Guild Wars 2

Jerus.4350:

roachsrealm.9284:

this happened to me at teq last week.

yeah, it sucks getting the boot before your rewards.

problem I see is, if there is a safety net type of system installed, how do you prevent abuse? if you are promised rewards for participating instead of completing, then every dungeon will be a “hit the boss and alt-f4”. no content will ever actually get finished.

you still get all the rewards you were present for, and for dungeon runs in particular all you are missing out on is a handful of tokens and about 1g. the dreaded disconnect only means you spend another 10 – 20 minutes doing it again.

I don’t feel the loot in this game is worth a safety net. while it would be nice, it would be easy to abuse and if I really want a few more blues and greens I can just kill a few raptor patrols in a fraction of the time.

That’s a pretty out there idea.

In other games they’ve installed systems that will keep your character “active” for a few minutes so you can get rewards you’ve earned.

Going into a dungeon or really any content and alt f4’ing out doesn’t let you actually do other things, you’d still have to log back in and grab the reward, but instead of helping complete it and trying to ensure it happens you’d be just relying on the team hoping they did while you still had to log back in.

And, it’s not just a few greens/blues. So much of this game’s rewards are reliant on completion. Your 3.55g from an Arah path + tokens + greens/blues. Your Chance at various skins like Fractal Skins or Teq Hoard. Some of these could be after an hour of prep/work. It’s not meaningless, at least not more than anything in the game (it is all just pixels and data).

Point being, if that’s the best abuse you can come up with… well, I’d be surprised if it happened even once.

you are right, of course. this likely would not be the case, but given any change to mechanics or the way a system works I try to look at the common user base and see how the path of least resistance would play out. in a worst case scenario, this wouldn’t be beneficial for anyone. it likely wouldn’t see too much abuse, but I’ve learned to never underestimate the masses.

as far as rewards go, yeah, Arah and some others are exceptions, but most dungeons will net you a gold or so, plus a few drops. a safety net to make sure I get another spoon from teq is not something I need.

this happened to me at teq last week.

yeah, it sucks getting the boot before your rewards.

problem I see is, if there is a safety net type of system installed, how do you prevent abuse? if you are promised rewards for participating instead of completing, then every dungeon will be a “hit the boss and alt-f4”. no content will ever actually get finished.

you still get all the rewards you were present for, and for dungeon runs in particular all you are missing out on is a handful of tokens and about 1g. the dreaded disconnect only means you spend another 10 – 20 minutes doing it again.

I don’t feel the loot in this game is worth a safety net. while it would be nice, it would be easy to abuse and if I really want a few more blues and greens I can just kill a few raptor patrols in a fraction of the time.

while its true that healing skills are static, what isn’t is your % relative to your total. for example, if you have runes that give you a damage boost over 90% of your health total, having a lower health pool will allow you to maintain that easier if you heal more often. the more health you have, the harder it is to get back up to that threshold. generally this is what people mean when they say mention healing effectiveness. There are a number of ranger traits that are effected by % health totals.

according to the base stats in the game, it really is as simple as:

Toughness vs Direct Damage
Vitality vs Condition Damage

typically, conditions are not that big of a deal if you have good condi clears or management. rangers have a lot of it.

the same could be said for direct damage. if you dodge well and avoid attacks, why do you need toughness. rangers have a lot of this too.

I would choose toughness over vitality, only for the reason that the utility buffs draw a larger % from toughness than they do vitality. your offensive stats will be that much higher based on your toughness, always.

I lead a mainly social guild. We have dungeon runners, PvPers, some WvW nuts, and a lot of PvE grinders. We have a site, our own teamspeak, and we usually see 30 people log in daily, usually 20 around peak times (reset, teq, etc). Some of our members (myself included) have been in this guild for 10 years now.

http://thegothicembrace.enjin.com/

(site isn’t awesome yet, I know)

if you are interested send me a mail in game to Smitten Mittens.

focus on power and ferocity for your dagger, condi and power for your torch.

prec is nice, but it is one of the only stats not required to be in your armor / weapons due to the Fury boon. the +20% you get from this is equal to 2 – 4 pieces of prec main equipment. for example, my ele has a 50% crit chance but no prec armor or trinkets whatsoever. just in the weapons / utility noms.

and traps sword / x / sb rangers are awesome. you want your condi to be at least 700 for good burning damage.

I’d go with more vitality and less prec in your stats and rely on boons to make up the difference. anything over 50% is very effective.

^ this is the best thing they can do, honestly.

I can’t speak on the elite specs, but I can describe the classes as they feel now.

Elementalist: whenever I play this I feel like I am a combo factory. I hit all my skills, quickly, and it feels more like a dance and less like a “fire everything” engineer. Tough to master but very satisfying when you get it down. Also: squishy. you learn to avoid taking hits very quickly.

Necromancer: one long fire and forget. I am a health tank that can wade in to any situation and soak all the everything. this feels like a slow build up of power, and with one skill I can send everything fleeing in terror. you will forget what your dodge button feels like.

try the event north of those caves that opens a portal. this portal takes you to the far south east corner of this map, where there is a lone poi.

I think MF does help with these.

but, saying MF helps with anything should be taken with a grain of salt. RNG is RNG, after all. all the MF in the world won’t promise anything 100%.

but yes, they still drop. I just got two nights ago in SE.

Some of the environmental effects from GW1 say like, “The Deep” were fun do deal with. Also the Realm of Torment. They added a persistent kind of excitement where you had to keep pressing on before your toon simply gave out.

I don’t like the idea for this in open world maps, but for dungeons and other instanced content (raids, fractals, etc) this would be very cool.

yes please. the aquabreather should be a helm – stat – clone with a different appearance.

there are tons of other suggestions that can improve underwater, but that is for a different thread…

on their own, dagger does more initial damage and keeps your health, healthy.

axe does less initial damage but stacks vuln, so your overall damage will increase over time. also, you can stay out of melee fights with axe. it also gives retaliation, so that is more damage potential.

dagger is about slicing fast and causing panic. best paired with wells, especially with the immobilize.

axe is about building pressure and punishment. if you are in a group, take axe over dagger. if you are alone, take dagger over axe.

otherwise, I think the weapons are just fine how they are. I think the reason axe suffers is because it’s not a selfish weapon, unlike most of the necromancers skills, and we just aren’t comfortable using it.

I use focus all the time.

skill 4 hits harder than I expect it to every time, and I never have problems seeing the bounce. if you are fighting one vet you can max vuln faster than any other class.

skill 5 does good damage, but its slow. I would like to see it cast faster, but Id much rather see it recharge faster.

Necro focus can turn a 20 minute dredge fractal into a 10 minute one. I also always bring it when fighting svanir, inquest, or any other boon-heavy mobs.

in PvP you should proc fear first since the cast on 5 is so long and easy to spot, but paired with dagger 3 you can keep people out of capture points. even for a second or two means more points for your team, where every second matters.

don’t use focus in WvW. ever.

Spartacus.3192:

remove ICD and take it back to 1 stack per block or leave ICD and make it 3 stacks instead of 2.

came here to post this ^

I’ll be using the Wolfborn longbow for now, because of the white/black scheme and it fits the style of my charrdian. This should be enough for me until I have enough for a 4th gift of light to make the azureflame.

the only room for it would be as a consecration or a spirit weapon. every other skill type has a heal for that type.

it doesn’t make sense as a consecration since it isn’t ground rooted, doesn’t have a lasting effect, and doesn’t effect other players / or enemies. it is one of the most selfish skills a guardian has.

it may work as a spirit weapon, but we know how well those work and we should not ask for such a thing.

I like it currently uncategorized. sure, they could make it work as another skill type regardless of how the others like it work (receive the light?) but it would then likely suffer in an unbuffed form until you traited into virtues to get back to the base skill we are used to.

they shouldn’t be individual summons and instead be more like ritualist-style weapon enchantments. this would make so much more sense and fit the flavor / lore of the class better.

hall of monuments firey dragon sword
volcanus
cobalt
any sword or greatsword with a firey effect
any torch offhand while it’s not stowed.

for elementalist, your options here suck. use your sword elite skill and use that.

from a looks standpoint, only you can decide what is best.

from a mechanics standpoint, look at the racial skills and what may be useful.

if you plan to focus on conditions in your rev build, go asura. if you want boons and some extra mobs to give damage for you, go charr.

without swiftness it would take me 33% longer to finish map exploration. over weeks and months this adds up to days of time.

swiftness is there to save time. on occasion it is useful for getting out of a red ring when you are out of endurance.

condi Mesmer runs into some problems in dungeons.

if you are clearing trash mobs you will feel as powerful as you do in open roaming. not much difference here.

for bosses and stacks, ive noticed that the token confusion and torment just don’t kick out enough damage, for two reasons. most bosses don’t move around much (torment suffers) and most stacks aim to keep the boss from using skills (confusion suffers). If you are part of an efficient group that knows how to use ice bow freeze, your conditions will barely have an impact before the boss goes down.

if you are set on using condi in dungeons, keep scepter / torch for a blast finisher and to stack confusion quickly. the more you have the better, of course. for your other set keep a sword / focus handy so you can contribute to DPS and keep yourself from getting blasted in a tight stack. using or traiting for additional reflects will help your dps, exponentially in some fights.

I tried this for about a week or two in regular dungeon runs, and found I simply did more damage with a ferocity stacking finesse build.

For reference, when I was condi-focused I used zerk armor and sinister trinkets.

To get the most out of your condi damage, I recommend using greatsword as a second weapon traited with the might stacking. dodge a couple clones out quick with GS out, swap to your condi set, and use Aristocracy Runes. The token clones will spatial surge and stack your might, and your limited conditions will pack more of a punch.

these are very helpful tips.

here are a couple more that I had to deal with. I’ve installed Win 10 in three machines already.

upgrading will reset your paging file. if you used this in the past to boost your speed a bit, you will likely have to reset it again.

when you upgrade it keeps all your old windows installation files, which take up a lot of space. you can use disc cleanup to remove these. (all programs > windows admin> disc cleanup) select your install HDD, and click the box in the lower left that reads “Clean up system files”. This will take a few minutes, and will clear dozens of GB of space for you. *only do this if you are happy with Win 10 and do not want to revert"

omg, of course.

#morningbeforecoffeenoobmoments.

thank you.

I second the notion of getting everything but the pre. by the time HoT comes out with the legendary mastery line to scavenger hunt your precursor of choice, you can feasibly obtain the required gifts first. The precursor is the most RNG part of this, and once the expansion comes out it will no longer be RNG.

How can I get rid of it?

ocd trigger: its sitting at ONE, cmon.
value trigger: I have something of value that I cannot use for anything. no one wants my shiny old action figure.
frustration trigger: there is no system set up to deal with this.

I’m afraid of getting stuck in a loop of always having 1 extra gem sitting in my wallet. Can there be a way to get rid of this single gem?

dungeon tour
teq
daily (pve/pvp)
daily ascended crafting
a silverwaste run
get another map completed on my Mesmer
update the guild facebook
manage guild boosts
check the roster for inactives past 6 months
check the roster for potential ranking changes
chat with people on our teamspeak and lement about my broken mic
go to work
come home, play skyforge until my eyes fall out
wake up, hold dnd session
work
sleep
repeat until I finish my degree
finally prepurchase HoT and maybe play it before HL3 comes out.

If you are going to craft all the parts required set aside a week of crafting. For a full set of armor; plan for at least a month.

Creating the base ascended material that then gets turned into the refined material is time gated on your account to one per day. The refined material, however, is not time gated, and even tradable. If you have the spare coin, the fastest way to get what you want is to purchase said mats off the trading post.

Plan to spend an average of 4g per piece, except Damask which is closer to 17g.

Spinal blades are tougher because blade shards trickle out of the current loot tables. As long as you have at least one blade shard, you can start making more using the mystic forge with these and watchwork sprockets.

IIRC you need 3000 blade shards total to make a full ascended spinal blades in the color of your choice.

Obtaining sprockets on your own is also time gated, tied to the farming node in a home instance. These are also tradable as well, and run about 8g per stack of 250.

I’m currently crafting an ascended set of Keepers armor for my guardian, and I’m kind of in the same situation you are in, as my needs are damask, steel, and sprockets. Running dungeons and farming silverwastes gets me the gold I need to purchase the required silk to make the time gated mats each day. I let them pile up until I salvage the required wool/cotton/silk, etc to make the refined mat, usually I do this at the end of a week period and make a few at once, making smaller purchases just to fill in the gaps to refine all I have available. (unless you are starting from zero mats, it is cheaper to buy what you need and refine it than purchasing the refined ascended mat on your own)

It’s just going to take time, and the more gold you have the faster the process becomes.

generally…

if the boss features reflects: bring wall of reflection. spirit shield weapon for extra. if you need more, equip a shield yourself.

if the boss features conditions: purging flames, save yourselves, or contemplation of purity.

if the boss features knockbacks, etc: hallowed ground, stand your ground.

if the boss features a lot of adds: meditations.

if you are underwater: combo fields.

if the boss reflects attacks: melee skills and meditations.

this is kind of how combat preparation works for every boss.

Urgoz / The Deep / Underworld Fractals.
Tengu / Kodan playable races.
Ring of Fire, Cantha, Elona, Far Shiverpeaks opened up.

an all underwater map or two, complete with overhaul of underwater combat, and an underwater dungeon / story.

My first impression of him (on a charr, mind) was something like “oh, a little sylvari necromancer scholar with an obsession for the undead? that’s kinda cool”.

then he opened his mouth and I thought “ugh. hopefully he is just some little flavor side character”

then he became a general and stuff happened. “um, I thought this was my personal story, not the NPCs?”

the trouble with truehorn is the same problem with scarlet. if you take a look at his story apart from what is shown us in game, it’s actually pretty compelling. everything between the lines lends depth and it’s somewhat tragic, but everything we get to experience first hand is bloated and skewed to the point of hilarity. it just doesn’t translate well into they system for story telling they have established.

how is knights more damage output than soldiers? soldiers is a power main, and knights is a toughness main.

are you sure you don’t mean captains? (same stats as knights, but power main instead?)

this is confusing.

what other reward tracks are there in WvW besides WvW Experience?

getting a boost to PvP reward tracks makes sense separate from individual rank exp, as those are separate systems. to my knowledge WvW always adds wvw exp and regular leveling up experience. which does it effect, and why make the distinction if it doesn’t effect wvw exp?

trans charges have always been that way, and is an odd outlier in the loot code.

why they decided to do this with trans charges, and at stacks of 5 at a time, seems completely arbitrary.

the loot system needs to be consolidated. loot bags of mats are fine still, but a way to open them all would be nice. we can sell them all as a stack if we want, after all.

I’m also sick of clicking on bouncy, wiggling chests icons in the corner and getting another box, which sometimes even contains another box inside of that, and at least more things to just click on.

for example, why should I have to double click on a vial of karma when boosters no longer effect them and when karma is account wide to begin with. it should just add karma to my total when the reward is met.

this same thing can be said for a lot of things.

there likely won’t be until jeweler is increased to 500. then you will be able to craft ascended trinkets, and then you will be able to use the 400 level upgraded jewels and use them in the forge much like the inscriptions and such are used now.

this is, of course, wild speculation, but if the system makes any sense at all it will look something like this.

hahaha, you said “goods” >_<

…because this is how you unlock explorable mode on any alt? by doing story first?

not much of a hassle imo.. most story modes can be done solo with a good build and stats. story dungeons are easier than most renown hearts..

in my experience this has little to do with the graphic nature of the new content and the load on their test/beta servers. they are simply not up to par yet with the other servers already established. look for this to be improved upon with each BWE and upon release.

forgot one:

PvE: want to stand in the way of a patrol and gather drops while you are afk? Necromancer minions.

just sign up with your email. download the exe and activate it. then you can deactivate it. its easier than pooping.

use headshot to clear stacks quickly, but only when no one else is removing stacks. headshot is good in a clutch, and is excellent for setting up a second freeze. be careful with your timing.

pistol whip takes longer, but you do more damage. I would save this skill for when you need to dodge, but also need to maintain dps and stay in the stack. do not rely on this for defiance management.

and as always, a little communication with your group goes a long way.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

roachsrealm.9284:

also: built in windows defender security is actually pretty good. stop using Norton. your antivirus is bad and you should feel bad.

been using NAV for decades… not ever had an issue, and have only ever had to reinstall one time on win 7 from a ransom virus on my game pc… all other desktops and laptops have never caught anything. NAV is good if you let it do its job…. I have no experience with defender though, so this will be a new ride for me in that reguards.

you can consider yourself lucky.

NAV doesn’t play well with others at all, but that’s true of any antivirus software. They all seem to be mutually exclusive. NAV has a habit of messing up system files, modifying registry and taking a lot of other liberties with your system. It’s not as bad as McAfee, but it is still a lesser of two evils.

The built in WD is solid, and I haven’t met a win server admin yet that uses anything else.

while this would be a neat feature, it would break the current back piece system in many ways.

example: no incentive to craft the three higher spinal blades. get one and you are done.

Jerus.4350:

roachsrealm.9284:

I like that the Mai Trin fight takes tactics, coordination, and communication.

I don’t like that Mai Trin herself is buggy, and the general location of the static fields required to remove her buffs seem totally random. I also don’t like that if anyone goes down, and you don’t want to completely wipe every time one person goes down, you are required to use an exploit to get people back in or they simply miss the rewards.

Why are you required to use an exploit?

My team will regularly pick someone up who died during the canon phase.

A good team will be able to do this. Pugs, however, are another story.

I don’t think they are, as my first one was speargun and that dropped on my guardian.

in order to keep the farming moving, you don’t have to stay in the entirety of an event to get credit. it is fairly easy to get gold rewards on these events. don’t tie yourself to one fort.

start in the south, escort the red supply, defend red until amber and indigo supply start. escort them both a little ways out, continue to defend indigo, escort blue, defend blue, and head down to amber to clean up. rinse, repeat, killing vet or elite mob events along the way.

as long as you take part, you can chain together events fairly quickly here.

also: kill dust. these little mobs drop onyx and charged lodestones which can sell for quite a profit.

the best way to make money on the TP is to never buy anything on it except a few mats. turn your karma into recipes and craft time gated or popular items. Plant food, ascended mats, and zerker gear all turns a profit over selling individual components.

and always post a listing. never sell immediately unless the difference is less than 10% in the profit.

ran into this one: if you have a gigabyte mobo and you’ve ever plugged a iDevice into it, you’re going to want to uninstall the ON/OFF gigabyte thing in your apps. the applecharger service will prevent your computer from shutting down.

also: built in windows defender security is actually pretty good. stop using Norton. your antivirus is bad and you should feel bad.

I like that the Mai Trin fight takes tactics, coordination, and communication.

I don’t like that Mai Trin herself is buggy, and the general location of the static fields required to remove her buffs seem totally random. I also don’t like that if anyone goes down, and you don’t want to completely wipe every time one person goes down, you are required to use an exploit to get people back in or they simply miss the rewards.

got a fractal greatsword skin couple nights ago on a level 40. I got a charged core in the first fractal, pinged it claiming this was my sweet drop for the run (it usually is). I also used a trans charge on my existing GS during the second fractal because I decided it was time to change the look.

>_>

I am now convinced the loot tables are sentient and are not without a sense of irony.

this just in: necro threads! it works!