Guild Wars 2

Lunchbox.9543:

I have been dreaming of Maul as a blast finisher as well. You’d need to keep a close eye on Healing Spring though, since with the GS cooldown trait, you’d be able to have at least two Area Healing (Maul) and two Healing (Swoop) combos without problem. That’s +2k and +2k aoe heal. Still, it’d be an interesting way to support your group.

You would have two Swoops, two Mauls untraited and two Swoops, three Mauls traited. The finishers both have the same base (1320 blast, 1300 leap) but their coefficients are different. However, in order to reach a +2k blast finisher, you would require 3400 healing power. (1320 + (3400*0.2)) = 2000.

If Maul were to have a blast finisher, the cool down would have to be increased significantly. Between two drakes and three Mauls, you could get five finished off in one Healing Spring. I think this would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease and then the Greatsword would lose what little damage it has, or Healing Spring would changed and be weaker in any builds without the Greatsword.

I should have been more precise: I meant 2k as a rough total of both finishers and not 2k per combo. Also, getting three Mauls off would be pretty tight timing-wise, I’m not certain the third strike would even go off in time taking casting time and aftercast into account. Still, it’s definitively something to look at.

There are already some blast finishers on low cooldowns out there, but giving a class both that and a water field is dangerous. However, it would be nice to have a single player-controlled blast finisher as a ranger and this skill seems fitting.

I like that you mostly suggest small changes unlike so many others. That’s, in my opinion, the way to go when it comes to balance. A few of my thoughts:

- Sword: Just removing the rooting would make a world of difference already. I wouldn’t touch the other skills for now to first see how it plays out.

- GS: I have been dreaming of Maul as a blast finisher as well. You’d need to keep a close eye on Healing Spring though, since with the GS cooldown trait, you’d be able to have at least two Area Healing (Maul) and two Healing (Swoop) combos without problem. That’s +2k and +2k aoe heal. Still, it’d be an interesting way to support your group.

-SB: Bleeding would probably be toned down (e.g. 2sec duration) as a result.

-LB: I don’t think the skills would need to be moved around. Leave it as it is, combine #2 and #3 like you did, and have the new skill on #3.

Hi there!

I was looking to buy a Superior Sigil of Strength but realized that the wiki was updated saying it does not function properly as of yesterday. However, I don’t see any mention of this in the Game Bugs section of the forums and search has been fruitless so far.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Strength

I was wondering if someone currently using this sigil could let me know if it’s working fine for them? Thanks!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User_talk:MadMaxx

According to the user who updated the table, the data comes from gw2.dat and there is much more than the listed 10k.

I’m glad to see many people chose the same path I did!

I chose this nickname when I went back to GW1 after it rested a few years on my shelf. I wanted to see how much of the game I could do on my own. That goal extended to GW2 when it came out, but during development I came across a few roleplayers wishing to fill up their Hall of Monuments, so I started helping them with that and stuck around.

Since then, I’m a guest of their guild. I’m very much a hardcore player myself, and many of them are looking for a more laid back approach to PvE. They reward me with their silly talk and fun, relaxed dungeon runs, and I, in turn, help some of them with harder content and demystify game mechanics and build / gear choices. I spend most of my time solo, but I always have an entertaining guild chat to tune in to.

Can’t say I never thought of officially joining guilds, but then I remember why I chose my nickname: I play a lot, but I want to play when I want to, how I want to. I don’t want to start scheduling my online time, knowing I -have- to be there for a certain event. I’ll probably be on anyway, but I know I don’t have to. I also want to stay away from as much drama as possible, so when things are heating up, I can just go ahead and represent my one-man guild for a while.

In the end, I think I have the best of both worlds, and I am very grateful for that. Big shout-out to the Jesters [JEST] on Tarnished Coast!

And to all the other players in this great, keep it up! Solo’s the way to go!

I once wrote a guide for friends. It’s quite old and many patches have changed stuff, so it’s long due for an update. There’s also a few erroneous information in there that I never took the time to correct, but perhaps it can help you anyway. Feel free to message me if you’d like footage or anything.

I run Blink / Feedback / Mantra of Resolve in all content (open world, dungeon, WvW).

I agree I don’t resort to Blink a lot in open world PvE, but it’s always good to have a stun breaker, and I like this one since you can break stun -and- instantly get out of touble. You can also use it out of combat to cover more ground when traveling.

Feedback, as said above, is just fantastic.

Mantra of Resolve because it’s a good idea to get used to using condition removal. You might not need it much at your current level, but I’d say it’s a good idea to get used to using it before it becomes invaluable.

As for retaliation, Vengeful Images used to keep retaliation 100% up, but now the phantasms only get it for 5 seconds and it then wears off.

Hitman.5829:

So what is the point of utility skills then?

To provide utility, like removing conditions. As he said, poison stacks in duration, so that’s probably why you had a lot on you. Furthermore, poison reduces the effectiveness of healing by 33% so it’s even better to remove it before healing.

If you’re having trouble with the signet, then go for “Shake it Off!” it’s on a shorter cooldown and also counts as a stun breaker. It also removes conditions from allies so that’s even more useful.

All in all, this is not a bug.

Your character will only gain xp every time you gain a new crafting level (as seen at the top of the crafting screen) between 0 and 400.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cluster_Bomb

It is noted as a bug on the wiki, though I always thought it just meant 3 stacks if you detonate it. Tooltips aren’t always very clear.

I’m using AoE Loot on Interact and it’s working on and off. Things I noticed that might be interfering with it’s use:

1) Terrain (somewhat line of sight’ish)
2) If you already have the “Search” dialog option on screen (would loot only this one corpse)

That might be way off, but that’s what I’ve been experimenting so far.

I started working on that a few weeks ago, determined to get map completion without dying once. I was a big fan of HC mode in D2 and D3 and so far it works just fine as it is. The hardest part so far is to resist the urge to aggro everything and fight as I usually do with my other characters. The casualties so far:

lvl 8 necro – one-shotted by a Veteran Risen Abomination in Caledon Forest
lvl 8 thief – died at the Benjamin Quickblade skill point in Queensdale trying to help two downed players.
lvl 23 mesmer – I swear that cliff wasn’t that high!
lvl 21 warrior – Got too kitteny against krait in Kessex.

It’s been fun so far, but I’m taking a small break from that as the starter zones are starting to get repetitive. I know I’ll manage to do it one day, we’ll just see how long it takes!

I remember seeing a dev mentioning this is a bug that affects male medium armor wearers. I tried finding the thread but my search was unsuccessful.

The range of Blink was always 900. You can use the “Far-Reaching Manipulations” trait to increase the range to 1200.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blink
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Far-Reaching_Manipulations

UnknownFreak is correct. Combo fields trigger at the end of the animation. Another good example for this is the Elementalist’s Churning Earth spell. If you start casting it while in a fire field, you’ll see the “Area Might” icon, but might will only be applied once the spell goes off uninterrupted.

While this can be seen as a disadvantage, there is something good about it; the combo will still trigger even if the field disappears before the animation is finished. Basically you need to start the animation in an active field, but the field doesn’t need to exist once the animation finishes.

Chaosx.2471:

We interrupt your forum drama and chest thumping to bring you a score update!

Many thanks to you sir!

Jayne.9251:

OH! I think I know why DB suddenly came rampaging into DB Hills with all those golems!

By the gods! I haven’t played for a few weeks; was that another addition in the latest patch!?

Was the third player showing up as “Offline” when your cursor hovered over his name? As far as I know, it only gives you the option to party up if the person is considered online.

Now, the person was of course online since he was chatting. That’s because the player’s status displayed in the chat box doesn’t update automatically, and so you have to open the Guild window to “refresh” that (or your friends’ list if the person happens to be on there). Once it’s done, the player should show up as online and you can right-click and have all the options.

Don’t know if that’s what was happening, but that happens to me all the time.

Some of the things I do:

- Spam Cluster Bomb in all kinds of combo fields
- Charge in with a Daggerstorm to reflect all those nasty projectiles (you can use that defensively too)
- Circle around the enemy group spreading Choking Gas to apply poison (less healing) and, when traited, Weakness (less endurange regen, less damage).

ExTribble.7108:

You were probably in combat. If you’re considered in combat but not taking hits while you mine, it’s usually (9/10 times I’d say) not a problem. If you’re getting hit while mining, no matter what the ore, you’re almost guaranteed to get the ruined chunks.

If you’re not considered in combat, you’d be guaranteed to get the ores without a problem (assuming you use the correct pick).

Interesting. I gather Orichalcum on multiple characters every day and haven’t seen ruined ore for months (and I only remember seeing some once or twice when I had the right pick, and that was long, long ago.) To me, being hit, in combat, out of combat, etc. never makes any difference.

Unless they have changed that recently, I can confirm that you will lose your skin.

A few months back, I had the Quiver of Swift Flight on my mesmer. I applied the Wintersday bag skin to it. Later, I decided to upgrade my back piece to the Infused version. The Mystic Forge accepted the back piece. The resulting quiver did not have the old skin.

So yeah, it creates a new item and thus you lose the skin.

Sorry DB! The matchup thread usually turns out like that once the weekend is over and people are stuck at work. I hope you can at least get some entertainment out of it!

You might want to try the build calculator over at http://gw2buildcraft.com/ to see how much % damage reduction you get from your “enhanced” thoughness. Or you can give us actual numbers and we can give more informed feedback.

Casting iWarden into an existing combo field will trigger the finisher.
Casting a field onto an existing iWarden will also trigger the finisher.

In both cases, it seems the bolts will fly out until…
a) the whirl animation is finished, or
b) the combo field disappears.

Whirl finishers trigger only once. Let’s say your iWarden triggers a field that disappears one second later; casting another field on top of it will not accomplish anything.

Also, since it sends out bolts in different directions, you might not be seeing confusion being applied to your target simply because the bolts themselves aren’t hitting. In my experience, you won’t get much confusion on your target that way unless it is tucked up in a corner.

As long as you see the “XX Bolts” combo finisher icon on your screen, you’re doing fine.

Do you actually “use” the signet? If so, that’s the problem. The condition removal is tied to the signet’s passive effect and only works if the signet is off cooldown. If you use the signet to heal yourself, you will have to wait until the cooldown is over until you can benefit from the condition removal again.

Sam.6483:

Then what we see in TP?

The chests at the end of each zone have a chance to drop a Rare quality skin which is tradeable. That’s what you are seeing on the TP. The ones you buy from Bubbles are Masterwork quality.

I am afraid you need to take this post with a grain of salt. First off, it states that there were no consumables in GW1, which is completely false:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Conset

Those consumables have a much bigger impact on the game in my opinion than those you find in GW2. Many speed clear builds (like DoA Glaiveway or Trenchway) relied on those consets to actually work thanks to cooldown reduction and very valuable stat boosts.

Moreover, stating that you could do dungeons without a healer is something I don’t believe. I have played GW1 for many years and am genuinely interested in seeing proof of that as I’ve never heard of this happen (unless you’re talking about solo farming a specific part of a dungeon). Looking up the current team builds on gwpvx.com, they still feature a dedicated healer or bonder.

So yeah, it’s not quite accurate.

Aveneo.2068:

So it seems Spatial Surge currently chooses 3 targets within 1200 range radius around the Mesmer if the targets are immobile objects.

Yeah, that’s my take on it too.

I went ahead and tried it on the dummies in LA and took some screenshots to show how the beam does not even prioritize the dummies in its path before hitting another target. For what I understand, it hits your target and then picks the two closest yellow objects nearest to the Mesmer (you can see that by walking around the dummies). The objects can be anywhere, meaning you can deal damage to them even if they are behind you.

I hope that helps!

A friend and I once tested out what was actually blocked and what wasn’t, here’s our results:

If both people block each other, both people still see your online status, character name, location and Nerdpoints. The only thing they don’t see is the character details when you hover over the name with your cursor, much like when you are not mutually friended with another player.

Also:
- Attempting to form a party gives a network error message.
- /say is blocked.
- /e is not blocked.
- /g is not blocked.
- /w is blocked. Says the user is offline.

If you’re already in a party with the person you wish to block, I’m assuming they aren’t blocked in party chat either. So overall it’s not very blocky.

I have also noticed a strange behavior when attacking Blossoms in Twilight Arbor, where some of them get hit even when they are far, far away from SS’ beam.

TC here, just went back up for me. Got rolled back like yesterday.

You can actually craft a backpiece in the Mystic Forge before reaching lvl 10.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ascended_equipment#Back_Items

The only thing you require from Fractals is a single Vial of Condensed Mists Essence which drops from foes in Fractals lvl 1 – 9.

I have crafted the Ignus Fatuus and have been wondering this as well. Also, when the spear is drawn, the character seems to be holding the end of the shaft instead of the middle of it like other spears. It’s a bit weird…

Western siege merchant also bugged. Thank you!

There were some good battles this afternoon at Woodhaven (TC BL), although I am under the impression SoR wasn’t really trying. I enjoyed pulling quite a few of you off the cliff — gotta enjoy those small victories, right?

I’m one of the WvWer that will continue to show up throughout the week, but it saddens me to see people judge our presence by the score or by their ability to work on their achievement. TC BL was full at one point around 3pm EST, and no we weren’t able to coordinate and do anything meaningful. But people are showing up, at least respect that.

I think many people are just being greedy and hope others will pay for upgrades.

I tend to use the gold I earn in WvW for upgrades, so in the end I make very little but contribute somewhat to the team effort. PvE is where the money is that anyway. If you can get more people to do that, then it becomes a lot easier to invest into upgrades: imagine ten people capping a supply camp. That’s more than 10 silvers right there! With that often comes sentry caps and yak kills, so if everyone chips in you’ll get your upgrades running in no time.

As the match is near its end, I would like to thank both DB and FA for the nice fights I’ve had over the week. I had plenty of little skirmishes down south in TCBL around dolyaks and supply camps, and it was fun every time. Best of luck in your next match, and we shall meet again, I’m pretty sure of that!

Yep. It’s just a way to prevent the enemy from getting some badges. Same as jumping off a cliff to your death.

This happened to me many many times, and I am 99.99% sure you still get loot as long as you dealt sufficient damage to the player before the jump.

As for logging out, I remember seeing a dev post somewhere stating they were investigating this.

Tarnished Coast.

Although BG was rampaging through all the maps last week and CD the week before, many of us fought hard and had fun despite how grim the score was. There is some kind of magic that makes it worthwhile to join WvW even if we are getting stomped.

We like well-mannered and polite players, tough. If you are not nice, please stay away!

Q: Do I really seriously have to keep resurrecting all the way back at my home base right at the top (etc.) part of the map when I die? Can I really not resurrect closer to where the fighting is or something? It takes like 5 minutes to walk back to the fight… which I don’t consider fun at all and most of the time everyone has moved or died so I don’t even know where anyone is! Is there a way to resurrect closer to the fight? Or do I just have to hope that one of my alive teammates will resurrect me…?

Unless your team upgrades the Garrison (north of the lake) or one of the two keeps east and west of the lake to have a waypoint, then yes this is the only way. Either you wait for someone to resurrect you, or you run back. If you go back to spawn, you can wait a bit and go out with a few other players so you stand a better chance if you encounter enemies.

Q: My friends also said that WvW is the easiest way to earn lots of money early on… but it only seems to be possible to get stuff that I can vendor or whatever from killing others.. which is hard to do because of the first thing I wrote here.. the gear that I get from ‘bags of loot’ doesn’t seem all that decent and the amount of money I get from selling it doesn’t even cover the repair costs for my armor. I think it’s really stupid that you should have to pay to repair your armor if you die in WvW. So how am I supposed to make money in WvW? Or is it not possible…?

Event rewards and loot scale with your level. It is possible to make money at higher levels, but it’s nothing compared to making money in PvE in my opinion.

Q: It seems like 4 games can go by (by this I mean when the timer resets 4 times) and we still haven’t captured any new bases at all. People are just still standing there in fortresses afking or whatever… why is everyone just wasting their time standing still doing nothing?

This is a question difficult to answer when we don’t know what was happening on the server at that time.

Basically apart from the dynamic events which are indeed dynamic because you never FHSDJGSHDGSDJ know where they are! That there is nothing more that WvW adds to anything except the experience of killing other players or in most cases, being slaughtered by other players and doing the odd dynamic event for a bit of xp and Karma etc…

Events are very straightforward in WvW. Here’s a list off the top of my head:

- Kill an enemy dolyak (supply caravan). All dolyaks are visible on the map at all times.

- Repel the enemy attackers: If the enemy (Players or NPCs) attack any objective you own, this event will trigger. If you kill something within the next three minutes, you get the reward. The event will pop again if the battle continues after the first three minutes, making long siege battles very lucrative for the defenders.

- Claiming land (sentries): Sentries are NPCs (Veteran Guards) standing at key points on supply roads and are represented by a flag. Killing an enemy sentry and then capping the point by standing in the colored circle will complete the event.

- Capping objectives (supply camps, towers, keeps): When assaulting enemy objectives, you first have to kill the Lord to be able to cap. Once the Lord is dead, a colored circle will appear and you will be able to cap once no enemy is found in said circle. Bigger objectives yield bigger rewards.

There are also some PvE events in the top corners of the map. Note that the rewards for escorting dolyaks have been disabled until further notice.

It would be great if I always knew where the fighting was at so I could join in, and I didn’t have to always teleport right back to all the asura gates when I die… just to spend 5 minutes walking back again…

WvW is all about a lot of people fighting battles all over the place, so communication is vital. It takes a while to learn all the abbreviations thrown around in the chat, but once you get the hang of it, you will be able to follow what’s going on and you WvW experience will be better!

Don’t give up!

edit: Bringing speed boosts makes a huge difference. Along with my longbow, I bring Sword/Warhorn for Charge and the Sword’s skill #2 to cover ground more quickly. Alternatively, you can bring a banner and use skills #3 and #4 on it.

Hello there!
I’ve leveled many characters while WvW’ing so I’ll try to answer your questions as clearly as possible.

LeijonaSisu.4760:

As I said I’m 22 scaled up to 80 now. I have all of my level best gear and etc. but I don’t seem to be able to stand a chance on anyone at all who is actually 80, or seems to be higher than me, but still scaled up to 80. The damage I do seems to be a complete pittance compared to those people… I won’t bother explaining my build. But I’m a 22 Warrior with Greatsword/Axe+Axe combo etc. Sometimes I seem to do tons of damage, and AoE wipe a ton of people.. other times I seem to do absolutely no damage at all. It varies so much…

Higher level means better gear and, most importantly, more trait points. I wouldn’t play melee before level 80 if I were you. Grab a longbow and start dishing out AoE damage; I’m leveling a warrior right now and it’s working very well.

Q: Is this normal? Is this because I am not actually 80, but instead 22 scaled up to 80? I realise everyone else has their traits, more skills and etc. Is this why it seems like I catch even ‘match’ others? I don’t stand a chance when 2 or more enemies attack me and I die in about 1-2 seconds… while other people seem to be able to take on 5+ people at once without even dodging or anything.

Don’t expect to last long if people focus you down and try to stay with a rather large group (obvious, I know). At level 22 you don’t even have an elite skill yet. Sure there are times you can beat another player 1v1, try to aim for squishier targets like elementalists if you really have to.

Q: How do I/we even win WvW? It seems that whenever the timer gets down to 0, even if I am on the winning side. Nothing at all happens… I don’t get any xp/money/karma etc… the timer just either goes to —:--:— or it resets.

WvW matches last one week and reset Fridays at 8pm EST. You can see the current score by pressing “B”. The timer you see is the remaining time until the next point tally (every 15 minutes). Depending on how many objectives your server holds, you will see a number between +0 and +695 at the top of the screen. These points will be added to the total score every 15 minutes. You do not get karma or gold from that, you get it from dynamic events which work just like in PvE.

Q: Why is everyone just ‘standing there’ on a fortress or whatever that we own? Why isn’t anyone capping anything? It seems like there are more people defending a place that the other team isn’t attacking. Rather than attacking another base themselves. Why is this? I don’t want to AFK at a base defending it for 25 minutes to get absolutely nothing.. is that the whole point of WvW?

I can’t say for certain, but it might have been guild members who decided to watch over this area while others were doing something else. Reading the chat is very important (and very hard to understand at first) in order to know what’s happening and to follow enemy movement as well.

Q: A few friends of mine said that WvW is hands down one of the fastest ways to level up. I quickly did 4 dynamic events and got basically half a level. But then for 20 minutes I couldn’t find or do anything and it seemed like it would have been just as fast to do PvE normally…

That really depends. If there’s a very good group going on your team, running around and capping camps, towers and keeps without much resistance does give a nice reward for your minimal effort. If your team is struggling, then it will be harder to complete those events.

(continued in next post)

As much as I like diversifying gameplay, there is one big question to answer: how do you prevent the abuse of this system? This goes for all ideas thrown around in this forum, too. If we would gain points for killing enemies, I think there are big vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited. For example, right now there’s the chance that some players idle in a WvW map in order to have fewer actual players on the field and have legitimate players queue up. In my opinion, points for kill would bring this problem one step further by sending these idle players to their deaths so another server gains points while also diminishing the size of the actual army. A possible answer to that could be “no free transfers” or something along those lines.

So, to bring the discussion further: how would this feature be implemented to prevent blatant abuse while also not hurting or limiting the legitimate players’ play styles and options on the field?