Guild Wars 2

by the time the 5th expansion for the last elder dragon comes out we’ll all have moved on to the Half Life 4/Fallout 6/Final Fantasy XXX hybrid MMO VR shooter with force feedback codpiece attachment.

hopefully. as it is this is the only “mat eater” that you cannot obtain any time you finally get around to doing so.

I’d guess look for it again around wintersday. with any luck it will be like the others by then, and you can open the content and start it any time of the year.

with my luck I’d have gotten the underwater ones three times in a row.

please no. the precursor hunt is RNG enough as it is. wait until the master system is out and then lets look at ideas to fill in the gaps.

so far the megaserver system tries to put you in the same map as your party members and guild members.
you can see where your guild members are in the world (which map)
with multiple guild chat channels, it will be easier to communicate between guilds.

seems like the only thing we’re missing is a visual representation of where the guild members are. what do you think?

should this be for the guild you are currently representing and just show those who are also repping, or anyone on the roster? for all the guilds you are a member of? only active in guild missions or just for wvw content? an option to turn it off? ideas?

get the clovers first. by the time you have the 77 you need you will be very close to finishing your T6 mats.

other tips:
while saving up your elder wood, farm in orr and sell the foxfire clusters you get. profits go to more T6 mats.
spend laurels. if you don’t plan on using these for anything else, dump them into T6 mat bags. each laurel gives you 3 such mats. pretty good return for something you don’t have to work toward to achieve (just have to wait for the laurels to come in.)
convert mats. if you have an abundance of T5 mats these can be converted to T6 with a pretty good rate (50 T5 —> 7-14 T6) for each forging.
if you get lucky with the mystic clover forge and get a stack of charged lodes, sell them and buy T6 mats.
if you have a ton of extra gold and you dont feel like just buying mats outright, you can gamble a bit and buy Heavy Moldy Bags. you’ll get a fair amount of T6 mats and a lot of T5 mats, which can then be converted to T6 (see above)
you can also dump your karma for orrian jewelry boxes, for gold and chances at lodes. some of these will sell for enough gold to get 5-25 more T6 mats. just like laurels, don’t spend your karma unless you have nothing else to spend it on (obsidian, etc)

the precursor is the hardest part, by far, and you have that finished.
map exploration is the longest part, and you are nearly finished with that.
the rest will fall into place very soon for you.

hey, if you are bored can you make me 13 bolts of damask? that will keep you busy for almost 2 weeks. I won’t pay you for them because I’m curing your boredom.

because people do dungeons every day already. there is no need to add them to the daily “enticement to play here” rotation.

if they did that, what next, reward everyone for something else they do all the time like logging in? oh… wait….

all professions have their strengths in FoTM. Rangers need good pet control and knowledge of how defiant stacks work. Necros need good snare control and knowledge of how defiant stacks work. There is nothing wrong with using fear to deal damage and move something to where you want it, as long as you chill it first.

the only rule for me is, you have a chance to prove yourself as a pug. if you do something that messes up the strategy of the run, you get told how to do it, or asked not to do that one thing. if you repeat the activity, you get kicked.

for me at least its not about player skill, its about their ability to listen. even the most noobish of players have potential to learn and become elite themselves if they can take direction.

Technically, you can start doing Fractals at level 2, but you probably shouldn’t.

A good rule of thumb is to have gear equal to your level and of at least rare quality before you hop into the fractal portal. This includes trinkets and weapons (although these you can get away with masterwork quality if you know your class well)

Once you are familiar with all the dungeon paths and mechanics in fractals you can probably get away with saying something like “this is my second account” to avoid the assumption that people think you are a complete noob.

go into your graphics card settings. turn on overclocking. don’t actually overclock it, but just increase the fan speed, and only when you play GW.

this is the difference between playing on potato settings at 55fps and playing at supersampled max settings at 35fps. your mileage may vary.

Dr Acula.3496:

roachsrealm.9284:

2) Yes necromancer skills are slow, but the reason we don’t have as many stun-breaks or access to stability is because necromancers are about pressure. A majority of our skills will continue to damage even if we are flat on our butts. Being stunned hits our DPS much less than it does other classes.

Oh okay, so I am forced to be condi based on this reasoning. Because as power, sitting there stunned, I am literally doing 0 DPS. But now unlike other classes, I have trash stun breaks AND 0 mobility in addition to an strong lack of Stability.

Yep Necros are fine.

Not exactly. Even in full power without a condi focus, your minions and your wells continue to damage when you are stunned.

I’m not saying this is awesome or even preferred for necromancers, but it is the way they are designed, and it’s what we’ve got. Its just the reason we don’t have as much access to stability.

Kizare.7950:

What build and weapon combo are you going with since you know your Necro; I’m new 2 GW2 I’ll create my own build but as for the 3 specs?

I was full sinister with spite, curses and soul reaping, but since the change I kept my sinister armor and went with zerker trinkets. Im still playing around with the traits, but I think I’ll be dropping curses for blood.

I like the ideas.

I would take Scepter 3 a step further. Actually boost it’s damage quite a bit so it would be a viable spike option (something necromancers are lacking) Maybe increase the damage to 5% per unique condition, and 100% crit chance, but then it clears up to 10 stacks of each condition and you are healed (or gain life force) appropriate for the number of conditions you consume.

Signet of Undeath should have a range equal to the Life Transfer port/heal. Improve the passive so it’s more appealing and reduce the cooldown but 25%.

Allow ressing in form elites. Plague is an excellent contender for this.

1) You have multiple ways to remove conditions, both through skills and traits. not all of them flat remove them but also convert them, and some of them even transfer them to enemies. even without the sigil of generosity you have more condi management than any other class.

2) Yes necromancer skills are slow, but the reason we don’t have as many stun-breaks or access to stability is because necromancers are about pressure. A majority of our skills will continue to damage even if we are flat on our butts. Being stunned hits our DPS much less than it does other classes.

3) This is true for any form/elite/class build. Destroys illusions too. It doesn’t destroy pets, and it shouldn’t destroy minions.

4) Necromancer conditions have never been about speed. Warriors can out bleed us, mesmers can out torment us, everyone can out burn us, and engies can apply as wide of a variety faster than us. The strength necromancer has is duration. Our conditions will outlast everyones. Necro condi is about pressure, not spike.

5) This is true.

6) Because without the limit, Reaper would have been severely overpowered, I’m guessing. Again, see: endless pressure only this time you can add: endless snare, which would lead to: endless whining from everyone else playing against a Reaper.

7) a slow heavy hitter who continues to do damage while stunned and has twice the starting health before the extra health pool does not need as much access to stability. It feels like you are trying to make necromancer a thief. It’s not.

1. only if I don’t need a stun break and Im using the other two wells already.
2. liked when it worked with chilling darkness. now even plague signet is more appealing.
3. make it a combo field:darkness , destroy projectiles, and apply blind / protection. allow it to pulse damage against chilled foes.

In my experience it’s always good to recruit in the areas where you want to play the game. If you want hardcore players who do hardcore content, go there and recruit, and make it look appealing. If you want PvPers, go to the heart of the mists and recruit there. WvW…so on..

My guild enjoys dungeoneering often, so we will recruit pugs who impress us during dungeon runs. We also like the players who enjoy the game and not just the flavor of the month content, so we will go into places like Timberline Falls or Harathi Hinterlands during off hours to get those kinds of people.

Advertise what you are looking for. Be specific, but brief. (PvE, PvP, etc)
Throw a bunch of people at the wall and see who sticks around.
Don’t force people to represent your guild, this turns a lot of people off.

for your first character, stop and smell the lore and go where the game suggests you go. this is a good experience for this game and the story is alright.

as far as missing things you might need to learn: don’t rely on the game to teach you these things. there are chests in each starter zone that teach you how to dodge to reach them, but thats about it. there is nothing in the game that teaches you about advanced combat tactics such as combo fields, finishers, and trait synergy.

don’t be afraid to experiment with your skills and traits.

also: this game has little to do with reaching max level. they popular phrasing is “end game starts after the tutorial”

protip: only use the mystic salvage kit for your rares/exotics. If you use them on everything you will run out of mystic forge stones.

My guild has been going slow but steady since GW1 was released. We have a core of about 5-10 players who play every day, and we usually see 30-40 people log in each day. Our roster lists just over 100 members, but most of them come on within a couple weeks at least.

Summer is certainly a slower time for us.

We have weekly events, an alliance with another guild, and an officer for each game type who organize events for their respective playstyle. If you enjoy PvE, PvP, or WvW we have you covered; just not 24/7. If you play in the evenings NA time you will see more people on than any other time.

We also have members from several countries and regions, so there is almost always someone on. If you are interested in joining us send me a PM, or mail in game to Mortis Zu Heltzer.

Edit: oh, also we have all the upgrades, our own site, teamspeak, and so on if that kind of thing is important to you. we aren’t rep required.

Lore-wise, the Jade Maw should be classified as a Leviathan type creature, given it’s locale, it’s characteristics, and it’s um… nature.

Mechanics-wise it can hardly even be considered a world boss. It’s one step above a scripted fight from a modern QTE generator. Only one thing hurts it and it’s not a profession mechanic of any kind.

Technically, the Jade Maw should be classified as a Nightmare or a Sleeping One. There’s a lot of lovecraft flavor to this one.

my minions have never had trouble hitting things.. are you guys playing the game correctly? you know you have to start attacking something first, right?

just save all your loot bags and open them on a character that is in the level range of the loot you want.

get zealots.

use zerk trinkets for dungeons with good people
use clerics trinkets for dungeons with bad pugs
use soldiers trinkets for wvw
don’t pvp. use another profession for that.

mine actually went up a little bit. stupid rng.

complaints like this are just… I mean, come on.

if you want storage right next to a trading post, go to divinity’s reach, or even better, go to Ebonhawke (if you don’t mind missing out on guild storage)

if you want everything right next to each other (including crafting) go to Rata Sum.

if you want to complain about walking or using waypoints whenever you want with no cost at all, continue using lion’s arch.

#entitledgamerproblems.

Ranger: traps / torch
Mesmer: torment/confusion on shatters
Necromancer: just about anything, honestly. avoid minions.
Guardian: burning traited to exploit said condition
Engi: pistol/bomb kit roamer
Elementalist: fire/earth condi convert fire fields burning bleeds
Thief: shared venoms dual dagger spike
Warrior: sword/axe/horn bleed focus

have you ever seen a full zerk life stealing necro take down an elite while downed? cause I have. sure, the elite was softened up a bit… it still had 25% health left.

dont sell your personal achievements.
dont sell dungeon paths
dont play with strangers

never run into this again

are we playing the same game? I just went into traps on my ranger and they are amazing. you should be up in the action. traps cripple. whats the point if you arent up there keeping everything next to you?

ranger’s arent engineers.

This would be a good combo with a rampagers set paired with it

still one of the best hide and seek spots

while, yeah, first world problem for sure, from a design aspect not every chest, box, or notification deserves a 30 frame fade up and music que. Leveling up doesn’t even trigger a nice dopamine response. It’s so “blah, here’s a chest, here’s a screen, tune in next time kids” early morning PBS feel. Every other MMO I’ve played the level up moments were exciting, thematic, and rewarding.

Other games: I GOT STRONGER PARTY TIME!
GW2: Have Jeeves bring in another bottle, Im not baked enough for this to be interesting yet.

right after reset is the best time.

get explorable unlocked. you can do this by yourself in story mode. it’s easy.

its mostly because of 2 reasons:

the npc escort takes forever, you can’t give him swiftness, and if your pugs pull wrong you will multiwipe here. often.

the final boss takes more coordination than most and in my experience most speedclear pugs just faceroll health bars. this tends to not be a good combo.

with people who know the path or at least listen, it can be a very lucrative path. just don’t speed clear it.

necro is good at soloing content, but without blocks or reflects you are going to have to learn how to do 2 things, and do them well.

manage your extra health pool
use fear correctly to time interrupts and force favorable positioning.

I’d actually recommend a more condi focused build for soloing, since you are alone anyway you can go for the slower burn in fights. you won’t break any speed clear records, but you’ll have an easier time with more overall pressure than trying to face tank through content on a necromancer.

10k or go home.

no, just kidding. I never do any prereqs for pug groups, but I do vote to kick with authority when you show that you don’t listen.

I will even show people the ropes and give pugs the benefit of the doubt, but as soon as you show that you just dont listen and think you can face roll through my dungeon, you are getting a boot to the head.

when they say things like:

you know… speedclear guilds do it this way… (go play with them then =P )

TA up had a guy say stacking on the boss in the spider room was better than LoS’n her around the corner. I say sure why the hell not. Pugs follow. then he starts whirlwinding through the boss and triggering all the local egg sacks.

>_>

alternate method of getting those mid-tier cloth mats:

get a bunch of bags from the silverwastes. do not open them. put them in your bank.

get on another character that’s in the level 35-55 range. open the bags on that character.

profit.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lesser_Vision_Crystal

had this happen during play once. my eyes burned red with fire and my ninja water mask wouldn’t go away. on land. it was bizarre.

so you studied your way to 80 in DR before ever setting foot outside of it and you want to have access to the whole world at once?

…you went to college right after high school, didn’t you?

just always use the curtain as your first swiftness. it’s always been this way (since like, just after beta)

speedy kits: you used to be able to have boon duration in your traits. this is likely the overlap you were experiencing. as it is now with no boon duration boosts it recharges in the time it wears off now. no overlap, but no downtime either.

you can add a non-steam game to steam. it loads the game just like you would load it normally. nothing is different but your ability to shift-tab and access steam features.

yeah ele is the good due to the burning base damage and the fire fields. it is very easy to spike up a ton of damage quickly. if you want to focus on high, fast, spike damage ele is the way to go.

but notice I didn’t say which one was best. all three are effective styles, it’s just a matter of how long you like fights to last, or what kind of fights you are in. an epidemic necro defending the gates of arah vs 20+ mobs will always cause more mayhem to more targets than an ele will. it’s just a matter of preference of playstyle.

uh sure, why not. my main is in my sig. Im on FA, but we can still play together (except for wvw). Im on in the afternoons/evenings mostly (gmt-6)

here’s the breakdown in my experience with a full sinister set.

Necromancer: applies a lot of conditions, but slowly and initially poorly. they stack more over time. In longer fights you will have more damage overall. This is the slow, effective burn. With the number of conditions applied a single condi clense will not cancel out your build.

Mesmer: you don’t have as many conditions, but your confusion and torment make up for it. This is more useful for a short set up and a well timed spike. Built in interrupts prevent clensers.

Elementalist: high, initial damage, quickly. burning and bleeds will stack fast and do a lot of damage. the ability to reapply them quickly make condition removals merely a speed bump. you don’t have nearly as many conditions, but because of this the ones you focus in are more effective in short fights.

playing around with mesmer traits since the latest patch, and found something that is both fun to play and effective almost anywhere.

http://intothemists.com/guides/5908-stealth_reflection

thoughts? improvements? I’ve found I can keep chaining stealth for almost a minute with this. when in combat no projectiles ever hit me.

we did ACp3 with this but only 3 guardians. did better than every pug group Ive been in. finished the burrows with 86% on the timer. only two of us used the shout elite.

Necromancer, hands down.

With soul reaping you can effectively play ele/mesmer/ritualist/ or almost anything else as your secondary without worrying too much about energy management.

Do nightfall to unlock heroes so you have some people with you. Henchies can work in earlier areas just fine, but once you progress through the story in the game missions will require more coordination and special skill use that the henchies just don’t have access to.

Rank up in Factions as well, the player-only skills are excellent, and allow you to full spirit spam with no problems. Doing this on a necromancer means endless health/energy regen and 6 full damage spirits at your disposal, who travel with your party. It is boring as kitten after a while, but it will allow you to clear zones in hard mode with ease.

do Eye of the North as well for skill unlocks. pain inverter is a boss killer button. get your mesmer heroes skills/armor/etc first. capture elite skills every time you get a chance.