Guild Wars 2

I really don’t like that 0/20/20/0/30 build. I don’t use my burst skills, I prefer to build around regen with max adrenaline. It also lacks the 10% damage increase for greatsword.

The Goat.1940:

because it superior to staff in damage, sd way better than staff for single target burst. dd is far better than staff for mobility / damage combination. it dsnt matter what you think a caster should do, all that matters is what Anet designed the class to do.

That’s funny, because staff seems designed to do a lot of damage, especially attuned to fire… scepter I find to be lacklustre at best, and the animations are horrible.

Nah, I don’t do support. I’m there for damage, and so far staff damage is good. I honestly don’t see the point in using daggers… a caster should be a ranged class. Why would I want to be up in someone’s face when I’m wearing cloth armour?

My warrior was my first 80. I levelled him up slowly and painfully, still learning the game. I started out with sword and shield. I wanted him to be tanky, take some damage and be in the thick of the fighting in WvW, capable of some level of CC (locking down healers, that sort of thing).

I switched to greatsword around level 50/60 and found it much easier. I liked the high damage and mobility (except for hundred blades, I’ve never been a fan of melee channelled abilities) and it made levelling a breeze. I found that with my high spec into toughness/healing and my regen signet, I was still hard to take down whilst putting out some good damage.

At 80 I switched into Knights gear. My plan was an all-rounder instead of a specialist: good damage but with survivability. For my build, I wanted to use divinity runes… until I saw the prices. I levelled a few alts while I saved up.

I haven’t played my warrior for a while now. He’s still waiting, runeless and waiting to be taken into WvW properly. When I logged on recently I found all my spec points had been reset… and that my build had been rendered impossible. The traits I’m talking about, of course, are Heightened Power and Berserker’s Power.

Previously, my build was 20/20/20/0/10. Now I’m completely lost! I don’t want to go full berserker (I have a thief for pure DPS) and I’d like to be able to roam solo/in small groups as well as having a decent chance in zergs or keep defence/takes.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I don’t want to waste the gear I already have (Knights, Ebonblade). My alternate weapon sets vary between longbow and sword/shield.

I’ve been reading through the forums, and have a few questions.

Firstly, I see that staff is described as a “support” weapon in WvW. I’m guessing that means it’s not viable for solo/small group roaming?

Secondly, why do all the builds ignore fire? It seems decent to me, especially for staff. I hear that everything needs 30 in Arcana and Water… is this just for survivability? Is it possible to build a dps-heavy staff elementalist?

Currently, I find it works better than D/D at low levels, although I’m only PvEing at the moment.

Currently, I’ve died more times with this mesmer at level 7 than I did with my thief from 1-80…

I think I’ll roll an engineer instead.

Rolled a mesmer today. I’ve played one before (greatsword/staff) and it took a bit of getting used to.

However, I wanted to go sword/pistol from the start on this one. I’ve never actually seen a class/weapon set so bad at early levels. The number 3 skill seems bugged – doesn’t always fire. The number 2 skill doesn’t last long enough, the number 1 is okay, 4 does decent damage, 5 does basically no damage, okay CC and a huge cooldown.

My question is this: should I persevere? Is it possible to create a decent mesmer using sword/pistol? I know mesmer takes a while to get going, but I really only want to use this weapon set (as primary). If it’s not going to work out, I’ll roll an engi instead.

Would like to hear from anyone who’s made this weapon combo work, especially in WvW.

Straegen.2938:

5 more in marksman gets sharpening stone at 75% health or one of my favorite for fun traits cripple at 25%.

5 more in wilderness gets additional condition removal (always a good thing) or protection at 25% health which is kind of like adding 2k-3k to your HP pool.

I was thinking of the +10% damage at full endurance, but I do dodge a lot so not sure if it’s worth it. Auto-sharpening stone could be useful since I don’t use it (as I use traps) but the defensive options may be best.

It depends on gear, though. That’s what I’m really stuck on at the moment and I don’t seem to be able to find any advice on it. :\

Hello, I’ve been levelling a ranger recently with a shortbow condition build, using traps to compliment my other dot abilities.

Just hit 80 with 5/30/25/5, still deciding where to put the last 5 points (either 10 in Marksman or 30 in Wilderness).

I’m not too sure about gear. What stats should I be aiming towards?

I was thinking Rampager’s set, although I’m not sure which runes to use. I’m hoping to be mainly doing WvW, although I’ve only really used my ranger in sPvP so far (the build was great in that, but I know it’s different).

I’ve also been considering trying out a crit-shortbow build instead, but I don’t want to waste money on gear I can’t use for my build. Does anyone have any tips or advice?

Thanks.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think being able to keep a specific target burning for a whole fight really qualifies it as being viable in PVP. I know targets you won’t ever keep burning for most of a fight as well. Skilled opponents will not be concerned by damage from Guardian burning.

Hahahaha, people still use this argument? Okay then. Obviously everyone I’ve killed just needed to “learn to play” or whatever.

You probably think warriors who don’t use greatswords/axes are doing it wrong too, right?

Obtena.7952:

mathras.2450:

Oh, it’s rubbish in WvW? Based on what?

Based on how easy it is to remove (or ignore it), how infrequently you can apply it, how difficult it is to boost the damage, how relatively uneconomical it is to focus gear into improving it over other stats.

The only applicable approach to burning in WvW is with small group tactics using boosted passive VoJ (Virtue 20 at least) with sword/GS sporting Carrion gear. That’s a very narrow application. I would love to tell you burning was worth the effort in PVP.

I dunno about you but I can keep my target burning for most of the fight, and it’ll die pretty quickly… that’s using sword and shield.

KensaiZen.3740:

Burning is a damage booster. Not to be used as a primary source of damage. Swords and staff are the best weapons for this as they proc burning very often. If traited to burn the area around you, the staff is a mega aoe weapon.

But by going deep into burning you aren’t actually getting much back for it. The extra damage is only viable in an AoE situation i.e against 5 or more mobs. If under this number it would not be more efficient then just mighty blow the crap out of everything.

A decent farming spec, but not that powerful. Rubbish in WvW.

Oh, it’s rubbish in WvW? Based on what?

I’ll start by saying I’m playing on a laptop at around the minimum specs, with the settings all turned down. I’m also in Europe, if that’s relevant (I’ve heard there have been some issues for European players).

However, until recently the game ran fine. Sure, I couldn’t do much WvW without lag and events with lots of people might make my laptop struggle a bit, but usually it was completely playable.

A few days ago, my FPS suddenly dropped and I could barely play the game. I checked my PC for problems – ran every anti-virus and anti-spyware program I had, and decided it must be due to Windows update, which was the only thing I’d changed. So I used system restore and sure enough, the FPS was almost back to normal.

The last couple of days it’s got worse again, and in addition I’m having some other very weird problems such as: sometimes being unable to use the trade post due to “connection errors”, being disconnected completely from the game or having it crash to desktop and then being unable to get back in (I get told I must be behind a firewall etc.) but I doubt it’s a problem with my router as the rest of the net is working fine..

It all seems very strange and random. Last night my FPS was fine, but the connection issues popped up and I was repeatedly disconnected at random points. Today, I could log in okay but the FPS was terrible and the game was unplayable. This evening, I can’t load the game because of the connection problem.

Anyone have any idea what’s going on?

Thanks guys. I’ve tried all the weapons and like greatsword the best – I guess I was just wondering what stats/trait builds I should work towards because I’m not too good with traits and stuff.

Hello all!

I’m relatively new to the game – my highest is a warrior at level 44 – and I’ve been playing a mesmer recently. He’s only level 18, and I haven’t spent any trait points yet as I’m kinda unsure about what to go for.

So far my favourite weapon is the greatsword – the damage seems better than the others and the only ability I don’t like is the GTAOE (number 3) skill. It also looks great on my tiny Asura. I’ve been using scepter/torch as my alternative set but I hear staff is best to run with greatsword?

I’m hoping to focus on WvW when I’m a bit higher (and when I have a computer capable of handling it!) so I’m not really looking at dungeons or anything.

Basically, I wondered if someone could point me towards a relevant guide for greatsword/staff in WvW or just tell me what sort of spec I should aim towards? Much appreciated.

Stiv.1820:

mathras.2450:

I was really disappointed. Okay, I expected a lagfest (I’m currently playing on a creaky old laptop) but I wasn’t expecting dull, uninspired locations that I’d have to run between (with no mounts, of course) in order to reach a fight. I’m sure I’m missing something here…

I stopped here to comment. You say you really enjoyed DAOC? Do you remember the time it took to get back to the fight? 10 minute portal waits, long runs through the borderlands… At least here if you take a keep, it’s possible to get a waypoint built there for fast travel.

Edit: got to gear repair QQ. DAOC gear slowly broke down to useless and you had to make an entire new set!

The money stuff, daoc gave zero cash reward for player kills until NF. Here you can make a profit in WvW. You can’t judge it by going as an up-level. In daoc, do you remember trying to fight a purple? A red even? Yea.. can’t even hit them, at least here you can contribute as an uplevel. Seriously did we play the same game?

I’m sorry, but I don’t see how you can suggest this is better than DAOC in any way…? Sure, you had to wait for portals… but only to invade, you could run straight out into your own frontier with no loading screens because it was (before NF) one zone. Running through the borderlands was actually fun, I remember going there in the early days of the game as a level 30something Warrior with a Skald friend… skirmishing outside the Hib frontier keep and killing 5 equal level opponents through a combination of tactics and luck.

I have a lot of fond memories of that game, and most of the “negative” things about it I see as positive. Stuns, mez? That was half the fun, if you knew what you were doing you could wipe a badly-organised army with a group of 8. Balance was a mess, sure, but that’s the same for most MMOs… and don’t forget the sheer number of classes DAOC had… 44 classes. That’s right. Each class felt different. How many does GW2 have? Or WoW, or SWToR?

As for gear degrading, sure, but it took FOREVER compared to this game. And they changed it so that artifacts didn’t degrade permanently. I rarely had problems with gear breaking, and I played the game for years. Still, that was a different time when gamers demanded more complex games with an incredibly complicated array of stats to balance (weapon types and armour types matching up, for example). Since WoW this genre has gone mainstream and quality has suffered, inevitably.

That’s not to say I don’t like some things about this game. Combat feels more dynamic, although with any lag the dodge mechanic is often hilarious/frustrating. I also like weapon swapping and… erm, well I’m sure there’s other things.

Anyway, like I said, I’ll be trying WvW a little bit more before I make a final decision on it. But I’ve yet to see anything approaching a convincing argument for items degrading in WvW.

I appreciate the replies but as for not dying, in a server in which my world appears to lose all the time (Tarnished Coast) an impression which I received not just from participating in being facerolled but also from talking to veterans of WvW on that server, death isn’t just inevitable, it’s about as easy to avoid as a sackful of rattlesnakes.

This is precisely why I think they should remove the need to repair gear in WvW. I imagine most people wouldn’t care about losing as much if they didn’t have to pay for it with gold too.

As for the “part of WvW is avoiding fights” argument I think that’s kinda weak. Sure, I’ve played games in which teams would spend time trying to avoid the zerg or draw it elsewhere – that’s all well and good, but they only did it because they were horribly outnumbered and lacked the capabilities to do anything else. This is a game mechanics flaw, and it’s nothing new either – WAR was doing empty zone flips long before this game.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I was under the impression WvW was a three-way fight between 3 realms, and yet all I’ve seen is my realm (the losers) and another world (the zergers). Have I misunderstood something? I was hoping for a 1v1v1 situation like in DAOC, where the outnumbered side could screw the other two up merrily by wiping out the survivors of a battle or stealing a keep while the other two fought each other.

Thanks for the comments.

I know I was bolstered, obviously – but I had hoped for a tier system, particularly after hearing about tiered gear (I guess they meant tiers like in WoW rather than WAR).

I also know it’s harsh to judge it on a few hours, but the armour repair thing is really a problem for me. Let me explain why.

Firstly, even if I make the money back, it’s a hassle I can do without (and have done without in the last two MMOs I played, WAR and SWToR). It feels like a step backwards, and utterly needless – although in a game in which you can legally buy gold with real money I can see why they did it.

Secondly, it will make me play more cowardly. I already tend to play in quite a reserved manner in these games, as I dislike dying (well, it’s no fun for me if I don’t get into it…) but if I know I’ll be losing money each time, I will be much more likely to surf the zerg and stay out of harm’s way, instead of using my class to its potential. I imagine there will be others who think like this too.

Thirdly, it puts off non-RvR players who may venture into the frontier lands. Most PvErs I know who don’t like PvP hate it because of griefing. In a game where being killed means losing money, griefers WILL be more prolific. Actually, every time I got wiped/saw a zerg wipe someone, I witnessed corpse humping of some variety, usually from players with names like Xruinyoox or something similar. That I can handle – hell, I’ve played DAOC’s PvP server guildless, that’s an exercise in being griefed, but it WILL put off casual players, which weakens the whole experience in a game type based on numbers.

I know that some people are going to/have already assumed that I’m some noob who wandered into WvW, didn’t know what was happening and ran crying to the forums, but I have played this sort of thing for many years. This is just the weakest example of RvR I’ve seen so far. I’d almost prefer SWToR’s open world “anything goes but it’s entirely meaningless” style of PvP.

Anyway, I’ll give it a few more chances, but I’m not feeling good about it, which is a shame because I thought this could finally be the successor to DAOC (which was by far the best example of RvR, more so than WAR).

I have to be honest, I took a gamble and bought GW2 based on hearing good things about WvW. I’ve played a lot of MMOs, and the only ones I’ve truly enjoyed have been DAOC and WAR. The reason: realm vs realm; big open places to fight over objectives in in which anything (well, many things) are possible.

So, I spent the last week or so getting the hang of the game in PvE, learning the basics of a couple of classes. Then, today, I tried WvW.

I was really disappointed. Okay, I expected a lagfest (I’m currently playing on a creaky old laptop) but I wasn’t expecting dull, uninspired locations that I’d have to run between (with no mounts, of course) in order to reach a fight. I’m sure I’m missing something here…

As for actual keep defence, it was over in a matter of seconds on the several occasions I encountered one. Going near the wall was death for me, a warrior.

I have to admit I was surprised to be thrown in with level 80s – I thought that WvW was going to be tiered so that everyone could enjoy it, and also so that lowbies could learn the mechanics as they levelled without burdening the high level players (e.g, Warhammer Online).

Instead I was given the option of a tutorial which explained very little, and managed to join a group somehow, although the very basic UI didn’t allow me to see my party/warband.

After an hour or so of getting destroyed by either zergs, or one engineer that killed three of us without losing any health, I wasn’t having much fun.

Then I realised my armour was broken. That you actually have to repair your gear in WvW, and, given the speed it takes to a) break and b) for you to die, this is a gamebreaker for me. The reason I play these games is to kill players and get immersed in big battles, not to be FORCED to farm money just so I can constantly repair my gear from brief forays into an attempt at RvR.

There were lots of other things too: siege weapon control was clunky and annoying, the map wasn’t particularly accurate, keeps seemed quite poorly designed (unless the intention is to make them impossible to defend successfully).

I understand that this is what some people want from an MMO, but it’s not at all what I was expecting or hoping for. Yes, I should have done more research, but I took a risk. Tbh, I’m fed up of the way MMOs are heading at the moment. I feel like this will be my last one, unless there are plans in the pipeline to remove the equipment damage from WvW. And before someone accuses me of being a carebear unable to handle PvP with actual stakes – well, in the old days of MMO PvP where every man was for himself unless guilded… back then, you died a LOT less. The whole POINT of RvR is that it’s a team battle system in which you can expect to die a LOT if you’re even remotely trying to help your side win, unless you have the numerical advantage (which they seem to have failed to address completely).

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my rant. Hopefully some things will change.

Hello! First of all, I’m new to the game. I currently have a lowbie warrior at level 19. I’ve levelled him purely in PvE, not wanting to try WvW until I had a grasp of the character. WvW is, however, my main reason for playing.

I know what I want from a warrior – or at least, what I’ve enjoyed in previous games (I know this is a different game!)

Basically, I’d like to be able to soak up some damage, CC a lot and/or do some decent burst in melee to take down squishy enemies.

I played WAR for a few years and had a Knight and an Ironbreaker – the knight was specced for defence and CC, and the Ironbreaker for damage and CC (with a 2h). With my knight I would typically cause as much havoc as possible in the enemy ranks, knocking enemy healers into my friends or off cliffs. With my Ironbreaker, I’d run into the back lines and drop a few healers and casters or at least shut them down completely. Both styles of play were great fun, although the knight was more fun in keep sieges.

I’d love to play my warrior in a similar way, but I have no idea, as a newbie, where to start. If anyone knows a spec that would work like this – or plays their warrior in a similar way themselves, then I’d be very grateful for your advice.

I’d also appreciate some general tips on playing a warrior in WvW.

Oh, and I’m not keen on playing as a ranged class except for plinking foes from keep walls, or perhaps catching a runner.