Moyayuki.3619

Update: I have been playing around with my weapon choices while going through the HoT story, and am currently trying out Sword/Focus with Fire/Air being my elements of choice. This way I can us the Air offhand skills that deflect projectiles and interrupt enemies' attacks, which seems very useful for HoT mobs. So for my offhand element, I am still torn between Air and Earth, and having focus or dagger in offhand. Either way, it does still mean that Power would be my main damage stat to focus on. Marauder seems like a good gear choice at this moment, while I am being given new armor pieces as story rewards that allow me to choose which stat combo to apply.

I finally finished replaying LWS2 and started HoT on my Elementalist/Weaver recently, the benefits I'm seeing so far are:

1.) Getting XP for Masteries

2.) Stocking up on more of the map currencies (Geodes, Bandit Crests, etc). This in turn means you can buy more collectables/armor you didn't get the first time around.

3.) Unlock more armor looks, as the end of certain story chapters gives you a choice of Carapace and, later, Bladed gear.

4.) And, of course, a refresher of the story. I did and still really dislike LWS2, but I'm trudging on through HoT because I want to try to make myself hate it a bit less. Don't know if it will be successful, however, as there still are many mandatory boss fights that feel extremely cheap even with cc abilities and proper dodging. (Thank the Six for "Retry at Checkpoint", which for a boss fight throws you right back mid-fight before the boss can regen!)

> @"Moyayuki.3619" said:

> > @"steki.1478" said:

> > First of all, expansion maps give you 10 HPs per challenge so you don't need to walk around Tyria collecting them 1 by 1.

> >

> > Now, when it comes to weapons, both staff and sw/d combinations are mostly power based (sword can be both power and condi, but condi uses focus as offhand) so berserker gear is fine, but if you play mostly open world you'll get more value from marauder.

> >

> > The thing is, fire spec is used in both power and condi builds, but earth spec is only good on condi builds, which you aren't using. Playing power build without air specialization is a huge dps loss since it gives you quite big damage modifiers, especially if you're running sword which has strong air skills and auto attacks on power builds. Playing staff with earth spec is also very contradictory since staff provides no condi damage, staff (or any weapon really) has very weak earth skills and staff is a ranged weapon, while earth traits favor melee gameplay.

> >

> > If you want to follow the fire/earth theme I'd suggest following the build that's posted in the comment above, but if you want to use mentioned weapons effectively I'd suggest a fire/air build which can be found on snowcrows (raids), discretize (fractals) or metabattle (open world), based on the content you're doing.

>

> The main reason why I'm using Earth instead of Air in my build choices is because it wasn't until this Ele toon when I fell in love with the elemental and storm glyphs. And the Earth build has a passive talent that reduces the cooldown for glyphs. Before I got Weaver, I was doing Fire/Earth/Air, but had to dump one to make room for Weaver.

>

> Also, I did mention in my OP that I use Fire as main and Earth as secondary with Weaver, so Fire is the main focus with my staff and my dual wielding. I love the fiery rock you can launch at enemies for AOE with Fire+Earth on staff, and the 2 dagger offhand skills with Earth are really helpful for me for area damage and CC. And with staff, that's my backup weapon for when there are big clumps of enemies, which happens a lot in the personal story. The skill 5 earth ability cripples enemies, with skill 4 earth ability locking some enemies in place, which gives me the ability to then use the AOE fire skills 2-3, coupled with using the fire storm glyph.

>

> So I know exactly which element combos I like, it's just a question of whether I should be having my armor and weapons be something other than Berserker in the future.

Aaaand...I now see that the Air talent tree ALSO has a passive that reduces Glyph cooldowns, so...that's good to know!

Final thoughts: Based on the two people who commented, it's suggested that for my stats I either A) stick with Beserker as I have been, B) switch to Dire, or C) use Marauder. I'll have to look at the other two more closely when I next get the chance to craft my own clothing.

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> Hi! I have played a build similar to this one before and it will absolutely wreck open world/story content. It's also perfectly adequate for strikes and fractals up to and including T4, although it is not optimal. I've also designed this build to be accessible to new players, with inexpensive stats/runes/sigils. You can also use dagger offhand with this build, but it's more of a power weapon.

>

> http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAw2lZwmYXMJmJOKPnvaA-zxIU8ohfQYz5KgEJgjB-e

>

> I typically use a fire/arcane variant, but this build should actually deal better damage while also being more passively tanky. Here's a sample video of what the fire/arcane version can do:

>

>

>

>

Based on what I see in the link, you suggest I go with Dire gear, which doesn't improve my Power at all but instead gives a boost to Condi Damage? I do understand that Eles/Weavers are squishy, so I odn't question the boost to Vitality and Toughness that comes with Dire. Though, I do realize this build is with offhand Focus in mind, which I never really have gotten the hang of. I've always been a way more offensive player. Which, if I keep dagger offhand as I've been doing, the consensus is that Earth talents should be replaced with Air or Arcane instead?

> @"steki.1478" said:

> First of all, expansion maps give you 10 HPs per challenge so you don't need to walk around Tyria collecting them 1 by 1.

>

> Now, when it comes to weapons, both staff and sw/d combinations are mostly power based (sword can be both power and condi, but condi uses focus as offhand) so berserker gear is fine, but if you play mostly open world you'll get more value from marauder.

>

> The thing is, fire spec is used in both power and condi builds, but earth spec is only good on condi builds, which you aren't using. Playing power build without air specialization is a huge dps loss since it gives you quite big damage modifiers, especially if you're running sword which has strong air skills and auto attacks on power builds. Playing staff with earth spec is also very contradictory since staff provides no condi damage, staff (or any weapon really) has very weak earth skills and staff is a ranged weapon, while earth traits favor melee gameplay.

>

> If you want to follow the fire/earth theme I'd suggest following the build that's posted in the comment above, but if you want to use mentioned weapons effectively I'd suggest a fire/air build which can be found on snowcrows (raids), discretize (fractals) or metabattle (open world), based on the content you're doing.

The main reason why I'm using Earth instead of Air in my build choices is because it wasn't until this Ele toon when I fell in love with the elemental and storm glyphs. And the Earth build has a passive talent that reduces the cooldown for glyphs. Before I got Weaver, I was doing Fire/Earth/Air, but had to dump one to make room for Weaver.

Also, I did mention in my OP that I use Fire as main and Earth as secondary with Weaver, so Fire is the main focus with my staff and my dual wielding. I love the fiery rock you can launch at enemies for AOE with Fire+Earth on staff, and the 2 dagger offhand skills with Earth are really helpful for me for area damage and CC. And with staff, that's my backup weapon for when there are big clumps of enemies, which happens a lot in the personal story. The skill 5 earth ability cripples enemies, with skill 4 earth ability locking some enemies in place, which gives me the ability to then use the AOE fire skills 2-3, coupled with using the fire storm glyph.

So I know exactly which element combos I like, it's just a question of whether I should be having my armor and weapons be something other than Berserker in the future.

Honestly, one of my biggest complaints about this game (a game I still love, btw) is the attitudes of most of the main cast, particularly those of Dragon's Edge 2.0. Heck, the writers even managed to make the Commander, the character I play, unlikable at points. The best example I have is what they did with making everyone distrust Caithe in HoT and for quite a bit through LWS3. I had played through the story from start to finish up until HoT got released, even played LWS1 back when it was live, and not once did I find any reason to think Caithe was up to nefarious deeds with the egg. I get it, the dragon could more easily corrupt Sylvari, but I had faith in Caithe. I had played Sylvari toons and knew Caithe wouldn't go off on her own without good reason (instead, there were other characters who, if THEY went off like that, I WOULD be worried).

It really frustrated me, and still frustrates me to this day, when characters insist on making a mountain out of molehill, or acting like a petulant child, putting dear friends at risk for nothing. A lot of drama I've seen has been the fault of characters not being able to get over themselves. Heck, look at the three Orders in the Personal Story, when we are getting them to work together to free Claw Island! Each Order rep thinks it's okay to slander the other Orders and not trust them just because they think THEIR WAY IS SUPERIOR! I get it, those kinds of people exist IRL, and the point of fighting Zhaitan was having everyone get past their short-sightedness and judgmental world views. But after Zhaitan, there should have been ZERO excuse for that kind of behavior. I don't care that Braham is still young - he doesn't get to throw a hissy fit just because he thinks he has some justification. I don't like characters being a walking stereotype/cliche/archetype, whatever you want to call it.

Ugh, sorry, need to take a breather... I know I did not address Rytlock at all in my post, mostly because I haven't finished PoF and played LWS4, but the OP's post reminded me of how much I sometimes hate the writers' decisions. And I am a PvEr who prefers to play story content, so sadly I cannot escape the characters who could have been written better.

Even today I still hate HoT's maps, story, and characters with a fiery passion (I still will never forgive ANet for making my commander distrust Caithe and treat her like shit), but I personally can't compare it with Dark Souls. With Dark Souls, I know the games are supposed to be hard. But with HoT, especially when it first came out, its difficulty was a slap to the face. The difficulty frustrated me, because I went into GW2 and got to max level having specific ideas in place on how the game played. Adding new skills, professions, and gimmicks is to be expected for an MMO expac, but those mobs...those mobs in HoT still make me want to rage, on top of how convoluted the maps are.

Yeah, I consider myself a casual player because I don't go into WvW or PvP, and aren't after the best end-game stuff, but I can still play Dark Souls. But HoT to me still is a frustrating mess, because I got into GW2 with certain expectations on how I should feel playing the game. I did get partway through PoF on one of my toons, and I certainly prefer it over HoT. The desert setting is more enjoyable for me, at any rate, even from a purely aesthetic point of view.

(FYI, I also play World of Warcraft, and I must say I hate how much they stripped away from classes and difficulty, and made most mobs like tissue paper. My dislike of the "dumbing down" of WoW is as strong as my dislike of how stupidly hard ANet made GW2 with the HoT expansion.)

I finally got my new main toon to 80, finished the Personal Story, and am starting LWS2 story. As base Elementalist, I went through the entire 1-80 story/leveling focused on Fire since it matches my character from a role-playing perspective, only switching to other elements when necessary. Been playing as a Weaver since the Orr chapters in the Personal Story, and am absolutely loving it. I have played around with the element combos, but for now I am pretty happy with Fire+Earth. So as I continue going through the LW stories and expacs on this toon, I would like to know what stats I should be focusing on. For now I happen to have mostly Berserker gear, and would be more than happy to change that out as the opportunity for new gear/crafting comes up (as in, if I get the choice between gear as a reward for finishing a story chapter, or get enough mats to craft better clothing). Again, I am keeping fire as my main element for role-playing purposes, so that's not going to change.

Also, with my build, the three "trees" I currently have "equipped" are Fire, Earth, and, of course, Weaver. Please be aware that I currently don't have many Weaver skills unlocked because I didn't go crazy with going through vanilla maps to pick up skill points, so I will be discovering more of the Weaver skill tree and what I like as I go. For now, my main question is about the stats I should focus on for clothing and weapons as I go forward (again, I mostly have Berserker gear at this moment in time. This toon is still a "fresh" 80 so there's plenty of time to build her up to what I want).

> @"Mortifera.6138" said:

> > @"Moyayuki.3619" said:

> > > @"trixantea.1230" said:

> > > This looks like GW2's version of Mists of Pandaria.

> >

> > As someone who never played the original Guild Wars and knows nothing of Cantha...this was my first gut reaction as well. Yeah, I eventually played MoP when I returned to WoW 2 years ago, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be...but the China inspiration was way too on the nose. It was pretty, and I do love the mythologies and landscapes of China, Japan, and other parts of the world, but the Asian influence was hitting me brutally over the head way too much. It felt very..."gross". I hope Cantha is not like Pandaria, and is its own unique take on an Asian culture. Is it more like China? Japan? Something else? Sounds like China based on the music. It makes me VERY worried, as a GW2 player who would be going into this blind.

>

> You are grossed out by Asia?

No, that's not what I was saying. I was saying that WoW's use of Chinese culture, art, architecture, etc felt gross. It felt like a huge walking stereotype (though I do have to say that I fell in love with the mantis race and their storyline, and there were specific characters in MoP who grew on me).

> @"trixantea.1230" said:

> This looks like GW2's version of Mists of Pandaria.

As someone who never played the original Guild Wars and knows nothing of Cantha...this was my first gut reaction as well. Yeah, I eventually played MoP when I returned to WoW 2 years ago, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be...but the China inspiration was way too on the nose. It was pretty, and I do love the mythologies and landscapes of China, Japan, and other parts of the world, but the Asian influence was hitting me brutally over the head way too much. It felt very..."gross". I hope Cantha is not like Pandaria, and is its own unique take on an Asian culture. Is it more like China? Japan? Something else? Sounds like China based on the music. It makes me VERY worried, as a GW2 player who would be going into this blind.

> @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> Reaper is a solo content monster, i would recommend sticking with that class. You left right before the soul eater change, so going power reaper you will have a much more enjoyable experience. If you are having a hard time still, switch to death magic and add rise.

It's not a matter of having trouble with Necromancers. I just am not always in the mood to play that type of class, thematically/aesthetically.

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> The story is continuous. But, you can play them in any order you like. If you have no wish to re-do HoT, then start wherever you want and go back to it later

I wish I could jump straight into PoF and skip HoT entirely, but each expac is level-locked, right? Meaning I'd have to have a toon do other content to get to the right level to start PoF? As you can tell, the almost two years of not playing has made me forget a lot.

A year and a half ago, I was growing disenchanted with GW2 and returned to WoW after not playing that since 2010. But now, I am wanting to boot GW2 up again (still playing WoW, particularly WoW Classic which is a godsend!), maybe even create a new character from scratch. Unfortunately...I am all too aware of how much content exists in this game today. I am a player who focuses on PvE and story content, but the thought of having to go through Heart of Thorns again fills me with dread. Only one toon of mine has completed that story, but that toon is not one i want to keep as my "main" anymore. I just remember HoT being an extremely painful expac, from the labyrinthine maps, the sharp spike in enemy difficulty, and the demonization of Caithe that I still will never forgive Anet for. But if I recall, the only way you can move on to the LW story and Path of Fire is by completing HoT -- is this still true? It's the main piece of story content I wish I could skip over.

And this isn't even counting the dozens of hours or more of LW story content that now exists, assuming I haven't missed unlocking chapters. The whole thought of trudging through all this makes me wary, and I'd like to hear advice from anyone who has had to go through this.

Note: I believe most of my existing toons are either low-level (30 and below), or got to HoT but no further. As I mentioned, only one toon of mine has completed HoT, the LW after that, and is currently in PoF, but I don't want to "main" a Necromancer at this time. She just happened to be the toon that I got through the most content, especially considering that I have an alt issue and constantly delete toons to make a fresh one.

Advice and encouragement would be greatly appreciated! I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it.

I haven't even made it to Season 4 (haven't even beat Path of Fire because I've been distracted by other games), and ever since HoT I've been feeling less and less excited about my PC's story and personality. My PC would never demonize Caithe the way they did in HoT and the Living World story that followed. And based on what I'm hearing here (I'm not clicking on the spoiler tags), it seems things are getting much worse.

Ok, yeah, I'm all for a good story with hard moral questions that need to be answered, but when this game first came out the big deal was deciding your character's own story and personality. Now the Commander is what the game devs want them to be, not what we want. It makes me nervous about even considering touching the LW story at all, now. :(

The Level-80 Boost does come with the description "For advanced players". I used it recently on a level 30 Ranger, since I have had a lot of experience with the class and really only wanted it so I could go to level 80 maps to train the pets I wanted before continuing on with the story. The only issue with using the boost over using 80 single-level boosts is that you don't get any of the gear that you would get from leveling up naturally. The game saddles you with Soldier's gear (which not everyone may like). I'm currently struggling to get enough mats to do the 400-level Leatherworking, otherwise I have to engage in the HoT and PoF stories for better armor rewards.

But, no, I don't think the boost should be locked behind how long you've played for. They aren't necessarily given out for free, anyway. People can play however they want. We even have "veterans" who aren't very good, and there may be "noobs" who are naturally skilled at the game. You can't judge someone based on how they play.

Yes, the damage should be downscaled like everything else in the game. But we should try to remember that PoF has only been out for a few weeks, meaning changes to that won't be made right away. Issues such as disconnects and genuine bugs/glitches are always handled first. Then the balancing changes can be tackled.

I really love the sound of the PoF character selection screen. Then again, I in general love the vibe of this expac, and have always liked Middle Eastern sounds, something other than brass and strings.

I'd like to point out that the PoF music there will eventually be reverted back to the default GW2 music. Just like with HoT, it stuck around for a few months before going away. The same will happen here.

I always wanted a tiger for my Rangers since the first day I played GW2 years ago, mostly because 1) they are awesome animals and 2) I had very good memories of my rare tiger pet in World of Warcraft. So when I finally got one of my newer Rangers to level 80 the other day, I rushed over to DM to tame one, instead of having to make the long, difficult journey to Dragon's Stand. Sure, the tiger is not white like my beloved pet in WoW, but still so wonderful to finally have one by my side. I even gave it the same name. :)

Now I just need to find out where the Wyverns and Gazelle are, since those are interesting pets. One thing I love the expacs for is broadening the variety of pets instead of being stuck with default animals like wolves and bears.

Do the rest of you have any fun pet stories, or have a favorite pet in this game?

The only thing that makes me nervous about using Dagger (if I was to unlock and equip the Soulbeast Spec) is that my experience with other Dagger-wielding classes shows that Daggers are horrible for fighting a group of enemies. You slash one enemy and are lucky to hit another at the same time. That's why I keep using Greatsword on Ranger because I can injure up to three enemies with a single swipe. Crowd control is definitely important in HoT and PoF due to greater mob density. But, as I mentioned in my OP, it is some of the passive traits/boons from Soulbeast that sound useful for my current Shortbow playstyle.

Taking damage over lava with Skimmer is the bug that the devs have acknowledged.

Whenever I play Guardian, my favorite weapon combinations are Greatsword and Scepter/Focus. I always make sure I have one weapon for close-quarters and another for range. However, I wouldn't be surprised if I swap my Scepter/Focus for the Longbow when I unlock the Elite Spec. :)

Reading a thread here about how crafting can feel convoluted inspired me to make this thread (since we currently don't have a QOL suggestion thread/sticky on this site). I'll keep it short: It would be nice if our Crafting windows could either a) always show the different categories (materials [cloth, leather, metals], head, shoulders, chest, etc, etc) in a specific, clearer order, or b) allow us to customize the order we want to see them in. As it is, the order always has backpacks and bags at the top, but everything else afterwards seems to change order sometimes. It would make most sense to have the materials category near the very top, since that's what we probably use the most when crafting.

Thoughts?

You are free to start it up again. Devs already explained that due to what they are using for this site, transferring threads over directly from the old site is not possible.

> @Durzlla.6295 said:

> If you have no intention of using the pet melding I wouldn't waste your time with Soulbeast.

>

> However, if you decide you do want to beast mode shortbow should totally work with it.

It's such a shame that Ranger is one of my favorite classes, but I have no desire to use either of its Elite Specs. Necromancer used to be one of my least favorite classes until I unlocked the Greatsword with Reaper - now my Reaper is my main. I feel that a lot of the Elite Specs in general are extremely niche, or force you to use abilities that do very particular things (Druid makes you a healer for the most part, and Soulbeast is for melding with pets in combat). It's hard to feel excited about getting to level 80 with some of my characters due to Elite Specs that don't interest me. :/