Guild Wars 2

It’s been a while since I looked at portable hardware, but that looks OK if you’re not planning running high settings. I sometimes play on my i5 Surface Pro 3… not recommended, but possible. Generally, you can get an affordable, powerful laptops, but the trade off will be either larger size, shorter battery, etc. If you’re contemplating a laptop instead of a desktop, I’m guessing you have some other requirements or use-cases outside of GW2 in mind… thus you have to consider if those trade offs are acceptable.

An intangible you should watch out for is the cooling solution… a poorly cooled laptop will just thermal throttle and you never see the benefit of your fancy specs. Try look up some reviews and see if anyone complains of throttling under gaming scenarios.

DoctorDing.5890:

The best HoT demo is now live: gliding in Tyria. An inspired sales tactic I reckon.

It is, and so is everyone who runs around with their HoT legendaries. But in a few months the wow factor will be gone and Anet will have made all the sales they can from those. And when that time comes, there will still be people sitting on the fence.

Since HoT > gliding + legendaries, why not let the full game speak for itself?

I’m not trying to get anything out of it myself (except probably more ppl to play/chat with in the long term), it’s a suggestion to Anet. I’ve already got HoT and participated in the beta weekends, so I know it’s limitations. As mentioned, it’s value would be to give the undecided a means to try before buying.

I don’t see any fixes that are absolutely needed for this to work. WvW does comes to mind, but that’s an issue for the core game. There are legendary bugs, but I’d be amazed if anyone could complete a legendary journey in the space of a weekend. And the difficulty of the encounters seem to be in line with Anet’s intentions. There are other bugs, but none that would be significant to someone who has 2 days to see what HoT has to offer over and above the core game.

Reason I bring it up now, is if Anet does do something of the sort, it should be sooner rather than later. The longer they wait, the less interest there would be. And like I said, the technology is already there.

Edit:
Technically, during BWE, the servers weren’t completely isolated… i.e. you could still travel to LA with your Rev and interact with the non-beta characters. Main limitations were that you couldn’t keep any loot/gold/achievements earned while on the beta character, and the systems that could unbalance the non-beta game were disabled while you were on that character (e.g. TP, mail, guild bank). Heck, one of my guildies did triple trouble on his beta-Rev and an ascended chest dropped for him… RNG gods at their worst!

Anet,
what about a limited-time/weekend access to HoT for the non-HoT crowd? I can see it helping players who don’t have HoT to decide if it’s worth their purchase.

You already have the account-mirroring technology from your beta weekends leading up to HoT.

Not really… go ahead and use it if there’s a particular weapon you want now.

When you beat fractal #50, one of the merchant golems will sell fractal weapon crates for 20 pristine relics. You can round off your collection with those.

The pools form at the transition between the 1st phase and the battery phase, then during each burn phase afterwards. Most maps just have too much DPS to allow enough time for these to spawn.

Trying joining a map at, or just after Teq spawns… you have to take the risk that your map doesn’t have the DPS to achieve the 2nd phase, but once you do, the longer amount of time during the burns phases let many more pools form. After numerous unsuccessul attempts with high DPS maps, I must have been sucked in 3 times during my successful whirlpool attempt.

Eye strain is a topic I think is more subjective and your results may vary, but there is some reasoning behind the advertising. These tend to focus on 2 things… flicker-free displays and low blue light. I can’t comment on low blue light, but I think flicker-free does have it’s merits. Some displays adjust brightness levels by rapidly switching its backlight on and off. The cheap LED bulbs I have on a dimmer switch does this, and although only barely perceptible, it drives me bananas. Turn them up to full brightness fixes this, but it’s probably not the best idea for a monitor.

Most times, the monitor makers do advertise this fact, but if they don’t, have look through its specs (or look up the review at TFTcentral) and see if it uses PWM or non-PWM backlighting. Non-PWM is what you want.

Edit:
AFAIK, this feature doesn’t add much cost or degrade the monitor performance, so you’re not losing anything by getting it.

insanemaniac.2456:

the vendor on the little island in the lobby sells extractors

no reason to overwrite a 10 or 11, just pull em out

+1

There’s an unmarked golem near the repair golem who will teleport you across. I only discovered him after getting a good deal of my fractal masteries so I’m not sure if you need to get that first. That same vendor also sells one of the reagents you need to attune your rings

IMO, adaptive refresh (G-sync and FreeSync) will be the future of gaming monitors. It’s something you need to see in person to appreciate as you can’t capture it on Fraps, nor are compressed internet video of a screen playing it representative either. Unfortunately, it’s still very new and standards are yet to be settled on.

G-Sync (nVidia’s) is the more technologically mature, but it is proprietary, monitors tend to have a single DP port input, and would typically cost a hundred+ more than an equivalent FreeSynch monitor. Also they tend to be 16:9 aspect ratio, with a few very expensive exceptions. On the plus side, it seems to scale up to higher refresh rates, including some 21:9 IPS monitors at 100+ hz (120 or 144, I can’t recall). Again these are really expensive.

FreeSync is AMD’s open source version and incorporated into the DP 1.2a standard. It is cheaper, monitors have your usual HDMI/DVI/DP ports (although DP are the only ports that can use the FreeSync function) and has a wider selection of aspects ratios (tons of 21:9 at varying price points). There is even rumors of Intel supporting this standard with its iGPUs in 1 or 2 generation, and extending FreeSync to the HDMI standard. Technically it has had teething problems… the early (cheaper) LG widescreens have a very narrow range where it would work 48-60hz I believe, and the higher end IPS monitors seem to top out at 90hz.

As mentioned above, IPS monitors are no longer limited to 60hz as long as your pockets are deep enough, but TN panels are also improving in colour reproduction. You just need to go through the reviews carefully (TFTcentral is a good source), and be prepared to manually calibrate if you want to optimize it. Still not as good as a well calibrated IPS and the more limited viewing angles still exist.

Personally, I’m holding off on a new monitor (I’m still on 1050p) because despite AMD’s GPUs generally lagging behind nVidia’s, I believe FreeSync will have wider adoption purely due to cost which may force nVidia to come to the party. Also, both companies will be releasing/announcing new GPUs based on 14/16nm processes and HBM2 memory, and I’m really hoping AMD has a good showing so I can grab a FreeSync monitor.

Edit:
As mentioned above, I agree that you shouldn’t buy a monitor JUST for GW2. GW2 won’t run at 144 fps consistantly and few people really care about accurate colour in games. The only specs that you may care about for GW2 is adaptive sync and 19:6 vs 21:6… wider means you see more onscreen. Otherwise, you do need to consider what other use cases you have for your monitor.

I know it’s been mentioned in various places before, but as you specifically mention gw2crafts…

Be aware thier guide omits the cheapest high level crafting recipes you can use to gain levels… dragonite ingots, bloodstone bricks and empyreal stars. Most players will have a huge surplus of these already, and just need some thermocatalytic reagent (~15s) and obsidian shards (4200 karma).

GL with your ascended.

Ansau.7326:

Also, that testing from tomshardware cannot be considered as valid nowadays. GPU tests were done with the beta client and, since then, the game has seen a lot of performance improvements and more graphic settings added. The CPU tests cannot be considered as valid neither, as they were done in a pve map were there was no cpu stress work.

Here is the performance of a r7 260x in ultra at the new HoT maps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk4-lwjFRSQ

So a youtube video showing a singe player running through a pve map with very few other players on screen, and no real time fps monitor nor average/min/max fps, and no comparison to alternative hardware, is a better benchmark than Tom’s Hardware old multi-CPU and GPU benchmarks? I’m linking Tom’s because, as old as it is, they are one of the few sites that have done multi-CPU & GPU testing in a variable-controlled environment and using a version of the GW2 engine. It’s not perfect, but its as impartial as you can get. N=1 isn’t a great sample size to base conclusions on, hence you’ll notice I never used my own system as a point of reference.

I will concede GW2 is much more CPU bound than most other games, and I agree AMD CPUs aren’t the best option. If he were building a new PC today, I would be recommending something very much in line with what everyone else has said.

I’ll also point out all of us have been giving our 2c’s based on quite a lot of assumptions which OP hasn’t clarified.

Facts:
- OP wants to run 1440p at max settings at 60 fps
- OP has a poorly cooled FX 8150
- OP has a R7 2xx 2Gb card
- OP is not happy with his system performance on medium settings at 1080p

Assumptions:
- OP is poor(-ish) or rich
- OP has a R7 260X (Even the R7 240 card has 2Gb – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Radeon_Rx_200_series)
- OP is able and/or happy to remount or replace heat-sinks, replace MBs and CPUs, re-route cables, etc himself (or has someone who will do it for him)
- OP is only interested in upgrading to play GW2 – reasonable assumption based on how he worded the question, but being able to name other use-cases for upgrading does wonders if you’re trying to convince parents/significant other to let you buy your new toys :P

Anyway, ball’s in your court OP

Ansau.7326:

Also, that testing from tomshardware cannot be considered as valid nowadays. GPU tests were done with the beta client and, since then, the game has seen a lot of performance improvements and more graphic settings added. The CPU tests cannot be considered as valid neither, as they were done in a pve map were there was no cpu stress work.

Here is the performance of a r7 260x in ultra at the new HoT maps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk4-lwjFRSQ

So a youtube video showing a singe player running through a pve map with very few other players on screen, and no real time fps monitor nor average/min/max fps, and no comparison to alternative hardware, is a better benchmark than Tom’s Hardware old multi-CPU and GPU benchmarks? I’m linking Tom’s because, as old as it is, they are one of the few sites that have done multi-CPU & GPU testing in a variable-controlled environment and using a version of the GW2 engine. N=1 isn’t a great sample size to base conclusions on, hence you’ll notice I never used my own system as a point of reference.

I will concede GW2 is much more CPU bound than most other games, and I agree AMD CPUs aren’t the best option. If he were building a new PC today, I would be recommending something very much in line with what everyone else has said.

I’ll also point out all of us have been giving our 2c’s based on quite a lot of assumptions which OP hasn’t clarified.

Facts:
- OP wants to run 1440p at max settings at 60 fps
- OP has a poorly cooled FX 8150
- OP has a R7 2xx 2Gb card
- OP is not happy with his system performance on medium settings at 1080p

Assumptions:
- OP is poor(-ish) or rich
- OP has a R7 260X (Even the R7 240 card has 2Gb – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Radeon_Rx_200_series)
- OP is able and/or happy to remount or replace heat-sinks, replace MBs and CPUs, re-route cables, etc himself (or has someone who will do it for him)
- OP is only interested in upgrading to play GW2 – reasonable assumption based on how he worded the question, but being able to name other use-cases for upgrading does wonders if you’re trying to convince parents/significant other to let you buy your new toys :P

Anyway, ball’s in your court OP

Btw… this may help.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-6.html

It’s a old review but they go all the way to 1600p with best appearance.
OP, your current setup (at least once you fix you CPUs heat problem) is:
GPU: R7 260x is roughly a GTX 560
CPU: Annoyingly they don’t state which FX-8000 CPU they used. I’d assume it’s a higher tier than yours. Be aware their CPU tests are run at 1024p to remove GPU bottle-necking, which is not the case when you move up in resolution.

Also have a look at these to compare various CPUs and GPUs for gaming in general:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

Ansau,
I’ll counter your points by simply saying we don’t even know what the OP’s budget is. Just as you assume the OP has a large budget, I made my recommendations based on a modest budget. (Look at the video I had linked in my first paragraph… that’s how ridiculous you can get if your budget was unlimited)

Regarding GPU, I would consider medium 1080p “adequate” for 1080p gaming, wouldn’t you? Nowhere in my post did I say a R9 380 is not enough for 1080p; OP says he wants to run at 1440p at max settings at 60 fps all the time, and my comment was directed at that.

Regarding the CPU, yes, AMD has worse single tread performance than Intel’s, but I don’t believe that’s where the majority of his bottle-neck is. Something is seriously wrong with his cooling if it falls outside AMD’s spec… you should only reach those levels when stress testing e.g. Prime95, gaming should not generate that sort of temperature with a functioning heat sink. It not unheard of for a heat sink to dislocated during shipping/moving. My suggestion to improve CPU perfromance with better heat management with thermal paste, a cooling fan plus cable management costs US$10-20.

As it stands, most posters here have recommend a better GPU, so why not get that and upgrade the rest of the rig later if he’s still not happy.

A very rough way to decide if it’s your CPU or GPU that is your bottle-neck is to compare their % usage in a graphically intense area, say Lion’s Arch. Turn your settings and resolution to what you desire. If your CPU is consistently sitting at 100% and GPU is low, then you’re likely CPU bound. If the reverse, then you’re GPU bound. You should repeat this is several areas, doing different activities, etc and see if the results are consistent. I know its not a great test, but the gold standard is to test your particular setup with multiple CPU and GPU combinations, so I doubt that will be happening.

OP… we really need to know your budget otherwise we’ll never settle this

One important detail you missed out is what resolution you want to play at… 1080p may be possible, any higher is unlikely inside that budget.

You can save money by getting AMD CPU and overclocking it – their top range FX-series is equivalent to a lower tier i5. And many micro-ATX boards are cheaper than the ATX equivalents, and you’ll mainly be sacrificing the extra PCIe slots.

And is a solid state drive necessary? Don’t get me wrong… it’s a great convenience. It will decrease your load times, but do nothing for your FPS or quality settings. Also consider it’s capacity… Windows 10 64-bit is 20Gb, GW2 is 25Gb, plus whatever else you intend to install onto it, those things fill up quicker than you imagine… 3 years ago I had a 240Gb one, and last year I had to upgrade to a 1Tb even though I put my videos, music and photos on a regular HDD.

(Edited because S-S-D = kitten in Anet’s eyes)

OP, do you have a budget? It would be a lot easier if we had an idea how much you have to work with. Unless you’re made of money… then let me be the first to recommend this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI

Also, are you comfortable meddling with the innards of your PC? If so, it’ll open up options compared to someone who isn’t.

Anyway to answer your question:
GPU – This is your priority. The top R7 card is a merely adequate card for 1080p gaming, and you’re using it to drive a screen with twice the pixel count. You may be OK with a AMD R9 380X or nVidia GTX 960 if you run low/med settings, but I’ll agree with the other posters that a 390 or 970 should be your minimum if you can afford it. Also check if your power supply meets the minimum requirement for whatever card you upgrade to. My guess is anything greater than 500W is probably OK.

CPU – you don’t need to change this… it’s equivalent to a lower end i5 which is plenty for games (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html). Most modern games scale better with GPUs than CPUs… unless you have something really slow a la Pentium G-series. As mentioned above, 65 degrees should not throttle, plus modern CPUs throttle to keep themselves safe, so you could just let it run at whatever temp it will let you to get the most out of it. See below
Again, already mentioned is changing your heatsink, which I concur… I would recommend staying away from water cooling. I know I’m making many assumptions, but your comments suggest you didn’t build your own PC, and I would be very surprised if a PC sold with a R7 card would have a case that can easily mount a radiator. What you could do is add more cooling fans if your case has extra vents, and also re-routing it’s internal cables to ensure optimal airflow… even more important now that you’re gonna put a toasty new GPU into it.

RAM – you’ve got enough

SSD – you’re good too… great to decrease loading screens, but doesn’t improve FPS per se

Btw, once you do upgrade, you’ll be surprised how much prettier high settings are compared to medium

Edit: Apologies… after some googling, it seems that the 61C is AMD’s max temp for your CPU… it’s GPUs are the ones that exceed 80C safely. (http://products.amd.com/en-us/search/CPU/AMD-FX-Series/AMD-FX-8-Core-Black-Edition/FX-8150/84) That could be caused by an incorrectly mounted heat sink, or poor quality thermal compound. An easy fix is to get a good quality thermal compund and use it to remount your existing heat sink (or if your heat sink is stock, replace it… it noisy and nasty anyway). I would still get a new GPU though… going from 3.3 to 3.7 GHz won’t add much to your FPS.

WARNING Old man rant incoming

The idea of rewarding people who help is a good one, I suppose it could be incorporated into the mentor system (instead of the apple just being the poor man’s commander tag) and be implemented across the game instead of just raids. Something like having a limited daily/weekly/monthly currency which you can’t use yourself, but can “tip” your mentor with.

In terms of the LFR tool itself, I would be careful what you wish for as it would have to be a lot more sophisticated than what Anet have implemented so far. The closest thing we have currently would be the sPvP queue which will group you with a bunch of randoms regardless of build and using your sPvP lvl to match for skill. Works fine there as the opposing team is also subject to the same process and it balances out. However in a tightly tuned PVE encounter with no agreed system of measuring experience, play style or personalities, this is arguably worse than current practice. Imagine a system automatically grouping up 8 dps, 2 tanks and no healer. Or allocate some players who expect the rest of the group to carry them. Or the experienced players have no interest or patience for teaching. A LFR systems needs to take into account all of those otherwise it would be no better than advertising on LFG.

Finally regarding the tuning of raids. I think Anet has made a conscious decision regarding this. In order to make raids pug-able, they would have to detune it to the level of fractals or dungeons… if this was their intention they should have just given us more fractals and dungeons. The inherent problem is the pug vs the regulars. A group of strangers with no social bonds with each other is inherently more unstable than a group of friends/acquaintances. It just takes 1 person in a bad mood and all hell breaks loose. The anonymity of the internet means there is no consequences to being a kitten and no recourse for making amends. The player then goes into the next pug expecting the same and with a chip on his shoulder. A very deleterious cycle. Compare this to a guild group who raids regularly… they are all friends and they know crossing the line does have social consequences, but also you can make up and laugh about it later down the track. He/she knows friends depend on him/her, so he/she work harder to improve themselves. The friends see the improvement, make a compliment which is motivation for more improvement. The friends then see themselves falling behind, and in the competitive spirit they up their own game. This is a virtuous cycle. I know this is an idealized scenario, but something to this effect will happen in a group who spends enough time together, which is something a pug can never achieve.

As old vanilla WoW raider, a part of me feels people who seriously want to do raids should just abandon pugs and find a group to like-minded players to bond, laugh and lay some smackdown with. (FYI, I don’t raid in HoT because this old raider no longer has the time nor attention span. I will not disrespect the 9 others, pug or otherwise, by not bringing my A-game.)

Have a look at https://www.gw2bltc.com/ It’s got a great breakdown of required mats. They’ve also have a comparison between crafting and buying costs. It doesn’t include the collections, so you’ll still need to check the wiki.

Edit:
Some precursors are cheaper to buy than to craft (Frostfang may be one of them), but it’s up to you if you like the idea of the “legendary journey”

I found the AR system confusing too when I started.
There are 2 types of slots:

Versatile /offensive/defensive infusion slots – found on all equipment types. Will only take the +5 or +7 infusions that you buy with with fractal relics (also takes the non-AR infusions you buy from laurel vendors)

Agony resistance slots – found only on rings and back pieces, usually you have to “infuse” or “attune” the item in order to obtain these slots on your items, attuning is cheaper than infusing as you need mats from higher fractals to infuse. Will only take the +1 AR infusions (or their artificer upgraded versions ) that drop from the chests.

One of the fractal vendors does sell a AR potion if you need a quick boost. I don’t think it stacks with your other AR, but I never tried it myself

I agree with Fenris’s statement on play style. To expand on that point, e.g. WvW, you can either be a zergling or a roamer. Some play styles benefit from a class with lots of mobility. Etc…

As sPvP (and WvW to a certain degree) don’t actually require you to have a lvl 80 char, you can just make chars to try out then delete if you don’t find them particularly effective for how you like to play.

FYI, I play staff/s/d condi reaper in sPvP, but I fight close up because I aim to pop my shroud. So technically, I play a melee style despite what my weapons imply.

I would like to preface this post by saying that I have no problem with how the current raid bosses are done, but I would like to offer an idea which would enable most builds to have a reasonable chance at a boss but not trivialize the encounter.

My idea is not a boss that would require all builds, e.g. Vale Guardian split, where a group requires a mix of direct damage, condi damage and CC, but one that can be tackled with a just one build type but having the mechanics work against them.

The boss has 3 (or 4) states:
Damaged by direct damage
Damaged by condi damage
Damaged by breaking breakbar (a variation could be a temporary BB which is quick to break and causes small/moderate damage, and a long-lasting BB which is very hard to break but causes massive damage when broken)

The mechanic is that the boss would constantly swap between states, and the team would have to perform some task/action (while under fire) to switch him to the stage that they are built to damage. The tuning would be to make it do-able if your whole team was built around one of the stages but impossible if you can’t get it into that particular stage. I envisage this would let almost any build type to succeed but still require the players to be good and dedicated.

Comments/ideas/improvements welcome

I think I’ve sorted out my problem.
I had a minor sigil of geomancy on one of my daggers, and now that I took it off, the problem disappeared… put it on my offhand, bug returns.

Noticed the sigil after the patch would proc when I cast, pick up, drop or run out of charges. Never used to do that before… maybe that’s what’s screwed it up.

I’ve got bug too. It does sometime work correctly in combat, but mostly not. Sometimes the weapon on the ground bugs out too and I’m left without my hammer.