Corax.7692

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> > @"Corax.7692" said:

> > I'd been playing GW2 on my laptop, but it stressed the power so much the battery started swelling. I'd like to get a desktop system for gaming (or maybe a laptop specifically designed to handle MMO stresses), but I don't want to buy better gear than is needed for MMOs. I've been searching online but the options are just completely overwhelming. Anybody got any tips, links to good guides, etc? Most of the guides I've seen assuming you want to buy the cheapest possible, or the most-advanced possible, and don't really talk about specific gaming genres.

> Um, that just sounds like an old/broken battery. The laptop cant draw more power from the battery than its rated for regardless of how "stressed" it is. If its a removable battery, you can probably play with just the power cable in.

It's a MacBook Pro, and I've been playing with the power cable in, so I'm pretty sure the battery is defective. Now you also know why I am overwhelmed by PC shopping. :-)

Thanks for the advice everybody! This new computer would be pretty much just for GW2 and other MMOs play, so I'll take your tips relative to that.

I'd been playing GW2 on my laptop, but it stressed the power so much the battery started swelling. I'd like to get a desktop system for gaming (or maybe a laptop specifically designed to handle MMO stresses), but I don't want to buy better gear than is needed for MMOs. I've been searching online but the options are just completely overwhelming. Anybody got any tips, links to good guides, etc? Most of the guides I've seen assuming you want to buy the cheapest possible, or the most-advanced possible, and don't really talk about specific gaming genres.

Prior responses summed things up for pure +Condition Damage pretty well. Also, a Sigil of Bursting on your weapon gets you +6% Condition Damage. (Note that Sigil benefits do not stack so don't put two of those on your weapon, or on both main and off hand.)

The Condition Damage stat isn't your only consideration for condition damage, though. As others have mentioned or hinted, things like condition duration (directly or via Expertise) have a big effect on your total damage, depending on the length of the fight. Go Viper's for both armor and weapons.

On your armor, 4 Runes of the Nightmare and 2 Runes of the Trappe yield a total of +100 Condition damage and +25% Condition Duration. This is what I've been told will max your overall condition damage. 5 of either of those runes will get you +175 Condition Damage but less added duration overall. There are also some trinkets you can get with Viper's stats, or close.

A Sigil of Malice on your weapon will also give you +10% Condition Duration.

If you are crafting gear, it may be less of a hassle for you to make a set other than Viper's and convert it in the Mystic Forge; you don't have to farm for mats to make all the Fulgurite if you do that.

So many things to discuss about ranger class design. Rhyse.8179 summarized the core problem pretty well:

> @"Rhyse.8179" said:

> What I would do is make the pet fully controllable. Move to location, guard ally, jump of a cliff, whatever. I want to be able to have my pet and I working on different things at different positions on the battlefield. As it is now (and forever) he's just a DOT with a hitbox.

To which I might add, a separate hit point pool that can result in us being pretty effectively crippled in a way other classes can't—and that tradeoff should be part of our class design, but seems not to be in GW2. Then again, my pets can solo veterans, which in my mind they should not be able to do. There are many situations outside of PvP where I find my pet just doesn't take much damage (or it dies within 5 seconds of course). Very swingy, context-dependent survivability. Anyhow!

As Rhyse said, the "core mechanic" of the class is sorely oversimplified, and soulbeast is a late semi-fix to the problem, giving us control over 3 of the pet's abilities, but taking away the pet*. I would love to be able to tell my pet where to stay, what to guard, and which attacks to use. Sadly, what we do have is just crappy pathing and combat AI.

(* Don't get me wrong; I love the design of soulbeast for some of the strategic and tactical options it gives me, but those too are probably not clear to many players, and outside the scope of this post. On the other hand, I do sometimes feel that beast mode is just a different arrangement of food on the plate.)

As for confusing variety in pets, I will admit to putting together a big color-coded spreadsheet of all the pets, with their stats and special abilities. There is a general design pattern where each family shares a general "role" such as tank, high DPS, condition, etc, with the same AI skills, but differing player-controlled (F2-key) abilities for such things as even more DPS, healing, CC, etc, with of course the odd exception. The pets in each family also vary with which stats they boost for soulbeast, which gives you at least three high-level ways of grouping pets. The thing is, the pet management UI makes this very hard to find out! You have to be familiar with all your pets in order to choose the right one for the job at hand (which is why I made the spreadsheet). I would much rather see a pet management window where, instead of just being shown all the pets, you choose the category (primary this, secondary that, beast mode that), and are shown pets for that job, so you can quickly get what you need. For those who prefer to pick pets by family or just looks, the existing arrangement could remain, of course.

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > I will call into question anybody who has trouble doing any story content outside of challenge modes.

> Why?

> The world has race car drivers and people who can't park a car. We have those who can solve quadratic equations in their head and those who have trouble calculating a tip. And probably more germane: we have people who win marathons and people who have trouble making it up the hill, even though there's plenty of evidence that nearly anyone who can get out of bed can finish one, if they want to (some will need a lot of training time; some won't).

>

> So why is it hard to imagine that some of the personal stories might be beyond challenging for some people?

>

> OK, that's an unfair question. Research, it turns out, shows us that it is really hard for people who excel at something, to fathom why some people have trouble with the basics of that thing. And likewise, it's hard for those who have trouble with the basics to grasp they are even missing something in the first place.

When I got the game, friends strongly encouraged me to get mounts, so I dove into the PoF story before even finishing the personal story (which was, in a word, Very Boring; yes that's two words).

I ended every boss fight in my underwear.

It wasn't until the other night, helping friends through the final fight with Balthazar, that I learned about using the special action key, and a few other things. There was no mention of it by the game engine to me, just some vague verbiage about "coordinating attacks" with Aurene, and I sure never noticed a tiny button appearing above my skill bar amongst all those flames and explosions happening. The friend who started the instance, even with our prompting to use the special action key, couldn't get it to work most of the time and so we would all just be killed.

If you're not already savvy to the genre of game, you'll have a tough time, as so many things like this aren't explained.

Anyhow, yes, living story stuff is doable solo. Enjoyable solo? I don't find it so, I find it frustrating and obnoxious. With friends, it's actually fun, even if we sometimes have to run an instance an extra time or two.

> @"Sojourner.4621" said:

> > @"Corax.7692" said:

> > > @"Sojourner.4621" said:

> > > > @"Corax.7692" said:

> > > > > @"Zushada.6108" said:

> > > > > My only wish is that the Griffon could use updrafts because I have died A LOT forgetting that I am on the Griffon and not gliding and you can't dismount midair.

> > > >

> > > > This is one of those chinks in game design that really irritate me. Obviously a griffon should be able to use an updraft! But no, arbitrary game logic applies rather than sensible physics.

> > > >

> > > > Then again, I sucked at jumping puzzles for so long because it never occurred to me that I could use the movement keys while mid-air. :-D Now that I know that, jumping puzzles are almost fun.

> > >

> > > It's a seperation of expansions. If Griffons could use updrafts then it would make gliding, the entire Heart of Thorns core mechanic, completely obsolete. It's NEVER a good idea to make content exclusive to the second expansion so useful that it effectively removes content exclusive to the first expansion from the game.

> >

> > That is a marketing argument. As a player, and someone who cares about design and immersion, I find it arbitrary and pointless.

>

> And yet another player who only has HoT and not PoF might feel that it is horrendously unfair if PoF players can, through buying another expansion, do all the things their expansion exclusive movement buff can but better. It's not just marketing, it's about a single person's immersion not being the only opinion that matters. There are no updrafts on PoF maps either. They segregate their expansions and mechanics so that someone who can afford one but not the other doesn't feel like the other has the advantage.

Fair points, but on HoT maps, you'll have a glider anyhow, and they still have their own unique and well-motivated mechanics such as lean techniques, stealth gliding, ley-line gliding, and of course, ability to deploy and undeploy mid-air (which is another point of contention about mounts, for some people).

But this is drifting well off the topic of the thread, and needn't turn into a big argument, so I'll just stop right there. :-)

> @"Tanek.5983" said:

> > @"Corax.7692" said:

> > * Desert Highlands: Springer—can jump up high. You need to train the raptor far-leaping mastery to be able to get to where the springers are (north-center on the map), or use a teleport to a friend. Easy to acquire by doing a renown heart.

>

> Quick note on this in case anyone goes to try it. The renown heart that you need to get the springer will not be available until you get the 3rd raptor mastery.

> We thought the same thing about the teleport, but apparently Anet does not want us using that particular loophole. ;)

Thanks for pointing this out. I've updated my response with this info.

There are some glider skins I am interested in. They are sold only in bundles with backpack skins that I am not interested in, and those bundles cost more than just buying glider skins. I would pay for the glider skins if I could get them for the price of other skins, without the extra stuff I don't want. Please sell all glider skins on their own.

> @"KidaSacheil.1956" said:

> > @"Corax.7692" said:

> > Very handy! Been using it the past few days.

> >

> > FYI, I am mot seeing today's Rich Orichalcum Vein near Faren's Flyer waypoint. I also don't see a way on your page to report discrepancies.

>

> Hi, thank you for your feedback!

> This specific location is a tricky one, because just as the mining ones in Maguuma Wastes, they have several places that they rotate between.

> So one day it can be in spot 1, and the next day it'll be at spot 2. I didn't add the other locations because when I checked, I couldn't confirm that it was the correct spot, (as I've checked every location personally). But if someone can confirm and share the locations of the other spots I can add it :)

Ah that is tricky. Don't know if you could implement a thing where it presents all the locations that rotate, and once a few players confirm which one is there today, it just shows that one. If it rotates during the day rather than from day to day, of course, that won't be possible.

> @"Sojourner.4621" said:

> > @"Corax.7692" said:

> > > @"Zushada.6108" said:

> > > My only wish is that the Griffon could use updrafts because I have died A LOT forgetting that I am on the Griffon and not gliding and you can't dismount midair.

> >

> > This is one of those chinks in game design that really irritate me. Obviously a griffon should be able to use an updraft! But no, arbitrary game logic applies rather than sensible physics.

> >

> > Then again, I sucked at jumping puzzles for so long because it never occurred to me that I could use the movement keys while mid-air. :-D Now that I know that, jumping puzzles are almost fun.

>

> It's a seperation of expansions. If Griffons could use updrafts then it would make gliding, the entire Heart of Thorns core mechanic, completely obsolete. It's NEVER a good idea to make content exclusive to the second expansion so useful that it effectively removes content exclusive to the first expansion from the game.

That is a marketing argument. As a player, and someone who cares about design and immersion, I find it arbitrary and pointless.

Very handy! Been using it the past few days.

FYI, I am mot seeing today's Rich Orichalcum Vein near Faren's Flyer waypoint. I also don't see a way on your page to report discrepancies.

Thanks for the info! I do have LS3 but haven't started it yet. I think I will go Grieving for this item, because that's immediately useful, and if I get another I will pick Harrier's for a druid build or other support character (I am trying other professions out).

> @"Zushada.6108" said:

> My only wish is that the Griffon could use updrafts because I have died A LOT forgetting that I am on the Griffon and not gliding and you can't dismount midair.

This is one of those chinks in game design that really irritate me. Obviously a griffon should be able to use an updraft! But no, arbitrary game logic applies rather than sensible physics.

Then again, I sucked at jumping puzzles for so long because it never occurred to me that I could use the movement keys while mid-air. :-D Now that I know that, jumping puzzles are almost fun.

> @"Sephylon.4938" said:

> best condi stat if you're going condi is viper. As for the banner, I'd say harrier for support builds, or any pof stat. There aren't alot of easily or repeatedly obtainable backpacks that give pof stat unlike how/core stats.

Viper isn't among the choices for this particular item (I updated the original post to make that clear). I will be looking for a Viper's backpack at some point, of course, but this thing landed in my lap so I have to figure the best choice from what's given.

Right now the bookmark button in posts uses a little banner or flag icon. The button to get to your bookmarks on top of the web page, however, is a completely unrelated shape, a star. It took me a while to even find my bookmarks because of this. The same (or a related) icon should be used for bookmarks, wherever the button is located.

Well I know it comes down to taste, but the choices here include some [combinations](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rising_Banners_of_the_Sunspear "combinations") so I figured I'd see what the community thinks. I am currently playing a condition soulbeast ranger with lots of Viper's gear, but it's my first level 80 toon and I have little experience with other professions yet. Viper's is not among the choices for this particular item.

I have not been doing Celestial for my gear, but on this back item it's a big greater total amount of stat points, and it might be good for splitting out with a druid build or on other toons, eventually. But for a condition build it seems the Rabid (+63 Condition Damage, +40 Toughness, +40 Precision), or Dire + Rabid combo is the best fit (+63 Condition Damage, +40 Toughness, +22 Vitality, +18 Precision). I don't know enough about Toughness vs. Vitality to judge that, however. Or Maybe Grieving for pure DPS....

I did all of the Path of Fire story and got all my mounts before beginning Heart of Thorns. I also ran all the Heart of Thorns maps and metas quite a lot before doing the HoT story, and there were more "spoilers" from having done the HoT metas, than spoilers between the expansions' stories—in that the story made sense of things I didn't understand about some of the metas. Then again, some of the story directly contradicted things in the open-world maps!

Having mounts in HoT maps makes a huge difference, as others have said, especially the griffon. By the way, Heart of Thorns has its own pre-mount mobility thing, the glider, which you can get with a mastery point. Gliders give you a limited-time glide through the air if you fall or jump from a height (unlimited with mastery training).

To get your first mount, just start Path of Fire and do the first chapter. That opens the maps; the raptor is available right near where you start after the story chapter, and you don't need to do any story to get any of the other mounts except the griffon and beetle. Each map in the Crystal Desert region introduces its own mount with a new movement mechanic, and the maps are essentially set up to require you have the prior mount to get each new one:

* Crystal Oasis: Raptor—can leap forward very quickly to cross gaps. Easy to acquire by doing a renown heart.

* Desert Highlands: Springer—can jump up high. You need to train the raptor far-leaping mastery to be able to get to where the springers are (north-center on the map), or use a teleport to a friend. Easy to acquire by doing a renown heart, but you can't do the heart until you get the raptor far-leap mastery (thanks to Tanek.5983 for this).

* Elon Riverlands: Skimmer—floats over land, water, and most importantly, quicksand and sulfur pits, which are all over higher-level PoF maps. Easy to acquire by doing a renown heart. I think you can just get to skimmers (south-west on the map) without an earlier mount, but I could be wrong.

* The Desolation: Jackal—can teleport through sand portals, which are the only routes to certain areas in PoF maps. Requires doing a renown heart with tasks that are a bit tricky to master. You need a skimmer to be able to get to where the jackals are (kind of south-westish). This mount's special abilities are perhaps the least relevant outside of PoF maps, but note that timing teleports well means your jackal will survive a very long fall.

* Domain of Vabbi: Griffon—can fly, sort of. It can't gain much altitude, but if you creep up to a high location, you can glide over very long distances and maintain your altitude with mastery training. You have to do a long, involved scavenger hunt and pay 250 gold to get it. The beginning items for the scavenger hunt do not drop for you until after you finish the Path of Fire story, and they give you hints about where you have to go to begin the scavenger hunt proper. (By the way, one handy thing about the griffon is you can switch to it while using your Heart of Thorns glider—but not vice versa.)

* Doumain of Kourna: Roller Beetle—it just rolls around, but it has a ridiculously fast turbo mode that, if you can steer it, will get you across a map the fastest of any mount. You have to start the appropriate living world season to open the map, and do an involved scavenger hunt to get the beetle. The story itself leads into the scavenger hunt.

I completed Path of Fire (barely) before starting the Living World Season 2 and Heart of Thorns story, and yes, there were spoilers and some things out of sequence, but that wasn't nearly as jarring as going from all the open-map play I'd been doing, into the story instances, where all the hostile-heavy areas were suddenly and mysteriously oases of calm (until the script called for things to be otherwise). Story mode in Heart of Thorns feels like a parallel, empty universe.

A small part of me might have liked to do the story in order, the rest of me would rather not have to deal with story at all, as it feels so clumsily grafted onto an otherwise fun MMO (with, you know multiple players, online). False and meaningless choices, brittle scripting that can't even handle me running a few steps ahead of the NPCs or killing mobs in the wrong order (seriously, WTH), getting kicked at the end of an instance for chasing a mob that runs across the invisible boundary.... But late-tier HoT mastery points are hard to come by, and each act and chapter net you a good handful, plus exotic or ascended gear if you manage all the achievements.

Ahem. Anyhow, spoilers or no, be sure to read a good guide before even beginning each chapter so you don't run into bugs that require redoing the whole thing. You can bring friends along in a party to help, although often those accompanying you won't get any of the rewards.

Getting back to the original topic, though, I am very glad I got all my mounts from Path of Fire first, because navigating Heart of Maguuma without them would be agonizing. Mounts make the game in general **tons** more fun. (Note that you cannot use them inside core or HoT instances.)

I have inadvertently read later books in series of novels, and going back to the first wasn't such a big deal to me. It might be the same for you, with Guild Wars 2.

I wondered right away why the airship over Gendarran Fields didn't at least appear in different maps on different days. Moving ships of any kind would be very nice, in general

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

> buff thief

I read this as "someone who steals buffs" rather than "please buff the thief profession", which left me confused until a following post.

Guild Wars 2 is a big hot mess of a game, with activities and areas spanning JRPG, WVE solo, WVE group, PVP, WVW, and more. There is definitely more to do than you ever could...you will probably find some things you like, and some things you don't.

For example, I love the WVE stuff I've seen so far. Some gets repetetive if you do it a lot, like the world bosses that happen on a very regular schedule and shower loot on you. But they are still pretty fun. The Heart of Thorns expansion has complex, multilevel maps and big end events that require large groups spread across the map to coordinate efforts in order to succeed. Some of those are quick (Auric Basin's Octovine, Tangled Depths's Gerent battles), some are quite long (Verdant Brink night, Dragon's Stand battle against Mordremoth). The events leading up to those can be done with smaller groups, and even solo. There are also many things to explore, discover, and solve, with some fun achievements too. This expansion came out before Path of Fire and its mounts, though, and I can't imagine enjoying these maps without them. Kudos to the folks who stuck with GW2 through that era. :-)

Path of Fire caters much more to solo and small-group play, with less convoluted maps but some tougher mobs. Events that require groups are shorter in duration and generally more zerg-the-elite style affairs. The coolest thing about PoF is the aforementioned mounts! Each has a different movement ability, and the terrain in the maps is designed to encourge and often require use of those special abilities. I don't spend as much time in these maps because I am really enjoying HoT too much.

So that stuff is fun to me, especially the big group HoT meta-events. The story stuff, however, I find incredibly frustrating. You are on rails the whole time, with few/meaningless choices to make in response to NPC questions and actions, invisible boundaries that kick you from instances if you cross them, making you have to re-watch the cut-scenes or dialogue leading to the action, and gimmick fights where the boss is simply invulnerable until you figure out the arbitrary trick to make them vulnerable for a few seconds. There is some good stuff in the story, but it's mired in obnoxiousness and bugs, in my opinion. You can skip it for other content, but in order to get enough mastery points for endgame content you kind of need to do it (and some people do enjoy story mode), and do some chapters multiple times because achievements are locked until after your first time through. Story mode does also get you some exotic and ascended items, so there is some additional incentive to do them.

I tried PVP and WVW and got stomped so hard I haven't had the nerve to try again yet.

I haven't seen too many people doing the classic dungeons, and the early groups I got in just ran in and got killed a lot. Even the later groups, with guild friends, we ran faster than I was used to in my WoW days, where you had to carefully plan pulls, tanking and aggro, and all that, and kill every trash mob to boot. Just running past trash mobs seems pretty common in GW2 dungeons. Combat in general feels **very** different in GW2, but you've probably already noted that.

Fractals are fun. They are basically scaling mini-dungeons (1-3 bosses) with increasingly difficult mechanics as you progress.

Jumping puzzes are a big part of this game, and you will have to do some jump-puzzling at some point, such as in fractals. If you don't like hopping around and dying/having to restart for missing a ledge or something, there are ways around it--sometimes. I absolutely hated jumping puzzles when I started, but I am developing some skill at them and finding the ones that don't punished missed jumps too hard to be rather enjoyable, now.

I have no experience with raids yet, but there seems to be good community support for training up, with a guild or two running raids dedicating to showing new raiders the ropes. Don't have the links to those handy but I've heard about them.

So far there doesn't seem to be much of a gear treadmill. You get your exotics with enough time put in, and start getting your ascended. Legendaries, I don't know about yet, but they don't increase your power, they are just more versatile and have cooler (well, fancier) graphics and animations. You can get ascended gear through doing story, by crafting them, by doing endgame meta-events, and in fractals, PVP/WVW and other high-end content.

The thing that gets me about the norn racials, compared to the others in particular, is that they are so crippling in some senses. The other racial skills, for the most part, just add a skill to your bar. You activate a norn racial, and you replace all your weapon skills with less-poweful attacks, and lose all your heal and utility skills too boot. And if you're a ranger, you lose your pet too! Rangers already have a thing for losing our pet, it's called Soulbeast, except then you get 3 useful skills of your choice based on your pet. (I haven't tried norn racials on other professions, partly because my disappointment in the norn racials has led me to roll other races; do the other professions all lose their profession mechanics/F-key skills too? I can see how they would.)

As for dungeons, the few I've been in, folks just run by the trash mobs anyhow.

I chose a norn partly for the fun of shapeshifting, but there's no fun in it when I lose so much, and it has such long cooldown. It could be made on par with other elite skills and racials, but instead it's just a big and instant nerf to your character. I don't see any design effort being put in to reworking this any time soon, though. One of the things I like least about this game is all the visible seams and edges: skills that are pointless to use, invisible walls, or worse, invisible non-walls that get you kicked from instances for following the thing your supposed to kill/escort(!!!), mobs that are invulnerable for no good or motivated reason, places where you can't use gliders/mounts "because". But that's quite another topic, isn't it?

Thanks for the useful info!

A followup. How does opening bags on a lower-level character affect the odds of getting gear that's useful to the level 80 charcter? If someone is hoping for that rare ascended gear drop, rather than accumulating gold, would they want to be opening these bags on their level 80? I'm curently focused on accumulating cash, but it occurred to me that this might be a consideration.

I found a wiki page on [Champion loot bags](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_loot_bag "Champion loot bag") , but haven't found an overview of such things as Dragon chests, Wyvern caches, etc.

This is recent news to me, and I haven't found much specific info yet. I originally heard about it with regard to Silverwastes bags, but does this apply to everything? If not, what are the exceptions? For example, I read elsewhere that unidentified gear is best opened by a level 80 character. Those aren't bags of course, but it's easy to consider this effect might apply to them as well. In addition, is it best to open the bags on a lower-level character **and** have that same character salvage the items, or is it best to have a level 80-character salvage items gained from bags opened by a lower-level character.

If you were to apply this approach to all containers, it would get out of hand quickly because of the variety of conainers (coin purses, bags of X gear, see pouches, seed pods, caches, etc. etc.).