Guild Wars 2?

[tomchick]

Shame about the lighting, but otherwise that’s awesome! I have a skritt pet as well. Those things are a steal from the trading post. I got mine for about 7s. And what’s up with the undead chickens going for some ungodly sum like 20 gold?

-Tom

[Ultrazen]

Rolled a Norn Engineer focusing on flamethrower and a couple of elixers (can only afford “B” for now but will add “R” later). This is my first alt. I like the Norn starting area more than the Sylvari starting area (although the Sylvari areas are prettier and more interesting) and the personal story is more entertaining.

After having leveled a Thief – my first and only character before this – to 41, something that really bugs me about the Engineer is the way kit activation/deactivation differs from Weapon Switching. I’d prefer to switch between standard weapons and the flamethrower using the Swap Weapons key (`) as I do with my main Thief, rather than the Utility Skill key which (until I manage to retrain myself) is less convenient. Can this be addressed via a key bind? I assume they designed it this way with the assumption that engineers would use multiple kits, but it doesn’t work for me because the flamethrower is the only kit I’m interested in using.

Edit: Ack, silly me, I should have just tried it instead of posting a question. Mapping the Utility Skill key for flamethrower to ` does the trick for now. My only concern is the fact that this key will need to be rebound each time I switch between Thief and Engineer.

Also bugs me that the kit deactivates on its own periodically, such as when I move to a new zone or exit/enter water.

The fact that you can’t drag and drop icons/skills around, and put them where ever you want is kind of a /boggle and something I hope gets addressed at some point. Many of the skills between classes are poorly thought out in this regard. Me for instance, I always snare type skills bound to a particular key, and when I bind it on one toon it’s inevitably different on another character.

Highly annoying if you’re used to playing with more or less the same key binds for 15+ years.

[Reldan]

There is treasure from the Black Lion chests that allows you to combine the stats of one item and looks of another to keep a specific set of headgear for instance. Those are purchasable from the store as well.

That means, you can wear Panscopic Monocle at all times just with the stats of whatever you buy, granted you have enough of the item to swap looks.

Easy way to get a bunch of those is to full complete zones. You get 3-4 transmutation stones that way.

Even for completing capitol cities, which usually are pretty fast since they’re just a matter of hitting all the waypoints, vistas, and points of interest.

[Driveled]

Why aren’t transmutes available on level 80 gear?

If you seriously want to change key mapping you could use something like autohotkey to make that happen. It’s silly that you would have to result to that but it would pass as a work around.

[Funkula]

They are, it’s a different item. You can get basic transmute stones from story rewards and explore bonuses, but master transmutes are only in black lion chests and the gem store.

[Driveled]

They are, it’s a different item. You can get basic transmute stones from story rewards and explore bonuses, but master transmutes are only in black lion chests and the gem store.

Ah gotcha. Haven’t seen them yet.

[khgoh]

They are, it’s a different item. You can get basic transmute stones from story rewards and explore bonuses, but master transmutes are only in black lion chests and the gem store.

Iv’e got 2 master transmute stones and I’m pretty sure theyr’e not only from black lion chests or the gem store. Think I got the last one from a level 65-ish personal quest or clearing a 60-ish zone…

[JM1]

I’ve done the PvP. It’s ok, but it’s the same game played on rotating maps. I’m also not all that interested in cosmetic rewards. I wish playing those matches gave me XP like they did in Warhammer.

If you’re not having enough fun playing the sPVP without XP progression, then stop.

You don’t have to force yourself to like GW2 - no-one’s going to judge you for it. Your posts on it are usually negative and it’s clear that you feel obligated to give it the full try before giving up on it, which is cool and all but I think you know that it’s not going to last much longer.

I’d prefer to switch between standard weapons and the flamethrower using the Swap Weapons key (`) as I do with my main Thief, rather than the Utility Skill key which (until I manage to retrain myself) is less convenient. Can this be addressed via a key bind? I assume they designed it this way with the assumption that engineers would use multiple kits, but it doesn’t work for me because the flamethrower is the only kit I’m interested in using.

Edit: Ack, silly me, I should have just tried it instead of posting a question. Mapping the Utility Skill key for flamethrower to ` does the trick for now. My only concern is the fact that this key will need to be rebound each time I switch between Thief and Engineer.

Whatareyoudoingmyheadhurts

OK so uh, by default, this is how it works:

Engineers get several kits. They can have several kits available to them. Each one has its own key.

Every time you equip a kit, the ` button will switch back to your “main” weapons, regardless of what kit you just equipped. Pressing your kit’s key will do the same thing.

If you have >1 kits, your new rebinding will actually make life harder for you. I have my utility slots bound to nearby keys so I can have kits on, say, E and C and easily swap in/out of them and between them. It’s a lot easier than just rebinding ` and really not very hard to learn.

[Mark_Asher]

I’m locked out of my account now. I got a message when I tried to log in that there may have been an unauthorized attempt to access my account. Anyone else get this? Anyway, I had to contact CS so I opened a support ticket (I hope, it wasn’t completely clear to me what to do).

[Mark_Asher]

If you’re not having enough fun playing the sPVP without XP progression, then stop.

You don’t have to force yourself to like GW2 - no-one’s going to judge you for it. Your posts on it are usually negative and it’s clear that you feel obligated to give it the full try before giving up on it, which is cool and all but I think you know that it’s not going to last much longer.

I did stop playing the PvP (why is it called sPvP by the way?). Someone asked me about it and I responded. That’s all. I hope they add new modes of play.

I am having fun playing the game at times. Now and then I’m in the mood for 30-40 minutes of PvE, which can be relaxing. The WvW is a lot of fun when I find good fights. Overall the game is top-notch but I’m doing things I’ve done in previous MMOs for the most part so there’s some burnout with the genre I have to deal with. My hope is that the WvW really takes off for me. I’m still learning it.

The best thing is there’s no monthly sub now so there’s no pressure to play. I’d probably be hitting the cancel button soon if there were. I’m too far from level 80 to get there anytime soon.

[Stridergg]

why is it called sPvP by the way?

There are 3 very different types of PvP in GW2: Structured PvP (sPvP), Tournament PvP (tPvP) and WvW PvP (WvW).

[Ultrazen]

Has anyone else noticed and/or had the problem of seemingly every quest being either:

1. Not enough mobs/objectives to complete the quest. I’ve lost count of the number of quests I’ve done where I’ve been at 90% complete and just plain run out of mobs or objectives and had to stand around for 10 minutes for a respawn.

2. Joe Schmo quest giver tells you to go kill mob x’s, and there are a ton of mob x’s just outside the quest area that would give you credit for said mobs.

I just did one where part of the completion was to kill centaurs, and the other part was to disarm traps. There were literally no centaurs within the quest radius, but a huge camp of them just beyond the border of the quest radius. Had to wait through 4 full respawns to get enough trap disarms to complete.

It would be one thing if this only happened once in a while, but for me, it seems like every quest is set up this way. They really need to have an over abundance of quest mobs/objects, instead of this either barely or not enough stuff, it’s starting to really drive me bonkers.

[KevinC]

Has anyone else noticed and/or had the problem of seemingly every quest being either:

1. Not enough mobs/objectives to complete the quest. I’ve lost count of the number of quests I’ve done where I’ve been at 90% complete and just plain run out of mobs or objectives and had to stand around for 10 minutes for a respawn.

2. Joe Schmo quest giver tells you to go kill mob x’s, and there are a ton of mob x’s just outside the quest area that would give you credit for said mobs.

I just did one where part of the completion was to kill centaurs, and the other part was to disarm traps. There were literally no centaurs within the quest radius, but a huge camp of them just beyond the border of the quest radius. Had to wait through 4 full respawns to get enough trap disarms to complete.

It would be one thing if this only happened once in a while, but for me, it seems like every quest is set up this way. They really need to have an over abundance of quest mobs/objects, instead of this either barely or not enough stuff, it’s starting to really drive me bonkers.

For the most part I haven’t run into those problems, especially since most Hearts provide multiple mechanisms to complete it. That being said, some zone layouts can vary pretty widely based on World Event status. It’s possible that Seraph have driven Centaurs out of a bulk of the area you’re doing the Heart, but there should still be enough around to complete it (if you do the other Heart objectives as well).

[Stridergg]

For the most part I haven’t run into those problems, especially since most Hearts provide multiple mechanisms to complete it. That being said, some zone layouts can vary pretty widely based on World Event status. It’s possible that Seraph have driven Centaurs out of a bulk of the area you’re doing the Heart, but there should still be enough around to complete it (if you do the other Heart objectives as well).

I am lvl 73 at the moment and there was one occasion when there were not that many mobs in the quest radius. I was lazy to do the complicated non-killing part of the heart. Pulling mobs into the heart area solved that problem for me. It doesn’t matter where the mob is initially located, it’s where you kill it.

Although if they are too far, it can be tough to pull them far enough due to the leash but I think they will travel pretty far if they are able to hit you from time to time.

[MrPerson]

Has anyone else noticed and/or had the problem of seemingly every quest being either: etc

I have only experienced this very rarely. The game seems to have some sort of dynamic respawn system that goes off the rails, so maybe you’ve had terrible luck. Some of the hubs are also supposed to generally be somewhere in their dynamic event system, and a lot of events are hosed, so that could be a factor as well.

In any case, some of the zones just plain suck for leveling purposes so it may be worth your while to check out one of the others.

[barstein]

One more thought about Engineer Kits vs. Weapon Switching: I think it would have made sense to create Pistol and Rifle Kits for Engineers, and then use the same Weapon Switching functionality for all kits (limiting players to having, say, two kits active at any given time regardless of how many kit skills they have unlocked).

[Andy_Bates]

Nice pic. I have tended to roll all humans and norns to this point. Am about to start a mesmer, and was going to go human female but the female light armor is maybe a bit too light for those odd times when the wife/kids see me playing. Going to switch to human male mesmer and swap my male guardian to something like that (I know, why roll a female at all - just for the variety since everything is already human or norn…)

I’m curious about what races and genders people usually pick. I know that some guys would never think about playing a character of the opposite sex, while some guys usually roll female characters. And what about races? It seems like human is the most popular, which seems odd to me. I would think that people would pick something different, just for the novelty of it. But maybe people identify with their character directly, so they want to pick something familiar.

Personally, if I’m going to stare at a character for 100+ hours, I’d rather have it be a woman. (That was the idea behind Lara Croft; the creator said something like, “If I have to stare at someone’s butt for the whole game, I’d rather have it be a woman.”) But before playing a human, I’d usually try out the other races first. My first two characters were charr and asura; the sylvari just don’t do it for me for some reason. They are just a little…odd.

[Octagus]

If the options are available I always pick the biggest, beefiest race as a spell caster and the tiniest, least warrior like race as my heavy Armor class.

My main is a norn mesmer whereas my eventual guardian will be asura.

[KevinC]

I’m curious about what races and genders people usually pick. I know that some guys would never think about playing a character of the opposite sex, while some guys usually roll female characters.

For me, if I’m to play a Human character I usually choose female because I find them more aesthetically pleasing. For caster types I found most MMO gear looks silly on males and for the warrior types I like the look of the agile fighter over the big hulking brute. When I want do to play something brutish, I’ll roll one of the monstrous races.

[Vincent19]

When creating a character I generally trend toward the cutest looking female characters I can find, which is the human female in GW2 (Norn ladies aren’t too bad either, but they’re too big). As has been stated previously, the reason for this is mainly because I’d far rather stare at a cute girl for hundreds of hours, even if she is just polygons (but she’s a lot of polygons).

It also has the effect of making me more interested in the other aesthetic options for the character, like various armor appearances and dyes. I generally couldn’t care less what a male character looks like in various clothing styles or colors, but it can be fun to play dress up with the girls.

All that being said, my most recently created character is a hulking, bearded Norn engineer named Bear Shark. He’s a badass even at level two.