Friday 29 June 2012

Healing Tank Spec from Moldran

Here is an interesting and fun spec to try for the final BWE before launch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31It6XMY_sg&feature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=31It6XMY_sg&v=-QD9KX0NT4o&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_496864

Thursday 28 June 2012

Gear Stats


Below are some stats showing how different gear can change your stats. The build is a sustained rifle damage build, but it is interesting to see the variability in crit chance and power, as well as armour etc that you can get by tweaking your gear.



Fighter =

Power - 2325.6
Crit Chance - 46.57
HP – 21662
Armour – 2488
Crit Damage – 20

2790 power 46.5% of the time



Divinity =

Power – 2221.6
Crit Chance – 49.4
HP – 22262
Armor – 2498
Crit Damage – 38

3065 power 49.4% of the time


Eagle =

Power – 2155.6
Crit Chance – 54.43
HP – 21662
Armour – 2438
Crit Damage – 28

2759 power 54.4% of the time

Stress Test (June 27th)

So I've decided that I've consistently become shitter at GW2 over the course of Stress Tests and BWE's and everyone else has got better. Couple this with the fact I was never that good to begin with and therein lies the problem!

Add into the mix the nerfing to warrior and last nights stress test was FRUSTRATING. However, saying that, I did find a very very decent Rifle build, which when supported with Axe/Shield (using Eviscerate as an actual finishing move) I found a bit of fun for an hour.

Had a rampaging DC in the last ten minutes which I couldn't get back on after, but apart from that the Stress Test wasn't all too stressful. The stability on the PvP servers was lacking, but that only happened with two hours to go and you imagine ArenaNet were testing how many servers they could turn off before it all went to shit. I like to imagine it like a big game of jenga where they are actually pulling servers out.

Anyway, build to follow later today.

Thursday 14 June 2012

More testing data (Sigils)

Minor Sigil of Accuracy/Corruption/Bloodlust - Work on both weapons and the effects stack

Sigil of Superior Restoration - Heals for about 670

Sigil of Demon Summoning - The fleshreaver lasts about 1min and hits for 1k+ (Fleshreaver)

Sigil of Superior Air - Does about 1.5k dmg with 2.5k attack (scales with attack)

Sigil of Superior Blood - Proc rate noticably increases with this on both weapons and heals for 325hp (does not scale with attack)

Sigil of Superior Fire - Hits for about 1k with 2.5k attack (scales with attack)

Sigil of Superior Battle - This will work for mainhand attacks while in the offhand, but will not stack if you have it on both weapons

Sigil of Superior Doom - This will work for mainhand attacks while in the offhand, but will not stack if you have it on both weapons

Sigil of Superior Leeching - Heals for about 950-1k (does not scale with attack)

Sigil of Superior Water - Heals for about 240-370



Credit: Hammburgler at http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/36865-detailed-effects-of-sigils/

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Keep up to date with my Post BWE2 builds here:

http://www.gw2codex.com/user/2005-papaganoosh

Some Number Crunching

Interesting testing data:

1. Powerful Banners.
  • It did 141 damage with 916 power.
  • It did 287 damage with 2169 power.
  • This is low damage, it doesn't appear worth it.
2. Reckless Dodge.
  • It did roughly 600 damage with 2169 power
3. Empowered Allies.
  • Does not increase your damage.
  • Ally went from 75 to 119 damage using steady weapon.
  • Ally went from 591 to 624 damage using normal weapon. (averaged over 5 hits)
4. Sure Footed.
  • Does not work with shield stance. Something I was just curious about because I heard it did.
5. Thick Skin.
  • This trait added 100 armor when over 90% health.
6. Inspiring Banners.
  • Scales with healing.
  • Zero healing = 125 regen
  • 300 healing = 162 regen
  • 838 healing = 230 regen
  • 1138 healing = 267 regen
7. Rune of Dolyent.
  • Regens for 30
  • Stacks with other regens.
8. Building Momentum.
  • Restores 50% of your endurance.
9. Stick and Move.
  • Damage went from 115 to 119 when endurance was full.
10. Slashing Power.
  • Damage went from 70 to 77 damage, so 10% increase.
11. Empowered.
  • Damage without any boons was 96.
  • 3 boons = 103 damage
  • 4 boons = 105 damage
  • 7 boons = 111 damage
12. Versatile Rage.
  • 5 charges of rage this gives is equal to about 1/2 bar of rage.
13. Adrenal Reserves.
  • This dropped the cost of a full rage attack from 3 bars to 2 bars.
14. Inspiring Shouts.
  • When you use a shout, you get about 80% of 1 bar of rage.
15. Adrenal Health.
  • The regen was independent of healing so it did not scale
  • 0 - 1 bar of rage = No regen.
  • 1 - 2 bar of rage = 125 regen.
  • 2 - 3 bar of rage = 240 regen
  • Full rage bar = 360 regen.
16. Sweet Revenge.
  • I tested this over 20 vengeances, I did not rally a single time.
  • I took no actions other than healing and running after using vengeance, perhaps you have to kill the mob or something. Other than that, it seems not worth the spot.
Some things I got from all of this:
  • Powerful Banners is garbage.
  • Empowered allies seems decent for WvW.
  • Building Momentum is a good talent all around. If you use in conjunction with a sigil of energy and fast weapon switching, you can dodge a lot.
  • Empowered has the ability to add alot of extra damage if you can get 10+ buffs up. It looks to be adding roughly 2.25% damage per buff. This gives me a great reason to use the 3 stacks of might on weapon switch sigil.
  • Sweet revenge seems to be garbage.

Credit: Zinn from http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/36855-testing-data-from-the-stress-test-event/

Tuesday 12 June 2012

BWE2 Warrior Thoughts


Warrior in W3:

Survives nicely if specced correctly and as a 'Combat Medic' can be veru useful. This is done by taking all the revive traits possible, 20% speed up, extra toughness etc. Very useful to have a strong Warrior running around getting everyone up.
Shout and banners build is viable, but only when they fix the Banner bugs. As it stands (through a fair bit of testing) it seems that the buff is not being applied even though it says it is.

Warrior Weapons:
Mace - Nice stun and pairs well with shield

Shield - nice damage mitigation (especially when paired with trait) and block is very useful.

Sword - Useful for hamstring and leap to get into range and keep enemies there

Hammer - good for fighting melee classes and keeping them at range

Greatsword - very OP at the moment (Hundred Blades), expecting a nerf incoming from all the people whining about it.

Rifle - good damage and good range

Longbow - not as good as the rifle

Horn - Great speed buff and decent buff

Axe - good damage, eviscerate needs a buff badly

Banners:

In great need of fixing as it is buggy as hell right now. Would be very nice once sorted.

Health:
Pretty decent with around 50% mitigation. VERY weak when not specced properly and can be a glass cannon.

Mobility:
Horn is great for getting about and closing distance. Melee weapon speed trait is still buggy so not worth taking yet and the rifle gives decent range.

Traits:

Need a serious rethink as some of the traits are totally useless, especially where they are placed. The XI and XII skills are also not good enough to warrant their placing there.

Downed:
Downed State for warrior is one of the best around. Nothing better than springing up to nail a fool in the face who was laughing over you.

Burst:
Needs a rethink BADLY. How eviscerate with two dual wield axes only uses one of the axes to judge damage is a joke. Hundred Blades is critting (with elite signet and power signet popped) for 14k and the same situation is yielding a 7k eviscerate something is stupidly wrong. I hope they fix it.

Monday 11 June 2012

Greatsword PvP build

A guildmate walked me through this build in the BWE2 (he may put one up himself at some point so it's worth keeping an eye on his blog: http://tufmudda.blogspot.co.uk/ )


http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3470003n3q434445afkk00udte1e4f81l1p1u

As you can see from the build above it is still very crit heavy and it is worth stacking Eagle on armour items and berserker amulet for the neck.

For the weapons you should have Sigil of Intelligence on the Greatsword, Sigil of Superior Battle on one Axe and Sigil of Superior Doom on the Main Hand Axe.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Intelligence
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Superior_Battle
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Superior_Doom

With this build you run in with Axe on, drop a few chops and an AoE or two to build Adrenaline and then for the rest of your fight keep it at Level 3. This build DOES NOT USE the Burst Finisher.

When Adrenaline is full swap to Greatsword (making sure Auto Attack is not on) and you will have the Sigil of Intelligence 100% crit chance. Pop Hundred Blades and watch the opponent melt.

My guildmate managed to clock up a 14k hit on the Golems in the Mists when using the Power and Elite Signet cooldowns whilst using it.

Worth a try for a laugh!

Axe Burst Crit Build (BWE2 Update)

Here is an updated trait build for the BWE2 weekend, taking into account the changes in traits etc

http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=34a7g03n3q434445beuu00ae4f81k1l1r1u22


This build is paired with full Eagle stats on armour items, amulet of the berserker and then a 5% crit chance sigil on each axe.

I tried both putting 30 in Strength and 30 in Discipline to see which yielded more damage and even in a Crit build the extra Power did more than the Crit Damage.

A regular Chop on full adrenalin would yield around 1.2k on a full protection specced Warrior with the 30 in Strength and around 1k with 30 in Discipline. I only got to play a couple of hours over the weekend but found that the damage didn't seem as incredible as BWE1 and the Stress Test.

More testing to follow!

Sunday 3 June 2012

Warrior vs Guardian


A pretty poor fight between a Warrior and a Guardian

Still decent to show how some dynamics of 1v1 work

Leaked Patch Notes

Account

• Optimization to reduce visible “Portal lag”
• Improve Portal watching
• Attempting to fix a Portal party issue (not related to the above change)

Art/Animation

• Legendary weapon replacement skill effects
• Gadget on gadget flux
• Point lights are now enabled on equipped items
• Added support for replacement material effects
• Support material replacement file effect fading
• Added the “Sylvari glow”
• There is a new indefinite progress bar that uses the wipe shader
• Added Mystic Forge sparklies
• Mystic Forge fire spirals in one direction
• Rewards now “fly” into the Mystic Forge

Chat

• Local chat (Say) is now very short range. /Shout (/Map) at map range has been added.

Crash

• Gadget crash fix
• Chat-related crash fixed
• Using items from your bank no longer crashes the server
• Loading into different maps is ok now
• Players can now leave their party without crashing
• Fix for guild bank crash (related to permissions)
• Fix for the cursor being out of bounds in a text box
• Playing with players from other shards should no longer crash WvW
• Fix in for a missile crash
• Fixed buff crashes
• Dialog manager crash fix
• Crash fix for character creation
• Fix for a marker-related crash
• Entering/leaving the water context no longer crashes
• Disabled a forced server crash
• Fixed a Mystic Forge rash
• Opening the hint dialog no longer crashes
• Agent selection crash (loot crash)

Gameplay

• Iconics have 1% of the normal hate
• F11 should now open the options menu
• If a player goes from alive to dead, we now give them a waypoint to port to so they can resurrect
• Input binding:
• There are now distinct left and right shift keys

• Rewards:
• Map complete rewards are now available

• If a transformation isn’t allowed to interact with bundles, drop any bundles the character may be
holding when transformed (No more flamethrower ooze H)
• Map complete doesn’t trigger every time you zone into a map now
• Gadgets/turrets now have a concept of an “authority”
• The player that creates the gadget is assigned as that gadget’s authority
• This basically means that players that place down the Siege blueprints can kick out other
players who are in their siege weapons if they want to use them
• “Move to Target” split into underwater and terrestrial
• “Move to Target” no longer applicable when downed
• Only 5 unique combatants can combo with a given combo field
• Characters that aren’t alive don’t return legendary weapon ItemDefs
• Mystic Forge only takes one of each kind of item [F 234559]
• Trait tiers are in
• Added account bound items
• Players can no longer redirect to a map if they are already redirecting
• Added a skill point currency type
• A shard selection bug has been fixed
• Input bindings have been implemented
• Improved how “Fear” works
• Recharge slows should be slowing for the proper amount now
• Spawn scaling for low-level events has been adjusted
• Level 70+ rare items have the potential to salvage out more materials as deemed by special reward
tables
• Auto-attacks no longer continue to attack an unselected target
• Missiles now fire in the direction of the camera when the player has no target and is holding down
the right mouse button (Side note: This is awesome)
• Players can now queue for multiple maps concurrently
• The default mouse scroll rate has been changed to 2x
• Mouse-looking no longer drives a characters movement unless they’re executing an upper body skill
• Characters can no longer jump if the jump state doesn’t exist
• The Fear mechanic has been improved
• Action Char Fear Char
• Action Skill Fear

• LFG:
• More backend implementation
• Blocked players no longer show up in LFG

• PvP:
• Added rank rewards to PvP Ranks
• Changed from a level to a level range per recent PvP Rank discussions
• PvpRank has been split from Glory
• Ranks now define a range of PvP ranks
• Placeholder awards are going through the reward manager
• Added support for Glory Boosts
• Start Auto Tournaments as soon as there are enough rosters ready (and send out a countdown
when the match is about to start)
• Tournament server improvements
• PvP Lobby waypoint travel is free
• Added a new reward type for PvP rank up
• Players with an “Offline” status can now be invited to tournaments
• Players are unable to send tournament invites to themselves

• WvW:
• Cannons now display red targeting circles to the enemy
• Game ending has been smoothed out
• Players receive a warning message and are redirected (configurable in content)
• The score dialog now displays a message telling the player their team’s final position
• Gadgets now report their WvW team
• Gadgets can now insert their shard names into their name if they know their WvW team
• WvW travel is free
• Clicking “Go to WvW” will close the score dialog now (by design)
• Squad members may now speak into the squad channel
• Removed /.sq dev command
• Added /squadjoin and /squadleave client commands
• Commanders are now named “Commander ”
• Players are no longer able to log back in to WvW maps
• Implemented /squadinfo and /supplyinfo

• Mystic Forge:

• Polish
• Added click and drag of slotted materials
• Added flames!
• Added a quantity check for ingredients that require a certain item count before we
request to forge a new item
• The Mystic Forge can take consumable subtypes
• Sparkly polish
• Now compares are weight class
• Now uses upgrade component types
• Added support for a “none” trinket type
• We hide the ingredient slots while animating then fade them back in when we display the
reward dialog
• Fixed being able to match item subtypes correctly if set to “any”

• Ranger:
• Pets can no longer be swapped out to instantly come back to life

Guild

• Fixed the guild vault to not crash other players who are viewing the Vault

Input Bindings

• The world map now closes while you’re in a cinematic
• The world map now shows up properly
• Ranger profession skill 2 now works
• Hooked up the WvW score screen to the new keybind action
• Extended mouse buttons work now
• Actions are now set to inactive when the Ul gains focus
• Added the option to reset all actions to their defaults
• Fixed some bugs with underwater interaction

Logging

• ItemDef logs the coin paid and the item now

Optimization

• Some backend stuff for the camera has been optimized
• If a controlled character is more than a certain distance away from a specific other
character, don’t update their terrain type (this prevents an extra raycast)
• WvW:
• Commander markers should no longer cause severe server lag

UI

• The hint dialog is disabled on non-dev builds
• The installer has been disabled on live
• Beginnings of the reward Ul have gone in
• The reward manager persists through different types of rewards (IE daily/monthly
achievement completion, map completion, tournament loot)
• VOcan now play for hints
• NPC interaction icons have been corrected
• Sorting arrows are no longer displayed if you cannot sort
• Shard selection dialog boxes resize themselves dynamically to fit the strings they contain
• Level up unlock alerts are now level up unlock hints
• Max level experience bar polish/issue fixup
• Character select doesn’t kick you back to character creation
• The commerce panel uses the commerce background again
• Inventory defaults to 5 units wide
• Achievement alert polish
• The party Ul shows team members again
• “Move to Target” option moved up in the options dialog
• Added a reset button to the Mystic Forge
• The experience bar can now show Glory
• Skill damage floaters are no longer deferred to later attacks
• Mystic item tooltips
• Fixed an image scaling bug
• Client gadgets were substituting Blue/Green shard names into the wrong areas
• Mystic Forge now pops up a dialog box when you discover a recipe
• Added a (possibly temporary) overflow label to the compass when in an overflow map
• Guaranteed and selectable rewards have been swapped
• Fixed a reward dialog sizing bug
• Added the option to disable AoE rings
• The experience bar displays properly at level 80
• Persistent reward select alerts show up under the map layer
• Hero dialog PvP polish
• Skill challenge markers should no longer be broken
• The window buttons have backgrounds
• Window visibility checks have been improved
• We now display the name of the item that’s in an invalid slot
• Added new URLs that direct to GW2 support
• Added character context menu options for travelling to a party member’s shard
• Select reward alerts have been moved away from the side of the screen
• Professions that did not have a hue value now have one
• Reward polish
• Only show the keybinds tab when logged in
• Compass:
• Reducing object count for better performance (for now)

• World select:
• Re-added world filtering that checks for content per world

• WvW:
• Enemy pets and players are named with their shard name instead of team color
• Sectors can be marked up to have their shard name displayed
• Added “Go to WvW” button to the WvW score screen
• Commander markers no longer disappear after exiting a siege weapon
• Join WvW buttons use the correct world name for maps and actually take players
to WvW on Alpha
• Left-clicking on a commander icon opens a context menu (with only one option
at the moment)
• The chat user context menu has an option to join that player’s squad

• Chat:

• Team chatting is prevented in all non-WvW and non-PvP maps
• Team chat is now game-server based
• Player scene and chatter lines are not shown as bubbles
• Support for map-wide chat (/shout, /yell, /y) has been hooked up
• /say and /local are now radius and reporting based instead of event based
(current radius is 2000)

• Hints:

• Dialog now updates as hints are completed
• Category heights are now consistent
• Downed penalty hint
• Conditions
• Boons
• Equipment broken
• Waypoints
• Achievements
• Damaged equipment
• Upgrade components
• Crafting stations
• Resource nodes
• Stealing
• Fixed the attunement hint
• Change the Adrenaline and Life Force hints to require two uses to complete
each hint
• Salvage kits
• Ranger pet bar
• Ranger pet controls
• Guardian virtues
• Mesmer shatters
• Engineer tool belt
• Meta events
• Renown rewards
• Ranger pet charm
• Pet panel
• Escape now cancels out of hints
• Added a “New” category to the hint dialog
• Added “NEW” indicators for recently completed hints
• Party invites
• Text now displays properly
• PvP:

• Fixed an error response from Play Now noticed during BWE1
• Added the tournament Ul (and polish)
• PvP now sends grand totals of glory and rank points earned during
the match for display on the client
• Match countdown UI
• Fixed the experience bar hiding in PvP
• Tournament roster fixes
• The match countdown isn’t displayed if you’re already in a match
• Tournament invite button bling
• Added a tooltip to the PvP scoreboard join team button
• The tournament roster now handles scrolling
• The roster size is limited to the max team size
• Added a roster button to the tournament details
• Cumulative Glory is no longer shown in the hero dialog
• Added more error strings for tournament errors
• The tournament roster now sorts

• Guild:

• Emblem – Update the paper doll when the guild changes
• The vault log shows the amounts that are deposited or withdrawn

• Mystic Forge:

• The “Forge” button will only be enabled when 4 items with a match are slotted
• Inventory items fade in/out over time
• General polish
• Enable/disable the craft and reset buttons based on the slotted item count

• Items:

• Transmuted items are no longer colored purple; they now take on the rarity
color of their attribute item
• Legendary items are now purple

• Launcher:

• Localized text and text box have been resized for the stress test
• The launcher now shows the amount downloaded
• Large numbers are no longer bugged
• Auto-play has been fixed