Guild Wars 2

I was all set for some total kitten from the OP as is usually the case with threads with these sorts of titles, however, it makes a lot of sense. I skipped a portion of the living world story because I didn’t log in when it came out, and was a bit confused by the events in Heart of Thorns. I do have the fortune of having come back right in time to catch the living world finale, which works in my favour. I also happen to not give a good god kitten about 90% of the story and lore in GW2 because it seems to have been written for 15 year olds. I would not be surprised if the next addition to Destiny’s Edge was an exchange student with an uncanny ability to pilot mechas. Nevertheless, for a fan of the lore, this would be potentially very, very off putting! To the point where I would fight for a refund, in all honesty. It’s probably not something ANet have thought about too much, but good point, OP.

Sorry OP, only good players are allowed to get a legendary weapon. You need more practise, that’s all.

I dunno, longbow berserker warrior is pretty destructive. I definitely don’t feel underpowered laying down the burn and watching the condition damage stack up. I reckon your warrior deserves another look!

Before I got the Elite spec, I ran my warrior with Arms, Defence and Discipline using rabid stats and swords + longbow. You are right about range, and with sword’s leap, you can dive right back into your longbow AoE for a combo. I rarely had any problems playing like that, I had so much adrenaline I could clear conditions more or less whenever I wanted by swapping to bow and laying down the fire field.

The Sylvari are my favourite race, so I’m all for seeing more characters from their lore!

Dante.1508:

Please no more Salad

I swear to God any expansion that focusses on the Asura will be an expansion I shall avoid like the plague! It’s bad enough that Taimi exists in all her stunted patheticness, but if I have to put up with more of the wee rainbow munching potogold seeking bar stewards I will lose my kitten. The Asuran race needs to be collectively rammed into the SAB where they can be enjoyed as punching bags in place of that poor shop keeper’s cart.

Taimi is awesome and the best NPC guildwars 2 has ever created since release, if it wasn’t for seeing her in Hot expac i wouldn’t have even bothered purchasing Living Story 2..

What the hell is wrong with you to dislike such an awesome npc :o

As I alluded to, she is simply completely cliche. She fills every trope imaginable bringing nothing interesting or any sense of purpose to the table. She is every teenage exchange student turned mecha pilot, every detective turned vigilante, every downtrodden underdog who must win the respect of her peers. She is nothing but a burden to the rest of the team and she lacks personality. In the face of more driven characters like Caithe or Marjory, she is little more than a living, limping disability. Did I also say her voice sounds like chalk on a whiteboard? Because it does. Wretched little thing. ANet missed an opportunity to make her truly interesting by melding her into her golem in the underground city, that would have been cool. But oh well, hopefully she has been written out of the story and we can get someone new to replace her. A Skritt character would tick all the boxes for cute underdog, and actually be a cute underdog.

They are terrible! They can’t be cute, because they have shark teeth. They can’t be comedy relief, because they are so full of themselves. Their stories aren’t interesting, and are completely cliche. The entire race simply fails at every conceivable level. Moto is the single exception to this, so as I said, the Asura may make a return every April Fools festival for a little while.

I swear to God any expansion that focusses on the Asura will be an expansion I shall avoid like the plague! It’s bad enough that Taimi exists in all her stunted patheticness, but if I have to put up with more of the wee rainbow munching potogold seeking bar stewards I will lose my kitten. The Asuran race needs to be collectively rammed into the SAB where they can be enjoyed as punching bags in place of that poor shop keeper’s cart.

You could try swapping bits of your accessories to soldier’s stats, but as mentioned and imo, your best bet is to slot a defensive trait line. The warrior’s berserker line is also very good for condition cleanse, and the warrior has looads of skills to avoid damage with and to quickly jump away from opponents if you get overwhelmed. I would swap your build before you swap your armour stats.

^ might as well end the thread here.

Thanks for the info folks!

I’ve recently brought my Thief into Fractals, and have acquired 20 AR with a full berserker/scholar dagger/dagger + shortbow build. My equipment is exotic except for my mainhand dagger, rings, amulet and accessories, which are ascended. For the most part, I find myself doing fine but my skill level isn’t high enough to dodge around certain encounters. Mai is a good example, where I feel that striking a compromise between damage and a bit of extra health would probably stop me from going down as often. Ideally, I would not be eating damage like a fat little piggy, but until I can convince my Thief to stop chowing down on the hurt, I’m looking to raise my health pool to compensate.

So. I happened upon some old threads by Wish exploring the effect of mixing soldiers and berserk, vs berserk and valkyrie. Here’s one:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief/first

After a bit of study, it seemed to me that swapping out some berserker armour in favour of soldiers pieces was the way to go, and that in general, going with valkyrie stats was the inferior choice. However, that was two years ago, and things may have changed.

What would you fellow Thieves recommend for a little extra health without gimping damage too much, and what’s the current word on valkyrie vs soldier + berserker stats?

For the backpiece, or the bow?

It could be a coincidence, but here are a few suggestions.

1. The colour palette in some of the zones is dark, you maybe straining your eyes.
2. Poor posture can cause cramps in your neck muscles, causing headaches. If you sit up straight and massage your neck, and the pain goes away or subsides briefly, this could be it.
3. As mentioned, dodgy framerates can cause headache. Even more oddly, for me, I have to play with vsync off in all games. When it is on, the smoothness of motion actually causes my eyes to hurt. I also turn off all motion blur effects and keep post processing to a minimum.
4. Coincidence – like I said, maybe it is just fluke and thousands of hours of gaming has finally caught up with you, it is entirely possible depending on your age. Im 32, and I’ve started keeping the lights on when I play because I have found myself getting headaches and neck pain from low light / squinting.

Hope you figure it out OP!

The point about dungeons being dead – does it matter? As far as earning gold is concerned, I must admit I was worried, as speed running them was how I got the cash for all them loathesome lodestones that Bolt needed, not to mention 500 ectos. However, inspite of this last night I decided to continue my thief’s personal story (still in Tyria), get hero points for the Daredevil spec, and see how much gold I could earn in the process. The result was actually spectacular! Not only did I meet a new player, we partied up, wondered around, did hearts, started events, and even tool part in an excellently organized triple trouble. In that time, I made almost 20 gold, and had far, FAR more fun than I ever had smashing through the usual dungeon suspects. Everyone and their mum needs textiles now, pretty much any drop white or above is absolutely worth the salvage. Im actually quite looking forward to doing a bit of world completion on the alt, bravo Arena Net!

Regular Tyria was just too easy, it took the meaning from playing the game and simply reduced it to a time sink that you sunk time into, and got reward out. Im not really interested in the rewards when I play games, I enjoy the journey much more. To me HoT represents a paradigm shift in difficulty and dynamic event structure. You can’t just waltz through the zones and be guaranteed success, you need to pay attention or you go splat. That to me, is cracking good fun!

Damio Roncartia.7041:

I always kind of laugh at these threads, because I was on the minute HoT went live, and the nerfs have been real. Current HoT is a cakewalk compared to what it was when it first went live. HP difficulty has been nerfed into the floor, enemy damage and numbers have been reduced, terrain hazards have been all but removed in some areas. I recently revisited a few a few HPs on alts I had been actively avoiding because of how maddeningly frustrating they were at release, like the champion frog in the canopy over VB, or the Mordrem in the abandoned temple at the low area of the start of VB, only to find that the frog had been turned into a commune, and the champion Mordrem had been turned into a vet. Let’s not forget the Vampire Broodmother who could insta-heal herself to full in the canopy too. There have already been plenty of nerfs, and the difficulty scale has reached a point where it’s fun, but not unbearable. Anymore, and it’s going to become as mind-numbingly easy as the rest of Tyria. I’m not normally one to say this seriously, but guys, git gud.

Really? Bugger it! Remember the original Orr? Man that was something. When I landed in Maguma when HoT hit the difficulty was very reminiscent of old Orr, perhaps a wee bit easier since I knew my toon pretty well by then. I was looking forward to bringing my Thief alt over for a bit of a challenge. Seems like it will be easier than I thought.

Damio Roncartia.7041:

nosleepdemon.1368:

They were only common drops if you were good enough to get to that level. Whether or not they were supposed to be left out of the game is irrelevant to the situation now presented, where old school pvpers who played for little to no reward deserve recognition. Contrary to popular ‘gamer culture’ belief, well no, contrary to just popular cultural belief, we are not all entitled to everything we want. The mentality that ‘everyone is a winner’ is completely bogus and narcissistic. Accept that at the very least, the opinion that old players who stuck with a broken system for the love of the game deserving unique recognition is valid. And, that however accidental, it is not unreasonable for these rarer skins to be it.

/refers to a request to bring back something trivial as self-entitled
/goes on to say people deserve recognition for a trivial task
Ha.

They were only trivial if you actually accomplished the thankless task of obtaining them. So yes, people do deserve them and wanting some sort of unique recognition for taking part in the structured pvp system back in the day is reasonable. Eh but why would you care right? You just want the things for your wardrobe, mr locust.

They were only common drops if you were good enough to get to that level. Whether or not they were supposed to be left out of the game is irrelevant to the situation now presented, where old school pvpers who played for little to no reward deserve recognition. Contrary to popular ‘gamer culture’ belief, well no, contrary to just popular cultural belief, we are not all entitled to everything we want. The mentality that ‘everyone is a winner’ is completely bogus and narcissistic. Accept that at the very least, the opinion that old players who stuck with a broken system for the love of the game deserving unique recognition is valid. And, that however accidental, it is not unreasonable for these rarer skins to be it.

Josh XT.6053:

John Smith.4610:

Things YOU know as facts:
1. I can buy unlimited items off the Tp without any server limitations- FALSE
2. I can pick up unlimited items into my inventory from the TP without any server limitations – FALSE
3. I can set arbitrary buy order prices at unlimited speed without server limitations. – FALSE
4. Doing any of these things in reverse (selling) causes an error to pop up – what?
Things devs have stated as facts in the past:
-series of random ad hominems that clearly make your points more valid…right?

Just because you don’t see the technical implementation of some aspects of the systems doesn’t mean it’s magic.

Doesn’t really answer any questions. I know as a fact that software development isn’t magic, I’ve been doing it for 20 years. The limitations are generally set by hardware or network connections. If those are your limitations – upgrade. See NCSoft earnings report and tell me how this isn’t possible.

I don’t really know why you’re being defensive about it, lets try to be constructive and think about what can be done. Why are other games not limited in the way that you are? Maybe utilize your community who may just have some ideas you missed.

I pegged you for a dba or sql monkey until I read about your theory that limitations in software engineering are generally either hardware or network based. Now I can only assume you are in fact, not a programmer at all.

Gotta love the PvEBros in this thread. On the one hand people complain about being BTFO in HOT zones, and then on the other you get threads like this where people claim that an excellent defensive stat is useless because pros gotta DPS. Your DPS is junk when you are downed or dead. Being able to survive one hit instead of no hits means that one tiny mistake that none of the pros ever make won’t get you killed.

tl;dr: Don’t get toughness if you’re a pro and don’t mind putting other players at risk to rally you when you inevitably get disintegrated. For everyone else, you might consider tanking up a wee bit.

Aah ok that makes sense, thanks folks!

Has anyone experienced a bug in SAB where picking up baubles no longer awards them to your inventory? I’m trying to get the baubles achievement(s) and this is making it rather hard…

Sartharina.3542:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Artemid.3925:

…so what would hard actually look like, to you?

Probably removing (most of) the hidden part of all the traps. As it is, it’s a test of memory, not reflexes or strategy. Not even a test of observation and attention like Pain Cliffs is.

You find a guide, because otherwise you’ll be dying a lot, and you memorize the path. Done.

If it were challenging/hard content, rather than punishing content, then you wouldn’t need a guide to avoid a hundred deaths.

That might be hard mode for the regular game, but it wouldn’t fit the Zeldathic theme. In fact, the entire reason I don’t like games like that is that they are set up to be nearly identical each time, that the entire challenge of any mode is about learning the route and remembering where to turn, twist, hide, fight, avoid fights, etc.

Again, I think the point here is that the OP doesn’t like the challenge of tribulation mode. That should be okay with them and with us — SAB isn’t for everyone and Tribulation Mode is for a smaller subset.

Just because we don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s poorly designed or inherently flawed.

tl;dr it’s okay not to like SAB and it’s okay not to like Tribulation Mode. That doesn’t mean they aren’t “hard” and “harder.”

Gonna disagree, but I think we’re just using different ideas of what “hard content” means.

I’m not talking about something you’d get from raids or the like. I’m not asking for truly hardcore content.

I’m just talking about people calling punishing content to be the same as challenging content. Some folks like punishing content – that’s fine and all. I don’t mind it, though I don’t find it enjoyable. I also dislike so many achievement points (over 200) being locked behind such a niche content.

For example, Agemnon.4608’s example of: “Imagine what the developers could do with expansion maps? You’re dodge jumping to a ledge and narrowly make it, then you perform a tight dodge jump around the corner…only to be confronted with the next expansion’s equivalent of shadow reapers and mordrem tormentors? And they’d respawn too.”

That’s punishing content, not challenging, and not necessarily difficult either. And while there are (obviously) some who enjoy that, it is not something that should be considered a “main attraction”. Tribulation mode is considered a primary (well, secondary – but certainly not tetriary) content to SAB, given that the majority of SAB’s rewards (half if not more) are locked behind it.

… I fail to see what makes it ‘punishing’ instead of ‘challenging’. Can you enlighten me? There is a challenge in being able to pull off a complex platforming sequence flawlessly while navigating hard-to-see/invisible obstacles.

I dare say today’s gamer demands their reward on a silver lined plate, but it mustn’t be too easy! That would make it trivi~STOP! That’s too hard! kitten it, you code monkies! Can you not get anything right?! I said I want it all! But I still want to feel exclusive!… Where’s my jewelled sucker?? Lowis! The meatloaf!

I heard that use of the coin also gives the player a yellow aura that gets more distinct over time, is that true?

Ha! I always wondered why only the super mace flailed. Since I don’t have any of them, I just thought the others flailed around normally, just not in the preview. I quite like how the flailing works, I’d fix the bug.

I feels for you OP, I had the same opinion when I started w1z1 and got through my first set of five lives without leaving sight of the picnic. I raged fairly hard at the bouncing rocks and chasm part too, that in itself consumed more lives than the entire rest of the zone. I also got very angry when I realised that the bar steward youtuber whose video I was watching got in a VERY lucky shortcut near the end with a pixel perfect jump, that I did not need to waste 3 continues on. But now I have that little green coin, have farmed 3-4x more continues than I used for w1z1, and am looking forward to w1z2. I guess this is what they meant by “I like this sort of thing, don’t judge me”. Best. Festival. Ever.

Aaaah, whoops! I suppose they didn’t say that HOT would ever enjoy the same sort of bonus material that vanilla did, and they didn’t state the legendaries would come in HOT or even that they would be exclusive to new expansions. Although I can see how that might irk folk still waiting for features announced during the development of HOT. I might buy the expansion after its release like I did HOT after I was reasonably sure I would get my money’s worth. With that said, just like with HOT where I got the cdkey on discount, I doubt I would pay the full price. In my opinion, an expansion should never cost as much as a full game.

There’s a new expansion coming? What announcement are we talking about?

KestrelGirl.9267:

This!
I was running the game on a Macbook Pro Retina (school laptop… lol, private school perks) because I thought my little-toaster-that-could ($300 Windows 10 laptop with Intel integrated graphics and horrible battery life) wouldn’t be able to handle such an amazingly realistic-looking game. Having a high-res screen was nice, but I couldn’t go higher than low settings without a serious drop in FPS. It was already only 20-30.

Then I tried running the game on my little potato.
Stable 30 fps on low settings. Bumped it up to medium shaders. Slight drop, and a little less stable, but looking great. Up to high shaders, and everything is gorgeous. THE GAME STILL RUNS. SMOOTHLY. AT 10-15 FPS.
I can’t use those settings in large-scale fights/PvP for obvious reasons, but now I know that I can take pretty screenshots on a craptop!

If you reckon 15 fps is smooth, you may want to stop stabbing yourself in the eyes, or whatever it is you are doing to cause such hideous damage to your sight.

Sounds like a L2P issue to me. I actually treat endurance as a resource now, and swap weapons not just when it’s convenient to maintain efficient use of cooldowns, but also when condition stacks are highest to get the most use out of condition clear effects. The choice of whether to straight up EZ roll out of significant damage, or swap to my sword and leap to reset my position and condition waves is just an example of how much more I tend to think about what I’m doing. I think it’s brilliant.

Of course they left her down there on her own, as Pact commander I welcome the opportunity to watch another one of my incredibly annoying entourage bite the dust. I actually ordered her into the golem but she wouldn’t listen, so leaving her to get eaten was the next best thing. I only allowed Rytlock to live because his antics were mildly amusing, but on the whole, most of my subordinates better fall in line; their brash actions and disrespectful talk-back put the mission in jeopardy more than a few times. Pricks.

Yo OP, don’t listen to Gele, the Warrior is super great fun in HOT! I’ve never had such a blast, maybe Ol’ Gele has burned out or spent every one of those three thousand hours running berserker? :P

Here’s how you PvE with a Warrior now:

1. Slot Elite spec
2. Get loads of condition damage and burn duration
3. Dust off that Longbow
4. Watch your burn ticks hit 10k
5. Giggle

Just don’t forget to dodge when the big target appears above your head!

Think of navigating Tangled Depths as a task rather similar to driving a car. If you are one of those people that doesn’t always indicate when changing lanes, or has trouble figuring out a roundabout or four way stop, or kindasorta meanders between lanes because, hey, four lanes is confusing… Well, perhaps you should stick to cycli~ Verdant Brink. Tangled Depths is actually quite intuitively designed once you understand its symmetry, and isn’t super hard to navigate unless you have issues with spacial awareness.

Cameirus.8407:

been trying for a week, organising maps an hour in advance…..

Finally just given up. Its just absurd with the way map populations are so low.

You’d think that the mega server system would take care of low population problems, but I’ve also ended up on maps with few players and it’s rather puzzling. Even with a large number of players doing something else, there should be enough to fill in the gaps and get some large populations together. There must be some rules set for match-making with the mega servers that’s causing a problem.

TD is probably my favourite map out of all the maps because it has so many distinct areas. When I first found that central cavern and finally figured out what all the “x has appeared in y lane” stuff was about I was seriously impressed. From a technical standpoint, the map is quite an achievement imo. The meta event is quite hard, and I’ve only tried it a few times however with that said, I don’t get what the deal is with people absolutely needing it done right now. Tequatl was also hard, and then he got nerfed to the point of just being a complete joke, where’s the fun in that? I’d rather have an event that’s rock solid and requires herculean coordination to complete, that actually feels like an accomplishment when it’s beaten, than some watered down joke that any Tom, kitten and Harry can do with their eyes closed.

Looks promising!

Bump, this happened to me earlier, extremely frustrating. Glad I wasn’t far into the map. I recall this being a problem with Tequatl too, so I doubt it’s something they are able to address. I read somewhere that it’s an issue with the game not being able to allocate memory passed a certain point regardless of how much RAM you actually have. In any case, a rejoin feature seems like the best we could hope for, but again, this has been floated around since Tequatl and never been implemented, so it’s likely that ANet have no actual way of keeping a player’s progress and keeping a slot open for them in a public instance.

Aaand then DS crashes the client and I can’t rejoin because the map is full, and ANet can’t program a way for the server to know when a client has quit on purpose, and when their game has just buggered itself up. Well, the game was good up until the end!

Finally, on the 8th try, the game decided that “take to the skies” really did mean take to the skies! This isn’t a hard or complicated fight, but it’s certainly a dice roll as to whether or not it doesn’t bug out!

I can’t get passed the second “big attack” because there’s no way I can become airborne… Brilliant.

Holy cow, this is the 5th or 6th attempt now, and it’s not because I don’t understand the mechanics, it’s because it’s so, SO bugged! What’s worse, is that Caithe keeps me alive for the most part so I can’t even easily reset it. Jesus!

Then again, it’s not like Arena Net have a great track record for final boss encounters…

Really poor show, all this build up, and another final battle that’s a complete let down.

Logged back in hoping that maybe it had been fixed as per the patch notes. Nope Did get the Bladed Coat in the VB meta event though, yay!

Wonder how many replies this needs before a red post pops up… In the mean time, can I assume that most of us have legendary weapons?

hands out cigars

Light up, ladies & gents.

Good Lord! Stop the presses! You’re right, this is a major issue! I’ve word that Arena Net have, as per your suggestions, made the leggings skin-tight and kitten -hugging. Also, they fired some guy.

I got full clear on verdant brink with jump shroom and gliding 2. You were expecting full access to everything right off the bat? Where is the fun in that? I wouldn’t recommend trying to clear VB though, it would be too much work.

Same here, just completed it and was wondering where the reward was… Bit of a disappointment!

I thought the little target indicator that appears above your head was a pretty obvious give away that you should get out of the way. Must be just me.

I’d like to add my thanks as well, I’ve been having loads of fun just exploring around and taking part in all the little things that are happening across the jungle. There’s really a sense of grandeur to the new zones that I’ve not felt since first setting foot in Orr and bareing witness to the Pact’s war effort first hand. The difficulty is spot on, and again very reminiscent of the vanilla beta and Orr, the expansion has really been a job well done imo, cheers!

This isn’t a casual vs hardcore issue imo, it’s a fundamental difference in how people prefer to play their games. There are those players like me (Im casual) who play games for fun, are not in any hurry to finish them, and like the feeling of gradually working toward a goal. It took me two years to get my Bolt, for example. I didn’t burn out because I don’t play games for the soul purpose of reaching the carrot at the end of the stick asap. The other kind of player, is the player who needs everything right now because reasons. They throw up this facade about grinding this and grinding that, but really they shall never be happy, because deep down they aren’t really enjoying the game for the sake of having fun, they have conditioned their minds to require reward as fast as possible. It is these kinds of players who have been loudly complaining about the content being “gated” when in reality, it’s this deep rooted assumption that they must be rewarded simply for existing. I fear that they will not be happy, because psychologically they have conditioned themselves to always need something more. It’s sad, but they represent a growing trend in gamers who have become dependent on gaming as a lifestyle choice, instead of something that they simply enjoy.