Blood Red Arachnid.2493

The answer seems a bit obvious. If I don't like how my characters look, I would change how they look. It's not like IRL where you're stuck with an ugly face and can't afford nice clothes.

Well... what else are you spending that gold on? I just crafted it all back in the days when crafting it was far more expensive. There's many alternate paths to get the weapons and armor, but crafting is always an option that is available to you. Also, small note, but everyone else is underselling the difference in performance. Changing your weapons alone to ascended is a 5% increase in strike damage. Going full ascended is a 10% increase overall, and getting all of the infusions is about a 12.5% increase overall. The increase in armor tier alone reduces damage by around 2.5%.

I'm not so sure. The times since we were trying out Fresh Air vs. BttH were awhile ago, but I remember that Fresh Air's damage loss was very minor. For example, this somewhat out-of-date video has Fresh air being a mere 100 DPS behind BttH. This is weaver focused, though. The other specializations don't make as great a use out of Fresh Air as weaver does. It would be nice to have some updated numbers on this. I can understand the trait not being as useful on the other specs, since those hang in their respective elements longer. But, if Fresh Air remains the DPS competitive yet greater flexibility option for Weaver, that is a perfectly fine place for the trait to be. We don't want to completely invalidate BttH.

It's possible it is the thing that you aren't saying. It is also possible that it was just a good hider. I've taken a few towers by just hiding really well when it was flipped. It is much easier on the red BL, since those towers are large and have a lot of nooks and crannies to hide in.

My "wild guess" is that you have a key that's bound between multiple apps. Since this only happens during raids, if you have some team speak program active in the background, there's a chance that you're accidentally pressing a key that's bound on the chat-app. This could confuse your computer, and make it think that you're trying to navigate in the speaking program, thus nullifying all of the left-clicks in GW2 instead.

I don't see why we can't just navigate to the outfit panel and click the little box.

Careful. Last time I brought this up Anet killed dagger ele.

I use them quite a bit on my ele. One of the few unseen buffs that Ele gives to the team is that they put up constant fire fields, which gives random bits of burning on all of those projectile and whirl finishers. Unfortunately... that isn't much. Random bits of 1-second burns only helps in the smallest of degrees. It is one of the complaints I have about the combo system, in that so many of the finishers just aren't of any noticeable value. In WvW I do try to rotate so that I spam blast finishers in fire fields, and I'll occasionally blast water for more heals.

Mirage's value comes in places that generally aren't useful in PVE: defenses, and mobility. It is rare for me to need the mirage, but one such place was when i was duoing the Hearts and Minds CM, both against Eir and the final boss. I tried using the other specs, but both Virt and Chrono just couldn't heap on the damage or stay alive. But the mirage was able to kite and dodge everything. The clones would upkeep a relatively high sustained damage, while Jaunt/Axes of Symmetry/Phase Retreat let me avoid all of the ground AoEs, and the prolific amount of Endurnace and mirage mirrors let me avoid attacks while reflecting projectiles in mass.

You'd be surprised... well, you are surprised at how much slips through the cracks. I had to issue a ticket once because I deleted a PoF collection item that couldn't be re-acquired. Turns out, one of those random collection items needed to be handed in directly instead of being a junk bit that gets shoved into your inventory like all of the others.

I'm reminded of an interview I heard about once. Sam Tramiel, then CEO of Atari, gave an interview to Next Generation magazine about the status of the company and their console at the time, the Atari Jaguar. This interview was supposed to help reassure customers, stock holders, and future potential customers of the value of the Jaguar console. However... Tramiel botched it. Terribly. One of the things he mentioned in this interview was that the Jaguar 2 was under development. This, among many other things, caused all interest in the Jaguar 1 to plummet, as no one wanted to sink their costs into that console anymore. NCsoft leaking the potential development of GW3 could very well be what sinks this game. The malaise of the OP is going to be a commonly shared sentiment.

They started making events like this to stop players from purposefully stalling events to grind loot. This reach its peak shortly after the champion loot bag update, where people would repeatedly fail the meta events to farm champs. It's far easier to stick all the rewards at the end instead of coming up with some arbitrary DR system for every event in the game.

The strike mission doesn't begin until the fight starts. Most groups will stand inside the instance until everyone shows up. Generally though, don't enter the portal yourself until either the commander enters, or a designated player enters (for raids only).

I am distracted by the little cat animation that's button accurate.

Not really. I like being all big and strong. I have 3 norn, and two of them are maximum height. I wanted to make the norn to be larger than life, so I made them to be as big as they could get. If I don't want to be that big, I just playing many of the other races. Which is... unfortunate for the other races, because I always want to be that big.

It's the boons. Builds have been doing 30-35k DPS since HoT. This was after quickness was made a boon and alacrity was introduced. Builds now doing 42k isn't a significant increase from this baseline. What has changed is boon availability. When all this old content was released, alacrity did not exist, quickness was a non-boostable buff that was quite rare, and getting 25 stacks of might required a lot of coordinated blast finishers to accomplish. Getting maximum DPS was all about maintaining fury, which was the best and most efficient boon. Running a "meta" build meant having 5 stacks of might, self-fury, and vigor to dodge all the attacks. The Jade Tech Overcharge Buffs all but boon-cap a player while solo. Now, builds give out shared fury and shared might automatically, making their maintenance not even a consideration. Aside from that, Quickness and Alacrity are now incredibly common, as are buffing builds in general. To make a buffer in this game is almost a trivial matter, as most professions are near the boon cap with no boon duration investment. Finally, true healing builds now exist, and a greater proliferation of aegis/protection/stability means that players are much safer face-tanking enemies than they were prior. Combine all this together, and we have open world builds doing 2.3x the damage they did previously from boons alone. As a bit of a smaller note, condition builds weren't a thing back then due to the stack limit. Because of this, a lot of the excess damage done was lost due to the stack culling, and anyone running a rabid condi build might as well been invisible. The solution to this isn't easy. The introduction of high sources of boon duration has created a situation where either the boon builds need it, or they don't. If boon builds are changed to require 80% duration to maintain their boons (essentially full Diviner), then the overworld boon overload would be culled significantly... at the cost of the performance of support builds in other places. If non-boosted boons are to remain valuable, then the overworld events would need to be buffed as to compensate for the fact that we're all jacked up on some serious juice now. Though there's the third option: do nothing. Chances are, Anet will take the third option, as the first two don't really present any ROI for the man-hours put into them.

Most of my toons are harvest chests at the moment. I also don't have SotO, so my rankings are influenced greatly by which weapon each spec can use. #1: Elementalist. I enjoy all specs, and the class can do a lot. I use this toon for WvW, so it is one of the few that I can say that I actually play regularly. Favorite spec is Weaver, which has a bunch of extra skills and a nice flow to the combat. I have the most builds and gearsets on Ele, and I switch between them quite often in all game modes. #2: Mesmer. The recent buffs have been pretty sweet, and the sheer versatility of the class lets me handle any situation. Favorite spec is Chronomancer, largely because of how fun the Continuum Split phantasm burst rotation is. #3: Thief. I have this one sitting at home, but when there's some odd task that needs doing in the overworld, I usually send my thief to handle it. Favorite spec is the Deadeye, which puts out a lot of damage without having to chase enemies down to hurt them. I also run condi Daredevil for its simplicity. #4: Engineer. This spec is great for days when I want to play the game in the weakest sense of the word. I alternate between Scrapper, which I use to solo dungeons/fractals/bounties, and condi Mechanist, which I use just running around in the overworld. This is a good profession to play one-handed. #5: Warrior. Now, normally I hate warrior, but I enjoy Bladesworn to an absurd amount. I just love taking the heads off of groups of enemies all at once. #6: Guardian. It has fallen out of use for me as of late. I alternate between condi willbender and power willbender, but recent changes have made it require too much micromanaging to really have fun with it. #7: Revenant. It feels like this profession gets some big overhaul every few months now, and quite frankly I'm never sure how to play it anymore. I'm sitting on power vindicator atm, but all of the changes just make the whole thing feel clunky and non-responsive. #8: Necromancer. It would be more accurate to say that I don't play necromancer anymore, as I have it parked at the end of a jumping puzzle that I don't want to leave. Reaper for simpilcity. #9: Ranger. I use a ranger for the weekly key farm, but after my first attempt I've decided to not have a permanent one. I have a spare key farmer sitting at a jumping puzzle to harvest silver doubloons, but that is it.

You'd be surprised. First, it is not the first time I've seen this. I've seen it twice before, once in City of Heroes, and once on these forums themselves. Their writing style and their actions follow a similar trend. I've also worked with a few psychologists while I was in college, and they really do act like this. Know that psychologists aren't literature majors, so the use of their terminology isn't to be taken literally. Also know that Hermetics is pretty big in the psych scene right now, so they're all about equating things to other things. Finally, also know that most colleges are now glorified degree mills that exist to suck out government subsidies, so it is really, really easy to get a psych degree.

Funny how you don't have a word to describe anything other than "cool"...

That's the mechanical dimension. The social dimension demands as high as 95% benchmarks with proof to join groups quite regularly. In full exotic gear with food, you'll at max hit 88% of the benchmark. Not having full ascended gear with infusions will automatically exclude you from most of these groups. Trying to make your own groups doesn't work, because most of the people who care enough to complete high end PVE regularly are also the kind of people who'll grind benchmarks for hours and shell out the cash for the gear to join the elite groups.

The easiest way to understand it is to think of two roulette wheels. One roulette wheel spins to determine if you're going to get an uncommon or higher drop. If that wheel lands in "winner" section, a second wheel will spin to determine what kind of drop you'll get. The odds that you see listed on each of those categories is roughly the chance that you'll get them... from the second wheel. The golden key bypasses the first wheel altogether, and just skips to the second wheel.

I mean that they want you to buy SotO, so all balance decisions prioritize selling SotO first and making a balanced game second.

My only complaint with the water line is the lack of a damage enhancing grandmaster trait. The self-heals and condi cleanses are all fine for PVP/WvW, but for PVE it just needs one more punch to make it great. The specific build I'm thinking of is Power Fire/Water/Catalyst that uses a hammer. On rare occasion I'll recommend that build to other players, or even play it myself, since it's biggest strength is the ability to do decent damage while in water attunement. Also, the cooldown reductions for water skills makes it flow better. My choices are Soothing Power, which does very little given it is a zerker build, Powerful Aura, with random aura spam not being particularly useful in PVE and does nothing for the player directly, and Cleansing Water, which doesn't do much given the build doesn't give out Aoe Regen. In all Irony, Powerful Auras with Smothering Aura will do far more cleansing than Cleansing Water, making that final trait a dead option for PVE. So, for now I just take Soothing Power for the miniscule heal. I can understand the balance considerations. Fire and Air don't have as many multiplicative modifiers, instead getting their value from the raw stats they give. It is always a possibility that giving Water a third damage trait in the grandmaster tier, on top of the 10% from Flow Like Water and Piercing Shards, could push it into the dangerous territory where the healing option is also the best offensive option.

That, or they go with the minecraft method. City of Heroes has the mission architect, which lets players write and design their own missions, NPCs, enemy abilities, enemy types and placements, etc. and so on. It is an even older MMO, now not even officially supported, so a modern version would be much different from what we have now. There's always an option to add a dungeon creator to the game, and let the players themselves generate content exponentially faster than the devs ever could. Another thing done in Runescape and Bloodborne is randomly generated dungeons. Runescape had the dungeoneering skill, which effectively let you go down into dungeons full of a bunch of randomly generated challenges, enemies, and loot. It wouldn't work as well with GW2, because it doesn't have nearly the robust skill system that Runescape has, but there is still the option to create randomized but basic dungeon layouts.

I can't remember if non-EoD accounts can still buy a tier 10 core. If so, I go with something like this. If not, hybridize Marauder and Dragon pieces to get more health. Something like this for more health. Partly this is my practiced experience with the setup, but I've found fresh air power sword to be quite simple in concept. Basically, the whole thing breaks down into 3 steps: Step 1: Use sword skill 3 Step 2: Use DPS skills from left to right Step 3: change attunements, and repeat. The rote attunement rotation is to start in Air, go to Fire, Double to Fire, go to Water, then quickly mash into double air. If you want a bit more finesse, you can switch that final part of the rotation up so you'll go into Earth every other time, and use Earthquake, Earthen Vortex, and Churning Earth for more damage. You have to do it every other time, though, because the cooldowns in Earth are a bit too long. Once you get a grasp of the flow it is pretty easy to remember the DPS rotation. The Gear is chosen to maximize damage. Death is the best debuff, and the fast things die the quicker you get loot and move on. The traits are also chosen largely to do maximum damage. There's some leeway in choices (I.E. Raging Storm vs. Stormsoul is based on context). If you want more survival, it is generally better to just change the utility skills to suit your needs. The utilities are whatever. I usually keep Arcane Shield as a stunbreak and a backup, but if you're confident you can use something else. Glyph of Storms is one of the best skills IMO, used in Earth to mass blind enemies, used in Air against large targets to do a lot of damage, used in Fire otherwise. Primordial Stance is there just for extra damage, and does nothing really crucial otherwise. Weave Self can get complicated if you're trying to maximize it, but if you aren't just consider it as a temporary stat buff. Trying to maximize Weave Self is difficult, but unless you're trying to benchmark a golem don't bother with trying to maximize it. Just go through two rotations (double air -> double fire - > water -> double air -> double fire -> Earth -> double air) and you'll still get a lot out of it. As an alternative option, Fiery Greatsword makes for a good pseudo-weapon swap if you're in need of a ranged weapon. The hardest part of this spec isn't going the rote rotation. It is learning how to be flexible with the attunements. There's a lot of small tricks in there that separates the boys from the men. For example, there's an excellent CC rotation for when breaking bars is needed. It requires you to swap to Earth, then Fresh Air into Air//Earth. From there, you can use Gale Strike -> Polaric Leap -> Earthquake (attune to double air) - > Updraft in that order to do 732 defiance damage, just shredding any bar you come across. Another example is the opener. If you're fighting smaller enemies, I advise starting in earth/x to use Sandstorm from Glyph of Storms, then quickly switch to fire and use Lava Skin. Doing this will give all enemies around you blind, weakness, and also give you barrier to absorb some stray hits, making you very hard to kill. However, if you're fighting a defiant enemy, start in double-air and do the DPS rotations as normal. Also, know that you can slow the water portion slightly to heal yourself and cleanse a condition with Cleansing Wave and Riptide. That flexibility is why I recommend Fresh Air. There's another build that uses Bolt to the Heart and just switches between fire and air the whole time. While easier to use, it is lacking that flexibility that lets you do things like burst CC and quick heals/cleanses. The only place this build is going to have trouble is if you're soloing hard champions that have a lot of continuous pressure. If you decide to solo champions, learn to pace yourself. You'll be relying on the evades from Riptide and Earthen Vortex more often, so if an attack is coming you'll want to calm down the DPS rotation for a second.