No, but the quartz crystal node does give those quartz crystals, which are essential for precursor crafting and a lot of armor insignia (celestial, etc.) My point was just that (as the OP stated), it would be nice if it would rely on map currency rather than gold and that Roundabout’s statement that it was dirt cheap isn’t necessarily true for all players.
Well I guess both are a means to an “Ascended” end. Just one that needs crafting, a time gate if you will… and one a currency gate.
The bloodstone gets you account bound best of stats/slot items that has the ability to be changed up, like a legendary, at very little cost.
Agreed.
From a balance perspective you also need to consider how the Quartz and Bloodstone nodes lead to the ascended items. Quartz/Celestial is still gated behind level 500 crafting and the Charged Quatrz, whereas Blood Rubies are a currency to directly buy the items… no other gates/restrictions imposed.
And seeing that the blood ruby items can have any ascended PvE stat, and can be stat swapped… it is a much more powerful currency that every other harvest node.
When you are looking for a GPU, don’t look at the GB amount… RAM doesn’t tell you anything about a GPU’s performance. Have a look at this for relative performance between generations of GPU: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html
GW2 should get good performance out of anything on the 10th row and above if you pair it with a good CPU, like an i5.
Just FYI, I love jumping puzzles, but I’m not happy about the super hard ones. I’ve never been able to finish Mad King’s Clock Tower or Winter Wonderland and have given up. I’ve finished the rest, but Skipping Stones drove me to the edge of madness. I was actually ok though with the aetherblade one.
I actually like all the JPs you mention… they add a different flavor of JP to the game. Especially the Mad King and Winter JPs… instead of the slow, pixel-perfect approach to every other JP, they are a “hesitate and you’re dead” Super Meatboy-like rush.
I’d suggest levelling your ranger to 80 to learn the basic game systems in a more manageable way (i.e. Dodging, breakbars, positioning, mob attack patterns). Once you have that under your belt, you’ll be able to return to your necro and just concentrate on the class specific mechanics.
What is it about the heavy armor classes that you hate? Other than not having viable healing roles, they’re fairly diverse in terms of play style and roles.
Should I 1st get a 1060 and an ssd to see how things change and then think about the cpu?
That’s probably the most reasonable way to go about it. The SSD by itself will completely change your PC experience (doesn’t improve FPS but will speed up almost everything else hugely)
OP mentioned he already have an i5. Its pretty pointless to buy a new one, you need a top end i7 to notice any real difference. Just OC that sucker and hope for the best, lol (well assuming you have a good sink and not godawfull stock).
You can’t overclock a non-K Intel CPU.
And I’m not sure if a i7 6700K is any better than a i5 6600K for games… none of the gaming benchmarks I’ve seen show much improvement between the two. The bigger improvement comes from the change from Sandy bridge to Skylake. Each generation improves IPC by ~5-10%, and Skylake is 3 generations ahead. That said, IPC =/= FPS, so I’d still say the value is debatable for games.
I’d rather it be left the way it is… intentional or not, it acts as a counter for all the salvages you’ve ever done.
AFAIK, you can’t get that stat from any other source, not even the API.
But you’re right, OP doesn’t need to upgrade everything at once. There is nothing in the foreseeable future that will break compatibility of the various components… even the LGA 1511 motherboards look like they will support several generations of the “lake” CPUs
Your GPU could do with an upgrade… a RX480 or GTX 1060 6GB will cost you 250-300€ and give very good 1080p performance in most games. For GW2 specifically, you could probably go down to an RX460, RX470 or 1060 3GB as GPU isn’t as critical.
The CPU is a more borderline decision… Intel CPUs have finally got to the point where upgrading from Sandy bridge to Skylake can give noticeable performance increase. Is the increase significant enough to be worth your money?… that’s hard to say. I can’t find anyone who’s done GW2 benchmarks comparing the different generations.
I know they are not using your specific CPU, but this gives you a sense of the improvement you may get: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Skylake-vs-Sandy-Bridge-Discrete-GPU-Showdown
But if upgrading to Haswell/Skylake gives you other features you want/need (USB3.1, Thunderbolt, M.3, etc)… then by all means go for it. For GW2 or other games, a i5 variant will be adequate… preferably the highest clocked one you can afford. Very few games make use of the hyper-threaded cores of the i7.
BlackOcean, it won’t really matter. I’ve got an i7 with an R9 280X. Admittedly the GPU is two years old tech, but I can run everything in this game at max settings. GW2 will reliably crash once or twice per play session (1-2 hours of play) because of the DX9 based engine it runs on.
Erm, that’s terrible advice. If “it doesn’t matter” and he goes and gets an AMD A6, he’s going to hate you forever. It’s true there hasn’t been significant progress in CPU and GPU tech is the last half decade, but that doesn’t mean he can pick any part off the shelf and have a good gaming experience.
I would go for ascended weapons and trinkets at the very least, as the stat increases are more meaningful than armor. If you’re not in a hurry, you can then slowly chip away at the armor.
Remember, other than fractals, there are some cheap ways to get a few pieces of weapons and armors. I’m ignoring the low RNG options like pvp chests, Teq and TT wurm;
Weapons: elite spec collections
Armor: Leyline armor collection, bioluminescent armor collection
Backpack: Blood rubies vendor
Ah, I’m not a crafter so I’ll just be going with Giver’s stuff.
Just ask in your guild or map-chat if anyone would be willing to craft the gear for you (provided you supply the mats). Sure, you run the risk of someone running off with your stuff, but most people wouldn’t do that in this community.
That won’t work. Viper’s is account bound so he needs to craft it himself.
I’d recommend against proofs of heroics IF you plan to do HoT PvE or raids AND are still working on your masteries.
WvW/EoTM is nice and quick for HPs, but you miss the chance to simultaneously gain HoT xp and MPs. Masteries will make your travels through the jungle much easier, and some are mandatory for certain raid encounters.
Just to clarify… those insignias are for crafting ascended directly. The MF uses exotic insignias, not ascended, for stat conversion. Those are a more reasonable 1-15g per insignia, with the exception of Minstrel’s and Trailblazer’s (30+g).
But I’d agree that the cost of crafting vs MForging isn’t significant percentage-wise. But, the economy changes, so when you’re ready to make your armor, just do your own calculations using the websites linked above and see which method is more worthwhile. Also have a look at GW2efficiency… by putting in your API, it’ll be able to take your preexisting mats into the cost calculations. https://gw2efficiency.com
Anet had 50% off HoT a couple of months ago for the beginning of LS3. They will probably repeat it for the HoT anniversary or the holidays so keep a look out.
I’m gonna throw this tidbit into the conversation cuz i’m curious to see what opinions are on this. One of the arguments I’ve heard against condition duration as opposed to condition damage is that it stretches your damage out over time, so unless you are using the character for content that has a lot of boss fights (fractals, raids, WB, etc) where the fight is gonna last a long time, you end up losing damage because the creature dies before your damage finishes ticking, so it’s possibly better to beef up the damage so it bursts more than it drags out.
Thoughts?
Condition duration doesn’t spread your existing damage out over more time. Your conditions still do the same damage per second, but they have more seconds to cause damage. As you say, you could just have higher condition dmg stat, but because viper’s gives both damage and duration, it outperforms other stat combos that only give condition dmg.
Conditions in general need time to ramp up. I think what you’re thinking of its the condition vs direct damage argument. In open world, the argument is moot because trash mobs die quickly regardless of damage type. Dungeons are the only PvE content where you may be better off with direct damage.
If you’re in dungeons, fractals or raids, the best strategy in many encounters is to stack within melee range even if you are a ranged class. That is so that you can share boons and heals, and to prevent the mob from running all over the place. So if you are aiming to do those content, ranged or melee doesn’t make much difference in most encounters.
Edit: oops, didn’t read the other post before writing my own
Sorry, but this is false. Living Story s3 requires HoT to be unlocked and accessed, so if he do not have HoT purchased he won’t be unlocking any episodes and the map asssociated with them and most likely will have to pay a small ammount for each episode in the form of gems afterwards if he wants to access them if he misses the period when they are free.
Actually, Incalpatus is right. Anyone without HoT can log in and “reserve” LS3. But they can only play LS3 without any additional payment when they buy HoT.
1) Yes and no. No because you can’t get any of the HoT 4 stat combos, the insignia recipes are account bound and require HoT to buy from vendors, so you can’t craft or forge these stats.
2) As others have said above.
3 & 4) Everything that was available before HoT launched is still available to you, but you won’t get anything new. The exception being the festivals and any overhauls to pre-HoT content (e.g Shatterer, fractals, wvw, pvp). Anet are unlikely to add new dungeons, world bosses or maps to the core areas.
+1 to Donari on this. Especially on the part about some more physical-looking staffs being needed. Other than Bo, there’s not much out there for daredevils -__-
Are you running G-sync? I don’t have personal experience, but I’ve heard G-sync doesn’t play nicely in windowed mode. Try disable it, you should have enough GPU horsepower with your 1080 to not need it for GW2.
I don’t think putting in such as minor bonuses will hurt, but I don’t think it will help the game either. It’ll feel like another bunch of numbers for number’s sake… just like the WvW server bonuses… doesn’t do anything to reinforce racial/server identity. (I’m talking about the minor map bonuses… the quicker attack/spellcasting/endurance bonuses will be OP)
I personally would have preferred it if they made race (and story choices) more meaningful to the open world… e.g. if you are Asura and were unethical in your personal story choices, you get invited to the otherwise inaccessible Inquest area in Rata Sum where you glimpse some tidbits of their research or Inquest history/politics. Or if you made honorable choices as a Charr, the soldiers in the Black Citadel will salute as you walk past (or sneer at you if you made dishonorable choices).
But that’s something that would need to be incorporated when the game was first released… I don’t hold out any hope of it being added to GW2 now.
Complete shutdowns without a preceding error sounds suspicious of some sort of power delivery problem – i.e. when under load your system isn’t getting enough power. If that’s the case, the stress tests should cause a similar symptom.
I’m guessing you didn’t upgrade CPU or GPU recently, both those are fairly old parts… I doubt you could even buy them anymore. Even if you didn’t upgrade you GPU, a PSU or MB can degrade and fail. What PSU do you have? PSUs tend to fail more often… there are plenty of cheapskate PSUs out there, whereas the dodgiest MB makers are long gone.
Easiest/cheapest thing is to first check all your external and internal connections in case something has come lose.
Thanks for the link. I must say, I’m a bit angry, Anet keeps doing dumb things without good reasons, or explanations why they do it… As a software developer I know all these deconstructions are executing same lines of code, which means they have 0 work to add all other missing infusions. If not… well then you know why the game is so often so buggy…
You may close or do whatever with this thread…
You’re being a bit unfair on Anet. Have you even read what they wrote? It was done for economic reasons.
You’re right about the coding… zero work. But as they explained in the post, they didn’t do that because it would destroy the value of all agony infusions. Your 14 AR would unlikely be worth a fraction of the 200+g it is selling for atm.
Now that they have established a foothold, maybe the pact can set us up an asura gate at the small camp north of the airship.
What you suggest is not unheard of… Anet have changed the entry to zones before. Southsun used to required going to the LA docks to enter, but they added an Asura gate later on.
I know a lot of people will be against this, but I personally would love to have the ability to gain even more combat stats/bonuses beyond what gear+runes+sigils+infusions offer. This would at least give me an incentive to out and farm maps again..
You’re describing BDO… that’s completely opposite of GW2’s progression philosophy.
BDO is a pay2win fiesta so no ty.
Like I said I’m okay to grind for items.. not spend tons of real money for them.
I wasn’t referring to the monetization system. I was referring to progression system:
Character – soft level cap of 50, but you can keep on grinding to increase that further, with no apparent limit.
Equipment – the upgrade system requires you to grind in order to afford the upgrade costs (RNG process which can fail at higher levels).
I was using it as a real-life example of the “ability to gain even more combat stats/bonuses” you suggested.
If you upgraded your account from F2P to a HoT account, you’ll have one free server transfer, so you don’t need to delete any characters if that’s the case.
