Guild Wars 2

There are 4 ways to get ascended gear. Crafting, Fractals, Raids, and Special Vendors. The difficulty of getting gear also varies heavily, because Ascended gear had to be haphazardly integrated into the game’s reward system following demands from players.

Understand right away that Ascended gear is a 5% increase in stats, but is a full order of magnitude more expensive/difficult to obtain a full set of. As a requirement, its only needed in High Level Fractals, specifically because it has Infusions slots that are needed to add Agony resistance to Armor. Outside of that- its preferable for Raids, but not an actual requirement. Some raid groups tend to be elitist about it, since its less DPS…… but the margin is so minor, that it won’t cause a competent group to fail because of it.

For the sake of efficiency, you want to prioritize Trinkets first, since they make up a larger total % of your gear bonuses. In Core Tyria, your options are somewhat limited, but not crippingly bad. Your first objective is an Amulet, which can be bought from the Laurel Vendor (only covers Core stats). Rings can also be bought with Laurels, but theres a more efficient way I’ll cover later. For Accessories (earring slot) you can get them with Guild Commendations from Guild missions plus 5 gold. This is way more preferable then spending 40 ectos, which is 15 gold, plus 40 laurels (which you only get 35 per month), and can be done in half the time. In core, back pieces have to be crafted or obtained from Fractal Vendors…… both are expensive prospects.

For rings, you want to get them from Fractals; obtained cheaply with Pristine Fractal Relics (costing 10 ea) from Daily rewards. You can get 3-4 a day on the lowest level fractals, which don’t require any Agony Resistance to do, and takes about 30-40 minutes with a half way competent PUG group. Theres a chaining behavior for higher tier rewards that’ll also give you the lower tier rewards at the same time; so later on when you’re capable of doing mid-tier fractals, that one 30-40 min run covers all your dailies.

Alternatively if you have access to Living story Season 3 chapters, you can get Ascended trinkets for tokens; which includes both Core and HoT stats. There should be a bundle sale for the whole season in the gem store, and I highly recommend getting it…. UNLESS you’re willing to wait until January to see if Living World S4 offers something similar for PoF stats. If you want to do this as cheaply as possible…. Get Crack in the Ice and Head of the Snake; as those 2 chapters have the easiest gathering options, and between the two has all 6 trinket items.

For Ascended Armor you have 3 options.

Crafting- which costs about 350-450g per set, requires you to level crafting (which can get a little expensive), and have access to Heart of Thorns map vendors (which you need masteries unlocked) and/or World vs World Provisioner if you want armor with HoT stats. This is the most straight forward way to get armor, but notably the most expensive in gold/materials.

Fractal Discount Armor- Obtained from a Fractal Vendor, this still requires you to max crafting level. However, the raw material cost is cheaper (roughly half), and supplemented through materials and tokens obtained from fractals.
Both WvW and PvP have a similar discounted armor set, but requires a lot of time be sunk into the game modes to gather the required rank and tickets to purchase.

Raids- Raid rewards give you tokens that can be used to buy Asc gear at a extreme discount (5-15g a piece + 150-400 shards), but takes a significant amount of time and effort gather due to rewards having a weekly reset (50 per wing, total of 200 per week). You can also get Trinkets and Weapons this way too.

There is also a 4th option if you’re new to Raids….. The Envoy Armor 1 collection produces a full set of stat selectable Armor of your choice, and needs full access to all the HOT maps, and do each Raid Wing (start to finish) at least once to get items and charge them. Gorseval has to be done at least 5 times because you need 5 of the item he drops, but doesn’t have to be in different weeks. If you fully know what you’re doing; realistically this can be done in under 2 weeks, as there are world events you have attend for collection items. The hardest part is doing the Raid wings….. PUG groups are really toxic, and most are only minimally competent or coordinated. You can Buy Raid kills, but those are really expensive, and runs the risk of scams. If at all possible, find someone in your Guild who raids a lot; They can help you get up to speed to participate, or might be able to set you up with a carry to get the collection done. Its a pain to do…. but its a Free set of armor.

However…. theres a catch 22 with Raid meta. For now, the DPS slots are favoring Condi builds. Condi builds require Vipers (a HoT stat). Due to the cost, and weight of expertise (condi duration) for DPS output, its considered wasteful to make an Exotic Viper set. So you need Vipers Asc to be a Condi DPS slot. DPS slots for Power builds can be viable, but are not optimal (thus generally shunned): However, Staff DareDevil ranks high on the list, and has a simple rotation; which should contribute enough in spite of being a sub optimal set up. Unforunately, no other power build comes even close to this…. so PUGs won’t even consider you.

But with the recent upset over condi getting their DPS capped due to external boosts (like food) getting changed, the Raid meta is in the middle of a shuffle. Depending on what gets figured out, there might be more easily doable options for novice raiders without the incredibly high upfront investment for gear.

Depends on what leveling method we’re talking about here. For Tyrian exploration, its probably the Mesmer- due to it getting most of its power from Grandmaster traits. If you can’t dodge…. Elementalist. Warrior can be tricky too, since its rebounding weaker then most classes.

Personally, I’d just save the lvl 80 boost until POF, and use it on a class that you’d want to use for raids or WvW but little else. Honestly the lvl 80 boost is not super important, since there are tons of Tomes of Knowledge given as rewards.

You can always discover other inscriptions and weapons…… Theres more then 12 types. Or you could try discovering Sigils.

Meta battle isn’t useful for open world content, nor is QT, which focuses exclusively on Raids/Fractals.

If your goal is world completion and HOT masteries, I would recommend a Valks Reaper, DareDevil (any really), Maruaders Rev, or ChronoTank.

Valks reaper is Power build, centered either Minions or Shroud. The key to this build is Valks armor, Valk Greatsword paired with either Axe/Focus or Dagger/Warhorn, and Valk/Zerks hybrid Trinkets. You take Reaper with Augur of Death (if you run minions), Decimate Defenses (mandatory) and Reapers Onslaught. Blood Magic with Vampiric Presence, and Unholy Martyr. If minions, take Death Magic with Flesh of the master, Necromatic Corruption, and Death Nova. For skills use Rise!, Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, and Flesh Golem. If Shroud take Soul Reaping with Unyeilding blast, Vital Persistence, last trait is your choice. The utility slots are free in this build, though its still recommended to use Flesh Golem for its massive breakbar damage.

The jist of the build is using Decimate Defenses to make up for lower natural Crit chance, and shifting those points into Vitality. This does 2 things for you…. massive health pool, with a huge shroud health pool (24/12k with Exotics), turning you into a walking damage sponge. Minions make it even tankier by adding toughness, damage redirection, and leeching conditions from you, while healing you as they attack. Shroud build focuses on shroud uptime, and relies on Reaper Onslaught to recharge your skills faster while in it. Minions are more effective in most situations, but the Shroud build is an option if don’t want them. Also note that this build very works well with just exotics, so its by far the cheapest gear up if your goal is finishing out HOT masteries and achievements.

The Daredevil build is a slightly retraited Meta build for raids. Basically all zerks, power runes, staff pistol/pistol, and Unhindered Combatant trait, Precision Signet (which doubles as condi clear) and a Stun break. Unhindered Combatant is extreme mobility, letting you navigate and avoid most fights. Note that this build can’t take more then a couple hit….. but you can kite most Champ HPs with it.

The Marauder Rev is the WvW Front Line support build from Metabattle, using Sword and Sword traits + Hammer for range. Glint is the main Stance for the heal skill, but the other stance can be anything you feel is useful. The HP lets you take several hits, but it does have problems with too much incoming sustain damage, and its damage output is average at best. However, the nature of the Glint skills significantly boosts nearby allies, allowing for stronger power compounding if you’re rolling an HP train or during Map Metas. Its more expensive to gear because of marauders, but its easy to carry it into WvW if you’re interested in a low skill zerg support build.

ChronoTank is the Illusion variant of the ChronoTank build for Raids. Its the hardest to use of the 4 suggested, but smart use of the Phantasms produce great sustain damage and keeps argo off of you for most of the fight. It has trouble with Chak because of their swarm tactics, but the clones keep them busy so you can skip past an area. The Quickness also makes you a lot of friends at boss fights during Map events.

There isn’t much info on it. The Storm warning supposedly triggers at the bottom of the hour, and rate Jormag’s fury builds depends on the number of Braziers lit. Champs spawn, and the storm clears once the champs are dead. Theoretically it could go on forever, and people have map hopped between ones in different states….. but it doesn’t look like anyone had done extensive research on it.

No love for the Mirage?

Game of Bones.8975:

I can’t see people using HMS DIVINITY as a sniper rifle.

I can….. and the thought is quite hilarious.

If I had editing skills, I’d cut in shots of a squad of Deadeyes, all armed with the HMS Divinity, sitting on a beach with shots from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

And a bonus thought…. shop a Commander tag over Becket’s head

…….. Why would they only support one OS? Especially when x64 is an architecture that runs on any OS from XP and up, and can run x86 code as a common feature.

Have you been reading some weird intel propaganda?

choovanski.5462:

darkprecure.6129:

Idk if you could just buy an american Key for PoF because I believe that NA-Keys can’t be used for EU-accounts .

no, they will work. i mean i converted my NA account into an EU account when i moved hemispheres. so there’s no reason for the key not to work.

in regard to taxes, if you buy via the website with, say paypal there’s no separate tax charge. i can confirm this for EU, & recalling back to when i bought HoT- i can’t remember an extra tax charge. nor is this something ive been charged by any game companies when im paying online through paypal. any of you are free to put PoF in their cart & see if NA has an extra tax charge. i’m betting it doesn’t.

so, it’s still looking like the EU version is just more expensive.

What you just described is Tax Evasion. Technically it is the responsibility of the tax payer to ensure they are paying appropriate taxes. Its just vendors have taken on the role of collector, since individuals couldn’t really be trusted to keep accurate records of all their spending.

Even when its not commonly enforced…. if given a reason, law enforcement could come after you for it. And I’ve been told VAT enforcement is pretty vicious.

Technically they don’t really need to play living story to get caught up. There are “story recaps” that convey most of the important stuff to get them marginally up to speed. Even then, grasping the plot points of LS does heavily rely on the player knowing at least something about Guildwars lore, both past and up to the Pact arc.

Speaking of which…. they really should make it a point to improve the Recap movies, and do one for each story arc, including the Forming of the Pact, if the player decides to jump straight into HoT or PoF starting missions.

Is the OP declaring the Meta is only picking one build its thinks is the best, and ignoring all the others for even the slightest decrease in performance? Or how the meta prerogative is to condense the entire game mode into the fewest team comps, with the most specialized, highest performing builds, and chastise those who ever dare question its purity of purpose?

Skyline Crash.6254:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’m not (ahem) holding my breath. Revenant still only has one underwater weapon and only two underwater legends. Most other profs have very, very limited options for utilities, especially elites. And all sorts of traits are wasted underwater.

Plus, “breathers” continue to be a waste of resources. I’ve been waiting since before launch for breathers to become skins, with the stats & rune taken from the helm.

wtf thats such a good idea (srs)

why dont they ever implement these seemingly simple fixes

Because, like armor weights, underwater weapons and the breather are bespoke from the normal armor set. It sounds “simple” if the engine was well maintained…. but the reality is the game holds the status of “Spaghetti code”, and its gonna take awhile for the engineers to untangle the mess of bespoke code sections.

Given how their efforts are moving with the new team….. they are looking for opportunities revamp systems for NEW content moving forward, and using that as an excuse to gut old code and replace with a better foundational system. Like how Specs replaced traits, which resolved front and back end trait management, and unified it with utility skill management under the Hero point system. Or how Gliding lead to fixing a large list of physics problems in the engine (which incidentally, the broken physics is how they built the first version of SAB). The Revnant skills lead to the creation of progressive fields, ground wave attacks, mobile AOE fields, a couple of teleport improvements, and at least some progress on ground based pathfinding. HOT maps resulted in better map space handling, better population scaling, with PoF expanding those limits even further.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

starlinvf.1358:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The players acted more like internal parasites in that game. They get inside the creature and then take over the controls and become the creature.

That’s not mounts.

Thats a pretty weird hair to split. Mounts in WoW is technically a Transform, where your rig turns into the mount, and theres a rigid copy of your avatar put on its back (at a fixed height that never bounces).

What exactly makes a mount then? Are tanks and planes in a war game mounts? In a game like Eve, are the ships you fly around in mounts? If you can grow wings and fly, are the wings mounts?

In an MMO I consider a mount something that has the player character and the mount both visible and the player character is outside the body of the mount and riding on it. I don’t consider wings you can grow or items you become/transform into to be mounts, although that might be the technical name for them.

In most games, mounts are almost indistinguishable from vehicles, as rider and “thing they ride on” are not treated as separate entities. Yet this passes the “is this the thing” test in eyes of most gamers, because its A. Not the Character. and B. The character is in control. By your definition, the Scorpion tank and Mongoose from HALO are “Mounts” even though their vehicles, because people ride on the outside of it. Or how a Motorcycle in GTA is a mount, but a Car in GTA is not. But a mount in WoW is a Mount, despite it functionally being a vehicle in its mechanics.

Thats why I consider it a stupid hair to split, because its trying to be specific for superficial reasoning, yet completely missing the point of the larger argument.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The players acted more like internal parasites in that game. They get inside the creature and then take over the controls and become the creature.

That’s not mounts.

Thats a pretty weird hair to split. Mounts in WoW is technically a Transform, where your rig turns into the mount, and theres a rigid copy of your avatar put on its back (at a fixed height that never bounces).

But something I notice was the Riders are animated in PoF. The trailer doesn’t show it well, but the WP interview has some footage of the training level with the Raptor. In it you can see the rider leaning in response to the mount’s movements, playing with the reigns, their body will swivel to match your camera’s look direction, and the models are IK’d correctly (which is not nearly as common a thing as it should be).

But just because I’m on this rant already….. I wanna point out something that kind of caught me by surprise. The mounts have surprisingly good “horse physics” on the body. They actually move, lean and balance like creature of their body shape would. They still cheat in the animation for a few places (like the feet), but its passable. I did a long google search, and was shocked how bad the mounts animate in a lot of modern games.

Of best example I’ve been able to find, 2 were single player game (Red Dead and Witcher), one was a Korean game from nearly a decade ago. (Alicia Online) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W7RzDYLmjc , and FF15 (mounts in 14 are just…… not good) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KF5mmdcO5I || These are good examples of animation with real effort put into them, but they are depressingly rare.

And to get perspective….. I comparing it to Argo from Shadow of the Colossus, using full body IK. While not that impressive looking by todays standards, not many games seem to be able to clear that bar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTyn_bRppGs

Honorable mentions goes to Mount and Blade II. Its most of the way there… but something still seems a bit off.

If anyone know of games with good mount or riding animations, I’d really like to see them. The comparisons make for good discussion, if not insightful.

You’re right, there are only three game modes. So why cut one out when it comes to reward tracks?

Because reward tracks are there specifically to boost sPvP and WvW “toward” the same wealth accumulation as PvE. It just doesn’t do enough to even come close to the gold conversion rate of even casual event trains.

Fractals and Raids have the highest gold conversion rate in the game by a wide margin. Even a T2 run for fractal dailies nets at least 5 gold for less then an hour of work. But in WvW, it takes around an hour to get a rank; and that only yields 75s and maybe an exotic worth 1g if you’re lucky. If the zergs are actually fighting each other consistently, you can get maybe 2 ranks an hour. Under these conditions, it actually COSTS more in siege and consumables then you’d normally make playing WvW; and was intended to have this cost shared across the participants (which not nearly enough donate). With sPvP, the earn rate is also really low, but at least it doesn’t have operating costs.

But sPvP had the Tournament rewards, which gave a huge boost to income if you could play a lot during the season window. You have no idea how huge a boon it was when they copied that over to WvW with Skirmish rewards….. for the first time, WvW had a reasonable way to get “functional” things like gear with desired stats, covering the cost of expenses, and stuff that was previously only available through Crafting and Farming map metas.

And even with that sharp increase in rewards…. is STILL less then what Fractal and Raid farming puts out, and with far less consistency due to the nature of server match ups.

So I’m sure PvE is really suffering from this terrible loss by not being able to put in twice the amount of time needed to get the same reward, and making less gold on the side.

its because the Mossheart doesn’t have a run animation. If you toggle walk mode with keybinds, it starts to look correct.

A hand full of transforms have this problem, because the base model/animation they lack either a stride mode or slow/fast walk. So what the engine does instead is play an animation faster or slower to match the step count of their scaled size. Thats something that a lot of games don’t actually do; and I believe is done here because of how Vets and Champs are physically upscaled versions of their base model. You can see this effect in action with embiggining and shink tonics, as the former slows movement animation speed in half, while the latter doubles it.

2 People in this thread have no appreciation for history. They will be doomed to repeat it.

For future reference, understand that the game, its economy, and various game modes, are designed to be lateral to each other. This will make more sense in a second.

No…. the Lvl 80 boost does NOT give you fee stuff, or forcibly catch up old content, because the old content isn’t a requirement to play in newer content. The only existing barrier is the leveling system; which itself only exists as a formality of MMO conventions. Once you hit the level cap, thats it…. there is going no higher. At the same time, you don’t need to be level 80 to play in the other game modes of World vs World, or structured PvP…. as those up max you automatically while you play there.

Since the PvE side of the game is now based on accretion, every new map or story arc introduces a new form of currency unique to that region, all players are normalized going in, and must acquire what they need moving forward.

If you want to do crafting, you have to level them up yourself. You want Karma? You have to start collecting them as you go. When PoF drops, day 1 everyone will be equal on rewards.

Really the only kick start the lvl 80 boost gives you is some lvl 80 gear, to make sure your stat ratios are on par with other level 80 players. But if you want to change stats to refocus your build, you’ll have to attain them separately like everyone else.

Its common practice to have variable pricing in different regions of the world, to reflect the buying power of that population. For example, several Asian and eastern European countries have steam games priced at less then half their USD equivalent value, where the average salary could be as little as several dollars a week.

So it could be considered that the EU has superior purchase power to the US. But game companies, being totally charitable, will charge according to a % the purchase power of that country, so they can afford that game fairly. :P
I thought the EU always touted how much better for the consumers they are then the US, yet that only seems to matter when that fairness favors the EU more.

Since no one has pointed it out yet… I a quick wiki look up yields the following.

-Ragnaros is based on Surt, the fire Giant of Norse mythology, and his appearance takes cues from the Balrog from LotR.
- His name is taken from Ragnarok
- Hes part of a quartet of Elemental lords, each of which is a reference to old world mythology.
- Is not a god, but a primordial force of nature (more akin to Elder Dragons in this lore)

- Balthazar is based on Ares, both of whom are titled “God of war”.
- The name Balthazar is a Greek pronunciation of the name of a Babylonian Prince; but I would wager that its more a reference to Baldr’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, with a Monk named Balthazar who seeks to end Bhaal’s curse by ascending to his throne, and ending his own life. In Tyrian Lore, Balthazar is the patron god of Smiting magic for Monks, and theres the currently fuzzy story of Balth, Menzies and their Father’s head.

There has been a long growing trend among people who are bad at arguing (ie internet arguing) to use reductionist premise as evidence of something to elevate their view point. Implied plagiarism is an internet favorite, but usually fail to realize that neither of the 2 things they were comparing were the original to begin with.

Go to a different location…..?

Thelgar.7214:

900 range is a crappy range and both axe and short bow don’t qualify as long range weapons. Really your only long-ranged options are staff and longbow. Reverting the nerf to Short Bow range and putting it back to 1200 (at least when traited), would be welcome.

Ranger Longbow has a range of 1500…. the longest range on any other class before Deadeye was 1200. The whole reason Shortbow was made 900, and Longbow made 1500 was to try and differentiate them more in sPvP and WvW.

It seems really odd at first, until you looked at how the weapons were being used. Under the old traits, Longbow projectiles were really slow, practically needing Read the Wind to be reliable at its 1200 edge range. Shortbow also used to have noticeably higher DPS, given its higher attack rate, short cast times, but only does so when flanking. So in order to get that benefit, you’d have to circle around your target….. which is a long walk when you’re kiting at the edge of the Radius.

Also consider the weapon pairing options for Power and Condi builds. Sword or Greatsword pairs with Longbow to address Longbows poor up close performance, while Axe/Torch being in the same range (and both weapon sets have a Fan attack that needs to be up close to land all its hit) was meant to allow the weapons to play better together, and swap frequently. It also encouraged Condi rangers to get in close, where they were more dangerous anyway with the addition of traps.

Being a Ranger main at launch, I can tell you the extent of the Ranger game play with 1200 short bow is to kite at max range, and not really do anything else. And unlike long bow, Shortbow doesn’t have burst options…. so you’re punished for not Autoattacking as much as possible.

I know thats a fallacy….. I just don’t know which type it is. Yesterday I saw 2 yellow cars after not seeing a yellow car for nearly 2 weeks…. so clearly theres been a sharp increase of Yellow cars now on the road. And since this is the first post I’ve seen from you, I can extrapolate that you are only capable of making terrible posts, and all future posts you make will be progressively worse.

You’re trying to prove an entire hypothesis on a single data point, where the data doesn’t even have a direct relationship to the thing its trying postulate.

Just to be constructive, I have an idea……

Formed after the rise of the Elder dragons, the Arch Exchange of Lion’s Arch has become the most important financial institution in Tyria. Founded by a member of the Xunlai, Hao Luen, after becoming marooned from his home land of Cantha after the Rising of Orr. Today the Guild is headed by his grandson, Captain Hao Luen of the Captain’s Council in Lion’s Arch; serving as the Council’s Financial adviser.

Seeing Tyria once again pushing outward against the dragon’s influence, the many curious, often magical items found by adventures, has caught the attention of the Arch Exchange due to the value as a trading currency. Seeing demand that has yet to be met, the Arch Exchange is launching a new initiate to enable adventures to exchange these currencies for credit, used to purchase other currencies brought in by other adventurers. The goal is to eventually rebuild the global institution once run by the Xunlai, and hopefully provide enough leverage to convince the Emperor of Cantha to reopen trade….. if/when Tyria can reestablish contact with the isolated empire.

Mechanically the exchange works very similar to the old dye and material traders of GW1, as well as the current Gem exchange, but using a Xunlai credit system as an intermediary. To protect the system from abuse and fraud, the Xunlai passively monitor the activities of their account holders as they travel. “Those who maintain good standing and reputation as adventurers are allowed full access to the range of services.” To encourage continued activity in the field, the Exchange charges a Karma fee with every withdrawal, scaled to the credit value of the currency withdrawn in. They’ve also made considerations for retired adventurers who have been invested in the exchange, and allows a daily limited amount of credit to be converted to Karma to help cover service fees.

Faaris.8013:

I don’t care much who Livia is. If she was an important character, the story writers would have introduced her, tell her history, tell me what she did, what makes her special. So far, she’s just an NPC for me. I haven’t played GW1, I guess most current players haven’t.

Livia could have died in that last fight, and it wouldn’t have had any impact on my feelings. I was sad when Marjory’s sister Belinda died, they did a better job making her a believable character than with this Livia. Why should I care about her? Why should I miss her? She’s not even likable.

In my opinion, it’s a bad idea to “introduce” an NPC that way. Do you know someone who talks with you and keeps mentioning people in a way that you think you should know them, because of the way he mentions their names? And you try to act like you know them because obviously, you are supposed to, and you just forgot about them, your fault. And then you bring yourself to actually ask because you feel stupid, and it turns out you never met these people, your buddy has never introduced them to you but talks like you know them for years.

That’s how I felt in that scene where my character asks “Livia, that Livia?” (or something along these lines)

One problem here is the same one that plagues comic book movies, and ultimately has no good solution when you’re on a short time table. A single reference can infer a wikis worth of knowledge if the audience has knowledge of the setting; but to catch up an audience that doesn’t, can take a lot of time and effort that could be better spent advancing the story.

Using DC and Marvel movies as examples…. Marvel actually made the effort the do world building, by giving each character their own story arc prior to making use of them in an Ensemble. Sometimes they’ll even lace in the main thread of another character’s movie. However, DC completely leaned on audience familiarity of charters when they did Batman v Superman… only to take liberties from the source material when drafting the script. They learned their lesson, and went all the way in the exact opposite direction with Suicide Squad; spending half the movie trying to cram every character back story as exposition, and not even getting through all of them before the plot needed to happen.

However… theres a much bigger concern. Dropping too many hints in a short story arc gives away the plot. So you either have to trust the audience to have cursory knowledge of a subject, or spend time building knowledge to have pay off later. Since Livia is a reference to GW1, and ties to several major story arcs in Tyrian lore, they’d have to spend a whole chapter to cover it all… and in the process make it obvious that its leading up to a big “reveal”. The reveal of Balthazar was hinted throughout the earlier chapters…. but they were so subtle and easily dismissed, most people weren’t even aware a connection existed. All we knew for sure was Lazarus was lying to us about his intentions.

A lot folks have criticized the personal story missions as being either too cliche, predictable, or unimaginative. So with LS3 they made a major effort to craft a mystery that could be told in about 20 minutes of dialog, but not make it obvious from the lead up dialog what the answer to the mystery is.

None of the classes feel like Gw1.

“Even through the harshest Siberian winters, my heat burns red hot!”

Shaogin.2679:

I used to see this response alot when requests came up for things like raids, tanks, healers, mounts etc. All of those things are in the game now despite the strong protest of these apparent WoW haters.

So I guess we can go back to asking for anything now, and just ignore the naysayers. What’s next? Capes? Built in open world voice channels?

Thats not why there was resistance to things found in WoW. Whether they like it not, WoW set the bar for what became mediocrity; kitten many games try desperately to clone it, in the hopes of getting a piece of the MMO pie.

The GW2 devs have developed a habit of subverting conventional ideas for game mechanics…. but its always been hit and miss. So when people heard they were adding mounts, everyone was immediately skeptical and curious to see what they were actually doing with it. And as the forums do…. they immediately took up pitchforks to preemptively voice their concerns that they’re just copying WoW with no regard to how it fits in GW2’s design.

There will always be resistance to “things that look like WoW”, because Guildwar’s popularity has always been driven by how its managed to differentiate itself in meaningful ways. The saying goes…. You can’t be WoW by being WoW.

None of the classes “feel” like they did in GW1. Judging but your complaint, you were expecting this game to be GW1 with better graphics….. but every indication since its original advertisement back in 2012 made it clear they were going with vastly different mechanics for combat.

As long as you hold that expectation, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Erukk.1408:

In fantasy, there is a big difference between “destroyed” and “killed”, especially when there is necromancy in the setting.

According to RPGworld, they don’t die….. they just faint.

The way I see it, there are limits to an Elder Dragon’s control, and can be resisted if the creature has enough force of will. Many Sylvari was able to resist the call of Moredremoth, Canoch and the Pact Commander in particular.

Joko is an S-class Necromancer, up there with the Kilbrohn; both easily having enough will power to resist the Dragons, and would likely only struggle in a direct confrontation.

As for his armies, turning them would probably be difficult due to way magic is used to create each army. Undead are bound to their masters, either directly through magical bonds, or indirectly channeled through objects of power. Control can be wrested if the new master can exercise greater power then the current one; with proximity often being a factor. Agents can often be used to relay and strengthen control due to their stronger bonds with their master, and usually become Commanders within the ranks of their armies.

While stressful on him, its not difficult to believe Joko was expending extra effort to make sure his armies remained under his control.

Easy…. don’t spent gold on anything, and just do stuff to get back into the swing of things. For money, fractal dailies are consistently good… but HOT map metas are also worth while.

If you want prepwork for new builds…. I would recommend doing Dragon Stand to collect Crystalline ore (for runes), or WvW if your server is halfway decent.

Walker.7204:

So, I’ve been away for a bit, but a new computer and the expansion has me back and I just had a few questions.

I noticed with the deluxe versions of the expansion they are giving an additional character slot (as well as the max boost, which I think comes with all), but I was just curious why and if there was a new profession coming out anytime soon?

If not, just curious how many of you have multiple characters with the same profession and why?

Do you just love a certain class, and also like trying it with different races?

With the elite specs, do you find that there are so many diff setups for each profession, that they are basically multiple jobs under one heading that play totally different?

Like I said, I’ve been away for awhile, and I was just curious as someone who has all classes maxed out at 80 how best to utilize another character slot.

Thank

The base game only offers 5 character slots….. with the expansion, and the level booster, its an excuse to start exploring a new class if you haven’t already made all 8 alts. If you already have a full roster, you can use it farm keys, do Tyrian story achievements, or roll a new race for Cosmetic changes. I’m considering rerolling my warrior as an asura, but don’t want to delete my original human one until I"m sure I like it.

Weylin.6478:

The problem I see with “Jack of All Trades” is that you just have to use EVERYTHING in a very unintuitive complex way to even get on par with the “specialized” classes.

It’s not like “Today I’m just going to use the flame thrower and be a kittenin’ juggernaut.”
It’s more like “If 90% of my high damaging skills aren’t on cooldown and done in the 12 step long correct order, I’m a complete failure and getting booted from the party.”

That said, I love the idea of a jack of all trades, but don’t like how that seems to translate to you having to use all possible trades at once to be anywhere near effective. Then again, how else could it be done?

The problem is the shift toward a harder Trinity for Raid design, and the hyper focusing of roles to facilitate that kind of game play. In Core, Engineers were the single most scalable class, and its performance had a strong mapping to the skill level of the player. But where it really shined was the fact that it could adapt to nearly ANY situation within a single build, and perform well at it where every other class would struggle from the diversification. This was also the time when Guardians were extremely over-utilized, since their offensive and defensive traits weren’t mutually exclusive, and their in-line support had no cost on their builds.

Both of these situations were enabled by the fact that half of your offensive and defensive power could come from boons alone. Guardians have defense boons in excess, Eles could stack might like crazy, and Engineers (while middling in performance) had Offense, Control and Support built into every weapon and kit they had. That gives them enough to cover the job of 2 classes in Dungeon meta, and actually was the Condi meta for all 3 game modes for a pretty long time.

It took them artificially raising the bar on DPS requirements, and power creeping Especs to match, to knock the engineer down into sub-par territory. It was never really considered the “best” for any single thing…. but it was definitely “good enough” for pretty much everything.

If you want to present the argument about Engineer being too complicated, you should be turning your attention to the fact that Especs in HOT made nearly every class much easier to use. Aka, they had to drop the skill cap of most classes to bring the power standard in-line; and that more then anything else is what helped players start exploring under used classes.

Here the problem I see with all this discussion…….. how much of it is only considering the mechanics of existing raids? Why has so many ruled out the fact that new raid wings will very likely be designed around the new Especs, in order to take advantage of gameplay mechanics?

Why are we so sure the Druid is irreplaceable when it only does 1-2 thing? And is only relevant because the Raids are specifically designed around them being there.

For the Souls reference, you have to understand that Soul and Body are 2 very different concepts in the realm of Guild wars Necromancy. This is even elaborated on with Oola, and her postulation that Necromancy and Golemency are practically identical in concept.

The minions necros make are constructs of flesh, but their powered by the magic of their masters. They don’t inherently posses a soul, don’t have free will, and barely any instinct. Golems are pretty much the same way, except their power source is usually a magic battery. They don’t have intelligence, but instead have an extensive Flow Graph and Pattern recognition engine, that allows them select programmed responses to environmental conditions or commands. They have no memory in a conventional sense, but can pull data samples from other sources (including internal storage) if it needs to make comparisons. While it shouldn’t in most cases, this does lead to Golem AI extrapolating in cases of misidentification; leading to undesired results. So in essence, Golems can’t reason, nor change their intended behavior due to circumstances… thus can’t be corrupted or coerced. However, they can be fooled by logic loop holes or data substitutions.

The Rata Novus meta with Zildi touches on this, as the Defense Matrix consider human, charr and norn as high risk. Theres also no entry for Sylvari, since they didn’t exist when those protocols were established. So to simply the filtering, so it’ll target the chak, she set the protocol to recognize all bipeds as Asuran, and thus white listed in the defense system.

The concept of a Soul comes into play when you’re dealing with Intellect involving necromatic constructs, and autonomy. To an extent, this also covers Sylvari, since they lack souls, but are intelligent. Normally necromancers will build constructs, and command them directly with their will. This means they lack autonomy, and can’t stray from from their master/power-source. However, you can Bind a soul into, or give intelligence to, a construct using magic, allowing that soul/intellect to control the construct as a body. Additional wards and spells can then be layered on top of that to limit what that soul can do, or punish/prevent it from taking certain actions. The most common of these binding spells is subservience… giving the soul freedom to make decisions, so long as it complies with its master’s wishes. This is the type of Magic Jako uses to raise and control his armies, as did Zhaitan with the Risen hoards.

This gives the impression that souls are energy that passes into the mist upon death; but can be recalled from the Mists to “wake” that intelligence, and need additional sources of energy to keep them bound to their host bodies. This explains why most risen exist in a perpetually deluded, dream like state… often parroting the routines of their previous life out of habit, without awareness beyond their immediate surroundings. Even Ghosts of the Foe Fire exhibit similar behavior.
However, stronger souls have expanded awareness, and can become cognizant of their surroundings and situation. They retain the ability to reason, can more easily recall memories of their past life, and project their will to manipulate magic. Artificial souls and beings have also been known form in the wake of events involving mist energy, usually as a reflection of the strongest patterns where energy can intersect.

However….. a lot of this muddied by the apparent distinction between a soul and an intelligence. There is some inconsistency in the lore, but it does seem that Souls contain both Intelligence and Energy, but Intelligence is for the most part just a pattern. This plays into the idea of The Mists being raw ethereal energy given shape when that energy coalesces, or resonate with intense energy occurring on the physical plane. Its also used as the explanation as to why fractals seem to form around disasters and battles, as theres always extreme magical or emotional forces resonating at the event’s peak.

Now addressing the difference between Necro and Ritualist, they actually focus on different aspects as a result of their cultural origins.

Necromancers are of western influence, which puts a strong emphasis on the physical world, and treats the beyond as an almost unknowable existence. Thus spirits that pass into the beyond are normally out of reach without divine intervention. However, spirits shackled to the physical plane through places or objects of strong emotional significance, can be pulled from purgatory and manifest if enough energy is presented to sustain them. In rare cases, the spirit’s can provide enough of their own energy, or leech from another source, to will themselves into the physical plane, manifesting in some form or another.
However the main focus on Necromancy is the practice of transferring energy, usually life force, between objects to impart some kind of effect. Objects that previously housed life, like dead bodies, are already attuned to the type of energy Necros utilize… making them prefect vessels to receive and manipulate energy as they see fit.

Ritualists are drawn from Eastern influence. It views the physical world and spirit world as coexisting, but separated by a barrier of awareness. Life is energy, and flows back and forth between the 2 worlds in an endless cycle. The Ritualist is trained to become a conduit between these states of existence, allowing the energy of the spirit world to flow back into the physical. They can invoke and shape this energy themselves, or commune with spirits to manipulate it on their behalf.

Thus the Necro commands energy that exists in, or is connected to (currently or previously) living creatures within the physical plane; while the Ritualist draws its energy directly from the spirit world.

Passive AOE buffs don’t stack. Also consider Grace of the Land caps at 10%, which across a team is pretty massive jump in DPS. Given its a 20% boost, I’m guessing its either hard to stack, or is only a self-buff similar in nature to Shiro’s sword trait. In fact…. its probably there to compensate for the lower or unfocused damage to help boost it in a DPS configuration.

Engineers have always been a very Jack-of-all-trades class. This limits the extremes of what it can do, but gives it a very high average performance and high versatility within a single build. Before HOT raised the performance bar, Engineers had a solid place in both Fractals and WvW due to its ability to bring an extremely diverse set of support functions without sacrificing its damage potential. There were more focused team comps….. but the benefit of Engineer was the ability to slot in easily into any group. Used to also have the highest condi damage potential in the whole game…. with the single most unnecessarily complicated rotation anyone bothered to pass through a DPS meter.

That changed a lot with Raids, though. Scrapper is technically a PvP spec, and the 10 slots allowed for more specialized builds without losing coverage. With the sheer focus on highest DPS possible, Engineers fell to wayside in PvE; but found a new life in WvW and PvP.

The class’s strength comes from its kits, and it has a kit for just about everything except long range combat. Aside from that, it makes for exceptional open world roaming due to the on-demand diversity with or without scrapper; and is highly entertaining if you’re good at adaptive strategy. Its most notable downside is not getting the high impact damage and support bursts the meta classes are set up for….. but can sustain extremely well once you learn to manage kit swapping.

From what been said about it so far, Holosmith looks to be a less complicated DPS spec. Could be good or bad, but it won’t be clear until more people get their hands on it.

Iosevus.2893:

I am.
I came back and started tentatively playing my engineer again with the hopes of using a sword.
But the reality is, this isn’t even really a sword spec. It’s a “form/shroud/stance” spec. All traits are dependent on using Photon Forge form, which half the skills are replaced by “photon” weapons other than a sword and the sword in the from uses a separate skin than your actual weapon.
The last part is mostly a cosmetic thing, but considering the amount of money people spend on skins in this game, you can’t really say it isn’t an issue.

So, now I wait to see the details on the Ranger elite, to see if that actually seems like something I would like. Otherwise, the expansion is a no starter for me as my main interest is mechanics not more land that will always be essentially the same as all MMOs.

The sword was a formality to give Engineers some much needed synergy with the Shield. Up until this point, there was never a reason to run shield, except in one fringe case in WvW, since the only main hand (Pistol) was a condi weapon, and the off hand pistol was always taken because blowtorch is the strongest attack in that setup.

Holosmith takes of the basic concept of weapon archetypes as kit skills, and pushes more DPS oriented options where most Engie kits were a mixture of damage, defense and support.

Its technically 8 maps, since Living story is gonna happen shortly after.

Congratulations……. because PoF maps are looking to be more about horizontal space, with a purposefully limited use of vertical travel.

Daddicus.6128:

I hope like core GW2. HoT had MAJOR problems, some of which still haven’t been corrected.

In particular, the maps (Tangled Depths in particular) are horrible to navigate. There needs to be an accurate way of knowing where you are, vertically. As it is, it is unacceptable.

The strength and overlap of mobs was way too high in HoT zones. They’ve toned it down a little, and even more so in Season 3 zones.

Gating has to make sense. To gate simply to slow down players is disgusting, and should never have happened.

Yet those were among the most requested things leading up to the expansion, as part of a list of reasons vanilla GW2 became “too boring” and “lacked replay value”. The remaining player base wanted more challenge, but didn’t know how to accomplish it within the game’s framework at the time. All we knew was HP/Damage scaling wasn’t working, as evidenced in fractals.

In fact, a lot of things that drove HOT’s design is based on what people liked or didn’t like from Fractal level design. More focused encounters, more variation in mob skills, enemy team compositions, a desire to see CC skills being more impactful to game play, environmental hazards, bundle tools that actually assist/help players during events, a better use of space, less dead zones, coherent map design, and fights that don’t simply boil down to standing there and spamming 1.

They already answered this when HOT came out. You can only load one Espec at a time, and is uniformly restricted to the 3rd trait line slot to make them mutually exclusive.

Especs also mechanically restricts the special weapon associated with it; so changing out of an Espec causes you to lose access to it until loaded back in again.

They have every reason not to do this as a general unlock. The problem is mobility and combat skills that are built into the player essentially break places not designed to support them. This happened with Tyrian Gliding, and took a concerted effort to integrate it in a way that made sense (Shatterer revamp).

But theres a big reason they never allowed global gliding skills outside of Bloodstone Fen….. they lose control of what players can do with it. And players will make an effort to break the game when given those types of tools.

Look at where they implemented gliding skills. Note how very specific to the event or environment they’re designed to be used. Consider the Dwayna artifact skills, and how quickly it opens up huge portions of the Siren’s landing map that are supposed to be hidden behind minor jumping puzzles, event chains, or story interactions. Now imagine maps that came about before its design. Particularly Ember bay, which isn’t even that old. Look at how gliding changed Drytop.

The fact that HOT is obtained separately is a strong indicator that they’re design for Mobility masteries are specific to the terrain in question. Even just Gliding can easily circumvent a lot of new locations if they’re built to be vertical. So considering we’re now in the desert, they have to exclude gliding from prerequisites, and mounts are the focus of mobility in this new region, and the large world space of PoF maps….all indications point to the majority of the maps being mostly horizontal, with only certain areas dedicated to vertical climbing, that are massively spaced out to prevent players from using gliding to get around the puzzle. What will probably end up happening is most gaps will be even height, or advances to higher ground; and regulate gliding to simply being a faster, safer way to get to the bottom of the puzzle.

Shatter can be killed by a Pug group, but the achievements take Triple Trouble levels of coordination. You need a Commander that knows the timing of the event, and a group specifically willing to follow instructions, and about 30 minutes prior to find people though LFG. You wait outside the map until 5-10 minutes before pre; enough time for the world boss train to start filling up. You then flood the map with your squad, and try to figure out if any of them got on a fresh or at least underpopulated IP. Then have the whole squad join on that map. Its the same technique used to organize TT and Teq maps, and will work 90% of the time.

The point is, you need to organize ahead of time, rather then try to scrape together a bunch of people at the last minute, and expect that to go smoothly.

Uh…. no…. Mastery tracks are a gating system, not a reward boosting system. This limits its usefulness to Utility, Mobility, or World interaction. What you’re describing are drop buffs already in use in the game as map specific buffs or collection specific triggers, and done that way for a reason. More over, the things you suggest as rewards are much better left to either Token vendors and/or meta reward chests, as it wouldn’t logically require mastery points beyond whats needed to participate in the events themselves.

Also don’t understand why you think this should involve mastery tracks outside of interacting with a vendor, when the whole point of it is to gate that content behind the same kind of “grind” your proposing with mastery track specifically assigned to unlocking token drops.

WoW isn’t the only thing they’re “copying”. But in your defense, WoW set the standard for mediocrity in the MMO industry, and what consumers expect when it comes to wasting their time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_

Carried a bunch of Skritt, who will gather all the shinys and bring them back to me.

OriOri.8724:

I’m worried about the HoT maps, especially since they revolve entirely around their metas. Depending on when you play, it can already be hard enough to find 2 maps completing the meta on VB or TD, and its just going to get worse when the expansion drops and the HoT maps are all but abandoned for a while.

The same thing that happened to the World boss train when HOT metas got popular……. people still do them, you just need a commander to host a squad and pick up 30 people along the way to hit critical mass. The habit of unfocused players right now is to look at LFG and use that to figure out where people are at…. when they see an event they’re interested in, then join that squad. This same approach can be applied to pretty much anything that stays practical with more then 5 players.

Consider this as the view point….. the only group content that has problems finding people to do it, are the ones that aren’t particularly fun to begin with. However, there is clear preference for content that has easy rewards… so thats the first place people will coalesce. Once thats done, if the commander suggests carrying the squad into another event, well over half will follow along to help get it started.
I find the bigger issue right now is a lack of commanders to coordinate these events, rather then there not being enough people to join once someone else has already done the setup.

All that happened is Guildwars 2 found an identity, and tried to run with it. The vanilla game didn’t know what it wanted to be, so it spitballed everything. Some was good, some was bad…. but not nearly enough of it work in concert.

In the time since then, particularly leading up to HOT, the game was forced to pick a path, and used that choice to make itself more coherent. So while it gave up some of its potential in one area, it became cohesive in several others.

There is a running joke in the industry about how the MMO market base wants “something like WoW, but different”. Guildwars 2 tried to be the Anti-WoW, thinking that if they avoid being compared to WoW, that it wouldn’t have to compete with it. What they weren’t expecting was getting the attention of half the WoW population, much less a sizable chunk of them playing the game just to check it out. Even to this day, WoW players who get burnt out on it will ask about this game to see if they want to try it.

And to its credit, Guildwars 2 manages to avoid the more egregious traps WoW clones tend to fall into when trying to replicate concepts popularized by WoW in its hayday. Most people forget that, despite the game play it enabled, the design of Guild wars 1 is a cosmic horror when it comes maintaining it. The fact GW1 didn’t implode under the weight of its skill list, is a testament to how good a job they did for coming up with very distinct, coherent skills and effects. But there is no denying that the movement was awkward most of the time, the kind of things they could mechanically was actually very limited, and that the popularity of the game rested very heavily on the locations, presentation of the story, and very heavily integrated exploration aspect in the game play. Even to this day, the most recalled aspect of the game was wandering around, enjoying the scenery, and treking to remote locations to find rare or unique things. I myself would replay the whole Prophecies story line at least 3 times a year just to relive the story. There are very few single player games I would play more then once…… so that says a lot about where the strength of the Guildwars franchise seems to be found. Which is odd when you consider, overall, the story summery being very mediocre, standard fantasy fare.

Simply put…. Guildwar’s greatest strength is its sense of presentation. If you look at the past complaints of this game, much of the loss of depth in the buildcraft was a secondary concern to how little mileage we get from the game’s story, locations, and sense of purpose. Even today, there are still prominent arguments about figuring out what to do with your time; where as in GW1, that was only problem if you were the type that never thought to look past the quest markers.