Tren.5120

All they have to do is speed up the weapon attack speed by 15% and then adjust the weapon damage and/or skill coefficients to compensate. They can easily maintain the same overall performance while increasing quality of life.

I don't agree. I think having one fast melee option is good for the class. Best option for this is Staff. In any case, if they were to do that, they'd probably have to revamp other trait lines to compensate. Those trait lines were designed with those weapons' skills in mind.

Nevermind.

You want Burning and Torment, not Bleeding and Poison. Afflicted is terrible because most of your bleeds are going to be near cap out of the box due to Traits. <Curses> has 20% +Bleed Duration and 50% +Scepter Skill Duration. Most of your bleeding comes from Scepter skills, now that Dagger has been replaced by Pistol. That's 70%. Add in Expertise from Exotic/Ascended Viper Gear and you're already nearing the 90% mark... You don't want +Bleeding Duration on Runes/Sigils, and +Poison Duration is the lowest priority. Burning and Torment are your highest priorities. The majority of your Weapon Skills will apply those two. I think Bleeding was a bigger deal when people were using Dagger as a weapon swap (prior to Weaponmaster training), since those weapon skills aren't affected by that 50% boost in <Curses>. As it currently stands, you basically get Bleeding Duration for free - mostly - via Traits. Generally, prioritize Torment and it will be your highest damaging condition on Scourge, unless something has changed. Scourge Traits give huge damage bonuses to Torment, IIRC. So, I'd go with Tormenting Runes unless you can get it to 90%+ easily some other way.

They are a spammy, thoughtless weapon unless you go Condi Reaper, which basically forces some thought into it since you want to optimize your chill usage to apply as many bleeds as possible, etc. The thing that is nice about them is that it's a faster pace weapon than Greatsword, and since its ranged you have some options for situations where you may want to back off - sometimes preemptively - and still do damage. General Ignaxious is a good example. I know he's going to do his AoE soon, so I tend to like being able to sort of pre-position and pre-range myself so I don't have to run across the map to get to where I need to be. But the power damage is kind of weak, and it feels pointless to have a gap closer on the back end of a gap closer. It just doesn't make any sense to run it if GS does more damage and you're basically forced to melee because of the gap closers in the rotation, anyways. For a power build you spend over half your time in Shroud, anyways 😛 I find it really, really underwhelming. If I wanna go ranged, I'm better off going Condi Scorge instead. It's less annoying to play, IMHO since the weapon skills don't force-reposition me.

Skyscale issue is a result of bad level design. GW2 crutches on masteries to enable efficient movement through a lot of expansion maps. The Skyscale goes around this because of its verticality and ability to cross large gaps with ease. You don't have to worry about bouncing mushrooms or hitting the perfect series of updrafts. You just fly up and glide to where you want in most cases - hitting an updraft "occasionally." In classic zones, which were not designed with flying mounts in mind, you can scale and cross mountain ranges with ease because the map was not designed to prohibit this. If someone goes to SoTo and gets the Skyscale, then a lot of the masteries for HoT and PoF are obsoleted instantly, which also damages the replay value of anything in those expansions' overland content. There is hardly a reason to use anything other than the Skyscale, unless you want to go through a Jackal portal or an event requires Turtle artillery. IMO, this had already started with mounts in PoF, the Springer in particular. However, the Skyscale really has zoomed it from Point C to Z.

Hardly anyone watches people stream GW2, relative to other games, and people tend to bias heavily towards PvP streamers over PvE for sandbox MMORPGs. Why do you think there are so many PvP games (FPS, etc.) being released, and hardly any sandbox MMORPGs with comparable development budgets? WoW, ESO, GW2, etc. are all PvP dominant on streaming services. What people watch on Twitch is not indicative of what people actually play in game, so that would be a horrible metric to use for deciding where development resources go. Even I have popped in and watched a PvP stream here and there, and I've probably spent less than 5 minutes over the entire life of this game in a PvP instance... and I doubt I'd ever go back into one again. I've been playing since well before the game had any expansions. I simply watched it out of morbid curiosity, and because why would I waste any time watching someone PvE in any of these games?

I think this is a big issue in Heart of Thorns, particularly Verdant Brink and Tangled Depths. It's really not just the starting areas. It kind of throws everything out of balance. People play GW2 much like a single player game, so it's not like they are waiting for people to get there before they start. They just fly in and instantly start killing the MOB.

Having same issue. Completely disappearing interface. Have tried F4'ing multiple times, after realizing you cannot jump off the map to force a reset. Thought I had inadvertently hit a button to hide the UI or something. Also, telling people they can counter it with Suppression is not useful when they can't see anything in the UI, so even if the skill popped up they wouldn't know it. And they wouldn't know what button to press to activate it unless they knew beforehand what that button was, lol.

I actually did the same thing for the exact same reasons.

I didn't look I to that since switching a MOBO is a bit more intense (some aren't comfortable doing it). But yeah, it's really not that expensive now that we're in 2023 and CPUs have been pretty OP for a while. IMO, the GPU is ultimately the bigger question mark. 4K sounds good, but it is generally not worth if the games look but ugly due to performance limitations at the hardware level 😞 But that's why I made suggestions at both the budget and higher pricing segments. It Is doable with fairly low costs, but whether it's worth crawling there over saving that cash for a whole new system upgrade later is the bigger question. PERSONALLY, I'd save for later and just stick with 1080p for the moment. I think a AIO is pretty standard for gaming rigs. Even a 120 will outperform a stock cooling fan (don't even think Intel bundles those, but that is the case for the stock AMD Wraith coolers).

i5-9600K: $229 (No MOBO Upgrade Required) RX 5700XT: $199 (RX590 $149 Good Brand/Dual Fan... so brainless to get this over the 5700 XT given the performance disparity) New PSU: ~$100 (Debatable: Depends on what is currently in the machine) $428-528 (Probably less, if used components are acquired) Not Quite $1,000

GW2 taxes the CPU in my machine more than Cyberpunk 2077. It's an MMORPG, it has high CPU requirements and the i3 in his machine is going to be a bottleneck. The engine actually does not scale as well with GPUs as newer games, so it absolutley is a consideration. The bottleneck shifts to GPU at 4K, but that doesn't mean requirements for the CPU remain the same. Nothing I recommended is an upsell. It is reality. OP did ask: And I replied with realistic recommendations for that. At least a 5700 XT, and I'd definitely upgrade the CPU as that will bottleneck, as well. An RX590 makes no sense given the cost of 5700 XTs and how much better they perform. You're going to be saving 20-25% in cost for like a 60+% decrease in GPU performance. It's a brainless recommendation fromboth a performance and economics standpoint. RX590 could run 4K games because of the 8GB VRAM Buffer, but the performance is still bad because the GPU is basically the equivalent of a 1060. The idea that you can upscale to 4K and basically maintain the same performance just by virtue of having a bigger VRAM buffer is also... curious, at best. That's not quite how it works. I still think that machine will struggle to maintain 40 FPS on anything but minimal settings (which look AWFUL) in GW2, given my experience running a 3700X with a 5700XT (not my current rig, but easy to swap the components back in to check - that CPU has comparable performance for gaming). That combination was struggling to maintain 60 FPS at 1080p with Medium Settings in GW2, outside of fairly barren cities. It would almost certainly drop into the 30s-40s while doing rifts or META events - down into the teens if you have ally effects on or there were a lot of people participating on screen. AM4 boards are dirt cheap and so are Ryzen 7 5700/5800 CPUs. (Anything below a 3700X is going to be a downgrade for gaming.) That RX GPU is very cheap, and almost certainly the best budget option available for someone who is cash-strapped. I didn't know recommending budget hardware was a toxic upsell when someone lists those requirements. The 7000 series CPU someone else mentioned cost as much as all the stuff I told him to get when you factor in the MOBO and Cooler needed to keep it in check, kitten. If he plans to upgrade the PC in the not-distant future, then he should not bother with 4K and stay on 1080p and spec the new machine appropriately. No point spending money in old components with a limited viability span. My 5700 XT is in the closet. I did not stick with it for 4K gaming because unless I was willing to run literally everything at low settings it performed terribly. It doesn't make sense to go to 4K if you're going to be running everything on minimal settings. It won't look better than 1080p. You lose more than you gain from that.

For 4K gaming it doesn't matter what CPU he puts in the machine, a 1050 Ti is completely out of line with what is appropriate. It's slow, has a narrow bus, and a small/slow VRAM buffer. It was designed for casual gaming at 768/1080p. It's a low-end card from 2017. Gaming at 4K is a lot more GPU-bound than gaming at 1080p, so you need more GPU grunt there even though GW2's engine (like most other older MMORPG engines) is a CPU hog. Otherwise, what point is there playing at minimal settings at UHD trying to get to playable framerates if it looks far worse than FHD at higher settings with higher consistent framerates. He will never reach a playable framerate with that setup... even if it shots higher peaks, I can guarantee that it's constantly dropping to the point that the average is still going to be well-below playable, anyways. You can put a Threadripper in that machine, and he will still get bad performance because that GPU is too weak. Beyond that, going from an i3-9100F to any AMD CPU means a complete platform swap. He will not only have to replace the CPU, but the MOBO as well. Upgrading to a newer Intel CPU will also necessitate a platform swap, as Intel is not as generous with maintaining sockets across CPU generations as AMD has been. 5800X3d only makes sense for dedicated gaming rigs that you don't use heavily for other tasks like productivity, video editing, etc. Otherwise, it may not be worth it over a Ryzen 9-5900/5950X - both of which will trounce it for Video Editing, Heavy Photography and Graphics Design, VFX, Scientific Computing, etc. Casual gamers need to think long and hard about getting those CPUs over the others with more Cores/Threads. For them, it generally is not worth it. An i7 would be fine for 60 FPS 4K gaming, as long as he had a suitable GPU and PSU... but I think he should keep a 1080p screen hooked up to that computer and run his games on that, instead... waiting until he replaces the entire machine to game at 3K. None of the components in that machine should be carried over. That CPU only supports DDR4-2400, so it's also possible that he may have slower DDR4 RAM in that machine (so it won't even optimize a Ryzen build). Generally, for GPU he'd want something like a RTX 3080 Ti/RX 6800 XT - particularly if he plays other games that are built on engines designed to take better advantage of the GPU. If he's willing to drop back to QHD, then an RX 5700 XT or RTX 2070 SUPER would bother deliver decent performance, assuming he had a suitable CPU to match with them (at least a 10th Gen i5/i7 (or OC'd 9600K) or Ryzen 3600/3700X) and was willing to drop some of the more GPU-abusing settings down a notch - like Shadows, Post Processing, Depth of Field, Ally Effects, etc. (the game would still look good). It really doesn't matter that a weak sauce PC peaks at 40 FPS if it's dropping constantly down to the teens. The goal is to narrow the corridor of variability in your framerates, so that performance stays as close as possible to the average. Also, running with CPU/GPU constantly at max load is just going to result in a very loud computer. Well, that may bother people to different degrees 😛

LMAO. RTX 3070 Ti, RX 6800 at least, for this. Otherwise, it isn't even worth getting a 4K display. With a 1050 Ti, you are far better off running on a 1080p display since that will not tax that weak sauce GPU much, and will allow your CPU to carry it. I find this game scales horribly with GPU compute capacity, anyways, so YMMV. There is no point running a game at 4K Resolution if you are forced to turn down everything to bare minimum just to get playable frame rates. 1080p is going to be playable at higher framerates while looking better. I personally wouldn't even bother trying to game in 4K with anything less than an RTX 3080/RX 6900.

Flight Master mastery is bugged and will remove the mount if I leave a SotO zone. EDIT: I actually can use it, but only via the Mastery Skill, which has a 180 Second (3 Minute) cooldown. Legitimately confused on how this is supposed to work.

If that post is "confusing," then the issue is not the post. It's your IQ. It's in the negatives 😉 Again: Boring, repetitive MOB grinding masquerading as an exciting expansion event mechanic. It's not fun. The MOBs don't even really drop anything useful, given decent XP, etc - and even if they did the dead time running across the map would basically cancel it out. I'd much rather install EverQuest I and go kill MOBs there, instead.

Also, 95% of Relics are absolute Garbage, and probably 10-15% of them don't even work properly. I would have much preferred they just kept that stuff the way it was prior to the expansion launching. This entire thing just feels like a LW episode they rushed out the door with a bunch of broken or underwhelming stuff layers on top in a desperate attempt to make it seem more compelling than it actually is. The Rift Hunting is not engaging, immersive or fun. Flying across the continent and back and wasting all of your time getting there for 2 minutes of fighting the same exact enemies over and over, and some Elite/Champion that dies in 15-30 seconds is not fun. Over half of your time is spend actually going from here to there. The entire thing is a massive time sink that offers nothing in return for the amount of time you spend ... basically, MOB grinding Kryptis Rifts. I'm sorry, but people need to drop the copium. I don't think it's such a MASSIVE waste of money as some make it out to be, given the cost was relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things. It's not like they sold it for $49.99 or something. But, I probably should have waited for initial reviews - and if so, I never would have wasted what they charged me for it. The entire premise of this expansion makes it close to worthless to me. I cannot stress enough how awful it feels to spend all that time going across the continent only to have the MOB die 10 seconds before you get there. This constantly happens. I've spent about 4 hours playing it since my last post, and Probably 3 of those hours is 100% wasted dead/in-transit time. I have never played such badly designed content in an MMORPG before.

They're a downgrade in the sense that they aren't as good for cooperative gameplay. I have a friend that I bought the game for and usually buy the expansions for on launch, and I won't bother buying this one for him because he won't play it if he logs in and we have different objectives for dailies. It would be a waste of money. Personally, I haven't logged in since the day it launched... or the day after. I forget. Nothing about it feels compelling. I actually haven't gamed at all since then, so maybe this is helping me move on and use that time for things that are a bit more important in my life 😛

Agree. Exasperatingly boring, these new maps. I'd rather farm repeatable Hero Challenges in other expansion maps. Did notice the issue of flying clear across the zone only to have to turn around and fly clear across the zone only to have to turn around to fly half-way across the zone and finally get to a rift before it's closed by other players.

ESO has Login rewards... and dailies. So, not quite 😛 And I don't think even a significant minority of players care about asset reuse. Really, that just seems like grasping at straws. It's not that important, and it makes very little sense to develop new assets (not free) when players are as averse to this game's player base to pay for anything. The result of that is this.

HoT was pretty bad because the maps were terrible and this expansion actually brings the worst parts of HoT back into the fore. It has the same issues, and these maps feel like Verdant Brink with the ground level blown out from under them. I actually think PoFire was the best expansion in terms of merging fun, less aggravating gameplay with masteries. The mounts delivered value, but they didn't feel like time gated necessities that made the entire expansion a royal PITA to play without them. I don't relaly consider the Skyscale that - at least not for players that have been here a while and have most HoT, PoF and EoD Masteries. With those, the Skyscale is actually not the gamechanger many may have thought it would be... For some of the higher mastery points, it was actually easier to get to them with a Springer, Dragon Leap, Jade Bot Personal Updraft than that sluggish AF Skyscale. I think I've gotten like 4 or 5 mastery points in these maps this way. The Skyscale can't use Updrafts without a Mastery, but I can simply jump off any mount and glider through the updrafts to reach areas I never could with the Skyscale - unless you have a LOT of masteries invested in that line. I've glid between continents without it. And while gliding I'm wondering why I even bothered wasting my money on this. It's a LW Episode that delivers the worst aspects of GW2 that I had experienced since release, and not much else. Even the Relics - thus far - are pretty awful, and some completely broken. Nothing at all done to the professions to compensate for the changes there, either. Thus far, this expansion has not delivered any value at all to me. It's like I just threw my money away. And I really made sure to restrain from making any definitive [knee-jerk] comments until I had played through a significant portion of it (Story, Zones, Rift Events, etc.). I can't bring myself to sit here and finish it off, though. It's just... BORING. Like, HoT was REALLY annoying, but it actually was kiiinda fun and the increased difficulty was [at least for me] welcome. I felt compelled to log in and play through the PoF and EoD stories (actually like playing through them on alts), but I cannot imagine playing through this again on another character. It's just BORING AF and I'd probably stop playing the game altogether for months if I tried to force myself to do it. I have to say... I am quite disappointed.

I really wish they hadn't made them Skyscale maps. I just... don't like that mount. Feels like a cheap way to make everything annoying and waste seconds and minutes here and there. I just don't like how unresponsive mounts maneuver in this game - like a car with sluggish steering - so I prefer not to have all the content dependent on them. Makes everything feel like a jumping puzzle. The rift thing is kiiiiiiiiiindaaa nice. But it will feel horrible once people stop farming them, Lol. Just like most other expansion zone metas, etc.

Part of the issue is that many of the people into MMORPGs have played a lot - if not most - of the good ones. And MMORPGs tend to regress as the years go by, so something that was fun 5 years ago may be less so today - assuming it still exists or isn't a practical ghost town. Some of the newer ones have tended to be... kind of weird in the grand scheme of things... or designed for a specific type of audience (Black Desert, New World).

Honestly, I don't even consider GW2 to have an actual endgame.