Infusion.7149

> @"weaponwh.9810" said:

> > @"Linken.6345" said:

> > Why not power warrior?

>

> is power warrior easy? all i see is bannerslave in raid, so wasn't sure its desired compare to other pdps

It's worth noting the bar for not being yelled at is lower if you have profession specific boons. If your role is "DPS" you will not be spared that leniency.

Power BS is relevant more so than power soulbeast or power holo. Power chrono is a special case in that only the StM variant is considered a support.

In that sense semi-afk players (i.e. auto-ing) can achieve higher damage on soulbeast than holo because you'd only get ~15K DPS outside of Photon Forge on holo (~22K in PF assuming only vulnerability) , while dagger on soulbeast does ~16K (sword = 17K, greatsword = 18k) , warrior axe is just under 15K. Where holo excels is cleave off of Photon Forge, grenades, and bomb kit.

Honestly scholar rune + sigil of force has been meta in fractals forever, which is the only place that ascended **armor** is necessary. Sigil of Impact used to be only 10% vs stunned/ controlled foes rather than 3% always and an added 7% vs CCed foes.

If you want a shakeup then scholar rune would need to be detuned a bit (maybe drop to 3% damage bonus similar to sigils). 225 ferocity = 15% crit damage if you have 100% crit chance , plus the additional 5% if you have close to full health (>90%).

Other contenders outside of scholar rune include eagle runes (10% damage modifier and the same 225 ferocity , but with 175 precision instead of power) and thief runes which are used for precision (10% damage multiplier as well). Rune of the Ogre has a 4% damage mod and 100 ferocity (~6.7% crit damage) but the rock dog summoned is impractical most of the time. There's golemancer runes with +300 ferocity bonus and that's the only thing with a higher ferocity bonus, keeping in mind you give up power to gain that bonus so it isn't viable most of the time.

Numerically if you punch a typical fractal build such as Banner BS through **discretize optimizer** with food/utility , assuming the defaults (sigil of force , sigil of impact and no spotter because soulbeasts run marksmanship in fractals):

>! Thief = 4615 , with 10% flanking bonus presumably

>! _Scholar_ with >90% bonus = 4615

>! Eagle = 4613 , the 10% damage bonus only applies vs <50% health targets so it's less useful for boss fights and raid/strike scenarios

>! Spellbreaker = 4552 , which isn't great when there's _No Pain No Gain_ or _Vengeance_ instabilities

>! Flame Legion = 4456 , keeping in mind you need a guardian to output burning for you if you're on a power build generally

>! Ogre = 4438

>! _Scholar_ sans 90% health bonus= 4395

>! Strength = 4372 , generally would only be running on Tactics warriors

>! Pack = 4277

For merged soulbeast

>! _Scholar_ with >90% bonus = 3452

>! Eagle = 3422 , the 10% damage bonus only applies vs <50% health targets so it's less useful for boss fights and raid/strike scenarios

>! Spellbreaker = 3416 , keeping in mind you have no boon rip yourself

>! Thief = 3401 , with 10% flanking bonus presumably

>! Flame Legion = 3334 , keeping in mind you need a guardian to output burning for you if you're on a power build generally

>! Ogre = 3320

>! _Scholar_ sans 90% bonus = 3288

>! Strength = 3272

>! Pack = 3212

For power DH (not sure why you would run this over condi FB most of the time)

>! _Scholar_ with >90% bonus = 3460

>! Eagle = 3382 , the 10% damage bonus only applies vs <50% health targets so it's less useful for boss fights and raid/strike scenarios

>! Spellbreaker = 3377 (you generally would not use this on a DH)

>! Thief = 3332 , with 10% flanking bonus presumably

>! Flame Legion = 3312

>! Ogre = 3312

>! _Scholar_ sans 90% bonus = 3295

>! Strength = 3250

>! Pack = 3156

On snowcrows gear optimizer it's even more apparent in FOTM mode because if you turn off spotter it spits out Scholar Runes straight down for warriors, power DH, soulbeasts, power chrono, power tempest & weaver , power holo, daredevil, reapers , and the lesser used power herald.

Runes tend to be the most boring part of power builds. You can look at builds sites and almost always it's Scholar Rune unless you can't reasonably hit crit cap of 100% crit chance.

I have to disagree with people getting 1 shotted in openworld in berserker gear. You can swap trinkets or change a build slightly if it's that much of a problem. In addition there's a mystic forge recipe to swap stats on ascended gear so stat select isn't necessarily a requirement for power builds. The only amazingly expensive stat right now is Trailblazer. Diviner requires time investment for the serpentite ; harrier ascended recipes are expensive so mystic forge tends to be cheaper. Minstrel used to be more pricey but now that it has fell out of favor for PVE , WVW players can have an easier time with obtaining it.

Generally it has been much more stressful for WvW players by the way, which is why I made legendary armor. Durability runes , leadership runes, antitoxin, monk runes, etc all have fallen in and out of favor.

If your group isn't hardcore I would say soulbeast is more forgiving especially playing with skirmishing that gives self fury. Utilities are generally sparse (Frost Trap, Sic em!, signet of the wild, Frost Spirit, etc).

Holo is more about heat management and if you overheat you will have a bad day because sword and bomb kit does DPS worse than merged soulbeast autoing on greatsword.

Chrono is least forgiving. Shatter damage scales with clones, danger time relies on slow, Seize the Moment drops personal damage in exchange for some quickness. Don't let 40k benchmarks fool you because those rely on slow uptime for Danger Time.

Honestly I would not bother, the typical condi holo viper-geared with renegade runes is around 50% burning and 20% bleeding doesn't outperform condi berserker or condi firebrand (which have uses beyond just damage). There's a reliance on critical hits which is something condi firebrand is far less dependent on.

Your current setup isn't going to work well because you need crit chance that isn't present on carrion sets. A "hybrid" would be more akin to grieving setups with the Baelfire rune you picked out or viper's + renegade runes or berserker's rune. I would definitely run Solar Focusing lens though.

You also end up playing with pistols, flamethrower (flame blast , napalm), and bomb kit (notably fire bomb) most of the time which aren't amazing. Maybe the next engineer spec will have a proper melee ranged condi weapon, but for now I would advise against it. In the situations conditions excel because power burst isn't feasible the condi application of pistols, flamethrower, and bomb kit are unreliable.

I would advise you use d912pxy or dxvk and try to see if it's DX9 bottlenecking you or the main thread. Turn down **model limit** and model quality ; turn off high quality **shadows** (CPU bound) , turn off any **reflections** besides terrain + sky (if you have a older CPU then disable them entirely).

A 8 core Intel chip is decent , I'm assuming it's 3.2GHz base clocks (i7-8700 ?) and not turbo. If something very old such as i7-960 (8 core 3.2GHz turbo) then I would get rid of it as fast as possible.

Your best option if buying a new CPU is a $130-200 AM4 motherboard with support for PCIE 4.0 and some 3200+ MT/s RAM (the "sweet spot" for 3rd gen Ryzen was 3600C16), along with a Ryzen 5000 series chip with 6+ cores. They have the highest single threaded performance and even when Intel's 11th gen comes out it will likely remain on top. The latest leaks have the 11th gen Intel chips only ahead while at 250W TDP rather than a standard 95-140W.

The alternative to gear templates is more character slots if you don't have full legendary or at least legendary armor, honestly. With legendaries then the stat swap is much more cumbersome (even if you have full armor you need to check the box for apply to all armor), with ascended you can just have all the gear in your inventory and swap it out that way akin to before templates in GW2.

There's no workaround unlike for build templates.

If you're doing "zero damage" with soulbeast then you should probably check your gear. If you're in exotics and it isn't marauder stat (probably not since you did not craft) or berserker (power main stat, precision, ferocity) then you probably don't have the right stat combination for PVE. You could have a few pieces of assassins (precision main stat, power and ferocity minor stat) but generally other stats are not good for openworld or most fractals.

If you're interested in fractals I would advise looking at https://discretize.eu/builds/ranger/soulbeast and in the long run I would try to get ascended weapons and trinkets at least unless you want to permanently be in tier 1 fractals. If you're not interested in fractals I would look into other content where exotics would still work such as living story and its associated maps (the biggest focus of GW2 PVE now), strike missions (watch some guides), PVP (doesn't rely on PVE gear), WvW (don't play non-soulbeast ranger or thief there), and possibly raids in the long run.

With soulbeast you will want to use beast mastery for the merged bonuses and an axe offhand (with sword or axe mainhand unless doing instanced content where cleave isn't required) or greatsword for the power damage. In fractals longbow is generally used only for the barrage and rapid fire burst.

You might want to link which page exactly to give useful feedback to the devs? https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/december-15-2020/

lists January 4

> @"Zok.4956" said:

> The grind (for players that do not like this type of gameplay) is not that it is easy to kill things. The grind is doing the killing over and over without liking it.

>

> And I am glad that gw2 is not "most Asian MMO".

>

Well if they reduced the timer at the pre-event once the objectives are complete , upped rewards and/or decreased the Prismaticite Crystal cost (directly or indirectly via the Ingot) you wouldn't need to "kill it over and over", would you? Especially given that the only reward other than the skins for Dragon Slayer weapon collection is some AP.

What is the constructive criticism here?

P.S. I would not expect any major recalibration of Prismaticite Crystal costs until after the entire episode is over, presumably May 2021 at the earliest when Chapter 4: Judgment is set to be launched. Bjora Marches' Eternal Ice Shards used to be more scarce until the western portion was released, for example and ultimately it was Bjora Marches that helped with the LS4 currencies for both Skyscale and Vision (legendary accessory).

Test it in Armistice Bastion. You are probably confusing moving targets that have protection/aegis with "divided damage".

As I stated in the DRM thread, there ought to be a non-RNG way to obtain them IMO.

Most players would probably agree that it is better than even having a pity timer , because it gives you an actual target of when you will be guaranteed to be able to obtain one (see Runic armor set with the prophet shards).

Is it stable in a stress test such a Unigine Heaven or Firestrike on loop?

Soulbeast is more than viable in fractals , it's just not a requested class and not a heal/support. Meanwhile druid is common in raid scenarios.

Firebrand , tempest, or scrapper (if you don't care as much about loot bags and your commander doesn't give scout tag)

Chrono / spellbreaker are both more for boon rip not really for heal output or "keeping people alive".

Your other options are dismal: druid, any thief, support scourge (people usually run hybrid) , herald (clunky tablet).

If a player is out of the map in PVP or WVW they should just be automatically kicked...

Also players can be flying without a mount, it's called gliding.

> @"anduriell.6280" said:

> I don't get what has to do this with the opinion GW2 needs an upgrade.

>

> Microsoft provides guides to migrate Dx9 to DX12 (not directly but by steps), the new Visual Studio (i think GW engine is done in C++) provide helper libraries and there are also opensource helper libraries to help to translate the code from legacy D3DXX to D3D12.

>

> This should have been started already long time ago with the announcement of PoF. There is no excuse not to implement this as the game is still very profitable.

>

>

If they upgrade the engine it would likely need to branch into mobile in the long run since that's where the money is which means likely _not DX12_ (where iOS is supported via MoltenVK on Metal ; also Vulkan allows Google Stadia support). People are assuming it is stock Unreal engine so that it would be an easy port, when we know it is heavily modified. Porting over without any reimplementation of memory management would not result in any appreciable gains over the add-ons people use and any in-house tools that are required to make content would need to be re-tooled (assuming that is even possible , considering some tools may not be in-house *).

See https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/SharingAndReleasing/Mobile/Android/VulkanMobileRenderer/index.html , https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/SharingAndReleasing/Mobile/iOS/DeviceCompatibility/index.html

Leveraging the same consumer base is not going to bring much more money in to fund something that massive, which is why a Steam launch would need to be a massive success. The performance benefit between Vulkan and DX12 is such that _either_ way there would probably need to be massive changes if there are features implemented that actually matter , namely async compute.

Also example Basemark GPU scores:

>! RTX 3090 Vulkan = 21.5K vs 20.3K on DX12

>! RTX 3080 Vulkan = 18 vs 17.1K

>! RX 6900 Vulkan = 17.3K vs 18.2K

>! RX 6800 Vulkan = 13.8K vs 14.6K

>! RTX 3070 Vulkan = 13.4K vs 12.7K

>! RTX 3060 Ti Vulkan = 12K vs ~11.4K

>! RTX 2080 Vulkan = ~11.4K vs ~10.2K

>! GTX 1080 Ti Vulkan = 10.7K vs 10K

>! RX 5700 XT Vulkan = 8.4K vs 8.7K on DX12

>! RTX 2060 Vulkan = 7.7K vs 7K

>! RX 5600 XT Vulkan = 6.4K vs ~6.6K

>! RX Vega 56 Vulkan = 6.2K vs 6.5K

>! GTX 1070 Vulkan = 6.3K vs 5.9K

>! GTX 1650 Super on Vulkan = ~4.9K vs 4.2K

Similarly , nobody has actually posted concrete evidence that the d912pxy / dxvk workaround has eliminated all frame drop problems , even if it has improved performance. It is deeper than just the render thread. We know that there has been work to improve multithreading but some things are inherently sequential. If only 50% of code is parallelized the core usage past 2 cores will result in negligible gains ; for 75% parallelized code only up to 4 cores even if it is on a new graphics API.

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > @"Infusion.7149" said:

> > You have to realize Unreal Engine 4 requires a 5% royalty.

>

> I'm quite certain that 5% royalty is far less than having an in-house engine team working on your game, especially if said engine team is large enough to make big changes to a game, like adding ray tracing, or developing a directx 12 version for the engine. Meanwhile, you get all those upgrades for free by using Unreal Engine. In the end that fee depends on how cutting edge you want a game to be, as developing cutting edge technology on your own would require a lot more money than a 5% royalty fee.

>

People are asking for Arenanet to upgrade the engine, dump money into it, and then possibly pay a 5% royalty because they feel it isn't performing well enough. Many MMOs use older Unreal Engine versions because there is no royalty.

---

* "Past and current clients include game studios like ArenaNet (NCSoft)" - http://www.quadsoftware.com/index.php?m=section&sec=product&subsec=editor&target=editor_press_starvault

* "Umbra Software, the provider of state of the art rendering optimization middleware, announced today that Guild Wars 2, the highly-anticipated MMO from ArenaNet, is taking advantage of Umbra’s occlusion culling technology" - https://blog.umbra3d.com/about-us/press-releases/arenanet-powering-the-world-of-guild-wars-2-with-umbra-3-rendering-optimization

> @"Zok.4956" said:

>

> No, things dying in one hit is not the definition of grind.

>

> There is nothing wrong with repetition. It becomes only a grind if players repeat (over and over again) content they do not like just for the rewards (currency, items, etc.) and it becomes more work than fun. If repeating the content is fun for a player, its not a grind (for that player).

>

> I agree with @"Solvar.7953": Making the content better, so more players have fun playing it (and have fun repeating it) would be a better solution than increasing the rewards.

>

In most Asian MMO grind-fests , killing things over and over that die in one hit at their spawn because you are geared such that they are trivial is the grind.

> @"zealex.9410" said:

> Speaking of other ncsoft titles, both l2 and bns are getting engine upgrades. in the case of l2 i think the game is moving from unreal 2.5 to unreal 4 which is a huge leap in visual fidelity and performance.

It's not a direct engine upgrade , Blade & Soul Complete is a separate server (Frontier World) and requires a new client. Also there's Blade and Soul 2 coming on _mobile_ not PC.

Lineage 2 M (mobile) is using Unreal Engine 4 , and so did Lineage 2 Revolution. Lineage 2 : Remastered hasn't had any release announcement officially.

There's also announced Aion 2 on _mobile_.

Everything is coming on _mobile_ because that is where the money is to be made.

You have to realize Unreal Engine 4 requires a 5% royalty.

Better off to have better rewards for capping/defending T3s to incentivize fighting for objectives and tiering them. Rewarding "being there" is going to make the mode worse off.

One of my friends who is 10K rank just plays PVP/PVE after finishing diamond skirmish track now.

Yes because I maintain the wiki section for all skills so I read every update. I've been actively involved in every update since a few years ago.

Also I play every class.

edit: P.S. It's nothing compared to GW1 or a strategy game such as Magic the Gathering

Disregarding the /kneel comments...

In all seriousness if you intend to play this game in the long-term guardian is a better choice. Guardian is at times not the optimal but it never has been outright bad whether it is PVE (quickness , aegis), WVW (stability), or PVP.

In its current state even if you are a pair of casuals , guardians get into groups for strikes and fractals far easier than necros do, for good reason. The only support spec for necro is scourge, which has an even darker theme. Even a half support spec condi firebrand with quickness runes will be generally more group oriented than a reaper with blood magic.

So 1. for a more pleasing aesthetic (no dark theme) go guardian , 2. for easier grouping go guardian , 3. for general higher performance in most scenarios go guardian , 4. if staff is wanted the only meta staff is heal firebrand staff (and DH traps)

I would advise against druid because unless you're playing raid content it generally isn't a requested spec. In openworld it will take you longer to kill things on druid than on condi firebrand and you can't outheal massive hits but you can block them effortlessly with aegis.

If you don't believe me just go to each profession forum. Necro forum is always full of complainers because their specs aren't doing top DPS on a stationary golem , ranger forum is always full of "why doesn't anyone want me in WVW" or playing druid in fractals in 2020 when chrono isn't requested in fractals, and guardian is usually not unless it's about PVP against classes with stealth/boon rip/evades.

edit: If aegis timing is a problem use longer duration blocks such as _Shield of Wrath_ on Focus

I have hopes for 2021 and EOD expansion.

For me personally the highlight of 2020 was getting Conflux due to the inventory savings (and fractal AR cost savings). The fact that you can have multiple is a bonus.

---

Let's take a look at 2020 highlights because there's too much doom and gloom here:

* Feb 25 major competitive balance overhaul (you can argue for or against it but it happened)

--> includes the introduction of _Vicious Expression_ for mesmers , Explosives line overhaul that pushed holo into dominance , removal of 2nd soulbeast pet , the Corruption line overhaul that led to condi rev , 1 dodge mirage :#

* July 7 balance update that restored cloneless shatters to chrono & reworked Seize the Moment , nerf to "Feel My Wrath!" to end DH dominance in PVE , toned down soulbeast merged bonuses

* Sunqua Peak with CM

* Drakkar world boss

* legendary PVP and WVW trinket ; God of WvW title (I don't have it but some people do)

* PVP miniseasons and swiss tournaments

* Forging Steel , Whisper of Jormag , and Cold War strike missions

* Drizzlewood Coast

* return of LS1 missions (more of a developmental feat than an accomplishment)

* Warlord's armor exclusive to PVP/WVW , Runic armor for strikes with a common sense alternative acquisition method

* Bunch of weapon skins including Volcanic Stormcaller, Charged Stormcaller, Broken Voice Dragon Slayer, Dominion Tribune, Empowered Boneskinner, Stormcaller , Tengu Echo , Legion weapons (Forging Steel weekly box or crafted), full set of Candy Cane weapons

---> "reskin" sets such as Glitched Adventure , Demon-Haunted, Imbued Holographic , Sun-Blessed Zephyrite , Abyssal Fractal , Sparkling Wrapped

* Underwater skimmers

* DRMs

The original poster has no concept of how to run a business. Imagine if a developer went by the amount of complaint threads in a forum.

Even if you just step back from this game's stats a minute you will see the reality. Casual players by definition aren't interested in power (as in stats or "winning") but the new shiny things and content that has new experiences (the RPG part of MMORPG).

Bartle taxonomy dictates that there's four major types of players: achievers, explorers, socializers, killers. The only group that this game isn't well suited for is killers which is subdivided into politicians (people that want a big reputation ... there's only a handful of people with enough coverage for this to apply , large guild leaders would be a part of this subgroup) and griefers (people that want a reputation for being bad , mainly because PVP afking is bannable as well as hacking or botting while PKing isn't ingame so mainly the things people do that would be considered griefing are removed from the game other than WvW players throwing siege on the enemy).

Mobile games make up **51%** of the overall gaming share right now, with consoles and PC splitting the rest more or less. Of those 51% most of the revenue is off **casual** games which is why I don't think people invested in more niche content such as raids (which you can't win simply by out-gearing) or PVP (which you can't win simply by out-gearing or out-grinding) should get their hopes up for the same cadence as Living Story or open-world. This year we had a fractal with a CM added so "hardcore" content is still being made. As a business you go where the money is while attempting to not abandon your minor customers completely. If you go by which section of your consumer-base has the most complaints that is a sure way to go bankrupt.

Accessibility both hardware-wise and content-wise (i.e. for max stat gear not things that just award skins , optional mastery points, or achievement points) is going to be key to set it apart moving forward. GW2 has a reputation as a casual game (and even touted it at launch as a game you can put down any time and pick up again) and they should capitalize on it to gain market-share rather than making grindy content. Even in the past I have suggested more ways to make the playing field more level: I was against having a stat bonus on ascended and legendaries (i.e. they could have just been agony resistance slots instead of straight up stronger) , easier overall access to ascended armor/trinkets/weapons now that the damage has been done, lower required WvW rank for full WvW masteries (it's over 1K rank right now and even if I am well over that it doesn't bode well for newcomers), less grind achievements for completion of story or masteries, etc.

Imagine if the canceled GW2 sideproject was porting to mobile (recent iphones, iPads, later gen Android phones) so that people could play the Living Story and everything openworld off Geforce Now or Google Stadia as well as the actual device. The canceled project had something to do with mobile , so it is obvious that Arenanet knows that is the direction they need to be headed if they cannot gain more players off PC.

> @"Mungo Zen.9364" said:

> If the DRM continue as they currently are then I will do the minimum required to get through the story and base achievements. I would suggest the following changes:

>

> 1 - Make Squad Sized DRM, scaling mob count and difficulty

> I fail to understand the intent of limiting DRM to 5 players. As such, I feel that making DRM work in groups larger than 5 and up to 50 would benefit the overall playability.

>

> 2 - In Squad Sized DRM, bake CM into 'pre-events' where completing the pre unlocks the CM

> If the group can pull of the pre-events, then they can likely pull off the CM, scale rewards accordingly

>

> 3 - Give each Squad Sized DRM a set start time once every 1 hour (expanding to every 2 hours assuming additional DRM are released)

> By having a focused start time every 20-30 minutes, players will have a target time to engage the DRM they want to play.

>

> 4 - Retain DRM for 1-5 players as 'on demand' content, but also as the primary way of engaging with the story elements.

> In the above Squad size DRM, the story elements could be toned down, for example all the dialogue during the escort in Metrica.

>

> There is an argument for giving DRM farmable value similar to other content currently available. However I would be far more likely to do DRM dailies if Squad Sized DRM was an option, regardless of the net value.

>

The content is designed for 5 man and scaling downward, see the interviews regarding DRMs' rationale on massivelyop.

Many skills don't scale past 5 players anyway and fractals are largely successful along with Living Story : those are all 5 man.

Rhetorical question: if it ended up similar to Eternal Ice Shards where after it is no longer the "new thing" and the prismantium crystal output was multiplied by a factor of 10 for the crystals, along with weekly amalgamated draconic lodestones, would we have this thread?

The biggest gripe people have besides the inability to skip dialogue on repeats is how 10-15 minutes later you get loot that essentially is openworld Drizzlewood Coast or Bjora Marches chest drops unless you are insanely lucky.

> @"Paul.4081" said:

> Look it's great that you've all put these hypothesis and theory down in the absence of any input from Anet who should be the ones making excuses but when a lot of us can run modern games at 4k and have better performance with them than we do on a game over 10 years old it's time to acknowledge that improvements are a necessity. I mean, when you're reading about 30fps on a close to top of the line rig then hearing arguments against saying that's not the bestest best best rig and that's great. That's not moving goalposts that's changing the sport.

>

> I Just got PoF & the other xpac and it's running appallingly. It's like I'm running a Voodoo 2. Anet should be ashamed.

Do they need to put out a press release every time they make a change in the background? They already put out notices when they work on the network.

Which modern MMO games that rely on network I/O of 100+ people perform well for you? At the end of the day you can't treat Arenanet like a company making a single player game.

It's also important to distinguish between 30 _min_ FPS in a **CPU bound** scenario versus 30 FPS everywhere. Do you really need 144 FPS for _openworld_?

As an aggregate across all CPUs, with the most common GPU on Steam (the GTX 1060 6GB) gets:

48 FPS rating on userbenchmark at 1080p https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/153864.0.High.1080p.0

50.7 FPS rating on userbenchmark at 1440p https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/153864.0.High.1440p.0

Others:

>!**107FPS** i7-8700K + GTX 1080 Ti, 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/251565.347462.High.1080p.0

>! **95 FPS** i7-6700K+ GTX 970 , 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/14719.32631.High.1080p.0

>! **93 FPS** i7-7700K + GTX 1070 , 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/141989.178732.High.1080p.0

>! **85.7FPS** i7-7700K + GTX 1080 , 1080p "max" https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/137575.178732.0.1080p.0

>! **85 FPS** R5 2600X + GTX 1060 3GB , 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/165268.466081.High.1080p.0

>! **80 FPS** i7-8700K + GTX 1050 Ti , 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/188434.347462.High.1080p.0

>! **63 FPS** i5-4690K + GTX 760 , 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/7650.11612.High.1080p.0

>! **68 FPS** i5-3570+ GTX 1060 , 1440p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/153864.793.0.1440p.0

>!**59.3FPS** i5-6500 + GTX 770 , 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/7658.34775.High.1080p.0i

>!**50 FPS** Ryzen 5 1600 + GTX 1050 Ti, 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/0.258318.High.1080p.0

>! **50 FPS** i7-4790K + GTX 1070 , 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/141989.11601.High.1080p.0

>! **50 FPS** i5-6600K + GTX 1070, 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/141989.32899.High.1080p.0

>! **40 FPS** i5-4460 + GTX 1050Ti 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/188434.10022.High.0.0

>! **40 FPS** i5-2500K + GTX 1060 6GB , 1080p high https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCGame/FPS-Estimates-Guild-Wars-2/3733/153864.46.High.1080p.0

If it runs like trash everywhere you might not even have dx9 installed properly.

If you actually watch the GDC presentation is it stated there were problems even porting GW1 server to 64 bit Windows. What happened is while testing worked, once it was put on virtual machines the paging caused CPU usage spikes undetectable by Windows monitoring due to polling rate. For 32 bit that it was designed on, out of memory results in crashes instead. Can you imagine if they redid the whole engine instead of focusing on low-hanging fruit for the CPU bottlenecks? Most of the existing art assets would be unusable probably because in-house tools used to work with the existing engine would need to be redone.

That's not even including quotes such as these from Bill Freist (now gone from Arenanet):

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/bill-freist-talks-optimization-and-performance/

> At present, Guild Wars 2 has already received a massive amount of optimizations. This means that players who have suffered from poor performance in the past should see an improvement to their frame rate. But there are still discrepancies between individual systems. As we investigate those, it leads us to discover interesting bottlenecks. For example, here’s a chart showing how much of a difference a graphics driver version can make.

...

> keep in mind that having an adequate processor, graphics card, and sufficient system memory are all important to having a smooth gameplay experience.

It's a known that it has used Umbra (CPU-side) culling as well:

https://blog.umbra3d.com/about-us/press-releases/arenanet-powering-the-world-of-guild-wars-2-with-umbra-3-rendering-optimization

> @"zealex.9410" said:

> So stardock had an increase of 20% from dx11 to 12 and thats supposed to mean that gw2 wont have a noricable increase? For a number of ppl 20% is gonna be absolutely noticable and i will be surpised if gw2 only experiences a 20% jump koving from dx9 to 12.

There's a difference between a person putting up a dx9 to dx12 on github and a game company actually rewriting their code and _having to support it_. Case in point, look at the mac client. Also see the performance differential semi-tabulated a few posts ago between d912pxy and the actual 64 bit client.

The closest thing to a proper implementation is dxvk since that works on multiple platforms and across multiple games , officially endorsed by Steam Play (through funding not just "use this").

Instead of conjecture , people ought to specify :

1. What CPU they're using and at what clocks (if you're using a 2GHz dual core 4 thread notebook chip don't expect miracles)

2. How much RAM they have and are they using a pagefile at all (because as stated above, 64 bit doesn't crash due to run out of RAM unless you don't use a pagefile)

3. Are they using a SSD , is there a pagefile and if pagefile is turned off is there an out of memory error

4. What ping they have

5. What are they are having issues with , within reason. Expecting 60 min FPS with 100+ people on highest settings is not realistic when it's CPU bound for all physics and shadows/reflections if they're turned on. For a period LS4 and PoF maps were performing poorly due to networking an not the client.

6. If settings are turned up , the VRAM usage out of the total GPU VRAM assuming GPU load is not always 100%

7. How much of a change is actually due to the non-rendering parts (i.e. using d912pxy or dxvk to isolate which bottlenecks aren't related to directx)

8. Whether CPU bound settings such as model limit, shadows , reflections are on max or low