The Guild Wars 2 Thread

[Caim]

Note that the "new" weapons for the professions (guns for Guardian and Elementalist, Staff for Warrior and so on) won't come out until the second content patch, somewhere in February. So don't go splurging on weapons you can't use yet.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Started playing this game recently. On the surface it feels OK and like something I wouldn't mind getting into, but I'm struggling to find a class I like to play. I rolled a Necromancer as pets + DoTs is my favored gameplay style for all MMOs since EQ but here it's not engaging at all and the pets look lame. I'll give the Mesmer a try next, hopefully I'll have more luck with that. I also took a look at some of the end game armor models and most of the Light suff looked like crap people would wear in a carneval. Are there no class sets?

 

[rubinstein]

Started playing this game recently. On the surface it feels OK and like something I wouldn't mind getting into, but I'm struggling to find a class I like to play. I rolled a Necromancer as pets + DoTs is my favored gameplay style for all MMOs since EQ but here it's not engaging at all and the pets look lame. I'll give the Mesmer a try next, hopefully I'll have more luck with that. I also took a look at some of the end game armor models and most of the Light suff looked like crap people would wear in a carneval. Are there no class sets?

5 races to play (even if 3 are humanoids) means no class sets

 

[Rahdulan]

Cultural armor is probably the closest, but that's race-based. Everything else is divided based on light, medium and heavy armor categories. Then again game is called Fashion Wars for a reason which just demonstrates money can't buy taste when you see what most people wear. Big thing in GW2 is acquiring equipment skins to mix and match, as well as costumes.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Started playing this game recently. On the surface it feels OK and like something I wouldn't mind getting into, but I'm struggling to find a class I like to play. I rolled a Necromancer as pets + DoTs is my favored gameplay style for all MMOs since EQ but here it's not engaging at all and the pets look lame. I'll give the Mesmer a try next, hopefully I'll have more luck with that. I also took a look at some of the end game armor models and most of the Light suff looked like crap people would wear in a carneval. Are there no class sets?

5 races to play (even if 3 are humanoids) means no class sets

WoW had class sets and wildly different race sizes and shapes and it wasn't an issue (apart from some looking silly or awful). Is there something that GW2 does differently that makes this a problem?

Cultural armor is probably the closest, but that's race-based. Everything else is divided based on light, medium and heavy armor categories. Then again game is called Fashion Wars for a reason which just demonstrates money can't buy taste when you see what most people wear. Big thing in GW2 is acquiring equipment skins to mix and match, as well as costumes.

Looking at the cultural armors they aren't too bad, except for the humans (Light). Norn have better looking light cultural armor, but their proportions are somehow goofy. Maybe I'll have to roll one and see how it looks and feels in-game in motion. A Norn Necro is looking better right now, but I'm not so sure about a Mesmer unless I go down the path of snu-snu.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Are there no class sets?

No. Each class has three elite specializations, and each elite spec has a unique unlockable weapon skin and an equipment skin (like the Druid's shoulderguards), but that's it.

WoW had class sets and wildly different race sizes and shapes and it wasn't an issue (apart from some looking silly or awful). Is there something that GW2 does differently that makes this a problem?

Nothing different. Anet just didn't put as much effort into their art department. WoW has released far more armor skins over the past 10 years than GW2 has over the course of its entire lifetime, and a large swath of GW2's armor skins are locked behind the cash shop.

 

[Average Manatee]

Don't know if this is still the case but I recall GW2 performance was so shit in large fights that you had to dial your settings down to the point everyone but you had generic looking ugly clothing anyway.

 

[pickmeister]

You bet it's still the case. The only thing that helps with it is turning down model count, so you see only yourself and 5 other players out of a 100.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I have a 3070 Ti. I have 60 FPS most of the time, but there are certain areas of the game that will cause framedrops (such as Verdant Brink).

Reflections are a massive FPS drop. IIRC there is a plane of water below almost every map in the game, so even if you can't see water you're still losing a lot of FPS. If you're struggling with FPS you can turn off reflections and only turn them on for screenshots.

I have character model limit set to high. I might get framedrops during a WvW zerg or a meta event like Dragon's End, but for me it's usually tolerable. This isn't a super fast paced game. I have character model quality set to medium.

 

[Vyvian]

Lowering shadows will net you the biggest gains and you won't lose much either.

 

[Prince(ss)]

Note that the "new" weapons for the professions (guns for Guardian and Elementalist, Staff for Warrior and so on) won't come out until the second content patch, somewhere in February. So don't go splurging on weapons you can't use yet.

I'm surprised ANet had the audacity to release an unfinished expansion packaged with the equivalent of an IOU. Not surprised that the general GW2 community didn't make more noise about it though, since they usually love the taste of dog water.

 

[Vyvian]

Note that the "new" weapons for the professions (guns for Guardian and Elementalist, Staff for Warrior and so on) won't come out until the second content patch, somewhere in February. So don't go splurging on weapons you can't use yet.

I'm surprised ANet had the audacity to release an unfinished expansion packaged with the equivalent of an IOU. Not surprised that the general GW2 community didn't make more noise about it though, since they usually love the taste of dog water.

As you said, the GW2 community laps up whatever ANet shovels down their throats. Look no further than how they collectively creamed their jeans when Colin was brought back, forgetting that he was a big reason the game went to shit and his extreme overhyping of things that never came to pass.

 

[Caim]

Note that the "new" weapons for the professions (guns for Guardian and Elementalist, Staff for Warrior and so on) won't come out until the second content patch, somewhere in February. So don't go splurging on weapons you can't use yet.

I'm surprised ANet had the audacity to release an unfinished expansion packaged with the equivalent of an IOU. Not surprised that the general GW2 community didn't make more noise about it though, since they usually love the taste of dog water.

As you said, the GW2 community laps up whatever ANet shovels down their throats. Look no further than how they collectively creamed their jeans when Colin was brought back, forgetting that he was a big reason the game went to shit and his extreme overhyping of things that never came to pass.

Or, you know, the Icebrood Saga climax.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/...es-and-new-hero-jump-start-event-start-today/

Greetings, gamers. We’re excited to announce our Black Friday sales for this year, including some of our deepest Guild Wars 2® expansion discounts ever! It’s not Friday yet, but our sales begin today, and you’ll have until next Tuesday, November 28 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8) to take advantage of these discounts.

We’ll also be offering deep discounts on many popular in-game items starting on Black Friday itself—November 24 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-8). Check out our Gem Store blog or the Gem Store in the game for more information on these discounts, but as a teaser: Black Lion Chest Keys will be a whopping 40% off!

Experience the entire dragon cycle saga from beginning to end with Guild Wars 2—The Complete Collection. This bundle contains an entire decade’s worth of content! Included are Guild Wars 2 Living World® Seasons 2–5 and the first three expansions: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns®, Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire®, and Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons®.

You’ll also get two Level-80 Boosts, allowing you instantly level up two characters and jump straight into our latest content, with two Shared Inventory Slots to easily share items with every character on your account.

This collection is available now at a 50% discount until November 28. For players only interested in the expansions, the Standard and Deluxe editions of the Elder Dragon Saga Collection are discounted by 60%.

 

[Vyvian]

They added hero point scrolls to the Gem Store. The proceeds on pace.

 

[TedNugent]

They added hero point scrolls to the Gem Store. The proceeds on pace.

That shit literally doesn't matter though

I've probably got 400 levelup times and two max level boost books just from buying the game and playing, and that was after boosting two of my alts that I don't even play.

The level cap hasn't even changed since the vanilla release anyway, and neither did end game gear.

Go hit up WoW if you want to play neverending treadmill to keep up with the Joneses. And that even has a stupidass WoW token system to fuck it all up.

New players still have to grind for ascended or legendary crap, but it's only a 5% increase over the exotic garbage you can buy on the TP for 50 gold for a full set.

 

[Vyvian]

They added hero point scrolls to the Gem Store. The proceeds on pace.

That shit literally doesn't matter though

I've probably got 400 levelup times and two max level boost books just from buying the game and playing, and that was after boosting two of my alts that I don't even play.

The level cap hasn't even changed since the vanilla release anyway, and neither did end game gear.

Go hit up WoW if you want to play neverending treadmill to keep up with the Joneses. And that even has a stupidass WoW token system to fuck it all up.

New players still have to grind for ascended or legendary crap, but it's only a 5% increase over the exotic garbage you can buy on the TP for 50 gold for a full set.

It's not there for you, it's there to fleece new players that don't know any better.
That's scumbag shit no matter how you excuse it.

 

[TedNugent]

I don't know about you, but I don't accidentally buy shit.

The most important thing is that it's not relevant to the actual competitive or end game mode, which in this game, it's not. Getting hero points is entirely self paced. Once you have them, you have them forever.

You also get full core build from hitting 80, and unlimited builds in PvP. So you simply explore, get HPs to get chosen e-spec on your main toon, then you're done. Forever. They didn't even release new e-specs or hero points with the last two expansions.

 

[Vyvian]

Again this is not something new players will know or understand, which is who this kinda crap targets.
That and the lazy because they aren't just core points, there's a chance to get HoT, PoF etc points done too which are 10.

 

[Rahdulan]

A worthwhile interview on future plans with ANet even bringing up expansion 5 and 6. Sadly, old dungeons will continue to get shafted.
https://wccftech.com/guild-wars-2-q...ets-of-the-obscure-learnings-and-2024-update/

 

[rubinstein]

gameplay-wise, dungeons were replaced by fractals ages ago. dungeons were and still are, especially with all the power creep etc. etc, abysmal content. when you look at gw1 end-game content from very early on (UW, FoW, TotPK) it still maintains considerable level of challenge, even after all the expansions and balance patches. these are not as difficult as later instances like SE or DoA, but not a breeze neither. they were designed into endurance runs with fun rewards. mobs arent difficult... unless you aggro 25 of them. try not to. there were also NO FUCKING LONG ASS CUTSCENES EVERY 10 MINUTES AAAAAAAAAAAA SHUT UP ZOJJA FFS. even if they are skippable, it was such a retarded idea to include them in FARMING zones. and gw2 writing is so uninteresting, dragon watch characters are so boring, its all so bad. in gw1 dungs are obviously farming zones, but the story there was mostly in the background, as lore. for example you absorbed DoA by assisting whispers or the snake guys, then exploring cleared zone (even if it was kinda empty), you didnt need 50 lines of dialogues about "feelings " every second fight.
and story-wise... yeah its sad we have so little of coherent end-game content. what i mean is, gw2 content feels so fragmented. fractals, strikes, meta-events. you join a group or map, and after 15, 20, or 30 minutes you are done. see you tomorrow or maybe next week even, enjoy your garbage loot! unless you rolled a natural 65536 on a D65536 and got that flashy infusion worth 1500g on TP instead of a 2 silver tonic (the loot is so bad in gw2).
so forget dungs. they are bad. but raids... raids are very good content for gw2 standards, much better than anything else: fracs, strikes, eotn instances. i find them too heavy on mechanics memorization instead of straight up difficulty of your enemies (them hitting heavier and faster, having dmg resistances etc), and i suspect this is what discourages 0kp noobs into getting into them. they just refuse to watch trainings or get decent builds. gw2 raids are on pair with gw1 end-game dungs/zones, because they have nice amount of story (in the background), they are endurance runs, they are challenging, and they give decent loot. unlike anything else in the game, something like W1-4 full clear feels like a typical video game adventure. exploring cleared map, interacting with items, absorbing lore even though white mantle did nothing wrong, and fuck charr. thats just cool. wow, gw2 can be cool! it emulates the same feelings as an honest clearing of FoW or DoA. in 4 years gw1 delivered many such adventures. in 11 years gw2 manged to deliver like two, because 90% of community screeches that they are missing content, when something so difficult gets introduced.

you say

Sadly, old dungeons will continue to get shafted.

are you being ironic here, because i cannot really tell, i know theres still somesentiment in the community towards them. but imo dungeons are lost cause for same reasons we need new raids. nevertheless, i state "sadly, nothing about raids". theres nothing abut raids in this interview. and casuals are probably celebrating this, because gw2 is THEIR mmo after all. "hurray! we wont miss any content again, now help us defend amnytas for the 50th time!". bugger off.
we will get temple of febe CM, but after 5 attempts it will become yet another 10 minutes out-of-context fight, you just do once a week to get more currency X.

sorry for the rant, i am bored at work, nobodys here, and i have barely anything to do, and i recently got back to this game, and its current state in many areas makes me so depressed again, because i love the franchise, obviously mostly thanks to gw1

 

[NoMoneyNoFameNoDame]

I guess it's time to shit on GW2 again.

1) level scaling defeats the point of leveling.
2) free upgrades from expansions defeats point of doing the game's content.
3) free upgrades from expansions defeats farming for weapons.
4) anyone can customize their weapon's base stats to be how they want with no material cost.
5) the game hard limits how much wealth you can get per hour and day by killing mobs.
6) the game hard limits how good drops can be in a day no matter what.
7) large boss battles negate your build/decisions the more players that are around.
8) skill spec is linear borefest, there's no strategy to it. it's bullshit arranged around a circle.
9) limited skill bar. you can almost make a decent build, but they count weapon skills as a skill slot.
10) removed all the fun skill collection GW1 was based on.
11) affording a guild takes forever and you need other people to even get it.
12) resource nodes are far more costly than they give back, meaning player home is a useless thing.
(you may as well buy all the nodes, and save yourself the pain)
13) no mercs to adventure where you like, like GW1 had.
and so no real team strategy can be setup.
14) combat is boring button mashing and even the spells are lackluster.
15) all the interesting level 80+ items are just reskins. meaning it's entirely a dressup game beyond
a certain point.
16) no reason to start other characters. just different playstyles that affects nothing.
17) you can't visit EOTN by walking to it. Effectively erasing the coolpart of walking there
yourself from GW1.
18) GW2's EOTN is especially pointless skin-collection BS. Just look at what all the various traders offer.
90% shit you already have just skinned differently. Also a lot of interesting locations are story-only to explore.
DUMB.
19) All the main factions you can play as get along because reasons.
20) I have never ever felt desire to do crafting or use any of the professions.
You barely make money more than just playing the game. And fixed market prices all price you out anyway.

So in summary game is objectively worse than GW1.

ArenaNet needs fix these issues instead of wasting their potential piling up expansions and promises about changing systems
that mean nothing in an already pointless game.

 

[rubinstein]

as i am extremely bored, and in a mood for a discussion, i will try to play a role of gw2 shill. i agree gw2 is inferior to its predecessor, no doubts here really, but from its abysmal launch state, when it was a dogshit 4/10 broken mmo, the devs were able to elevate it to something like a 6/10 game, that shines in some areas. sadly, the game is being held back by majority of its mostly casual playerbase. just read map chat during metas or anet forums, these people are still crying about pocket raptors ffs, they dont want to improve and drag down others with them. these are the folks gw2 devs listen to, because, unlike very few "extremely toxic raiders", they are the ones spending 10 euros on fluffy mount skins, as they are unable to farm gold fast enough. yes, there are plenty of core design decisions like traits or boons & conditions that many, me included, hate, but its not all that bad. gw2 devs proved they can create fun and challenging end-game content, when they do it for hardcore players.
if i dont reply to a point, it means i (at least mostly) agree.
2), 3) both of these sound greatly exaggerated and vague. what exactly are those "free upgrades from expansions", you mean a level 80 booster for a single character? is it really that fun to go through entire leveling for the n-th time? what does "farming for weapons" even mean when we have TP? gw1 leveling is cool, because its core gameplay is good, yet people still did ascalon runs. when you want to have your 6th proph pve character ready for end-game ASAP, leveling, no matter how good, suddenly becomes an unpleasant drag.
10) i loved skill collecting, but too many skills contributed to gw1 demise. at some point the game became unscalable and impossible to balance. just too big for its own good. also polluted with eotn retarded pve skills. gw2 by far has too few skills and very often they are too simple, but thats a different problem stemming from the accursed boons & conditions system.
13) mercs and heroes just dont fit gw2 gameplay, and i dont think its fair to shit on gw2 for trying to be more action based than gw1. imo its dumb to hate on genre of the game, it makes more sense to focus on more specific shortcomings. ive heard opinions from gw1 enjoyers, who said that introduction of heroes in nightfall was disastrous to the game, because it deemphasized socialization aspect of the game. forming parties with people was necessary to clear hard content before nf released and people gained many friends that way. but long after nf release with all the metabuilds socialization became mostly optional. on the other hand, at least all the content in gw1 is still playable. you will always be able to clear FoW with norgu and razah. but you may find it very difficult to defeat vale guardian in 2035 or 2040.
14) you should have seen me in my glory days SY spamming in doa. or playing monk being glued to a tiny "party" UI window, smashing my keyboard, hoping all the healing spells fire at once and bring that one dumb nigga warrior from 5% HP to a full bar in a split of a second. the end-game in both games require heavy dexterity from the players. gw2 may be bad, but its not boring, if it means anything. generally optimized build = build that utlizes skills in a rotation instead of relying on a buffed auto-attacking (it even applies more to gw1 than gw2, because necro reaper is supereasy to play and half the time he is auto-attacking. in gw1 you are constantly doing some crazy skill combos). spells suck in gw2, hard to disagree. what they did to mesmers...
16) they kinda retracted from removal of trinity around hot release with introduction of druid (and then the other elite specs that filled other niches in the following expacs), but still its hard to fully disagree here. i obviously blame replacing all the various methods of acquiring boons and inflicting debuffs from gw1 to the rotten to the core boons and conditions system of gw2. i think by this time you can already tell, how i feel about it.
15), 17) here you are just try-harding lmao, these are not baits, right?
ugh. i think im done. after 2 hours of mental gymnastics, i dont think i can tackle more points. for sure its difficult to defend gw2.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

gw2 by far has too few skills

Eh, GW2 has quite a number of skills. The issue is that many of them aren't used because they're redundant and are inferior to other skills.

• The racial skill cooldowns are too long so they're not used.
• Frost trap is sometimes used for DPS. Spike trap is sometimes used in PvP as a stun. The other two trap skills aren't used.
• Signet of the Hunt was used for its 25% movement speed passive before people got mounts. Signet of the Wild is used as a passive DPS boost without requiring the player to add more buttons they have to press to deal damage. The other two signets aren't used as they deal too little damage compared to other damage skills and are limited by where you place them.
• Spirits were rarely used. They died easily and didn't follow the player, which in a movement heavy game means that you often would not benefit from the spirits. Storm and Stone spirit were used for a heal Untamed build last year, but that was nerfed so no one uses it now.
• For the pet skills, guard is never used because pets die too fast. Search and Rescue isn't used because you can just rez people yourself without wasting a skill slot, and with the jade bot introduced in EoD, people can just self revive or respawn immediately since you can deploy waypoints wherever you want. Protect Me is used as a stunbreak in PvP. Only Sic'em is sometimes used due to its damage.
• For survival skills, Muddy Terrain is never used. Sharpening Stone is sometimes used as a damage boost. Quickening Zephyr was used as a damage boost up until this year when it was nerfed. Lightning Reflexes is sometimes used in PvP as a third dodge.
• Druid skills: nobody used them at all until they were reworked last year, and only to heal WvW zergs.
• Soulbeast skills: usually only used for Stancebeast buff sharing builds in WvW since the stances did were not mutually exclusive with boons.
• Untamed skills: Exploding spores was used as part of the Fervent Force Untamed build, but that was nerfed last year so it's only ocassional used as a stun in PvP. Mutate Conditions isn't used. Unnatural Traversal was used in burst greatsword PvP builds before that was nerfed. Nature's Binding is sometimes used as a CC in PvP.
• Heal skills: The choice is between "We Heal As One" or Troll Unguent. Nobody uses Water Spirit because spirit builds were nerfed and spirits suck. Healing Spring had niche use in last year's heal Untamed build (due to the water + blast heal combo from wielding a hammer) but that build was nerfed so nobody uses it.
• Elite skills: Nobody uses Strength of the Pack since you more easily get Fury from other players or your jade bot anyway. Entangle is used as a CC in PvP. Spirit of Nature is used as a rez in group PvE content. One Wolf Pack is used for stance sharing in WvW. Forest's Fortification is used as a damage mitigation.

50 to 75% of Ranger skills simply aren't used because they are inefficient compared to the alternatives, and/or have no synergy (due to the builds they used to work for being destroyed by nerfs). And this isn't a ranger exclusive problem; this affects most GW2 classes. Even Anet's favored classes like guardian and necro suffer from having a lot unused skills too.

 

[Average Manatee]

Funny how despite having 10x the skills GW1 probably has about a 50% skill usability ratio, so as good or better than GW2. It's almost like letting players create whole builds that can truly focus on something specific and synergize with weirdly specific skills was a good idea. Like sure people aren't running Pet builds or Trap builds 99% of the time but you can totally do it and dominate the hardest GW1 content.

EDIT: I just spent 5 mins looking at the GW1 skill list and despite not having played GW1 PvP in over a decade I can only think "damn this'd be cool and unique to make a team build around". Sign of an amazing game.

Spoiler

Was there ever a meta HA build involving multiple rangers with flurry and practiced stance/choking gas? Would be an hilarious amount of interrupts that can't be blocked and shuts down anything, can basically neuter any enemy offensive caster one moment then pivot to shutting down defense the next