Infusion.7149

Above posters are forgetting boon rip on sword autos , it's not just _Vicious Expression_ and _Shattered Concentration_ (which through testing is per clone). The big thing is tides of time (no target cap), gravity well, null field, focus pull, veil (no target cap). Illusion of Life isn't as efficient if there's a stall and you're not getting kills. If your party is terrible at stability but stacks well you can run mantra of concentration. Open-field portal hasn't been as effective as older times because of the obvious tell and the cap on people going through it. People aren't running minstrel stat chrono for healing mostly, unlike with scrapper , tempest, and firebrand. They're running minstrel because to frontline with sword you need high defensive stats. Used to be a more useful stat with WvW boon chrono where you could Signet of Inspiration to copy boons and also output party boons on shatters. The heals on mantras and wells aren't amazing but you still get a minor amount of heal output from _Restorative Illusions_ as well as _Illusionary Inspiration_ if you choose to run Inspiration.

> @"Lucio.4190" said: > Is it possible that the framerate drops when there's lot of players on the screen at the same time, just because that would save lots of traffic? Thinking at how much bandwidth would be required if it was trying to deliver 60+ fps to all 80 players? > Or does it work like that at all? > > Also thinking if new hardware is build to use dx12, when an older driver or dx is used that wouldn't know how to use the full power of the hardware? > > Just throwing out some thoughts, how crazy (and maybe very wrong) they may sound. Network lag causes rubber-banding (if your settings menu shows spikes 250+ms which is quarter of a second, on par with a fast weapon skill). Network connectivity is just part of it and I would assume the code is tuned to update in intervals (a server-based "tick" , for Overwatch or CS:GO it's 60 ticks/second , Fortnite is 30 ticks/second , Apex Legends is 20 ticks/second) such that any positioning data in between is interpolated. Common network code will dictate which objects are in draw distance. For 60FPS, it is 16ms per frame and for 30FPS it is 32ms per frame not accounting for input lag. * see https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/107755/severe-lag-spikes-disconnect-error-code-7-11-3-202-101 ; https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/111982/an-update-on-game-performance-issues * This was much more common on LS4 and POF maps as far as reports go. Could just be due to amazon's elastic EC2 instances needing to dynamically scale for unexpected demand as well. * Guild Wars franchise is actually renowned for the robustness of their infrastructure , with Mike O'Brien being behind Battle.net. Many MMOs need regular "server maintenance" downtimes. What Arenaanet does is run the old build and new build in parallel, with all new connections going to the new build. Their shift to AWS was noted here: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/arenanet-guild-wars-mmorpg-migration/ * Presentation in 2017 at GDC here regarding 24/7 uptime: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024442/-Guild-Wars-Microservices-and The only GPUs with outright DX9 issues were Navi-based AMD Radeons, people were using DXVK and d912pxy to get around that. Everything from "Kepler" GTX 600 series and up should support DX12 even if it isn't the full featureset. If you have a desktop Intel i5 quad core or better from 2012 onwards (all AMD Ryzens included) frame rates _should_ be at least double digits , typically above mid 20s on unoptimized world bosses and/or 50v50 WvW on EBG and 40+ minimums elsewhere. If you don't turn on standard enemy models in WvW then you are likely to run into "asset load" setbacks such as having to get data on appearance (including race, gender , backpacks) , class , weapon sets equipped.

You don't need to level for PVP unless you mean WVW

> @"XenoSpyro.1780" said: > > @"Blocki.4931" said: > > Literally just don't try to run it at max settings. > > That's all that is required. It's perfectly playable, it works. > If you use the d3d12 wrapper, you can easily max out almost every setting if your rig is decent enough (read: not a 2011 potato). Any 4 core with 3+ ghz should do. > > Player count and higher shadow settings are a very odd exception. These are usuable as long as you're not in a map meta, or smack in the middle of a holiday event. Even at its inception the d912pxy benchmarks suggest that some things are still heavily biased towards CPU. _1080ti + Ryzen 7 2700x (2 generations old)_ * Svanir Shaman core map meta boss: 21.5-32.2 min (d912pxy), average 31.1-49.3 (d912pxy), 1% low 21.6-29.8 (d912pxy) * Fire elemental core map meta boss: 27.3-31.5 min (d912pxy), average 30.1-35 (d912pxy), 1% low 22.9-25.1 (d912pxy) * Lion's Arch FPS with dx9 and d912pxy : 29.5-31.2 min (D912pxy) , average 52.8-60.2 , 1% low 26.6-27.9 (d912pxy) * Urban Battleground fractal ,5 players limit : 37-42.2 min (d912pxy) , average 63 FPS, 1% low 34.6-38.8 (d912pxy) * Volcanic fractal : 56.6-60.2 min (d912pxy) , average 81.9-110 (d912pxy), 1% low 56.9-63.1 (d912pxy) This user was in WvW recording on EBG and seems to hit ~26FPS or so as a minimum with the DX12 mod and Windows optimizations i7-8700K ( 6 core 12 thread) @ 5.2GHz , RX5700XT Note that for AMD GPUs , dxvk has proven to be more reliable Also note that they have model limit medium, which is generally a bad idea for WVW.

> @"Stand The Wall.6987" said: > in terms of raw healing i wonder which is the best. i think its **druid** now but can't confirm. they def have the biggest direct heals at least, maybe not overall. Good luck with astral force and not giving away squad position with your pet.

I pressed back by accident and had a long post here but the gist of it was: It should probably be a non-essential spec similar to condi banner berserker: very good to have but not gamebreaking without it. Another power spec would be superfluous and a full on heal spec seems extraneous when scrapper exists. Medkit scrapper isn't taken in PVE because it doesn't have quickness, alacrity, or even fury (without turret trait which is clunky). While condi holo or core condi engineer are usable they currently require too much work to use over other condi specs while bringing nothing really unique other than _pinpoint distribution_. The tradeoff could very well be use of only one kit for example. A new spec with +100 to 150 expertise or something to that angle would be beneficial because banners do not have expertise. The likely weapon would be mace in melee range, I don't think axe / dagger / focus / staff / etc would be fitting. I also don't think bows really fit engineers. By having a melee weapon it would justify higher damage overall than pistol which is currently quite lacking. Could be easily auto with bleed, a gap closer of some sort whether a leap or pull (more thematic) on around 8-10 base cooldown, some sort of cleave skill with small PBAOE. Something that works similar to the old mine kit would probably be in line with that idea : it would be easier now to implement with the ammo system. Something less "technical" than gyros and holo forge / exceeds / etc and more in line with flamethrowers, toolkit, catapults, rams (Personal Battering Ram) , trebuchets ought to be the theme. If you look at snowcrows or luckynoobs most condi specs are only able to hit 100% condition duration for one or two damaging conditions (usually burning + bleeding) except for renegade with nightmare runes.

Since you have a massive .dat file (51GB on my drive) and a small installer I would just install GW2 and copy the dat file over. Keep in mind you need NTFS file system on windows if you aren't using a direct transfer and are using an intermediary step such as an external drive (some of those are FAT32 when you get them with a file size limit).

Scrapper healing scales with boons and has a lower skill floor for effectiveness. If you have heralds or multiple scrappers using _purity of purpose_ it scales much better. Engineers are better at bulk cleanses (purge gyro , cleansing field, fumigate on Elixir Gun) but mantra of lore remains very competitive with 2 conditions cleansed every 12s base cooldown on 5 people , it's just smaller radius. The reasons why people don't run heal scrappers in PVE is due to role compression, near zero damage while camping med kit, and lower number of scenarios with a high amount of incoming conditions: with a firebrand you can output quickness and stability more reliably. Firebrand healing doesn't stack as well because it depends on aegis to an extent and healing in general on firebrands has been nerfed. The major contributors are virtue of resolve traited with _Absolute Resolution_ (it's about 200/second , the tooltip is per 3 seconds) as well as aegis (~800ish every time it pops), shield of absorption , dodge roll (Selfless Daring ~1K heal , so essentially every 9s) , and full chain of mace autos (~ 1K heal). The looser your stack is the better the scrapper is in comparison because the mace auto chain is 180 radius and so is symbol of faith, mantra of lore, mantra of solace (one of my commander friends actually runs "Receive the Light").

Yep they're quite cheap, below 20 silvers each.

You can do PVP/WVW reward tracks for the ascalonian tears Flock runes are a good choice though , water runes if you want more boon duration.

> @"Lily.1935" said: > Some weapons that could use some improvements being Rev hammer, necro dagger, guardian longbow, guardian mace, Guardian hammer, engineer rifle, necro focus, thief daggers, thief sword. And I'm sure there are more... Rev's hammer doesn't need much help if at all, it's used in WVW to great extents since its inception. Guardian's mace doesn't need help. It is used in WVW to great extents and the only reason why people wouldn't use it in PVE is the extra healing isn't as necessary as fury generation considering you have aegis output from both shield and mantra of solace (which could use toning down). Dragonhunter's longbow only needs a bit more damage in PVE, in PVP/WVW it isn't used because CC skills had their damage removed so the only real damage is True Shot. Hunter's Ward is incredibly annoying but isn't quite a damage skill when you account for how long it takes to use it. Symbol of Energy doesn't have a high power coefficient so the weapon is sort of split. Guardian's hammer used to be used more often in WVW for blasting fields. There's been some offmeta hammer guardians that capitalize on the high damage hits of Mighty Blow in recent memory. Presumably if guardians could build tankier in PVP you could use them to bunker a point as in core days. Also you can basically maintain protection just by mindlessly auto-ing so I don't think it is wise to suggest improving it much if at all. Necro's focus isn't generally used in PVE but it's a strong boon rip in WVW/PVP. Engineer's rifle was meta for holos for a bit since you can cycle it with kits. The blunderbuss and jump shot skills do most of the damage on rifle. It still is used on roaming holo builds focusing on elixirs. I would caution against improving it significantly. Thief's sword was meta in PVP for the longest time in both sword + pistol and sword+dagger form. Before deadly ambition nerfs it was even used on condition type thieves, it was that ubiquitous.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/ <-- blast from the past * No level treadmill as far as stat gains. That includes not having RNG on exponentially more expensive upgrading (fractal AR is exponential but imagine if upgrading could fail with 50%+ failure rate). * Play at your leisure, you're not obligated to play due to a subscription or gear creep. I've had guildmates that took years off (for whatever life reasons , including hospitalization or whatnot) come back and were excited to play again. * A game world where things act and feel alive rather than interacted with by text boxes and popup dialogues exclusively. I don't think people realize how spoiled they are , we saw this happen when voiceovers were missing due to the pandemic. * Combat that isn't about spamming potions * The ability to make any class in any gender and race. * No kill stealing or random PKing (player killing) ; mobs generally take more than one hit outside of core Tyria. Rolling for loot? We don't have that. --> In fact a [massivelyop](https://massivelyop.com/2016/04/07/massively-overthinking-grouping-kill-stealing-and-open-pvp-in-mmorpgs/) article states it is best at dealing with KSing: >! **Brianna Royce**: _This problem has been solved many times over by Guild Wars 2. The solution isn’t finding a better way to decide who gets how much experience and who gets “ownership” of a mob; the solution is to just stop worrying about it at all and instead give everyone who contributes to a fight exactly the same amount of experience and loot. Individuals aren’t penalized, but there’s still benefit to grouping, formally or informally, since you kill stuff that much faster._ >! _There’s no reason modern MMORPGs should be doing anything other than that system right there, end of story._ >! >! **Patron Archebius**: _If you help kill something, then you should get XP and credit for the kill, assuming you did more than a certain percentage of the total damage. I think Guild Wars 2 did this pretty flawlessly. There’s nothing more annoying than hopping into a game and having to stand around the noob areas waiting for stuff to spawn; or, alternatively, for the starting region to be massively overpopulated with monsters to a ludicrous degree (looking at you, Black Desert. Pretty rare for boogles of weasels to just congregate outside of town)._ * Realm vs realm combat with a relatively even footing stat-wise. * Art quality given the aging engine and the limitations it has ----- They also responded very clearly to some player requests such as gliding and mounts (people were whining about no mounts at launch , waypoints are more sparse after mounts were added). I would advise you look at https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Release for a top-level overview of what has changed over the years. In the near term the schedule is set for Icebrood Saga Champions : Chapter 2: Power — planned for January 2021 Chapter 3: Balance — planned for March 2021 Chapter 4: Judgment — planned for May 2021

Well that is why I wrote that is _one_ of the builds people are running , the general premise is the same (sword mainhand, CCs / boonrips). On my server we never use illusions on chronos ; the metabattle build is Chaos , Domination, Chronomancer as well.

For core maps (2012), https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-4.html > The Radeon HD 7750 and GeForce GTX 550 Ti had no trouble through 1920x1080 at the _Balanced_ preset. However, they're both knocked down to about 30 FPS minimums using the _Best Appearance_ setting. > At 1920x1080, you need at least a Radeon HD 7770 or GeForce GTX 560 to use the best-looking graphics preset offered in Guild Wars 2. It's preferable to get smoother performance using the Balanced setting when it comes to slower cards. > None of the boards we're testing can keep above 40 FPS, including the powerful Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 670. At its highest detail setting, Guild Wars 2 clearly demands a potent graphics subsystem. ... > Four physical cores appear ideal, based on our results from the Sandy Bridge design. Sandy Bridge-E doesn't seem to introduce any benefit at all. Intel's dual-core, Hyper-Threaded Core i3 and dual-core Pentium are notably slower, though they still embarrass the eight-core AMD FX at 3 GHz. > Guild Wars 2 looks good, even at its lowest detail settings. **And it runs smoothly at 1920x1080 on a $40 Radeon HD 6450 using that entry-level preset.** > A **Sandy Bridge-based** Core i5 is all you need for the best possible experience. P.S. Nobody is arguing that the engine should not be improved. A complete engine overhaul on the other hand is not in the cards. Testing with d912pxy and dxvk on average has ~15-20% improvement for min FPS in line with what Stardock's developer stated over DX11 (this game is DX9). There needs to be additional multithreading at the actual main thread and not the render threads.

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said: > quickness doesnt seem to work on phantasmal berserker :) I just tested it 10 seconds ago and quickness does apply to the phantasmal berserker

Remember: Guardian staff used to cleave 5 targets in a large cone , it was the "lootstick". I think ranger longbows' rapid-fire "burst" in competitive modes comes down to damage modifiers such as sic'em and merged pet bonuses (which have been shaved down) more so than longbow itself. That and the momentary dismount issue where it doesn't count armor while you drop off the mount are essentially what enable it to spike people. Also as it is projectile it generally isn't as huge a problem as old revenant 2s cooldown CoR (with no invuln against CoR timer) was for example. Also above I forget to mention thief **pistol mainhand**, which is the hallmark of new players that have no idea about DPS. That seriously needs help, it is so bad I forgot it existed for a bit. Here's to hoping the next thief elite spec is condi of some sort so they have a viable condi application. The _Deadly ambition_ nerf meant there really isn't a viable way to apply condis , even before the nerf the best you could do was about 27-30K with daggers, ~27K on pistol mainhand with Deadeye using M7, and ~23K with shortbow. You could try daggers but ultimately it now doesn't have the frequent application and probably would need sigil of earth or something akin to that. ---> Ultimately I believe the reason it was made weaker overall is due to the Pistol + Dagger condition thief in PVP (which is more about the surprise burst than sustained damage).

Basically whatever is hot in PVP with some mobility is typically the roaming meta. Keep in mind some skills and traits are split between PVP and WVW. Classes such as holosmith, d/p or s/p daredevil, burn DH guardians, power heralds, mallyx condi heralds, power soulbeast, power reaper (usually speed runes for mobility or something akin to that), strength spellbreaker, etc. Of those classes unless you want to never play in groups I think you want to play holosmith (swap to DPS or heal scrapper in groups) , burn DH (swap to firebrand in groups), power herald (bring a hammer), power reaper, or strength spellbreaker (make sure you have Greatsword or double axes for better cleave).

That's just an example of _one_ of the builds people run in WVW. Illusions is taken for the ammo on shatters and phasntasmal haste means the Phantasmal Berserker (which rips boons) attacks faster. If you play WVW over an extended period of time you would know that since July 2020 patch mesmers started to see play again. --- For PVE , the most common use of boon rip is in fractals with _No Pain No Gain_ or _Vengeance_ where it is usually covered by a Renegade.

Most weapons have an obvious bias except Firebrand axe , ranger axes, and weaver sword. For openworld _I would not use condi at all_ except maybe Firebrand axe. on a strictly one full weaponset basis based off spec: Firebrand: axe+torch , scepter+torch --- the only time condi makes sense DH / core guard: Sword+focus or scepter+focus, Greatsword Revenant : double sword, staff (or hammer for PVE memes , you will camp swords usually anyway) Mesmer / chrono: sword+sword or sword+focus, Greatsword Warrior (any spec): double axe , double mace Ranger (any spec): sword+axe or axe+axe if you need to range and use greatsword, longbow/greatsword Weaver: sword + dagger Tempest: scepter + warhorn Holo: sword+shield (openworld) , sword+pistol otherwise Scrapper: hammer Daredevil : staff Deadeye: rifle (not enough cleave generally so just run daredevil) Reaper: Axe+warhorn, Greatsword

People might play boon thief in something like Freezie, but healer thief is basically so off meta it is unreal. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Detonate_Plasma <--- 4s base quickness , in Freezie mission (aka Snowman Lair) https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drink_Ambrosia <--- 5s base quickness , in Voice + Claw

The reason why you don't get drops just for healing is so people can't afk farm. **That's** what it comes down to, because of PVE people running boon builds like herald at spawn points. As long as you tag things in some fashion, if you have been healing or spitting out boons the threshold for tagging damage is lowered significantly.

6-11 in Forging Steel https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stone_Summit_Chest 1-3 in Cold War https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grand_Frost_Legion_Chest and likely 1-3 in all others that are short , I haven't paid attention to it in a while since I just do the dailies for the weekly chest.

If you have that much of an issue with it , get scout participation.

? Do more strikes to get more prophet shards

The only major support with this problem is medkit heal scrapper. Firebrands not resolve tomes and tempests running any weapon at all don't have this issue. Just tag things. Retaliation counts, reflects count.