Use the cheapest “trinket” type item, 3 of them gives 7 commendations
Malachite copper stud and tiger’s eye copper stuf, 26 copper each
Comes to about 1.20s per commendation
Hi PowerCat – 1 silver 20 copper per commendation equals to 1 gold, 20 silver per 100 commendation. Multiply that by 5 and you need around 6 gold pero 500 commendations.
Not sure on your server but on Santum of Rall, the cheapest exotic level 70-80 armor is 70++ silver. That translates to around 2 gold 20 silver (rounding up) for 550 commendations.
Of course, if you don’t need that much commendations, your way is fine
My friends are MMO addicts, and I’ve been trying to get them to give GW2 a chance but they wouldn’t even touch it since they felt like they’ve already invested too much in WoW to give another game any chances. However, I managed to convince them enough to try it due to the free trial weekend + the promise of a really epic event (since I really enjoyed the Halloween one and it was such a fresh change from the stale events in WoW).
I live in GMT +8 so the event for us starts at 4 in the morning. I asked them to stay up, just so they can experience the one time event.
Well of course, we all know what happened there. It took forever to even cast a spell. Everything was lagging. We couldn’t even find each other due to being placed in different overflow servers. My friends play on a 7MBPS line. I play on a 1.5 Mbps line. We all have middle to high end gaming rigs.
Obviously, there were like, “Really?! No thanks.”
Another friend/guildmate from WoW logged on much later. I told him to level up a bit, and then I tried doing the karka investigation missions with him. After standing around in Hanto Post for more than 30 minutes waiting for Noll event to trigger, he got bored and logged off.
Anyway, that’s my story.
Seriously – worst event ever.
I wish I had seen this thread sooner. I sunk 2.5 gold to get 550 commendations, saw the items being sold, then immediately regretted it.(
i just hit 80 on my mes. i’ve been killing some stuff in frostgorge sound. while i can confirm that I feel that the zerker damages a bit less, it does seem to do its attacks more often. I just don’t know if I’m remembering correctly since i’ve not been playing this class for the past few weeks (and based on the feedback on the forums, i guess i won’t be returning to this class any time soon). I’m not using phantasmal haste btw and I’m equipped in full berserker gear. can anyone confirm this?
Never base ANYTHING on forum feedback, as a rule. If you don’t feel particularly hindered by the changes, what does it matter what other people are saying? Most of the “this profession is ruined, I’m never playing Mesmer again/quitting” talk is generally people blustering anyway out of frustration.
My guess is that most of the people who say they are “quitting” will take, at most, a week off before being back and that at least 50% of the people saying they aren’t going to revisit the profession will be playing it before the end of the day.
Personally, I noticed a bit of a drop in my damage potential with the Mesmer but it wasn’t anything particularly note-worthy. The iBerserker dealing less damage on initial hit is a little disconcerting but overall didn’t feel particularly underpowered…
As for people complaining about the LOS fix, it was a FIX for a BUG that just happened to make things easier for us. People generally knew it was going to get fixed sooner or later, from what I had read in previous forum posts. It is kind of saddening we don’t get to deal TUNZ OF DMG during keep sieges now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do ANYTHING to help. Off the top of my head:
- Portal for supplies, shenanigans
- Into the Void
- Chaos Storm
- Null Field
- Can still summon on top of CONSTRUCTED siege that is on the edge (cannons and pots of oil generally) as far as I can tell
- Summon Phantasms onto door (I think this still works?) which will still AOE through wall
- The same things anyone else can do (siege, attacking people as they try to enter the keep, supply runs, attack door…) but more awesomely with purple butterflies.Would it be nice to have more AoE variety, and is its lacking noticable? Of course. Should they fix the issue with the first strike of Phantasm missing more than usual? Yes. Is the profession crippled in some horrible way? No.
actually, just to clarify, i already ditched the Mesmer like 2 weeks ago with a tenth of a bar to 80. I don’t do PvP AT ALL so whatever “advantages” the mesmer had in WvWvW or whatever is irrelevant to me. It was painful leveling it from 1-40. After 40, it was much easier until I hit 80 today.
However, to be honest, I really don’t feel that ANet knows what the frog they’re doing with this class – especially in PvE. While the more frequent Zerker attacks (if ever they’re confirmed) would seem like a buff, I also noticed that the Zerker now moves closer to the mob AFTER it does one attack. For some reason, I am also noticing that the Zerker is now much more frail than how it was two weeks ago.
But again, this might just be all in my head and I might just be imagining things. Based on the information ANet is officially releasing though, it seems like they want to drive this class to the ground, so I’m off this boat.
See yas.
i just hit 80 on my mes. i’ve been killing some stuff in frostgorge sound. while i can confirm that I feel that the zerker damages a bit less, it does seem to do its attacks more often. I just don’t know if I’m remembering correctly since i’ve not been playing this class for the past few weeks (and based on the feedback on the forums, i guess i won’t be returning to this class any time soon). I’m not using phantasmal haste btw and I’m equipped in full berserker gear. can anyone confirm this?
Hi Necros,
I am exploring this class and I am level 11 right now and immensely enjoying my staff and marks. However, I seem to be at a loss as to what to put in the other weapon slot.
I’m currently running with Scepter/Warhorn (for the speed buff) but it seems to be subpar to how awesome the staff is.
The dagger and axes do wonderful damage but seems to be a little unweildy (especially the dagger). Dagger OH I found is really good but I don’t want to be kittened in terms of speed.
I am looking for a build that works well with Marks and Wells, preferably a power type build (although I won’t mind if the build you give me is condition just please bear in mind that this is a leveling build so the faster I kill stuff, the better), and that will do well in dynamic events (in terms of loot tagging).
I do not care for PvP or Dungeons at this point.
Can someone quickly post their build or suggest something based on Staff, Marks, Wells, and AoE goodness?
TY~!
Quote button not working:
Supervillain.8617: It didn’t stop Trahearne…nor did his bland, unconvincing reactions to everything, incompetence in battle, or utter lack of shame for taking credit for absolutely everything the player-character did.
This. Exactly. I actually thought the personal storyline had the potential to become really great but unfortunately, it got Trahearned.
Dear ANet,
I just finished the Retribution part of my story line (taking back Claw Island) and l am so amazed and very happy with Order of Whispers.
I am usually critical of the different game elements in Guild Wars 2 (this game still needs a lot of work, seriously) but one thing that exceeded my expectations was the Order of Whispers.
There are so many things I like about them. The top 5 are:
1. The members of the Order of Whispers are so brilliantly characterized. The characterization of each member was so spot on – from Riel, to Doern, to Demi, to Lady Wi. You made each character so distinct and interesting with just a few lines of dialogue. The voice acting was very very good as well across the board for all members. My favorite characters in the Order has to be Riel and Doern.
Also, Doern is SOOOOOO hot. >_<
2. Tybalt was so adorable too, and his character was so earnest – such a contrast to the other members of the Order, but it worked really really well. I enjoyed having him in my story, especially his quips and his unusual obsession with apples. I miss him. T_T
3. The armor style is so sexy but classy. I love it!
4. The initial Whispers quests were very well thought out and just fit and enhanced what my idea of Order of Whispers are. I love the drinking game in Gendarran Foothills, I love how they work behind shadows manipulating events, I love the role they played in Retribution. I love how they have the least amount of the stupid “you against waves of mobs” type of encounters. I love how you really felt that you had to be all stealthy and manipulative and such during their quests. JUST SO MUCH LOVE for this faction.
5. The Lore. From hints of the story of the previous Master who got corrupted to the idea that they are the oldest of orders, I really felt so engaged and compelled by the Order of Whispers story line. My other character is in the Durmand Priory and the questline for Durmand is a yawnfest compared to Order of Whispers. I love the Order of Whispers because they’re like the MI:6 of Tyria and I always feel like James Bond when I’m doing an Orders-specific quest.
So ANet, thank you, thank you, thank you!
The fly in the ointment:
Okay, so before I end this post I just have to say this, coming down from the epic awesomeness of the Blightghast fight:
Trahearne…? SERIOUSLY?? WHY?!?!
You ruined a perfectly good story with this bland, one-dimensional, humorless, useless plot device. I can’t even consider him a character because he has none. I play sylvari and I hated him from when I met him when I was level 16, ankittenpt wishing he’d just be like some fungal infection that would go away after a time.
I don’t understand why he has to be the one given Caladbolg. Notwithstanding the fact that he gets all the glory and “leads” the three orders, he dies in every frikkin encounter and he’s utterly useless.
Add to the fact that he’s such a poorly written plot device, the voice acting for him is SO BAD. I don’t know if it’s that monotonous drone, or the fact that he has no depth whatsoever and he delivers each line as if he was in a boring math lecture. There are so many many things that’s going on with Trahearne that’s just so wrong.
I play a male sylvari and the voice acting is excellent – so being “Sylvari” is no excuse for that awful voice acting job.
Random NPCs in the city have more personality than Borehearne. The fact that he takes over my story is bad enough, to have zero personality is adding insult to injury. I wouldn’t have minded if Doarne or Tybalt took over my story. They were absolutely interesting, engaging characters.
Trahearne just isn’t. I really can’t wait for him to die. Seriously. I hope he does some “I’m gonna be a martyr and shed my sap to cleanse Orr” angle so we can get rid of this annoying plot device once and for all.
I used scepter a lot and this is actually a bug fix that’s a nerf:
•Confusing Images: This skill has been updated to fire at its correct distance.
It used to be that you can open up with confusing images on mobs at ~1200 distance.
So again, mostly nerfs for Mesmers and no bug fixes. Hurrah! I don’t know if I should be glad that I stopped playing this class, or disappointed because ANet has no kittening idea how to balance Mesmers for PvE.
I’m level 22 right now and I seem to be having the same problem but under different circumstances. I am currently equipping a rifle but I’ve spent most of the time leveling up using p/p. I’ve tried P/D as well but it wasn’t as fun (playwise) for me. Anyway on to the problem:
The problem I have is with range mobs. I know – strange, right? For some reason, I just seem so ineffective against them. I can manage 1 ranged mob fine but add in another melee, or worse, another range mob, and I’m good as downed. Using P/D didn’t help that much in this situation as the incoming damage was simply too great to out damage them first. The worse mobs are the Golems that seem to do this barrage of attacks that take more than 700HP.
I am equipped with lvl 20 Masterwork level Rifle with + power, and I also bring along a pistol and shield with + vit. It seems to not matter what utilities I bring since all of them are situational and just when I thought I’d have the right set to run with, a situation comes up that my utility skills are useless against. Right now I’m just bringing flamethrower, rifle turret, and elixir S (because what the heck, I keep dying anyway so might as well bring that 60 second panic button for quick escapes).
Turrets would have been a nice distraction if they weren’t so unweildy and die so easily. I have to keep remembering to put them down and pick them up, and then there are those annoying situations wherein I’m just looting but I accidentally pick them up because, no surprise here, ANet’s brilliant design was to put looting and action button in 1 key.
Just to be able to survive enough not to get annoyed to the point of quitting playing, I’ve specced into Alchemy for that added life and chose the trait that automatically makes you invulnerable for 3 seconds when you hit 25% life.
I think one more thing I have to add here is that I’m usually fighting mobs 2-3 levels higher than I am because I’ve ran out of hearts at my appropriate level to do (in fact I’ve finished the level 24 hearts as well in the 15-25 area of asura/sylvari – I forget the name).
So, any tips in dealing with multiple range mobs?
They could make dragons etc give exotics, but the botters can’t bot those and the deal they made would be void, they have to cater to the bots to keep their bribes coming in. It’s obvious one of the devs took a bribe.
I love the conspiracy angle you’re going for here. LOL.
Hello Engineers! I am loving your class but I am bewildered with the massive amount of options and playstyles.
I hope you can help me find a playstyle based on the following:
1. I don’t PvP. It’s the least of my concern.
2. So far, I can’t seem to find a really nice use for kits. Flamethrower is nice but it misses to often. Grenades are unweildy. Bombs are super duper awesome but very situational (actually I’m just having a hard time using them against ranged). I’d prefer not to use kits but if I had to, it would be Bombs or Elixir Gun.
3. I love the pistols. The rifle – not so much because there’s not a lot of AoE and the attacks seem slow. Yes, I LOVE AoE damage. I don’t mind giving up some single target viability for AoE damage.
4. Not really a fan of elixirs.
5. I love turrents. I just hate the fact that Pickup is also bound to F and it’s really annoying when you accidentally pickup your turret when you meant to pick up loot.
What I’m looking for is one of these (please state as well what utility skills you bring and what stats you focus on):
1. A pistol/pistol or pistol/shield build OR
2. A bomb kit build OR
3. A turrent build (I love the turrents).
Thanks
+1 to the OP. I too am having the most dreadful time tapping mobs for loot especially in DE’s. Based on observation, there seems to be two different and independent ways the system calculates if you can get loot from a mob:
1) damaging a mob (seems to not matter how much) and having it subsequently killed during DE awards you an invisible contribution towards getting the gold star and some XP. Mesmers don’t generally fare badly in this area UNLESS the mobs are dead even before you can cast a single damaging spell
2) damaging a mob will award you loot based on how much you damage mobs (seems to require that you damage mobs for more than 25% of their health or something)
While the Mesmer is viable in DE’s if you just want to get Karma/Gold/whatevs from the event itself, the glaring discrepancy here is in loot drops.
I am not a PvP player and I do resent the fact that Mesmers keep getting nerfed in PvE because of PvP balancing issues.
For example – people are claiming that zerkers are doing too much burst (I wouldn’t know I’ve never done PvP). From my perspective, these are actually weak in PvP because they go poof in two hits and are basically useless the moment they get aggro apart from the cripple effect. The warden, which is the only decent damaging phantasm, is irrelevant the moment you have a mob that moves or if another player uses a knockback effect on the mob.
There’s a way to nerf a class in PvP and still preserve (or in our case, since we badly need it, increase) viability in PvE and these are what these ANet apologists need to realize instead of just saying “No, the class is fine just l2p”. ANet is really doing a bad job in balancing the different demands and expectations of players from this class. The PvP-ers are probably happy that the Mesmer is pwning in PvP (again I wouldnt know since I don’t PvP) but for people like me who really don’t care a single bit about PvP, the Mesmer is a true pain to play compared to how other classes fare in PvE.
A simple change like lowering zerker damage by 50% but increasing both his healthpool and rate of fire by 25% would decrease the amount of ppl QQing about zerker in PvP and would be beneficial in PvE. Re-designing GS1 to also hit multiple targets by spreading the damage it does now across 3 enemies clumped together would also help alleviate AoE concerns, as well as increasing GS3 radius and removing the cap on the number of targets it damages.
I mean, these are just ideas that I’m literally just pulling out of my kitten and, at least for me, they’re already better than what ANet has been doing to the Mesmer thus far.
If you guys haven’t noticed, we don’t even get a red reply in the Mesmer forums. It’s like they made this class, forgot about it, and remembers it only when people in PvP start demanding the class be nerfed, and then they do a really kittened up job about it.
Not sure if this has been asked before but this is not in the wiki. So…
1) Does your gear scale down? How exactly does it scale down?
Does it scale down your gear based on character level or gear level? For example I’m a level 40 character wearing level 20 gear in a level 20 area. Does my gear still scale down?
2) Do the the bonuses given to you by your traits (e.g. plus power or precision) scale down as well?
Was not getting any replies in General Discussion so was hoping if someone here can answer. Thanks!
So… does anyone know?
Not sure if this has been asked before but this is not in the wiki. So…
1) Does your gear scale down? How exactly does it scale down?
Does it scale down your gear based on character level or gear level? For example I’m a level 40 character wearing level 20 gear in a level 20 area. Does my gear still scale down?
2) Do the the bonuses given to you by your traits (e.g. plus power or precision) scale down as well?
All of you guys who posted after my last post – thank you so much for your suggestions and words of encouragement. Feel really relieved to know all that work spent wasn’t for nothing. I guess I just gotta keep at it, seems like the learning curve is a bit steep.
To the people saying this is another QQ thread – Wow… I never said the class was unplayable. It’s obviously playable as I’m already level 42. If it was unplayable I’d stop at level 2.
All I am just saying is it feels so very underpowered compared to other classes and I wish they’d fix it (or just fix the frikin bugs) just so that amount of deaths I have on my Mesmer won’t be as staggeringly high compared to that of my Ranger or Guardian.
I can handle 4-5 mobs at a time on the Guardian using a staff without breaking a sweat – with my Mesmer this situation means that I’ll be down within the first 15 seconds and hoping to just get enough damage to kills something so I can rally.
Also:
1. Swords: I tried it, was nice – but I absolutely detest being in melee range (<900) and I won’t use it even if it had a “one hit kill all mobs instantly” button (okay… if it had that – maybe).
2. I tried pistol before but it feels much less versatile than focus considering that iDuelist is not AoE and it’s not as if Mesmers have breadth in terms of AoE options compared to some of the other classes. The iWarden is like one of the last bastions of AoE I can somewhat rely on.
3. I feel that, aside from the iWarden, I’m being “forced” to use focus for the speed buff. I’ve tried swapping it out with other offhands but at the end of the day, the faster I get around, the faster I get things done so now I feel like I’m trapped in the choice of either sucking it up with focus or moving slower and since I’m not yet 80, speed kinda wins
I can compromise on the staff and replace my build with GS/Sceptre+Focus. I was really using GS but replaced it with the staff because the Rare GS’s are kinda expensive compared to the staves at my current level.
While I can compromise on the type of build, I can’t compromise on the weapon as I really hate going melee. It’s going to be two of either GS, Staff, or Sceptre + offhand for me. Not sure if there’s a viable build in there. :/
Anyway, for those who were really nice and said something constructive and offered suggestions – thanks. I’ll give those a try.
And for the people who were like “zomg why are joo having such a hard time with Mesmer wen I is awsome with this class lololol maybe u r noob” (I’m sure this was not how you said it but that’s how I hear it in my head) I honestly don’t know where you’re coming from. I kill Veteran Mobs with 3 to 4 of their minions all at the same time easy with a Ranger. I cannot get nowhere near that with the Mesmer. Granted my Ranger is just level 29 but he’s doing the exact same maps/encounters as my Mesmer who’s level 42 so I don’t see why the Ranger should come out on top (even taking dynamic scaling into consideration).
@Shrook: Currently running with Scepter+Focus/Staff and a Duelist/Illusion build for bleed on phantasm crits.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the Mesmer playstyle and ideology. It’s just that whenever I jump into my ranger or guardian, I find playing the game much easier and relaxing compared to when I’m playing it on my Mesmer to achieve the same end result. The guardian and ranger just feels rightly powerful in comparison to the mobs I’m attacking as opposed to the Mesmer where I’m constantly hovering below 50% health and running away just to not die.
I’m level 42 and I never ever do areas at my same level (I’m currently finishing all the 15-25 ones) but even then, the class just feels really really gi mp in terms of damage output and survivability in PVE (and let’s not get started on DE’s – geez). The class is also so riddled with many bugs, and whenever there’s a patch I keep getting excited that the bugs will be fixed.
Oh yeah, sure, the bugs are fixed – the bugs that make the class somehow playable and enticing (I’m looking at you iWarden!). It’s just disappointing how much indifference ANet has for this class – all they see and fix are the skills which other people are complaining “zomg OP!!” about but they don’t do anything about the list of other bugs stickied on this forum that’s making this class so frustrating to paly.
My question to you is: Do you think it’s still worth playing this class considering that nothing worthwhile is being done by ANet to fix the various design flaws and bugs this class has? I really want to play this class ankittenep hoping that things will get better during the next patch – but they never do. I’m really losing hope and it seems like it was really a waste of time leveling this class up which is sad since this was the playstyle I liked the most.
The guardian and ranger are fun but I keep coming back to Mesmer because I miss the playstyle – and then I feel so kittened and discouraged so I jump back to the Ranger/Guardian.
Any words of encouragement? Will it ever get better? Constructive replies only please.
@blighton: i don’t know… maybe it’s just me right but don’t you feel cheated when you see all of these people afk playing and earning karma and stuff while you actually spend some time of your life playing this game to achieve the same result?
@roqoco: i think you’re missing the point here. i read that article which was specifically why i posted this thread. The article goes on to say that specific action is being done to stop botters. That’s well and good and kudos to ANet for that. What it fails to address is the fact that the design of the content itself is what is encouraging botting and afk-playing.
I mean, come on… give people a bridge or a single point of entry that mobs will regularly run to at scheduled intervals and that give loads of karma and what not – and of course people, by virtue of them being people, will find ways to make it work to their advantage.
So we come down to this:
1) either suck it up or join them since this seems to be the most efficient way at the moment to level up and gain karma and exp (oh look i’m gaining stuff even when i’m not on the computer) OR
2) fix this to encourage people to actually friggin play the game
Case in point: Kessex Hill. There’s a bridge there which centaurs attack ever 10-15 minutes in which they attempt to rebuild the bridge. Well of course people have been afk-playing and you can see all of these people attacking thin air until event cycles itself.
Want proof?
Here.
Seriously, dynamic events like this need more work that should require people to be actively participating (e.g. make boss mobs that cast spells on the ground that makes anyone that stands still for more than 10 seconds insta-die or something – yeah I know that’s a bad suggestion but that’s what I can come up with right at the top of my head).
Again, the system of reporting botters transfer the responsibility to the player. I would just like to propose here that ANet instead do something actively to the design itself to prevent stuff like this happening.
sitll borken. pealse fxi nwo!!!
Hi ANet,
I was randomly questing in Wayfarer Foothills when my character suddenly and randomly became possessed and/or mentally challenged and/or something.
Why did he suddenly contort like that? Why is his mouth is frozen open as if it was caught in the middle of a scream, and his eyes are wide open in that blank emotionless gaze as if he was begging the Seven gods to save his mortal existence as some infernal demon ripped his soul out of his body???
It’s disturbing as heck. Why does my character do this???
agree. design would’ve been better if it was an aoe around your current target instead.
Weapons: Shortbow/Axe/Horn (Long bow situational for aoe)
Traits: 30/30/0/0/10
http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=36i0001p151tm6mc00uu00a3c3d3j3m3rfugrStat focus: Precision—>Crit Damage—>Power (once you are at 100% crit damage precision provides more dps than power)
Sup. Runes of the Ranger in all my gear. I use Sup. Sigil of Str. on my bow (chance to gain might on critical). I put the +10 precision on kills (stacks to 25) on my axe.
How it works:
The build is based on quickness, in my opinion the most overpowered source of damage for rangers. I use quickening zephyr immediately after I pop signet of the wild and rampage as one. When zephyr runs off I switch pets to get the quickness bonus from pet swap (I switch pets every 20 seconds, it is important to keep your pet alive so you don’t get the full 60 sec cd). I will switch to axe/horn once my pet/zephyr is on CD, blow all axe cds except call of the wild. I use call of the wild right before I switch back to sbow. Finally, right before the mob dies I switch to axe to allow myself to proc the axe sigil to gain the precision stack.The synergy between shortbow/quickness and Sigil of Str is amazing, allows you to keep 10+ might stacks up while quickness buffed.
As for pets, I use the stalker for the might buff and the hyena for dps (2 is better than 1).
This sounds like it’ll take a lot of practice to get used to what with all the swapping and the cooldown monitoring you have to do but kudos to you. Do you do the same rotation in AoE situations (like DE’s) or was the rotation you described for “boss”-type fights?
@Zelvoka: (my quote button isn’t working again)
“Pet : Black bear F2 Enfeebling Roar : Roar fiercely, weakening nearby foes. —- here’s what GOOD weakening —? Endurance regeneration decreased by 50%; 50% of Non Critical hits are glancing blows (50% damage); stacks duration. for 10sec<< 10sec Range: 600”
This is amazing. Thanks for this info. I’ve never bothered to look at what weakness does. Didn’t realize it how synergistic it would be for tanky pets/characters.
I won’t come close to calling myself a pro but I use the following and it seems to work well. I only do PvE so keep that in mind.
- Pets:
– Jaguar (Any cat due to their high precision)
– Black bear (some use brown bear)- Weapons:
– Shortbow
– Sword & Horn (if you can stand the sword locking you in place)- One of the following trait builds:
– 30/30/0/0/10
– 20/30/10/0/10- Stats to focus on:
– Power -> Precision -> +Crithttp://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mcom0Vm0mvgGMmvgGMxx9MazRczVaM
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mcom0Vm0mvgGMmvgGMGxa0azRzVaVMI often swap Signet of Stone for Signet of the Hunt
Key to this layout is to make sure you never let your pet die else you lose the Master’s Bond stacks. Swapping to your secondary pet will also clear the stacks. Use the Jaguar’s F2 ability to stealth it if it gets aggro (in a dungeon) or just call it back to you and use your heal if needed.
Also keeping your pet alive in a dungeon is a real challenge. You spend a big part of your time monitoring your pet then focusing on yourself and putting out the most damage you can. Those that claim that their pets never dies in a dungeon most likely have their pet next to them most of the time.
Hi Kojack, thanks for answering. This looks very viable on paper. Is this comparable to a condition damage build? Also, some questions:
1. Why use shortbow? (I had the impression shortbows are only good for condition damage and if you wanna go power, you switch to longbow)
2. Based on your personal experience, is Pet Prowess (Skirmish Adept 1) better than Sharpened Edges (Skirmish Adept 2)?
Thanks!
My thief build is sword+pistol, with utility skills varying by level. Blind works wonders against both groups and single bosses. Black Powder will reapply blind for a few seconds in its area of effect. Pistol whip can lock down a single target. If I get in trouble, hide in shadows, smoke screen, and/or roll for initiative can save the day. (If nothing else, I can stealth for long enough to heal, which will stealth me again.) Ironically, I stumbled on the build with my “live” thief so I could take on skill challenges and veterans solo.
Now don’t get me wrong—I totally agree that some of the steps are too hard. I’ve played this game a lot, so facing 3 mobs at once is no big deal, but I recognize that it’s too much for most players, and the early steps (L1-20) in particular need to be toned down. But I simply don’t have enough hours in the day to play through every single story step and make adjustments, which is why I keep asking for specifics.
Also, not to start an argument, but expecting every story step to work for ANY build is not realistic. If you want to build a glass cannon, you can’t expect to never die, and you can’t expect your particular favorite build to work all the time.
How about NOT play each single story step and just tone down all “waves of enemies” type of encounters across the board? I mean the player is just 1 guy and it’s not like you’re going to fix NPC AI for every single encounter any time soon so they’re practically useless right now.
I just don’t understand the thought process of that went through when these encounters were designed. How did you really expect a single person to handle fast spawning waves of multiple enemies alone? I mean sure, maybe guardians and warriors could get by but did you even consider how certain classes that don’t have strong solo AoE, like Mesmers, could get by?
To be honest, this is one of the reasons I’ve totally stopped playing the personal story. It is SO discouraging when you are 10 levels above the supposed level of step in the story but you are puppied because of dynamic scaling (though I have really nothing against dynamic scaling it’s just that it exacerbates the situation) and the only way you can complete it is by dying and rezzing over and over again.
I don’t mean to come off as hostile. It’s just really frustrating hearing that you, as content designer, has to MANUALLY check each step just to verify and fix this issue. The inefficiency of this process is mind boggling especially in this day and age of modern software engineering methodologies. It’s not like GW2 was developed in the 80’s in some guy’s basement using QBasic, right?
What, was Guild Wars 2 developed using spaghetti code? Is there no search and replace function in the event scripts? Are there no in house tools developed to make it easy for content designers to maintain the game’s content? Are there no usage statistics or tracking that show the percentage of people that are dying repeatedly over some step that alerts your content design teams that “hey maybe something’s wrong here, let’s focus on this”?
Jeff I know you are doing your best but this method (checking forums for people having trouble with quests) is not only extremely inefficient, it also does not capture issues that may be ongoing but nobody has been annoyed enough yet to post in the forums.
Please kick your developers on their behinds if they seriously designed the code with such poor maintainability that content designers have to resort to crowd sourcing just to discover issues and get things fixed. I am not pretending to know better but issues like this just betray the fact that something must have gone terribly wrong during the technical design phase since situations like this were not accounted for.
Let’s have discussion on the merits and pros and cons of different racial skills for Mesmers. I know that racial skills are not as great as profession skills and that they’re supposedly there just for flavor but surely, some of them must have borderline/situational uses that could perhaps synergize or fill in a weakness of the Mesmer class.
Disregarding looks or personal preference, what do you think is the best race (in terms of racial skills) for Mesmers and why?
Hi guys,
Can some of you who consider themselves “pro” Rangers give the rest of the community an idea of what weapons you use, what kind of damaging stat you invest in (power, pres, or cond dmg), and what your build is in general that you find most effect in PvE (meaning DE’s, solo questing/farming, and dungeons).
Right now I’m really enjoying being a shortbow/axe+torch Ranger (I sometimes switch the torch with a horn when I know I’ll be doing a lot of running around the map) and I really enjoy this playstyle. I wish I could find some use for the Longbow but in reality, I just keep finding the shortbow consistently better (in terms of damage output and “feel” for the playstyle – I really hate the fact that my damage gets puppied whenever the mobs get close).
Also, is there a viable/competitive power build for Rangers or is conditional damage really the best way to go for now?
NO.
NO.
NOnononononono!
Are you trying to make this World of Whatsisname?!
NO! NO NO NO!
This is the absolute worst idea ever if you want to fix the economy. There are so much more better ideas in this forum.
This is one of those things that I really am having a hard time understanding. WHY would people rather have an option to stow their pet permanently and have a DPS hit as opposed to just having the pet out? I’ve done jumping puzzles and I’ve never ever had a problem with my pet. Is there something I’m missing here? Are the pets causing you to fail your jumping puzzles? Are they stealing your cookies and sleeping with your moms? Whyyy???
Besides, as other people have pointed out already, if you want to play a ranged character without a pet, you can go engineer, warrior, whatevs. Someone please explain to me why people would rather not have a pet because it totally boggles the mind.
I agree that the pet AI and responsiveness needs work but it’s not like I’m doing worse as a ranger just because the pet’s out. If you don’t want to babysit a pet then don’t. It’s not like you have to micromanage it.
Hmm… I love the look of the Fern Hound and this was the pet I started out with (I play Sylvari). I was having somewhat of a harder time than expected leveling through the first 10 levels (pet kept dying for some reason) and I read somewhere about Arctodus so I went to the Norn area to tame him.
After getting to Arctodus, life became SO MUCH easier for me as a ranger. Seriously. This bear rarely goes down even when taking hits from 2-3 enemies.
The other 2 pets I enjoyed so far are:
1. Jungle Spider – The Poison combo field + root is just awesome sauce. I love using this pet during DE’s
2. Raven – My favorite solo questing pet. It looks really cool flying around when it attacks, plus it gives you a swiftness buff when you enter combat so what I usually do when I’m running from one point to the other is to randomly attack critters using F1
Right now I’m running mostly with Raven and Bear. I replace the Raven with Jungle Spider from time to time but the Bear always stays in my toggle. I wish they’d modify the interface and allow us to switch up to 3 pets :P
I’ve yet to explore other pets though.
Oh and I don’t know if this is a bug but the blue jellyfish (or was it red? I tamed it in the lake in Lions Arch) is totally useless! It does not seem to want to attack. :/
Thanks Katz and Pandemoniac. Both your answers actually answered my questions. Very helpful info.
I’m not a crafter myself right now but I’m always torn between selling them to the vendor or salvaging them for materials (selling them on TP is usually not an option since they sell for less than vendor price).
Thanks!
Why does the server keep going down or is it me?
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: pyronix.4081
I was in the middle of Rata Sum when this happened to me. I got booted out of the game due to some Transaction Failed error. Tried to log in a few times. Was successful some times but got booted out again after a few seconds. Now, I can’t log in at all. It’s giving me error 42:0:9001:3928.
@Wizardauz: I haven’t played a Guardian past level 3 but the way I’ve heard it, Guardians are one of the more better tuned (read: not kittened, or at least not as kittened as Mesmers) classes for PvE right now. Aside from having innate defensive abilities as class mechanics, you have pretty good AoE/Heals. You have to consider, however, how other classes will do against the same challenges. Not all classes can handle waves and waves and waves of enemies as competently.
As an example, on my Ranger, I find doing personal quests of equal level much easier than when I’m on my Mesmer considering the Mesmer is 10 levels higher than the ranger.
I…don’t think the Dream works that way. Remember, the Nightmare Court was formed by a firstborn and some of the first Sylvari that came after. The Pale Tree does not control the dream, and the Sylvari as a whole can dictate their own lives. How exactly has the tablet affected them that much? The existence of the Nightmare Court and the Soundless should be evidence enough that the Tablet isn’t controlling their lives THAT much. The tablet itself pretty much just says: Don’t be a bigot, be rational, and follow life."
Riku I think the reason I’m questioning the moral stance of the Nightmare Court is somehow related to what is happening right now in the real world. First of all, just as a disclaimer, I do not condone terrorism in any form, in the same way that spreading corruption/destruction is not a morally gray area for me – it is clearly evil. However, if you look deeper into the issue, there’s a reason why terrorists become terrorists. I would like to believe that people /sylvari are not inherently born evil.
I can see a parallel to this situation in the story of the Pale Tree vs Nightmare Court. Essentially the NC are the terrorists of the Sylvari race. They don’t want to conform, they want to sow disorder for their own seemingly crazy ideas. However, I want to go deeper than that and challenge the assumption that the Pale Tree is all good and such. If it were, then why are Sylvari being tempted to join the NC? Surely, there must be a flaw in the system that’s making them question their association to the Pale Tree and to Ventari’s teachings.
Like media in real life, the view presented by the game to us with regards to the NC is very 1 sided. Not all Muslims are terrorists (actually only an extremely small percentage of them are) and thinking along those lines, and I would like to conjecture that perhaps, not all NC are evil considering that their supposedly driving motivation (which is to get rid of ventari’s teaching and replace it with something that is organically sylvari) is not inherently evil.
Is it possible that the NC NPCs we encounter simply represents the extremist arm of their group but that there are many other Sylvari who ascribe to their ideals but are not violent?
This is different from the Soundless though as the Soundless just don’t want to have to do anything with the Pale Tree.
You did listen to what Gavin wanted to actually do to the stag, right? He wanted to make it suffer, simply so the innocent creature’s pain can aid the Nightmare.
It is possible to be noble or honourbound and still be amoral.If you want your creativity tickled, btw, some people are theorizing that the Nightmare and the Nightmare Court were born from the memories of those poor Sylvari who first encountered the Asura and were experimented on (apparently in quite ruthless ways).
RE: Gavin – yeah I suppose you’re right. He just seems more lawful neutral/lawful evil than his cohorts. I really did like Gavin and I really felt bad when I had to kill him.
Caithe herself seems to have a hidden dark side. I think it’s in the Green Knight and Moon Shield option where she interrogates one of the Nightmare Courtiers and kills the courtier like it was nothing after she got the information she needed all the while saying something like “This is enough violence for now.”
Still it makes me wonder what it is with the Pale Tree that’s causing the Soundless to turn away and the Nightmare Court to attract/seduce Sylvari. I mean, if the Pale Tree was “perfect”, the Sylvari would be united in the grove as her “goodness” would be stronger than the nightmare’s supposed corruption. I keep having that nagging feeling that something’s not right with the Pale Tree or that it’s hiding something from the rest of the Sylvari race.
Hi Jeff, is it not possible from your end to query which steps across all story steps involve encounters with waves of mobs? It seems less efficient to be asking players to specifically cite instances/situations where they encounter difficulty considering that:
1. a lot of people (me included) cannot remember the exact Quest Names/steps when I encountered insane levels of difficulty. However, most of the difficult steps have one common factor which is what the OP has written – waves of enemies. Regardless of whether you have NPCs on your side or not, most of them are useless so these encounters need to be toned down
2. not all of GW2 players read the forums. Some of them will just give up on it out of sheer frustration
The quick response ANet have given so far is very much appreciated. I think it would just go faster on your end if there was a systematic way of bringing up all steps that had wave encounters and just implementing a general fix somehow that would scale properly (just by toning down the encounter to a level that’s challenging but not frustrating) with a single player at the given level of the quest instead of doing it on a case by case basis.
Of course, maybe I’m oversimplifying this but surely there must be a tool or a way for you or the developers to call this data up.
So I apparently posted this before reading their write up on the official GW2 wiki. Here’s a snippet that somehow corroborates what I’m talking about.
“The primary goal of the Nightmare Court is to corrupt the Pale Tree herself, bringing her around to their twisted ideals so that the sylvari may be freed from the shackles of Ventari’s Tablet and replace this philosophy of a centaur and a human by one which is uniquely sylvari.
The sylvari in the Nightmare Court don’t consider themselves “perverse”; some wouldn’t even think of themselves as “evil”. They have chosen a path they think is correct and are willing to convince other sylvari to choose the same path. Once within the court, their converts are forced to commit dreadful acts that destroy every last ounce of virtue they may have left."
Based on this, I think the motivation (freeing themselves from the shackles of the philosophy of a centaur and a human – as well intentioned as it may seem – to be replaced by something that is unique to the sylvari) is actually the progressive mind set I would rather adopt. From a Sylvari standpoint, I wouldn’t want my morals and ideals to be dictated to me by some tablet that some centaur and human wrote years ago. They are not Sylvari, and they do not understand the unique situation of the Sylvari race.
As for the Nightmare Court, I am inclined to agree that while the motivation is noble, the execution is morally questionable. I am still not convinced however that all of the Nightmare Court maintain this mindset considering that Gavin (White Stag option) chose to fight and die in honor when he could have easily gained the upper hand through deception.
My main qualm here as well is more philosophical – evil supposedly cannot arise from something that is purely good. Why did the Pale Tree not “foresee” through the Dream of Dreams that the Nightmare Court will arise? The Sylvari who formed the Nightmare Court came from the Pale Tree herself as well, so is there not a chance that there is a flipside to this Dream of Dreams that the Pale Tree does not want to acknowledge but has subconsciously manifested itself through some of her children? Consequently, shouldn’t the goal of the Pale Tree be unification then, instead of Separation?
(edited by pyronix.4081)
I need specific information to know which story step to look at.
- Your current story step
- Your current objective
- Your character’s class and level
- Any specifics on the issue (too many enemies at once, tough boss, confusing objective, etc.)
Any story that involves waves of enemies.
Too many enemies at once – It’s always this. As Sylvarri Mesmer, I honestly cannot do personal story quests at my own level for Crescent Moon and Green Knight options. It was better when I was a ranger since I had a pet tanking – but not by much.
I’ve resorted to not doing personal stories at all because of the difficulty level. It needs toning down – across the board!
ANet, please do not ask players to cite specific story step and objectives. As an earlier poster stated, you need to recheck all stories where waves of enemies are involved. They really don’t get that much easier as well even when you do them at a higher level due to dynamic scaling (I don’t mind being scaled down – what I DO mind is that the difficulty level is not comparable to the quest level).
IMO there is nothing subjective over this thread.
People’s opinion about the story may be subjective, but player’s choices not affecting the game is not subjective, it’s just a fact, and that’s the subject in discussion.ArenaNet says:
“What we want is for the player to feel like a hero, and to feel like they’ve really changed the world around him.”
https://www.guildwars2.com/media/videos#vlb/Tv7j73VWVWsIf we make choices that are just ignored later on, we are not changing the world at all.
…and just to add, you cannot feel like a hero if Failhearne steals all the glory for the work you’ve done. It actually defeats the purpose of the Personal Story feature. Accept or not and as sad as it may sound, a lot of people play MMO’s because of the sense of virtual achievement and recognition they get – taking this away and giving this to an NPC that most people feel do not deserve it limits this enjoyment.
No disrepect to you Jeff, but this is a multi-faceted issue. It’s not just Trahearne, or how people find his character that’s the problem here. As the OP stated, choices are not mattering at all, which is counter to the expectation set for this game. While I do understand that there are limitations to how “personal” you can make the story, especially at end game when things have to wrap up together, it would not hurt to incorporate slight variations that will acknowledge the decisions you made. It was really not a good decision to make Failhearne the focus of the story. The people who like Trahearne now would not have minded if their characters became the focus of the story instead. The people who don’t like Trahearne now would be much happier if their characters became the focus of the story instead. It’s a win-win and it makes perfect business sense.
This question keeps bugging me. I have nothing against the Pale Tree and their cohorts but a lot of times (especially if you get the White Stag hunt option) I feel that there’s something intrinsically wrong with the Pale Tree which is why the Nightmare court exists.
I keep getting this freedom fighters vibe from the Nightmare Court. I mean, sure they want to spread hate and despair and a lot of the Nightmare Court characters ONLY want to spread hate and despair but when you actually think about the goal of the Nightmare Court, they want to be free from the influence of the Pale Tree because they would rather prefer to face life realistically (love with loss, joy with pain, dream with the shattering truth of reality). The execution might be flawed but the intent is not evil – it is actually noble.
It’s like the Grove is North Korea, you know. They’re all seemingly happy but it’s really just a cult of personality, and some of these Nightmare court guys have woken up to the reality of the rest of the world around them and realized that hey… things aren’t so peachy.
It really doesn’t move unless you trait for it, I think. It sucks, I know. LOL
Hi,
Can we please have an option to replace “Kitten” by “Puppies” or “Pandas” whenever the forum censors stuff? I mean, nothing against kittens of course – they cute and such. I just like puppies and pandas more.
So instead of giving us a reponse about how fail the personal story is you just posted about that stupid thing of the kittens. GJ ArenaNet, keep up with that..
About half of the threads on the Personal Story forum first page have comments from ANet but no replies so far on the 3 ongoing threads (not counting the ones in the Sylvarri forums) with regards to how the personal story is not really your personal story because of Failhearne, considering that these threads are the most discussed. It seems like this is an issue ANet is actively avoiding answering at the moment. I don’t think they expected people to react so negatively to Failhearne or how the personal story develops later in the game.
No quote button, so…
I fail to see how that is coming out of nowhere. What kind of introduction did you want? His entire 25 year life story? And I’m playing a new Sylvari char. I’ve played through all three of their lines. He does give you an introduction, to my memory.
Well apart from the “Hi I’m a firstborn who spent all my time in Orr and now I’m back,” there’s really no compelling reason as to why I should have anything to do with this guy in the first place. He was just deus ex machina-ed into the story.
It’s like watching a Star Trek movie with the Borg on the verge of winning when all of a sudden Arnold Schwarzenneger comes into the scene and without really much explanation other than “I used to be a Borg but I escaped the colective and now I’m back” and suddenly takes over the whole plot.
It makes NO puppying sense (I like puppies more than kittens).