Guild Wars 2

Core ranger condition builds are very competitive – all this talk of people not wanting rangers in raids is way, way in the past.

As others have mentioned, druids (ranger elite spec) is pretty much the go-to healer for endgame content. Druids combine ready access to heal/cleanse with great group dps buffs. Furthermore, those druid-specific damage buffs are not the standard boons, but are (as far as I remember) immune to boon-stripping.

A condi ranger/druid in full viper gear definitely puts out respectable dps. The power-based builds Bratec tested are a totally different matter, and have never been seen as competitive with other classes.

Dall.9752:

If you’re in a group you’re using everyone’s time, not just your own, so you’re expected to put as much effort into it as everyone else. I don’t feel bad for those newbies being called out.

^^^^^This x1 ,000,000.

It’s great that you have a non-meta build, have no clue what your class’ strengths are, or are trying something for the first time and know zero mechanics. That’s all fine by me – just don’t feel entitled to have others spend their time carrying you, or teaching you things about the game that are in the tooltips.

To be fair to the OP and many other new folks, there’s nothing wrong with asking a direct and reasonably focused question in map chat, and such questions merit helpful responses. It’s not unusual to see someone ask a question and get 3 simultaneous helpful responses from various people in the map.

Bratec.7136:

Going ranged you lose perma-alacrity, perma-quickness, 25 stacks of mights, all protections. And fight goes much longer. And the longer fight drag, the more chances for group to wipe. So this means, its not “safer” not because you are on your own without heals and buffs, but also because more chances of wipe.

You’re confusing risk to yourself and risk to the group.

Ranged combat, with very limited exception, is almost always safer for you as an individual player. You probably don’t have the full attention of the boss, are safe from the boss’ melee cleaves, and have more time to respond to changes in attack pattern and other threats to you.

All the things you mention in the post I quoted are about how the risk to the party is higher when ppl remain at range. It’s just that the situation moves quickly from “I am at range and am kinda safe here, forget the rest of the group” to “I am at range and am suddenly unsafe because the fight is out of control”.

I’m always confused by the “can’t find a group to run dungeons” posts. Maybe it’s the time of day, but I find LFG populated every time I look to do something. Moreover, when LFG is entirely empty (or just doesn’t have what I want), I start a dungeon group and it fills relatively quickly. Often I don’t even wait for it to fill with 5, for easy and popular paths like SE p1.

Heroes? Sounds nice, but I don’t miss them in GW2 for the simple reason that I never played GW1. If anything, I think it will only make it harder for new/terrible players to keep their spot in the dungeon party, if there’s a super easy alternative to carrying that dead weight.

Can confirm this build has been pretty phenomenal in unranked, still notching top heals despite not having the easy access to group heals via shout regens.

Still have yet to test it in ranked (gold 1/2), but I expect it to be a bit more situational this tier. I spend a lot of time on node, and sometimes for score reasons I just want to be able to LB 4 a challenger and root them off node for a bit. That being said, that’s good for 1 intentional root; I will probably not miss it as much as I fear, given the easy poison pressure.

I think the game will run reasonably smoothly on the described machine, and look nice doing it. I ran GW2 on a 8-year old AMD A6 laptop I with integrated graphics I bought retail, and it ran a stable 30fps almost everywhere on medium settings. My keyboard got hot to the touch though, although AMD laptop gamers are used to that.

However, I’d personally not recommend getting an i7 that ends in “U”. As someone in another thread pointed out to me when I asked several months ago, the “U” designation is their low-power mobile computing version of their cpus. For the money, getting an i7 that ends with “HQ” is a better buy.

However, unless you custom-order your laptop, chances are you will only be able to get those “U” suffix chips. I just received my custom built laptop last week, and it is definitely the best purchase I have made in a decade… and I was pretty happy with the deal I got on my new car a few years back lol. If it’s an option, I recommend custom.

Exiled.5781:

Currently only have ranger to 80 and kinda frustrates me picking a ranged class that does better or is better with melee weapons.

I feel your pain there. My ranger is my first and main character, and I was disappointed to find out how much better she is at killing things in melee range. That still doesn’t stop me from running longbow builds where content allows, and I’ve made my peace with it.

Keep messing around with classes and builds until you find one that satisfies you – that’s another thing people love to do at endgame. Messing around with builds is a widely-shared hobby, the meta builds really exist for increasing the chance you/your group will succeed in very specific forms of content.

+1 bajillion zillion other large nonsense numbers

My single customer support experience was everything it should and could be. Not just other games, but I think all companies need to emulate the efficiency and non-patronizing helpfulness the support team has shown here.

Menadena.7482:

I would suggest exploring the core areas more. For some reason it feels to me like replayability has gone down over time, even though things like quality have gone up. We have had the core maps since the beginning but I can never fail to find something to do there. Meanwhile, by the time I got to LS3 the new maps were ‘wow, gee’ and for most of them only visit a few times. Between Siren’s Landing and Draconis Mons I probably made a dozen trips combined and did not even bother to do the story after I got to the new zones.

I’m totally with you on this. I still have a good time just mass-hunting bandit champs in core maps to deplete the stacks of encoded orders I haul around. The only reason I ever go to the LS3 maps is to just farm up what I want, and then I never go back.

My thoughts:

1) I actually like that melee is punishing in this game. One of the first things I noticed about GW2, having come from a more traditional trinity MMO, was the balance between mobs being faceroll-easy to kill, but dangerous if ignored.

I like the fragility because it just feels more meaningful to me that my guardian has to do something to survive 3 measly bandits rolling up on her, but that something isn’t a high bar to reach. I find it takes away a little of the grindy feeling in various quests and achieves. This feeling extends to large scale battles as well. In many other games the high effectiveness of readily available defensive techniques essentially turns world bosses into gigantic HP sponges. It totally detracts from any tension, and just turns into rotation practice for me, and I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of impatience with the encounter. I feel more engaged in large-scale battles I participate in GW2, and I like it that way.

2) I’m fine with the current offense-defense balance, but I agree more defensive options would be nice. I did martial arts for a goodly amount of my youth, and the vast majority of my sparring opponents were larger and stronger than I was. So guess what? I rather organically learned that I had to (1) avoid damage and (2) end encounters quickly to better facilitate point (1) in order to win. I guess that’s why it doesn’t rub me the wrong way that the game values fast kills much more than defensive counters.

That being said, I agree that the upscaling we see in large battles really makes even our current defensive responses nearly meaningless in many situations. I really enjoyed tanking in other games, and I do miss it when I’m in Tyria. A Vitality tweak along the lines already suggested would be cool, along with making toughness more meaningful.

3) No substantial comment. I do, however, TOTALLY agree that there’s a missed opportunity with PoF about land-based spear combat.

4) I want new dungeons, ONLY if they are nothing like Arah. If I had to guess, I spend the most amount of time in HoT meta chains, followed in a close second by dungeon frequenter runs. You’ve elaborated in other posts already what I like most about dungeons – they’re tied to lore, and I really feel the dungeon experience has enriched my overall attachment to the game.

However, if continuing along the progression set by Arah is a remote possibility, I say forget about new dungeons. Pretty much every other dungeon (and path therein) I have no problem with, as they hit a sweet spot I mentioned in point #1 above: “you have to do something to win, but that something is not a high bar.”

5) No opinion

6) We already have this. In the PvP lobby, your toon can access the full elite spec even before unlocking a single piece of it. There are dummies and even responsive NPC targets to try things out on. Of course it’s quite different than trying it out in your favored PvE environment, but you can definitely get a feel for how it works and what your preference is right in the PvP lobby. The only thing you truly miss any opportunity for in solo-testing your build in the lobby is boon sharing, I think.

You’re just in the dark; in fact, I’d say you’re totally off the mark regarding raids and pvp.

There was a huge outcry against the addition of raids to this game, specifically because a huge portion of the community really liked the “this game isn’t about elite gameplay” feeling GW2 has.

I do a mixture of pvp, dungeons, and fractals on a daily basis; I’m on the fence about whether or not to start raiding, but I do have a raid-ready character and have unlocked every single mastery except for the raiding ones. That being said, there are some days where I do none of those because I get sucked into doing Silverwastes or HoT meta-events, another thing I love doing.

So yeah… you sound new, just learn what classes and activities you like in the game, and those can easily keep you occupied into endgame.

ElectricGoat.8253:

If arenanet did some sort of pay us X amount of dollars, and we’ll give you a linux client I think it would be successful. I’d happily pay up to $30 just for a linux client. I’m sure other users would pony up as well.

Count me in. As we speak I’m installing Lubuntu on one hdd, and DSL on another. Windows 7 occupies my ssd, which is an honor it does not deserve – yet enjoys solely because I desire a full GW2 experience.

$30 for a native debian/ubuntu-centric client would be a steal. I’d honestly pay in the region of $100-150, which is about how much it would cost me to buy Windows. I would see buying a Linux client as paying ransom to escape Windows forever.

I do believe there are players that bad in this game.

“Casual” for GW2 is a shockingly low floor. The worst players I’ve seen in other games seem by default a step above the worst players I’ve met here. This holds true for my experience in both pvp and pve.

Yeah OP, I’m not sure I see the merit in your idea. What your post seems to boil down to is “I want to cherry pick the coolest/most useful elements of elite specs and add it to my core build.”

To me, that essentially negates the meaning of having to make a choice between core and elite specs.

I have little to say about points 2 and 3 in your list, but about point 1: I’m not sure that the cherrypicking element would really convince anyone to buy who wouldn’t already do so. As for adding diversity to a declining game, I say there are other and better ways to do it.

Devildoc.6721:

There is one good thing about the LS3 maps not being big meta events like all the HoT maps and Silverwastes.. and that is there is no “fail maps”.

Totally agree with this, I think it deserves extra attention. I have personally been very lucky with DS meta in particular, as I’ve completed it on all but 2 attempts. One of those attempts was just undermanned, and the mid team was just awful. The second failure involves not being able to taxi into a full map, which is not really a failure, just prevented me that particular day from notching my own goal. I think every single other map-wide meta I joined that made a serious attempt to clear, cleared for me.

Despite my own luck, I’ve heard from many other players I’ve run into online and the forums here (yes yes, I know it’s a very limited sample size) who have had much worse fortune in completing DS or other metas. I really like GW2’s “jump in and play” style, and I feel like the failure-prone HoT metas were a slight departure from that. The price of returning to a more casual event style would of course be less connected/complex/rewarding meta chains that may not even have map-wide consequences.

I’ll be happy so long as the other metas remain reasonably populated, such that those of us who still revisit them have a reasonable chance of running into a map that can clear it.

I get the whole thing about a strong theme, and in most circumstances I’m all for the artist/creator (Anet) having complete control of presenting the theme (ranger=a much more naturalistic combatant, in tune with nature and perhaps the ‘old’ way of doing things).

That being said, For a long time I wanted to see a rifle elite spec for ranger. I main a druid, and as the first toon I ever rolled in the game, I was disappointed that it packed a rather mediocre punch at range. For dps these days I run full ascended viper gear/build, which is great… but I still miss the idea of doing awesome pewpew numbers at ludicrously long range.

But the more I thought about it, the more the ranger rifle turned out to be a weird combination of warrior rifle and DH LB moves in my imagination. Specifically, I thought the ranger should end up with something like warrior rifle #5 (stock swing knockback at melee range) and DH LB #3 (unblockable projectile at longish cooldown, but with no knockback or projectile-destruction). The more I worked out the spec, the less it felt like “ranger” -which I think says a lot about Anet’s success in cementing the naturalist theme for the class.

TLDR; it would be nice to have a really hard-hitting long-range rifle build for ranger, but I agree that it doesn’t really fit how Anet has presented the class “feel.”

I don’t think a significant rework is in order, largely due to the nature of the game.

The majority of the game, for better or for worse, does seem to primarily cater to very casual players. Just look at the threads complaining about how hard HoT is, and how it’s turned them off to the game. It’s not that every single complainer felt unable to step up to the challenge, but a surprising (to me) amount were disappointed that the game had a step-up in difficulty at all. So if most people are happy walking around safe core Tyria maps and want a particular pet for a particular visual or RP reason, I think almost any pet would work for that kind of player, regardless of how poorly it performs by the numbers.

It does kind of bother me that I went around gathering all the pets and most of them are totally unused, but I have 6 pets that I tend to rotate through on various builds, and that gives me enough variety for the time being.

Edit: for clarity

Like some others who posted here, I was a hard no on mounts before the demo. The demo did soften my stance on them a bit, but I still have reservations in terms of map design and what someone aptly called the “zoo” appearance.

Map Design
I worry that fast/reliable/summon-them-anywhere mounts will alter Anet’s map design philosophy. When I first came to GW2 I was shocked to find out there were no mounts. I quickly found out that Anet’s map design was so rich and dense that traveling on foot was really worth the time for a new player, just to get a good look at the world. Even as an endgamer I still appreciate walking through many locations that I’ve visited before, all while having the option to waypoint if I’m in a hurry.

I just don’t want to see maps ballooning in size with empty, meaningless, or otherwise poorly designed space just for mounts to zip through.

The Zoo… ugh
Few things look uglier in-game to me than a scene where a ton of different players are standing around in a small space, all on their weird motley assembly of mounts.

Granted, there is already some of this to an extent, what with all the different glittery particle-spam gear you can see amassed on players in one place (the old pvp lobby comes to mind). However, adding mounts to that same mix only makes the problem worse, if you saw it as a problem to begin with.

I’m with the folks in this thread who mentioned mount-free zones; that would essentially solve all my issues with the zoo potential. No mounts inside cities and certain towns/outposts would be nice. I’d rather not have to clip my toon through someone else’s smelly mount to reach a vendor, anvil, or crafting station.

Jav.8439:

Why so much salt?

Change is hard, I guess. I for one adopted condi shortbow fairly early on when I noticed my longbow ranger just wasn’t getting things done as efficiently as my other power-based toons. I still run LB zerker for fun in open world and other faceroll situations from time to time, but I enjoy and prefer condi when it comes to actually getting things done or going into a new area for the first time.

Others have pretty much covered why I’m pumped for Soulbeast, but primarily I’m excited at just having more options. Plenty of salt is always around when things change, but I have faith that I’ll find something among the new stuff that I like.

I’ve noticed a slight increase too.

Playing on an old potato until my new comp comes in. The temporary machine I’m using is a 10+ year old laptop with integrated intel gfx, but still manages 20 fps in core maps (15-17 fps was the average before the patch). When dealing with fps so low, small differences are noticeable.

Draconis Mons is still at an unplayable 3 fps or so. Just too many particles, I guess.

I came to GW2 not having any clue about how different it could be from standard trinity mmos, and I stayed because I think Tyria is just a much more interesting game environment than most.

I think the whole bemoaning metabuild culture misses an important fact: you can give a terrible or apathetic player the most meta build of them all, but chances are they will lack the discipline to actually properly execute the meta rotation. I gravitated toward the viper condi meta on my druid without looking at a meta build site for it, and when I finally did I saw that the meta makes a few different choices than I did and I saw a fairly substantial increase in output. I still do it the not-quite meta way on my own, but for dungeons, fractals, and in the near future, raids I will probably make the meta adjustments.

I would choose to do so because I also find success fun, not the idea of min//maxing itself. The wonderful thing about GW2 is that so much of the game allows players to succeed while being nowhere near meta, and that is honestly a special characteristic I find totally utouched by raids.

I’ll offer 2 links, when I can get to a civilized keyboard and off this infernal phone. The first will be the HD 620 system discussed, and another is 20 bucks cheaper, same cpu, but has a Radeon R7 M445 (likely sharing double duty with some integrated Intel gfx). Both are $700 and $680, respectively. I have a new ssd I can put into the $680 system to get rid of the hdd that comes with it.

In reality, my heart really wants a custom laptop from Sager. I can get one for $709 now, and likely closer to 600 if I can hold out until the fall. I’ll link that one too.

So why not get the Sager now? Well the 2 other retail laptops I’m going to link I can get tax fee for my business, and sales tax is kinda steep in Illinois. Also, the laptop will primarily be used for work, which suffers almost as much as my GW2 game play thanks to the temporary replacement potato I bummed from my brother.

EDIT: I just looked up the Sager again, which is indeed a 7700hq, and totally blows the 7500u out of the water in my book. so I’ll just wait a fewonths for the fat superior system to come down another 50 or so bucks. Thanks for the heads up on the i7u, Archon!

Lol and Inculp, I feel you as a survivor of the radeon hd series. I held my fps steady by overcclocking and not multitasking. The thing is, I experienced fairly consistent fpses across several mmos with that setup, while there are some things that Intel integrated graphics from almost a decade ago run fine (swtor, for instance) but other it just fails consistently (GW2, sadly).

I am nevery going to buy a laptop that has both an amd cpu and graphics ever again though. Heat was a problem from day one until the moment it died, while older Intel notebooks I ran the same stuff on remained cool to the touch.

Hi community, would appreciate a bit of feedback/advice on a laptop I’m looking to get (i7-7500, Intel HD 620) and how it runs GW2. I’ve seen one video on this specific subject, and it was done by a guy who clearly knows nothing about Tyria. He didn’t even go to LA, so I have no faith in that “test” of the HD 620.

I just want to know if anyone has any feedback on how the combination of the i7-7500 & HD 620 would run most aspects of the game. FPS is my biggest concern. I’ve heard that because of the way GW2 is set up (with all the game files socked into one giant archive), I’ll likely be CPU limited on performance. That being said, I have absolutely awful experience with older – we’re talking 7-8 years ago – Intel integrated graphics, and am very wary of repeating the experience.

I understand other components could impact gameplay, but I’ll be covered on those fronts, I think (M.2 drive and 16GB RAM, for instance).

I do pretty much everything except WvW and raids, but I’m looking to get into raiding shortly. I just want to ensure I can get similar performance out of this integrated Intel GPU as I did from my old, now deceased machine.

For reference: the deceased machine was a 5-year old AMD A6/Radeon Mobility HD 6250, which finally died about a week ago. It was old, but ran GW2 just fine – “just fine” meaning:

-1366×760, native sampling
-fairly low settings (no reflections, low shadows, lowest shaders, etc)
-about 30 fps almost everywhere
-20-25 fps for DS events, possibly a tad lower for WvW zergs

So obviously the game being at its prettiest on my laptop is not a priority for me. FPS is the big, big deal in my book – so long as framerate is not keeping me out of most content (especially Draconis Mons), I don’t care if I have to turn all the other settings down on the laptop.

Doam.8305:

Dungeons runners quit because their rewards were nerfed

Well I disagree with your assessment of HoT, but at least your position is clear.

About dungeon nerfs: I wasn’t around to see how dungeons used to be rewarded, but I hear that they simply redirected some of the direct gold rewards into the frequenter reward. Regardless, between raw salvage, mob kills, mystic forge gambling, and salvaging dungeon exotics for inscriptions, dungeon running seems plenty rewarding to me. It might not be the fastest way up, but it’s definitely steady and can help an exclusive pve/dungeon runner pile up a respectable amount for some important purchases.

Yobculture.5786:

My guild does dungeon tours more or less every other day if not daily, so there is still quite obviously a demograhic for it.

I can’t speak for my guildies but seeing as most of the paths are soloable in their current form anyway, I don’t see a lot of reason why they should put resources into re-working dungeons that could be spent elsewhere.

^ This.

OP, it might just be a function of where you live and what times you play, but I do 16+ paths a day, usually in less than 3 hours. All done via LFG, have never once run a dungeon with a guildmate, ever.

And it’s not like I’m sitting still waiting for LFG to fill for most of those 3 hours – I’m usually doing stuff farming for a legendary, maybe even a couple ranked matches here and there during a lull in LFG activity.

Djinn.9245:

I can understand new players who enjoy a challenge joining GW2 because of HoT. What I can’t understand is why anyone who preferred a higher difficulty would play GW2 for the first 3 years as it was.

I totally disagree with this sentiment. I will agree that challenge is definitely not a priority for core Tyria’s design, but it can definitely be found if you want it.

When I first picked up GW2, I loved the art style and the Living Story idea (where the map permanently changes or moves on, bearing scars from past eras of the game). Those were the things that kept me with GW2, I didn’t care a whit about challenge.

That being said, I’m the kind of person who enjoys challenge, and soon began seeking it out in core Tyria. It was immediately apparent the hearts, event chains, and other open-world stuff contained almost no challenge whatsoever, even for a brand new player of moderate skill. As soon as I could I prepared myself for dungeons, opened my own “hey I’m new” LFG, and farmed dungeons for xp and salvage. Dungeons ceased to feel challenging for me just a few minutes into that first AC run.

That’s when I started soloing the dungeons that didn’t have an enforced grouping mechanic. To my surprise, even CM story was initially difficult to solo on a couple different classes I’d become fairly familiar with. Every fight became new again when it was just me, trying desperately to achieve various objectives in a boss fight while tanking hits/healing past them/dropping what aoe I could.

Between fractals, preparing for raids, and legendary farming, my current challenge is working with a totally dumb ranger build I put together just because of the way it looks. I’m not the only one – other players handicap themselves in fairly severe ways just to see how far they can take things, or overinvest in stats/traits to focus on strengthening a particular aspect of their gameplay.

So while I agree with you that core Tyria, by design, is a total cakewalk, it definitely has fun corners for challenge seekers – solo dungeon runs being just one of them. Your failure to understand why a challenge seeker would stick with the core game simply indicates that you, yourself, are probably not a challenge seeker hankering for the same type of challenge I described.

I, too, ran a short-lived roaming SB/staff build. I kept my armor, backpack and SB in viper stats, as I had an ascended viper set, and my staff and trinkets were magi. “Subpar” is also the word I’d use for it. I tried it for WvW, and as I really dislike that entire game mode, I didn’t explore it very deeply.

I found that if I considered the SB more of a survival weapon (root/stun, dodge back and run while keeping up a moderate amount of pressure from condis and pet) it worked out a bit better than just trying to land the kill. Then again, that means I was just running and not being much of a threat, so there’s that tradeoff.

The reason why you haven’t (and never really will) find an SB/staff build on metabattle is because it’s going to force a sort of 3-way compromise. As others have already mentioned, shortbow is a condi weapon, and staff is both a power and healing weapon. These differing natures means your own gear slots and trait choices will be fighting themselves. There’s only so many gear slots and traits you can fill; committing to one set of stats (be it condi, power, or heals) will essentially validate one of your weapons at the expense of the other, while trying to split traits and stats leaves you subpar at both sides you are trying to appease.

Vayne.8563:

When things get gradually harder, then people are much better at handling it than if they just skip ahead.

LS 2 really needed to come with HoT, because the jump from core to HOT is too drastic.

This, a thousand times over. While I was able to (relatively quickly) make the transition from core to HoT without the benefit of LS2, I can see how that would be a great bridge between the core game and the expansion.

When all is said and done, however, adding in LS2 (or any sort of difficulty ratcheting, however paced) is ultimately a departure from the stroll-in-the-park feeling of ease that attracts so many to core GW2. I’m not sure that even if they feel less overwhelmed by HoT thanks to a transitional phase, players who really feel wedded to the core game’s casualness would change their minds about HoT’s enjoyability, since HoT itself would remain a step above the core game’s challenge.

Sad to hear your HoT experience was so poor, Saephaan. I’m not an elite gamer myself, by any means, and I initially had trouble getting anywhere in VB when I first got HoT.

That being said, I think it’s deeply unfair that you and so many other accuse HoT of being geared towards “hardcore” players. It really…. isn’t, by my estimation at least. I’ve played a goodly number of games, and HoT is pretty forgiving by many standards. Such a huge percentage of encounters in this entire game are soloable, and in reasonable time too. I’ve soloed plenty of ostensibly group-oriented combat in other games, but it would always take a long time because I’d have to run a tank or healer to just survive the hits properly.

I think the most accurate thing to say is not that HoT is a difficult experience, but that core GW2 is an incredibly easy one. If that core easy experience is what you were looking for in HoT, then yeah, you’re definitely not going to have a good time in the jungle.

Ashen.2907:

Are we still the pact commander? I thought someone else bore that title, and responsibility for the fleet’s destruction.

“Commander” was always our title, referring to our second-in-command position. If I recall correctly, we recently formally left the Pact to lead Dragon’s Watch, but Almorra Soulkeeper mentioned that Commander will remain our honorary title for life.

Trahearne was the former Pact Marshal (highest ranking leader of the Pact) who oversaw the fleet’s decimation at the hands of Mordremoth, and he’s now being replaced byLogan. Yeah, I know, it’s been a while since we actually found out who the new Marshal is, but meh… it’s the most recent LS3 installment, I’ll keep the spoiler tags in there.

Amaimon.7823:

voltaicbore.8012:

I dislike Taimi simply because I loathe Asura in general. There is an Asura-loving guild advertising in LA lately, and I want to join it then somehow do something terrible to besmirch its name. But I won’t, because I can’t even bring myself to pretend liking Asura.

That being said, I actually like Taimi’s kind of youthful/ringing voice. I just wish Ms. Derryberry (Taimi’s voice actor, for those who don’t know) managed to create a more distinctive voice for Valette Wi.

Why would you do that? Why would you go out of your way to make other people miserable? I don’t get it.. what do get in return other than more loath and spite

Heh mostly a joke (mostly). I really do harbor a strong dislike of Asura, but as I noted, even that doesn’t make it worth it to me to rain on their parade.

Ranger (which can grow up to be a druid, if you end up buying HoT), is an extremely forgiving class. While leveling, do yourself a favor and run a dps pet (any of the cat family pets will do) instead of a bear, initially. It should teach you to rely on pet swaps and smart(ish) play to keep your pet alive and useful, and also the value of killing faster (or using other defensive countermeasures) instead of trying to outlast hits.

Given that you can level many different ways, and that GW2 was apparently designed to appeal to a very casual breed of player, it’s no surprise to me that the game does not really hand you much challenge during the leveling process if you don’t go out of your way to look for it. That said, dungeons might be a great place for you to find what you’re looking for, in terms of solo challenge.

5 years of pve is a long, long time to not set foot in a dungeon. Hell, dungeons can drop 60K or more experience at a time… I can’t imagine standard (i.e. not using stacks of xp tomes) leveling without them.

Soloing explorable paths in dungeons can offer significant challenge. In fact, you might find most of them impossible to solo (CoF p1, for instance would be mechanically impossible for you to complete, all dps aside). But even if you can’t get through the whole thing, it can be really-eye opening to deal with certain boss encounters that offer specific challenges.

I’ll use CM story mode as an example. My chronomancer can absolutely yawn her way through the first 3 bosses solo. However, the 4th boss offered a very specific challenge. Partway through that fight, 5 or so adds run in from the side, and they each have a pretty big knockback/knockdown. I discovered I had gotten a bit lazy about using continuum shift, healing on time, timing blocks a bit better, using evades/interrupts/invulnerability with greater skill, etc. It took me many tries to get through with my build (admittedly I could probably have adjusted or compromised that for easier progress), but through condi, kiting, and blocks of all kinds, I managed it.

Solo PvE challenge is definitely there. It’s just that open world is not the place to find it.

I dislike Taimi simply because I loathe Asura in general. There is an Asura-loving guild advertising in LA lately, and I want to join it then somehow do something terrible to besmirch its name. But I won’t, because I can’t even bring myself to pretend liking Asura.

That being said, I actually like Taimi’s kind of youthful/ringing voice. I just wish Ms. Derryberry (Taimi’s voice actor, for those who don’t know) managed to create a more distinctive voice for Valette Wi.

Agreed with all the “HPs are fine as they are” crowd. I am an absolutely horrible necro, and even on that class I soloed my way to completing the reaper line. I will admit the VB Guano HP took me a couple tries, but I managed it.

Every time I see a call for help with HPs, I go and help if I’m not holding down part of the meta. I’ve never once felt an HP train was required.

I do not support this idea, largely because (as others have mentioned) I foresee other kitteny nerfs to CA in exchange for the uptime boost. I don’t raid and do very little WvW, so not sure how it would be in those areas; however I feel CA is more than good enough currently for fractals, dungeons, and spvp.

Sigfodr.9576:

About:

staff/staff is a waste of a staff. It have 0 benefit contra only using 1 staff. If you think its to trigger “Quick Draw”, then you are better off doing this by using Avatar.

Viper Axe used in a heal build. You will be better off with an exo magi axe (get it from AC). The axe is not for dmg, but for the utility. And the main consern is therefore to keep your healing power high when you need to swap away from your staff.

Plat doubloons are also kinda a waste, since you will get more healing from water sigil. If you want your regen to outlast the chronos. Then ither use warhorn (traited) or use Healing spring (traited).

Ah so axe is used for utility on healing builds, just not viper stats. A reflect and a reposition always have their uses, I guess.

Back in the day I tried a traited healing spring, but found it easier to run a traited warhorn instead on regen uptime. I found myself trying to drop the spring (which covers an absolutely enormous area when triggered) away from the other more offensive fields the group was dropping, and found it harder to spread around regen for as long as I could just blasting warhorn #5 on a shorter traited cooldown.

^ I second this. It’s too late for you now, but there should really be a disclaimer for new players looking to drop an 80 boost token when you’re still learning both the game and the class.

Mesmer is in a pretty good place. Although dps is quite low, the sheer amount of utility a mesmer/chrono brings to any group is ridiculous. Have fun!

If you can, I say go for the ascended Magi trinkets. I say this only because our unique buffs may not be affected by boon duration (grace of the land and the empowerment glyph). I could be wrong about that though.

It’s not like the exotic + plat doubloons would be a terrible choice though. More boon uptime can only be better for the group.

Thanks for the feedback! I was actually referring to all of the ruins we come across, from that fighting pit/Pale Reaver area to the Lost Precipice. We see remnants of buildings and structures everywhere, and nobody really explains it to us. I expected at least a bunch of Priory nerd npcs to be chatting about it when they have a moment to catch their breath, but nothing.

The druid theory makes sense in terms of humans being in the jungle, but then again things like a fighting pit (and large edifices in general) seem to run counter to the really back-to-nature/hippy-dippy feeling I get from the description of the druids. It would be interesting to find out more about who’s old home many guilds are squatting in now.

Jokubas.4265:

The things that tend to get me most excited for expansions are things like new races and classes. Heart of Thorns did not have the former and the Revenant just isn’t my cup of tea. The elite specializations are okay, Chronomancer seems neat, but it’s not enough on its own.

I agree with you on rev. I made one just because the female Norn rev in the character creation page seemed really striking lol. Overall, it’s definitely my least used class and not my cup of tea either. If “yay shiny new class” is what you were looking for out of HoT, maybe the purchase really isn’t for you.

I think what you – and many others, no doubt – may not like about elite specs is that they really hone in on a particular choice for your character (as you already mentioned, perhaps, in passing at the end of your post). For instance, my ranger is my first and main character, and I rarely ran her as a straight dps character. However, as a druid, I do more healing than anything else these days. I did put together an ascended viper set for condition builds, which allowed me to bring that toon back into the dps game. This is a big change from what I ran pre-HoT, which was a standard power longbow + shouts setup, low dps and all.

That being said, being a full support druid is a ton of fun, and seems like a better version of the healing role that I often played in other classic trinity mmos.

My healer runs a warhorn, but I hear many still run staff/staff builds.

And no, I’d say a viper axe in a healer build is just a waste. Not sure it’s going to do anywhere near enough dps to justify using in either main or offhand. Maybe someone can make the case for offhand axe in terms of utility (breakbar/reposition on #4 and reflect on #5), but I can’t think of any reason why I’d ever bring an axe on my healer.

1) Raids: we’re doing pretty well, as many groups run at least 2 druids. Very sought after as healers, and competitive as condi dps that can maintain a goodly amount of group support.

2) Fractal speed runs: not sure, as I am still a tier 1 fractal nooblet. But I would assume the same things that make us valuable for raids would apply to fractals, although with social awkwardness (forcing players to spread out a bit) our group buffing abilities might be a bit more limited than usual.

3) sPvP: in a very good place right now. I used to run a standard sword/dagger bunker and had success with that, and have now switched to LB/staff and doing even better. I’m really not that good (tier 3 silver in ranked this season), but I often walk away with 3+ top stats on my druid.

Apologies if I missed it in the wiki or these forums, but I can’t find any information on this. All those ruins in VB – who used to live there?

Although I did buy HoT and do not regret it, I can answer from the perspective of when I was still holding out on the purchase for as long as I did.

The short answer is that I used to play another game that deeply and completely betrayed its original premise, and heard from map chat that HoT was doing the same to GW2. However, because what I wanted from core GW2 (dynamic event chains/meta events) was different than what others apparently wanted (a super easy mode casual experience), I convinced myself that buying HoT would be fine. And I was right, in that I love HoT.

The longer answer:

I’ve posted this on occasion in other contexts, but I am a SWToR refugee (the current EA/Bioware Star Wars mmo, for those who don’t know).

SWToR was sold to me, and others, as a game distinct for its strong story writing. Initially this was true: there were 8 completely distinct storylines, complete with unique companions, conversations, and other features. I’d say 2 or 3 of those stories are well-written enough to be their own game, really. Without getting into more detail, suffice it to say that the dev team there has utterly and completely betrayed that original premise; now every single character plays an identical story. You have non-Jedi/Sith running around talking to Force visions, fighting Force battles, and other such nonsense. Even your once-unique companions are basically skins of one another with the same base functionality.

When I first stepped into core Tyria as an f2p, I fell in love immediately with how the world felt alive. No trinity, and a game world that seemed to change and move on with time. I absolutely loved that the tower in Kessex Hills remained toppled, and thought it was quite daring that the devs destroyed the beloved central hub city and remade it as a shadow of its former self. I did feel a bit sad that I missed out on Scarlet and the old LA, but the world felt so much more alive this way. I knew that dynamic event chains would eventually repeat and all would have a chance to do them, but the chains initially seemed long enough (and the new camps/WPs opened stayed long enough) that I felt like my character was making a real difference in that corner of the world. There being pretty much 0 gear grind was a very thick layer of icing on what I found was an already delicious cake.

As I considered buying HoT, I was warned that HoT was quite different from all the things I mentioned above. There was a certain level of power creep involved (although gear grind beyond exotic remained largely optional), and gravitation towards meta builds for higher levels of play was expected.

I wavered for some time, but eventually bought HoT just because I loved the experience of GW2 up to that point. I read as much as I could on reddit, these forums, and elsewhere about what HoT entailed. I concluded that although HoT did betray a bit of that initial feeling of map-aliveness, that shift made sense to me because we’d be fighting in a jungle. Working through wild places that belong to the enemy (not civilization) seemed to fit with the idea that player actions couldn’t ever really tame the zones.

So yeah. I didn’t come to GW2 seeking super casual faceroll, so HoT did not seem like a total betrayal of the core game to me. Since what I wanted was more meta events, HoT was a purchase that made sense. I took the time to confirm this as best as I could before buying, and I’m not disappointed that I did.

You’ll get used to the icons. In fact, since they reorganized them by type, it’s easier than ever to keep track of them.

More than anything else I’d like the pet window to – by default appear high enough when opened to not have the last row cut off. Might just be a resolution thing for me, but I do have a couple different builds that switch between smoke/bristle and other combinations.

Power ranger will be hard to use effectively at endgame. It’s still fine for all the HoT zones, if you’re just doing open-world stuff on your own or participating in any of the metas. However, if a group is really depending on everyone to put out a lot of dps, you will likely not perform that well.

I strongly suggest you try learning condi ranger as well! I gave it a shot, and it’s now become my main form of ranger. The DPS, survivability, and group support condi rangers can keep up is really nice.

Heals druid of course is a well-beloved raid healer/buffer; few classes can touch us when it comes to pumping out heals and group damage increases all at once. Interestingly there are some builds out there that allow you to contribute a bit more to dps while also maintaining that support role, although I haven’t tried any myself.

Yeah, I’m not sure what Anduriell was getting at… condi ranger is in a really good place right now. and we have plenty of condi weapons.

I’ve really taken a liking to a full viper condi ranger setup, the standard SB/sxe+torch loadout. While I’m up in the enemy’s face 99% of the time, there are still enough 900+ ranged moves to reach out and tag mobs that are just a bit too far away. I like that flexibility.

Carighan.6758:

To me the biggest loss of identity is maybe in the underlying shift in design focus.

At release, GW2 was all about the world, as a crucial element of an MMO’s design. About providing a consistent, self-sufficient (events bounce back and forth without us, living store happens whether we’re there to experience it or not) and vast world in which the players would get dumped with comparatively little guidance, able to explore and learn at their own pace.
This rather brutal approach was then in turn balanced by intentionally under-balancing the game to a significant degree, old Orr zones (again intentionally, I suspect) excepted.

Nowadays, it is about providing a continuing trickle of content and a mountain of boxes to tick to keep the players engaged and coming back. To this end, a lot of steps were taken to make players feel more in control, from significant power creep in HoT over more interrupt/active-counter centric PvE enemies to crafted/quested legendaries.

Nowadays, everything is about player agency. The original design didn’t even care much about it, it was about world consistency.

And frankly both are good designs, but the modern one is entirely unlike what I originally came to the game for

I feel like this deserves more attention. Again, I haven’t been around that long (but long enough for 9K AP, 165 mastery, lv 80 in every class), so I can’t really detect a true shift away from that concept. But yeah, the extent to which the game world turned without our direct input was hugely interesting to me. As much as I wish I could relive LS1 and Scarlet, I really, really, really appreciated that the game world had moved on while bearing the scars of that era. No other game I’d played or heard of would do such a thing.

If that was ever really a meaningful a game-development focus (making an active world that didn’t revolve around every single player being the Messianic Champion of Respawning Mobs and Never-Changing Environments), then it’s a shame that the game no longer seems to have that in its future.

Solvar.7953:

What always bothers me more is that when your character dies, you just go back to some waypoint. But this isn’t true for the rest of the people living in Tyria. So whenever a character is killed off in the story, I’m thinking “Why don’t they just waypoint out?”

I do realize it is a game, and it would be really annoying if our characters really died forever. But I find that more jarring than toilets and food and water. And in fairness, since I ’ve a bunch of junk food from leveling up chef, my characters actually do eat quite regularly.

Yeah. If you’re familiar with the Log Horizon books/anime, that’s a hugely interesting concept. Player controlled characters therefore become a totally alien set of people relative to the npcs, who are weak/die for good/live relatively limited lives. Adventurers there essentially dropped out of the sky and are not natives.

Our toons of course were written to be natives, and the way point death-cheating bothered me from a writing standpoint. I just chalked it up to “we’ll they can’t very well delete our toons each time, far too hardcore for gw2.”