GUILD WARS 2 THREAD OF GENERAL GUILD WARRING TWO

[synkr0nized]

Some good news: The PAX announcement confirmed no new levels or new gear levels.


"Viable" gets thrown around a lot and not used correctly.

If you throw together a combination of traits that enables you to kill enemy things without dying, it's viable.

The dungeon community wants the most optimal builds. Given that the entirety of GW2 combat in dungeon boss and even some world boss encounters revolves around dodging to negate damage rather than a trinity or similar system that focuses on mitigating and managing damage, the best builds focus on the highest sustained and/or burst DPS.

That said, the "community" in this sense is really only relevant if you are using LFG, as the average LFG party is going to want to clear more quickly. Any guild(s) you can get involved in or individuals you can find to run through using whatever will open up the floor to all kinds of builds, even if they are terrible, though it may also be more fun for those involved.




In any case, I would NOT suggest you worry about HoT if you don't intend to progress through Season 2 of the Living Story. And if you haven't logged in, then I guess you've missed out (As long as you logged in for each chapter's release, then it's added to your account and ready for you to play it whenever).

The mechanics may be cool (And they are!), but for me Season 2 improved vastly over Season 1 in making me feel relevant to the world, pulling together PCs and NPCs under relevant causes, and at least trying to give some emotional depth to the world and its NPCs. It's also been a blast with regard to superior boss encounter design in the story missions and the open world, so if that trend continues then maybe even if you miss on the story that's happened in the past few months you'll still enjoy it. I dunno.

[Toast]

Originally Posted by shiney

That's kind of how I feel, along with a feeling that my personal concerns about a lack of content I would enjoy have yet to be addressed. In the process of 0 - 80 I had my fill of "Collect these items or kill those bad guys until this heart is full, go to next waypoint, complete next heart quest" ad infinitum.

See, that's what I enjoy about the game, and what I want more of. That's also how I feel about the kind of content I want not being addressed.

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

If you throw together a combination of traits that enables you to kill enemy things without dying, it's viable.

Here I disagree. To me there's a big difference between usable and viable. Guardian off-hands are a good example to illustrate what I mean. You can use the shield and the torch, and they're actually more useful with the recent updates, but they're still not viable because they will never be as good a choice as the focus.

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

The dungeon community wants the most optimal builds. Given that the entirety of GW2 combat in dungeon boss and even some world boss encounters revolves around dodging to negate damage rather than a trinity or similar system that focuses on mitigating and managing damage, the best builds focus on the highest sustained and/or burst DPS.

The entire game is built around damage being the only leg the whole damage/support/control thing stands on, for pve. Champions and bosses are essentially immune to control and are huge damage sponges, and normal mobs don't last long enough for it to be useful. There's no point in going full support, because you either don't need to to get perma-boons or you cripple your damage to do so for little benefit.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Toast

Here I disagree. To me there's a big difference between usable and viable. Guardian off-hands are a good example to illustrate what I mean. You can use the shield and the torch, and they're actually more useful with the recent updates, but they're still not viable because they will never be as good a choice as the focus.

Not being as good doesn't mean it's not viable. A viable build is one in which a player can clear content without being carried. The focus is certainly the optimal choice in guardian offhand (I really like it, myself, despite how much I'd rather take my shield out of storage and use it).

Perhaps this is just drifting into semantics, however, when it doesn't need to do so. (i.e. like I said, too often MMO players use "viable" when they really mean "optimal" or "most efficient"; a guardian with a mace and shield is capable of succeeding, albeit more slowly than one with a sword and focus; I don't think we are actually disagreeing on anything here but the use of "viable" itself)

Originally Posted by Toast

The entire game is built around damage being the only leg the whole damage/support/control thing stands on, for pve. Champions and bosses are essentially immune to control and are huge damage sponges, and normal mobs don't last long enough for it to be useful. There's no point in going full support, because you either don't need to to get perma-boons or you cripple your damage to do so for little benefit.

Right, that's why I said dungeon encounters are centered on dodging at the right time. The fact that ANet's developers decided to be lazy and make dungeon bosses virtually immune to CCs emphasizes the don't-stand-in-the-fire and press-dodge-at-the-right-time mentality for staying alive. As long as you do that, all your build needs to focus on is pure damage -- anyone playing one of the terrible support-only builds floating around still won't be able to keep someone alive through most boss attacks, anyway.

Plus the quicker your enemies are dead the less chance they have to do any damage to you :P.


For what it's worth, LS episodes in Season 2 -- while they do have achievements [mostly for replaying them], there's nothing forcing you to grind those out. If you've liked GW lore at all in GW2 and have some fond memories of the first game, I urge you to play through them once.

[Arcanum]

Let me tell you the story of my sub-optimal, yet still viable elementalist.

I'm running Power/Vit/CondDmg armor on my elementalist (Flame Legion dungeon armor) with Berserker Chest and Legs because reasons.I wanted Flame Legion shoulders, boots, gloves, and head, but different chest and legs for my full exotic armor set (for looks, not stats, but I didn't want to bother with transmutation stones and a second exotic set), bought the chest off the Trading Post I believe, the pants from Orrian karma merchants. I never got around to running the dungeons I wanted the chest/legs from. I've also got full exotic sapphire accessories, socketed with exquisite sapphires (Healing Power/Power/Toughness).

My traits are 6/0/0/4/4, and really the only reason I have 6 into fire is to help boost my damage a little bit as well as for the fury bonus to my blast finishers on fire fields.

I am for all intents and purposes a support Elementalist, and have been since I hit 80 and crafted my accessories from scratch.

And it works pretty well if I do say so myself. As long as someone isn't getting one-shot, I can heal them up to full really quickly. It's not as good as a traditional MMO healer obviously, but it helps keep people alive and I also buff the damage of everyone else on my team with Might+Fury, and Vulnerability stacks. And people always seem surprised by how tanky a Greater Water Elemental can be, not to mention the extra heals it dishes out.

Obviously my elementalist doesn't have much of a place in the super-high-skilled dungeon groups who avoid damage almost completely, but he's a great boon to the average party, and that's the kind of party I find myself playing with the most.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Arcanum

My traits are 6/0/0/4/4, and really the only reason I have 6 into fire is to help boost my damage a little bit as well as for the fury bonus to my blast finishers on fire fields.

6/0/0/4/4 is actually pretty useful for random world roaming and meta events, too. You might also enjoy swapping it to 0/6/0/4/4 if you haven't yet taken the ele into WvW.

[Arcanum]

Never thought my build was terrible since it has always proved surprisingly effective. I'm just aware that it falls significantly outside the bounds of the Zerk Meta, especially with the armor + accessory choices.

---------- Post added 02-06-2015 at 09:54 AM ---------- Previous post was 02-05-2015 at 10:08 PM ----------

So I found out I'm rich in GW2. Way back in 2012 I had made a Mystic Forge Conduit purely for the sake of convenience. Cost me like 15-20G buying some mats from the TP. Apparently those things were a limited time deal and are now worth ~870G. Now I just need to earn another 20G so I can afford the 40G listing fee

[Toast]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

Not being as good doesn't mean it's not viable. A viable build is one in which a player can clear content without being carried. The focus is certainly the optimal choice in guardian offhand (I really like it, myself, despite how much I'd rather take my shield out of storage and use it).

Perhaps this is just drifting into semantics, however, when it doesn't need to do so. (i.e. like I said, too often MMO players use "viable" when they really mean "optimal" or "most efficient"; a guardian with a mace and shield is capable of succeeding, albeit more slowly than one with a sword and focus; I don't think we are actually disagreeing on anything here but the use of "viable" itself)

It largely is a matter of terminology. Perhaps a better way for me to put it would be to say that they're not equally viable.

In any case, I am enjoying the mace/torch guardian I started last week. What I miss most compared to my main guardian is actually my traveler's runes for the runspeed buff.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Arcanum

So I found out I'm rich in GW2. Way back in 2012 I had made a Mystic Forge Conduit purely for the sake of convenience. Cost me like 15-20G buying some mats from the TP. Apparently those things were a limited time deal and are now worth ~870G. Now I just need to earn another 20G so I can afford the 40G listing fee

Wow, lucky.

I keep crossing my fingers for a precursor so that, unless it's one of the ~3 or 4 I think I may want eventually, I can sell it for the cash. I'd definitely do it with a conduit, too.

Though I'd keep a permanent hair stylist contract.

[synkr0nized]

doin' a vista daily
Walked up to the one on the top floor of the Almuten Mansion in Genderran Fields and found myself walking through a small group of players role playing as some kind of rich Canthan clan.

It was a bit surreal, but I was not quick-witted enough to utter something appropriately Charr-like as I passed by and overheard their conversations.

There are a lot of cool places I could see people using for RP. I am surprised I don't run into it more often. And, thankfully, the few times I have it's been pretty normal, not the awful "ERP" that basically dominates most popular stations in Star Trek Online (or at least used to, haven't played that in half a year).

[synkr0nized]

At the risk of no-one but the usual ~4 of us who post here reading this:

GW2 is 75% off this weekend, making the Heroic and Deluxe editions $10 and $15, respectively. This means that for the same price as a single character slot account upgrade you can get the game and some additional bonus gear/boosts.

At that price, anyone who's wanted to explore Tyria, the game mechanics, or whatnot really has no reason not to do so.


For current players, the digital deluxe upgrade to your account is only 500 gems now (compared the typical 2000).