Guild Wars 2 - The Thread [Archive] - Page 2

synkr0nized

12-16-2012, 02:08 PM

If you end up doing The Steel Tide in Cursed Shore, you may as well melee the giants; relying on the tanks will only piss you off.

After dying a couple times thanks to the tank and camera controls being fucked up beyond use, I buggered off to the nearby base to make a bug report and look up the mission on the forum (where I echo'd existing bug reports). Upon coming back, I charged in and killed the rest of the risen in melee among the NPCs' corpse party.

At least that progressed the mission. While I thankfully haven't experienced this yet (beyond the Fort Trinity bug that didn't update when you held the gate in that mission), I know others have had blocked progress due to story missions just failing to update.

People keep telling me this is "normal" for an MMO, but I don't recall ever being as annoyed with bugs and errors in GW or WoW**. But I didn't play either at launch, just a bit after.

** not including SWTOR and STO here, as both are full of stupid shit of their own, and a lot of that isn't even considered bugs.

Arcanum

12-16-2012, 02:34 PM

So I looked around and it seems the Steel Tide is a bit after you make the totally wrong choice when you have three missions to choose from in that one camp. The correct choice is, and always will be, Hunters and Prey for two reasons. 1) You track down a freaking Searing Cauldron to use against the undead. 2) You get to play the Air Drop story mission, which is one of the best in the game because you control a ridiculously overpowered Golem Battlesuit that has a death laser with near-infinite range, and a teleport spell with no cooldown.

shiney

12-16-2012, 02:53 PM

Yeah see I play with my wife, and so we choose differing story options at each crossroads to experience as much content as we can. I got stuck with Steel Tide, she got the wicked air drop one.

As far as interest goes Synk, yeah I am getting frustrated with end game and the time sink necessary to make some of these horrifying exotics. I am frustrated with the slow gold gain too. But oh well. I'm enjoying my alt guardian, he's 47 and fun.

synkr0nized

12-16-2012, 03:46 PM

So I looked around and it seems the Steel Tide is a bit after you make the totally wrong choice when you have three missions to choose from in that one camp.

Escorting a Charr tank battalion is never a wrong choice. Until you realize this is a personal story path in Guild Wars 2, so then yeah it is. It certainly doesn't help that one of the more interesting and fun named NPC allies / supporting characters is killed along this path. Their [the story writers] desire to kill off NPCs once you get into Pact storylines is really annoying, especially since I find most all of these characters more fun and engaging than Tree Jesus Trahearne.

I wanted those huge tanks we see up in the Iron Marches and Fireheart Rise, not these trikes. And for them to work right, not bug out like a bauss.

But I have enough alts I've seen most paths / will see the ones I haven't done yet in due time.

Edit: Holiday shenanigans. Fuck these dolls; they can really be a pain for a melee character.
yRV_ie4O_jM

Ryong

12-17-2012, 02:28 PM

I have no goddamn idea what to do on GW2 anymore. I'm always playing on my own and, leveling my low level characters, I'm in maps where I'm the only player most of the time. I can't find a build that really works at lvl 80 for my guardian - anything requires money which I don't have and even then it's for some crazy specific situation.

synkr0nized

12-17-2012, 02:54 PM

I can't find a build that really works at lvl 80 for my guardian - anything requires money which I don't have and even then it's for some crazy specific situation.

I cannot help with the former, unless we happen to be on at the same time and they implement guesting. Also Crystal Desert is fucking huge and always full, so a low-population zone still has a few people in it for us.

I should also note that I don't have full exotics yet. I really like the look of the Vigil armor on a female charr, so I grabbed that when I hit 80 (after crafting myself a set of rare-level Knight's armor). The AC dungeon has similar stats, but the amount of difference between the Vigil rares and the AC exotics is not so phenomenal as to make me upset that I haven't completed that grind yet.

But this is what I run at 80 currently on my guardian (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUIQNAR5elYgKtnFSOEmIFRuA7DAETBGz41DHSRGC). I had a somewhat different setup while leveling, but I still made use of the Honor and Valor trait lines. Both help make you super tough, and there are some support options. I like the greatsword, despite it being an overused weapon, and went down the Honor tree for the two-handed weapon skill recharge boost (this also benefits both underwater weapon slots). Otherwise I have the mace/shield combo for when I really need to bunker a bit against a tough champion or am getting pounded. 30 in valor gives me additional heals whenever I shout (the Charr racial "Battle Roar" also triggers this), and most of the time I am rolling to heal others more than to dodge (aside from, say, a boss giant stomping or the like) thanks to the 15 minor trait in Honor. 15 in radiance lets you give everyone the ability to burn their target, and this instantly recharges the virtue all of the time as you kill mobs [except on vets/champion/boss fights, though it's still more useful to spread this to everyone and put the virtue on cooldown, in my opinion]. The 5 points in Virtues are because I like boons and don't really see a huge benefit to putting them elsewhere.

Using this build, I pretty much ignore damage in PvE, especially in zerging dynamic events. I have successfully "tanked", inasmuch as GW2 lets you, Korr and various event bosses with this build, and I have no problem taking on large groups in Orr. I often forget that I need to dodge on other melee characters after playing the guardian for a bit. I also pair this build with the Vigial gear (power, vitality, toughness) for the added defense and some offensive boost. I have also crafted Knight's armor [rare] for if I think I want more crit and less survivability. I use an offensive greatsword (power, precision, crit or condition damage) and have a satisfying crit chance despite the defensive nature of the build. I run a more defensive mace/shield set (more focused on vit, toughness, healing power) for when I want to drop the AoE healing and protection.

The utilities can be swapped around. Save Yourselves is pretty aces, as is Retreat, for example. I am not sure which elite I prefer, though I've saved myself and NPCs from annihilation in story missions with the elite shown here. The major traits can be swapped around, too. These are just the ones that fit my playstyle, but there are other options. For example, I do swap out Retributive Armor for Honorable Shield depending on the situation/my mood (Valor, 25). Writ of Exultation (Honor, bigger symbols) was great while leveling, but I think it's not quite as good for my build at endgame. Blind Exposure (Radiance, 10) is kind of meh, but I am not sure what might be better here, due to not using a lot of signets in my build. If you like meditations, there is also Focused Mind in the Valor line, and Pure of Heart in the Honor line can make Aegis even more useful to you.

I am unfortunately not confident about this setup's use in dungeon explorables, as I have still done little dungeoning. It is my hope that it can handle being in close better, as I don't like sceptors and have no range in this build, beyond utility. I do have a staff for running around the world and random fun, as it is also affected by the two-hand recharge trait and can provide some utility. I like using it when I am playing with my low-level friends to support them instead of outright killing everything.

Since I don't sPvP, I can only comment on wub-wub, where this kind of build makes me tough to kill but doesn't give me a lot of chasing capability. I am normally on my thief (haha d/d is so fun there; I am sure I would be better off with s/p, but I really enjoy death blossom; it was amazing in GW1, too) or mesmer (portal bitch, woo) for that content, but I can risk taking hits much more.

Of course this whole post assumes you haven't tried tons of builds yourself / that this build is at all useful to anyone besides me / that you haven't already rejected something like this previously. And I won't at all claim it's original -- I am sure plenty of guardian build threads look similar.

Toast

12-17-2012, 07:00 PM

I can't find a build that really works at lvl 80 for my guardian - anything requires money which I don't have and even then it's for some crazy specific situation.

The build that I use looks like this (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUEQJARWlYgyCXGyvDgdFSmCR6AtPQQVFiHMFYE8dLA), though I'm still tinkering with it. I use greatsword primarily and have the staff for when I want or need to fall back and support. This build capitalizes on burning. I don't stack much condition damage, as it scales poorly with burning, but with traits to do burning every 4 hits instead of five, the radiance minor traits, and 10% extra damage on burning foes, I get a lot out of it. Because virtue of justice renews on enemy death, I can nearly spam it during group events, giving a huge boost in damage to allies, and helping them out with the aoe blind.

I currently use empowering might, and I'm happy with it overall. Even with a crit rate of about 30%, I can still get 6-7 stacks of might during most combats, and that applies to any allies I have as well. But I've been thinking of trying out another trait in that line instead. Symbols healing and 20% cooldown on two handed weapons are both attractive, but I haven't tried them out to see if they'd be better choices.

Currently I'm in lvl 80 rares, but my stats are kind of all over the place. My crafting is lagging behind just a touch, but when I can make new armor, I'm going to focus primarily on power, toughness, and vitality, with some precision and healing power thrown in to keep myself up.

As it stands though I generally don't have too many problems. When I do have problems is during events that are specifically designed for multiple players and no one else is around. I'm on Tarnished Coast, and while most zones are fairly active, Orr is mostly dead and I'm trying to finish up the personal story.

I don't run dungeons, so I don't know exactly how effective this build would be for that, nor do I pvp, so I can't offer any advice there. Having said that, I have done very well with this build. I snagged the skillpoint at the statue of Balthazar where 3 vets and 4 risen acolytes kept spawning almost faster than I could kill them just last week when no other players were around.

synkr0nized

02-20-2013, 12:11 AM

So someone with an 80 necro told me my necro was way tankier and stronger than his/hers and then was upset when I revealed I was still only level 38. :V

Minions are still terrible, though. Stack me up all the mobs and let my wells and staff skills annihilate them.

Really not diggin' what ranger has become in GW2 (compared to GW1; perhaps new rangers are happy) despite some neat aspects. I probably will kill that character, which may leave me with the open slot I'd need to run a LP-style playthrough.

Guesting should be working now, though! So that's a plus for any groups getting together. I haven't tried it yet, as the few times I've gotten on recently were to play with folks on Crystal Desert.

Also also, there's a new-ish storyline in the world now, along with Laurels as a special currency. I haven't really bothered with this content, though. And the lack of a dedicated grouping tool for endgame grinding keeps me from being super pumped about logging in to run dungeons. I'd be doing that a lot more if there was a WoW or even STO-style queue.

Lastly, I saw that you can now track posts you've given a +1 to on the forum and see which of your posts have received that. Apparently quite a large number of my posts have been +1'd.

synkr0nized

03-06-2013, 06:11 AM

Oh man

Short version:
- the "living story" is, as typical with GW2, far less than they pretend it is, but still semi-interesting so far
- dragon and other big meta-event chests are profitable, so chain-farm the events if you have time
- guesting is being blamed for big-group fights lagging out, but it's probably more specifically just Anet having bad servers and/or code
---- cannot wait for the removal of / client-side options for culling (reported by a dev to be coming soon, possible in the next "larger" patch)

For now, the road from the Black Citadel to Hoelbrak offers some insight into events happening in the world. Refugees, mostly norn and charr, are heading south, getting chased off by an alliance of Flame Legion and dredge. Along the path, you can investigate refugee bodies to collect trinkets that can be given to refugee representatives at campfires along the trail, and you can fix broken signs to help refugees find the way. Additionally, you can treat injured refugees and help drive off the allied invaders when they pop up in certain areas (currently this is all either in the northern Wayfarer Foothills and portions of Diessa Plateau). Lastly, be sure to investigate both zones for half-buried treasures refugees lost along the way and return these trinkets to their owners back in Lion's Arch. There are heralds in most major cities with more information, as well as in-game mail from your faction's Destiny's Edge member.

Hopefully as more aspects of this tale are released, it will become more interesting. As it is now, it's just a couple simple achievements and some additional events in two map zones.

Dragons / other large-reward meta-events are pushing folks to overflow and/or chugging with server lag (you can move all you want and see animations fine, but good luck getting a skill to fire off; auto-attack your way to gold!). Ridiculous. I mean, as far as PvE fights go, these are much better than what you normally encounter. Sure, they have tons of health to make the fight go on more, but at least these bosses do something and have a gimmick, such as the ice walls from the Claw of Jormag, the crystal traps from the Shatterer, the summoned minions from the fire elemental, etc. Most regular champion-level mobs are just blobs of health with one or two telegraphed attacks. But it's pretty lol-worthy that they made these open-world encounters and then the servers shit the bed when a zone gets full of people coming to down the bosses.

If you do get dumped into an Overflow zone, they still spawn there. Unfortunately, http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/ cannot help you there, as there's no way of truly knowing when the Overflow was generated to accommodate players and when its spawn timers were started.

In any case, I highly recommend you give them a shot if you have not been doing so already. Currently you are limited to one chest, per event/boss, per day on each character, though a lot of folks think it was meant to be per account. So if you have alts like me swap among them and hit up those chests now in case that gets taken away. ANet is pretty good about getting rid of things that are bugs/exploits/etc. when they present an advantage to the player, so unlike other bugs that still exist in the game this could be gone if they decide it's not what they want.

The good news is the random junk rares got me enough ectos from salvage that my "main" (in quotes 'cause I've always been an alt whore and kind of honestly hate the idea of a main character) and portions of my other characters got some exotic gifts to replace various rares.

I still want that Inquest light armor from CoE, though.

But yeah guesting paired with tons more participation thanks to the chests allegedly guaranteeing at least one rare-quality item and having a small chance to drop a precursor exotic means cluster-fucks if you chain-farm the events (three dragons, things like the fire elemental, shadow behemoth, and frozen maw, temples in Orr).

I have finally figured out where the giant Straits of Devastation karma zerg on my server went (though I guess their first stop was the Fractals dungeon, which I still haven't done... I am such a fucking slack-ass with the dungeons).

How is the PvE population on your servers? Crystal Desert is still pretty jumping overall, though again instead of running across large groups throughout Orr it's more like mid-level zones now on average -- you see one or two folks run by, maybe a small party, every once-in-a-while. The temple events bring people back into Orr, though, for sure, so there's that. At least the enemy mobs in Orr have been nerfed (far less CC is used, and some of them are broken -- for example, those mobs that throw a hook into you and pull you toward them? It doesn't pull you anymore it seems), making it easy to run around even if there isn't a group.

In any case if any one is on and looking for company to clear a map or do whatever, hit me up if I am on. I'd be happy to try out guesting and come smite things with you. Otherwise get your farm on :D

Grandmaster_Skweeb

03-06-2013, 04:09 PM

The changing of the meta-event chests is a double-edged sword. A guaranteed rare, or higher, per chest is a huge improvement over the depressingly uphill battle of chaining events and getting nothing but blues.

The downside: in A-Net's typical heavy ham-handed fashion they made it so you can only get one chest per day from each event (didn't know it was character instead of account limited, which I suppose is still better..but you're right, Anet will probably kill that ASAP). Which causes a lot more participation and in tandem with guesting causes a megafuckton of lag. Which means if you aren't there well ahead of the pre-event you're in overflow and you're effectively fucked out of a chest for that run.

A more viable solution to that would've been to guarantee the rare/exotic on first run then significant diminishing returns until grays are given instead of a one chest a day thing.

I don't even bother with dragons anymore due to being on a fairly large population server which, with guesting, causes disconnecting every few minutes or lagging so hard that the game doesn't respond to input for thirty seconds. Or straight up overflow.

Fuck that noise.

As for dungeons: I don't really do fractals and only stick to a few dungeons until A-Net gets its head out of ass. Turning off rez-rushing, when the dungeons were inherently designed with that in mind from the get go, without doing a very thorough fine tuning of said dungeons BEFORE the change is quite possibly the fuckin stupidest thing they've done to this game. As such, I only do explorables of CoF paths 1 & 2, CoE 1 & 2, and exploit run CM path 3. Everything else can rightly piss off until A-Net stops jerking off to loot events and living story to focus on some actual mechanics tweaking that are sorely needed with this game.

Ryong

03-09-2013, 12:40 PM

Banner-based warriors are hilarious.

For Great Justice! is better than most signets.

That is all I have to say on the matter of warrior.

Also, I feel that guardian was much easier to play because their heals seemed to actually heal.

synkr0nized

03-12-2013, 05:54 AM

Wub-wub being so zerg-heavy makes me think of Galcon (http://www.galcon.com/).

synkr0nized

03-15-2013, 09:48 AM

rummaging in my screenshots folder

This game really and truly is beautiful.

shiney

03-15-2013, 10:23 AM

What are people's usernames? I never see you folk online except for synk and I still play a few times a week. I have a mid-level mesmer), a decently high guardian...twinking pure toughness & vitality on armor/runes while focusing power and stuff on weapon has led to an unkillable monster. And an 80 thief which is pretty fun but she doesn't get much play anymore due to the other characters. And is a glass cannon. :<

synkr0nized

03-15-2013, 10:43 AM

I think you and I are it anymore.

Also act now, and you, too, can look like a douchebag! (the hoodies aren't all that bad, but hhahaha this promotional ad is so terrible)

synkr0nized

03-20-2013, 08:59 AM

I finally realized that the Icy Dragon Sword is also in the game, and not just the Fiery one. While the FDS is a HoM reward skin, the IDS comes from expensive mats or a lot of luck with the Claw of Jormag chest: Jormag's Breath (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jormag%27s_Breath).

fffffff
I may need to move to dual-wielding swords on a character so I can do IDS/FDS.

My warrior was fortunate enough to get a max one of both in GW, though the FDS skin was pretty common (perhaps not max stats ones, but the skin did drop a lot, relatively, in the Prophecies content).

---------- Post added at 09:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:20 AM ----------

Also, speaking of the Claw of Jormag, here's a tip -- in the second phase, while it may be tempting to follow the large cluster of players that sit on the ledge to the right and fire at the Claw at range, this is not really helping for this phase.

There are golems with bombs to damage/stun the Claw walking down the ramp in the center area. Champions are tossed out and spawn in this area to harass them; note "Champions" and not just vets, as the intent is for multiple players to tackle them. Vets are spawned on the ledges to harass the center and the golems. Ice pillars are spawned by the Claw in the center that have a small AoE that one-shots golems. Players are meant to be in the center and tear down the pillars and kite the champions to get the golems to the Claw to stun it. Then everyone can run in and attack it (as normally it has a strong debuff aura that is applied as you get closer to it, stacking in intensity).

MOST players sit on the ledge and fire at range, much like in the first phase. While this is what you have to do in the first phase, this doesn't contribute anything other than mediocre-to-poor DPS in the second phase. The more golems are protected and the more golems that reach the Claw, the quicker it gets stunned for everyone to rush it with its defenses down.

I've never seen the event fail, but I still dislike how many people are lazy and sit on the ledge during the second phase. I did it at first, as I didn't know any better. Maybe if you haven't done this event this will help you know what's meant to happen.

Ryong

03-20-2013, 09:16 AM

I remember when I tackled it a bunch of times per day that I'd just kill everything but it during the golem phase because oh shit loot.

Also: I now have a warrior at 40. Cooking is also a lot better than Huntsman.

shiney

03-20-2013, 10:32 AM

Cooking is sooooo complicated. :< There's just too damn many recipes.

Arcanum

03-20-2013, 12:42 PM

I have a funny story about fighting the Claw of Jormag that I'm not sure if I shared on here already. So here it goes.

Shortly after GW2 launched, a group of friends and I were making our way through Jormag's area to get some last few levels before heading off to Orr. We basically cleared out that entire map, and it was about 3am when we were finishing up. So right when we were about to log off, guess who shows up. The effing claw. This was the first time all of us had been online at once for a dragon fight (some of us had fought The Shatterer or Tequatl, but not all of us together) so we thought "fuck yeah, let's kill this dragon."

The problem, however, was that it was us and maybe a half dozen other players in the map at that time, and nobody there had fought the Claw before. It took an hour to organize the other random folk into clearing the Claw's first stage, because they were obsessed with killing the endlessly spawning adds near the NPC guns instead of smashing the ice wall.

So there we are, 4 in the goddamn morning, and we hit phase 2. What's the first thing the randoms decide to do? Aggro the adds. Now we've got two champions running amok while we try to figure out how to do damage to the Claw, because it looked like escorting the golems did nothing. It took about a half hour for us to escort enough golems to stun the Claw for the first time. Fortunately, since we had been fighting this damn dragon for so long, more people were showing up. It still took another 30-45 minutes to kill it. For those keeping track at home, that's 2 hours, from 3am to 5am, to kill that damn dragon. We didn't try and fight the Claw for about a week after that.

synkr0nized

03-20-2013, 12:44 PM

Arcanum

03-20-2013, 12:51 PM

Yeah. There was 5 of us in mumble constantly going "what is this? what's going on? is this working? what's with these rocket launchers? do we need the NPCs to help? what's everyone else doing? oh my god so many adds. AHHH CHAMPIONS WHAT THE HELLLLL?"

Really the worst part was the lack of people, because that made for such slow going even when we figured out what to do. Phase 2 really picked up its pace when more people trickled into the map (or showed up to the fight from us constantly spamming the map channel) and we had more people destroying ice pillars and distracting the champions.

Actually no, the worst part was having both champions aggroed into the center area at the same time, and not enough teamwork to kill them.

Grandmaster_Skweeb

03-20-2013, 02:50 PM

This is a surprise to no one. (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/Upcoming-mega-boss-chest-change) Gauranteed rares are down to once per day per account, so those of us who cycle through alts have about a week to continue enjoying that.
-wise).

Called it. Their secondary reason is pretty irksome. To keep rares from flooding the market? That's fuckin stupid. The byprosuct of that is going to drive up the prices again and directly jack up the cost of ectoplasms as well. Fits quite nicey into their gaming the market against players to make buying gems more tempting.

If they don't want people farming the chests then maaaaybe it would behoove them to take another look at their fucked up loot tables. Improving that aspect would make it so if anyone wants a shot at getting better stuff outside of maxxing out magic find, grouping up with four other people, and karma train events until loot DR kicks in.

It's bad enough wanting to make an exotic weapon needing 250 ectoplasms, the amount of shit for legendaries is ridiculous without either having an entire guild donating to the cause or buying gems in bulk. Buut nope. Anet is too busy fisting mechanics that dont needbeing touched.

shiney

03-20-2013, 03:01 PM

Yeah I am not thrilled with Anet's management of the economy. It's part of what turns me off of the game -- the lack of a LFG tool in-game (which should not be that hard to make come on Anet), and the difficult economy which would require me to spend either too much money or too much time to make any reasonable impact. So I end up leveling a character to 80, and then grinding zones I've already done, and then repeating. I don't like endgame on GW2. It's very stale.

Ryong

03-20-2013, 03:13 PM

I've been having trouble with the economy since day one. I wish I could make money with crafting.

synkr0nized

03-20-2013, 06:11 PM

I've been having trouble with the economy since day one. I wish I could make money with crafting.

This. A lot.
The profit margin per craftable thing is minimal. End-game exotics are the ones that tend to net any real profit, and even then it's under a gold -- may as well farm a couple events at that rate.

It's my understanding that folks making decent coin over time with the trading post are the ones following trends, buying in bulk, doing intelligent flipping, and anyone who gets a bit lucky with the RNG and loots a precursor. I'm just scraping together coin as I go, and the meta-event farming has helped that along a little bit, allowing me to make a few gold for myself and finish off exotic armor sets much more quickly.

However folks on my server were talking about the incoming nerf -- or, really, what they should have done from the get-go, despite me liking that I've been able to repeat looting by swapping characters -- more or less agreed that while the chests may have helped make ectos more common Fractal runs and some of the popular paths (e.g. CoF path 1) are still where it's at (and perhaps moreso once folks stop hitting the dragons and bosses as much).

edit 1: Heck, maybe I'll get to see the Straits of Devestation karma train again. I actually have fun doing that, but it's been so dead lately. On the other hand, I've at least gotten more time in doing the Orr Temple events and learning those. It's too bad there's no easy way to get into dungeons on-the-fly like those events. I'd rather be out in the world doing meta-events, even if I've done them before, than standing around LA waiting for someone to do the dungeons I want to do, let alone if they'll take someone with very minimal dungeon run experience.

edit 2: Oh also it's been the understanding of myself and others that I've seen chatting about it that the once-per-account-per-day chest is for the guaranteed rares but that the once-per-day-per-character looting that's been around forever includes the chance for exotics/precursors. As in those aren't being limited to the reduced chest.

Arcanum

03-20-2013, 07:41 PM

It's too bad there's no easy way to get into dungeons on-the-fly like those events. I'd rather be out in the world doing meta-events, even if I've done them before, than standing around LA waiting for someone to do the dungeons I want to do, let alone if they'll take someone with very minimal dungeon run experience.

Speaking of this, we need to have an NPF dungeon run some time in the future. We've got me, synk, Ryong, shiney, and I believe shiney's said before that his wife plays too? Alternatively, Skweeb. So boom, party of five right there. Now we just need a time when everyone will be on.

Ryong

03-20-2013, 07:45 PM

I'll probably be online a loooooot of time in the following days. We'll just have to sort out the issue that we're not all on the same server.

Arcanum

03-20-2013, 08:29 PM

Pretty sure there's guesting now. Also, you don't even have to be on the same server as long as you're in the same party. I once joined a dungeon group in an LA overflow, and we were all from different servers, but had no problem entering the same dungeon instance.

Grandmaster_Skweeb

03-20-2013, 10:51 PM

edit 2: Oh also it's been the understanding of myself and others that I've seen chatting about it that the once-per-account-per-day chest is for the guaranteed rares but that the once-per-day-per-character looting that's been around forever includes the chance for exotics/precursors. As in those aren't being limited to the reduced chest.

Give it time. They'll destroy this too. Sadly, after all this nerfshit goes down Orr karma trains will really be the last profitable venture between the once-a-week chests and I'm sick of Orr because I've already ran that rigamarol to where I can't stand setting foot in that zone.

I love this game and all but it is quickly shifting towards too frustrated with A-Net's bullshit to justify playing it much longer. I'll probly jump ship when Elder Scrolls Online comes out.

synkr0nized

03-26-2013, 10:46 AM

Flame and Frost: The Razing Patch/Release/??? is here -- WvW XP, balance updates, and world-wide fixes (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-March-26-2013/first#post1700276)

Overall, these notes claim to fix a lot of bugged events throughout the world and in the personal story missions. I always kind of roll my eye at these and don't hold my breath, but they've definitely improved many over the months. So this could be a nice boon for our worlds if NPCs stop bugging and events actually progress.

Wub-wub gets an XP system separate from everything else. I have mixed feelings about this. I suppose if I was only playing GW2 for wub-wub I'd be pumped, as I am pretty sure its meant to appease those players. As it is, it just seems like another thing to grind and a secondary talent system placed on top of the ones we already have for each profession.

The Living Story might finally be getting somewhere. There are new weapon skins to represent the alliance between Flame Legion and dredge (haha fuck the dredge, seriously. At least the Flame Legion make good villains). I get the impression we are going to uncover some bosses. I like that -- the existing scavenger hunt for lost items was kind of meh.

Balance! Well, more like nerfs for some classes. Here's my [over-general] take:

Overall: Quickness of any kind got owned. Mesmers and warriors shed tears. Stealth apparently only gets you revealed if you attack; thieves cautiously optimistic.

Engineer -- I don't play one, but this class had a ton of notes. I hope these are welcome buffs and aid for the class, as I know earlier folks kind of felt unhappy with Engineer.

Elementalist -- fixes, no actual balance/buffs/nerfs

Guardian -- nothing

Mesmer -- GS 1 can go through targets on the way to its intended target. That's kind of cool. Looks like we got some adjustments to fix errors.

The big thing is that we got nerfed pretty hard with the Quickness nerf. Our one good elite got no duration increase to even try to offset the nerf. edit: Speaking objectively, we still get to boost our party with it, rather than one person, and apply a combo field with no negative debuff on top, so it's not like it's suddenly bad. I am sure we'll still see us mesmers staggering it on meta bosses, as well.

Necro -- FUCKING FINALLY death shroud won't hide buffs/debuffs/endurance information. Fuck that custom UI was stupid as shit.

Epidemic necros finally have to deal with the obstructed mechanic that everyone else faces. About time.

Warrior -- Banners buffed like whoa. Banners still clunky and awkward to use in fast-paced combat.

Quickness nerf owns Frenzy, arguably already the weakest quickness skill thanks to its damage taken increase.

But I guess kicking is buffed. Who the fuck uses that?

Thief -- haste slightly buffed, caltrops nerfed; signet of malice healing in PvE arguably 1/3 less effective as a result

Ranger -- haha no one plays ranger

Oh, yeah, they have also mentioned upcoming leaderboards, based on achievement points and actions in-game. As if we needed even more evidence that GW2 is being driven by the folks who created and ran Eye of the North, this just solidifies that GW2 isn't about exploring the world and playing as you want -- it's all about farming those titles!

Fortunately there's enough to do while doing so that I will still be playing.

---------- Post added at 11:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:35 AM ----------

Hahaha
Hundred-blades + Frenzy spamming greatsword warriors are already crying about how nerfed warriors are now.

While I have a GS on my warrior, I have stayed away from using it ever since, oh, around level 40 when I stopped playing with GS and signets like a chump. So one-trick.

Ryong

03-26-2013, 11:12 AM

I had Frenzy on my warrior solely for the axe autoattack being glorious. I appreciate banners so woo.

Toast

03-26-2013, 03:45 PM

quickness was far too powerful anyway. I've got a mesmer and make regular use of time warp, and I think the change is fine.

Leaderboards and achievements are just a total meh for me. I didn't have any interest in titles in gw1, and I have no interest in them now.

synkr0nized

03-26-2013, 05:13 PM

Speaking of this, we need to have an NPF dungeon run some time in the future. We've got me, synk, Ryong, shiney, and I believe shiney's said before that his wife plays too? Alternatively, Skweeb. So boom, party of five right there. Now we just need a time when everyone will be on.

Oh, sure. This weekend I am booked, but I should be free in the evenings this week or next. And with guesting we should be able to make this work easy-peasy. Even if not, it was my understanding that a party could do dungeons even if they were on different servers as long as everyone had access to the dungeon (e.g. we all go stand in Plains of Ashford on our own servers for AC), since the dungeon itself is its own instance made for the party.

In any case I want to learn where I am bad and how I can improve in group/dungeon play. Having a few good runs doesn't mean I have it nailed, and I am still vastly inexperienced outside of story modes. That said, man, necro with wells seems like god mode in some of these dungeons compared to, say, my thief.

synkr0nized

03-28-2013, 01:56 AM

laffo @ Rox's eyes and Braham's character design

Grandmaster_Skweeb

03-28-2013, 09:42 AM

If I played this more I'd be down for dungeoneering since I seem to be the most experienced with 'em out of us. But I'm reeeeaaally not liking anet's direction with the game since they fucked us all over with disabling rezzing during combat in dungeons WITHOUT TUNING THE DUNGEONS ACCORDINGLY! Some are tolerable but the rest are still total pure bullshit if you don't have rez-stones from the gem shop. Of the dungeonns that are okay I mean maybe 1/3 to 2/3's of the paths are tweaked fine enough. Sadly it seems Fractals are the only real balanced dungeons across the board and I hate fractal runs. Then there's the whole screwed up loot and economy thing I've railed on before, but that's an entirely different monster contributing to my growing apathy towards this game.

But generally between my wii-u's monster hunter, Bioshock Infinite, tf2, and soon Dead Island Riptide I have really no time or interest in playing GW2. At leas for a while any time soon. When they get their sorry asses around to fixing some obviously major flawed shit I might hop back in.

shiney

03-28-2013, 10:21 AM

Hang on, you can't rez someone who's down during combat in a dungeon? But they didn't scale down difficulty or anything?

Anet is really annoying me lately honestly. And I barely play any endgame or anything. It just seems like they are lurching awkwardly from problem to problem, most of which they are actually creating themselves. It's intensely disappointing because this game has serious potential, but it's just absolutely squandered.

synkr0nized

03-28-2013, 10:27 AM

No, they have disabled respawning at waypoints during combat in dungeons. So if anyone in the group is still in combat, everyone must be manually resurrected or wait until a wipe. This was to eliminate death-rushing through shit to try to make folks play "better", but it is quite fair to be upset at, as GS is, due to the dungeons not really being tweaked appropriately.

Like, I know I am still inexperienced so I get that I don't know all the right strats and junk, but I do think it's fair how a lot of the playerbase is like, "WTF world PvE is so easy, but I die 443766534 times in dungeons, gg Anet". Don't ever say that, though, as then you're just casual scum (according to players, not Anet; Anet just thinks you'll have to l2play a little more/work on it, which for non-PuGs is likely fair/valid but is lololol not going to happen with most PuGs).

Grandmaster_Skweeb

03-28-2013, 11:24 AM

Hang on, you can't rez someone who's down during combat in a dungeon?

You can but the aggro system generally says Oh hey, they're healing someone. KILL THE FUCK OUT OF THEM WITH COMPLETE DISREGARD TO EVERYTHING ELSE ATTACKING ME! so it typically ends up with you dead and whoever was trying to rez you. Hence the rez-stone comment. You live or..you're dead the whole fight thus reducing the group's survivability and offense potential by 1/5. Unless by some miracle someone in your group, like a guardian, has the spell to rez a player. But that's extremely rare.

But they didn't scale down difficulty or anything?

They did for some dungeon paths. Like in Path 3 of crucible of flames in the bomb room. Small tweaks like that. What pissed off a shitton of players is their method of going about the dungeon spawn point rez-rushing was literally this: We're turning off rez rushing without changing anything in the dungeons to see where the most problems lie. Then we'll change things on the data.

Well GEE WHIZ, that reactive model turned out fucking well when things went from players doing every dungeon to players doing fractals primarily, CoF paths 2 & 3, one path (maybe two) of TA, City of Arah being effectively abandoned (save for the masochists), HoW (one path), and glitch runs of CM (forget what path). So before the bullshit bomb was dropped you'd see players rocking armor from all dungeons at any given time. Now the biggest majority I see is CoF armor because CoF isn't a complete clusterfuck nightmare headache and meta-event treasure chest exotics.

But in general the fuckton of mob waves that were clearly designed for rez-rushing battles of attrition are still there. Majority of bosses have clearly too much health and do too much damage for the no-rush model. Champion mobs are still best avoided. Nobody wants a ranger in the group because of pets pulling agro and wiping groups (I'm serious, if you're a ranger you've pretty much cursed yourself to never dungeoneering. ever. Necromancers to a lesser extent seeing as they have the option of running with minions or not.) Dungeons in general are in a fuckin sad state of affairs..but that's okay with A-Net because YAY FRACTALS AND LIVING STORY *FAP FAP FAP FAP FAP*

Guild Wars 2 is the quintessential Level Up game right now. Because the only thing that they haven't quite fucked over yet is leveling. Sad thing is I'd rather go back to playing WoW than GW2 now. Only thing saving it for me is being in a guild with awesome people, which I feel kinda bad about because I don't sign on much anymore due to the game getting increasingly frustrating as time goes on. I used to be a very active member of said guild too.

Ryong

03-28-2013, 11:38 AM

...Haven't they been dealing with fixing PvP? I think you're kind of too angry there, man.

Grandmaster_Skweeb

03-28-2013, 11:43 AM

A-Net's ability to fix pvp is worse than Blizzard's. Just puttin that out there.

Steel Shadow

03-28-2013, 11:59 AM

So I finally ended up going through a few explorables yesterday - I leveled up to 80 at launch then got distracted by other games, so I never got around to it before. Jesus Christ it was boring. Boss fights were taking 10-15 minutes or longer, and trash fights generally took an age as well. All of which took twice as long if you wiped, of course. It wasn't even a bad group, things just took forever. What the hell kind of game is this supposed to be?

Well, that's not really fair - GW2 is a good game. the system's fun, they have all sorts of little systems! They've just managed to fuck up majorly in an area that's actually pretty important. Damn.

Possibly not helped by the fact that my 80's a Ranger, but meh.

shiney

03-28-2013, 12:29 PM

Well, that's not really fair - GW2 is a good game. the system's fun, they have all sorts of little systems! They've just managed to fuck up majorly in an area that's actually pretty important. Damn.

This. It's a lot of fun and I like leveling and I like crafting and I like gaming the BLTP, I really like the combat and I enjoy how classes are actually different and traits and skillsets even moreso. Buuuuuuut that represents a small portion of the game, that portion being "from level 1 to level 80", and then there's nothing to do that I can enjoy because either groups are immensely difficult to get together, or nobody is doing the dungeons I want anyway (see above as for reasons why nobody is doing dungeons I want), and wubwub I just can't get into because any large-scale PvP thing inevitably ends up as "ffffffuuuuuuuu" between people and I hate that. I've played wub five times now and every single time it's populated with "WHY AREN'T YOU DOING THE THINGS I WANT YOU TO BE DOING" throughout and seriously fuck that.

So......meh

synkr0nized

03-28-2013, 05:51 PM

Jesus Christ it was boring. Boss fights were taking 10-15 minutes or longer, and trash fights generally took an age as well. All of which took twice as long if you wiped, of course. It wasn't even a bad group, things just took forever. What the hell kind of game is this supposed to be?

This is the concern I have with dungeons so far, and why I haven't pushed myself to go and join one of the various guilds on my server to have more chances to run with groups. In the open world and leveling up and map completion and dynamic events, the no-trinity aspect has been great. In wub-wub, I find it is also more fluid and enjoyable.

But in 5-man groups crawling dungeons, I often feel like the trinity system would make them more enjoyable, like they have somehow still been designed with that in mind. Perhaps mostly in some of the mechanics of the fights than flat out everwhere. But, again, I remind myself that there are still more paths and dungeons to explore and to not be premature with my assumptions.

Still, with a lot of the large boss-like creatures, in a dungeon or in the world, it feels like once you know what to dodge there's nothing exciting about whittling through its large health pool. At least Claw of Jormag, the Mega Destroyer, and the Orrian temple events offer, like, phases to their fights and keep people moving around.

But yeah finally about to get 100% world completion now that I've been fucking around in the borderlands more pointedly. Woo. Still nowhere near enough gold and mats to make the various gifts for a legendary, though! Grindgrindgrind.

Hahah holy fuck these dredge periscopes. They are loud!

Grandmaster_Skweeb

03-28-2013, 06:36 PM

It isn't unusual for a dungeon to take at least an hour, depending on which one.

Started the dungeon with some guildies that I'd run dungeons with a lot, when other guildies weren't interested we'd just group up and knock out a few for shiggles..so it isn't a stretch to say we're some of the best in terms of overall survivability and dps output.

The tipping point for me was doing Crucible of Eternity path 2 about a month ago. With said cream of the guild crop we started CoE path 2 at 11pm PST. Because of the untuned nature of the dungeon we didn't finish until 3:30am. After that I said never again to CoE and any other untuned dungeon.

So yeah, there's a reason why I'm somewhat pissed at A-net for destroying the portion of the game I had the most fun with.

Edit: like, I didn't even care about the tokens or even making a profit off them. Dungeons were fun with friends, then it became an exercise in bashing one's head against a brick wall until either you give up or somehow stumble through to the end and forget why it was even fun in the process.

synkr0nized

04-01-2013, 12:58 AM

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Super_Adventure_Box

can't decide if amusing and goofy fun or stupid as shit and has no place in Tyria

I'm leaning toward that latter, since I believe it was originally just going to be an April Fool's joke. At least it's only this month, in any case.

Steel Shadow

04-01-2013, 01:05 AM

Hush, Super Adventure Box is amazing. I'm going to be running through that place all month.

synkr0nized

04-18-2013, 12:01 AM

There's a free trial weekend (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/try-guild-wars-2-for-free-this-weekend-april-19-21/) in a few days. If you'd any inkling to explore Tyria, the 8-bit nostalgia of Super Adventure Box, three-way server warfare, or ArenaNet's latest dress-up simulator, this might be a good time!

synkr0nized

04-30-2013, 12:24 PM

April 30 Patch Notes (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-April-30-2013)

- culmination of current Living Story content

- a good chunk of world bug fixes and story tweaks

- definite balance updates; some highlights (i.e. what's been most talked about):
--- ranger pets buffed/tweaked and AI improved
--- warriors finally given talked about "boon hate" trait (in Discipline grandmaster levels) to combat bunkers
--- d/d eles kind of nerfed, mostly in PvP situations
--- confusion nerfed to sPvP levels for WvW
--- various skills across multiple classes (ele, engie, guardian) changed to not block "unblockable missiles" (aka siege weapon fire in wub wub)
--- ele's mist form and engineer's elixir S no longer allow the use of heal, utility, and elite skills while active

Reading the official forums for any MMO can be bad for one's sanity anyway, but a lot of the fear about this patch seems to have been overzealous exaggeration.

I'm semi-upset at the Ride the Lightning changes, since for me I hardly ever escaped with it (which is what they didn't like about it). Now I cannot run around wub wub maps as quickly on ele. But I get what they're going for there. The confusion nerf is also upsetting to me, since killing folks with confusion relies on player stupidity and not confusion itself being strong (since its damage itself isn't super high when considering how easy it is cleansed and how quickly it fades). I suppose they were not pleased with the cumulative effects of multiple mesmers in zerg vs. zerg skrimishes, though. PvE is unaffected, and sPvP mesmers still run condition-heavy confusion builds despite the confusion reduction having been enacted there already before, so I suspect we won't suddenly suck.

I am curious how engineers feel with this patch. I still haven't played one beyond level 5, and in addition to being similarly hit with the confusion nerf for wub wub they have had other nerfs this patch to their healing and junk.

Overall though I like some of the fixes, and I look forward to getting in-game to see how they work out for me.

Steel Shadow

04-30-2013, 03:41 PM

New dungeon is fantastic. That is all.

Ryong

04-30-2013, 09:03 PM

Signets buffs everywhere!

synkr0nized

04-30-2013, 11:43 PM

New dungeon is fantastic. That is all.

I agree -- it was a good time. I don't know that I'm all motivated to redo it much, but it was fun.

Also, for you folks who have done more dungeoning than I -- how does it compare to explorables in other dungeons? Because I found it pretty easy, and my impression is that the explorable paths (not talkin' about fractals, as that's meant to be the "endgame" dungeon) should be noticeably more difficult than it.

So they're hinting at a character being behind all of this, and in some places this character has been called a "personal nemesis". Being as any such character will have to account for the differences in race, order, and other character-creation/growth choices, it will have to be someone a little more generally-known to the Guild Wars 2 players.

There are clues in the jail cell after the dungeon when you go check up on Roxy. The dialogue and what a dev has posted on the forum confirms it is a "she", and someone with a "silver tongue" who spoke well enough to convince the higher-ups of both the Flame Legion and dredge to work together. "Serpent" and/or "snake" was also used in one prisoner's description. I currently feel like I should suspect Faolain, but I don't see a connection between her and the Molten Alliance. Additionally, since Caithe plays no part in this, I doubt she'd be interested. If it turns out to be, like, Countess Anise or something I might flip my shit.

Anyway, May 12 is when this current bit "culminates". The dungeon's entrance may pop around zones and all for now, but there may be additional content related or in it to come. I do know the last achievement for the Living Story section, at least for now, will only be available at the end.