Guild Wars 2

I never seem to have a problem with joining specific groups on the LFG. I will join groups that advertise Zerk only meta exp please and they never know I am not zerk or meta build, and somehow I never get kicked…

if people are kicking you because of your class you don’t want to play with them anyway. Rangers are NOT nerfed. I have consistently seen rangers solo Lupi in a bad group and always be the last one downed in tricky situations. People who hate on rangers are missing out.

xpadder is like 10 bucks.

I used a controller for playing for the first 2 months out of beta to try it out. it was more frustrating that it was worth. the difficulties of note included jumping puzzles, ground-targeted abilities, and where to assign the “swim down” button.

This game is almost simple enough to be all controller, assuming you never open menus, chat, or do anything but simple combat. I just got a wireless keyboard / mouse instead and it’s a much better experience.

if it is anything at all like last time:

clean off your space bar. you will be jumping a lot.
start saving up excess materials. these may be used as currency. (stacks of silk, etc)
save up your gold, we will have at least 3 new back pieces to obtain. if they dont introduce new ones and reuse last years, then sell your wind/sun/storm catchers now before the prices drop due to new supply

Im an odd thief that I never use SB. I used it while leveling, and once I hit 80 and the age of damage, I dropped it in favor of P/P and S/P for pve content.

If you are fighting in WvW or PvP, however, shortbow MUST be on list. It is invaluable utility that thieves need.

a quick build recommendation:

keeping the party alive is very beneficial, but so is keeping fights shorter and keeping the enemy from hitting your teammates. If you take 5 out of virtues (you are already a condition removal battery) and 10 out of valor (let everyone else worry about their toughness; if you want to tank don’t boost someone else’s toughness to make it harder to do so); then you can put 15 into radiance and keep blind and might up AoE on each mob death. Enemies that cannot hit you means your teammates dont need armor means you can tank anything (plus might so all fights are shorter, the best defense)

For armor, I’d recommend a mix.

Zealot’s armor and Clerics trinkets. Your toughness will still be very good, your damage respectable, and your healing out of sight. You get the benefits of both contributing damage to your team and keeping everyone alive. If you really want to shine as a support role get Mercy runes. 5 people up fighting is better than 4, always.

I know you have 5 in virtues for the might and other boon benefits on your F1-3 skills, but this build may not really benefit from it. You have plenty of other sources of might already, and your meditations will heal you if you need it. Take 5 out and put it into Radiance. If I ever saw a build that would benefit from Searing Flames (remove boons on burn apply) this would be it.

Also, why sword? Seems like mace would also proc on the blocks and give you some additional healing if you needed it. JI and your hydromancy sigil is enough of a gap closer already.

If you change to tuning crystals your burns will do 4-6oo more damage over all and you won’t lose that much power. This means more overall pressure which is a good thing.

and don’t lose the pizza. It is by far the best way to extend any condition. Specific ones only do half as much.

I know…conditions in PvE why not just zerk.

I have a dungeon runner and it’s happy. This is mostly just for theory as my mes is currently full zerk with a phantasm focus and reflections. Very meta, and getting old.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhUQNArfWnsIuIqUtRttqtqxCtCNUrVrNCqBdykUFU/ltcUS2gAA-ThyCABOoEE4DBAAHBAU03Yg5Pkkittenp8b59HuR9HNOBAkCYRpRA-e

I’m trying to make the most use of conditions and particularly confusion, torment, and blind. I don’t want to interrupt and daze foes (confusion won’t trigger). The above build is what I have come up with.

Haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, and wanted to get some feedback (no pun intended.) For roaming, even WvW and just clearing maps and large scale events, does this seem viable at all or should I just stick to the meta?

Thanks

I would change it.

prediction: the Pact and the Lionguard will have the most influence on the “look and feel” of New Lions Arch. NLA will have representation of all races, and a small section of pirate nostalgia.

when it’s ready.

ya we’re supposed to have flying cars and bubble cities too… your point?

for your first toon, just complete maps in level appropriate zones and keep up with your personal story. if the game takes you there, complete it. once you get the mail for a dungeon, go check it out. gather everything you see and craft as you gain the appropriate mats. you will naturally hit the level cap long before your story expects you to be there, and it makes for a nice journey.

for alts, I recommend my wife’s method:
craft as far as you can in chef until you run out of mats.
do the same in jeweler.
get some running skills and find as many waypoints as possible, just running through maps, hitting gathering nodes along the way.
if an event pops up nearby, DO IT. avoid hearts that take too long, far off vistas and poi’s. go out of your way for skill points.

by the time you have explored all the waypoints and kept up on crafting you will be well past 80. then actual map completion on your alt will be a breeze since you have all the waypoints open.

Here’s what I’ve been using recently: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUIQJARWl0ApptFDxfH8DRRkVQk2HAY9h4h9QjwfjA-zgBBoNQYOAZrFRjtOqIasqZER16kYkCwElRA-e

Key features for dungeon use:
Respectable power, excellent healing.
F1 on kill will: vuln, blind, burn, might AoE
With fury about 50% crit chance (more than enough, you will might cap with fire fields and staff)
AoE Might on Crit (1 second cool down)
Passive healing and support built-in
Food / Hallowed Ground for Boon Duration
Mercy Runes because: 4 players hitting a target is slower than 5 players hitting a target. little extra toughness is great. no other stats will boost enough here to be noticed.

Use hammer for tougher, high damage boss fights. i use a zerker scepter/torch for ranged fights. bring mace/focus vs Dredge. Don’t ever use sword.

Stack on fights and have everyone hug you. Dungeons always go faster for me with this than with any other class / build.

there will be changes to about 1/4th of all professions skills/traits, and so on.
there will be some bug fixes in dungeons.
dungeons and fractals will be “fixed” which means making them harder to do normally and forcing players into a “this is how it should be done” mentality.
world events will all scale up because knights.

what I’d like to see:
new race / class
precursor hunt
500 jeweler/cook
solo dungeons

what was the reward like for this result?
which one did you fight?
what server were you on?

dust no problem. that you can do in a night.

dragonite will take longer. plan events, get familiar with the timer sites, and they are limited on server resets. plan for weeks, unless you do WvW often.

shards are also not a problem. farm fast dungeon runs.

as for salvaging and getting everything you want, plan for a couple weeks if you are starting from scratch.

only way I can see it working is by transmuting over 250 stones with mystic forge stones and probably 2 other ingredients (crystalline dust and something that costs skill points) to get you 5 crystals. It has to be the same cost.

How many gems does it take per trans crystal?
How many gems does it take per trans stone?
Figure in hours of game-time to accumulate said stones, etc.
It has to be more expensive than just using gems to get crystals, otherwise people would just buy stones from now on and convert them.

there are crafting stations in every home city and every starter zone, and in Ebonhawke. That’s 11 full places you can craft anytime you want. I cannot believe we’re going to start complaining that there isn’t a 12th, overpopulated and lagged option for us to use instead.

same issue. annoying because I dont show bags, and have my spare armor sets / weapons all along the bottom. it keeps expanding it by one square and everything is messed up. this is no bueno!

Thanks for the advice.

What’s the feeling about perplexity runes? I notice Engi’s have a lot of stun/interrupt options and a few fast apply high stack confusion skills.

Also: is it just me or are turrets almost completely useless unless you are doing a “defend a static area” type of event?

Was doing TA last night vs spiders and noticed something I thought was strange.

When I am poisoned, I do DOUBLE damage.

Is this intended behavior? Should I stop using condition removal skills?

Hey. I just started my 8th and final character (for now) and engineer is it.

I PvE mostly, doing dungeons, fractals, and large-scale events.

Engineer is by far the most complex class when it comes to theorycrafting. I’m asking for some advice from the experts here.

I’m looking for a damaging support role in dungeons. After looking through everything, Dire stats or Apoth stats both look appealing.. am I crazy?

Elixir Gun and Grenades with healing traits also look good on paper, but are they good in practice?

I know there will be a few of those “PvE lol run anything” responses, but I’m really looking for something constructive. What is the best support role you can fulfill with the wide, complex variety the Engineer offers in dungeon groups?

making it instant like other meditations would solve a lot of problems.

increasing the healing scale would also help a bit. like so many other skills in the game, you have to plan out how you use them.

start your own dungeon instance and then invite people to it. lock them in to playing with you. don’t ping your armor. just play the game.

1) Engineer
2) Ranger
3) Thief

What good is a wall going to do?

see: airships

our guild has been doing something similar in LA every friday night on FA. We are all yaks tho. its a good time

Normally I would agree with you. I cleaned out the case of any dust, reset the video card, and I do have fan speed monitors running. The temp on the graphics card never gets high enough to indicate a crash.

What’s more is that this problem only occurs with Guild Wars. I can run HD video no problem, play other games at full settings with no problems, and I do a lot of video editing (which uses a ton of my graphics resources). None of these activities causes the same problem.

I’ve been having the same problem. Still no fix for it…yet

Still no resolution on this. I can only run the game at minimum settings. Everything else seems to crash the game.

was going fine. prep for the marionette event and a random engineer started spamming flamethrower skills. Immediate crash.

Went through those settings. Found the maximum defaulted at 100%. I set it to 99%. I turned antialiasing in game back to FXAA. so far so good..

yes I can.

4.20 GHz quad core processor (AMD FX 4170)
12 GB Ram
Windows 7.1 x64

I am using a router / modem combo. We have multiple computers accessing the internet regularly and 2 desktops running GW2 at once, and have been since GW1 without issues.

I tried disconnecting and going through the modem directly. Same result on auto-detect and max settings. If I disable anti-aliasing in game and have all other settings on high or max it seems to be going alright. Right now my in-game settings through router are:

Animation: high
Antialiasing: None
Envorinment: high
LOD Distance: High
Reflections: All
Rextures: High
Render: Native
Shadows: High
Shaders: High
Post: High
Character limit: low
Character quality: high
all 5 final checks are “yes”, full screen 1920×1080 default refresh rate without any limiters or third party apps running.

tried turning all the settings up to full and turned the anti-aliasing off in-game. so far it’s been doing fine in fire-heavy champ/turret fights…

after repair and full install auto-detect settings produced the same results. I did a “clear the harpies” event in Fireheart Rise without any issues playing my mesmer. I went north to do a vet event, a flame legion soldier that uses a flame thrower attack. Game crashed again black screen, same as before.

I have:
AMD Radeon HD 7700 series graphics card.

When I play with in-game settings set to auto-detect:
the game looks great and plays for a while. when there are too many effects on the screen (fire) the screen goes black, but the sound continues. The game will not return.

When I play with in-game settings in minimal:
the game looks ok and works fine. crashed never occur after days and hours of playing.

When I play with the in-game settings on maximum:
the game looks amazing and runs fine. then with too many effects it crashes.

My ATI settings are all default to allow for the game to use it’s settings.

I have done the following troubleshooting:
-repair data archive. same results on normal or higher settings.
-deleted local gw2 cache and deleted .dat file. currently reinstalling.
-made sure I have the latest DirectX and graphics card drivers. did a clean installation of both.
-ran scans, etc, on harddrive. no malicious items detected and no defragment recommended (did one anyway)

While the graphics card is not top tier high end, since I got it last summer Ive been able to run the game a full / ultra settings and still keep above 60fps, which has been working out well for me. CPU and GPU temps are fine, with no alerts or alarms going off. Since the Marionette update, I’ve been experiencing black screen crashes.

Symptoms of the crash:
Sound goes “BZZZRT” and the monitor goes black.
All sound normally continues. I can still hear the game and those talking on Teamspeak in real time. I can even reply for a short while.
In game my character still auto-attacks (confirmed with another desktop/account in same house) It does not log me until I force restart.

VERY RARELY when this happens it will stay black for a moment then come back. When this happens the graphics look crisper and sharper, losing their depth and fuzziness. Before is normal and after it’s “white outline city”. IF this occurs, I can play with any graphics settings and the game no longer crashes at all during that gameplay session. As soon as the program is closed and reopened we’re back at step one.

After the repair and reinstall finish I’ll post my findings. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help correct this.

you only really begin to notice the effect if you stack chill beyond 20 seconds (which you can do pretty easily on some ele / necro builds)

the real advantage isn’t the skill cool down of course, its the reduction in movement speed. if not removed or covered with another condition it’s an excellent snare.

I use laurels to get them. Keeps my wallet fat. Once you get an amulet on your main fractal runner for higher levels forget about your laurels. You can get ascended accessories with guild commendations (1 every 2 weeks) and ascended rings from FotM trader (1 every 10 runs, assuming you don’t get a lucky drop in run with the stats you want.)

Otherwise just spend an hour doing all the large-scale mob events you can in Orr or Frostgorge. You can also get a ton of the blood in Southsun.

Amazing thief skills. Props. Makes me want to evaluate my thief build for dungeons and fracs.

its because of this frac that I will only bring my necromancer in to FotM anymore. Conditions go through protection and you can easily strip the boons on the dredge. It makes the fights shorter.

but this does nothing for the crazy, meticulous mechanics that are required to finish this frac. Even on my level 5 difficulty run last night this particular fractal took an extra 20 minutes to finish…

fastest ways to level a character in GW2:
-do hearts. ignore the ones that take a while
-reach as many waypoints as possible. I got from 75 to 80 just running from LA south to Arah in Cursed Shore.
-crafting. getting a single craft to 400 should net you about 10 levels. you will see most of this from 300 up. Discovery is key.
-do as many of the Daily achievements each day as you can, not just the required 5 for the chest.
-power through your personal story when you are far over leveled for it. these rewards scale and will give you a lot.
-do easy, fast dungeon paths each day. ACp3, CoFp1 and HotWp1 all take about 12-20 minutes each.
-use food items that give XP boosts. It not much but it does add up.
-when roaming, kill random mobs in far off places. the longer a single enemy stays alive the more bonus exp it gives.

we just take down the protection totem only. ignore the others. if you are killing yourself from retaliation you need more regeneration.

just stay at range most of the time or tank melee him if your total armor is over 3500. no need to stack or trick this boss.

If you are NA the guild I’m an officer in focuses on PvE and Dungeon content. We do all guild missions every Friday, and fractals frequently. We’re vet dungeoneers.

Check out our site if you are interested. We’re on Fort Aspenwood.

www.thegothicembrace.com

yes please. second. I have wanted this since beta.

oh.. or just make another toon with the same class. yes, some people do this. yes, it is more expensive and time consuming at first. yes, it saves a ton of time later on.

Celestial. be good, but not great at everything. Never have to change your armor. Use situation specific sigils on specific weapons. (staff for dungeons, hammer for WvW, etc..)

then you can change your traits without changing anything else.

There is video, but it’s not up yet.

Yes we stacked vs Spider Queen. I was the only tanky build (guardian, symbols, clerics trinkets) Knights thief, zerk warrior and ele from what I remember. Ele weapons helped a lot.

with my ranger experience and fractals I will say this:

you are very spread out
you rely too much on your pet

if your pet were to go down (which occurs often in the chaos of fractals) about 70% of your build is now useless. you trait for spirits but you only have one (a good one mind, but consider the protection spirit as well) That pet shout skill, I have never seen it work properly. In my experience it’s always better to keep your players alive instead of getting them back up quicker.

Consider something like this instead, which I think will take advantage of your play style and goal as effective party support while doing more consistent damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAnXRjEVd1VVWWg2Bi1D9s//8Uke27UUqTlyv2xbvA-jgCBYgQYhBkIBgKBkKAK7sIasFVFRjVtET/iIq2IuIa1SBcxyI-e

My guild recently ran an AC path 3 run with trinkets and weapons only. We took off our armor, jumped in, and wanted to see how far we could make it.

It was just as easy as it is normally. The fights took a little longer. We only had slight difficulty at the colossus at the end. (we wiped once)

This was an excellent experiment in build focus. Without armor or runes it really showed off how useless your armor stats in PvE really are. The ONLY difference in the experience was time. This really shows off how ineffective different armor combinations in PvE are, and how little they actually effect the gameplay.

I challenge you to do the same with other dungeon paths. We’re planning on tackling CoF path 1 next.

scepter/torch, for sure. stay at range enough to take advantage and use all the skills. swap back to staff to idle and keep people buffed for the next opening.

I always called this skill “holy farts”, if nothing else from just the sound it makes.

thats not entirely true, just don’t go full clerics unless you are taking advantage of what it’s designed for.

I have a full set of clerics armor w/trinkets and I rune mix for boon duration. In +30 fractals I full symbol with mace/hammer/gs and staff on standby.

You can keep might, protection and healing up on your group longer, and if your team knows this and knows how to stay near you, you can get a more efficient team dynamic out of this. The fights will take a little longer, but they will also be a little easier. Play to the strengths of the mechanics here.

That said, it certainly isn’t required. At higher level fractals you need more damage, faster than anywhere else. If you are in a good group go DPS focus and just time your blinds and blocks.

Full clerics support for guardian = random pug insurance. You can carry a team of people who have no idea what they are doing, but it will only get you so far.