Clyde.5178

> @"Nokomis.5076" said:

> You can open a support ticket without logging in. Just provide as much information as possible for the team.

OK, I just opened an anonymous ticket. Thank you.

I've had an account for a few years and I've never had any problems like this. Then after I started Ice Brood Story, it disconnected me and blocked my account. I can't log in to open a ticket. The only thing I can think of is that I used a VPN, but I entered the security code when prompted. I live in Thailand, so I thought it might improve my connection, but the VPN made my ping slower, so I logged out and closed the VPN. I had been playing normally for a few hours and then just disconnected and blocked. Please help.

I started with Minstrel's then later switched to Harrier's with a few Minstrel trinkets for survivability. It's fine in T4. I think I had half/half at one point. You can mix pieces and experiment. I prefer the boon time and damage Harrier's gives to the extra heals of Minstrel's. Also, Harrier's feels better with a more experienced group, because they don't tend to need much heals and your ~6k DPS helps. Minstrel's feels better when your pug needs to be carried because you can just ignore most mechanics.

I've seen HFB run full Harrier's, full Minstrel's, Harrier with Magi trinket, full Diviner's. Even full Plaguedoctor's. It all works up to T4, but with CM's 99/100 you want to be playing whatever meta.

Yes, it is.

Just hit the golem for a bit on condi and can't see any noticeable difference in damage.

I just got into gw2 this month and decided on condi firebrand for fractals and raids, just finished my ascended viper set. Am I screwed?

> @"Fargas.6251" said:

> I didn’t know about Toughness bringing in aggro. That’s pretty good to know. You wouldn’t happen to know a good ballpark health pool to sit on for open world would you?

>

For open world I use full Trailblazer's with Apothecary's trinkets (cause I haven't got the Trailblazer's trinkets yet) and I've got just over 16k hp with about 2k toughness. I have no problem staying alive and dealing decent damage.

> I suppose the stats I can afford to lose are Ferocity and Expertise I’m guessing. Would you say that’s accurate?

Well, you want to stay around 100% burning duration, because that's most of your damage, so expertise is important, but you can also get burning duration from traits, runes, and food. The reason that snowcrows build is able to run Sinister's and Grieving and not full Viper's is because they make up for the lack of expertise by using Balthazar runes.

There's a post on here where someone did the math, but power, condition, precision, ferocity, and expertise all have a bit of a delicate balance in Firebrand and there are certain breakpoints with stats where once you have a certain amount of one stat, it's better to invest in another.

Full Trailblazers is great for open world, but if you want to use that snowcrows build and not invest in a full set, I'd replace some of the Grieving gear with Trailblazers. That way, you'd keep the expertise (~100% burning duration) and add some tankiness. You cut Grieving because the ferocity wouldn't be as effective if you're running Trailblazer's gear.

> @"ollbirtan.2915" said:

> For OW/FOTM Seraphbrand does a great job of might stacking / support / general survivability and damage. I usually run iterations of this build. Easily maintain ~20 might solo.

> http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWABc+t7lRweYVMMGJW0SvPbA-zRRYmhQgG909FSCVQphQHJgDnERoe6HE7hgD4tcq5G-e

I'm really interested in this build because I love condition Firebrand, and I want to work towards building heal/support gear for fractals. I was thinking of going full minstrel's, since I've seen Harrier's do negligible damage anyway.

How is Seraph's for FoTM? Do you find yourself trying to actively heal everyone or are you mostly DPS'ing and just passively healing from solace and symbols? I'd hate all the DPS stats to go to waste if I'm barely targeting the boss.

> @"Fargas.6251" said:

> How much Toughness do I need to bring, for it to even be worthwhile? Is Vitality actually better?

That depends on which game mode you want to play. The Snowcrows build you linked is intended for raids and fractals, so you'll be fine there. But if you find yourself dying a lot, you can mix in some Trailblazers, or the more accessible Dire or Carrion gear.

If you want to do open world or WvW/PvP, you'll definitely need more toughness and vitality. Trailblazers is amazing for open world and soloing everything.

As far as toughness vs. vitality, you want a blend of the two, but keep in mind that higher toughness will attract more aggro.

Zealous Sceptor in the Zeal spec with a sceptor stacks to 25 pretty quick and stays there. I use it in my Trailblazer Firebrand open world build.

I've been playing Firebrand for a while and I really enjoy everything about it. I like doing fractals and open world events, eventually I want to get into raiding. I've been using a Viper's exotic set for fractals going more hybrid dps. I also have a trailblazers set of exotics for open world events. I've got my crafting up and mats ready to craft several pieces of ascended armor and I'm kind of torn between crafting the Condi dps Viper's/Sinister/Grieving set and a more support set like Harriers/Minstrels/Seraph. I know it comes down to personal preference and what playstyle you like, but I'm hoping someone's experience can guide me in the right direction.

I made the standard Condi Firebrand build with full exotic vipers and I get ~19kdps on golem with F1. If I drop F1 from my rotation, I do ~25kdps. My condi duration is about 95%. I know F1 excels against multiple targets where you can get the reset, but I've seen this build do tons of damage with F1 in the rotation on golem from other players, and all the guides say F1 is your main source of damage. So I feel like I must be doing something wrong.

Trying to keep things like might and quickness up is way harder than it should be. There are visual cues for when the Boon begins, but no duration cue. And then all the boons are just tiny icons that are the same size, shape and color. At least make them different colors so I can differentiate them in my peripheral. Or give each boon a visual cue for duration on the character, like a glow or halo effect.

> @"mindcircus.1506" said:

> There are a few points in GW2 that things are brought up that were explained in the first game and do not get rexplained. The are talked about like common knowledge without any background given.

> It's kind of an "immersion" thing. No one in Tyria at this day and time would need to have the the Bloodstone explained to them

>

> At any rate, the Bloodstones are actually one of the cooler pieces of this Franchise's lore.

>

> There's some speculation in this video that''s no longer relevant, but there's a ton of good explanations in this video

>

> Start about 2:30

The video is really helpful, thanks for that. Bloodstones do sound pretty cool.

I'm playing through Season 3 now, really trying to get into the story, but something came up. Bloodstones. You get this mission to check out what the White Mantle is up to, which coincides with Taimi's observations of magical disturbances. Then Taimi talks about the Maguuma Bloodstone like everyone knows about it already. And when it explodes, your character is like "I think a Bloodstone exploded." But, at this point in the story, no one has really explained what a Bloodstone is. It really made me feel like I missed something, so I went back and watch all of the story up to this point, but I didn't find anything. Did I miss something? Isn't it strange that there's this giant godly artifact in the jungle that everyone seems to know about, but hasn't seemed too concerned about it up to now?