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Communities and Barriers

Posted by Tasha on January 31, 2013 Feedback, Guild Wars 2 4 Responses »

Jan 312013

For all it’s done to remove barriers between players, Guild Wars 2 has some odd eccentricities that pull people apart in weird ways. Allow me to explain.

I’m going to start with a situation that isn’t unique, but won’t be a problem that everyone faces. As a guild leader of a small to medium size guild (up to 18 online concurrently, 60 active members), dungeons are both great and a pest. Our members love them and do them daily. But because they require exactly 5 people to complete, they tie up a relatively large number of online members with consequences for others wanting to do other content with people. And given the horror stories (and experiences) with PUGs, there’s an understandable reluctance to go there, which presents a problem.

There are currently 2 ways forward; to grow the guild or make connections to other guilds and share members. The former isn’t really an adequate solution as it changes the nature of the guild. The latter is the better way forward (it worked for Guild Wars 1) but the game limits this kind of integration. The makeshift solution at the moment is to be a member of multiple guilds, but the 5 guild limit causes problems for leaders and officers looking to network.

In an ideal world, I’d love to see alliances return. A communal chat channel for multiple guilds, with the ability to name the group would do. Alliances allow guilds to make up for their individual deficiencies by complimenting each other. It’s a win win scenario. In the meantime, I’d love it if an account could join 10 or more guilds to stitch together these spider web alliances, even if there was a gold fee involved in doing so.

I won’t be surprised if (or should that be hoping that) at some point in the game’s life players are able to hire NPCs for dungeons. They’d be great for that last spot or two in the group, even if they cost a few silver to hire. Sure, you might not want to do Arah with them, but it’d allow you to do Catacombs without bringing a PUG. A pie in the sky idea maybe, but I think it could work.

A scenario that may be more common to others is grouping in the open world. You’ve got a few friends and you’d like to enjoy a shared experience exploring the world. Trouble is there’s 7 of you, not 5. You have to split into 2 groups and hope you manage to stay together and I can tell you that isn’t what happens. One group is inevitably faster than the other, and as there’s no quick way of locating them on the map, the groups start drifting apart until they’re have 2 separate experiences. I’m bewildered by this because most events will happily scale past 5 people while remaining a challenge. This is especially true in Orr, where taking the god shrines is a fantastic guild event that takes a large number of people to achieve.

The WvW commander book comes in handy for these kinds of events and is exactly why we had a whip round a couple of months ago so I could get one. In my experience in PvE, squad functionality is lacking. The only kind of interface is using /squadinfo (which isn’t detailed in game) which tells you who is in the squad and how much supply they have. There’s no way to remove someone who has joined, or way of seeing where others in the squad are. The only real benefit is that everyone nearby gets a beacon as to where the squad leader is and a shared chat channel.

MYST Uncontesting the Dwayna shrine in Orr

The functionality has helped us when it comes to big events. In December we ran an event uncontesting all the shrines in Orr which we loved and gave us a bit of love from others nearby. But becoming a commander is a heavy handed solution to the problem. I wouldn’t know where to start in WvW and would rather not have that functionality, but there aren’t any other options and I think the game would benefit from them.

Generally I think it’d be great if you could see people on your friends list who were in the same zone as you. I understand the overhead may be high for this though, so I’d like to also suggest either a modification to squads in PvE to make them a little more in line with parties (e.g. kicking abilities, tracking where others are). I think there may also be an argument for party boosters which allowed you to have (for example) 10 people in any party you lead for 24 hours. Of course, if you tried to enter a dungeon it would tell you you couldn’t unless you had 5 or fewer people – no unfair advantages wanted here.

Allowing larger party sizes might also be an advantage in WvW. ArenaNet have made some grumbles to the tune of wanting people to zerg less and party more, but 5 isn’t enough for many objectives in WvW. Being able to have parties of 10 may encourage people to split up into groups more. Or allow commanders to access the squad abilities without broadcasting the tag to others so they can lead people without inviting a zerg that draws more attention.

Ultimately however, the combat system is the biggest limiting factor to socialisation. Combat is so much more intense than other games that there is no time to type during combat (I’m talking about level 50+ here). Players get tunnel vision on the mob they’re fighting and the next one ahead, and forget there’s a box in the corner to speak to people. This first came to my attention during the various server surveys I did before release – people noted that the servers were quiet even though people they met acted in a friendly manner. People didn’t need to speak because the game let them play together without barrier or need. It’s gotten worse as time went on.

Yet I am happy that this is the cause of so many problems, as intense combat leads to a more engaging experience. If it leads to a more entertaining game is up to the opinions of individuals. This does bring a temptation to put more emphasis on voice communications within a guild but this brings more problems. Not everyone has the means or wants to sit on a voice server all the time they’re playing. And when you consider how many times you talk to someone you randomly meet going about your daily business, it’s more an echo of art imitating life than anything wrong (in my opinion).

So there you have it. My take on why Guild Wars 2 drives people apart as much as it brings them together. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please do leave your comments below or get hold of me on Twitter.

Echoes of the Past

Posted by Tasha on January 11, 2013 Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 2 Responses »

Jan 112013

On New Year’s Day, a few of us from MYST (my guild) went back to Guild Wars 1 for a bit of a wander down memory lane. We elected to do Frostmaw’s Burrows; a 5 level dungeon in the north of the Far Shiverpeaks – accompanied by norn, the human adventurers face giant wurms, crystal hydra, element switching drakes and flying incubus that are determined to knock down their foes at every opportunity.

It turns out the memory of the game was rosier than the experience and it’s amazing how quickly we’ve all adapted to Guild Wars 2. Pressing F to try to interact, 1 to start the auto attack and double tap to dodge; all things we now do automatically in Guild Wars 2 that have no meaning in Guild Wars 1. Things got better when I added F to the list of accepted shortcuts for actions normally reserved for the spacebar, but that only happened after half an hour of swearing. By the end of the dungeon, things had mostly returned to normal, though I wouldn’t have called my playing abilities anywhere near up to par with where they used to be.

It isn’t just the combat either. The dungeon names were little more than a shadow of a memory, and Olafstead and Sifhalla had mentally changed locations when trying to head to the dungeon itself. Even the appropriate action for rare weapons had faded. After receiving a hammer as a drop from a locked Chest I found myself about to salvage it in hope of some ectos, before remembering it was the wrong game. D’oh.

After stepping away from the game for a while and returning, I’ve started seeing Guild Wars in a new light. While there are still lots of features I want to see implemented in Guild Wars 2 (guild halls and the ability to meet up with people on different servers top that list), there’s also a number of improvements that I’m thankful for in the new game. Not being able to dodge was surprisingly frustrating and ground targeted effects seemed an obvious omission. It was odd and illogical to not be able to send crafting materials to the bank instantly and remembering that the only way to sell things to other player was to stand in a town and shout for hours. Guild Wars ruined other MMOs for me, making them seem illogical and frustrating, and Guild Wars 2 has done that again.

One thing that was stunning from our evening in the old Tyria was how quiet it had become. There was only one European English district for the round of Dwayna vs Grenth we dropped in on. And we were incredibly sad to see no one in any of the districts for the Luxon side of Alliance Battles. At all. In any of the districts on any of the servers. Good thing we have WvW.

I can’t help but feel sad at how quickly 7 years of gaming has faded. We’ll almost certainly be back in Guild Wars 1 another time for fun that doesn’t require exactly 5 people, but it doesn’t feel like home anymore. That Tyria is preserved in the droplets of history in Guild Wars 2 now; rose tinted echoes of past struggles and encounters. Perhaps they’re best left that way as we forge new memories.

Conditions in Guild Wars 2

Posted by Tasha on December 7, 2012 Guides, Guild Wars 2, MMO Gaming, Oh shit maths 3 Responses »

Dec 072012

I wasn’t going to write more in this series but after a request for more information by Felladin, how could I say no. So here we go – Conditions in Guild Wars 2.

An overview

There are a total of 11 conditions that players can inflict in Guild Wars 2 and have a variety of effects and durations. When reapplied to a target with the same condition, some conditions will stack in duration or intensity and a couple don’t alter all. When a condition is removed by a skill, all of same condition is removed.

Bleeding – Does damage over time, where the damage applied per stack per second at level 80 can be calculated to be 42.5 + Condition Damage * 0.05. Multiple applications stack the condition up to a cap of 25. Your character may exclaim about bleeding when this is applied.

Burning – Does damage over time, where the damage applied per stack per second at level 80 can be calculated to be 328 + Condition Damage * 0.25. Stacks in duration. Your character may exclaim about being on fire when this is applied.

Blind – Causes target’s next attack to miss. Reapplication has no effect. Your character may exclaim that they can’t see when this is applied.

Chilled – Reduces movement speed and skill recharge of the target by 66%. Reapplication increases the duration of the condition. Your character may complain about being freezing when this condition is applied.

Crippling – Reduces the movement speed of the target by 50%. Stacks in duration. Your character may complain about their leg or feet when this is applied.

Confusion – Does damage when the target uses any skill (including auto attack), where the damage applied per stack at level 80 can be calculated to be 130 + Condition Damage * 0.15. Unlike all other conditions, damage from confusion is halved in sPvP. Multiple applications stack the condition up to a cap of 25. Your character may ask what is going on when this is applied.

Fear – Causes the target to move directly away from the caster or centre of the area causing the condition. Can’t be stacked.

Immobilized – The target can’t move or dodge. Stacks in duration. Some teleportation skills (such as the mesmer staff skill 2) still work.

Poison – Does damage over time, where the damage applied per stack per second at level 80 can be calculated to be 84 + Condition Damage * 0.1. Stacks in duration. Your character may exclaim about feeling unwell when this is applied.

Vulnerability – Increases the damage that the target takes by 1%. Multiple applications stack intensity by 1% per application up to a cap of 25. Your character may complain about feeling vulnerable when this is applied.

Weakness – Causes 50% of attacks to be glancing (which reduces the damage output of the attack) and reduced endurance regeneration by 50%. Stacks in duration.

Condition Damage

Condition Damage is one of the attributes that regularly appears on gear (both major and minor) and can also be increased through traits. However, it only affects 4 of the 11 conditions – Burning, Bleeding, Confusion and Poison. So if your preferred build doesn’t reliably generate lots of these particular conditions, stacking condition damage is going to be pointless for you.

For extra complications, every condition increases by a different amount in proportion to Condition Damage and level.

Condition Damage	Bleeding	Burning	Poison	Confusion	Confusion sPvP
0	42.5	328	84	130	65
100	47.5	353	94	145	72.5
200	52.5	378	104	160	80
300	57.5	403	114	175	87.5
400	62.5	428	124	190	95
500	67.5	453	134	205	102.5
600	72.5	478	144	220	110
700	77.5	503	154	235	117.5
800	82.5	528	164	250	125
900	87.5	553	174	265	132.5
1000	92.5	578	184	280	140
1100	97.5	603	194	295	147.5
1200	102.5	628	204	310	155
1300	107.5	653	214	325	162.5
1400	112.5	678	224	340	170

This may seem really imbalanced, but the durations of the various conditions differs a lot.

Condition Duration

Condition duration is useful to everyone who can generate any type of condition, as it will apply to all of them. The game does not round the duration of conditions, but does round the number on the tooltip of the skill to the nearest 0.25s. Since the conditions that do damage per second (Burning, Bleeding and Poison) only do damage on the whole second mark there’s a possibility of being misled with how many pulses of damage you will get. Here’s a video I put together to explain.

(NB: In the video I say that the wiki is wrong. It isn’t. It’s just worded in a way that can be misleading)

So if the only conditions you have are ones that tick per second, there will be optimal steps of condition duration. Realistically there’s too many potential sources of conditions that may change at any time (due to game updates) to get into a meaningful discussion here, as it will be obsolete pretty quickly. What I have done however is note down the standard duration of each source of the big four by profession skills. A summary is below (click here for a condition duration by profession breakdown).

Note that not every condition made as a result of a trait is affected by Condition Duration. It is not clear if this is a bug or intended.

Currently the only common sources of increasing overall condition duration besides food are in Traits and Runes. It would be possible to raise Condition Duration to 54% using both of these. After that, it’s possible to increase the duration of a particular type of condition through Traits and Sigils (although there are some bugs in this area). These numbers add up; ie. +30% Condition Duration +20% burning duration = 50% longer burns.

Let’s look at how these durations change

With respect to Bleeding, it is only worth increasing Condition Duration if it results in at least one extra whole second, giving an extra pulse of damage. It is highly unlikely that it’s worth trying to increase your condition duration if most of your condition skills apply durations of 1s. Similarly for 2s and 3s conditions, trying to make 50% and 34% condition duration may just be too much when considering the sacrifices required to other attributes such as Power or Toughness. At 4s, things become a lot easier. An increase of 25% duration is achievable by raising the first trait line to 25, and will result in one extra pulse of damage. Of course this is a balancing act if you’ve gone Precision.

The reason it’s different for Burning and Poison is that they stack in duration. If you apply a 3.5s burn and then apply another 3.5s burn before it ends, the durations will add up to a 7s burn with 7 pulses of damage (even if the burns come from different people). If you wait for the first burn to end before applying the second, you’ll only get 6 pulses of damage. If you have lots of sources of these types of conditions, you may be able to get more pulses than you should by applying them fairly quickly. Of course, if you only have one source, or it’s really short, you may be out of luck.

It’s not all about these 3 though. The other 8 conditions will all be of use to you if they last a little bit longer. An extra .25 duration on Vulnerability may allow you to get a good hit on an enemy, or with Crippled allow you to catch up to them to snare again. Confusion is an odd one because on the one hand it looks like you get no benefit until the person with it attacks. But if you force an enemy to not do anything for 5s because you put Confusion on them, that’s 5s you can pummel them to your heart’s content. And if they do fight back, they get a slap in the face!

What happens at 25 stacks?

Conditions that stack (Bleeds, Confusion and Vulnerability) will stack up to a maximum of 25 applications. Any more that are applied are ignored until one of the existing applications ends.

When you have conditions applied to you from multiple sources they go into the same stack dependent on type. The same thing happens on enemies. So if you and someone else in your team can both apply 25 stacks of bleeding and try to, one of you is wasting potential damage from your conditions. This is why it may not always be a great idea to try to build a bar that can push so many of one type out. Having a bit of variety helps you work better in a team. Bleeding is the usual one where people clash.

It will also help if condition removal is used as most only remove certain conditions or a certain number of types.

What happens when players with different amounts of condition damage attack the same target?

Short answer: pretty much what you expect.

If you and someone else with different amounts of Condition Damage both apply a condition that stacks in duration on the same target, the durations will add and the ticks from the first source will all fire before the ticks from the second source do. Where durations go over the top of the second (ie 6.5s + 6.5s = 13s = 13 pulses) the Condition Damage of the source that made it go over the top of the second counts (the second person in this example).

For conditions that stack, each application acts independently and times out as expected.

What about compared with other attributes?

Damage from conditions is an unstable source because it can be removed. Many condition removals will remove the entirety of one type of condition, so if you’re fighting someone who uses it just after you’ve applied all your bleeds you’ll lose that damage source until your skills recharge. You can help mitigate the effect of a condition removal skill by not focusing on one type of condition.

Of course, you’ve still got the use of your weapons and other attacks while the conditions are working their magic, so Power and Precision are useful even in a condition heavy bar!

So which should I prioritise between the two?

This is a rough and ready step through the decision making process. There will be exceptions to the steps below, but this should give you some guidance.

1. Count your condition types and their raw durations using this table below (remember to take off armor, traits etc. You may find it useful to go into the PvP lobby).

Duration (s)	Bleeding, Burning, Confusion and Poison	Other Conditions
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
20
30

2. If you have less than 3 sources of conditions, either tweak your build or stop here. Conditions won’t have enough of an effect on your build to be worth dedicating gear decisions to.

3. Look at the number and duration of sources of Bleeding, Burning, Confusion and Poison you have. If around 60% of them are under 4s in duration score a point for Condition Damage. If around 60% of them are over 4s in duration, score a point for Condition Duration. If you’re roughly equal, score a point for both.

4. If you have more than 3 sources of other conditions, score a point for Condition Duration.

5. You should now have a tally that will give you an idea if Condition Damage or Condition Duration is more important to you. If you’re tied, they’re both useful!

In conclusion

Conditions are a very useful part of any build and their proper use can increase the overall damage output of a team. To get the most out of them, you’ll need to give some thought to the sources you have in your build. Don’t always trust the tooltips!

Sources

To make this, I used the ever useful Guild Wars 2 Wiki, this reddit thread, A guide to Bleeding by Boons and Conditions and the game itself. There was lots of testing – for science!

Thank you to my guild mate fafq for being a guinea pig for some experiments, and to Lissahkins for proof reading this article.

Feedback

As always if you have any comments, please leave them down below. Please also let me know if you found this article useful!

Vitality vs Toughness

Posted by Tasha on October 31, 2012 Guides, Guild Wars 2 3 Responses »

Oct 312012

Having looked before at the offensive attributes Power and Precision, it’s time to turn the microscope on Vitality and Toughness. If you haven’t read the post on Power vs Precision I suggest you do as I’m going to be building a little on the theory.

A dose of reality

Vitality raises your character’s health by 10 per point, while Toughness reduces the effect of direct damage. Because they affect survivability in different ways, in order to compare the two accurately you need to take a different approach to just comparing raw numbers. Really, when it comes to survivability the only thing that matters is how many attacks your character can take before it is chomping on the dirt, and that means creating a hypothetical attacker. Our attacker will be similar to the one we created for the Power vs Precision article, with 1000 weapon damage, a skill multiplier of 2 and a Power level of 1500 (I consider this around average) with no additional Precision or Critical Damage. Just as before, actual results will vary!

The damage that this attacker does to your character is related to Armor, which is the sum of Defence (from your actual armor) and Toughness. As a result, the amount of damage taken by a character will depend on their profession type – Scholar, Adventurer or Soldier. The number of times a character can sustain damage will depend on character health, and therefore Vitality. Unfortunately, the amount of base health of a character isn’t broken down by armor class, but on the following table.

Professions	Base health, level 80	Base health+vitality, level 80
Warrior, Necromancer	9,212	18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer	5,922	15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist	1,645	10,805

This means that Elementalists, Mesmers and Necromancers will all survive a different number of times for the same hit, so we’ll have to break down survivability by profession. And because no character is going to survive 100 hits before taking a dirt nap, we’ll have to break normal and critical hits apart.

Gear

When it comes to improving Vitality and Toughness, there are a few options available to players. The clearest ones are through traits, and it’s possible through sacrificing points in other lines to push both Vitality and Toughness to +300. There are also options through armor, jewellery, runes and more.

Overall I’ve calculated that any character should be able to get an additional 1095 Toughness through prioritising it through traits, armor, jewellery and runes, and an additional 751 Toughness through minor attributes on armor and jewellery and pushing the traits. In a similar way, it’s possible to get an extra 780 Vitality through traits, armor and runes (there are no jewellery pieces with primary Vitality) and 751 through minor attributes on armor and jewellery and with traits. You may be able to squeeze another 30 or so points somewhere but that’t nothing to write home about.

However, it’s important to note that just because you could push all your gear towards survivability it may not be advantageous to. The first line of defense is always to not get hit, which you can do for free by using appropriate positioning, skills and dodges. Also, if an enemy is dead it can’t kill you – it’s no good surviving if you can’t take anything down! But more on that later; let’s get to the maths!

Toughness

Here’s the data on how many hits all the professions can take from our imaginary attacker.

Profession	Health	Armor	Standard Attack	% of total	Hit count	Critical Attack	% of total	Hit Count

Elementalist	10805	1836	1,634	15.12%	7	2,451	22.68%	5
with Secondary Toughness	10805	2587	1,160	10.73%	10	1,739	16.10%	7
with Primary Toughness	10805	2931	1,024	9.47%	11	1,535	14.21%	8

Mesmer	15082	1836	1,634	10.83%	10	2,451	16.25%	7
with Secondary Toughness	15082	2587	1,160	7.69%	14	1,739	11.53%	9
with Primary Toughness	15082	2931	1,024	6.79%	15	1,535	10.18%	10

Necromancer	18372	1836	1,634	8.89%	12	2,451	13.34%	8
with Secondary Toughness	18372	2587	1,160	6.31%	16	1,739	9.47%	11
with Primary Toughness	18372	2931	1,024	5.57%	18	1,535	8.36%	12

Thief	10805	1980	1,515	14.02%	8	2,273	21.03%	5
with Secondary Toughness	10805	2731	1,098	10.17%	10	1,648	15.25%	7
with Primary Toughness	10805	3075	976	9.03%	12	1,463	13.54%	8

Engineer, Ranger	15082	1980	1,515	10.05%	10	2,273	15.07%	7
with Secondary Toughness	15082	2731	1,098	7.28%	14	1,648	10.93%	10
with Primary Toughness	15082	3075	976	6.47%	16	1,463	9.70%	11

Guardian	10805	2127	1,410	13.05%	8	2,116	19.58%	6
with Secondary Toughness	10805	2878	1,042	9.65%	11	1,564	14.47%	7
with Primary Toughness	10805	3222	931	8.62%	12	1,397	12.93%	8

Warrior	18372	2127	1,410	7.68%	14	2,116	11.52%	9
with Secondary Toughness	18372	2878	1,042	5.67%	18	1,564	8.51%	12
with Primary Toughness	18372	3222	931	5.07%	20	1,397	7.60%	14

So overall, raising Toughness by 750 points allows characters to take between 3 and 4 more normal hits and around 2 more critical hits. Prioritising Toughness will only help against 1 or 2 additional critical or normal hits. Considering the sacrifice in Power output, that doesn’t seem a very good trade off to me!

Vitality

Again here’s the data on surviving our imaginary attacker

Profession	Health	Armor	Standard Attack	% of total	Hit count	Critical Attack	% of total	Hit Count

Elementalist	10805	1836	1,634	15.12%	7	2,451	22.68%	5
with Secondary Vitality	18315	1836	1,634	8.92%	12	2,451	13.38%	8
with Primary Vitality	18605	1836	1,634	8.78%	12	2,451	13.17%	8

Mesmer	15082	1836	1,634	10.83%	10	2,451	16.25%	7
with Secondary Vitality	22592	1836	1,634	7.23%	14	2,451	10.85%	10
with Primary Vitality	22882	1836	1,634	7.14%	15	2,451	10.71%	10

Necromancer	18372	1836	1,634	8.89%	12	2,451	13.34%	8
with Secondary Vitality	25882	1836	1,634	6.31%	16	2,451	9.47%	11
with Primary Vitality	26172	1836	1,634	6.24%	17	2,451	9.36%	11

Thief	10805	1980	1,515	14.02%	8	2,273	21.03%	5
with Secondary Vitality	18315	1980	1,515	8.27%	13	2,273	12.41%	9
with Primary Vitality	18605	1980	1,515	8.14%	13	2,273	12.22%	9

Engineer, Ranger	15082	1980	1,515	10.05%	10	2,273	15.07%	7
with Secondary Vitality	22592	1980	1,515	6.71%	15	2,273	10.06%	10
with Primary Vitality	22882	1980	1,515	6.62%	16	2,273	9.93%	11

Guardian	10805	2127	1,410	13.05%	8	2,116	19.58%	6
with Secondary Vitality	18315	2127	1,410	7.70%	13	2,116	11.55%	9
with Primary Vitality	18605	2127	1,410	7.58%	14	2,116	11.37%	9

Warrior	18372	2127	1,410	7.68%	14	2,116	11.52%	9
with Secondary Vitality	25882	2127	1,410	5.45%	19	2,116	8.17%	13
with Primary Vitality	26172	2127	1,410	5.39%	19	2,116	8.08%	13

Overall, raising Vitality by 750 points allows characters to take 4 or 5 more normal hits than a normal character, and around 3 or 4 critical hits. Because there’s such a small difference between prioritising Vitality and having it as a secondary attribute (around 30 points, or 300 health), being attacked by someone with this amount of power makes very little difference and may only allow you to survive one more attack. Again, this seems like an extreme trade off.

Comparing the two

So it looks like points in Vitality go further than points in Toughness and in many ways this is actually true. Toughness only affects direct damage and has no effect on damage from conditions at all, so even if you do have several thousand toughness, you might not survive very long if you get bleeding, burning and poison stacked on you. This is where Vitality shines, because it will help you survive condition stacks for longer.

However, as your character face foes with higher amounts of Power and Precision, Toughness will reduce the damage these foes can do allowing what health you have to effectively go further. It’s not enough to only look to raise Vitality as you’ll find your health will disappear quickly against heavy hitters and you’ll be unable to heal effectively unless you look at raising Healing Power.

Choosing your equipment

Like so much in Guild Wars 2, you’re going to be making a compromise when it comes to choosing equipment and that brings up the big question of how much survivability is enough. Every second you’re fighting is a second you can use to cause damage and apply conditions to the enemy, move to a more favourable position, heal, remove a condition or get an ally involved to help. Your skill, the weapons you like and the utilities and traits you want to use will play into assessing this.

While I do play mesmer primarily which has lots of movement options, I consider surviving around 12 hits to be enough on any of the professions I play regularly (warrior, elementalist). This does mean that the gear I want will be different on all of them. For example I may be able to “get away” with just having offensive gear on my warrior, but since I like having money that isn’t spent on repair bills, I’ll have to consider something different on my elementalist.

Ultimately, the equipment you choose is going to come down to the options supplied to you by the game. And at this point I’ll bring up the post that started this all off which is designed to help you understand your options and make an informed choice – Attributes and Equipment in Guild Wars 2.

Hopefully you found this helpful. If you have any questions, please do leave me a comment below or stalk me on Twitter.

Power vs Precision

Posted by Tasha on October 18, 2012 Guides, Guild Wars 2 7 Responses »

Oct 182012

After the post I made last week about gear and attributes in Guild Wars 2, I got not only a great response which I’m truly grateful for, but also had a number of really good questions and discussions with a number of friends and players. This post is the outcome of one of those discussions about the pros and cons of stacking Power over Precision. There’ll be another later about Toughness vs Vitality.

This is going to be a little bit more maths heavy than before (which was mostly just tables of options), but hopefully I can make it simple enough for most to follow without a headache!

How damage is calculated

In Guild Wars 2 according to the Wiki, damage is calculated according to the following equation:

Damage = ( Power * Weapon Damage * Skill Multiplier ) / Target’s Defence

This is just one hit though and on its own it means very little. We need to look at what happens over a number of attacks and that’s where critical chance, critical damage and precision all roll in. In order to investigate the effect of all these mechanics, I’ve had to make a number of assumptions about various values that may not be true in game. For example, I’ve assumed that all weapons deal 1000 damage, the skill multiplier is 2 and the target is a scholar who has done nothing to improve their toughness. Just because the numbers don’t tally exactly doesn’t mean the trends that they tell us aren’t useful – in fact the opposite. To minimise the effect of these assumptions, I’ve changed none of them in any of the calculations.

This means the only factor in the equation we’ll be changing is Power, and we can investigate Precision by looking at a number of attacks and varying the number. So, I have also assumed that the number of critical hits in 100 exactly tallies with the percentage chance to critical hit (ie if the critical chance is 30% then out of 100 attacks, 30 of them will be critical hits).

In the game there are lots of things that affect how much damage an attack does, including things like Might, Fury, Protection, Vulnerability and Toughness, or if it actually lands at all. You can read more about this on the Guild Wars 2 Wiki.

Your actual results will vary.

The base line

The base line for all professions is 916 Power and 916 Precision. As was explained last time, every point in power equates to a point of attack damage, so by default all characters have 916 attack. Precision relates to the chance to do a critical hit. The first 916 Precision equates to 4% critical chance. Every 21.16 points in Precision thereafter raise the critical chance by 1% (at level 80). The amount of damage a critical attack does is controlled by Critical damage, which is based on 1.5 times the normal attack. Raising critical damage by 1% results in an extra 0.01 multiplier on damage (ie 1.51 times the normal attack).

All in all, a bog standard character will do a normal hit of 998 and a critical hit of 1497. Over 100 hits, on average they will do 101,778 damage.

Raising power

To see the effect of power, I’m going to just run through the calculations of raising it in steps of 200, probably further than is possible through equipment and gear.

Power	Precision	Critical Chance	Critical Damage	1 hit	100 hits
916	916	4	1.5	998	101,778
1116	916	4	1.5	1,216	124,000
1316	916	4	1.5	1,434	146,222
1516	916	4	1.5	1,651	168,444
1716	916	4	1.5	1,869	190,667
1916	916	4	1.5	2,087	212,889
2116	916	4	1.5	2,305	235,111
2316	916	4	1.5	2,523	257,333
2516	916	4	1.5	2,741	279,556
2716	916	4	1.5	2,959	301,778

So looking at the trend here, we can see that an extra 200 points into power will reward the player with an extra 22,222 damage over 100 attacks.

Raising precision

Similar to what we did with power, I’m going to run through the calculations of raising precision in steps of 200.

Power	Precision	Critical Chance	Critical Damage	1 hit	100 hits
916	916	4	1.5	998	101,778
916	1116	13	1.5	998	106,493
916	1316	23	1.5	998	111,209
916	1516	32	1.5	998	115,925
916	1716	42	1.5	998	120,640
916	1916	51	1.5	998	125,356
916	2116	61	1.5	998	130,071
916	2316	70	1.5	998	134,787
916	2516	80	1.5	998	139,503
916	2716	89	1.5	998	144,218

Once again, looking at the trend, an extra 200 points in precision raises the critical chance by 9.45%, resulting in an extra 4,715 damage over 100 attacks.

That’s a big difference

So we’ve established that (for these numbers at least) you’re going to get around 4.5 times more damage putting 200 points into Power rather than Precision. So are there any reasons at all to put points into Precision?

The answer is yes, to a point. There are a number of skills that have effects that fire on a critical hit, so increasing the chance to critical hit is something you want to do – you just don’t want to ignore power so much that your character is very weak. So if you raise your Precision up, you might want to consider raising Power as a secondary attribute to make sure the attacks that do become critical hits do even more damage. Of course, this will mean sacrificing points you can put into your survival or other wanted benefits.

In reality, Power and Precision aren’t mutually exclusive. Many armor and jewellery pieces have both Power and Precision on them in varying proportions. Working out exactly what proportions you need to get the best out of your character isn’t easy (we haven’t factored in condition damage or might for example) but hopefully you’ve now got an idea of which is better for you!

Of course, these aren’t the only common considerations for characters – I’ll be taking a look at Toughness and Vitality soon.

Your Feedback

I value it. A lot. If you’ve noticed a mistake somewhere, something isn’t clear or just want to give me a virtual cookie you can do so below or on Twitter. Thanks for reading and for sharing!

Attributes and Equipment in Guild Wars 2

Posted by Tasha on October 9, 2012 Guides, Guild Wars 2 23 Responses »

Oct 092012

Note: this guide was updated 27th January 2013 to clarify the section on Trinkets.

This guide came about because, after hitting level 80, I wanted to know what set of armor I should be aiming to get and was thoroughly confused by all the options and terminology. After finding out a few interesting bits and bobs, I was asked to make a guide for others in my guild and have decided to go one further and share it with everyone. While this won’t tell you what gear is optimal for your character, it will help you make good enough choices without resorting to spreadsheets and complex maths. While I’ve included the numbers for those of you who like that kind of thing, they can be largely ignored.

Most of the armors and trinkets in this article are related to the Exotic tier, and I’m in the process of addressing the Ascended items better!

Understanding your attributes

Let’s start with the basic terminology and numbers. Every character at level 80 has a base of 916 in Power, Precision, Toughness and Vitality, and 4% Critical Chance. These and other statistics can be increased through traits, equipment and skills. You can see a summary of all these attributes in the top right portion of the Hero Panel. Here’s a breakdown of what all the different numbers mean:

Primary Attributes

Power – Every point in Power increases the attack statistic by one, which increases damage for all attacks.
Precision – Points put into precision increase the chance of a critical hit for the character. Many of the conditional effects of a skill or trait trigger on a critical hit. The amount of additional precision required to increase the chance of a critical hit by 1% is determined by the following formula: (0.0024 × Level^2) + (0.06 × Level) + 1
At level 80, the required precision to increase the chance of a critical hit by 1% is 21.16.
Vitality – Every point in vitality above the base raises the health of the character by 10, improving the character’s ability to withstand a single large attack and degenerative damage
Toughness – Every point in Toughness increases the armor of the character by 1, improving the character’s ability to withstand direct damage. It has no effect on falling damage

Secondary Attributes

Attack – You get 1 point of this for every point in power. Used in damage calculations.
Weapon Damage – Comes from your weapons. Static for your profession at level 80. Used in damage calculations for some skills.
Condition Damage – Affects Bleeding, Burning, Poison and Confusion only. The calculations for working out the impact of raising the condition damage is different for each of these conditions (see separate section).
Critical Chance – This is derived from a base level of 4% plus an additional percentage determined by Precision. At level 80 21.16 precision is required to raise Critical Chance 1%. This number is always rounded up. Used in damage calculations.
Critical Damage – Comes from gear. Determines how much damage your critical attacks do. The base is 1.5x normal attack damage and additional percentages are added to the base. So +50% Critical Damage results in 2.0x normal attack damage. Used in damage calculations.
Armor – Sum of Toughness and Defense. Used in damage calculations.
Defense – Comes from your armor. Static for your profession at level 80.
Health – This is derived from a base level of health determined by your profession (see separate section), plus 10 health for every 1 point in vitality.
Healing Power – Comes from gear. Each point of healing power adds 0.125 healing for Regeneration and 0.06 healing for rejuvenation. It also affects active healing skills, but it is not know by how much at this time.
Magic Find – Not listed on the hero panel, but this attribute raises the player’s chance to receive rare loot from drops.

Condition damage

Just to make it even more complicated, the amount that raising the condition damage affects the damage done by Bleeding, Burning, Poison and Confusion depends on the condition in question.

Condition	Condition Damage Used	Base Damage at Level 80	Equation
Bleeding	5%	42.5 per stack per second	Condition Damage * 0.05 + 42.5
Burning	25%	328 per second	Condition Damage * 0.25 + 328
Poison	10%	84 per second	Condition Damage * 0.10 + 84
Confusion*	15%	130 per stack per attack	Condition Damage * 0.15 + 130

*Note that damage done by confusion is halved in sPvP.

You can learn more about condition damage in this post.

Health

The basic health of your character depends on its profession and the standard 916 Vitality.

Professions	Base health at level 80	Base health + Vitality at level 80
Warrior, Necromancer	9,212	18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer	5,922	15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist	1,645	10,805

How to improve your statistics

There are 3 main ways you can affect your attributes: traits, equipment and skills. As the traits and skills very much depend on your play style and profession I’m going to concentrate on equipment here and how to make good choices about which statistics to prioritise.

Armor

Around half of the improvements you can make in PvE come from the choices you make about the type of armor you have. At level 80, all types of armor reach a plateau for defense depending on profession. Here are the maximum defense values:

Armor Piece	Scholar	Adventurer	Soldier
Helm	73	97	121
Mantle	73	97	121
Coat	314	338	363
Gloves	133	157	182
Pants	194	218	242
Shoes	133	157	182
Total	920	1064	1211

Each armor piece also comes in 14 variations (though they may not be available for every skin without transmuting). Every variation has a main attribute and 2 minor attributes.

Type	Attributes
Type	Main	Minor	Minor
Beserker’s	Power	Precision	Critical Damage
Soldier’s	Power	Toughness	Vitality
Valkyrie	Power	Vitality	Critical Damage
Rampager’s	Precision	Power	Condition Damage
Knight’s	Toughness	Power	Precision
Giver’s	Toughness	Boon Duration	Healing Power
Shaman’s	Vitality	Condition Damage	Healing Power
Carrion	Condition Damage	Power	Vitality
Rabid	Condition Damage	Precision	Toughness
Cleric’s	Healing Power	Power	Toughness
Magi	Healing Power	Precision	Vitality
Apothecary’s	Healing Power	Toughness	Condition Damage
Explorer’s	Magic Find	Power	Precision
Traveler’s	Magic Find	Power	Condition Damage

The numbers used depend on the armor piece that the type is applies to.

Attribute	Level	Hat	Mantle	Coat	Gloves	Pants	Shoes	Total
Power	Main	45	34	101	34	67	34	315
Power	Minor	32	24	72	24	48	24	224
Precision	Main	45	34	101	34	67	34	315 *
Precision	Minor	32	24	72	24	48	24	224 *
Toughness	Main	45	34	101	34	67	34	315
Toughness	Minor	32	24	72	24	48	24	224
Vitality	Main	45	34	101	34	67	34	315
Vitality	Minor	32	24	72	24	48	24	224
Condition Damage	Main	45	34	101	34	67	34	315
Condition Damage	Minor	32	24	72	24	48	24	224
Healing Power	Main	45	34	101	34	67	34	315
Healing Power	Minor	32	24	72	24	48	24	224
Boon Duration	Main	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Boon Duration	Minor	1	1	1	1	1	1	6
Magic Find	Main	3	3	3	3	3	3	18
Magic Find	Minor	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Critical Damage	Main	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Critical Damage	Minor	2	2	5	2	3	2	16

*Main: +14.88% Critical Chance. Minor: +10.44% Critical Chance.

So for example, Valkyrie armor will give you +315 Power, +224 Vitality and +16% Critical Damage and Knight’s armor will give you +315 Toughness, +224 Power and +224 Precision. You don’t need to take an entire set of armor if you don’t want to, but that’s going down the optimal route!

We’ll come back to additional ways to modify your armor later but let’s move on to accessories.

Trinkets

This is a term that wraps up Amulets, Earrings and Rings in PvE. There are no inherent bonuses with trinkets (ie akin to defence for armor), it’s all about boosting attributes. Unlike armor, there are Exotic and Ascended levels of Accessories, with rings added in November 2012 and amulets in January 2013.

Exotic

Exotic trinkets come from a variety of sources, mainly through crafting. Here are the varieties and their armor equivalents:

Gemstone	Armor Equivalent	Trinket	Main	Minor	Minor
Ruby	Beserker’s	Amulet	90 Power	64 Precision	5% Critical Damage
		Ring	67 Power	48 Precision	3% Critical Damage
		Earring	56 Power	40 Precision	3% Critical Damage
Beryl	Valkyrie	Amulet	90 Power	64 Vitality	5% Critical Damage
		Ring	67 Power	48 Vitality	3% Critical Damage
		Earring	56 Power	40 Vitality	3% Critical Damage
Emerald	Knight’s	Amulet	90 Toughness	64 Power	64 Precision
		Ring	67 Toughness	48 Power	48 Precision
		Earring	56 Toughness	40 Power	40 Precision
Coral	Rampager’s	Amulet	90 Precision	64 Power	64 Condition Damage
		Ring	67 Precision	48 Power	48 Condition Damage
		Earring	56 Precision	40 Power	40 Condition Damage
Snowflake	-	Amulet	3% Magic Find	64 Healing Power	1% Boon Duration
		Ring	3% Magic Find	48 Healing Power	1% Boon Duration
		Earring	3% Magic Find	40 Healing Power	1% Boon Duration
Chrysocola	Carrion	Amulet	90 Condition Damage	64 Vitality	64 Power
		Ring	67 Condition Damage	48 Vitality	48 Power
		Earring	56 Condition Damage	40 Vitality	40 Power
Sapphire	Cleric’s	Amulet	90 Healing Power	64 Toughness	64 Power
		Ring	67 Healing Power	48 Toughness	48 Power
		Earring	56 Healing Power	40 Toughness	40 Power
Passiflora	Apothecary’s	Amulet	90 Healing Power	64 Toughness	64 Condition Damage
		Ring	67 Healing Power	48 Toughness	48 Condition Damage
		Earring	56 Healing Power	40 Toughness	40 Condition Damage
Opal	Explorer’s	Amulet	3% Magic Find	64 Power	64 Precision
		Ring	3% Magic Find	48 Power	48 Precision
		Earring	3% Magic Find	40 Power	40 Precision
Candy Corn	Traveller’s	Amulet	3% Magic Find	64 Power	64 Condition Damage
- *	Soldier’s	Amulet	90 Power	64 Toughness	64 Vitality
- *	Shaman’s	Amulet	90 Vitality	64 Healing Power	64 Condition Damage

*These two equivalents only exist for amulets and are the Emerald Pendant and Sapphire Pendant for Soldier’s and Shaman’s respectively

Each exotic trinket comes with a slot for a jewel upgrade, which come in the following varieties

Gemstone	Major	Minor	Minor
Exquisite Ruby Jewel	25 Power	15 Precision	3% Critical Damage
Exquisite Beryl Jewel	25 Power	15 Vitality	3% Critical Damage
Exquisite Emerald Jewel	25 Precision	15 Toughness	15 Power
Exquisite Coral Jewel	25 Precision	15 Condition Damage	15 Power
Exquisite Snowflake Jewel	3% Magic Find	15 Healing Power	1% Boon Duration
Exquisite Chrysocola Jewel	25 Condition Damage	15 Power	15 Vitality
Exquisite Sapphire Jewel	25 Healing Power	15 Power	15 Toughness
Exquisite Passiflora Jewel	25 Healing Power	15 Condition Damage	15 Toughness
Exquisite Opal Jewel	4% Magic Find	15 Precision	15 Power

Note that if crafted, Trinkets are created with the similarly named jewel in the upgrade slots (ie the Emerald Orichalcum Amulet is made with an Emerald Jewel in the upgrade slot). The exception are Candy Corn items which are made slotted with Opal jewels. You can change the jewels if you wish.

Overall, your character can wear 1 amulet, 2 rings and 2 earrings at a time, each with an upgrade slot. So for a full set of Ruby gear you’d get the following bonuses

Calculation	Total
90 + 67 + 67 + 56 + 56 + (5 * 25)	461 Power
64 + 48 + 48 + 40 +40 + (5 * 15)	315 Precision
5% + 3% + 3% + 3% + 3% + (5 * 3%)	32% Critical Damage

Ascended

The ascended tier of items was added in November 2012 and will be extended in January 2013. Currently they can only be obtained from BUY-4373 in Fractals of the Mists, but will soon be available in exchange for the new currency laurels. While Ascended items follow similar statistics patterns as Exotics, the bonuses that would come from runes or gems are included in the items themselves.

Instead there is an offensive or defensive slot for an Infusion which can be added to items at the Mystic Forge. Offensive and defensive refer to the small bonus that comes with infusion (ie Power is offensive, Toughness is defensive). Versatile infusions can be placed in either an offensive or defensive slot.

Because ascended items are currently being expanded and for the sake of keeping this post manageable, I will be starting a new post on them in the coming days.

Choosing what’s right for you

NB: this guide assumes that characters are not wanting to go for full support as it isn’t really useful in open world PvE.

Work out what weapons you like using and look at the skills. Note which ones generate conditions that are altered by condition damage and which have effects that are triggered on a critical hit. If you have few skills that inflict Burning, Bleeding, Poison or Confusion, strike items that increase condition damage off the list because you’ll do more damage by increasing Power, Precision and Critical Damage. If you have a lot of skills that have effects triggered on a critical hit, you should try prioritise Precision because that will make those effects happen more often. If you use roughly the same utility skills, include them in this process.
Think about your survivability. Do you survive well at the moment? How do you stand up against conditions and direct hits? Are you wanting to be a well rounded character, be a tank or a glass cannon? If you struggle against conditions, are a Guardian, Thief or Elementalist you should look to increase your Vitality. If you get bashed around a lot, are a Necromancer, Mesmer or Elementalist, you should look to increase your Toughness to better survive hits. If you want to increase both, work out what’s more important and prioritise that for jewellery.
Where else are you lacking? Do you want to be able to heal more? What about having a small chance of getting rarer drops? Are these more important that having a better damage output or survivability?
Hopefully by now you’ve got some priorities. Look at the jewellery options and choose what best suits, remembering Power is useful to all professions. If there’s no clear good option, move on to step 5 and come back to this step.
Choose your armor choices to round off the remainder of your priorities.
Still confused? Try reading my posts on Power vs Precision, Vitality vs Toughness and Conditions to see if that clears anything up. If not, get in touch and I’ll see if I can help out.
Look at other items below and tweak the result!

Other ways to improve your attributes

Back Item

During your personal story you will be given 2 Back Items as a reward which fits into one of the slots near the accessories. There are 3 sources of statistics – the personal story, the guild armorer and from dungeons. They have an upgrade slot (the level 33 version is currently bugged). This is only a selection of the backpacks in the game (but most of the level 80 ones) – you can see the rest here.

Name	From	Attributes
Name	From	Main	Minor	Minor
Ghost Eater’s Hide	Ascalonian Catacombs	+3% Magic Find	+16 Power	+16 Condition Damage
Beserker’s Spineguard of the Beserker	Personal Story	+18 Power	+13 Precision	+1% Critical Damage
Cleric’s Spineguard of the Cleric	Personal Story	+18 Healing Power	+13 Power	+13 Toughness
Rampager’s Spineguard of the Rampager	Personal Story	+18 Precision	+13 Power	+13 Condition Damage
Guild Assassin’s Backpack	Guild Armorer	+20 Power	+14 Precision	+1% Critical Damage
Guild Caretaker’s Backpack	Guild Armorer	+20 Healing Power	+14 Precision	+14 Vitality
Magi’s Spineguard	Fractals of the Mists	+20 Healing Power	+14 Precision	+14 Vitality
Guild Defender’s Backpack	Guild Armorer	+20 Power	+14 Toughness	+14 Vitality
Soldier’s Spineguard	Fractals of the Mists	+20 Power	+14 Toughness	+14 Vitality
Risen Spineguard	Arah or Fractals of the Mists	+20 Vitality	+14 Healing Power	+14 Condition Damage
Rabid Spineguard	Fractals of the Mists	+20 Condition Damage	+14 Precision	+14 Toughness
Prototype Fractal Capacitor	Fractals of the Mists	Various
Quiver of Swift Flight	Mystic Forge	32 + 24 Power	18 + 17 Precision	4% + 1% Critical Damage
Book of Secrets	Mystic Forge	32 + 24 Power	18 + 17 Precision	4% + 1% Critical Damage
Bowyer’s delight	Mystic Forge	32 + 24 Power	18 + 17 Toughness	18 + 17 Vitality
Koss on Koss	Mystic Forge	32 + 24 Power	18 + 17 Toughness	18 + 17 Vitality
Sights Be True	Mystic Forge	32 + 24 Toughness	18 + 17 Power	4% + 1% Critical Damage
Symon’s History of Ascalon	Mystic Forge	32 + 24 Toughness	18 + 17 Power	4% + 1% Critical Damage
Endless Quiver	Mystic Forge	32 + 24 Condition Damage	18 + 17 Precision	18 + 17 Toughness
Tome of the Rubicon	Mystic Forge	32 + 24 Condition Damage	18 + 17 Precision	18 + 17 Toughness
Quiver of a Thousand Arrows	Mystic Forge	32 Power + 5% Magic find	18 + 17 Vitality	18 + 17 Toughness
There with Yakkington: A Traveler’s Tale	Mystic Forge	32 Power + 5% Magic find	18 + 17 Vitality	18 + 17 Toughness

Crests

Crests can be applied to any piece of equipment. There are 5 variants.

Crest Type	Attribute
Crest Type	Main	Minor	Minor
Magi	+20 Healing Power	+14 Precision	+14 Vitality
Rabid	+20 Condition Damage	+14 Precision	+14 Toughness
Shaman	+20 Vitality	+14 Healing Power	+14 Power
Soldier	+20 Power	+14 Toughness	+14 Vitality
Traveler	+3% Magic Find	+14% Power	+14% Precision

Runes

Runes are added to armor and provide additional bonuses which stack depending on how many are applied to armor. You can look at all the options here. Mixing and matching may be useful. Every rune has a primary cumulative attribute which is given with 1,3 or 5 armor pieces with the rune. For example, slotting 5 Superior Rune of the Baelfires will give an additional +165 Power.

Runes and armor bonuses combined roughly equate to jewellery bonuses.

Weapons

In addition to providing damage or defense, weapons have attributes similar in style to armor. When working out type what you want, look closely at the skills that weapon (or weapons if they’re both one handed) give and make the choices based on maximising those skills.

Sigils

These are added to weapons and provide additional bonuses. The wiki article explains these pretty well so take a look.

Aqua Breather

Don’t forget to improve this. It won’t be used when you’re on land but the bonuses come into affect as soon as you go into the water – don’t be caught out using the aqua breather you started with!

And finally, a note about sPvP…

In sPvP the inherent bonuses in armor and jewellery is moved into a single PvP amulet which provides all of the bonuses to statistics. Runes and Sigils can be applied as normal.

Resources

This guide was compiled from information found in game, on Guild Wars 2 Wiki and Guild Wars 2 Database.

Was this useful? Let me know…

Just like the community surveys before release, I do this stuff because I hope people find it useful. If you did, let me know. Not only does it give me a warm fuzzy feeling, but it also makes me more likely to do it again! There are comments below, or if you’re shy you can contact me through the about page!

A month with Guild Wars 2

Posted by Tasha on October 1, 2012 Guild Wars 2, Personal 2 Responses »

Oct 012012

37 days. That’s how many days have passed since the Guild Wars 2 servers opened. Feel like longer? To me it does.

September is always a demanding month because of working commitments that this year had a bizarre smooshing of the two halves of my existence while Gangnam Style was played repeatedly on a nearby stand at a trade show in Amsterdam. Add to that the requirements of trying to rebuild a guild that hasn’t played together properly in 4 years, and a subsequent real life meetup and something had to give. It was my writing and I’m putting that right now.

The first few days of Guild Wars 2 wasn’t exactly smooth. I missed out on the name I wanted despite being up at 4am to try and grab it. I had to settle for Lady Tasha but managed to grab the rest. Mystic Spiral [MYST] quickly got founded along with a secondary guild Mystic Pirates [YARR], and we were away. Except we weren’t. The problems with guilds meant many of us lived in a silent lonely existence for a while with brief glimpses of other people. This has obviously improved over time but that initial period was very hard to achieve anything.

Lady Tasha

Since then, despite nearly a clear 2 weeks out of the game, I’ve managed to get my mesmer to level 80. She’s experienced less than 40% of the world (5 areas 100%) and hasn’t finished her personal story or any craft which to me is excellent. There are many more adventures ahead than there are behind. I’ve found the mesmer profession to be a great choice for my playstyle. There’s enough damage in there to feel useful, while there’s plenty of conditional options for making a real difference to the success of the group. I haven’t felt useless in PvP or WvW either. Generally my character is equipped with a staff and sword and pistol but frequently switch to a focus for a speed boost. Oh and Feedback is an amazing skill that will probably be nerfed now it’s been mentioned.

My overall experience with Guild Wars 2 has been undeniably mixed. I am still very much in love with Tyria and the grandness of its landscapes and adventures, but I have found that the appreciation of the environment and the thrill of exploring lasts around 30-45 minutes before I find myself slipping into an achiever’s mindset again, moving from heart to vista to point of interest. Likewise I love that combat requires thought, but lament that sometimes I am just too mentally tired to be bothered to exert that effort (something I haven’t found in other MMOs). And while I’ve enjoyed the moments where I’ve been able to save a stranger from defeat I feel like I’ve connected with very few people I’m playing alongside.

That may all sound a bit contradictory but hopefully some of you will have had similar experiences. I can’t point many of those frustrations at the game itself – the first two are certainly no one else’s fault than mine. The final point may be due to the game, the limited time I’ve had over the last month or that people are still focussed on building their characters rather than creating experiences with each other. The remaining frustrations I have are common ones related to dodgy patches leading to bugged content that many other people find equally infuriating.

I am really mixed about how I feel regarding communication in Guild Wars 2. There’s a fantastic quote by Joss Whedon about the masterpiece that is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Hush” (see footnote*):

When people stop talking, they start communicating. Language can interfere with communication because language limits. As soon as you say something, you’ve eliminated every other possibility of what you might be talking about. We also use language to separate ourselves from other people.

While it feels odd to have a load of people in an area with you, it isn’t like you don’t communicate with others in your immediate surroundings. People still say thank you. The game doesn’t exactly lend itself to being able to fight and type.

Something that never ceases to amaze me is the detail that goes into corners of the game that few people will see. Something that really touched me over the weekend was a lodge owned by a sylvari who has adopted orphans of a number of races because she can’t have children, juxtaposed with another one nearby inhabited by a norn and his sister who’s desperate for a baby and is settling for someone only referred to as her mate. Tyria knows how to tug on the heartstrings and make you think in the most unlikely of places.

Now the demands of the offline world have stopped impeding on the online one, I’ll have more time to slow down and make an effort to connect with people again. After finishing my personal story, I’ll be looking to round off my basic level 80 armor and then alt around to my heart’s content helping people. I’ve already forayed briefly into WvW and PvP and intend to do more of both. My main aim is to get that sense of community back into the game.

*In this episode, the entire town of Sunnydale lose their voices while grinning bald Victorian-doctor-esque go around cutting out people’s hearts while they’re still conscious and unable to scream for help. There’s a sequence in the episode which shows how the residents are dealing with their mutism – some read the Bible in a group on the street, others turn to alcohol while others try to turn a quick buck by selling small whiteboards and markers. While I’m biased as Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains one of my favourite TV series, I really recommend watching this one if you can.

Karma is a Bitch

Posted by Tasha on August 31, 2012 Guild Wars 2, MMO Gaming, Oh shit maths Comments Off

Aug 312012

If you’re a European player, chances are you probably missed the fireworks last night from ArenaNet’s latest status update that rolled into the early morning. Not only have the developers been busy coping with the popularity of their game (to the point that they’ve stopped selling digital copies on their own website) but they’ve also been dealing with account hackings, botting and exploits.

Most of the drama last night came from the permanent termination of around 3000 accounts that seriously engaged in exploiting a karma merchant who offered items for 1 thousanth the normal price. 1000 more will need to ride out a 72 hour ban for giving in to temptation but not taking it to extremes. There’s been a lot of debate on Reddit and Twitter about if this approach is right or wrong on an individual basis, but I’m not sure anyone has considered the big picture.

I had a quick total up the replies to all the people who posted their character names on Reddit asking how many times they exploited. The answer: 15,028 times from 55 people. If we take the average number of times someone exploited and multiply that up by the number of perma banned accounts, that’s 819709 items (estimate). That is a huge number of items especially considering only 1912 (estimate) should have been possible to purchase with that quantity of karma.

That large number of items would have had an impact on the economy. What’s more disturbing perhaps is that this represented 0.3% of the total playerbase. Imagine if the trading post and mail system hadn’t been down, or if people hadn’t spread the exploit so publically. This could have taken far longer to identify and the damage would have been done and spread. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d love to be playing Guild Wars 2 in 4 years time without a messed up economy and with the developers being able to concentrate on making their game better rather than chasing those who try to break it.

I’m personally with ArenaNet in handing out the bans (even if they can now be revoked). It’s a clear message to anyone who exploits that they risk their account in the future. Just as the temporary bans for hate speech and bad language are having an effect on the game, so will this. Here’s to a friendlier, more honest player base.

Another look at the Guild Wars 2 ranger

Posted by Tasha on August 12, 2012 Beta, Feedback, Guild Wars 2 5 Responses »

Aug 122012

It’s no secret that when it comes to MMOs, I generally play a ranger class. In Guild Wars 1, I’ve spent over 6000 hours in the company of my Ranger – nearly half of all the time my main account has accumulated. I’ve played one in Aion and cobbled one together in Rift. Generally, I love them with a passion that’s only occasionally rivalled by healing classes. I also haven’t exactly been quiet about how disappointing my experiences with Ranger in early demos of Guild Wars 2 were. Frankly, I felt like the heart had been ripped from the profession I loved. I was not, to put it lightly, a happy bunny. But that was all a long time ago now, so on Friday night during the stress test I figured it was only fair to give the Ranger another shot. Would the changes, balances and tweaks have made my experiences better?

Hello from Queensdale

It seems I’d made a human ranger sometime in BWE3 to reserve a name, so hopped on and joined some guildmates in Queensdale. I wanted to get as wide a view on the profession by experiencing as many different weapons as possible, so focussed on completing renown hearts and dynamic events, trying to stay in areas 2 levels above my own. By the time I logged off at around 3:30am UK time, my Ranger was nearly at level 11 and I’d already gotten some “favourite” weapons. So, here’s my impressions of the ranger after a relatively short time together.

Let’s start with the pet. In earlier days, I’d found the pet to be more of a hinderance than a help. It frequently got lost and as it was far more powerful than the ranger itself, I felt like a cheerleader

playing it rather than a hero. I’d heard various complaints about the pet being squishy and pointless during the Beta Weekends. This was not my experience during the stress test and I felt that the pet had reached a certain amount of balance with the ranger. While the pet definiately helped with damage output and was use for aggro diversion, I didn’t feel like the pet could take down an enemy solo and I could see the impact my character’s skills were having. The pet was a necessary element of combat, but not overpoweringly so. When the pet died I felt disadvantaged and exposed. Yes, pets do go down quite quickly and switching pets and using their special abilities is something that rangers will need to get used to doing to make the most of combat. But, that’s the same with every profession’s primary mechanic. Also, pets now resurrect themselves out of combat which will most certainly take a lot of the tedium out of being a pet owner. Are they appropriately sentient? No clue. That will need more careful testing.

To the weapons then. I got to try a variety of weapons including dual wielding axes, axe and sword, shortbow, longbow and greatsword. Now, the next bit of the “review” needs to have a major caveat; the manner I was playing the stress test did not lend itself well to getting a good view of melee combat. I was fighting enemies that were over my level and I wasn’t upgrading my armor properly. So needless to say, when I got into the further regions of Queensdale using melee weaponry, I died a lot. That said, there weren’t any weapons I really hated. I had the greatest affinity for the shortbow, I think because the skills it has are similar to how I play my ranger in Guild Wars – plenty of conditions! I probably least enjoyed the dual axes build. Frankly, I still miss the “haha, you’re screwed” feeling that used to come from a well timed d-shot (and have since found from using Static Field to trap enemies in WvW), but I have a feeling that if I keep looking and play around with traits I might find it on the ranger again.

Is 3 and a half hours long enough to get a good view of a class? Probably not, but it’s enough to make up your mind about if you would be happy playing more and I can say that I’d be very willing to go back and give the ranger a bit more time; which I’ll be doing in around 30 minutes! The plan is still to roll mesmer at release, but the ranger may just make it on the alt list.

Where’s that humble pie? I need a slice.

Experiences from the Final Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend

Posted by Tasha on August 6, 2012 Beta, Community Commentary, Feedback, Guild Wars 2, MMO Gaming, Oh shit maths 5 Responses »

Aug 062012

In a few weeks we’ll be stepping foot inside Tyria again for real. One important decision everyone will need to make is what server to call home and I’ve set myself the challenge of researching the communities on each of the Guild Wars 2 servers. So after the final beta weekend I asked members of the Guild Wars 2 community for the experiences of their servers. The response was more immense than I could of hoped for. I can only offer my heartfelt thanks to everyone who took the time to fill in the survey and help their fellow players (and myself) out!

Gathering information

Using the previous survey as a base and building on the areas that the survey fell short on last time, I built up a short set of questions covering information that included the number of guilds people were a member of, how satisfied they were with their choice of server, their experiences on their servers and the languages spoken on them. The existence of the survey was promoted to my followers on Twitter and retweeted several times by individuals and fansites within the Guild Wars 2 community. It was also promoted on Guild Wars 2 Guru, the Guild Wars 2 sub-Reddit and Guild Wars 2 Nederlandstalige Community.

As with the last survey, I have included every response I received even where I felt that response may have been deliberately misleading, and removed offensive words and identifying comments from the feedback. Again, the questions, original responses and some statistical analysis is available in a pdf for you to enjoy (if you enjoy that kind of thing). I’ll refer to some feedback below, and draw out the more interesting statistics.

General comments

There was a far larger response to this survey than the previous two undertaken. Combined with the fewer number of servers provided for the final Beta Weekend event, the responses will give a better indication of what the communities and experiences of people on those surveys were actually like. However, caution must be undertaken when applying the findings of this survey. The ArenaNet blog post What’s New in the Final Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event indicated that “hundreds of thousands of players” were expected to take part in the final event, and the 365 responses are a very small sample of that expected amount.

That said, only 2 servers gave no response at all and there were 13 servers who gave 10 or more responses. This makes this the most reliable of my surveys so far and I am hopeful that people may find the information contained within it useful when it comes to choosing their server for release. However the variety of comments from the same server means that the results must be taken with a large pinch of salt!

Game Formats

There are no large differences between the two regions when it comes to the main formats people were playing over the final beta weekend. Overall 83% of responders said they spent most of their time this weekend in PvE, compared with 12% in WvW and 5% in PvP.

When asked about their experiences in the different formats, some interesting differences emerged. There was some irregularity between those who answered “Did Not Play Format” between the 3 questions (for example, some who indicated they did not play a format in one question gave their experiences of that format in the other two). Overall nearly 98% did some form of pve, while only 35% did some form of sPvP. Those on European servers are more likely to do some form of PvP than American Servers – over 7% difference in both sPvP and WvW.

Guilds

There was a large difference between the number of people who chose not to be in a guild on the American and European servers, with 13% more Europeans being a member of one or more guild(s).

Across all servers, of those in a guild 79% of those who responded were in only 1 guild. This was slightly lower on American servers (75%), who had proportionally more people in 2 (17%) or 3 (5%) guilds than Europe (14% and 1%).

Countries & Languages

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were 10 more countries represented on European servers (25) than on American servers (15). In addition there were 9 more languages seen on European servers (17) than on US servers (8). This diversity showed through in comments about server communities, with some responses expressing frustration at the number of different languages spoken on their chosen server. Some also commented about the overflow servers being grouped together, which added to linguistic frustration. In general these comments did not occur alongside reports of negative server satisfaction.

Even though there was a large variety of languages spoken on the various European servers, each server did seem to have a primary language. English was spoken to some extent on all servers.

Sense of Community Throughout the Formats

Trying to measure a sense of community is extremely tricky, but the responses from 3 questions broken by format were used to attempt to get an impression of moment to moment life on a server and in the two regions. The amount of text in the various formats gives an indication of communication and resurrection gives an indication of symbolic interaction while perceived co-ordination gives an indication of working towards a common goal.

By format overall PvE scored highest on the sense of community factors, with more positive responses to the quantity of text communication, resurrection and overall coordination. WvW was positive overall, but less so than PvE. However, PvP scored quite low on the text and resurrection factors, and less positively in cooperation. This may be in part due to the fast paced nature of PvP compared to the other two formats, along with its quick resurrection timers.

The differences in responses between the two regions were highest in PvP, with a less negative reaction overall in text and cooperation on US servers while EU servers were slightly ahead with resurrection. Overall the differences don’t give a clear indication of one region scoring higher in sense of community factors.

Community

Just as with the second Beta Weekend, the comments received on community are pretty hard to analyse objectively. Generally speaking the comments seem positive about the communities on all servers, with most containing some form of positive and negative experience. Few of the comments were entirely negative about their server. A number of people commented that they spent most of the weekend playing solo and some of these highlighted a lack of community outside a guild. Others said they didn’t notice any community on their servers at all, which was countered by rare stories of people going significantly out of their way to help their server mates.

Amongst the various comments, there were a few that spoke of the community in Guild Wars 2 being better than the community in other MMOs, but some of these also mentioned that they felt the community was worse than it had been for Beta Weekend 2. A few comments expressed frustration at being forced to move servers that they had been on for the last 2 weekends to the detriment of the community. Amongst European servers, there were comments of frustration about the number of different languages being used on overflow servers.

Compared to the community responses for Beta Weekend 2, there were more comments relating to trolls on the servers and complaints about being forced into overflow servers.

Satisfaction and Server Population

When it comes to server population, there are a few relatively minor differences between the two regions. Those on American servers expressed a higher preference for their servers to be busier than their European counterparts (35.75% reported they’d prefer the servers to be “A little busier” or “A lot busier” compared to 30.64% in Europe). Conversely 15.59% of those who responded from European servers would have preferred their servers to be “A little quieter” compared with 6.70% of those on American servers. Both regions had roughly the same percentage of responses that expressed “No strong feelings” about their server populations.

The overall results between the two regions when it comes to server satisfaction are roughly equal, with there being slightly more people who reported being unsatisfied with their server choice on US servers. 5% more of their counterparts on European servers reported being satisfied with their server choice.

Conclusion

When it comes to choosing a server for release, it’ll be up to you to consider what the most important factors are to your in game happiness. The overwhelming outcome of this survey is the variety of differences between all servers in terms what formats the majority of the population play, the language base and the sense of community on the server. Hopefully it’ll be of some use when people come to make their decisions.

It’s unfortunate that some contributors commented that the sense of community had deteriorated from Beta Weekend 2 to Beta Weekend 3 (the final beta weekend), but this is in line with expectations. Further analysis will need to be done to see if there is any statistical evidence to back up these reports. However there did seem to be a better quantity of servers for the final weekend, especially for US servers. Given the comments regarding the language problems on overflow servers in Europe, I think it may be a good idea for ArenaNet to investigate how they are grouping the servers together to try to provide the most harmonious output.

Your Feedback

If you’ve found this information useful to you, please do drop a note in the comments below. Currently I have no plans to do any more of these surveys, but if I get enough feedback from people saying it’s worthwhile doing, I will. Likewise, please contact me if you have any feedback you’d like to give about the content of the survey itself.

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