Guild Wars 2 Catch All

Scaphism wrote:

I agree that dodging and casting on the run are good mechanics to keep combat more active. However there are a lot of skills to manage in combat - many more than GW1 and most of the other DOTA-likes. So even though they've reduced the amount of self buffs and watching red bars, there's still a huge amount of information to keep track of. There are the 10 skills on your bar plus 5 more from a weapon swap, which means 15 skills at a minimum. It's also easy to swap in an entirely new skill bar (and weapon sets) when you break off from combat - so in every match each character has access to every single skill in their profession. You're never pinned down to a given build, so there's no real way to plan a set of counters by knowing what your opponent is running - because they can swap everything out.

BTW I believe you can change the major skills in your skill tree too (Select 2 instead of 1 etc.) when you are out of combat too.

I agree with you. My thing is you can not mod the interface so you can locate key information more conviently while you are in dynamic combat.

So.. I'm looking at the score projections and what next week's WvW matchups will be. unless there's a big swing this afternoon/evening, tiers 2 through 5 will not see a single change in ranking.

Looks like we've finally reached stable rankings, exciting times =)

Tenebrous wrote:
Scaphism wrote:

I agree that dodging and casting on the run are good mechanics to keep combat more active. However there are a lot of skills to manage in combat - many more than GW1 and most of the other DOTA-likes. So even though they've reduced the amount of self buffs and watching red bars, there's still a huge amount of information to keep track of. There are the 10 skills on your bar plus 5 more from a weapon swap, which means 15 skills at a minimum. It's also easy to swap in an entirely new skill bar (and weapon sets) when you break off from combat - so in every match each character has access to every single skill in their profession. You're never pinned down to a given build, so there's no real way to plan a set of counters by knowing what your opponent is running - because they can swap everything out.

BTW I believe you can change the major skills in your skill tree too (Select 2 instead of 1 etc.) when you are out of combat too.

I agree with you. My thing is you can not mod the interface so you can locate key information more conviently while you are in dynamic combat.

Yep, that's correct for traits. A clear example would be switching to the 50% falling damage major trait just before jumping down a cliff, then quickly switching back to combat trait after you've landed and start healing up.

I also wanted to say that I'm not sure how my tone has come across in my last few posts, but I'm not aiming to be confrontational or cynical about PvP here. As Killtrash noted, GW1's PvP really clicked with me. I wasn't expecting GW2's PvP to grab me the same way, and I'm not at a point in my life anymore where I could really master the it the way I did 6-7 years ago.

As for War Machine, I can't tell who's in that photo but we really clicked with WM's tournament team when we faced them. Even though they beat us in the finals at Leipzig.

AndrewA wrote:

So I've started trying to make gold via the auction house because I loathe grinding, but I want better gear. A couple of helpful sites that I've found so far are:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/
http://tpcalc.com/

Last night I was tooling around with short term flips for profit, and came out about 50s ahead (10G seed money) despite learning the hard way that listing fees are not refunded.

Quick tip: to calculate the profitability of a flip, add 20%* to your buy price, like tipping at a restaurant. There's a neat trick to the math for this - no need for tpcalc or a calculator. Move the decimal place to the left 1 position, then double the result. Add that to the original. It's a rough estimate, rule of thumb, but works for me.

Say you're buying Tiny Icy Bags at 23c ea. 10% is 2.3c, double that is 4.6c - round up(always). 23c + 5c = 28c, your target for profitability(not break even).

This breaks down at very low values. Your minimum listing fee is ALWAYS 1c, and your minimum sales commission is ALWAYS 1c.
Therefore, you have to do special math below 19c.
10c + 20% = 12c - 1c listing -1c sales = 10c. Break-even. No profit. The trading post seems to round fractions of copper up, so 12c might actually be taking a loss, I forget.

* - The actual factor is 1.176. If you multiply your purchase price by 1.176 (equivalent to adding 17.6%), you get the exact break-even point. I prefer to err on the side of profit and ease of mental math, therefore 20% is what I use, especially since it simply involves moving the decimal one digit to the left and doubling.

AndrewA wrote:

So I've started trying to make gold via the auction house because I loathe grinding, but I want better gear. A couple of helpful sites that I've found so far are:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/
http://tpcalc.com/

Last night I was tooling around with short term flips for profit, and came out about 50s ahead (10G seed money) despite learning the hard way that listing fees are not refunded.

If you really want money, just 100% an area and sell all the loot you get. That and the rewards can get the money building up pretty quick.

karmajay wrote:

If you really want money, just 100% an area and sell all the loot you get. That and the rewards can get the money building up pretty quick.

That's what I'm doing right now. My main's a sylvari, and I just went with the story until I get stuck around level 18. So when that happened, I just decided to explore and 100% all starting areas. I'm almost done with Queensdale, and so far so good. I've made a fair amount of silver in the process, and certainly don't need to walk anywhere, I just teleport when I need to. Oh, and I gained a few levels too, I'm now 23 or 24, so it's a win-win situation.

karmajay wrote:
AndrewA wrote:

So I've started trying to make gold via the auction house because I loathe grinding, but I want better gear. A couple of helpful sites that I've found so far are:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/
http://tpcalc.com/

Last night I was tooling around with short term flips for profit, and came out about 50s ahead (10G seed money) despite learning the hard way that listing fees are not refunded.

If you really want money, just 100% an area and sell all the loot you get. That and the rewards can get the money building up pretty quick.

Keeping in mind that I'm level 80, I'm looking for a money-making venture that I can do between playing WvW.... i.e. something that isn't time intensive. Hopefully understanding the market gets me there. Maybe it's just a pipe dream though.

So I'm bouncing between GW 2 and Swtor and I'm hitting a wall in Guid Wars. It's still a great game but I don't feel the same desire to log on that much. The hearts and dynamic events are getting a bit repetitive, and going back to a Bioware game has made me realize just how cheesy the main story is in GW. I also find the dungeons to be fun but a bit time consuming. Getting through Ascalonian Catacombs took upwards of 2 hours for me, and thats really long for a beginner dungeon.

Does anyone have suggestions for making it over the level 40 slump? Are there some cool areas I should be looking forward to or should I jump back into later dungeons? I'm debating whether I just play for WVW, but leveling in PVP feels slow.

Hmmm, which areas are available to you should be fairly self explanatory. If you're not already, don't stick to one area and try to clear it, but move around. I find getting on event chains quite fruitful for getting xp, and the lowest one I really like is in north Harahti hinterlands, starting from seraph captured camps.

I bounced between getting 100% in areas and story missions to get to 80, with a little WvW to shake things up. Generally when the story missions brought me to a new zone, I'd 100% it before doing the mission. Then I'd do the story missions until they brought me to a new zone or got above my level, at which point I'd do some WvW or pick a low-level zone to 100%.

As annoying as the story missions are (especially if you're doing an alt), it does provide a nice chunk of xp.

Stengah wrote:

I bounced between getting 100% in areas and story missions to get to 80, with a little WvW to shake things up. Generally when the story missions brought me to a new zone, I'd 100% it before doing the mission. Then I'd do the story missions until they brought me to a new zone or got above my level, at which point I'd do some WvW or pick a low-level zone to 100%.

Yeah I did the same and the levels just flew by.

I am taking a break until the holiday content, at 250 hours I needed a break Still have plenty to do, have not finished the story yet, about 74% complete.

jdzappa wrote:

Getting through Ascalonian Catacombs took upwards of 2 hours for me, and thats really long for a beginner dungeon.

That one took 1.5h for me when I did it the first time. It's certainly not short.

CM is a nice choice for a compact intro dungeon.

Some of the AC boss fights are poorly designed, especially for a players first instance. That twins fight especially. It usually devolves into a war of attrition unless you can exploit a bug to separate them at the start.

Crafting (especially 'discovery') gives a huge chunk of xp if you are looking to get a few levels under your belt before moving forward in adventuring again. Cooking is a pretty easy one to get started with if you've been collecting plants along the way and depositing collectables. Plus, eating while adventuring gives an XP bonus in addition to the other food-specific perks (like magic find, regeneration, condition damage and so forth).

Completing the daily is generally fairly quick to do -- kill 15 different mob types, x amount of mobs altogether (I don't remember exact #, but it isn't a lot), gather x amount of material (again, not a lot), and 5 dynamic events. Each step of the way, you get small bits of bonus xp, and then a nice chunk of xp when you have all of the daily requirements completed.

Cobble wrote:

Some of the AC boss fights are poorly designed, especially for a players first instance. That twins fight especially. It usually devolves into a war of attrition unless you can exploit a bug to separate them at the start.

No it requires team work and communication and not a hard thing to do with the right group. Running with a pug makes the possibility of taking forever to finish that much more likely.

ranalin wrote:
Cobble wrote:

Some of the AC boss fights are poorly designed, especially for a players first instance. That twins fight especially. It usually devolves into a war of attrition unless you can exploit a bug to separate them at the start.

No it requires team work and communication and not a hard thing to do with the right group. Running with a pug makes the possibility of taking forever to finish that much more likely.

If you don't want your early AC (or really any dungeon) runs to take forever, read up on some strategy guides/walkthroughs. Yeah it will take some of the "discovery" fun out of it, but it'll help you run it in a more reasonable amount of time. We can do a Dessa AC run in just over a half hour I think. AC has a lot of tricks to learn which makes it tough on your first run.

AC is quite a bit of fun. I like the mix of bosses with some trash between. We've done the story and the butler in CM and I'm extremely unimpressed with that dungeon. Not many interesting encounters, almost no waypoints and room after room of lots of tough mobs. Feels like too much of a slog. Ran a few fractals now, though, and those are pretty awesome.

jdzappa wrote:

Does anyone have suggestions for making it over the level 40 slump? Are there some cool areas I should be looking forward to or should I jump back into later dungeons? I'm debating whether I just play for WVW, but leveling in PVP feels slow.

I'm always a little surprised to see people hitting level slumps in GW2. I never even really much considered what level I was; they come pretty quickly and I never felt any grind. There's enough different zones at any given level that you should be able to bounce around and check out some different content. I've found the Norn and Charr areas to be the most interesting. Cool designs and interesting events.

I've been level 80 for awhile now and still having fun. Hearts can feel like a little bit of a slog at times; some are just more fun and better designed than others. Working on zone completion and I love that mobs drop level-appropriate loot. I wish they would actually tweak everything to work that way. It's disappointing to finish an event or jumping puzzle and end up getting zone-level loot. Killing cenaturs and bandits will never get old, though

Scratched wrote:

Hmmm, which areas are available to you should be fairly self explanatory. If you're not already, don't stick to one area and try to clear it, but move around. I find getting on event chains quite fruitful for getting xp, and the lowest one I really like is in north Harahti hinterlands, starting from seraph captured camps.

I think Harathi Hinterlands is a 40 zone too. I'm not sure, because I was in my 60s or 70s when I hit it. It's got the huge event chains and map control changes that you'd expect from an end-game zone. I know I found it to be more interesting than average for that reason.

One thing I strongly recommend is to not just go from heart to heart. As others have said, the mid level zones have some wonderful event chains, most of which can be completed solo. If you notice NPCs taking to each other, hang around and see if they start an event. I have noticed way too many players rush off after an event when if they would have only waited 30 seconds the next event in the chain would have started.

Sorry if it's been brought up before, but has anybody tried leveling from 1 to 80 in WvW? On a whim I rolled a throwaway and jumped right in and discovered that I'm pretty much dead weight (as expected). I can't really see it being very effective or fun at lower levels unless I'm missing something (much in the same way that I miss a great deal of things in GW2).

the trick would be to stick with large zergs as they tour a borderland and grab all the towers/keeps, as those are worth the most. unfortunately those don't happen that often.

as for being effective.. siege engines! your class/level don't matter at all when you're manning an arrow cart.

I'd still recommend not locking yourself in to WvW to level-up(and outfit) a character, GW2 encourages diversity in play and you gain the most from doing a bit of everything.

Superbeard wrote:

Sorry if it's been brought up before, but has anybody tried leveling from 1 to 80 in WvW? On a whim I rolled a throwaway and jumped right in and discovered that I'm pretty much dead weight (as expected). I can't really see it being very effective or fun at lower levels unless I'm missing something (much in the same way that I miss a great deal of things in GW2).

It's effective about once and maybe twice a week to spend a whole play session in WvW. The trick is to find packs of the PvE mobs and clear them out. The more out of way places the better. These will have VERY high xp bonuses and the higher the level you are the higher the bonus. Joining in the WvW proper helps break up the grinding and gives you some xp as well.

Superbeard wrote:

Sorry if it's been brought up before, but has anybody tried leveling from 1 to 80 in WvW?

You are pretty much dead weight until you get to level 30. Then you are able to be effective with all your skill bars unlocked. It also depends on the class of choice. You will take a lot of damage from the geared 80s, so ranged classes will live longer and be able to use more utility skills. Focusing on tactics instead of raw kills makes a huge difference no matter what the level.

Ex. Use siege machines you get for free from jumping puzzles or buy them (very useful). A level 1 with an arrow cart is just as good as a level 80.
Focus on pulling enemies off of walls or crippling, slowing, and using traps/conditions to give your allies an edge. Think more support instead of front line dps soaker.

So did ANet just decide to reward everyone for the Karka event? I logged in tonight after being away for a week to find an ancient karka chest in my inbox. Aside from exploring the new island I really didn't get to participate in the event at all so I was wondering if they're just trying to buy my love with free loot. If that's the case, it worked. I got 3 exotics, 2 rares and that fancy 20 slot box.

Nothing for me I had participated in earlier events, but decided to do other things when the finale was on as I wanted to avoid the inevitable lag (and it lagged everywhere anyway). Ah well...

I got it. I participated it in the opening one time event, did the finding the evidence trail until I hit a bugged event, explored the island, and was playing during (or just after) the final event, but didn't actually participate in that one.

I got the 20 slots, the earring, and 2 exotic heavy leggings (Yakkington's and Koss') and a rare scepter and rare medium shoulders.

I got one, participated but had to log before the final.

Is it me or did the Karka event seem pointless. I do know it created a new zone where there is not much to do . . .

Tenebrous wrote:

Is it me or did the Karka event seem pointless. I do know it created a new zone where there is not much to do . . .

The Devs have stated that the Lost Shores is basically half baked and that more content for the zone will be coming.

I know the game still had some rough edges but have been thrilled with the monthly content, now, if only they could fix the WvW culling issue.

Our server has become a ghost town during the day. Makes me sad because that's when I primarily play.