Drall.2419

Mech skins really seems to be low hanging fruit for Anet.

It is still crazy that they still have bug-prone things to do for legendary after all that time. If they cannot fix everything, at least they could replace the bug-prone requirements with something stable of similar effort. Salt on the wound is another example. Fighting bugs should not be part of collections...

Same issue, daily reset did not change anything.

Adding mech skins is a good monetization opportunity for ANet. Make customer happy and make some revenue. I could see them doing it at some point.

Underwater combat would need a bit of a rehaul, so don't hold your breath (pun intended 🙂 ).

On the other extreme, the first time it took weeks for my wife and I. We explored every nook and cranny of the maps, found many caves, jumping puzzles, events, and wonderful views. The completion was a nice side effect. The way we approached it was to do a story chapter and then fully explore the maps that were opened by that chapter before going back to the next chapter. Journey over destination kinda thing.

Zhaitan variant for Scourge fits very nicely.

Posting this now is the epitome of tone deafness.

I am looking for opinions on best duo builds for strikes and fractals. The goal here is to be able to fill groups easily when not at peak times. One of the requirements is that the builds are on the easier side. Not necessarily LI, but rather be able to operate without having to look at the bottom of the screen too often - and watch the bad guys/mechanics instead. I am conscious that over time that requirement will go away as we learn the builds and content, but we are (I am?) slow learners and would like to get going earlier than later. Covering healing + quickness + alacrity between the two of us seem to make sense. (We already have DPS-only options we can always switch to if needed). I have a few ideas already, but I do not want to bias any suggestions. opinions, or recommendations. Thanks!

Not what you were looking for, but maybe use your axe with axe/axe power soulbeast?

I don't know. They are sharing more. They share the roadmap. They share principles. They take input prior to changes. That's more communication than before, and probably sharing more than I would in their shoes. Reality is that they have limited resources and need to make decisions on what to be prioritized, and deprioritized. And whatever gets deprioritized will have people unhappy about it. The fact that all constituencies seem to feel they get less than others is probably a good sign when you think about it. Then on anything shared or released you have the inevitable negative comments where "I want" becomes "everyone needs" and "it's not what I expected" becomes "this is broken", and so on. And we wonder why they do not want to equip us with more specifics for us to build the fire on which to hold their feet. Again, I don't know.

The data about skins available per mount is interesting. I suspect the more important data is about which mount are people willing to spend for skins...

I am in the same context of playing as a duo with my wife. We are enjoying it tremendously. Although the lack of group credit is very valid, we found over time the impact to be negligeable. As someone mentioned, the only real impact is time to complete hearts. When one is progressing faster we simply wait for the partner behind to hit first before engaging, and we finish at roughly the same time. Other times we just wait for the second one to finish and clean inventory in the meantime (there seems to always have inventory to clean in this game...). Being of different levels has no impact, so if one gets ahead it's not an issue. Early on we ran with different boosters to level together until we realized that it really was not an issue. If one gets a little more loot, we share the resulting gold anyways. We have done hearts in the Tyria maps only once for map completion, except if needed for some collection or other. Newer maps have much less hearts, so it is even less of a factor. Now in open world we do map events, fractals, Strikes and activities based on whatever the collection we are working on. Lately we added some fishing for crafting a first legendary weapon (yes, we were sure we would never craft one, but here we are). We also did each dungeons at least once. We have joined a guild to do WvW which is really intense. Another thing we thought we would never do. We are looking at getting into raids eventually, but life. So yeah, I just wanted to add the perspective that it's a very long road and hearts are the first couple of yards only. Hope you keep enjoying the game!

Others games have martial arts by using hand wraps as a weapon. Much less impactful way to add it to GW2. Much like they added the saber-gun-thing to warriors.

Is it worth it now for you has more to do with your pre-dispositions than the game itself. Ask yourself if you will look at the half-full part, or still in the mood to look at the half-empty part. You seem to know enough about the game to decide from there.

A few people have posted that macros are not allowed with the link. When I read the link, It seems to me that they are not allowed in any competitive context - where you compete against other players. I don't see a restriction on chaining 2 actions on one mouse click for example. Am I reading it wrong? P.S. I also agree that trying to automate an attack chain would probably more detrimental than helpful.

I meant casual based on frequency and predictability of playing. I do not have a regular schedule or regular play time. I cannot join a static for example. I do not think casual as an attitude, rather an availability. Less time to research, practice, play. I have been playing casually in OW for a bit over a year and now trying the instanced content. Is it viable with limited time and mostlt pugs is really the question.

Hi, I wanted to share my experience so far trying to get into instanced content. I am reading posts on getting more casuals in endgame/ or that endgame is not for casual/ or that endgame need to be more casual friendly/ or that casual need to get good/ or anything in between. So here is my take as I am giving it a go. First, I am not an elite player, but I am probably not terrible either. I am fine with investing time listening to guides, I use the common build sites to have a decent build, and I take the time to gear appropriately. One of my main concern is to not be incompetent in any activity with people who expect me to be competent. So I am trying to sort out how to get going, what's needed to be competent, and how do I know if I am competent enough! DRMs. These were easy to get started since I could solo/duo and get a sense of the mission before joining with others. The problem is that I did not find them a very valuable investment of time and moved on to other things (unless I missed something?). Dungeons. I started those in duo with my wife and we completed about half of the paths. For the rest, I found some LFG open to inexperienced people. There are not that many, so I have yet to finish all of them. I feel there is a path here, though a slower one, and the rewards are less interesting (once I got all the runes I needed, that is). Having a better structure for LFG with training and experienced grouped for all dungeons would definitely be an improvement. Fractals. These I found easy to get started. Some Tier 1 LFGs are clear that they are open to everyone. I ended up staying in T1 for quite a bit. Expectations and difficulty are fairly low, so you can learn mechanics (guides only go so far). I almost completed all Tier 2, but I feel I will need to stay there for a while as well. I have been doing dailies and recommended, but some of the fractals don't come up very often. I still feel somewhat inadequate with those, and I assume the expectation is that I have leaned all the fractals really well before going to T3+. All in all, I feel pretty good about fractals, there is a good path forward. A broader distribution of all fractals would be an improvement. IBS Strikes. There is a training category, so that's great. I found a few training groups here and there, so over a few weeks I learned the strikes enough to start joining regular groups. There is a path here, but it is slower. I wanted to point out that commanders who take the time to train people are awesome. EOD Strikes. There is also a training category, but it is almost always empty. I only learned the turtle so far. I guess people who need it will take anyone since they are learning themselves. I do not see a clear path forward here. CM Strikes and Raids. I have not tried them yet. I feel I need to get better with the other modes first. I joined a guild who offers raid training, so in time that will probably be my path forward there. Also, in the process of getting adequate I did a number of things I felt were expected: Pick a class and learn it fairly well. Equip my characters with the meta. (Keep updating through the balance patches). Install arcdps. Optimize button mapping (including getting a new mouse with more buttons). Optimize game settings. I think the main point here is how much is the endgame is for casual? There is a point beyond "casual" that I do not expect to cross - combat log analysis, kill proofs, rotation practice, and things of that nature. So we will see how far I can get as a "casual". I suspect I will need to commit more than casual to do everything in game. Anyways, these are my thoughts on trying instanced PVE as a well-meaning casual! P.S. To be clear, I don't think the game needs to be made easier for me to do everything, staying casual is a choice. Removing friction along the way is a good idea though.

I understand setting goals. There are many you can pick from as other have mentioned. Here are the ones my wife and I set for ourselves: Level to 80 Do full story and all expansions story (we did it on a second character to have continuity, first time we jumped all over) Do map completion on every map Do the "return to" achievements (you get a legendary trinket and lots of currency for the skyscale next) Get the skyscale Do all the dungeons and paths at least once. Do all the strikes at least once. Get to 100 in fractals. Still working on it. Craft a legendary weapon. This is not a short term thing. Still working on it. I think next will be raids and CM stikes, and more WvW. Along the way I leveled and equipped 4 builds before landing on a main. I did find that my character does get more powerful over time. The difference is not because of gear, but rather because I improve the way I play the character. I am leveling me, if that makes any sense. Hope you find your path!

Scourge is another good ranged option.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will try the hybrid healer, seems an interesting avenue. Thanks!

Hi all. My wife and I run with 2 scourges. We are both pretty much using the current condi scourge meta from Snowcrows https://snowcrows.com/builds/necromancer/scourge/condition-scourge The only difference is that when duoing harder content, we sometimes replace the viper trinkets with celestial ones to increase our support to each other, and general survivability. I am wondering if there might be a better approach to take advantage of having 2 scourges together, instead of running the same build. Especially in undermanned strikes/fractals/dungeons. Should one embrace more of a support build? Have both go more hybrid? Or keep full DPS? Or any other suggestion? Thanks!

You missed a primary game mode: searching in google/wiki/youtube etc. for info about this or that. Sometimes it feels near the top for me...

Hey! I would like to join the guild to start doing instanced PvE and WvW. Casual yet organized seems a good fit!

I have the same dislike of crafting. I raised crafting for the weapons, it felt worth it for the specialization collections. Since ascended are really mandatory only for fractals, you can get them doing fractals. Kinda makes sense. I suspect you knew that one. The other place I found is with doing strike missions in eye of the north. By leveling the story on 2 characters I was able to get the chest piece. Anyways, all I have.