The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Angthoron]

I guess I should try out CoF, CoE, AC and other explorables, but I still need to do story modes for CoF and CoE and at times I usually play, nobody is doing storymodes anymore, and the guild's already asleep

The first and second path of AC explo is easy and very profitable (much more than CM), the third is somewhat harder, but nowhere near any of CM paths.CoF story has human-charr gay romance in it, which alone makes it worth to go there (and laugh at the cheesy cutscenes, just like we did playing Prophecies). CoE story gave me a nice portion of assrape, was harder than the hardest path of CM, but I heard they nerfed it.

CoE first run today. Subject Alpha is full of shit. Not going back there any time soon.

Well I had massive assrape in CM on my first runs too, so it could be because of the first-timedness, though yeah, I've heard things about Co places that don't make me rush to check them out. And huh, AC explorables are easier than CM, really? What a world, what a world. Going to check it out then, I guess - though I want my thief in CM gear eventually, that 5-piece Noble sounds nice, together with guild MF bonus and any food and banner MF that I can scrounge. Even with whatever basic MF boosts that I've been running lately, there's been a clear influx of rare items per evening for me. But hey, might get a weapon from AC in this case, need to replace a couple of things.

 

[RK47]

I don't know why people stack a lot on Magic Find in this game. Do 2-3 runs and you can get a full set of rare - I got my first rare healing set from HotW before working on full exotic with Dwayna runes. Now it's my go-to outfit for dungeon runs. Working my way on the Power / Prec / Crit Dmg % set for WvW now.

But still, difficulty is crapshoot. The designers are obviously trying out new stuff, but ignore the many ways, many profession builds and item combo + player skill level can fuck it up. Everyone is a little bit too squishy hence I went with full Protection Heal build to make sure nobody dies.

And funny, nobody every went 'we need a tank and a healer.'
They really bought the 'no trinity' bullshit arenanet is selling them. Only to get blown up in 5 seconds unless I open up with Protection spam and heal spam. Literally face-rolling on the Virtue spam plus Utility Spam in most encounters for Heal Guardian will ensure a smooth ride in general and that's all I ever do anyway in dungeons.

Today Crystal Desert got zerged out of top spot for the WvW. Strangely, I don't give a fuck. It's really hard to care. I wanna discuss this more with my guildmates, but they seem to be into it that I might offend their 'hardwork' of waking up on 7am and continually log hours in the battleground, staying in mumble, planning shit up. I did that yesterday for 4 hours - and not feeling the 'seriousness'. It's like playing Battlefield 3 with infinite tickets. But when there's not enough player on one side, there isn't any team balance. Had to log for dinner, not sure if I'm coming back on for that, I rather level an alt.

Do I see any friendly at all? Any?

 

[Angthoron]

Hmm, RK, if you can give some tips on the healguardian or dungeon melee guardian (I actually ran into one the other day, was like WTF at first but the sod didn't die a single time so I guess it must work? 2H sword on top of that, huh) would largely appreciate that, am levelling a Guardian at the moment, and GF has one, but as we've been a bit absent, think our skills with that have dropped a bit.

Also, I dunno, no-trinity thing works for me, I've been in a couple pugs with no plate/no healer and it went swimmingly, and that's in CM, so it kinda works I guess. Obviously if there's a trinity present that knows how to pull it off, it's probably even better, but still, it's definitely worked so far.

As for MF gear - I personally collect it because rares and up generally sell nicely, so purely for the money. It also seems that the Mystical Forge is affected by MF, and I got some very good 80 rares out of random crap greens. Eventually I'll build up a DPS set as well, naturally, but so far, it's not been that crucial. Also, I've not been very lucky with random loot until I upped my MF, and now, compared to guildies, I can get up to 3 rares per event chain compared to 0-1 that the non-MF guys get. Could be pure luck of course, but at least the few times I tried it, it felt kinda tangible. But even then, I often get low-level rares and even high-level rares are never for my class.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, I ran 2h sword, and to me it seemed that the big idea was to use the Blind effect from leap to take a bit of pressure off yourself while at the same time shouting like a monkey (Shouts have very good buffs, easy trait-speccing, and the shortest cooldowns), along with having a roll-heal and pretty much permanent Retaliation. And of course, spin2win (seriously, every other attack on the Guardian seems weak after using Whirling Wrath for a while) as often as possible. And you have a mace/shield for emergency healing (+ Tome of Courage for second emergency heal). Of course, this isn't sure in any fashion, as I haven't played all the way to the endgame (I still need to muster the will to finish at least one character).

And like mentioned before, Zealous Blade sucks donkeydick. An important warning for 2h sword users.

 

[RK47]

As Ulminati said before you probably need hold the line.
It regens and more importantly gives Protection (-33% dmg reduction) for a duration.
This is your main source of 'damage mitigation'

He's using Greatsword? Hmm. Odd.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simu....181.190.192.197.205.206.212.0.0.0.0.30.30.10

Here's what I run with:
I usually use staff for much better heal options (a total of 3 skill actually heal here)

Staff 1 - Regular AoE cone 160 degree forward spam. Hits up to 5 targets. VERY nice for fire and forget.
Staff 2 - Fires a damage orb. Can be detonated for heal but will trigger longer cooldown.
Staff 3 - Symbol of Swiftness actually does damage and buffs allies with speed. With Honor X Trait, you can heal with it too. So if there's a melee engaging a target, it helps to damage the target AND heal the guy standing on it. Tricky, but good fall back option.
Staff 4 - Gives 12 stack of might that takes a good chunk of time to complete it. You can get interrupted and only gain partial bonus, losing out on a big heal at the end of it.
Staff 5 - Pushes back melee a bit. But not very useful. Can setup combo light. But that's it.

And Scep/Shield for longer ranged dps and more protections spam with the shield.
Scepter 1 - Slow, terrible ranged attack at 900. The only viable choice for ranged Guardian.
Scepter 2 - Smite for a nice AoE spam. Might help if you use Sigil of Air (30% chance L-Bolt when crit) or something. Sigil of Water (30% heal chance is good too)
Scepter 3 - Immobilize and vulnerability 3 on target. Not very useful.
Shield 4 - Medium range damage and buff yourself + allies with protection.
Shield 5 - Bubble up - Protecting yourself and whoever is within your circle by knocking someone away and blocks projectile. Can be detonate to heal nearby allies.

Heal options
Staff 2 - Orb Detonate
Staff 3 - Symbol Trait Honor X
Staff 4 - Might stack 12 - Heal at the end of cast chain.
Shield 5 - Shield of Absorption - Detonate
Heal 6 - Healing Breeze - Cone heal yourself and people around you. This skill needs channelling. Dodging will break it. But keep in mind that Virtue AND Shouts do not. You can be literally knocked down on the floor and your Virtue/Shouts can still be spammed.
Utility 7 - Hold the Line - Protection and Regeneration Good stuff. Somewhat low cooldown. Trait Honor XI will make this remove conditions from your teammates. Essential when dealing with condition dungeons.
Utility 8 - Smite Cond. - Does small player-centred aoe damage - removes a condition. Trait Valor XII will make this self heal. At 16 sec (-20%) cooldown this is pretty much safe to spam when you lost 20% hp. It can also be cast when you're knocked down / stunned too.
Virtue F2 - Activate Virtue of Resolution for a small heal. Inspired Virtue trait rank 5
Dodge - Selfless Daring Trait - You heal nearby allies at the end your roll - Yourself included.

That's 10 skills you can employ to heal with this trait setup. You can go full Meditation for utility self-heals if you wish. But I find Merciful Intervention (Teleport to nearest party member and heal) very tricky to use. And the rest of the mediation gives nothing much that I want. Contemplation of purity cooldown is too long to take advantage of. Judge intervention teleports you to a target where you do small dmg and inflict burning. Not very useful and it's not where I want to be.

Protection Options
Virtue F3 - Activate Virtue of Courage to grant Aegis and Protection. - What a winner. They block the next hit and gets damage reduction.
Shield 4 - Medium range damage and buff yourself + allies with protection.

The Final Utility
Utility 9 - Stand your Ground. Retaliation and stability is granted to your team. Keep this as an emergency. Whenever you see stuns/knockdown, or condition you need to remove from your team, yet you ran out of options to remove, use this. Retaliation is an afterthought but does damage anyway when your team is hit. Can be swapped with Save Yourselves if you want more dps out of yourself, but it has a longer cooldown. Once again, Shout can be used even when you're disabled and it will not interrupt casting animations or channeling. Good shit.

Elite - Renewed Focus.
This is probably the best elite you go for Dungeon runs. Consider this: You have the opportunity to give 10 second of protection and double aegis. As well as 2 small heals and 2 Might stacks within a window of 3 seconds.
I usually use this when in panic mode. F1 F2 F3 0 F2 F3 - Virtue spammed. 10 seconds of Might 10 seconds of Protection 2 Aegis and 2 Regeneration + 2 Heals. Holy F. Oh, it also gives you 2 seconds of invulnerability. Clearly not overpowered.

If you need DPS - You can try tome of wrath #4 then #3 then spam #1. But my team usually dies when I neglect heals. I wonder why....

Tome of Courage is a pure heal moment for the guardian - but his casting is kinda slow.. you will get knocked down / interrupted when spamming that 1.5k heals. It does work in a pinch but I prefer Renewed Focus since the Cooldown makes it nearly spammable (90 secs) in a protracted boss fights. (ALL BOSS FIGHTS ARE MORE THAN 10 MINS LONG)

Gear wise, go for Vit/Prec/Heal - I wish there's Vit/Tough/Heal but there isn't any from my favorite dungeons.
Hope it helps.

 

[Angthoron]

Thanks, going to try it out, this does sound really good. Interesting, too, I think Renewed Focus got bashed earlier in the thread, but it does sound really handy, and 90 second CD is very good. I wish my Thief had 90 second CD elites that would actually be useful.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

In my limited experience, I would argue that Stand Your Ground can be replaced with Save Yourselves depending on the situation, and potentially Altruistic Healing (numbers are a mystery, as usual) with full shout-monkey approach could make you heal-tank better. Honor could also be dropped a tier down and instead Virtues raised for either Justice or Resolve boost trait.

 

[RK47]

Altruistic healing gives around 70-100 HP per trigger- not a lot, but adds up if you buff repeatedly.

• Triggers healing for every boon applied. Applying area-of-effect boons will trigger healing for each ally affected (including yourself) and skills that apply boons repeatedly over time, such as symbols, will trigger healing with each pulse.
• Skills that apply multiple stacks of might will trigger healing for each stack.
• Synergizes well with traits and skills that rapidly reapply boons, such as symbols, Empowering Might, and Empower.

I do admit that my original build was more towards self preservation then support - hence the self heal on meditation is pretty spammy and 300 Toughness from Valor goes towards preserving yourself too.

But let's try a Selfless Support build this time (I might try this tonight)
Radiance 20
Honor 30
Virtue 20

Once again, the goal of this build is to make sure your group stays alive and condition free.
Radiance 20
The first 15 points are solely dedicated to spamming Virtue of Justice to inflict blind and vulnerability when clearing trash or boss. This adds both defensive (next opponent attack misses) and offensive (vulnerability inflicted) support to your team.

The last 5 points is simply to give a little bit 'more' for triggering Signet of Judgment. With this trait, it is now a 20 sec cooldown Smite Condition - with Retaliation to party and Weakness debuff to enemies. Which is much better than a non-heal Smite Condition. When the signet is not activated, you gain 10% damage reduction, that will replace the missing 300 toughness when you drop 30 Valor from this build.

Honor 30
Remains largely the same. This is your primary heal traits and healing source. 200 Precision from 20 Radiance will aid you in landing those crits to refill your dodge bars quicker from Vigorous Precision Buff (Crit grants Vigor) etc, like I said, I think I like this build better, it has a much better synergy than 30 Valor being a completely selfish tank dump. And the shouts being condition converted into boon is amazing. You literally have no fear of conditions anymore in most encounters since both shouts are relative lowish in cooldowns, allowing your team to put more dps on their utility slots (Guardian DPS from their utility is merely Save Yourselves!). 28 seconds for Hold the line and 24 seconds for Stand your Ground! You could argue that Save Yourselves is worthy of the last utility slot but Signet of Judgment still gives bonus for not being activated and has very low cooldown.

Virtue 20
I must confess, the trait bonuses are pretty lackluster for Virtue, but if you look into their passive stat increases you start to realize why this trait tree needs to be kept 'suppressed.' Every point on Virtue reduces Virtue cooldown by 1% and increases duration of your boons by 1%. It makes an already spammy Virtue more spammier.

The first 15 points on Virtue creates a near never ending chain of Retaliation boon for your team as well as extra boons for your Virtue Trigger.
Here's literally what happens when you press F1 F2 and F3 in quick succession:
Everyone in team gains burning effect on their next attack.
Everyone in team gains gains Might. Inspired Virtue
Every enemy near you is inflicted with Blindness Justice is Blind
Every enemy near you is inflicted with Vulnerability Blind Exposure
Everyone in team is healed.
Everyone in team gains Regeneration. Inspired Virtue
Everyone in team gains Aegis.
Everyone in team gains Protection. Inspired Virtue
Everyone in team gains Retaliation x3 stacked duration. Virtue of Retribution
Everyone in team loses 3 conditions. Absolute Resolution

And that's without Renewed Focus

 

[RK47]

I spent some time with my Engineer over the weekend, getting him to lvl 47 in the process.
My verdict is: Quite a mess.

There's a lot of good things to be said about his utility skills and kit options, but the fact that his kits completely overshadowed his main weapons in PvE and World v World is shocking. It's almost like this class is never meant to invest on Legendary or Exotic weapons. There's no point, when you equip a weapon kit, all those weapon statistics, both off hand and main hand bonuses disappears. Hence, no sigil is necessary. You could wield a level 1 pistol and still wreak havoc with Flamethrower. Let's not even talk about the Grenade Kit that has out of whack dps when underwater and when traited properly spams twice the amount from the extreme range of 1500. POPAMOLE.

I have no issues with their utility skills, a lot of them are very DPS-oriented and very selfish. In contrast to the Guardian's team boons granting - Engineer is mostly self-buff oriented. Elixir Gun is clearly the exception to the rule and might work as a great Dungeon runner if you spam the right party buffs. And you don't even have to work for an Exotic weapon for DPS.

Except...some Toolbelts are too random.

The biggest issue with his tool-belt skills (F1-F4) becomes apparent when most of them does random effects.
Toss Elixir B and you don't know what you gonna get.
Toss Elixir H and you won't even be guaranteed of regeneration. Maybe the RNG decide to troll you and give you Vigor when you actually need Protection or Regeneration.
Toss Elixir S and you might get stealth OR you might get Stability. Two completely different buff that are both situational.

After enjoying the much more stable and safer Guardian's Virtue, this random tool belt of Engineer's is driving me nuts.
It's best to just pick a better gadget skill that comes with consistent buff rather than rely on random elixirs.
I've hardly participated on dungeon run, but one run to Ascalon Catacombs had me clearing a hive or some shit. The party was crying cause the nests were hard to hit with targetable attacks, oh well, bomb kit to the rescue. I just stayed on top of each nest and spammed the fuck out of the bombs. GG. When the boss fight starts, it's back to nade kits.

When I first picked this class, I thought I'd be a steam-powered sniper of some sort, but it turns out not to be case. Rifles are just not meant for sniping like warrior's Adrenaline Shot at 1500 range (outsniped by warrior). Most of his skills are sub 1000 range. Pistols are great for debuff and quick damage before switching to Flamethrower or the superior Grenade kit to start your main damage dealer.

It's a great kit class, but I'm sure arena net will realize the 'problem' and 'fix' Engineer in the future.

 

[Angthoron]

Thanks for the build write-ups, RK, that 2nd one looks pretty good as well. Did you try it out? What's the impression with it, if you have?

Also, went for another CM pug last night, got a yet another 2H guardian with us. Yeah, this one actually died a bunch of times, but nowhere the amount that I've seen melee die before. I actually wonder if ANet is secretly tweaking something, or if these guys know how to play quite well. He did switch out to mace/shield a time or two, but overall just ran with 2H Sword. Weird stuff.

 

[RK47]

I'm still at work, that's why I have the time to write all these shit up.
Rest assured, I'll be running with my regular guildies since we got used to each other.

 

[Kane]

 

[markec]

I had a interesting day yesterday.

First I gathered some onions and got a random dye only to find out it was rare kind and people were asking 5 gold pieces for it on a marketplace.

Then I found two rare weapons while killing random mobs (centaurs) which I didnt know was even possible to find outside dungeons. Maybe the fact that I was underleveled by five levels had something to do with it, so is it possible you get better loot drops the higher you difference between levels, also I didnt use any magic find boost items.

Also can someone invite me to the Codex guild, user: markec.5392

 

[RK47]

grats on nice starter cash markec.
ran a bunch of dungeon last night with the new setup. no wipes - pretty ok. had a few hairy moment when I had no more heals to give, but the reduction in damage taken and continued heals ensured that the party's individual heals are hardly on cooldown, so it's a great feeling when i'm out of options and they just pop their own heals, putting themselves back to near full health.

Also, I'm really digging the low cost re-spec feature of this game. Just 3 silvers 50 coppers at lvl 80. I can keep trying new builds.

 

[RK47]

Trying to build a Glass Cannon Staff Guardian for World v World

After much thinking I decided on this build for this weekend.
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simu....170.171.186.190.191.0.0.0.0.0.0.10.30.30.0.0
Armor & Gear consideration : Full Berserker set , either CoF pieces or Draconic crafted one would do.
Staff is pretty much CoF or Berzerker too.
Gems? Same thing.

Traits explained
10 Zeal : 100 Power + 10% Condition Duration
Fiery Wrath - More damage versus Burning targets - Judge Intervention Burns. Virtue F1 activation burns on next attack.
30 Radiance: 300 Precision + 300 Condition Damage
- Healer retaliation - The reason I pick shelter is because it blocks all attacks when channeling. This is more useful than an extra 2000 HP heal from Signet. So you can channel this, and while they're attacking you, their damage is BLOCKED and your RETALIATION is hitting them back.
- Searing Flames - Burning an enemy removes a boon. Regeneration, Protection. Whatever. We burn them down.
- Blind Exposure - Since triggering Virtue of Justice (F1) now triggers blind, our Judge Intervention > Blinding Justice > Vulnerability to people AROUND YOU!

30 Valor: 300 Toughness + 30% Critical Chance
- Retributive Armor: 5% of Toughness goes to Precision. More Crit.
- Focused Mind: Instant Judge's Intervention
- Altruistic Healing: Applying Boons heal you. Drop a symbol, heal self. Empowering Might (Staff #4) grants HP per stack of Might. Can be useful when you want to recover a little bit more HP.

Utility Slots:
- Save Yourself! Use this AFTER you teleport in with Judge's Intervention - That's right, save yourselves! I'm going in with my Bros!
- Stand your ground! Do this to stay standing and apply retaliation. Whoever tries to knock you down fails, whoever hits you, gets hurt.
- Judge's Intervention: How you gonna deliver pain from 1200 range.

Alright, I'm off work. Cya folks!

 

[Angthoron]

Some magnificent bastard has created a dragon timer tracker. It's still in beta, and doesn't take pre-events into consideration, but, it does work fairly well (Prepare to wait or do a couple events though): http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/

 

[RK47]

Yep I usually just rely on guildies. another benefit to having a large guild is that there's a lot of them around the world at once and they'd just go 'sunless up.' 'jormag up' etc on guild chat and at least a dozen would just drop what they're doing, teleport over and collect community chest.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

We’re in the middle of working on additional fixes for the FOV, we’ll have an update on this very shortly. We’ve been doing some very promising tests internally, will role out more info soon once we’re sure everything is working!

 

[RK47]

We’re in the middle of working on additional fixes for the FOV, we’ll have an update on this very shortly. We’ve been doing some very promising tests internally, will role out more info soon once we’re sure everything is working!

Crystal Desert gets outmanned buff.

 

[Angthoron]

We’re in the middle of working on additional fixes for the FOV, we’ll have an update on this very shortly. We’ve been doing some very promising tests internally, will role out more info soon once we’re sure everything is working!

Awesome. I kinda got used to it already, mostly, but more FOV fixes and more camera fixes in general would be awesome.

Also, had a run with some Italian guild today, a hunter, 2 warriors and a guardian, and holy shit, warriors and guardian were all melee and stuff just died. I've not seen dungeons cleared up so quickly, and that was their first runs in CM. Granted, they were full CoF, but still, holy fuck, they just destroyed everything, including the poisonbombing boss of Path 2.

 

[Shannow]

So, I'll be getting GW2 soonish. What server are the euro co'x fags running on?

 

[Kane]

So, I'll be getting GW2 soonish.

Don't.

 

[Excidium]

So, I'll be getting GW2 soonish. What server are the euro co'x fags running on?

Seafarer's Rest

 

[Angthoron]

So the Halloween event is pretty decent so far, if you don't like farming, there's an uncomplicated scavenging hunt, if you do like farming, go carve 150 pumpkins and collect candy (incidentally not a bad source of money if you get into a gate zerg), plus the totally derpy brawling.

Protip: If you want to carve pumpkins, just keep doing it in Lion's Arch, then log out once you get all cut, log back in, you'll likely be in overflow, so just keep repeating until satisfied - just keep relogging into overflow. Quite quick and easy that way, if a bit mind-numbing.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Is anyone in a server where Arah is not bugged? It seems that a large number of them have bugged DEs, making it impossible to access it. I'm trying to finish my Arah set and this has gone on for days.