Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion coming on Oct 23! Core game now F2P!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion coming on Oct 23! Core game now F2P!

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Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Heavy Lobster posted:

So, I started a Mesmer recently, and am having an absolute blast! Had a spare level-to-20 scroll so I already have all my slot skills, but I feel like I might be getting in a bit too deep too early and now I don't quite know what to do.

I've been running Sword/Pistol and Greatsword, and I've been doing pretty well in terms of taking on big groups just by merit of having tons of illusions out and about and slotting my skills as Blink/Decoy/Mirror Images, but I don't really know what I could be doing better, what I'm doing poorly, etc. When am I really supposed to shatter my illusions, and how often do I shatter with F2-4 instead of just for pure damage? Since I don't use Scepter I feel like I have to be a bit more careful with it since I can't just build them back up again instantly, and as a result I just kind of leave them be.

Any general tips on playing the profession as well as some best practices for shattering?

You're approaching this form the wrong direction. Your default mode should be to always shatter everything all the time, and to learn when not to shatter as the exception (eg when you want your phantasmal guardian/disenchanter around doing stuff or your warden/berserker/duelist is on cooldown, or you're wailing on a big HP sink and all your illusions are phantasms). Get the trait that creates a clone whenever you dodge roll as soon as possible, pretty much no matter what build you're using. Shatter with F1 as often as you can, F2 when you can't F1, F4 when you must, and F3 when you're in wvwvw or feel like it.

Edit about utilities: I love Blink, but I mostly use it in WvW for repositioning in zerg fights or blinking past choke points. I'd recommend something else for PvE. Feedback and Null Field are awesome pretty much everywhere, Mirror Images is great for spamming shatters, and if you ever do WvW ever, spend the skill points to be able to use Portal. Both of the utility phantasms have their uses too.

Waci fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Nov 5, 2013

# ¿ Nov 5, 2013 14:00

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 07:11

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Bret Hart posted:

Why not give guardians a permanent movement increase trait or something, or a signet that has 25% increase movement speed for god sakes

Non-mesmers are not allowed to complain about the lack of movement speed boosts.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2014 07:32

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Faerie Fortune posted:

Point is, what's the best way to not suck?

Don't stand in red circles really is all there is to it. Character level matters for PvE, in sPvP you get levelled up to 80 in every way, and well you saw how WvW works. I'm also in Europe and in SFD, and there's generally people on quite late, but the European day time really is quiet. GOON is more active, even at weird unamerican hours, and you can be in both guilds if you have trouble finding people to play with in one. That said, the weekend's about to happen so you should be able to find people to do stuff with in either guild.

# ¿ May 16, 2014 13:15

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Dreggon posted:

Is that actually a thing?

Yes. You follow a cute little bunny and when you get into its lair it turns into a mesmer boss and you get killed by ghosts.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2014 08:11

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Guild clown car, 3000 gems. Everyone piles in and an officer can drive us all where we need to be.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 20:11

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

SFD does dungeons the slow way and has fun but that has way more to do with everyone being drunk and that one dude with an awesome voice singing than it does with dungeon design.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2014 22:45

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Princess-posting time!

Mesmer:

Elementalist:

Necromancer:

Guardian:

Thief:

Warrior:

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 02:50

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Inzombiac posted:

What difficulties I run into are things like, how would a Warrior use a staff that wasn't just a copy of a banner (assuming they can't make it behave like a bo staff)

What's wrong with either option?

quote:

or making a scepter a melee option that wasn't just a faster, lighter mace.

You mean like a dagger on a thief is just like a faster, lighter sword? Maybe they could make warrior sceptre a group support option (imagine pointing at things with it while yelling, which has been established as useful), kind of like a more offensively focused warhorn.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 12:49

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

That, and spears on land. And also pistols.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 12:54

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Starfleet Dental B-team progresses on to round two!

# ¿ Aug 10, 2014 18:06

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

They'll probably go up a bit once they stop being 1 ticket each, but they're also the least popular black lion skins in a while, so they probably wont shoot up that high.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 14:55

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Kormir's one redeeming trait is the bit with The Hunger and that she makes Treesus look good in the giving credit where credit is due department.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 04:01

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

They drop randomly from a lot of things.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 07:27

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Or you could run around in an EotM zerg for like an hour.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2014 20:23

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

They're already hers.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2014 03:56

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

He's... stable and self-sustaining? Worrying indeed.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2014 13:26

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

M.c.P posted:

The gently caress is glicko?

A rating system. It's what's used to track wvw rankings, so since people want Maguuma to drop down in the rankings so that we'd end up in a not top tier tournament bracket for the next season, they want us to do as poo poo as possible and get angry at people for doing things that get points.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2014 06:23

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

You did but it wasn't that funny anyway.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2014 14:14

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Oh no, all those cancelled subscriptions. :ohdear:

Seriously though, they'll come back, and while improvements to newbie things aren't the most exciting news for most existing players, they're still not something that should be ignored. There's still a weeks worth of stuff left unannounced for this patch, and there's always the chance that they actually are working on an expansion, which they probably wouldn't announce as just one thing among many in a patch.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2014 17:56

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Jackard posted:

Retention is important, players/guilds are content for other players.

So is getting new players.

Turncoat Mommy posted:

level gating is dumb and if I couldn't spend the entire beta weekends spvping, I probably wouldn't have played this game

i would have

The only thing that's level gated is the UI button. You can still go do stuff without touching yucky PVE first.

Waci fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Aug 28, 2014

# ¿ Aug 28, 2014 18:07

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

According to the blog post, you can still just push the hotkey to open the panel, so yes, they're just hiding the UI buttons until you've watered enough cows or whatever to prove that you can walk without falling over.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2014 18:10

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

To the awesome singing man and everyone else int he fractakls group with us I sam truly sorry for being repeatedly unable to make it upt he ramp in cliffside fractls and thus ruining fractals saturday for everybody

# ¿ Aug 31, 2014 05:12

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

I'm pretty sure that when it's goon versus goon, there are no winners.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2014 22:33

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2014 11:59

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

THE RAGGY posted:

I bought GW2 yesterday as something I could get involved in during the inevitable lulls in the other games I am involved in. I have to say I'm impressed with the way it's been put together and seems to have come on a fair bit from the first GW I played.

Can't say I'm all that impressed with the general pubbie community though, most people either ignore what I thought were legit questions, are too busy winning to care about the nubs, or fire back poor attempts at troll.

Is this the general experience in the pubbie populated worlds? I'm tempted to start over with a character in Maguuma and run with a goon guild.

Absolutely play with goons. If you ever want to WvW, that means getting on Maguuma.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2014 17:15

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Goldmine.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2014 23:06

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Logged in to check and yep, my golem hits for 50-60k in Orr with its gatling fists.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2014 04:41

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Yea. We're entering the wonders of gold league. At least it's not FA and SoS for 4 weeks straight. :shepicide:

# ¿ Sep 12, 2014 08:25

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Xun posted:

We are STILL in gold league?!

Yep. We couldn't lose hard enough even when we tried.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2014 09:43

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Red Mundus posted:

It's hard to move away from my guardian main to another class. Thanks to the advice in this thread, I'm pretty much unstoppable.

I decided to try an engineer and try playing something completely different. What are good weapons to use? Pistol/shield looks good. Is it also a good idea to focus on getting turret skills and such when picking skills?

Turrets are only possible build, but kits are good too. Flamethrower is the best weapon. Grenades, bombs, and the tool kit are all cool and useful.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2014 00:09

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

My thief got a new look. Not as pretty as Lorekeet, though.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2014 08:39

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Mom, dad, stop fighting. :ohdear:

# ¿ Sep 18, 2014 21:20

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

BombermanX posted:

Turncoat Mommy posted:

Add to OP please.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2014 04:28

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

The expression is so very fitting for Arah too.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2014 12:21

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Generic Octopus posted:

What is even in the gem store that y'all spend so much on the things?

Gemstore-exclusive armour skins. Gemstore-exclusive weapon skins. Gemstore-exclusive dyes.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 16:35

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

They don't have balance problems, they totally meant to fall from the tree.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2014 13:04

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Hamburger Test posted:

I just started playing again, previously I got a guardian to max level shortly after launch and quit almost immediately. I wanted something completely different from what I am used to so I am now rolling as a mesmer. I am only level 13 so far, but I'm wondering what is so bad about them?

Mesmers depend more on traits for effectiveness and playstyle than many other classes (Deceptive Evasion might as well be a class feature), so until you get those traits they can feel weaker if you're comparing them to what they feel like at level 80 or to other classes. They're not bad, they just don't swoosh through everything quite as fast as many other classes do.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 15:24

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

What did you do to her Arus? :ohdear:

# ¿ Sep 28, 2014 04:03

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

They finally gave you your llama? :toot:

# ¿ Oct 10, 2014 16:08

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 07:11

Waci: May 30, 2011; A boy and his dog.

Looks like phoenix greatsword.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 12:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns expansion coming on Oct 23! Core game now F2P!

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