful of gamers find it ‘disgusting’ or ‘offensive’ or ‘exploitative’.

When I set my mind on getting a fused GS, I said I’d keep buying keys until I get a ticket. I got it after spending NZD$75 on keys.

Now I understand that RNG isn’t ‘fair’ in that someone who spends USD$1 on one key could get the same ticket that I paid NZD$75 for, and of course who would have wanted to be the guy who got the ticket for one dollar? The same complaint about RNG can apply to people who get precursors after using the mystic toilet once vs. the people who have thrown in 1000+ rares and got nothing.

But I don’t regret getting the fused GS. It does look nice, which is one thing, and I don’t see as many of them as I do Twilights and Sunrises and Eternities, which I’m sure is another factor people consider when they gamble. The truth of the matter is people won’t flock to buy it if everyone can easily obtain one; its perceived rarity contributes to its value. I wouldn’t have paid one dollar for it if everyone can get one for one dollar. And if they ever release a full set of weapon skins on the gem store for a fixed price, you’ll see that contrary to what you believe, after a few hundred people shell out 600 gems for a greatsword skin, no one else will when you see everyone running around with one.

The way I see it is, I’ve spent over a hundred dollars in gems and that’s sponsored the bug fixes, the world and profession polishings, the new content, the new quests and so on. I enjoy FotM and dungeons and I’d gladly spend even more on gems if there’s going to be more of them. As @Panda Shepard said, I’ve sponsored all the non-gem/gold-to-gem buyers so that ArenaNet doesn’t have to charge everyone a monthly subscription fee for their game. And I have a cool weapon and other cool skins I really really like to show for it.

To put it in perspective I spent a few hours vegetating in the office to pay for a weapon skin. People say hundreds of dollars in gems like it’s a big deal, but when you consider that you earn close to a hundred dollars in one workday, it’s honestly a small price to pay for something you’ll use for months down the line.

Uhm I’ve had people join and blatantly lie about their AR. I can only assume they want to be carried through a free fractal personal level +1. I wouldn’t mind carrying under level 38, but leeching past 40 when each party member increasingly needs to contribute as much as they can is just unacceptable.

I can confirm that the invulnerable harpy thing happens to me – while I’m meleeing the bloody harpy standing right in front of it. (EDIT: This happened less than 24 hours ago)

Also I don’t know if it’s a bug but in the Dredge fractal, you don’t get hit by those one-hit-down shockwaves from the Champ Rabsovich whatever his name is if you’re standing on the highest point of the pipes.

And yeah you can still do the scenic climb around the outside of the first cage to jump into the cage you do the buttons/control panel.

EDIT #2: There was something in the Shaman fractal but I forgot the specifics. I think it’s stacking inside the first boss/meleeing? Stops the bubble you have to break with an infused stone from spawning. Or is that considered a valid strategy?

Do fractals count? Because Mossman and Shaman at 40+ gives me heartburn. The mechanics are fine, but the former goes into stealth for too long and the latter spawns too many elementals. Sure, 40+ FotM is supposed to be hard, but I’d rather Mossman go in and out of stealth more frequently than go into stealth for an entire minute at a time. And the amount of elementals that spawn at Shaman is just frustrating when your AoE is limited to 5.

I have little difficulties with these encounters because I play a guardian, but to privilege one profession over another because shield of the avenger/wall of reflection/sanctuary/shouts+soldier runes/aegis/whatever mechanic is OP compared to what other professions have at their disposal is just poor design.

Uhm there’s nothing you absolutely need to do, but if you wanted ideas for what you can do at level 80 – well obviously since you’re in the dungeons forum you want to try out some dungeons, right?

Most would agree that the most challenging PvE content would be the final dungeon, Arah, and Fractal of the Mists (FotM) at level 40+.

You’d be working towards getting a full set of exotic gear and ascended accessories for your level 80 if you haven’t already done so. You can get ascended rings and backpiece from FotM, amulet from daily laurels and accessories either from daily laurels or guild commendations.

You can work your way towards exotic gear by doing dungeons – each time you run a dungeon you get some tokens, and when you accumulate enough tokens you can exchange them for armour pieces. The dungeon token vendor is in Lion’s Arch, Marriner WP I think. It’s a row of merchants – you won’t miss it on your map. Talk to each merchant to see which armour set you like the look of, and what stat combination you want to use. That’ll decide which dungeon you will run to get the tokens you need.

What kind of stat combination you should get is really your choice, and depends on your class and your playstyle, but most people would recommend ‘berserker’ (zerker) gear which is Power, Precision, % Critical Damage for optimal DPS. Of course if your damage largely comes from applying a large amount of conditions then you’d want Condition Damage gear (Rabid or Carrion). If you need gear advice it’s better to post in your profession’s subforum, but you can ask here and we can try to help you.

Also you may decide you want to get some gold instead, to buy cultural armour or work towards your legendary or commander or whatever. Path 1 of the Citadel of Flame (CoF) is currently the most profitable dungeon to run. This will be the door icon in Fireheart Rise. You can run there from Hoelbrak exit east > Wayfarer Foothills exit north > Frostgorge Sound exit north-east.

I used to main a Necro and then I made a Guardian for FotM. Haven’t looked back since. As much as I enjoy playing my Necromancer, it just can’t compare with what a Guardian brings to the team. Aegis. Perma-burn. Condition Removals. Stability. Regeneration. Retaliation. Interrupts. Knockbacks. Pulls. Immobilise. Projectile Reflection/Absorption. Light combo field. Team needs a little boost? Perma-might/frequent heals. Speed. Did I mention Line of Warding for Ascalon warriors?

There is absolutely no way I can spec my Necro to bring that kind of support to the team. Wells are good for conditions/boons/heals assuming everyone stands still in your little circle. The only skill I would consider remotely OP for Necro is epidemic and it’s kinda useless if there’s only one boss.

Ayrilana.1396:

I thought if you ranged attack in TA and dodged at the right time, you could evade the spider spawn? I haven’t done this since October so I could be mistaken or they changed this since then.

For CoF 3, there’s just 3 torches and the enemies stay around them stay dead for a decent amount of time. People struggle more on the next part where you have to defend the circle. Oh, and the tunnel part with the lanterns that explode. That was always fun…

They might have changed it since I last did TA regularly but I think the caster classes in particular tend to AoE the Nightmare Tree and aggro the spiders hanging around the front half of the room. They’re not a problem if the party shifts focus to take care of them first but even the most common sense things seem to be difficult to coordinate for PuGs.

Most PuGs I’ve been in fell apart at the torches so, good to hear that there are more people out there who are Path 3 savvy, so to speak x) Those are other things PuGs lack – patience, willingness to listen and willingness to wipe to learn – so despite some of us making an effort to take people on their first dungeon run to make it a more enjoyable experience, the majority of PvEers do their first dungeon in a PuG and end up hating it because the party tends to be just a total mess.

That said, I’ve been in good PuGs so they’re not all bad. It’s just that when they’re bad, they can be 4-hour-long dungeon run kind of bad.

I have not run SE or CoE before, but if you include the time it takes to assemble a PuG on gw2lfg.com and consider that they are PuGs and not a coordinated guild/speed run party.

Here are the paths that I know of that typically take under an hour in a PuG: AC Path 1 and 3, CM Path Asura and Butler, TA Path Up and Forward/Forward, HotW Path 1 and 2, CoF Path 1 and 2, Arah Path 1, 2 and 3.

Here are the paths that take one hour or longer: AC Path 2, CM Path Seraph, TA Path Forward/Up, CoF Path 3, Arah Path 4.

AC Path 2: it can be incredibly frustrating to coordinate a PuG to do the Oozes in the final boss.
CM Path Seraph (I think this is path 2): running the bombs to the gate can be a nightmare in a PuG.
TA Path Forward/Up: actually not too bad but most mixed bag inexperienced parties will struggle with Vevina, the Mesmer boss before the final boss. Also you will have to contend with an onslaught of spider adds at the final boss.
CoF Path 3: Hardly anyone runs it so when you do find a party to run it (this alone can take up a good part of that hour you allocate for this path) most people don’t know how to handle the torches.
Arah Path 4: It’s just long. You have to activate 4 or 5 statues and each statue has a mini boss. You do like 2 or 3 statues, and then there’s Lupicus in the middle, and then 1 more statue I think (Grenth? I haven’t done this in ages) and then final boss Dwayna.

EDIT: The fastest dungeon paths are: AC Path 3, CM Path Butler (3?), TA Path Up, HotW Path 1, CoF Path 1 (currently fastest in the game – 8~15 minutes depending on party composition), Arah Path 3.

EDIT #2: If it’s your very first time running a dungeon in explorable mode, I would suggest CoF Path 1 or HotW Path 1. You will need some DPS to do AC Path 3, you will greatly benefit from party members or yourself with reflect skills (wall of reflection, feedback, etc.) with CM Butler, TA Path Up you will want to find a party that kills along the way rather than skip or you’ll be dying a lot while you learn it, and Arah is arguably the hardest dungeon family in the game so you might want to leave that until you’ve done a few other dungeons first. There’s a lot of running and wallhugging required in Arah Path 3 so do stick together with the group.

If you’re in an NA server I’m happy to take you on a run of your choice, but I’m in an Oceanic timezone. Feel free to add me to your friends list anyway and message me when I’m on – we’ll get a group together and try out a dungeon =)

Every little thing you do gives you EXP – it’s designed to encourage you to go out into those green and blue smudges on your minimap and explore places you’ve never been to before.

Apart from what rozcinana said, I’d also encourage you to learn to use the dodge key (I think it defaults on c and v). Try attacking something that hits you from range like a centaur archer and then dodge projectiles, or something that has a huge windup that you can see like the centaur trampler that knocks you down – those are the easiest to learn on. This will prepare you for encounters later on when things will kill you in one or two hits if you don’t dodge.

Also, buy a Crude Salvage Kit when you’re next at a merchant. A salvage kit basically breaks down armour and weapons you don’t need into raw materials. You should be salvaging everything you can’t use/don’t need up until at least level 20. This is because some of the raw materials you get in return can sell for more on the Trading Post (default key o) than if you sold the armour back to the vendor. This is especially true for light armour (acolyte ____ or country _), which gives you jute scraps when you salvage them.

I don’t think that people don’t enjoy the game just because whatever class they play is bugged in some sort of way. Most people who enjoy the game don’t bother to come to the forums to tell ANet that they are enjoying it. It’s just the people who either have some sort of account issue, are complaining about X or Y or have found some bug that they want to report that post here.

I personally enjoy the game despite the bugs and the unfairness in class balance, but I do acknowledge that most MMO forums are not representative of how the game’s population as a whole feels about the game. The forums are usually filled with people who have something to rant and rave about, rather than people who would take the time out of playing the game they enjoy to write a nice thing or two to the developers.

generalraccoon.3857:

Afya.5842:

Please don’t…..cause I just started farming it for gold and ultimately my legendary…..(I know I jumped on the wagon a bit late….)

Please leave at least one route for farmers….

Worry not, there’s still a few other easy dungeon paths around. there will likely still be options for farming other than cof1, and this forums will definitely point the way

What he said ;D Most likely if they nerf CoF P1 the farmers will just move to HotW P1.

I thought that adding story mode completion into the daily was a small step forward, but it’s clearly not enough. I helped a guildmate complete his personal storyline by doing Arah story with him.

1. What reward do I get from doing Arah story again? Next to nothing.

2. Do you know how long Arah story takes? By the time you’re on the second Disneyland boat ride getting kitten from behind by zombie gorillas you just want it to end.

3. Do I have enough time to run Arah story with 300 guild members? No.

4. Maybe adding tokens as a story mode completion reward isn’t ideal, but would anyone in their right minds choose to re-run Arah story rather than Arah path 3 if you added 20 tokens as a reward to complete Arah story? Would anyone re-run CoF story rather than CoF path 1 for 20 tokens? Hell no. I could do Arah path 1, 2 and 3 in the time it takes to do Arah story for 180 tokens. As for CoF, we’ve got so many CoF tokens and salvaged so many CoF rares that anything that takes longer than 10 minutes is a waste of omnomberry bars.

I’m all for more gold and karma rewards, or something similar to the daily chest where you have a chance of getting a little something from the gem store like a basic transmutation stone or a repair cannister or a Black Lion Salvage Kit or something. As it is I’d rather kill 30 ambient creatures than sit around on gw2lfg.com bumping up my LFG post trying to assemble a story mode team together.

Going to echo what others have said. You don’t need AR for level 10. In fact it’s better to go without it. I did at least 10 runs of level 10 with 0 AR and as a result I learned how to watch out for the mechanics and dodge them early on. I have little trouble now doing level 40.

When you have AR you get lazy. You don’t have to dodge agony if agony only does 156 damage per tick. When I do level 20 I don’t bother dodging since agony does negligible damage to me. You’re just shooting yourself in the foot when you outlevel your AR requirement later on.

EDIT: But to answer your question, there is no way other than Laurels to get Ascended that you can slot AR into before encountering the agony mechanic at level 10 onwards.

Hi there and welcome to GW2. I have zero experience with WoW so I don’t quite understand the comparisons but I will try and answer your questions.

1) All classes can solo, yes, in the open PVE environment. Some classes have a greater learning curve than others. For example, levelling is fairly straightforward with a warrior. You just run around and kill things. It doesn’t really matter what buttons you press. It will however take some time to get your head around a class like the mesmer. They die more easily compared to warriors until you get the hang of phantasms and clones. But if player skill and experience is constant then you should have no problems picking up any class and going off on your own adventure.

When we get into dungeons – well, no one does dungeon runs solo unless they want to make a point – some classes are more preferred than others. Warriors, Guardians, Mesmers and to a lesser extent Thieves and Elementalists are preferred for dungeons. Necromancers and Engineers are fairly unwelcome in most PuGs and Rangers are kind of seen as pond scum. That said, I main a Necromancer and I don’t feel completely unhelpful in a dungeon party – I just don’t bring as much to the team compared to when I use my Guardian instead.

2) You get to try all the weapons out fairly early on so you know what your main attacks will be. All the classes unlock more useful skills later on culminating with the elites but by the time you’re level 30 or 40 you should be on par with all the other classes. There are no ‘late bloomers’ per se. Most people who exclusively do PvE content don’t fully comprehend their class and all the different builds they could use until they’re level 80 with 30 skillpoints to spare so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

3) I don’t know what this mechanic is but you can log out anywhere and you won’t lose EXP or anything. You’ll log back in right where you logged out and won’t be reset to any waypoints or anything.

We fought the Champion Risen Warrior once in Arah because some party member new to the dungeon for the first time aggroed him by accident and couldn’t de-aggro without running into Lupi.

Instant 10-15 minutes down the drain, most of it spent ressing a zerker ele who didn’t know how to dodge.

Reward: One blue Carrion Cabalist Hood.

Why do people say ‘just run, don’t fight’? Reward: one blue Carrion Cabalist Hood is why.

You should run with parties that want to clear everything – people specify that on gw2lfg.com – if you’re so keen on cleaning out the trash. But don’t make everyone else do it your way too.

I obtained a truckload of crafting boosters whilst getting my fused skin. I have a few alts I’d like to do the cheap and fast artificing/cooking/jewelcrafting levelling that seems to be trending. I know it’ll be different for everyone but I’d like to know how much materials I can expect to save by using a crafting booster. For example can I buy roughly 10% less materials from the crafting guide shopping lists? 20%?

Does the booster work on discoveries or only on making the same thing? (i.e. would you use it for artificing but not jewelcrafting, since the former is just potion-brewing and the latter is refining a whole bunch of ores and then a whole lot of discovering).

I haven’t done TA in ages but if it hasn’t changed in the past few months, it’s faster to alternate between Up and Forward/Forward (with different characters if you can). Forward/Up takes substantially longer if you’re with an inexperienced group.

You are getting to the events too late. You should be there before they start and not try to WP in after a kind guildie or friend or whoever informs you that the boss is up. So it’s unfair that guests or your own server’s large population pushes you into overflow, but I don’t have much sympathy for you if you’re not willing to wait out during the spawning window as it’s not fair for the people who have sat in the map waiting for the boss.

Flamenco.3894:

Rash.6514:

Please note that I agree that killing the trash takes time and the loot is not always good. Although a lot of people don’t see greens and blues as crafting materials, I think ANet could also help with the coins. This is what made me ask that question in the first place. Is in ANet’s plans that we take time on the dungeons? Or should it be more casual? If it should be more casual (or quicker), then they must really do something about the HP on the mobs.

The only thing I think is wrong is skipping content so much.

That’s not the only thing. Why are people compelled to skip content that much? Answer that and you will find the mysteries of the universe.

I think the really simple answer is that whether I skip or don’t skip, I still get 60 tokens, 26 silver and 177600whatever experience at the end. Now should I skip and save 20 minutes to get the same outcome as if I don’t skip – well, most people would prefer to skip, unless not skipping means that people keep dying (which happens quite often in places like TA).

However if there was an incentive to not skip – for example the mobs along the way have a good drop rate, or can drop like 2 tokens or something, then definitely you’d see more people opting to kill things.

I don’t really know how to describe it and I couldn’t take a screenshot and report it in game since hovering my mouse over the ring didn’t get caught in the print screen. Basically if your ring is positioned in the right half of your bank the stats box floats at the top of your screen and gets cut off so you can’t see what the main stats are.

But if it’s in the left half of your bank then it displays just fine.

I attached a picture I took with my phone camera to show you what I mean. Wondering if it’s just my screen resolution?

Uhm I don’t think the grawl attacking the camp is the first event in the chain. You need to clear out the grawl place with the marks on the walls and sacrificial offerings at the heart of corruption PoI to start the grawl attacking the camp.

Unless it happens to be a coincidence that every time I solo clean out that area, the grawl camp pre-event gets triggered.

Useful and wanted for most areas would be warriors, guardians and possibly elementalists. It’s really hard to answer this question because different people have different playstyles, so it’s best to level up each profession you’re considering until about level 10 (and get your free black lion key in the process lol) and see how you like it.

But it depends since thieves are great in WvW and sPvP but not so great in PvE.

Engineers unfortunately aren’t really a highly desired profession, and I think it’s partly because not many people play them so they don’t know the full potential of what engineers bring to the game, but it doesn’t hurt to try them out regardless and see what you like.

For fractals definitely warrior, but other dungeons will benefit from elementalists too.

I’m in a similar position as you – got my guardian alt to 80 and currently taking my time levelling a warrior, mesmer and elementalist as I pretty much only do dungeons. The elementalist is more fun to me because guardian and warrior levelling feels really similar and is starting to feel like a grind, but it’s a bit of a learning curve figuring out what attunement does what and which is best for which encounter.

The warrior on the other hand is basically unlock all signets + elite warbanner, get yourself a greatsword, 100 blades everything, use greatsword 3 and 5 for covering great distances quickly, join dynamic event zergs and boom level up. You don’t have to use much of your brain to play a warrior so in that sense an elementalist is much more engaging.

Yeah you don’t have to be able to equip something to transmute it as far as I know. Just have the Priory light armour and white generic armour in your inventory, double click on the transmute stone and drag and drop there.

It’s currently marginally cheaper to buy a new copy of the game for USD$40 (converts to roughly NZD$48) than to buy 5 character slots (which would cost me NZD$50) and I have the option of picking a different home world, which is nice.

Anyway I’m wondering if I’m able to link accounts somehow like how my GW account is linked to my GW2 account.

Also, have people just bought character slots or a new copy of the game? I have 6 character slots on my current account but one is for storage since it’s cheaper to deck out a mule with 20 slot bags than buy a new bank tab.

EDIT: Not keen on farming CoF for enough gold to buy new character slots so gold > gem is not an option for me.

It’s completely RNG. I got one in approximately 75 keys. Didn’t keep track as I got free keys from a few of the opened BLCs, but I know I bought 60 keys before getting one, and bought 5 keys again in the hopes of getting one more but gave up after that.

I spent NZD$50 and just under 5G to buy 60 keys and got at least 10 keys from chests. Didn’t get a skin. I understand it’s a gamble and it’ll be different for everyone, and I’m not complaining about it, but just wanted to chime in and say that the odds aren’t that great.

kittenzlenit.7648:

Farming for a specific skin is a slap in the face, yes.

Consider a casual player who only has the time required to run a 20+ fractal (which if you’re incredibly lucky is 1 hour but can take 3+ hours if you’re stuck in a terrible PuG) in the weekends.

At this point I’d have a better chance of getting struck by lightning by the end of the year than getting the one skin I want.

EDIT: Why can’t they implement the voucher system that they’re using for the Fused skins in the Black Lion chests? At least then you’re not shafted if you get a weapon you can’t use.

OK thanks guys. I think I’ll go ahead and level the alt. Maybe if the party I end up in already has a guardian, I can afford to go with a higher DPS option, and have some zerker/knight hybrid armour for a bit of extra toughness.

I understand that. But for example I’d definitely bring my Guardian to FotM because of WoR and Shield of the Avenger. Cuts time with Harpies and really helps with Shaman. It doesn’t matter if I become very good at the dungeon with a glass cannon if the 4 other party members wipe from lava elementals.

So I guess my question is more whether there are dungeons where I’d be more ‘useful’ unloading boatloads of DPS compared to, say, aegis and boons and reflect/absorb skills.

Hi guys,

I’m casually levelling a warrior alt so that I can be more useful to my team. However I’m a semi-casual player so I don’t think I’ll get it to 80 until May. By then CoF P1 might be nerfed so that no one does it anymore.

So I’m asking the community if zerker warriors are useful outside CoF farming. I’m currently using my PVT Guardian for all other dungeons I do – are there situations where zerker warrior > PVT guardian?

Thanks for your advice.