Posts by Marty Silverblade

    Blood Magic can put out decent damage with something like this. Bring Dark Aura on a hero, and probably more healing than you would normally. That's just an example; there are plenty of other things you can do if you prefer. Maybe Vampiric Swarm or Touch over SoLS, though you'd likely be BiP dependant. I haven't experimented with such alternatives extensively.

    Edit: actually, I suspect the better option would be to drop Mystic Regeneration for either of those options so you can max out soul reaping instead. You can bring Life Transfer instead if health regen is desired.

    Vampiric is superior for damage over sundering. You'll also want to keep a zealous and elemental weapon.

    Luck of the Draw is never a good choice for a warrior. I don't know why the wiki page would suggest it as a "great example". It's only half as useful as -2/stance. The +10al vs <element> ones can be great picks but require you to pay attention to damage types and set up multiple shields.

    Swordsmanship rune goes on the helmet so that when you swap weapons you only have to swap that piece. Other runes can go wherever. I'd probably opt for a second vitae over clarity, though it likely won't make a difference either way.

    I suspect the radiant insignia were from you mistakenly believing that more energy = energy management. Sentinel or sentry would be the default choices.

    I'm assuming we're only talking about normal mode here. Hopefully it's obvious to you that a no shield melee build on a no deaths character is generally a bad idea.

    You'll want heavy investments in all of expertise + weapon + beast mastery and don't want to risk using major/superior runes (normally essential for rangers) so I wouldn't bother investing anywhere else.

    Some untested examples:

    Minor expertise and beast mastery runes plus an expertise helmet for all.

    OgokYpXbquGEwB0V0VA21FuBPItB
    Switch the attacks around as you see fit. I've gone for energy ones given they'll be basically free due to expertise + a zealous scythe. Farmer's Scythe could be a good pick once you get to Eye of the North.

    OgokYpXbquGEwB0lz1zV2FuBPItB
    An attempt at an adrenaline based one instead. Assuming Withering Aura on a hero. Dark Fury would also be nice if you want to cater to yourself that heavily.

    OgETMVreXSsQ8ZHMG8qg3gHk2A
    Earthbind on a hero is ideal, perhaps essential. I don't know how the timing will work on Renewing Smash with only a 25% IAS.

    Ultimately once you get to the point where you can put together half decent hero builds you shouldn't have to worry much about minmaxing your own bar. As I said though, hm is a different story.

    As a general rule bonuses stack multiplicatively. Oftentimes there's a limit, though individual sources that exceed this will have their full effect, and some sources are exempt from the limit.

    Per the wiki, the limit for reduced casting time is 25% and the fast casting bonus is exempt.

    If my interpretation is correct:
    First example: 2 seconds * 0.85 (pie) * 0.72 (fc) = 1.224 seconds.
    Second example: 2 seconds * 0.5 (hct mod) * 0.72 (fc) = 0.72 seconds. Pie would be ignored because the hct mod alone exceeds the cap.

    bsoltan
    February 10, 2019 at 11:27 AM

    Maybe also possible idea:

    Mercenaries heros + tool box Wich allows you to have a more unique set up then with normal hero profession options and you can not just place 3 heros separately you can basicly chose for all 7 team member individually where they should stand. So like a 3 hero team north, 3 hero team south with perfect positioning. And a player + support hero + summon stone middle. With a possible roam. This could lead to a way faster cleaning.

    Neither mercenaries nor toolbox are required to do this. In the settings you can bind keys for hero flags 4-7. Maybe toolbox adds a ui element for them, idk.

    Sight Beyond Sight is redundant with AScan, except that it functions as a cover enchant.

    I'd be inclined to bring GDW to add some crowd control to your ranged units. This also may mean you won't need the second splinter on the BiP, which is significantly less good at 11 than 14+.

    Some of the listed attributes clearly aren't correct. Idk if you had intended that to be the case.

    Bone Minions at 12 death have ~420 health (including spawning power) and 30 armor. Every damage packet they receive in any non trivial situation is going to eat a shelter charge. An ST rit is not going to work.

    Sitting in a middle ground between two fundamentally opposing concepts will leave you with something mediocre at best. Focus on either boosting the minions for damage or bombing. The effectiveness of minion damage grows exponentially with death magic so I would advise the latter, though your horrors will have ~540 health + 58 armor which maybe is useable if you really want to try that route.

    Order of Pain is party member only so it won't do anything for your minions or spirits. It's also not advisable to add another sacrifice skill to your bip, or to have something so time intensive on a healer.

    Maybe have Assassin's Promise + EVAS on the player bar to help ball the enemies and absorb the biggest hits before the minion horde arrives? Maybe try spirit's gift and/or blood bond to help sustain them.

    I would think two copies of BotM requires a meaningful increase on the amount of healing you've got there.

    Using a max damage scythe = terrible damage when SWS is down.

    Using a req4 scythe = terrible damage always.

    Stance removal is rare and in any instance where it is not the solution would be to run a different build or to kill or suppress the source before it can use it. Even if your intention is to only switch to the r4 when SWS is down, it's still not a particularly apt means of addressing the problem.

    When I asked what you've been doing I meant which missions specifically so we can most closely replicate your actions.

    I added the books to my inventory in the way you've shown and completed nahpui quarter nm. The book updated as expected.

    Are you running toolbox or any other sort of add ons? Not that I'm aware of those causing any such issues, or having the potential to do so.

    I'm not sure if you're trying to convey anything with the images, but just in case, you know there's a difference between the regular and hard mode versions of the books? Doing, for example, The Wilds in hard mode won't add an entry to the normal mode Flameseeker Prophecies.

    Have you tried talking to the NPC's that will retroactively fill in pages?

    Are you aware the early missions (eg the two shing jea island missions) don't appear in any book in normal mode and appear in the Young Heroes of Tyria in hard mode?

    It would help if you told/showed us specifically what you've got and what you've been doing.

    If you're asking with regard to getting enough oppressor weapons for your Hall of Monuments, I got mine by doing the wanted quests with a high reward:time ratio and playing through the war in kryta and hearts of the north storylines on other characters. Wasn't significantly grindy.

    If you're asking with regard to how people obtain them in enormous quantities for sale, botting. To my knowledge, one of the hotn quests gives 5 war supplies in 10 mins or thereabouts. Idk which, or whether they do that one because it's the best war supply farm overall or if it's just the best one they can automate.

    Normal mode or hard mode? With the various changes that have been made since release the former is not substantially more difficult than routine content like vanquishes.

    Have you given it a go? If so, are you struggling somewhere? I'll refrain from being overly specific now, but I'll note that like tougher content in general it's more about technique than builds. Aggroing carefully and paying attention to your compass are both very important. DoA isn't like UW though where it's basically essential to have a plan beforehand or you're going to fail. Still, reading the wiki beforehand can help prevent you wiping from any surprises it throws at you.

    Meta builds should be fine, though it's worth noting panic will do a lot more here than usual.

    I'll echo the above: the zealous daggers are the practical choice but are easy enough to replicate by buying the parts and assembling them yourself, so if you're really keen on Shiro's Daggers for the skin you might as well take them. Don't bother trying to farm weapon parts because that's never a time efficient way to get them - for a lot of things, like mods, you're better off just getting the money and buying them.

    Regarding balthazar faction: note that unlocking and obtaining are not the same. If you spend balthazar faction to unlock weapon mods then what this will do is make them available on demand for your PvP-only characters. It will not give your PvE characters one of those mods, so this is not a solution for your situation.

    Welcome back.

    As you've noticed PvP is largely non functional due to botters and other such types. You'll need to look out for community organised events to viably play PvP. See here for details.

    Regarding active players, do you mean for PvP or as a whole? Regardless, I don't think anyone can really give a solid number. As far as PvE is concerned, most people are out doing things with heroes so you're not going to see many people sitting around in outposts looking for groups. Joining a guild to connect you with people is recommended.

    It's important to note that things have fallen out of use due to buffs rather than nerfs. After Anet announced they were moving on to GW2 (probably around when you quit) their profession 'rebalances' just consisted of buffing the hell out of them rather than necessarily addressing the wider issues with them or nerfing the overpowered stuff, presumably because this was easier and wouldn't risk any players getting annoyed and leaving. As such, all the old stuff is still as viable as it was (likely aside from the GW Beyond content which was designed with these updates in mind). If you're interested there are archives for PvX and Guru which might provide some inspiration. Some PvX users also keep off-meta build ideas on their personal pages, though I don't know if there's a good way to search them.

    Regarding your specific suggestions:

    -An example of a physway/meleeway build is here. There's a lot wrong with it (I'm sure there are better examples elsewhere), but you can see the general structure with the multiple melee's getting buffed with orders, smites, etc.

    -I'm also reminded of EFGJack's coordinated ball and spike builds. Unfortunately the images are gone but the videos show off the playstyle sufficiently.

    Aside from that, there's nothing stopping you from putting something together yourself. That's the biggest appeal for a lot of people. As mentioned, the game has been made significantly easier than it was, so even if the concept ends up being lackluster it should still be generally capable. Even inherently gimmicky setups such as teams of all the same primary profession can function.

    Finally, execution matters. The game wasn't meant to be a case of loading the correct skill bars and then coasting through to success. This tends to be forgotten nowadays with overpowered setups devaluing player competence, but things like pulling, aggroing, flagging heroes, preprotting, etc, used to be what made the difference between success and failure. So even supposedly 'bad' builds (by modern standards) can work if you put in a little effort.

    I can't replicate your attachment issue. All the buttons work fine for me. I tried on both my usual white mantle theme and on the dervish one (I presume this is what you're referring to as the dark theme).

    I don't usually have email notifications on for anything, but I just tried it and nothing turned up after 10 mins. I'll poke Kevin.

    Armor reduces damage by a percentage. For example +5AL cuts incoming damage by ~8%, +16AL cuts incoming damage by ~24%, +40AL cuts incoming damage by 50%. So the number of damage points additional armor will prevent depends on the size of the incoming packet.

    There's no armor cap, either overall or for particular damage types. There is a +25AL limit on bonus armor (see links below), though if a single effect exceeds this it will work in full.

    Armor rating - Guild Wars Wiki (GWW)

    Armor calculation - Guild Wars Wiki (GWW)

    The mechanics are well understood at this point so the wiki should cover anything you need to know if you really want to dig deep into this stuff. If you give some concrete info about where/what/how you're testing and it's not clear from the above links we can walk through the numbers.

    No. Mr. Clean(-Value) is incorrect. The duration of an effect is always fixed upon it's creation. They are never shortened/lengthened or sped up/slowed down on the fly. Switching to a -20% blind (for example) shield after you've been blinded achieves nothing. Likewise, casting Ether Renewal and then switching to a +20% enchant weapon does nothing, casting Healing Breeze and then Blessed Aura does nothing, moving in or out of Quickening Zephyr does nothing, etc.

    Edit: QZ affects recharge time rather than effect durations, but the principle is the same.

    I would imagine health only because dmg reduc only applies to physical damage

    While it is true the -2/enchant and similar mods are physical only it's irrelevant here. These mods go in the inscription slot which can never contain +health. The question for that slot is whether the -2 is better than +10 armor vs damage or creature type. The health vs armor slot is the suffix mod, and also the prefix for staves. A +5 armor mod here affects all armor effected sources of damage. https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_weapon_upgrades

    I'm not a chestrunner by any means so I can't speak specifically in that context, but as a general rule +armor is preferred. A few reasons:

    -Armor typically increases the amount of damage the enemies have to throw at you to kill you by more.

    -Armor makes healing more effective.

    -Adding x to your maximum health achieves absolutely nothing until you get below x health whereas armor is always helping.

    There's more to say about it then that, but there you go. I'm sure the relevant build pages on pvx/wherever would detail the preferred equipment anyway.

    The dat contains all sorts of data used by the game - text, sounds, images, 3d models, etc. You're not going to be able to open it with wordpad or other simple single purpose tools. I know people have built software that will allow you to view the contents but I don't know from who or where it's found. Searching for "gw dat browser" or similar should bring it up.

    What are you trying to do?