Guild Wars 2

Morbius · 19 Apr 2013 at 10:14

Morbius said:
I think I'm leaning towards Guardian now anyway. It really depends on what the others choose. The guy I think is going to play elementalist hasn't completely decided yet - there's a small chance he might pick a warrior in which case I'd go mesmer instead.

OK, he's decided on Elementalist so I shall be playing a Guardian.

I'm assuming that I'll need to stack vitality and toughness if I want to be a human shield?

Porceliamone · 19 Apr 2013 at 10:52

Not necessarily. Guardians have huge defensive capabilities in their traits and skills regardless of armour and runes.

You could probably run fairly balanced and still be quite a tank. Toughness relates to armour though, to take less damage from all attacks and generally be alive for longer! I'd advise pushing that up over anything else but seriously recommend you check out the Guardian forums on the official website.

I'm guessing if you go full on meatshield though it may get boring pretty quickly. Everyone likes to smash face too!

HeX · 19 Apr 2013 at 11:13

No such thing as a 'tank' in GW2. When it gets to the high level content it's more down to being able to dodge, stay out of AoE, and know your class.

As for armour, 2700 is the magic number, past that the damage reduction isn't worth the loss in other stats, and honestly it doesn't do much to help you survive. I've run a full tank Mace + Shield warrior before just to test, with 3200+ armour, and dungeon/fractal bosses will still rip you to shreds no fuss if you just try to faceroll them.

Plus you lose a ton of DPS by running Pow/Vit/Tough armour.

I currently run this setup on my Warrior (switch out banners as needed, or switch traits to healing shouts if someone else is running banners)

I've done every path of every dungeon, and am sat on lv34 fractals atm.

GW2 seems to prefer killing fast over staying alive longer, so DPS is nearly always king.

However when you do come to longer lasting fights, this is where Guardians really help.

Guardians have the same base health as a caster class, so rather low, but you can have the same armour as a Warrior. But where Guardians shine is their utility and the plethora of boons at your disposal. They have near constant personal protection and regen, plus party wide protection, regen and stability. Then they have Wall of Reflection and their Shield Bubble skills that can stop all incoming projectile attacks (a Godsend for high level fractals!), plus good ranged (scepter) and melee damage, and the ability to ball enemies easy with binding blade (ready for aoe or bursting down).

Guardians are like the utility belt of the group, there isn't a situation where a Guardian isn't useful.

PooBrain · 19 Apr 2013 at 12:11

Been playing the trial as a Sylvari Ranger and it's sweet so i'm gonna buy it either Monday or Friday latest!

Solz · 19 Apr 2013 at 12:24

I bought the game a few months back, loving t so far currently lv 80 warrior, the server i am on is Piken Square, in a guild that play a lot of WvW which is mainly what i enjoy playing at the moment.

nin9abadga · 19 Apr 2013 at 13:01

i've not been playing too long, i tried most of the classes but settled on a double axe warrior and a shortbow/longbow ranger as my mains (atm). Warrior was insanely easy to level, I have him at 80 but it's pretty dull playing him. My Ranger is now 50, it's taking longer to level but I've died much less even though I've been underlevelled for zones, taken on more elites and found myself in much more difficult situations.

I'm on Ring of Fire, I joined a guild but it's pretty small I need to find a bigger one I think.

sean · 20 Apr 2013 at 13:13

nin9abadga said:
I'm on Ring of Fire, I joined a guild but it's pretty small I need to find a bigger one I think.

What do you play, dungeons, PvE, WvW? If you're into WvW I think ICON or Pain Intended are still the places to be on RoF.

No1newts · 20 Apr 2013 at 18:02

Has there been a recent patch updating event difficulties in higher zones?

Arah battle (to capture) The lab event next to Tequatl and Tequatl himself all seem substantially harder than they were a couple of weeks ago.

They are still doable, but the amount of people getting slapped around was very surprising.

Anon-e-mouse · 20 Apr 2013 at 20:57

That lab event is now really annoying.. unless there's more that one player there, it's a toss-up if it fails, and they all hit like a truck.

Tequatl wasn't altered much IIRC, however the Jormag encounter was buffed.

Orr had a look-over, which apparently involved removing some of the risen, and altering some of the CC that they had, not really aware of other specific changes to Arah.

No1newts · 21 Apr 2013 at 07:24

Decided to start a Guardian and in a rush, was able to power level 2 to 17 with cooking

Took about 7.15g to get it to 400 and about hour and half work.

Happy days

thezakarum · 21 Apr 2013 at 11:42

No1newts said:
Decided to start a Guardian and in a rush, was able to power level 2 to 17 with cooking

Took about 7.15g to get it to 400 and about hour and half work.

Happy days

Should have done it when you were level 70, the experiance from crafting scales.

No1newts · 21 Apr 2013 at 11:56

thezakarum said:
Should have done it when you were level 70, the experiance from crafting scales.

Doh!

Schoolboy error!

Should be able to get armour to around 200 which should hopefully carry me to 20

Still finishing my Engi which is 67, more than enough karma pots from daily to kit out in exotics come 80

Also, have they gimped the drop rate of the orb things from yellow/orange armour? I was getting 4/5 now all of a sudden I'm lucky if I pick up 1/5. On the back of good drops I was about 30g across the account. Down to about 20 now after my cooking blowout and orb drop off.

Aedus · 21 Apr 2013 at 12:05

thezakarum said:
Should have done it when you were level 70, the experiance from crafting scales.

It scales, but you don't lose out.

Leveling from 1-2 is pretty much the same as 79-80, yes there may be a tiny bit of difference, but it's not a massive difference like in other MMO's.

You'll gain the same amount of levels from crafting at whatever point you do it from, so it doesn't really matter when you craft, you will save pretty much the same amount of time.

Btw if you want to power level via crafting use this:
http://www.gw2crafts.net/

It updates with prices so you can see what the cheapest way to do each one is.

No1newts · 21 Apr 2013 at 12:34

Aedus said:
It scales, but you don't lose out.

Leveling from 1-2 is pretty much the same as 79-80, yes there may be a tiny bit of difference, but it's not a massive difference like in other MMO's.

You'll gain the same amount of levels from crafting at whatever point you do it from, so it doesn't really matter when you craft, you will save pretty much the same amount of time.

Btw if you want to power level via crafting use this:
http://www.gw2crafts.net/

It updates with prices so you can see what the cheapest way to do each one is.

Wow that's surprisingly cheap!

Could get most the way to 80 off the back of profs. I'm not particularly looking to power level and still going to 100% I just hate the initial pre level 10 period when you have very few skills.

arekgreenman888 · 21 Apr 2013 at 16:26

anyone else having problems loging in with GD2 free trail weekend? I've registered but its not letting me log in. is it a set up? ta

HeX · 23 Apr 2013 at 15:37

Flame and Frost: Retribution

Retribution will be the final installment of the Flame and Frost living story arc. To tie everything off, we're getting a new story dungeon that'll take us deep underground into the Molten Weapon Facilities. Structured PvP is getting some love in the form of custom PvP arenas and spectator mode. Guilds are getting more missions and new rewards. The gem store will be getting new stuff.

Molten Weapon Facilities

The final act of our struggle against the Molten Alliance is coming up. We're going to fight alongside Braham and Rox as we take the fight to the enemy.

Together, we've beaten back the Molten Alliance. Now the time has come to pursue them into their stronghold and end the threat for good. Our goal is to rescue captives and bust up as much Molten machinery as possible.

The dungeon hasn't been built by the normal dungeon team. Instead, it was tackled by the same folks who made the Halloween and Wintersday instanced content. The whole dungeon builds up to a final boss encounter. You'll be prepared for that encounter by all the mobs you destroy on your way through the dungeon; you'll see a certain mechanic right up front, then a different one once you've learned to handle the first, then perhaps both in combination, so that by the time you get to the big finale you're all ready to kick butt and take names.

The dungeon is balanced to be somewhere "between story and explorable modes" in terms of difficulty. (Given that I can name a few explorable mode dungeons that are way simpler than some of the story modes, that rating needs to be taken with a grain of salt.) The team expects that it'll take really experienced and skilled teams between 30 and 45 minutes to complete (that length is due in part, I'm told, to a little bit of time-gating), while less coordinated teams will find themselves spending an hour or so inside.

As living story content, the dungeon will be available only for a set amount of time. Because of that, it can have pretty neat rewards -- "really cool ones" that "you'll want to come back for." There's no need to run the dungeon multiple times to get the whole story, but folks who do go in multiple times over the course of its presence in the world will find that it changes over time. There's variety in some of the things that happen and combinations of enemies in order to give players the feeling that they're not just ransacking the same facility over and over. To reinforce that, the entrances and exits to the dungeon will be moving throughout the cycle.

General New Stuff

April's Retribution patch will bring in other goodies, too. There's a new ability for arrow cart mastery as well as five new levels for the guard killer ability line. New guild missions (including a new guild rush that includes turning into Quaggans, awwww yissss!) are being added. You can now purchase WvW siege equipment decorated with your guild's logo. You can also get "back banners" that display your guild's logo. I'm not certain how a back banner differs from a cloak or cape, but apparently it does. My personal bet is that these back banners will be on the higher end of personal rewards. My other personal bet is that, sans substantial evidence that they're truly different from cloaks, the name of back banner will not stick around long in player parlance. And because money is made for spending, there will be new items in the gem store. The sonic tunneling tool will allow players to travel for short distances underground. You'll also be able to buy four new weapon skins, two of which are weapons belonging to our buddies Rox and Braham.

Structred PvP updates

ArenaNet is bringing in some major support for sPvP. We've seen a bit of this with different queue structures, changing tournament types, new maps, and the recent introduction of leaderboards. The team is stepping up its game, however, with the incoming patch. Custom arenas and spectator mode will both be making their beta debut.

Arena starter kits and time tokens will be available through the gem store. The starter kit will, as you may have guessed, allow you to set up your arena. It also comes with a month of time for your custom space. Time tokens will be necessary to keep your arena open after that month. Anybody can contribute time to an arena; if you're splitting with your guild, or you spend a lot of time in someone's arena and want to help out, you can totally just apply your time token to it and be good to go.

You have all sorts of controls over your custom arena, should you have both the capacity and interest to make one. You can set a name, a password (or a lack of password), a logon message, the team size, the time and score limit, the respawn type and timing, whether or not the "ready" button is in use, the number of players required to kick the game off, the number of slots that are reserved for members, the membership list, the list of banned players, map rotation, whether or not you want progression (that is, if kills, losses, and the like will be recorded), whether you want players to be able to swap out gear and skills, and whether or not autobalancing happens.

That's a lot of options! To help you navigate them, ANet has overhauled the browser to be way more helpful and informative. You'll be able to see which custom arenas you can join and search by certain settings. You can also save custom arenas as favorites so they're easy to find.

Spectator mode will be available for hotjoinable sPvP and in custom arenas. As you enter a match, you'll have an option to join as red team, blue team, random team, or spectator. You'll be able to pick a player's point of view to see from; this will allow you to inspect all of her gear, traits, and skills. You'll also be able to choose from fixed cameras that hang out near high-traffic areas if you'd rather see combat around a specific point rather than the way a single player is maneuvering.

At present, spectator mode is possible only for live spectating, without any option for playback.

No1newts · 23 Apr 2013 at 18:06

Sounds good.

The guild I'm in is a decent one but they do guild missions at stupid times is the problem

I normally avoid short term dungeons but will be giving this one a go

HeX · 24 Apr 2013 at 08:30

First pic of Guild back banners.

Porceliamone · 26 Apr 2013 at 09:44

Criteria for getting a banner is?
Where is this screenie from?

PooBrain · 26 Apr 2013 at 10:28

Can't believe GW2 trial is only for a weekend...i'll buy it in about 3 weeks time anyways but still.