Guild Wars 2

Care to explain? I just ran up to him and wailed on him with my sword.

Valks Minion Master….. one of the tankiest builds in the game. For open world, including HOT, its almost unkillable while maintaining respectable damage output. Access to some very strong CCs too.

Valks armor, Valk/Zerk Hybrid trinkets, Valk weapons. Death 3-3-3, Blood 3-3-2, Reaper 1-3-3. Rise!, Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, Flesh Golem, Axe/Focus, Great Sword.

I used this to get achievements for all the LS3 chapters, and pretty much only died to fall damage and messing up while soloing champs. In fact, the more targets in cleave range, the stronger it gets.

With some minor alterations, and dropping minions in favor of Soul Reaping, you can take it into raids as a flat DPS build. Condi is obvious better in that situation… but you can make due if the rest of the team comp is in good shape.

Recipe for Power based Minion Reaper.

Valks armor, Valk weaopns, Valk/Zerk hybrid trinkets, Power or Ferocity Runes of choice. (Rage runes is cheap option for lazy Fury)
Axe/Focus, Great Sword
Death magic 1-2-1
Blood Magic 3-3-2/3
Reaper 1-3-3

Minion Skills: Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, Rise!, Flesh Golem.

Basic premise:
Use GS3 and Focus 4 to stack vulnerability, which gives Crit chance bonus due to Decimate Defenses. Minions provide toughness bonus, off load conditions, and steady source of healing. Rise provides more minions and additional damage redirection (33%).

Strengths: A literal kitten ton of HP (25K + another 12.5k in Shroud), bonus toughness from traits +200 with 10 minions), and reliable way to replenish health in combat. It can survive all but the densest AOE damage, and dishes out an incredibly large amount of damage while doing it. Both offensive and defense power scale with the number of nearby enemies, making it one of the consistently strongest brawling builds in PvE.

Weaknesses: General lack of stability, but can easily soak the damage until the stun wears off.

Life Force generation: Shadow fiend command attack gives 10%, GS3 generates a lot if hitting multiple targets, Axe 2 and Focus 4 generates on use as well. Shroud 1 also generates life force on the last chain, so striking 5 targets off sets the decay rate.

Healing: Vampiric minor trait causes Minion attacks to collectively heal for a lot, but you can get a small burst heal by using any of your multi-hit attacks. Note that this trait also heals through Shroud (normally heals won’t), allowing you heal yourself while shroud’s protection is up. Shroud 4 can heal for a crap ton if you’re surrounded.

Non-minion version
Sub Soul Reaping for Death magic
1-2-X Foot in Grave for stun break, Death Perception for lazy crit chance.
Skill: whatever works
Relies more on shroud for survival, but spends more time in it. Is an easy respec for situations where minions are not welcome. Shroud Auto also generates Vulnerability, allowing for practically 100% crit chance with zero effort.

Stupid but entertaining Healing Reaper
Any Healing primary stat gear + Runes with healing power
Blood Magic, Soul Reaping and Reaper. The only critical traits is Transfusion in Blood Magic, Reaper’s Onslaught in Reaper, and Vital Persistence in Soul reaping. The combination is done to help keep you in shroud as much as possible, and use Soul Spiral to push out big healing pulses (13k+ HP healing per use).

For additional stupid fun, running condi as a secondary stat on Healing Reaper, take Chilling Nova, Dhuumfire, and Epidemic to spread condis whenever your Shroud is down. Damage isn’t going to be impressive anyway, so you may as well pick utilities that are fun to play with.

Given the events of GW1 Ascension, the Forgotten tested them for morals, duty and personal resolve. They could easily had been drawn from the huge pool of heroes and adventurers that existed in that era, but they are still of a mortal mind set. They have fears, regrets, and doubts, and the tests are there to see if at are at least capable of overcoming them.

But the challenges don’t end with the Forgotten’s tests. Many Exalted did not survive through the period of dormancy, and many more fell during the initial Mordrem incursion of Tarir. Masks of the Fallen is a testament to their diminished forces, as are the broken armors scattered through Auric Basin. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the Exalted began to question their capacity to succeed in their mission, given how few remain, but push forward anyway knowing failure can’t be afforded.

With that said, there are other Tarnished exalted around Tarir. There appears to be no physical or functional difference between Tarnished and other Exalted, so I can only guess it was a lore element that had significance at one point, but was later dropped mid development. As for the Tarnished Traitor’s mask….. that is an anomaly, as all other lore would suggest an Exalted is dead if their mask is removed.

Ardid.7203:

I highly doubt there are “alignments” in GW2 world. I think Tyria, while very maniqueistic in the surface, is way more fluid and grey than traditional old school D&D style fantasy.

Guardians can be good, bad and both, as long as they have the conviction enough to keep fighting for what they believe.

It also helps that RPGs and even D&D are trying to move away from rigid alignment systems, and moving more toward “character traits” to allow for better story telling. Movies have been doing this a lot because of the easy potential for conflict…. though many confuse the idea of “Anti-hero” as being the same as morally jaded, when that not what it actually means.

As for GW2, there is no clear cut good vs evil; only the clashing of morals and ideals. Even the dragons don’t represent any kind of ideological stance…. they are eldritch forces of nature, with objective purpose to wake, feast, flourish, and then rest. They’re often mistaken as representing an ideological stance because of their methods; which is why they have followers in some circles. Zhaitan calls, Modremoth infests, Jormag tempts, Krakatorik subverts, Primordus consumes….. and Bubbles uses Splash attack.

In fact…. many of the “antagonistic” factions in the game are driven by purity of purpose. The Inquest accepts that any sacrifice is a worthy one in the quest for knowledge. The Nightmare Court fight for freedom from oppression. The Flame Legion seeks unity through force. The White Mantle want security and survival for all humanity. The Svanir pursue primal strength. Outlaw Gangs and Aetherblade want wealth and power.

The catch here is that the line for heroism in the game is drawn by selfless deeds. And thats where the divide and conflict leads to the clash of ideology. The difference between Jenna’s crown and Caudacus’ White Mantle, despite wanting the same thing, is Jenna’s solution is done through cooperation and diplomacy, while Caudacus’ solution is done through isolationism. The Inquest vs the Colleges is their disagreement in Ethics; and ironically, how the Colleges are counter productive through the promotion of selfish in-fighting over recognition, secretive research practices, and overbearing political control on what can be researched, and how its conducted. The Svanir only recognize pure strength as the only measure of worth; while Norn society finds value in Successful deeds.

This approach leaves a lot of room open for interpretation… but more importantly is made flexible to allow any ideology to be swayed, and serve the greater good without compromising the foundation of those beliefs. The Guardian represents conviction in those beliefs, and manifests as a power to be wielded in service of those beliefs…. even if those beliefs are purely selfish in nature.

Canoch in particular resonates heavily with this concept of transforming idealism. His goals during the SouthSun ark (to free the refugees tricked into contractual slavery)
were entirely just, but his methods too destructive. His core beliefs remain the same.. almost identical to that of the Nightmare court. But he is now aware that the ends don’t always justify the means, and takes care to not inflict collateral damage despite the difficulty it imposes on his actions. This has redefined his sense of Justice, and now recognizes personal responsibility, the value of personal restraint, and recognizes law is not just a tool of oppression.

“I went to the mists, and now I hear voices in my head.” Shrio is a demanding *, Mallyx is Emo, Ventari grunts too much, Jallias is too loud, and Glint sounds like Eir.

just remove the infusion using the 24s tool kit from fractals and leave it in the bank?

Only if it has a profanity filter and must be unique across the whole game. wait… why would anyone collapse a bank tab?

Rauderi.8706:

Westenev.5289:

I think, ideally, we would ideally want to see something akin to Renegade and Paragon from Mass Effect, whereby the same actions are taken for different reasons. For this reason, I think it would be nice if the Charm, Dignity and Threaten options saw more widespread use.

I could’ve used a Paragon/Renegade set of options in Episode 3.

-Paragon/Dignity-
Weak, mincing Commander: “No Braham, don’t go away angry. Let’s talk this out ..and, he’s gone.”

-Renegade/Ferocity-
Commander: [Post face-punch] “How dare you pull this childish garbage on me? Do you have any idea what I’ve lost? My warband! The Pact! Eir was my friend! [second punch] Go on, go.” [Braham leaves crying.]
Rox: “Boss, don’t you think you were too hard on him?”
Commander: “No, but I bet this is going to bite me in the buttcape anyway. He’ll sort it out. I hope.”

It’s one of those “illusion of choice” things that doesn’t change the overall story, just the presentation of it.

That won’t work anymore…… the cost of voice acting is just too kitten high in this situation. Anet took a major philosophical shift for story presentation in HOT, in order to provide a more engaging, higher quality experience. This lead to a more focused story and plot line, which in turn allows for more dialog without costing tone or contextualization. That was, and still remains the biggest problem with previous Personal story… the inability to maintain consistent personality tone across story arcs. Sometimes it wouldn’t even maintain tone within the same conversation when its at a break/merger point in the story tree. “I never should had trusted you…. Cross me again, and I’ll bury you!” “So what do we do next?”

Choice in story ultimately doesn’t work because of the nature of Fate. All content has to be created, and thus is affirmative in design. In order to have choice that actually works as choice, or to even give the proper illusion of choice, all permutations of choice have to be either preordained or stripped of all contextual relevance. Using Skyrim as an example, the choice to run Melee or Ranged has no bearing on the story elements of the game. But all story elements, quests, and events are designed in advanced, and can only play out in a finite number of ways. On the flip side, you can kill every mudcrab in a river, leave the area and come back, it would be as if they were never gone.

Guildwars 2 has always been accused of being Content starved, and all of its players actions not having any kind of impact on the world, when the reality is the opposite. There is a TON of content available, and player interaction with world events have a very real impact on the state of the world. What players are really complaining about is not having persistent consequences. But as history has shown…. players can’t be trusted with decisions or actions which have lasting effects, as they will inevitably head down the path of destruction once all other options are explored. Not because of any moral grounding, or objective reasoning- but pure curiosity… A perverted sentimentality.

Even the mind set itself is breed from realization that the consequences ultimately don’t matter. That the effects of those actions start and end with the game, and don’t carry any personal responsibility the moment you close the game. You are free to walk away at any point, eventually starting the cycle again at a different point in the game, or even a different game if you so choose. But those destructive actions have already affected other…. and thats the real problem. A purposeful disconnect from the reality of the situation, the power to impose ones will, but no cost meaningful cost of the repercussions.
Looking at WoW, the dichotomy of Alliance and Hoard doesn’t matter since you as a player have the ability to change sides on a whim. Once you experience one, there is nothing preventing you from experiencing the other via a second account. Sometimes you’re even rewarded for this exploration of experience, despite the choice itself is advertised as having a moral weight.

So to create the paper thin illusion of choice comes with a cost. But those who play will not pay the cost if the illusion has no meaning. And even if the fates gave them a path filled with meaning and consequences, the player would reject it out of spite for his own insignificance of will. Yet when given real choice, the player laments the decisions and blames the creator for allowing the poor choice to be made. How can one learn from an experience, if the experience carries no true weight? And more importantly…. who will bear the cost if the player won’t?

Justine.6351:

They should just remove/rework them tbh. They contribute to unhealthy play anyhow just like seaweed +% dmg while moving did.

After you kill a foe, gain (insert buff) for 30seconds increasing your (insert stat) by 250.

So instead of encouraging people to runaway, it encourages them to push harder.

They already have a whole category “gain X stat/buff for 30 second on kill” for food, which almost never gets used due to it being unreliable. Its in a bad place because the damage bonus is irrelevant against trash mobs, it takes too long to kill vets+, and you’d want the damage up front for those fights anyway.

The Bloodlust was popular for a long time. because it both had a bigger bonus and persisted long enough to matter. Now days Force/Night and Malice works better in raids/dungeons since they don’t reset on down. Especially raids, since you can’t rebuild stacks if you wipe on a boss segment.

If you had to improve it, it would have to be a cross of opening strike and grace of the land, where the sigil grants a buff that triggers (on strike) into a damage bonus that lasts 30 seconds, and resets the trigger on mob kill. That allows the stacks to pile up on kill streaks, but still offers front loaded damage bonus. Balancing it would be a problem though. It would need <50% uptime without kill streaks, and still have provide at least 50 per stack (5 max) to be worth using.

If we’re going single stack, it’ll have to be +250 to break even with Force in most set ups, but can’t be 100% up time. Could go +300 with some down time and “on kill” refresh; but it’ll end up being best in slot or not worth taking over force.

The problem really boils down to needing something you can front load AND has to renew on its own in order to compete with passive versions for Raids and Fractals. And frankly, Fractals/Raids are the only place that justifies investing in the majority of sigils.

Since OP is a Revanent, I can make one kind of easy suggestion for stupidly survivable power build for general purpose PvE.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Herald_-_Frontline_Sustain

It calls for Mauraders gear, but you can substitute a mixture of Berserkers, Valkyrie, and Assassins to get a similar spread of stats. The extra vitality is whats important, and you want to get it at least up to 20k (its 24k with Asc Maurader). Sigil choice is open, but Bloodlust/Strength combo is meant to make up the lower power total.

Ironically, the rest of the build doesn’t matter as much. The majority of your surviablity comes from the extra HP, mixed with the minor traits of Dev/Ret/Her… so you’re pretty much free to select all offensive majors if you want. For legends you run Glint + any other legend based on situation. The main reason to run Glint is the Healing skill to invert damage (using dense AOE fields to heal yourself), and passively stack might/swiftness as you navigate. You can also run any weapon set you want, but do recommend keeping either Hammer or Staff for the CCs. This build is phenomenal for Map meta, and only really dies when you get badly stun locked.

The down side is that your burst damage is pretty low (compared to meta builds), but your sustain damage is good enough to deal with most fights until you hit 4:1 odds. At that power scale, staff DPS is pretty much on par with sword, unless you trait swords; but the sheer utility of the staff makes its hard to replace as the melee weapon of choice.

Second downside is this build won’t fly in Raids due to the toughness from the runes. But since Rev doesn’t fit well into the raid meta right now, you’re better off bringing another class or having a separate armor set for raids.

As a side suggestion…. if you haven’t taken your alts through HOT’s story line, each pass gives you a choice for a box of HOT stat exotic gear. I started taking all my alts through the story so I can do the Caladbalg collection, and been collecting Vipers boxes as I go. Gonna use those for a Viper armor set for a condi build, once I decide which class to use for it.

To reinforce what others are saying…. leveling in the game is pretty low stakes,since buildcraft and traits don’t become important until you’re around level 65, and can unlock enough stuff to run proper combinations.

As a rule of thumb for nearly all classes, signets are consistently powerful/useful at lower levels, and you should looking at either a distinctly offensive or defensive trait line to start with. This won’t be apparent to most new players, but the core traits are usually broken into 5 themes….. Class Mechanic, Power damage, Condi damage, Support, and Defense.

For Guardians, in the above order, its Virtues, Zeal, Radiance, Honor and Valor. Guards are easy to trait for, since all their traits have secondary support benefits. Bread and Butter for leveling is going to be Greatsword for power builds, using Zeal and Valor to increase attack power and extra condi cleanse respectively.

For Rangers its far more mixed in terms of themes. Beast Master = Class mechanic, Marksman = Ranged Damage, Skirmish = Melee/Mobility, Wilderness survival = Condi damage/clear, Nature Magic = Defense/Support. Rangers are pretty hard to kill given the large number of personal defense skills, and down skill 3 being an extremely powerful revive. You can also command your pet using F1/2/3/4 commands while downed….. not many people know this, and it can come in handy.

What build are you running, and what weapon set? Eles have a decent spread of defenses options across all weapons sets and their utility skills. Summon Elemental Elite and calling an Earth Elemental also makes for a great tank to distract mobs when your running glassy builds. The Elite skill is least significant on the majority of Ele builds, so it rarely interferes with anything else.

As for Brutes…. carry a reflect, and they practically kill themselves.

You mean the progress bar? Players don’t telegraph skills beyond the animations. If you’re talking about skill effects, there are several settings to clamp the number on screen at at time…. but it covers both friendly and enemy skill effects.

IndigoSundown.5419:

ANet has already added rune change functionality to Legendary armor, and spoken of sigil change for L. weapons. Imagine the reaction from those who thought the rune/sigil swap feature was an added reward for the time and expense they put in to get the weapon/armor. If it is taken away to be put behind another pay/time wall, I guarantee there will be protests.

The legendary tier was originally supposed to be cosmetic. However, ANet added stat swap, so now it’s not entirely cosmetic. The idea of Legendary runes and sigils (and trinkets, for that matter) seems off, since they don’t affect a character’s appearance.

That said, the game is going to — at some point — need new carrots for the carrot-chase play-style players to chase. At this point, I haven’t got a clue what they could do. Let’s hope they do, especially since Legendary Armor looks like it’s going to be raid-only.

But you’re also forgetting that cosmetics and desirable stats had a different dynamic before the Wardrobe system. Cosmetics were destructive, as you combined 2 items to get one desired item.

Stat swapping was a response to Wardrobe completely undermining the old Transmutation system, and the very, very clunky nature of Mystic Forge recipes. Ascended gear in all forms is automatically account bound… but Legendary weapons (by default) are not. Thus enabling stat swapping via MF would give unbound results, and/or require just as many bespoke recipes and item IDs as there are for Ascended weapons- which is why we have 20+ colors associated with Asc Weapons stats, where as item rewards from HOT are mostly stat selectable.

Like someone else pointed out previously, the impact of Sigil swapping is Economic rather then cosmetic. Its why they refused to do legendary armor at first, because Asc armor sets has been the single biggest success for the TP Tax gold sink. Legendary armor causes that cost to eventually dead end, as it removes a major reoccurring cost that has kept players engaged in the TP.

The reason they’ve changed that can only mean they’re going to render it obsolete with a future change, and shift new desirable elements behind a new gating system. Legendary armor is a major convenience now that multiple builds are viable per class…. but its costs are finite, and they need reoccurring costs in order to combat inflation. But with a full set of Legendary armor and weapons, which have free access to all stat/sigil combinations in perpetuity, where do you move the cost sink to? Food has already been kind of a failure due to massive cost disparity, and stat swapping nullfies a shifting meta. Whats left in the mechanics?

Carighan.6758:

I don’t mind the shift away from them, interesting as “Dragons as forces of nature” could have been. They were just used as generic bosses anyhow.

What annoys me is just how utterly random the newly introduced boss is. And how he shows up and all. It’s all so… yeah. Might as well be anyone else.

The whole LS3 was building up Lazrus as the antagonist, and everyone expected a plot twist at the end. But using one of the Human Gods introduces 2 new sub plots that couldn’t happen without direct references to them…. 1. It reinforces their vulnerability as Mist Walkers against the Dragons, and Balth’s motivations are one of shrouded desperation. 2. Theres now a 3rd contender in the scenario, and this is ramping up to change the war into a battle of Juggernauts. The heroes now have to juggle 3 problems…. the overt threat of Dragon minions, the fractured political state of Tyria, and now a second super natural force, with a total disregard for collateral damage.

If they had repeated the scenario of Nightfall, using the players as Agents to the God’s war, we would have the exact same plot line as LS3, but with way more contrivances to explain why anyone in Tyria would actually go along with the God’s plans. The raids and dungeons also house a lot of extended plot; and one constant reoccurring theme is mortals achieving godhood through massive infusions of magical energy.

But there is one major focal point of mythos that has to be addressed, yet has been largely hand waved up until this point….. the Mists itself. Despite never being mentioned directly in story, the Mist wars and multiverse theory is now an integral element to the Dragon wars ever since it was introduced via Omadd’s machine. The dragons powers are bound to the physical realm of Tyria; yet we know for a fact that Mist walkers easily traverse between these realms. Thats a massive plot hole if you ignore the Mist Wars, because it would otherwise be the most direct solution to the Elder dragons…. a place to evacuate to, and theoretically infinite resources to wage war against them. The only things preventing this is our inability to navigate its metaphysical design with any sort of reliability, and the constant threat of invading forces from the borderlands.

So no… Balth as an antagonist is not “random”. The inclusion of the Mist walkers were inevitable the moment the metaphysical nature of Tyria was brought into the main story. The fact that they’re addressing it now is mostly to prevent the story from getting too chaotic before they can tie some of these threads together. Its also why they knocked out 2 Elder dragons to buy the story time, ended Caudicus, and put Logan in charge of the Pact….. there are too many loose ends in the story right now to generate the plot focus they need for a better story experience.

This might not seem obvious to most…. but look back at High Fantasy movies mimicking the structure of Lord of the Rings. Or even compare Peter Jackson’s Hobbit to the older Animated versions. Lord of the Rings is 3 interwoven story threads (and I don’t mean story arcs), comprised of multiple plot threads, each on a different scale. The Hobbit is one story thread made from 3 repeating plot threads. The thing to take away from this is Tolkenesqe stories can easily balloon out of control if you don’t know how to keep the plot threads personal, but well connected. That was a big problem with GW2’s personal story…. events escalated rapidly, but the various plot threads were not tied together well. Its also what happened to the Hobbit movie, as elements were introduced and discarded abruptly; resulting in things being utterly confusing at best, and completely unresolved at worst. Heart of Thorns tried to reset the board by nullifying the Pact….. but Mordremoth wasn’t a compelling villain for a more narrowed story focus, as him putting too much focus on the heroes would be utterly overbearing. Its basically the Mount Doom ark of LotR once you realize HOT Map Metas and the HOT personal story are actually divergent. Its also why the story thread told from the perspective of the map meta is much stronger, because salvaging a shattered army and bringing it to bear against the heart of the enemy for a rematch, is exactly the type of underdog story most people find compelling.

With the way they’re trying to steer events, the expansion is clearly trying to shoot for a more focused approach to story telling, and sort out the problems of who is in main roles and who are in supporting roles. The pact is clearly going to be shifted into a Supporting role, and the heroes are clearly going to spending the majority of the expansion truth seeking. Its hard to say who well be the main antagonist (with so many on the table at the moment), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the first or third act involves Kraktorik fighting something other then the Heroes/Pact forces.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Panda.1967:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Panda.1967:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Except since Outfits are a different weight than either Heavy, Medium, or Light, they could not be mixed with Heavy, Medium or Light Armor. That leaves…well, Outfits.

So not true… the weights have no baring on what can and can’t be mixed. All the weights affect is how the physics engine interacts with the mesh. A light cloth armor would be weighted to be very flowy and float a bit in motion while heavy plate armor would be more rigid and direct in motion. Weights very well can be mixed, in fact they are mixed on various outfits (and even some armors). Weights also translate to what parts of the armor mesh moves with what bone-nodes in the model skeleton rigging. All of which is to be perfectly honest, universal across all armor classes. The only thing that ANet differentiates between with weights on armor classes is the physics interactions, but that’s due to aesthetics. Afterall heavy armor shouldn’t just look like heavy armor, it should move like it too.

When I said outfits are less restrictive on weights, I really meant just that. They are free to design outfits for whatever material weight they wish with no restriction based on the armor class. This fact wouldn’t change.

Infact, there are several armor parts in the game already that can be used across all armor classes. These parts have identical weights across all armor classes. They do not interact with the physics engine any differently on a light armor class than they do on a heavy armor class. They do not interact with the skeleton any differently either. Weight really is the least important barrier in this entire debate. So unimportant that it (forgive the pun) holds no weight.

Sectioning out outfits allows them to continue to focus on making outfits rather than armor as it’s still the simpler option, while simultaneously appeasing the playerbase as a whole. Players who enjoy outfits still get their outfits, players who want more armors to mix-n-match can now mix-n-match with outfit parts. Everyone wins.

Odd, I can’t mix any Heavy Armor with Light or Medium. I guess the Devs were mistaken when they stated Outfits were another weight, and couldn’t be mixed…not to mention the problem with the different dye channels.

I’m sure the Devs will consider your feedback, and give it the attention it deserves.

That is not how weights work. I explained in my post how they function. I’ve worked with model weights for projects before. They have no baring on what can and cant be used together. The reason you can’t mix armors of different classes is because of an arbitrary restriction put in place by ANet in the games coding itself to create class identities. A restriction that no one here is arguing to be removed either.

Armors would remain untouched.
Outfits would STILL BE outfits.

The only change would be that instead of 1 outfit slot, you would have 6 slots to mix-n-match with. If you want to mix armor classes then thats a whole different argument and could be accomplished with just a few changes to the code.

ANet said mixing and matching isn’t something that can be easily done. They described the different weight classes as having fundamentally incompatible components.

Source

….there are some fundamental incompatible things between weight classes. (part of how we set up every armor to allow many dye channels and styles per piece). There really is no way at this point over six years since we started development to make absolutely everything work together….

That was a total cop out explanation on the Dev’s part, because it implies either incompetence in engine architecture or incompetence in their programmers. The only way this would be an irrevocable truth is if everything in the engine was bespoke… which has been shown to be true in some areas, but not in others. However, the Engine is now doing a laundry list of things previous claimed to be “impossible” due to engine limitations; and have been constantly experimenting with new game logic to support new mechanics, all in the interest of improving content.

The Skins aren’t the problem, its how shader properties are linked to items (which all point to material properties in that quote) . All of which can be ignored, since Outfits have already proven to get around this problem by bypassing the legacy code in question.

See here.

http://metabattle.com/

Next weapon should be a Hammer and Stances….. its “Tradition”.

Rev is weird in that its trait lines and various skills don’t synergize internally the way other classes do. Its like picking a bunch of abilities in isolation, and none of them compound properly with anything outside its Trait/Weapon/Legend combination. Devastation traits are the most flexible as they’re the most generic on triggers- but thats the one fringe case.

The problem right now is that Rev is a Support class where other classes will collectively do its job better, and still bring more to the group. This leaves its one strong niche as Condi damage…. to which Ranger does better, and offers better support to boot as Condi Druid. The nerfs have been unkind to Rev.

About the one place where its still uniquely powerful is WvW front line support…… which is attributed almost entirely to Pain Absorption being the only reliable source of Resistance in the game right now.

Do you have any other characters? Or did you just pop the level booster on your only one?

Most people advise against using the Level booster for your first couple of characters, because you NEED time to acclimate to how the game operates, build/trait concepts, and understand class dynamics in general. The lvl 80 boost is best used to create an Alt for other game modes that you don’t plan on playing often, or only need to do one thing in the short term.

As for the gear you get from the lvl 80 boost (Soldiers stats), its actually the least useful stat combination to stack, unless you’re doing WvW as a front line support build. The demo build you’re given by default is basically a hybrid set up with a heavy skew toward defense; and is used to give new players enough durability to not die in 2 hits. Secondly, the sub-par damage purposely prolongs the fights during your demo period in Silverwaste, and is meant to force you to explore all your skills in 1v1 battles.

HOWEVER….. in typical game play, there is a much stronger leaning toward offensive stats, as Dodges are extremely powerful as a defense. You can take less hits in total, but you kill things in half the time, and avoid ALL the damage if you manage your dodges well. This is why your first character should always be leveled normally….. because combat in this game breaks the tank and spank convention that all WoW-like games rely heavily on. The resulting confusion of having to learn a whole new type of combat, and then throw players into the deep end of the game’s Buildcraft, with no clue to how any of it works, frustrates a LOT of players that were expecting GW2 to follow the typical WoW formula.

This is exacerbated further with new players using Elementalist and Mesmers, as they’re subversions of the Mage/Warlock archetypes. Their defense is heavily reliant on their mobility options, and their offense comes from an understanding of mechanical force multipliers. Soldiers becomes kind of a disservice in PvE, as it doesn’t play to either class’s real strengths for Offense or Support, and most of the defense strengths are disconnected from their gear stats.

The problem here is that in hitting Lvl 80, your first order of business should be gearing up for build cohesion. But since you didn’t level normally, and didn’t experimented with trait combinations, you have no clear idea on where to start or how to make that work. Thats really bad, since all content above lv 65 is scaled on much higher difficulty coefficient, because most classes at that point have enough traits to nearly double their combat efficiency. Even if you were to copy a Meta build, and parrot the rotations, you wouldn’t understand how it works or how to adapt the rotations/traits to meet different situations. Thats all things you would normally learn while leveling and fighting otherwise trivially inept mobs.

Another problem is you’re lack of understanding of how the game’s progression works. That’s not really your fault, and is common misunderstanding from players that come out of WoW-esqe types of games. Lvl 80 is the max level cap…. period. The game itself instead works on the idea of Lateral/Diagonal progression. Exotic tiered items represent the game’s base line for a stat cap. From this there are only 2 vertical, single step, paths that represents the entirely to the game’s power creep. Ascended gear, and Elite Specializations.

Ascended gear primarily exists as a Gating mechanism for Fractal Dungeons, and only offers a total of 5% stat gain for 2 whole orders of magnitude increase in cost. Its the only gear which supports Infusion Slots, and houses the Agony resistance needed for higher areas of Fractals. Its about as traditional a gear check as this game gets, and is unnecessary for all other areas of the game. Legendary gear is just an extension of this same system, has the exact same stat cap, and whose only added utility is the ability to change Stats on demand, as well as unlocking unique Cosmetic skins.

Elite Specializations is where most of the power creep in this game comes from. Core Tyria (F2P/base game) gives players the Core Specializations of each class, and is gained over the course of the leveling process. Elite Specializations, which are released along side the expansions, significantly change the mechanical dynamics of a Class, and usually result in a significant power increase against Enemies introduced in that expansion. For Heart of Thorns, a huge emphasis was put on CC skills, Group support, and Group Combat; so each Elite spec gives a net increase in one of these 3 areas. For the next expansion, the power creep will move laterally by having a different build focus, and new spin on each class’s unique mechanics. Since ESpecs have to be loaded in exclusion to each other, vertical progression essentially stops once you have access to at least 1 ESpec for your class.

Mastery points are a completely different animal; and unlock requisite abilities that are needed for the maps under the expansion. Almost all of these are mobility options uniquely suited to traversing the new areas…. though, they ported Gliding into Core Tyria due to sharp increase of fall related deaths. And then later adapted Gliding into some world boss events to make them more interesting.

Gyros have “reduced cool down” in their baseline. A few Especs do that when “CD traits” end up being best in slot, and want players to try to mixing more options. For Gyros specifically, they’re actually a little over powered in PvP; and the Tool Belts skills are straight up most powerful/useful on nearly kit. And for the record…. 20 sec is really short for what those tool belt skills do.

Hearld is a Support Spec, which only really does boon share….. thats pretty much it. As for Staff 5…. nope… the only skill stronger against break bars is the Signet of Humility.

As for “flourish”, all they really have is the sword skills. The rest are pretty straight forward.

Was it an opening Strike?

Long bow, Zerks, Marksman, Skirmishing (quickdraw), and either Nature Magic (damage reduction) or Wilderness survival (condi clear). Thats the only type of power build worth running, unless you’re going for Roaming instead.

Big Jaws
Maully
Bunny Thumper

You can all take guesses as to which species I used the last one on. :P

So basically take out all the gating systems? :P

Another thing to consider is the “Cost” of the tiers. The game started with only up to exotics, and thus are considered the baseline for the majority of late game activities. It should also be noted that leveling in this game is designed to be extremely fast, given it intended WvW and sPvP to be the primary late game; where as the PvE side was meant to be more casual play, or something to do between major PvP/WvW seasons.

So with that in mind, gear while leveling up tends to be largely inconsequential. So much so, that you’ll be leveling faster then level appropriate gear will drop for you. Builds also tend to be unimportant for most of the leveling process… though some classes are more build dependent then others.

Once you hit lvl 80, you start entering the buildcraft portion of the game, and decide what game modes you take on, and what role you want to play in them. End game content is very group centered (Raids, WvW, Map Meta chains), while exploration and Core Tyria events are played very loosely, and can be done solo for the most part. Group content is really the only parts of the game where Team composition matters. For everything else, a build with a bias toward damage, minor self-support and mobility is all thats really needed to avoid dying.

Again, Exotics are the game’s base line. Ascended gear was added (initially) to support infusion slots for Fractal mini-dungeons. Fractals use a unique environmental hazard known as “Agony”, which is a purely gear check mechanism used to gate access to higher level fractals. You would build an ascended set over time, and incorporate infusions (which you gather through play) to raise agony resistance. The catch though is the Ascended armor set very expensive to construct…. a whole order of magnitude more expensive (currently 300g if you buy everything). The main reason for this was to force investment for high tier fractals (which have significantly higher pay out), and served to help drain the Trade Post of excess mid tier materials. This secondary purpose is really the reason why the construction cost is so high right now. As time went on, they added additional methods to get ascended gear as a way to undermined the reoccurring cost of gearing multiple characters… but you had to build a set initially to get into the new reward loop. It didn’t make the process cheaper… but was less complicated then crafting. It wasn’t until a year after that they increased the stat value of Ascended gear as a response to players being upset over the steep price increase between it and exotic tiers. (And at this point, exotics could be had for free, by doing several dungeon runs over the course of a few days). Today, if you have access to certain LS3 maps, and are a regular in raids, you can get ascended gear without needing to craft anything.

Legendary gear started in a similar situation. Legendary weapons were expensive to construct, and were considered the ultimate end-game crafting project. But these items were purely cosmetic, and meant to be transmuted/merged with another weapon with the desired stats. I forgot the exact time line- but around the time Asc gear got its stat upgrade and the Wardrobe system was introduced, they added a new mechanic to Legendary weapons that allowed them to infinitely change their stats, and could choose from any stat combo available in the game. It was a gesture to reflect the high cost of construction and give legendary items some form of utility, since you couldn’t use transmutation to change the stats on it anymore. Legendary armor was a recent addition (something they previously refused to do), and tied it to Raid rewards. That utility is also something that grew out of the demands of raids, since classes often need to change stat combos in order to change roles within the Raid meta.

So to recap…. Exotic gear covers 90% of all activity in the game. Ascended gear is only required for Fractals, due to them being the first tier to include Infusion slots. Asc gear also represents a massive price jump due to its role as gate keeper for high level fractals. Legendary armor is long term reward from Raids, and is mainly a gold/time sink trade for convenient stat swapping. Legendary weapons are for prestige/cosmetics, but does include conveniences in light of its high cost to obtain.

The whole weapon system is reworking of the Skill system from GW1. The first game heavily emphasized buildcraft, by completely detaching player performance from their gear stats, and refocused all of that into a deceptively simple scaled cost system. Players were given a pool Attribute points, which are spent across multiple (level scaled) trait lines that offer both passive bonuses and directly affect skill performance.

From there, you are given 8 slots to load any combination of over 300 distinct skills (per class), each with their own effects, conditional triggers, and a statistical coefficient based on its hosting trait line. Every player can also Dual class, given them access to all the skills and attributes (save an exclusive for class primary) of every other class in the game. The resulting possibilities were incredibly power as they were expansive.

http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/PvX_wiki remains a testament to how much depth existed within the system, where even sub-optional builds could still be highly effective through a myriad of secondary objectives or creative approaches to existing problems. And this was a game which still utilized a Trinity style class division.

Case in point. I present the legendary 55 Monk…. the unkillable farming machine. https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/55_Monk

Monk is a classic healing profession in GW1, with access to healing and damage mitigation skills. While they do have access to attack skills, its comparatively weak to most other classes, and nets a fairly low DPS when fully speced for combat.

The way this build worked is by combining the face value mechanics of 5 skills, and the counteractive idea of lowering your MAX HP as far as possible. (55 being the lowest MAX HP you can obtain on the class). The brilliance of this build hinges on one skill https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Protective_Spirit " Incoming damage is reduced to 10% of target ally’s maximum Health. ". By reducing your max health to 55, the most damage it can take per hit is 5.5…. which can be reduced further through other spells (to a minimum of 1). To maintain the protection, 2 skills which give energy when taking damage allow it replenish energy faster then you’d need to spend it. Complimenting this is either a regeneration or a Heal over time spell, which can replenish your health faster then you can take damage in all but the most extreme cases.
This leaves your remaining slots for offensive skills, which now have a rapidly replenishing supply of energy to fuel it.

Fast forward to GW2, and the Devs made a deliberate choice to limit the game’s buildcraft in order to avoid problems with PvP match ups. If you ask any player from from GW1 during its height, you can induce a bit of nostalgic rage by mentioning “Bunny Thumper” or “Touch Ranger”. The result of this decision lead to the structure of GW1 style skills being split between Weapons/Utilities (Triggers) and Trait effects (conditional modifiers). Under this more rigid design, the number of permutations for effect combinations is heavily limited, and thus easier to control/correct if a certain combination is too powerful.

The design intent of this is recreate the buildcraft thought process of Guildwars 1, but reduce the number of vectors they need to monitor for balance changes. For the most part its been successful in this…. but its often underminded by other aspects of the game that fail to mesh with it (like gear stats).

So the final result is the expectation of a player to decide what aspects they want the build to have, and make decisions on trade offs to they’re willing to make to accomplish it. The Beta/Launch version of the trait system had less limitations, but the trade off aspects were very unrewarding as there were often very clear “best in slot” options on many trait lines. With the revamped Trait system (now called Specializations), synergy combinations are a lot clearer, and the choice to use them now yields much stronger results.

Specializations also reinforced the concept of Internal and External Synergy for group compositions. Prior to this change, the game heavily skewed toward “DPS optimal” and Boon sharing setups for maximum damage output. Defense builds were usually punished through attrition, and neutralizing the enemy was safer then trying to outlast them. So the best way to deal with threats (especially dungeons) was to trait for, and do as much personal DPS as possible, then use the remaining traits for… whatever. Might stacking was the norm, and easy accomplished through skills available on nearly all classes; while defense (if even needed) was done by dodges and personal healing.

After the change, group support became much more distinct and easier to set up. It also limited a number of overtly powerful trait combos, and tried to boost under performing combos based on how players were making their choices. It took well a over a year, and a lot of data from raids… but they’ve finally hit a point where its fairly stable. A little underwhelming in places, since we all like playing with OP combos… but a good mix of creative freedom and build literacy.

Aeolus.3615:

drops should by only materials (salvages), no hammer or heavy armor drop from a rat…

imo is the only thing that needs to be adressed int this topic.

Thats been tried…. and it didn’t work out nearly as well as you’d think. After EC did a thing about it when Firefall was still a new thing. The JC Penny discussion comes up frequently whenever this topic is brought up; and the psychology around it is just staggering. It makes me lose faith in the reasoning powers of an average consumer.

Simply put…. voice actors are expensive. With amount of Dialog this game has, even in the incidentals, is hours of audio. Producing even 5 seconds of usable dialog can take up to 30-45 minutes of a studio time with a VA, over multiple retakes, to get the desired tone and characteristics for the sample.

To produce a personality shift for combat and ambient dialog, they’d have to go back and redo everything that isn’t story dialog. To include story dialog (for consistency) would take several weeks, plus well into 6 figures additional to the above costs, AND would have to be included in all new content, as well as all new voice packs having to retroactively redo dialog for all past content.

So while it seems like a “simple” bit of content, you can’t just ignore the need for consistency with the way the game’s story content has to be presented, and the massive costs required to maintain that much audio that can’t be compartmentalized to a specific story arc.

Theres already another thread discussing the VA change for the Female Charr between Pact and Heart of Thorns story lines. This alone shows VA changes can massively stand out to even casual observers, and serves to high light a few major problems that exist with content production that has to span multiple years.

Even if we go the easy route to add dialog to the library, using the same VAs and personality archetypes, thats still going to cost studio time and VA fees. Given the amount of work and cost that goes into creating these recording sessions, its actually way more efficient to incorporate this into the scheduling for an expansion or LS arc, and add it to the core game, rather then bespoke paid content.

Faaris.8013:

mtpelion.4562:

Rates are applied at the time you open bags or salvage items. Can you imagine the ridiculous amount of unnecessary data that would need to be tracked if those things were determined upon drop and stored until opened/salvaged? The game’s servers would have melted within the first year!

Thinking about it, that would be ridiculous. In the worst case, someone loots only a couple of bags per day and has a stack that contains 100 different entries for their content, depending on several things, mabye even the current magic find rate, which can change depedning on the food or gear you wear (not sure if luck goes into opening these bags).

It is also quite ridiculous that people who hoarded bags now have a 50% chance to get heardened leather compared to the people who opened the same drops earlier. Hoarding should not be rewarded.

I’m not sure if you’ve played many MMOs…. but the vast majority of them openly encourage hoarding with their reward systems. As long as there is uncertainty, people will hoard on speculation.

*If you want to stop people from hoarding, you have to get rid of the RNG. * But these types of games won’t do that, because the players demand a sense of accomplishment…. and that can only be produced if there is a sense of struggle to overcome. RNG is by far the most effective of these, because its the same archetype behind gambling. The more the odds are stacked against them, the greater the high of beating it. More importantly, players also adopt a very vicarious/jealous sense of participation seeing other players beat the odds. It creates a gnawing feeling that messes with your judgement; You know its not really worth the effort, but you’ll do it anyway on the off chance of scoring a big win.

Its a combination of server side physics and latency. When the client gets too out of sync, it creates rebounding as both sides try to figure out where you are in the world space.

The best trick to doing the JP is finding a Mesmer to port you where you need to go. A fairly large amount of people keep a Mesmer parked there to farm the chest. If you ask around LA during busy hours, theres a good chance you’ll find someone willing to help out.

“Tanky” is a weird concept to this game, as the most survivable classes accomplish it through mitigation and defense skills, rather then soaking raw damage. Hands down, the best tank in the game right now is the Chronomancer. You heard me right. The best defense is to simply not get hit…. and the Mesmer has a billions skills that can accomplish that.

Now if you’re looking for something that allows for a big margin of error…..
- Guardians have a lot of skills that let them rebound from mistakes, and their support focus works just as well on yourself as it does for allies.
- Necros are deceptively tanky, but you have to understand Shroud to make this work in your favor. Your damage will also be kind of meh without Reaper helping to fill in the gaps…. so be aware that you’re not gonna be bursty like other classes.
- Rangers have high personal survivability, and pets can tank on your behalf. The class is kind of clunky (even with Druid), so its great for map exploration. But comes with a lot of caveats at end game, mostly due to it lacking group support outside of Druid.

I would recommend Engineer or Elementalist as well. They’re the 2 most flexible classes in the game without deep trait reliance, which makes them fun to level with. They also have a strong mix of defensive skills to compliment the standard dodge roll.

As for the lvl 80 boost….. I wouldn’t recommend using that to test classes. Basically there are 2 big problems with it. 1. You’re kitted with soliders gear, which is very defense oriented. Which creates a problem because 2. Silverwaste has a LOT of Feral Mordrem, which are geared to lock down defense oriented builds, and outright punish power builds.

Its a bit of a catch 22….. Beating feral mordrem is about knowing specific counter tactics to expose a weakness, and then deal as much damage in the window as possible. This is NOT well projected in their animations, nor is it described anywhere on the target bar.

Buildcraft is also not straight forward, and relies on knowledge of mechanics and their relationships to each other. This is what tends to trip up new players- because traits can be individually weak, but play off each other for in huge ways; while individually powerful “looking” traits can easily under-perform due to lack of synergy. Thats partly why the Lvl 80 boost gives you a basic build to start with, but really doesn’t give you much instruction on how it works, or how to play with it. Honestly, the lvl 80 boost is made for seasoned players to see all the traits and tool around a little.

Hype is bad….. should stick to excitement.

Djinn.9245:

Ider.1276:

Narrrz.7532:

That seems such an obvious solution that i can’t imagine they haven’t thought of tit, which leaves two possibilities: either changing droprates is really hard to do, or else we’re misconstruing what their actual objective is.

I’m not usually that cynical, but considering recent fix the real goal is: “Buy crappy episode 4 one of the worst in LS3, hehe! And then farm there for hours making us player-hour statistics so we can present it to NCsoft.”
Still love the game, but this situation smells very fishy.

I have to disagree with this idea. If they really wanted great player/hour statistics they would have left the engi farm alone.

The problem is mostly this internal conflict of trying to fix a supply shortage using a focused farm (something they’ve never really done on this scale), but trying to directly control the flow the rate on a single vector (ie the farm itself). It failed initially for 2 simple reasons…. the output rate was too conservative, and way too much effort for such a weak payout.

Several have suggested that the farm was aimed at people who wanted to farm leather directly, rather then feed the TP. This kind of makes a lot of sense when you consider how the farm’s flow control is so harsh, and how it demands a lot of direct effort from the player. But the question is how sustainable is it in the long run? It’ll take a few weeks for things to pan out…. but people will eventually get bored of the leather farm, and prices will eventually settle (barring any changes they make in the mean time).

With the output rates being more reliable now, the farm might actually fill its purpose.

I couldn’t make sense of any of that….

Djinn.9245:

Sartharina.3542:

Nikal.4921:

I’m used to getting leather from skinning creatures and cloth from killing humanoids in other games. Is there a particular reason for this not being available in GW2?

Well, skinning is useless

Why would skinning be useless? It would be a way to get guaranteed leather from a source just like I can get guaranteed metal, wood, and plants from nodes. We should also have guaranteed cloth drops from humanoid mobs.

I never understood why GW2 was created to be so unbalanced in this way.

Because its thematically and mechanically awkward given the game’s style of loot system. We could apply this same argument “looting what we can see” to literally everything else in the game, and quickly becomes apparent that the current drop system no longer makes sense, while also requiring more meta data per mob to stay consistent. “I should be able to Loot the Eternity from ArchWizard, along with lots of ancient bones, dust, etc, because hes undead” is both silly, but also the logical conclusion of a Survival style looting system.

We could literally get the same results by having Hide salvage items drop more frequently from beast themed creatures; with zero explanation, no new mechanics, and not have to change anything more then a % value on a drop table ID (of which its pretty clear they have a habit of associating at least one table based mainly on bestiary categories).

The whole reason this even became a problem has almost entirely everything to do with how the original game design saw character progression. Crafting runs parallel to the Loot system, rather then be an integral part of each others design. This made very obvious in the fact that drops are largely based on character level, rather then the source of the bag/drop. If we were to look at the tables, they either nested, or accomplish the same thing as a nested table, in that the drop table for a mob/bag is comprised of multiple tables; some of which may be shared between sources.

In practical terms, your level affects gear drops and will be in the ball park of your level, and are the most common drop on that table- but materials sub-types (which has no level associated in their meta data) will not reflect this, and are very rare by comparison. In the early days of the game, this made perfect sense, as higher level players needed higher tier materials to make level relevant gear and items. But this was a bad design choice for the type of economy the TP is designed to support, and is forced to track a large number of item IDs where 95% is of little to no interest to Lvl 80 players….. IE the ones capable of generating gold, but now have fewer expenses due to hitting the gear ceiling. Mat promotions were put in there to bridge the gap…. but the rarity of Dust at the time made this process not worth the effort; except in the one case of T5→T6 Fine mats, where the drops were still very rare, but recipes only demanded small amounts to be useful.

All that got thrown out of whack, with Asc gear now requiring massive amounts of Mid-Tier mats, passed through multiple condensing, intermediary steps, in order to produce only a portion of a full set. This was 3 full orders of magnitude more materials then T6, but encompassed a massive surplus on the market.
The PROBLEM was the the Surplus forming from “months” of neglect on the crafting side, despite having a comparatively low input rate due to the behavior of the drop tables, and the general speed at which players level. That surplus, which took a long time to build up, was drained in a matter of days; and players lacked reliable mechanisms to replenish the market with the 2 most needed materials in the more expensive portion of the set…. cloth and leather for Armor.

This chain of events lead to the Cloth drought. At the time, Cloth comprised half of EVERY armor recipe, used in making insignias. More importantly, the most popular PvE classes at the time were Guardian, Elementalist and Mesmer; while all 3 Med classes were rarely welcome in any group meta. Guardians were perhaps the most likely to get an Asc armor set, due to high demand in group meta- but that cost was split with the otherwise easy gather metal. Leather armor classes had very little demand, and recipes didn’t require much outside of Med armor; so those prices stayed low, as supplies didn’t move in volume.

But this whole situation flipped when they made EVERY armor recipe require equal, if not MORE leather then it did cloth. They also changed the recipes T5 to require 4 raw per refined, in a direct effort to drain the supply. It was successful in making leather relevant….. and then fell into the same trap that Cloth did- only harder due to the larger amounts needed. But Patches were only one part of the problem. All of a sudden, newer one-off recipes were demanding T6 leather for collections. Gossamer didn’t get this same level of attention; which is why the T6 Cloth remains relatively cheap to this day.

Cloth and Leather are unique in that they have no direct gathering source, but they are also called for in nearly 10 times the amount to create a useful item set. This low input, high consumption state of demand could be universally solved by either increasing the rate of normal bag drops across all zones (which ignore level and can output the mat directly), and/or (preferably) increasing the drop rate of non-gear salvage, as those abide by source level and don’t have subtables to compete with possible output of leather/cloth.

Abakk.9176:

Haleydawn.3764:

Abakk.9176:

Haleydawn.3764:

The only difference between the Masterwork, Rare and Exotic versions of this rune is the cooldown. Obviously the lower the cooldown, theoretically, more often the blast.

Yeah, that is what i thought. So if i take the Rare i have neither the most expensive one or the slowest.

I know the difference in price isn’t too big with the Fire ones but looking at Air for example, it’s almost 3,5 gold per Sigil for a difference of 2 seconds.

I thought there was something else i missed. Thanks

Sigil of Air works differently though, it has a higher damage coefficient than fire and the damage dealt is also affected by all non-crit modifiers. So with Air it is worth the Exotic sigil, to have it proc as often as possible.

Ah, hence the difference in price

I always pair the two but to be honest i thought Fire would do more damage than Air, if not much since they seem both the same through the tooltips.

Why the difference?

And how does one come by such information through the game?

The train of thought (which is common in this game’s design) is that damage is balanced between frequency, scale, and dilution (target count/area range). When its in the middle of these 3, players tend to recognize it as “sustain damage”. As it shifts off of that center, you gain in some areas, but get weaker in others. Burst damage is focused mostly toward scale, but tends to focus over a smaller area and have longer cool down. Opposite to that is large area DOTs, or slow damage skills…. such as plaugelands, and other pulsed damage sources that act as pressure rather then significant damage.

When you apply this to Sigil of fire and air, they each serve 2 very different purposes. Sigil of air designed to focus damage toward a single target, and procs frequently as a way to help burst it down. This is why Air is more popular, as focused DPS leads to a faster kill for specified targets. Fire is supplemental cleave damage, and is designed to augment skills which lack cleave, or help assist builds that can benefit from it. Suffice to say that not many builds will directly incorporate that into the design, but does find less specific use as a cheaper alternative to Air/Force in power builds.

Healix.5819:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Amazon cloud or not, the account data will have a primary location for its storage. There is latency between the primary locations (currently limited to one in Germany for EU and one in Texas for NA) and ANet hasn’t figured out how to sync the data quickly enough to allow people from different regions to play with each other.

Updates to your account data is stored in the map instance, which is why when the map crashes, you lose the last few minutes. If the HoT maps are actually running on Amazon, it shows they’re already taking the risk of running remote instances, which has the potential for data loss when the connection between them is lost. Cross region play was always possible with the same risk and is something they’ve already done in GW1.

There certainly won’t be something like WvW or even single map instances for Australia, but the potential is there now more than ever. The goal of this experiment is likely only to gauge its power, which could potentially reduce server lag under stress and open up more complex possibilities, including higher caps.

But GW1 also didn’t require low latency the way this game does. The game has an effective tolerance of 250ms, if only for the fact that it uses tab targeting to cover up the some of the physics short falls. Thats surprisingly reliable for any game that uses a physics style of combat system, as most start having disruptive errors at 130 or higher.

Oceanic servers have always been a catch 22 due to the size of its gamer population, and heavily spread out they are between games. Every MMO I’ve ever known to try it, eventually closes them down due to sustained populations only reaching the mid-upper 100s at peak hours….. at best. On average, the population is closer to a 400-600, and eventually falls off as people migrate to NA servers due to bigger communities there to interact with. Aus in particular doesn’t have enough focus in any single game to warrant an MMO server farm; and seems to be more suited to instanced based games like Battlefield….. which they eventually migrate to NA servers; AGAIN, because of weaker off-peak, or even near peak hours.

Djinn.9245:

Wintermute.5408:

Issue with ES being better than core class is mostly created by players themselves.

Because there’s meta.

Of course. If there is something that is “the best”, what person would say “I don’t want the best, I want something that is less good than that”?

Certainly there are a few people with strong enough personalities to go against the Meta and have a character they want that does something different. But most people won’t do that.

This would be far less of a problem if there was stronger distinction in rotation difficulty to performance output. The way Metabattle presents its builds makes 2 hugely kittenumptions….. that only perfect rotations matter, and that everyone is capable of it. There isn’t enough leeway in GW2 buildcraft in general that makes understanding these concepts intuitive to the player; and the overall encounter design almost never rewards players for finding those combinations on their own. Using the Engineer as the 2 most extreme examples…. the Fractal Condi build has the potentially highest DPS in the entire game, with whats easily the most complicated rotation to match. But a Power bomber build has competitive DPS, but only requires the player to spam 1. In fact…. it even goes as far as punishing the player’s DPS for doing anything that isn’t spamming 1.

So in the above situation, what would be the Meta? More importantly…. why are we not aware of any gradients between these 2 builds when it comes to difficulty vs output?

Faaris.8013:

Vayne.8563:

Anet has gone the other route, adding more points in new zones than are needed to get the masteries in those zones. As time goes on you need to depend, for example, less and less on adventures, because there’s more masteries points to choose from.

30 of 185 HoT Mastery Points are coming adventures. 53 are from Raids and LW S3. Not everybody purchases LW S3 and even less people can get the points from raids. For a majority of players, there is no way to avoid Adventures if they want to max out the masteries. You need 137 HoT Mastery Points to do that.

Even if you get gold in all Adventures, all communes/strongboxes and even do all collections and crazy JPs, you still have to either do raids or purchase an episode LW S3.

It is not easy to max out masteries, that’s why we see much more players with 140 to 170 or less MPs than with 186. On the other hand we see much more characters at level 80 than <80, because maxing your character level is indeed easy. The surplus points in the new zones are a step into the right direction, but 30 points from adventures is a lot.

I want to point out that Raid and Ancient Magic masteries are NOT required for the Maguuma gift section of the weapon crafting. They are required to get the Spirtshard track for HOT zones after the fact.. which is irritating, but only requires you to do one thing each to open the tracks. The MPs in LS3/Raids gained also count toward the Magumma mastery pool, which can be put back toward the main HOT mastery tracks. Thats how I unlocked Leyline gliding, which in turn made getting the remaining MPs in HOT a hell of a lot easier.

The only real sticking point is the way Adventures work, with the very uneven difficulty distribution of the reward tiers between them. There are a couple where gold is trivial, but bronze is unforgiving, or a function of luck (I’m looking at you Masks of the Fallen). Adventures also integrate other mastery tracks….. leading to a whole situation where its not clear what you Masteries you need to get Silver/Gold, while also stagnating progress toward those tracks.

This is one of the few areas of the game where the level of intuitive design should be at its highest; yet relies more on outside factors then any other part of the game. If this type of design approach was used in Raids, players would had burned the servers on Wing 1 of Spirit Vale.

All that said…. Achievements are unavoidable for 1 simple reason…. its extremely cheap and easy to do. A side benefit is also forcing players to utilize more of the content. That is generally positive from a UX stand point, but the pacing has to be perfect for it to work. For example…. some of the VB and TD achievements look straight forward, but are really obtuse in practice. Locations are unclear, event states can keep them effectively locked out, many of the gliding related ones have really harsh failure set backs, and not enough of the level design signals Metroidvaina elements at the needed clarity to keep it consistent.

In fact, the Exp requirement for leveling them does a serious disservice to the MV aspect, as it outright disrupts exploration pacing in big way. When a person spots a thing, they’re initial instinct is to figure out how get up there. They try to reverse engineer the area using known mechanics- and if a player element is missing, it has to be immediately apparent what the bridging solution is, so that it stands out when the player unlocks the needed function later on in the game. But in an effort to make them easy to spot early on, they make the reward obvious, but not the bridging solutions….. especially with gliding, given how free form it is. The problem here is players getting too acclimated to the area from frequent transit, and eventually forgetting the puzzle is there. Tarir has this problem all over the place, as most of the puzzles are elevated, but the transit zones are gauntlets that pull the players attention almost constantly. May of the gliding puzzles wrap around areas, which disorients the player as they try to follow walls or path ways to figure out where the entry point is.

I’m almost positive that the level design and Mastery track layout were done completely separate from each other, leading to a very “check list” approach that results in very jarring breaks in pacing for players on an initial playthrough, if they reach an area too early in the track progress. I had dropped HOT masteries completely during the expansions height out of frustration, and only came back to them later after spare LS3 MPs allowed me to rapidly finish the mobility unlocks. That second run went a hell of a lot smoother, and was utterly shocked at how many obtuse dead ends there were when I realized the lack of level signaling.

Dodge rolls. Given the how team comps work in Raids…. the fact you’re dying is either attributed to you not avoiding damage when you’re supposed to, or your group’s healer is not pulling his weight.

Power Engie, Trait explosives, Bomb Kit….. stand there and keep pressing 1.

The general issue with trying to do Hybrid is that their condi (confusion and torment) are essentially worthless without strong focus. For PvP/WvW, condi mesmers are actually dangerous because confusion and torment can capitalize on player’s procing the bonus damage, combined with mesmers being hard to pin down. In PvE its lack luster at best. Power builds on the other hand are very straight forward, which makes them great for PvE, but easier to mitigate in PvP./WvW. And if you’re doing raids/fractals, you’re more function driven then damage driven.

I forgot to point out that the Chrono quickness build is actually a lot simpler then the Shatter builds in practice. Most of the effort is mentally juggling various states, in addition to defense if you’re tanking or covering down for a raid/fractal section.

This is the meta build….. but I can suggest a couple of changes.
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Utility_DPS

Instead of Commander leggings, use all Zerks armor. Instead make one of the earrings Commanders. This will get you close to the same stats, but is much cheaper to swap out then an armor piece in case you need to drop toughness for some reason.

Overall Phantasms do over 60% of your damage, you can somewhat rely on them to contribute damage at range. If you had to swap for a reason, subbing GS for your non-blocking offhand can work in a pinch.

As a comment on HOT maps….. you don’t really need a different build to survive in modrem infested areas. Fighting them is like fighting really squishy Vets…. they hit hard, but have very obvious tells that are easy to respond to. Each also has distinct weakness, and half of them have break bars. Itzel Hylek are dangerous to everyone… so they’re going to be a pain in the ass no matter what; but you can reflect thirr attacks that if traited.

The Chak are a slightly different story. Chak normally fight as clusters, and the Devs expect players to use constant evasion tactics to deal with them. This is a slight problem for Mesmers, as they’re not well equipped to output significant AOE damage, and this makes fighting Chak a little frustrating if they surround you.

Beyond that…. just avoid trying to face tank, and getting around is not that hard.

Mesmers, at their core, are about misdirection and utility. They can’t really be played straight, because their skills are made to play like a musical instrument. To quickly get it out of the way- Chrono is a straight upgrade in terms of buildcraft, and works with every conceivable build type the Mesmer can pull together. While most run Quickness Boonshare loadouts, the truth is Chorno is a support spec that centers on internal alacrity, but radiates that power outward through every facet of its other traits.

For Sword, its placed in the meta for 2 reasons…. 1. Between the 2 main hands, it has the highest utility between its 3 skills, including a reliable boonstrip. 2. Sword 2 is both an Evade and a Damage burst, which is invaluable for Chorno Tanks in Raids.

As for Mesmer itself, its all about timing. Since you’ve been using Scepter, I imagine you’ve just been kiting, and randomly using shatters whenever you remember its there. With a sword build, you have to be more mobile, and use your shatters frequently. Even without Chorno, Phantasm/Shatter builds are among the strongest damage dealers in the game…. and if played well, almost impossible to take down. There is no real “trick” per-say, and is more about learning how your re-positioning skills work, and being fully aware of your traits.

A good training cross section is the Sw/Sw – GS Power Shatter build. Note this NOT an optimal build, but does work strongly in Pre-HOT maps. Its goal is to teach you how to generate Illusions, and use them as ammo for your shatter attacks. It also rewards a more aggressive melee style, but includes a number of “get out of jail free” traits in case you do take a big hit.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhEQNAscRnsIClphtqBmqBUrhFVDqcClYbnPZJHhMAjo4A-TxAPgAgK/AU/5VJIA-e
For runes, just use cheap power ones… this set is temporary, and will get replaced by a Meta set later on. Suggested- Vampirism, Priveteer, or Hoelbraks (pref for the Condi reduction)
The utility skills listed are for general purpose group support, and not integral to the build in any way….. you can replace them as you see fit.

There is no strict rotation to learn with this build, but you want to make an effort to space out illusion generation, rather then dump then out and try to burst with them. Open with a weaker clone skill (3 on sword, 2 on GS), then use the Phantasm skill, swap weapons, then toy with it for a bit (creating a 3rd illusion in the process). Your first goal is to learn shatter finishing; Basically the point where its taken enough damage that Mind Wrack can finish it off. Practice this on single enemies.

Once you’ve got this down fairly well, you’re next goal is chain kills across 3-4 enemies in sequence. You engage them one by one, and try to keep the momentum up. This is actually a hard thing to do with Mesmers, as their class design is geared more toward tackling large single targets.

Once you’re confident with that, practice that same rhythm on a single Vet, by chaining a series of shatters against it. Here you start becoming aware of 2 important things. Phantasms have your highest damage output over time, so let them get off at least 2 attacks before shattering them. Second, displacing yourself, and letting your illusions take arggo is a great way to avoid damage. Its around this time you start becoming aware of the 3 illusion limit…. so a side goal is be aware enough to not overwrite a phantasm with a clone on accident.

The next challenge is to navigate Orr. Undead there are a lot more diverse, and are strong enough to warrant the inclusion of Diversion and Distortion shatters to your kitten nal. Vet Abominations make great practice for distortion, given how hard they hit if they do land. You’ll also find lots of reasons to mix up your utilities.

As a side note…. you can, at any point, swap Domination for Illusions, and use traits 1-2-2 (or 1-2-1 for blinds). Domination front loads more damage, but Illusions gains more damage via shatter frequency.

The final challenge is try and solo a Champ. Despite being built for this purpose, its still a tough fight for Mesmers due to the sheer amount of HP they have. Diversion also wrecks break bars, so you should be making good use of that. This is where everything you need to know about a baseline mesmer comes into play…..how to build up illusions and stagger the shatters, utilizing various mobility skills, learning enemy attack timing to take advantage of your blocks and evades, and most importantly, how to maintain “cadence”.

This is what I was describing about Mesmer and musical instruments. Normally rotations are executed as quickly as possible, and tends to center on the player’s internal rhythm. With Mesmers, much of that awareness shifts to the target, as the defensive aspects have to be timed to counter incoming attacks. Its this ability to counter act, disrupt, or displace out of enemy attacks that makes Chrono Mesmers the current Meta Tank in all late game PvE content. Thats pretty mind blowing, considering Mesmer is designed as a utility class.

Finally, once you’ve unlocked Chornomancer, the dynamics of the class changes dramatically, as does the purpose of the rotations. However, at this point, you should be able to “feel out” cool downs without looking at the timers; and that plays heavily into taking advantage of the Chrono’s faster skill pacing.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ritualist

The shape of the Rev symbol likely has several layers to its meaning and reference, as you can pretty easily imply similarities to many Meta-physical icons in religions and pop culture.

Its a juggling act by design. 2 things to understand off the bat…..
1. 50 energy is your base line entering combat, or upon swap. This is done to put a cap on opening skill bursting, while simultaneously preventing an energy drought if you Legend swap in emergencies.
2. Dragon Stance is currently the only legend that uses an Upkeep management style, and requires a major mental shift compared to the core legends.

Ironically, other then Shiro, each legend is designed to be camped. But due to their narrow situational roles, you need to understand when and how to exit into your other Legend to keep combat momentum. This does NOT synergize the way other classes do, so you have to treat each legend as its own distinct build, with a specific set of functions.

What you’re probably doing wrong is over-using your weapon skills, while simultaneously over-utilizing your utilities. Both Glint and Ventari are meant to monopolize that energy pool on their utilities, while their complimenting weapons were designed to infrequently play off of it.

I run a similar setup using the Marauder’s WvW build in PvE (using Ventari for the blocks), and what I’ve found is to juggle certain facets based on surrounding players. If solo, camp Fury, Swift and Might while traveling to build up might for an opening attack, then unleash facet of strength along side you’re opening attack. You can also pop “one with nature” just before entering combat for the extra boons. This will work for most short fights, and leaves +2 energy for weapon skills in slightly longer fights.

When you have players nearby, use Facet of nature and Facet of Strength to stack might, and boost any incoming boons get from them. If you have a large group around you, then you go into full passive mode (you can overexert your upkeep to reset the facets without swapping) by entering combat with +5 to build to 100, then use Nature, Strength, Darkness (-6 total) and maybe light (-7) to let it drain while you auto attack. You use the active of those skills as needed to protect yourself, then activate another facet to take its place to keep boons flowing (because you get a damage bonus per boon). While in this mode, you avoid using weapon skills (other then AA) unless its highly opportune to do so.

For Ventari, you don’t rely on the Tablet to do cleansing, because its too expensive for that. Thats partly why its paired with Staff 4, which is cheaper on energy, and heals for more. You run Ventari for the Tablet Block, or general Healing if you’re geared for it. If you want condi clear for a group, run Mayllax for Pain Absorption and make sure you have boon uptime (for resistance), transference to off-load the condition, or stick near someone with AOE condi clear (since it’ll eliminate the whole stack on you).

Stabs are a known weakness with Revs, so running Retribution is the only way to gain that without Jalis loaded. Even then, its unreliable. So if your problem is getting interrupted while using Chaos, change the timing of how you use it.