The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Bought this, probably going to roll a Norn Guardian first (tips welcome). So what were the Brodexer servers again?

 

[RK47]

EU Server is Seafarer's Rest
Do team up with me sometime, I'm just starting out and MMOs are pretty dull alone.
Current chars:

Arkay Fortyseven - Human Engineer
Lord Generic - Human Guardian
Farkov - Norn Guardian

 

[Angthoron]

So I decided to try a venomshare thief in sPVP. The concept behind venomshare is running either three poisons + thieves guild or 2 poisons + ambush + thieves guild. On top of that, you want the 30pt shadow arts skill Venomous aura, which applies your poisons to the attacks of all nearby allies. You may also want to pick up the 20pt shadow arts trait Leeching Venom, which makes your venom attacks steal life, the 30pt Deadly Arts skill that makes all venoms last for an additional strike and the 20pt deadly art trait that makes your venom skills recharge 20% faster. On top of that, you're also getting the 15pt deadly art minor that makes your poisons give vulnerability and the 25pt that makes you do additional damage to things that have conditions.

Now, venom conditions don't stack in intensity (boo), but they do stack in duration. And pets/minions count as allies. And all allies benefit from the traits you gave your venoms (last an extra strike, heal on attack, weaken on poison).
I tried running with a swarm necromancer and popping my 3 poisons in short succession. Dear god, everything melted. EVERYTHING. It's not as bursty as heartseeker crit spam. But if you have an ally or two nearby the short-term dps is through the roof.

Next up I'm gonna try out Leaping Super Immortal Death Troll Legendary Unicorn Blossom™.
It's a double-dagger build running signet of malice, calthrops, roll for initiative, shadowstep and dagger storm. With energized sigils to regain stamina and maxed acrobatics/trickery. Fun skills will be:
Assassins reward which heals you whenever you use initiative.
Uncatchable, which leaves behind calthrops when you dodge.
Quick pockets, which gives you more initiative when you swap weapons.
Slowed pulse, which gives you regeneration when you have 5+ stacks of bleeding
Power of inertia, which gives you might when you dodge.
Also the minors Shadow refuge (free smoke bombs @ 25% hp), Feline grace (dodge returns some of the stamina used), Kleptomaniac (stealing gives 3 initiative) and preparedness (+3 maximum initiative).

Between signet of malice and assassins reward you should easily outheal the paltry amount of damage you'll receive in the few split-seconds you're not either dodging (and dropping calthrops) or spinning in the air with death blossom.

Of course, both builds rely heavily on conditions, so any guardian running save yourselves/contemplation of purity is gonna be a right pain. D:
But then, guardian pretty much hardcounters thief no matter what setup the thief is running.

Gotta admit, running relaxed PvE and not being capped yet (yay, limited gaming time at the moment) I've been running some pretty basic builds so far, this specialization stuff sounds pretty neat. Is there some builds site to look at properly? I checked a couple out but they seemed sort of limited and rather generic, and I'm a bit wary of going to random sites with all the account fishing going around at the moment.

 

[Average Manatee]

GW1 got an ele update. It's almost hilarious how bad Anet is at balancing it nowadays. Truly dartboard buffs across the board. Pretending to care about PvP but won't revert the silly GvG alternations they made in the past, and in PvE Anet seems to think that the worst problems eles face is that Flare spammers aren't all that effective. Even renames an entire game mechanic just for the lulz. Well, almost renames. About 1/3rd of the references to "Exhaustion" still haven't been changed to "Overcast".

Now, venom conditions don't stack in intensity (boo), but they do stack in duration. And pets/minions count as allies. And all allies benefit from the traits you gave your venoms (last an extra strike, heal on attack, weaken on poison).
I tried running with a swarm necromancer and popping my 3 poisons in short succession. Dear god, everything melted. EVERYTHING. It's not as bursty as heartseeker crit spam. But if you have an ally or two nearby the short-term dps is through the roof.

short term dps through the roof

doesn't stack in intensity

It's like you don't even bother to make sense within your own posts.

I've tried a poison-based build and aside from taking a minute to kill most players, the problem is that your venom skills have horrific recharge and only one of them actually does poison anyway. Have fun poisoning an enemy 6 times and then waiting almost 40s before you can do it again. If there is one decent part to venom builds it's that it stacks weakness pretty well. Otherwise...shit build.

 

[Angthoron]

It's a good thing you're not playing WoW bro, you'd burst a vein with all the retarded shit Blizzard does there.

On an unrelated note:

GW2 sales break 2 million, http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/13/guild-wars-2-breaks-the-two-million-sales-mark/ - and that's with the 1,5 week sales halt (which I gotta say was quite a rare move for the industry that is more front-loaded than Pamela Anderson in her most silicon days).

GW2 dev states that GW2 will receive free content updates rather than sell them as mini-DLCs: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/guild-wars-2-free-for-all-2/

Guess they're going by the GW1 model then, more or less?

 

[Tycn]

GW1 got an ele update. It's almost hilarious how bad Anet is at balancing it nowadays. Truly dartboard buffs across the board. Pretending to care about PvP but won't revert the silly GvG alternations they made in the past, and in PvE Anet seems to think that the worst problems eles face is that Flare spammers aren't all that effective. Even renames an entire game mechanic just for the lulz. Well, almost renames. About 1/3rd of the references to "Exhaustion" still haven't been changed to "Overcast".

Oh wow. It doesn't even seem necessary for them to expedite the game's demise, given the number of players.

Are you finding GW2 to be an adequate substitute, PvP wise?

 

[Average Manatee]

GW1 got an ele update. It's almost hilarious how bad Anet is at balancing it nowadays. Truly dartboard buffs across the board. Pretending to care about PvP but won't revert the silly GvG alternations they made in the past, and in PvE Anet seems to think that the worst problems eles face is that Flare spammers aren't all that effective. Even renames an entire game mechanic just for the lulz. Well, almost renames. About 1/3rd of the references to "Exhaustion" still haven't been changed to "Overcast".

Oh wow. It doesn't even seem like they need to expedite the game's demise, judging from the number of players.

Are you finding GW2 to be an adequate substitute?

GW2 is more of an over the shoulder Diablo 3 with a slightly more complex skill system than it is a GW1 successor. I'm starting to doubt we will ever see anything like GW1 again.

I don't think they are trying to sink GW1, just bad at their job and have no experience outside GW2. They probably put their junior staff/interns on the job, who haven't even played GW1 and have no idea where to start.

For example, Stone Sheath (from the last ele buff...) is considered way too powerful defensively in PVP. Anet's solution in this update? Make it cost 10e instead of 5e. Anyone who has played GW1 knows that such a change would be almost entirely ineffectual. Could have reduced duration, removed immunity to crits, increased recharge, whatever. But not increasing a non-spammable spell from the lowest energy usage level to the second lowest energy usage level.

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's almost hilarious how bad Anet is at balancing it nowadays.

Nowadays?

 

[Saark]

Hey Ulminati, nice find that Venomshare applies to Pets aswell. Gotta run this ourselves from time to time in the future.

As to how to finish a mesmer, theres two kinds of marks above peoples heads. The crosshair when someone calls them, and a reddish arrow that simply shows your target. When someone goes invisible like a mesmer or thief it stays on the person and shows again the moment they become visible. Just wait for the finishing move until the mesmer with the arrow is visible and stomp his head in. God I hate mesmers...

 

[Angthoron]

Also, to get this one right - if there's 5 people using same type of poison hitting the same target, what will actually happen?
1) Only 1 application of poison, nothing more.
2) 5 applications of poison, 1 from each source?
3) 1 application, longer duration?

I've not really had a chance to play with poisons properly yet, especially in a group, so I'm kinda curious as to how it works. Also, does Basilisk Poison work at all? It seems to only turn stuff to stone sometimes (using it for underwater combat mainly), so, uh... What's with that?

 

[Saark]

It depends on the condition they are applying. Most stack in duration, like Burning or Poison (once had 60seconds of poison on me after a 5second fight, imagine not having condition removal handy at that time). Others stack in intensity, like Vulnerability or Bleeding, the latter increasing the intervals between the next damage tick. And conditions like Immobilize or Daze simply overwrite each other. There probably is a list out there in case you need the specifics, but for the ones that stack in amount and not duration these are Bleeding, Confusion and Vulnerability.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

So most of us are on Seafarer's Rest?

 

[Angthoron]

Yep, most of EU Codexians are there.

It depends on the condition they are applying. Most stack in duration, like Burning or Poison (once had 60seconds of poison on me after a 5second fight, imagine not having condition removal handy at that time). Others stack in intensity, like Vulnerability or Bleeding, the latter increasing the intervals between the next damage tick. And conditions like Immobilize or Daze simply overwrite each other. There probably is a list out there in case you need the specifics, but for the ones that stack in amount and not duration these are Bleeding, Confusion and Vulnerability.

Cheers, that clears it up.

 

[Ulminati]

5 tourneys. 2 wins, 2 2nd places and a 3rd place. We bring Glory to Codexia

 

[Ulminati]

Bought this, probably going to roll a Norn Guardian first (tips welcome). So what were the Brodexer servers again?

Depending on what you wanna do with your guardian, I leveled one ot 80 solo greatsword PvE, ran most dungeons as a tanky mace/shield, I've done some sPVP as staff/scepter and atm I'm rocking tournaments as a point defense hammerguard. Lemm eknow what you want your guardian to do and I'll give pointers.

The Kodex Kool Krew is mostly on Seafarer's rest. Me, Berekan, Suicidebunny, Zed, Mangoose and a bunch of others can all toss you an inv if you tell us what your name is.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's almost hilarious how bad Anet is at balancing it nowadays.

Nowadays?

Mesmer update was pretty good all around. Derv update was great for PvE, kind of ugly PvP-wise but nerfed (relatively) quickly. Not that PvP was all that great by then, but at least those updates fixed their problems pretty quickly. But Next-gen Anet knows that the biggest problem in the game with Eles is that Firestorm wasn't used in PvE because the recharge was 30s.

 

[Weierstraß]

"Exhaustion" still haven't been changed to "Overcast".

What? That's joke, right? What kind of reasoning goes behind something like this? I mean after seven years, after the game's been abandoned in favor of its sequel. Stupid balance changes I can understand, anyone can be stupid. A terminology change like this is not stupid, it's just bizarre nonsense. It's completely incomprehensible.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, it's retarded. It's almost like the kind of decision you would make if you were making changes to a certain several week-old MMO rather than a game that has used exhaustion for years. It doesn't even make any sense in the context of other skills. Does the ranger spirit that doubles exhaustion now double "Overcast"? WTF will that even mean? When you get exhaustion from using a sword attack (rare circumstances, but it can happen), are you now "overcasted"?

They have added entirely new mechanics in semi-recent updates, like dualcast (Ele combination AoE/Enchants that trigger on both you and an ally), and flash enchantments (Instant-cast dervish enchantments, since wasting time casting them previously made them mostly useless). But those were actual good mechanics changes that made classes work better, not silly changing of words out for other words because who knows the fuck why.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Bought this, probably going to roll a Norn Guardian first (tips welcome). So what were the Brodexer servers again?

Depending on what you wanna do with your guardian, I leveled one ot 80 solo greatsword PvE, ran most dungeons as a tanky mace/shield, I've done some sPVP as staff/scepter and atm I'm rocking tournaments as a point defense hammerguard. Lemm eknow what you want your guardian to do and I'll give pointers.

The Kodex Kool Krew is mostly on Seafarer's rest. Me, Berekan, Suicidebunny, Zed, Mangoose and a bunch of others can all toss you an inv if you tell us what your name is.

Well, Greatsword is something I wanted to use a lot, seeing how even the more sensible body types for Norn are still steroid abusers. And besides, goes with the whole territory.

 

[Ulminati]

We ended up playing 7 tourneys. First one were a partial where we got in 2nd place. Then we hooked up with 2 norweigans and another pugger and got a 1st place and a 3rd place. Then the pugger got kicked and we got another norweigan instead. Got us another 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Then we lost one, the 2 good norweigans left and we got another pair of shitty norweigans in their place. Lost one more and called it a day.

There was a marked difference in quality in the opposition we met, but most teams played pretty well. There weren't any retarded clusterfucks way away from the points and we had some really tense 1v2-2v2 back and forth fights trying to keep mid from flipping.
I'm going to toot my own horn and say Hammerguardian is pretty much the best thing ever on the third map. 2 really strong knockbacks followed by longish immobilizes and 12 seconds of stability means you can pretty much guarantee a Cocktower neutralize unless they have 3+ peepz or a similar guardian or earth elementalist opposing you.

Our strategy that won us most maps went as follows: 1 hammerguard, 1 meditationguard, 1 glass cannon warrior, 2 mesmers - later a mesmer and a ranger.
Map 1: glass cannon warrior tried to steal enemy boss, hammrguard went for keep, meditaitonguard went for closest control point, last 2 went on our boss. Everyone collapsed on keep after bosses 'cept one who went for the enemy side point. After that, Hammerguard stayed mid, Mediguard stayed side and the other 3 roam to defend/flip. when bosses respawn, same combi of taking ours/stealing theirs.
Map 2: Guardians take close point. Rest go graveyard. Once close point is taken, hammrguard stays def while mediguard knocks down gate in case we want to get lord later. Once side point is stable, hammerguard goes graveyard, mediguard stays side and the rest roam to flip/defend.
Map 3: Mesmer on treb, hammerguard on cocktower, warrior goes for enemy treb, mediguard/ranger take close sidepoint. Mediguard holds close sidepoint, warrior/ranger roam.

Well, Greatsword is something I wanted to use a lot, seeing how even the more sensible body types for Norn are still steroid abusers. And besides, goes with the whole territory.

With greatsword you wanna go meditations in PvP or Promethium Pally in PvE. Promethium Pally is 20pt radiance to make your VoJ refresh on kills and enemies get vulnerable on blind, since your greatsword 4 and active VoJ add blind. Also get the one who makes your spirit weapons apply burning on attack. In zeal you want 30pts for the skill that makes you do +10% damage to burning enemies and the one that makes spirit weapons not be destroyed when commanded. Also get the +5% greatsword damage.
This doesn't come into its own until you get the second trait book @lv40. Until then, I reccomend getting the +10% vs burning enemies, judges intervention, purging flames, signet heal and the +power or +condition damage signets. That'll serve you well from lv 10-40.
For your second weapon I reccomend either mace/shield as an oh-fuck with 5 being AoE knockback, 3 being retaliation and 2 being AoE heal. Or Sword+focus for single target burst. You cab precharge the focus #4 skill (lasts 4 seconds iirc) and use the sword #2 skill to teleport to the enemy at the last second before exploding for a nice initiation. alternately, scepter+torch for setting yourself on fire and smite is pretty solid. I'd avoid hammer. It's mainly good in PvP for the knockback+immobilize to defend points.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Okay, does GW2 have an extensive point-spending build where I'd have to get a respec token or something, or can I shift around freely?

(This means do I need a level-by-level guide on what to get, or do I unlock everything simply by use)

 

[Ulminati]

Okay, does GW2 have an extensive point-spending build where I'd have to get a respec token or something, or can I shift around freely?

(This means do I need a level-by-level guide on what to get, or do I unlock everything simply by use)

You can respec abilities at will outside combat. Once you unlock a trait skill (10, 20 30pt) you can change that skill freely outside combat. Trait point reallocation costs a small amount of money (1-3 silver depending on level iirc) to respec. You can respec traits freely in PvP when you're in the sPVP lobby.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Okay, can you give me an example of the theory build, or a link to one?

EDIT: The handle is vaarnaaarne and the current character is Kalevinpoika. I'm also going to play a Sylvari Mesmer (I really liked creating one of these, lots of nice options) and a Jewgineer (Human Engineer).

 

[Angthoron]

Okay, can you give me an example of the theory build, or a link to one?

EDIT: The handle is vaarnaaarne and the current character is Kalevinpoika. I'm also going to play a Sylvari Mesmer (I really liked creating one of these, lots of nice options) and a Jewgineer (Human Engineer).

http://www.gw2builds.org/view/748048/greatsword_leveling_burn_build_lvl45

Levelling build, I suppose this is in the right direction, covers the skills Ulminati mentions at least.

 

[rashiakas]

Do you need to be on the same server for Tournaments?