ScorpioSpork

This might take this off-topic, but personally I feel the whol point of a persistant MMORPG is the player reacting to the world and fitting into whatever is going on. I feel the genre isnt suited to focusing on "content on demand" for the single player or even a group (though GW2 supports the group part). Myself, if I want content on demand just for me I play a single player game or a non-persistant multiplayer game (lately Skyrim or Tomb Raider).

I feel GW2 banked alot on people just exploring for the sake of it, and that falls a bit flat with a large part of the playerbase. While I am not bothered with the content availability, usually I waypoint into a zone with a certain goal and get sidetracked three times on the way, eating up a good amount of time but having fun doing so. I think that is what a.net build for. and instant gratification both in rewards and always having things to do that you consider "worth it" take a backseat to it.

These short term goals are what keep me going:  I want to get my toon good-looking armors and good build, and I want to do Fractals scale 40+.

I enjoy these things for some reason, though these are also pretty much why I'd never get my legendary, haha.  Map completion/exploring maps is just . . . too much of a pain for me; I don't enjoy it at all.

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I'm one of those people who care about aesthetics and efficiency of my toons.  

After bringing a toon to level 80, the first thing I do is dress it up. I preview the armors/weapons then start to collect them. This, of course, takes a while because I don't always have dungeons tokens ready on hands so I'd have to farm them.

Next is efficiency. I want to have the best balance possible between survivability and damage for my skill level. This is an on-going process for weeks because my skill level do change as I play the class more and more.  But it's (arguably) what I enjoy the most.  I don't know why but the idea of being a tiny bit stronger is always so appealing to me.

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And I also enjoy high-scale Fractals (40+) because of a few reasons:
- Players up there are generally competent, capable of at least carry our own weight while still supporting the party in some way.  
- Players up there also used to Fractals, familiar with all its ins and outs.  
- We generally fight everything, very little skipping.  I like it this way.  I dislike groups or dungeons where we have to run long ways, skipping lots of mobs.

Let's put it this way:  When you're confident that you can rely on your team, you're more likely to play for the party---utilizing your skills for the benefits of party, adapting to a more selfless play-style---rather than for your own survival.  It's great!  Even though the content is harder, it's usually more relaxing than doing, says, AC with bad PUGs.

And don't even get me started with bad AC PUGs. The first boss, Queen Spider, is solo-able.  Even an average-skilled, casual player like me can still solo her.  A whole team of 4 or 5 players have absolutely zero reason to wipe at Queen Spider, yet we still have teams that fail here.  It's unbelievable!


(and I'm 20 years old, as of now.)

I think GW2 is missing a very important feature from GW1. That is a Trait Template similar to GW1's Skill Template.

Also, I still don't see the purpose of retraining traits and the associated fees. I do not believe it is an effective gold sink. I also do not see how it impacts game-play positively. It's more of a nuisance as I'd like to switch my traits based on the fighting situation. I may choose to go from greatsword to sword/focus or to sword/shield in a dungeon or to face certain mobs. Now, I will have to teleport to a town, patiently wait thru infinite loading sequence, go to the npc, pay a small fee, and then allocate the trait points manually while my teammates wait for me patiently in the dungeon. Is this an effective process?

Why can't I simply load trait template when i am out of combat, switch my weapons and continue? If it's a gold sink, why not just let me pay an equivalent fee every time I load trait template that reallocates trait points?

What do you guys think?

Why not a title for collecting every title?  'Completionist'

- Lifetime Survivor (although they made it ridiculously easy to acquire through crafting)
- An Explorer achievement title would be nice (though they'd hardly be as prestigious as GW1 cartogropher achieves)
- Titles for Thirst Slayer and All You Can Eat
- Jumping puzzle completion achievement + title

And it would be cool if The Emperor would adjust to your character's gender. I want to be The Empress if I ever manage to get that achievement.

there are a couple achievements in the game that really surprise (and annoy me) for not having titles attached to them. the first one is completing all jump puzzles. not only would it be nice to have a title for taking the time to do them all, but i also think "Jumpman" would be an awesome title as a tribute to the original Mario character. although, it would be gender-biased towards males, but i still love the idea behind it. lol.

i also wish there was a title (or at least an achievement, wtf?) for collecting every dye in the game, especially since it can take a while to do if you don't hoard gold. "Taste the Rainbow" would be an awesome title for it imo (assuming there were no copyright problems with it), or even something simple like "Colorful." still, though, i wish it had something.

are there any others you wish were in the game?

Here's mine:

Day


Night


Its a mix of Arah (Chest-Legs) with CoF (Hands-Boots) and the helmet is from the Barbaric crafting set. I think the gold doesn't look quite good right now, but I'll wait for Twilight before I switch to Abyss (I'd rather spend that gold on T6 mats right now lol).

It really depends on the kind of look you want, but i quite like my Arah/TA/T2 set on my sylvari
http://i.imgur.com/n9b2X8E.jpg

I suppose that there is no single truth or best option, but merely personal preference.

Personally, I play a 0/10/10/30/20 build - so without Evasive Arcana. The reason for this is quite simple: 0/10/0/30/20 everyone agrees on. My personal play style is rather, well, kamikaze, charging in on stuff, off-tanking loose mobs, etc. Therefore, I'm quite fond of having the additional protection boon up from 10 points in Earth. It also allows me to wear a bit more offensive gear. With this build, I've been in many parties where other players noticed that for some (in their eyes) unknown reason, they had protection up almost all the time - well, that's me!

My build and gear setup are also based on the fact that I prefer to have a more resilient character that can "save the day" and is "independent" (i.e. I don't need a Guardian face-tanking anything). I am there to give support in the form of minor healing, boons and auras and I am perfectly capable of not going down, ever. (That's the idea, anyway.)

Due to this, I prefer a gear setup with more Vit/Toughness in it; currently I run with a full Soldier's outfit and Berserker's weapons and jewels. I didn't bother (yet) with the math on the gear setup, though (I might exchange some jewels and gear if the %crit / vit/toughness ratio is better that way).

Finally, I think that Cleansing Fire (I'm not 100% sure about the name, but you know which skill I mean) is not needed if you already use Ether Renewal. I run with Signet of Fire / Signet of Air / Frost Bow instead, depending on the situation. (SoAir is very useful on fights such as Giganticus Lupicus, for example.)

The more time I invest into my ele, the more I start to dislike Evasive Arcana. The only thing holding me back from switching is the heal while evading in water.

Also I realized you're using Arcana X when you're not using any Arcane or Signet utilities. I suggest replacing it with Arcane VI for the extra Vigor on crit.

It has real PvP, the question you should be asking is, why do I (YOU) waste your time talking about a game you clearly hate, when you could be wasting your time playing a game you actually like?

Okkum, on 09 April 2013 - 04:10 PM, said:

That's what my necromancer's build will be, or very similar to it anyway.

MY advice is to change it only a little though, because the ONE unique thing necromancers bring to a group is the following:

I'd say they are the best class to build for power/precision/crit damage, WHILE trying to maximize their up-time and variety of Utilitarian Conditions. That is to say, its easy for a necromancers to stack some VERY useful condtions while doing their normal damage role, especially Vulnerability.

For 100% condition duration, you have the following to work with:

30% potential from Traits, 40% potential from Food (Rare Veggie Pizza), 20% from Giver weapons (10%x2), 20% from Armor Rune combinations (10% from Lyssa, 10% from either Nightmare (expensive) or 4 Lich i think it is) = 110%, It caps at 100% though, so you have some wiggle room.

Now, this is only if you want the maximum up time on ALL conditions you do. If you are primarily concerned with specific condition durations, you can stack any combination of the +10% to Specific Condition Sigils on your weapons.

For example, lets say you dont want to use Giver weapons since they will provide inferior damage stats, but you absolutely want 100% uptime for your Vulnerability stacks, you could use 2 10% Vulnerability duration Sigils and have 80% to all (which is still fantastic) and 100% to Vulnerability.

Or in our case, since we have 110%, you could use say 1 Vulnerability and 1 Chill, to get 100% in chill and Vulnerability, which I believe are our two strongest conditions for utility.


Additionally, with your traits, I would change the Blood line to something else. That trait is terrible in isolation. The dagger cooldown might be useful if you find yourself in constant need of Immobilization, Life Siphon, OR which to run dual-daggers for the useful Weakness if offhand dagger that will last VERY long with at or near 100% condition duration. At 100% duration against non-champions it lasts 20 seconds with a 21.5 second cooldown with the dagger reuse time.

Focus's chill would last 10 seconds on a 16 second cooldown, along with Spectral Grasp's lasting 8 seconds on 24 second cooldown if traited for spectral cooldowns, which i certainly would change your "deathshroud cooldowns" to "spectral cooldown reduction," since we dont get too much out of having lower cooldowns in DS. This also lower's spectral wall, one of your better skills for stacking vulnerability.

Speaking of DS, popping in every 5 seconds or to avoid huge damage is a good trick, also, it has good ranged damage for when you need to hang back potentially to complement Axe's autos and damage, until you dip below 50% and lifeblast starts sucking. Also, Dark Path is another excellent source of Chill at 10s Chill with only a mere 15 second cooldown (only lowered to 12.75 with trait, not worth the trait imo).


So with a Axe Focus / Dagger Dagger set up you have access to:

Tons of Vulnerability stacking, 100% easily accessible Chill Stacking, strong but not 100% Weakness on bosses but near 100% on nonchamps, good but not amazing potential safe damage with Axe / Death Shroud from range, and powerful but not ridiculous damage in melee with Dagger Dagger, and some brief regeneration and condition removal with off-hand dagger and foci, and boon removal.

I'd love someone to tell me that this ISNT a useful skill set for any serious dungeon content in the game. I strongly believe this build would pull its own weight even in highly organize DPS-focused speed clears simply due to it having "respectable" damage while maintaining 25 vulnerability in bursts and 14ish reliably consistently, along with the aforementioned Chill and Weakness. There are some bosses that prevent players from damaging them during certain abilities, or at least make it very risky to do so, so Chill is incredibly effective here. Weakness is less so, since ideally you CAN avoid almost every bit of damage in the game with enough knowledge and skill (that i personally dont have, ask Strife lol). Still, no one is perfect, AND the potential of literally halving the damage from a boss that could have otherwise one shot, is invaluable.



EDIT:

Alternatively, thinking about it, if you go rune of Lyssa x2, rune of Mad King x2, and rune of Svarnir (or other 20% "frozen" (chill) duration rune of your choice based on cheepness), then you could get 100% chill easier, and then stack the two 10% (for 20%) Vulnerability Sigils .

This could save you significant cost on your food, resulting in:

30% Traits + 40% Runes/Sigils = 70% for Chill and Vulnerability. We can never reach 100% Weakness, ESPECIALLY on bosses, so that certainly is an option if you want to skip using off-hand dagger.

The remaining 30% could be achieved with the much cheaper food, Super Veggie Pizza, at 36% duration. Or you could use Giver Weapons, giving up significant power and crit chance and crit damage, to have 20% more condition duration.

This would give you 90% to all conditions are all times even without food, and allow you to eat Omnom Berry Bars for additional 40% coin drop from bosses and general foes, which is really hard to pass up. But you are sacrificing damage and 10% duration to do so!

Both have their perks

AzureRogue, on 09 April 2013 - 09:37 PM, said:

No need to be optimal, as its actually a niche build for dealing maximum damage. No problem at all going a bit tankier in it, or building it with a bit of support in might with say 100% Might Duration and having someone with Fire Fields, so you could group stack to 25 might in 8 rotations of your auto attack (fewer if you take Scepter + Dagger + Arcane Wave). 40 second x3 Might is ridiculously powerful. Also, you can aoe Heal if anyone provides a water field for you, every 3 seconds roughly.

The swing speed on the hammer is just under 3 seconds I believe, which actually increases my damage numbers a tad, as I was assuming right at three seconds. I know this because with my video recording, I would run out of my 25 hammer charges in under 23 seconds I believe in fights where I had constant damage application.

Dasviidonja, on 11 April 2013 - 01:41 PM, said:

I think you're missing something here. I agree that playing a game without any sense of progression would be dull after a while. However, progression doesn't need to be vertical. Horizontal progression, such as new skills, or new types of gear stats (not better, just new), allows for progression without the unnecessary and unfortunate side effects of power creep.

Dasryn, on 11 April 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

Little did they know, a large portion of the playerbase bought the game in hopes of it not turning into WoW.