Shailyn Slay.7234

> 1. Magic Find Max - is this a worthwhile goal?

> I watched a vid re Salvaging Ectoplasm's and selling the Crysalline Dust for a very small loss. Currently up to 120% Magic find and climbing. This seems like it will pay off in the long run.

It's an okay goal, but increasing above ~200 takes a lot more luck, so it just becomes slower and slower. If you don't have alrger amounts of gold (200-300 at least) it won't be feasible to increase it by much without large time investments

> 2. Home Instance

> What are some quick ways to get a few nodes in here? I think I have it right that I can gather from my own, and from another's Instance daily, so aiming for some nodes seems sensible.

Getting nodes yourself is not really a way to make money (it can become profitable over years but ...). Some people do it for fun, some because they are collectors, etc. You can gather each specific home instance node once per day (on any character, in any home instance). If you know some people who have a lot of nodes (or use lfg) just use their instance

> 3. Laurels

> I spent my first 15x Laurels getting some 'starter gold' to give myself some flexibility (via starter kits & material bags), but am now looking to save these. Whats worth going after? Home Instance nodes seem like a stable long term investment

Laurels are an easy source for your first ascended amulet (core stats only though) you can also get utility infusions for these. If its money you want go for T6 material bags.

> 4. Karma

> Should I be trading these in for gold, or trying to save for a 'big ticket' type item? If gold is the answer, am I better off following https://gw2efficiency.com/ or going for the map completion fragments from the rotating vendors? If not gold - what should I be focused on instead here?

it's very tedious to convert Karma into gold - most people just let it pile up. You can spend (&earn) a lot during wintersday

> 5. Time gated crafting

> Is there much profit to be made from these items? Not sure how it compares to things like glyphs for investment vs payback, but it seems like crafting can be a big gold sink.

Not sure how high the profit is, but in the long you will want to use these materials at some point. I'd recommend keeping them for now.

> 6. Dungeon currencies

> I was lucky enough to get a group which ran every wing of Caudecus’s Manor and ended up with 321 Seals of Beetletun. As far as I can tell my best bet here would be to grab a mainhand weapon as an upgrade at 80. Is there a better idea here?

Dungeon tokens are indeed best spend on exotic gear - be aware though that each dungeon only offers 3 stat combinations - some are quite good others not so much (don't remember which ones CM has)

> @"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

> @"Shiyo.3578" Yeah see, just about every single player whom I've talked with that reports really unusual match making patterns that lead to really weird win & lose streaks and being like permanently stuck in this weird pattern, are all people who own first month release accounts. I mean seriously, I'm not just saying this. Even my main account is a first day release birth date.

>

> I'm curious as to who else is experiencing these patterns and what their account birth dates are. I am also curious as to if any first month birth dates claim to be experiencing very normal match making that isn't volatile at all.

>

> I think it's an important piece to the puzzle of figuring out what is going on here. I'm talking account birth dates, total games played, and a summary of that account's match making patterns. I'm really starting to believe that something went buggy somewhere along the lines with older accounts.

>

> But I dunno, it could have absolutely nothing to do with it in the end.

My account is (pre-)release as well, and I often feel I have the same/similar problem. While I'm not a plat player (and probably never will be) I can play in gold and uusally still perform well. However, there are so many matches that are completely unwinnable (or already won) within 1-2 minutes - it's so obvious when a team (sometimes mine, sometimes now) just can not perform. One thing I noticed is that this effect is stronger (or maybe just feels worse?) when your rating is further away from where you could/should be - in (high) Silver I often feel like I couldn't impact games that much, in g1/g2 this already became better.

I've also noticed that it's almost impossible for me get placed into Gold in any season - 1200 is the "default" rating (50/50 wins) and marks the silver/gold border. But even with 6/10 placement wins I will usually end up placed in silver 2/3. I often feel like the 'soft reset' of MMR that's suppsoed to happen between seasons either doesn't happen at all; is so soft that it might as well not exits; or somehow takes into account all seaons/ratings you ever had

1) PvP does not use (PvE) gear - is has it's own stat system that is independent and equalized. If you click on the 'helmet' button in the middle top of the screen you can select amulet (base stats), rune & sigils for your pvp build. The stat combinations on the amultes make up you main stats - not sure which are best for necro (or rather your build), but you can check sites like metabattle.com for spceifics like that.

2) Minions should automatically attack targets in range; however, I'm unsure how targeting preference works for necro as I never play it.

You're allowed to use your account from whatever computer you want.

What is not allowed would be sharing your account with a friend (so maybe don't save your password on their pc). As long as you just use a 'borrowed' computer you're golden.

You can get grandmaster marks (of any type) from ranked PvP - only 3 or so per season, so it's slow, but it IS possible to get them without any crafting at all.

Additonally both PvP & WvW have some chances of dropping ascneded gear, so if play these modes exclusively you are bound to get some ascended gear (which is only relevant for WvW and not sPvP anyway) at somepoint. WvW might have even more options to get ascended gear that I don't know about, cause I don't really play it (I'm guessing some of the armor/weapons you can unlock for skrimisher tickets might be ascended).

Most people have already pointed out the common advice that you shouldnt boost your first 1-2 characters to learn the game, but afterwards that completely fine.

One part of your question that wasn't commented one is your descriptions/feelings of the classes: you described warrior as heads-on with good damage and healing and thief as very bursty with low healing. This is *excactly* how these classes are supposed to feel, warrior just runs in & hits everything until it's dead. Thief on the other hand bursts 1-2 targets down & then - and I feel like you maybe missed that - needs to vansish again; a Thief's best defense is not getting caught in the first place - using evade skills, blind or stealth.

This different approach of classes to handle combat is very much intended (and a big part why you should try different classes to see which one fits you). Guardian for example is a heavy armor class, but has low HP - defense therefore relies on active block skills and (similar to thief) killing things before they get dangerous. The list goes on ...

Generally all classes can do dungeons or (casual) fractal runs. For really high level play people want to see certain builds, which may favor some classes over others, but you shouldn't worry about that now (especially since these builds & classes can change with balance updates).

If I remember correctly this achievement also took me a while because the events are very much RNGish.

One thing that is important to note is that they can (randomly) pop up at *any* of the 3 cannons - so camping a single one might mean you miss the event running somewhere else on the map.

Best way to get is probably to ask in map chat & lfg and hope people shout out if they see the event running somewhere.

I remember reading somewhere that in order to get mounts 'look good' the devs had to change how moving animations are done in the game:

On foot characters either move (at a certain speed) or not and the camera follows them at that same speed and everything is fine. However, at the high speeds of mounts the instant change from stationary to moving looks disruptive or 'jumpy', so they had to make the camera lag behind a bit and then accelerate to the full speed of the mount.

I'm guessing this option can dis/enable this feature.

Man I wish I had a VR headset to try this ...

You probably just used the GW2hook / reshader stuff so I'm not sure if you can answer this but:

Do you think there is any possibility of making stuff like name tags (& I guess also Inventory and other pop-up like windows) appear only on one screen/eye? Because that seems to be the last step missing to fully enable playing the game in VR without switching back and forth.

I already posted in the general feedback thread, but I hope it's worth adding this here as well:

My first/main suggestion goes along with making a clearer differentiation between templates & loadouts by adding an 'active' build on which all (manual) changes are applied. I think this can't just solve issues of not being able to make small changes to build without auto-saving them, but can *also* be used to re-introduce auto-loadouts for different game modes and maybe even make sharing of equipment between characters a bit easier.

**Adding an 'active' build**

The way build & equipment templates were introduced now they completely replace the previous way of selecting skills & equipment.

I want to suggest a sort of intermediate process, in which each character has one 'active' build (and equipment state), which - like before introduction of templates - is affected by any (manual) changes made to skills & traits. The templates can then work the same as they do now, with the exception that clicking / changing anything on a template doesn't automatically apply the template to the active build. This applying of a template is instead done by an additional button (or the already implemented key-binds), an additional option of 'save current active build to template' would be nice, but isn't even necessary.

Additional option the active build can be saved separately for each game mode, like it was before templates. (This essentially means that people who use only one build for a given game mode don't need to save it as a template, but if they want to quickly change between two builds within one game mode, they'll need to save both as a template)

The same process can probably also be applied to equipment, but with some caveats. While it was stated that the devs didn't want to touch inventory code for the templates, I think this mostly applies to taking items out of inventory (since auto-placing stuff into inventory happens all the time with when equipping new equipment or just autoloot). This means that if we have items stored/saved in the current equipment templates, we'd need to add an 'active' slot of actually equipped items. These items can then be exchanged manually from inventory: now the game needs to check if the replaced item (currently located in 'active equipped' is also part of any template (in which case it will got into that 'slot') or not (in which case it goes into inventory, using the same process as ever / before templates).

This should make quickly changing weapons easy, but won't change the saved templates (and the weapons of the saved templates do NOT go into inventory). People who want to share items between characters can then take a set character-bound armor and save it a template, then manually replace it with items from shared inventory/bank. Once they want to move it back, they just need to load the saved template, which will pop all non-saved but equipped items back into inventory (from where they can be moved to / accessed by other characters).

**Alternative without 'active' builds**

I know that my main suggestion is quite a bit of an addition to the current implementation of the templates.

My main issue with the current implementation is that builds are not linked to game modes anymore. One hopefully easy way to solve this is allow (manual) linking a given template with a game mode. Then this template will be auto-loaded when entering the associated game mode. (I imagine this a right-click option: where it now says copy /paste /... template; just add the options: Set as default for PvE / PvP / WvW)

I'm usually pretty happy with the stuff Anet delivers, this time not so much (though I'm also not upset about this patch).

I'm also pretty sure all of these points have been raised already, but I do have some suggestions on how they might be tackled in a sensible way.

**1) No linked sPvP / WvW builds**

This is probably what annoys me most with this new system, I didn't really have time to play yet, but I'm absolutely sure I will at some point play PvP with my PvE build because I forgot to switch (saved) builds, which makes this definitely a QoL **downgrade**.

I see two ways to fix to turn this issue around:

a) make it possible to set one build template as default for each game mode. This is essentially like the old system (so it shouldn't be to much work for the devs), with the change that we can set & unset the links ourselves.

b) Introduce 'default' builds (see also below), that are separate for each game mode and are auto loaded once you change game modes

**2) No non-template builds**

The fact that we can't change skills or equipment without it affecting the saved templates is also almost anti-QoL. I like the suggestion of introducing a 'current' build (and equipment load out) on which all manual changes are applied - loading a saved template is then just a quick way to quickly change lots the whole current build.

This should be pretty easy to implement for build templates, though I can see problems when applying it to equipment (the Devs stated that they didn't want to touch the code for Inventory and loading a template with i.e. different weapons then the currently equipped ones would require those moving back to the inventory). I still think this can work though since it will only require the code place items *into* inventory (kinda like auto-loot) but never retrieve them. (Only tricky part is to check where an equipped item, that is part of a template, goes when its replaced in the current load out).

**3) Legendary gear, Item sharing & Pricing**

These are points I'm personally not very affected by, so I don't care to much, but I think most complaints are valid here (with the current implementation).

My suggested way of adding 'default' build and equipment load outs might even make item sharing between characters easier (since you just need to save a set of character bound items to immediately 'drop' all equipped ones into your inventory - doesn't enable saving templates for multiple characters but that was never possible anyway). With such improvements I also think the current pricing would be relatively fair.

> @"Evon Skyfyre.9673" said:

> login info from GW1 is long gone. I'll just do without if they do not fix it.

After linking your accounts (which you'll have done in case of HoM rewards), your GW1 account uses the same login details (email & password) as the GW2 account. The only additional information you need is afaik a character name - though support should be able to help if you can't remember that.

I think this happens whenever the GW1 / login servers have a connection problem to the GW2 servers.

When the bug first occured, they had to manually reset it, but nowadays it happens automatically once after a short while.

It's also super unlikely that they will change anything about that, since the account connection requires that GW2 repetitively checks the GW1 servers if you maybe added anything to your HoM.

> @"Emberstone.2904" said:

> Then let me store them on my own computer like before. I'd gladly store 30+ text files myself. I did it for hundreds of builds back in the day (which I still have around).

You can do that (for build templates, not gear) - they said that in the very first official announcement:

>[build Template Sharing](https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/learn-all-about-build-and-equipment-templates/ "Build Template Sharing")

>Build Templates can also be copied as a chat link in the game. You can send them to friends to help them prepare for a raid—or to your enemies to boast of your superior build. These chat links can also be copied and pasted out of the game and back into it from your clipboard, making trying a new build from another player or an external website a breeze

It bewilders me how people continue to complain about things that are absolute non-issues, just because they apparently can't even read through the announcement of the feature they complain about.

Gathering tools are (probably for exactly this reason) not part of the equipment templates:

>Quote from [official announcment](https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/learn-all-about-build-and-equipment-templates/ "official announcment")

>Your character’s equipment, attributes, and upgrades—excluding gathering tools—can be stored in Equipment Templates.

> @"Turkeyspit.3965" said:

> Currently every player has 1 build template for PvE, WvW and PvP. If you take your Guardian from Lion's Arch, to Eternal Battlegrounds, to the PvP lobby, your have 3 separate trait builds and utility bars, which are saved based on whatever you slotted in while in that zone. That is how it works currently.

>

> After this patch, everyone will have 3 build templates per character for free, and on launch, will automatically be setup with any existing PvE, WvW, and PvP builds.

>

> So after this launches, if you use the same character to play PvE, WvW and PvP, you have literally been given NOTHING, as you need to use 1 template for each game mode. You only benefit if you choose to purchase additional templates, or if you only play that character in 1 or 2 of those game modes, which now gives you the freedom to run a second build in one of them.

Expect, I really think you are wrong here.

Every character will indeed get 3 free build templates, that *initially* are set to the 3 different builds your character already has, you can then go ahead and change this. However, I have haven't seen anything in the official announcement, that would indicate that WvW & sPvP builds are not saved separately anymore - this is essentially a wild speculation people just seem to be assuming is true.

I personally think it's much more likely that in the future each character will still have independently saved PvE, WvW & sPvP builds (even just because changing how that would mean more changes to the game engine) AND have 3 build templates that can be loaded instantly all the time (by hotkeys even).

So If you save 3 PvE build template, you can probbaly still:

- manually change your current build to some variation that is a 4th build

- go to WvW / sPvP and get your corresponding build there (you just can't insta load it after any changes or in another game mode)

Will sPvP & WvW skill selection still be independent of the build templates in general?

Let's say I play mostly PVE so I'm using all of my 3 build templates for different PVE builds (quite easy with 2 elite specs). If I then switch to WvW or sPvP will my skill selection there be locked to one of the build templates or is it still independently saved (just not insta-loadable)?

eh, we already have that since like forever? It's probably not clearly documented anywhere, but if you change your skill while being underwater, this will only change your underwater skills and not affect your skill choice on land.

The news article on the build templates even shows that the templates will be able to save both underwater & land skills separately.

Yes, unlocking of the current LW season happens for all accounts that log in during the correct time frame, independent on whether or not the account can access that season due to expansions owned.

Couldn't find an 'official' source but people in [this thread](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/32580/unlocking-lws4-chapters) pretty much all agree on the question.

Okay, (lazy) German speaker here. I took the interview, put it through google translate (which did a surprisingly good job) and brushed up the results a bit.

Additionally I **highlighted** all that parts that are actual quotes from Mike at the interview, the rest is comments/fluff added by the magazine (partially paraphrasing Mike and partially speculating on things.

Here's the Interview in English:

> What will the Icebrood saga do differently? First, Mike and I talked about lessons learned from the previous four seasons of the Living World.

>

> The Icebrood saga is supposed to do some things differently in terms of innovations and design. This was especially oriented to the first seasons:

> **Do not expect a new map with every update. We will also work with and extend existing maps. It's much the same as in Season 2, just a little bigger and bigger than the two maps from that time.**

> **We start with a new big map and can then implement things that we have not done previously.**

> According to Mike, the first season was also a great inspiration, because it was a lot of fun for the developers and kept the players active at the bar.

>

>

> What's changing in storytelling? Also, in the way stories are told, Guild Wars 2 has been evolving over the years. Mike gave a very concrete example:

> **In Season 2 we had Belinda, which we introduced and killed shortly thereafter. We had something similar with Blish in Season 4, but the character was much more advanced.**

> **The outcry: "You only created this character to kill it right again" was much smaller there than it was then.**

> He also proudly says that the way the story is told has changed for the better. It is much more focused now than in the beginning.

>

>

> What about our hero group in the story? If you are also fans of the characters Marjory and Kasmeer like me, you can look forward to their return. After the two have completely disappeared after Path of Fire, they will now return in the Icebrood saga.

> Mike describes the story of the new Icebrood saga as darker and more in a Cthulhu style. Therefore, it is fitting that especially Marjory as a necromancer has a performance again.

> Overall, there should be more frequent rotations in our hero group. So the players will not interact with too many characters at a time and yet the group should endure.

>

>

> How regularly will episodes of the Living World 5 be released? Of course, I wanted to know from Mike how often we can expect new episodes.

> From the last seasons we were used to a rhythm of 2-3 months, but the developers would now like to undercut this:

> **In principle we would like to be faster now than in the last season. Our current priority is that we try to have something exciting in the game every month.**

> **For this we have the living world, but also festivals that take place regularly. In addition, there are those, as we call them internally, bonus events in which you should defeat, for example, World Bosses.**

> Based on Mike's description, the update calendar for 2019 might look something like this:

> September - Prologue

> October - Halloween

> November - Episode 1

> December - Christmas

> The calendar is then supplemented by the bonus events, which have been held regularly lately. Currently one is running specifically for returnees and newcomers.

>

>

> Where is the first thing in the Icebrood saga? On the 17th of September, the prologue "Bound by Blood" comes into play, which already brings some innovations.

> But really, it starts with the first episode of the Living World Season 5. It should appear in any case later this year. The first area will be the Northern Shiverpeaks.

> Mike describes this as a particularly beautiful place:

> **You can look forward to some incredibly beautiful vistas. The Art team has been working hard and getting a lot of inspiration from the Guild Wars 1 maps.**

>

>

> Are there new world bosses? The new world boss Drakkar was already announced at the event and Mike could tell me a little about it. He should be more demanding than the last published world bosses:

> **The Shatterer in Jahai was a good intermediate step, but he was not as demanding as Triple trouble. The new world boss is getting big and is supposed to bring the players together.**

> **However, it will not be on the new map from the beginning, but will be added later.**

> From the announcement we already know that Drakkar is planned for the second episode.

>

>

> How do the Strike missions work? In addition to the world bosses, we also talked about the new Strike missions. There are 10 players against a boss, who should be demanding.

> Mike describes this new challenge as follows:

> **Strike missions are instanced content, but can be entered in two ways. If you just want to fight, you can enter the location and you will randomly get mixed up with other players, similar to the Riftstalker events.**

> **Path number 2 is a separate entrance for your group. There you can then collect and defeat the boss, even in smaller groups than intended.**

> New fractals and raids continue to be worked on, as Mike confirmed on demand.

> We also talked about repeatable challenge modes in the raids. These would be discussed internally, but still there is no new info.

>

There is no way official / supported way to create addons of this game. The best you can do is to create a program that overlays certain things with the game (which should work fairly well for translations / subtitles). Be aware of the [rules for thrid party tools](https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013625034-Policy-Third-Party-Programs "rules for thrid party tools") though.

If you don't have actual programming experience I'd recommend you to start with something that already is able to overlays in GW2 and expand on that. As far as I know [TaCo](http://www.gw2taco.com "TaCo") allows users to add [custom markers](http://www.gw2taco.com/2016/01/how-to-create-your-own-marker-pack.html "custom markers"), which should be much easier than starting from scratch. Taco should have the additional advantage that it can already access the GW2 API (which is not for writing addons, but for retrieving information from the game), which you'll need to figure which subtitles/translations you need to show on the screen at any given moment.

[Git](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git "Git") is just a version control system, which is often used in programming/coding/development but is in no way specific to GW2 or addons.

I'm pretty sure Janna was going barefoot, before plebs like us even had the option of getting invisible shoes ^^

Once you have completed a given Living world episode (like War Eternal now), you can restart it (or any other one for that matter) in the Perosnal story tab of your hero panel.

It will usually ask you something like 'Replay story for achievements' (which is the primary reason most people do it) and may warn you that any progress in your current story step (if you are doing another one right now) may get lost.

You can also use this to 'jump' over whole chapters for characters that haven't played the episodes before.

For some combo-packs (specifically the LS packs) the gemstore automatically reduces the total cost of the package depending on which parts you already own - did you check if this also works for the glider/backpack combo?

If not, you're probably out of luck and have to buy the glider individually (if only the combo pack is available in the gemstore you may have to wait for the glider to rotate in?).

If the problem in this mission is too much CC from enemies you can try to bring more skills/traits for stability (esp. guardian has very good access to stability) and stun break skills (which allow you to break out of all that flying around).

Personally, I almost never walk around without any stun breakers (meta fractal/raid builds being the exception), but this might be influence from having a pvp background.

@"FrostyEldin.8096" if you want to find someone to play with you, you should at least say which region (EU/NA) you're playing on. A time frame for when you're online will help even more.