Guild Wars 2

You would get better returns on investment by upgrading your GPU with your current setup, especially if you can upgrade your CPU for cheap. Just spend around $170 on an AMD 7850 1GB.

The 8800GTS would be a big bottleneck for the upgraded Intel components so you wouldn’t see that much of an improvement.

The wiki have most of what you’re looking for.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Norn
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mists

I circle strafe constantly with every class, it helps tremendously in making enemies miss you in melee or when you’re kiting from range. I don’t just use the “strafe left/right” keys to circle strafe, I use them in conjunction with the mouse look for faster centering to keep them within my circle. It’s actually not necessary to bind the strafe keys at all if you’re using the mouse look, though some people prefer to use them instead of turn left/right. Just hold down forward with turn/strafe left/right, hold down the right mouse button, and move the mouse towards your enemy to circle around them.

About face is pointless if you use the mouse look, since you can spin around as fast as your mouse moves.

Change the AoE targeting to fast casting and get used to having your mouse cursor always hovering around your targets. Fast casting will immediately drop the AoE target where the cursor is when you hit the command.

Putting GW2 on an SSD won’t have much of a noticeable effect because you’re loading data from the servers and not just the drive, so the bottleneck in this case is the network.

If you don’t have to upgrade right away, wait a little.

1. Black Friday’s around the corner.
2. AMD claims their new trinity CPUs are comparable to the i5 performance with the price point of i3s. Even if that’s not true it should stir up the pricing wars. They should be releasing them in October.

With WvW, the most important thing is to stay with and get lost in a group of your allies, sticking out alone or in melee range is certain death. This means you’re stuck with either the rifle for single target damage or the longbow for multiple target damage.

Unfortunately, warriors aren’t really meant to be played exclusively as a ranged class so their ranged skills aren’t as extensive as other classes. What you can do to really help your allies is use utility skills like banners and shouts to give boons to those around you.

If you still find the ranged warrior boring, I suggest trying out a ranger. They are also pretty easy to play and they have a few more options for medium and long range weaponry.

Last time I checked the way to get to the vista was bugged but here’s a hint. Talk to the char next to the tower and he mentions something about flying cows. Now what can make a cow fly? Take into account the charrs are the most industrial race known to build weapons of war.

I believe that’s true, I usually don’t zone out to a new location on a game session (mainly to reduce waypoint costs) and as long as I’m wandering around doing different DEs I haven’t encountered the diminishing returns.

I had the Nostromo and now the G13. The Nostromo was more comfortable for me but it broke so I switched to the G13. The only thing that makes the G13 uncomfortable is the amount of keys it has making some hard to reach without moving your hand.

On both I preferred to map WASD to movement and the 4 function keys to the thumbstick. Moving with the thumbstick was too imprecise for me.

ANet doesn’t want you to stay in one place doing the same thing over and over. I’ve run around the same zone for a few hours and never encountered the diminishing returns for DEs or drops. I’ve even done the same DEs multiple times without it reducing the rewards, I just didn’t do the same one back to back.

Apple trollbaiting aside, look at the GPU that comes with the MacBook Pro. The cheapest one and the MacBook Air runs on the integrated graphics HD4000, which is just above minimum specs.

If you want better performance you’ll want to get the one that comes with the Nvidia GT 650m.

I’m pretty sure I looked after F1 for shadowstep and didn’t see any action bar change for stealing. Are there certain locations/situations where it isn’t usable?

The tiny icon for the F1 command should change, none of your other skill icons will change. The only time it shouldn’t work is if you’re out of range.

So a spear would hold off (logically) enemies better then a dagger even if the dagger does twice the damage?

The spear is an underwater weapon, I thought you were having a hard time with underwater combat. The spear is a really good weapon to use when you’re underwater. On land, most of the weapon combinations for a thief are good, but for different reasons. Dual daggers are good for close range bleeding (damage over time) damage, dual pistols are good for single target damage, the shortbow is good for multiple target attacks, etc.

Maybe I don’t have these actions and skills set up right in their slots? I’ve pretty much gotten all the way to level 9 only using 6 and 7 concerning healing/utility skills.

So your first 5 skills are set by the weapon you choose, your 6 slot is your heal, and the rest are your utility skills which you can customize. Try to find utility skills which will work well with your weapons of choice.

Like my previous example, the 3 skill for dual daggers is leaping death blossom which hits multiple targets within range and applies bleeds (while also evading). The caltrops utility skill drops an AoE (area of effect) which bleeds anything that is within the marked area. These two skills work well with each other especially if you have +condition damage modifiers to your armor and weapons.

I haven’t paid any attention to crafting. I’ve double-clicked on everything I’ve picked up though so schematics and dyes and bags of stuff isn’t lost. I’ve upgraded weapons and armor and paid to get them repaired often.

Crafting gives a good chunk of experience, maxing out a discipline will net you 10 levels. It also allows you to create items which are generally much stronger than the drops you get killing mobs. It also allows you to create gear tailored to you. Keeping the crafting level on par with your level can be difficult/expensive but you should look into it. Check the GW2 wiki on crafting as it can be complicated.

I’ve got one more level (10) to reach before I can learn more/improve the Thief skills?

Level 10 will give you access to another utility skill, which will certainly help. Level 11 will open up the traits tree, which allows you to improve specific attributes like strength, precision, vitality, etc.

Is that funny cube thingy (I really need to write some names down don’t I?) Lion’s Gate and where you can pass through to explore other Beginning/Easy areas of the game?

Not sure what the funny cube thingy is but the way to Lion’s Arch is the Asura Gate that are located in all of the major cities, they are the purple “stargates”. For Rata Sum it can be confusing because there are multiple asura gates. Approach one and mouse over the center, it will tell you where it leads to.

The personal story quests can be very difficult and it requires you to think of new tactics if you fail. Sometimes leveling up until you get more skills/traits and better gear will help dramatically.

1. If you’re still using the spear gun, switch to a spear ASAP. The spear requires you to be in melee range but it offers better evasion skills and damage.

2. I’m a dagger/dagger thief for leaping death blossom and combining it with caltrops for maximum bleed damage to multiple targets. What I like to do against multiple mobs is toss caltrops before entering combat and then drawing mobs in with a range weapon. Once they are in melee range switch to daggers and spam leaping death blossom, then circle strafe attack around the mobs until they are dead. Constantly move, don’t stand in one spot while fighting.

3. Not familiar with the asura personal stories but if the turrets and mines are anything like the sylvari ones, when you pick up a turret or mine, do you see your action bar changing?

4. Shadowstep is a good way to get you into melee range but it does have a range limit, you can increase that range later when you open up your traits.

When you successfully steal, you should notice that your steal icon has changed to something else. If you press F1 again you will use the stolen skill. The stealing cool down begins once you do the initial steal, not when you use the stolen skill. So you can steal, save the stolen skill for later, and (if enough time has passed) use the stolen skill and steal again right away. When you open up your traits, you can improve your stealing by adding secondary effects like poison, adding initiative, attacking, etc.

Crafting is actually quite useful both in terms of experience gained and useful products but if you aren’t interested in it then sell your crafting mats and buy good gear from the trading post. Being properly geared makes quite a bit of difference.

Check out Lenovo’s website and look for the IdeaPad Y580. There’s a version with the 650m GPU and it’s a little over $800.

You get what you pay for. The A6 is a very weak CPU, an entry level AMD. It’s paired with a GPU that’s just slightly better than integrated graphics. While it should be able to play GW2, it probably won’t play it too well (low settings with fps between 10-40 depending on how busy the environment is).

Not max but the ASUS K55VM will run GW2 decently at the 1366×768 resolution, probably within the medium settings range. The weakest component is the GPU, which is only slightly better than the new integrated GPUs.

To run GW2 on high or max settings on a laptop, you’re going to have to spend at least $800 for a laptop with an Nvidia GT 650m.

You don’t need to upgrade. In fact, playing at your resolution, upgrading won’t do anything for you. A single 4870 should max out the the graphics settings at that resolution.

If you’re still not satisfied with the current performance, it’s likely a driver issue.

I hear alot about dodging in this game. Is it being referred to when a Red Circle appears underneath you or are we saying you have to jump around the target during melee ?

The red ring that shows up on the ground means an enemy has targeted that area with an AoE (area of effect) spell which damages or puts a condition to all that is within it. Whether you dodge or simply walk out, it’s a good idea not to stay there for too long. A white ring or line is a friendly unit targeting the area with a beneficial spell.

I don’t know how anyone can dodge when there is a Event taking place cause so many people are milling about and make it about impossible to even click target something!

Carry a ranged weapon and wait until the boss does his major attack (usually when you see several people get KO’ed or knocked over), then charge in and melee the crap outta him for no more than a minute. Dodge out even if you don’t see the wind-up, rinse, repeat. Gold medal achievement every time with minimal deaths.

“Students of the Ichi school Way of Strategy should train from the start with the sword and the longsword in either hand. This is a truth: When you sacrifice your life, you must make fullest use of your weaponry. It is false not to do so, and die with a weapon yet undrawn.”

Miyamoto Musashi on his school of two swords “Ichi Ryu Ni To”, from “The Book of Five Rings”.

Tom Gore.4035:

Plants actually do the “inverse” of human breathing, in that they take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. If they didn’t, life on earth would have to be arranged in quite a different way.

Plants also respire, taking in oxygen to burn glucose and releasing CO2 during the non-photosynthetic stage.

But yes, there are aquatic and terrestrial plants. Stick a house plant underwater and it will die like any land creature.

From what I’ve heard the abyss dye is the blackest dye out there, darker than regular black.

This is what abyss dye looks like on the heritage medium armor (and starter hood). Note that the dark part with a blue tint is dyed “midnight sky”.

Laurie.1698:

Looking for some advice here. I followed all the steps at the top of this thread, I have NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti video card NVIDIA 306.2 beta driver installed, AMD Phenom II x6 1100 T, 3.30 Ghz, 8 GB of ram, running Win7 64 bit.

I know there must be more I can check for (I hope hehe) because I’m still getting the bluescreen crashing. Its random, all the sudden, loud buzzing noise in my headphones and I’m bluescreened with memory dump and reboot. I looked at the dump file and there were a few indicators that it might have been from my virus program which is Avast, so I disabled before I played and its still happening.

Any advice, something to try, would GREATLY be appreciated. Thank you for your time reading this.

Blue screens can be either hardware or software, it’s pretty difficult to tell unless you know what the error code displayed during the blue screen actually means.

Check out this site and see if the error you see is mentioned.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/stoperrors.htm

If that fails or is too confusing you can try to run a chkdsk /r repair to see if there are any problems with the OS. Open a command prompt in Windows and enter “chkdsk /r”.

Ronyn Nightshade

The 4 digit code only applies to the website and forums, it doesn’t get applied to your in game character name.

As for your character name, you can add spaces to form 2 or more word names. So if “Deepcuts” is taken, give him a last name. The naming rules are:

-Maximum 19 characters long
-Only the first letter after a space is capitalized, so no random caps
-no offensive names
-no copyrighted names
-no special characters, accents are ok.
-no numbers

RuggedBabyJesus.8513:

That says something being for Nvidia GPUs, I’m using an AMD GPU.

Same rule is likely to apply, the drivers that comes with the videocard is likely several months old. Even if you bought a new PC, the drivers are likely to still be old since they get updated every few months. Update to the latest drivers.

And besides, should I really need to change any settings to play an effing MMO with a $260 GPU with 2GB of VRAM? It just doesn’t make any sense!!

Welcome to PC gaming, where there are millions of different hardware configurations that cannot all be accounted for.

An enthusiast that only recommends factory overclocks for GPU and CPU (factory overclock CPU? really?)

As to getting improvements for Nvidia users, upgrade to the latest beta drivers from Nvidia. Their production drivers aren’t playing nice with GW2, at least for their new 600 series cards. I saw as much as a ~20fps improvement just updating the drivers.

1. WvWvW
2. Crafting – all of them. You can have 2 at a time and be able to switch to others but it will cost a little to switch. You don’t lose your current craft level if you switch to a new one.
3. Have you explored all the lower level zones? With the down-leveling you can explore all the areas and still gain experience and drops. Go show off your higher level gears and skills to newbs, just don’t die to something like a boar :p

ANet have already stated that they won’t ban you for simply dropping a curse word, even in regular chat. It’s when you go overboard/harass/use hate speech.

They also don’t monitor private chats but if you offend someone with the above and they report you, you can be punished.

Have well of suffering as your utility skill.
Have a staff and a second weapon set (I like axe and horn or dual daggers).
Learn how to circle strafe around your opponents, you will take alot less hits if done correctly.

When the fight starts drop down all of your AOE staff skills right in front of you, then switch weapons to do more damage. Drop the well of suffering when the assassins are sure to be within range. Now just circle strafe around the assassins hopefully keeping them within your AOE spells and dodge/DS when you get tagged.

Tobias.2397:

Graphics card : ATI Radeon X1600 (Name of the graphics card is hiding in plain sight >.>) with updated drivers and 256 MB VRAM

The x1600 is weaker than the integrated GPU that is listed for the minimum requirement.

You’re not missing much. In the chaotic boss fights of dynamic events, it’s impossible to see the boss telegraph it’s attacks so you can’t dodge out of the way. Have a rifle or longbow on hand and only jump in if you see the boss use it’s AOE attack (and a bunch of people go down).

For the dungeons it’s a little better. With less people and particle effects flying around you should be able to see the bosses telegraph their attacks and dodge out of the way. Still, you have to be on your game and use interrupt skills at the right moment as well as dodge.

Kal.2376:

This game is more active/reactive than other games. If you just stand still in one position, you will get hit… A lot… And hard!! Keep moving, dodging, changing weapons, watching cooldowns, using your heal, and you’ll do fine. Just try not to stand still in one spot, or you will have trouble

Yep, learning to circle strafe around your opponent while keeping them within range will significantly reduce the amount of times you take a hit. This applies to all classes and all ranges.

For boss fights which tends to have very damaging AOE attacks, it’s just better to hang back with a rifle or longbow. You’re not going to survive very long at melee range even if you dodge like a god.