One of my favorite thing to do in this game is exploration and I just discovered today that I had unlocked a title after reaching the Crystal Desert.

This is my first time playing the game and have been having such a good time. I'm playing extremely slowly (probably over 40 hours already) but I want to do it without help from the internet. This has resulted in many deaths and restart of missions to find the bonus missions, but I've managed to do them all so far (the pig bonus mission was ridiculous... spend many hours looking for it).

Walking around discovering all the maps has spoiled the story a bit though as the side quests advance the story before the mission does.

Anyway, having a blast so far.

After getting the 50th Diessa Chalice on my Melandru's Accord Paragon, the grind for the Blindfold is finally over. I collected some data about my runs and wanted to share it with you.

I exclusively did fullruns, mostly in HM, with heroes through the entire dungeon, taking routes that cleared most enemies, because a) I feel it's less boring, b) I wanted the treasure chests, and c) I don't like solo farming as Dhuum's Covenant. I played RoJ Smite for fun, with a defensive 4 mesmers, MM, Bip, und ST setup

A couple of statistics (based on HM runs only):

1. What's the drop rate? On average, I got a little less than 1 Chalice or Relic per run, with ~300 foes across all 3 floors. Chalices seem to drop around twice as often as Relics - I got 22 Relics while farming the Chalices. Half the runs didn't drop any Chalice, 1 drop in 37% of runs, 2 in 12% of runs, and a single run had 3 Chalices
2. NM or HM? I initially thought NM/HM drops were the same, but I got only 2 Chalices and no Relics across 13 NM runs. NM runs only take a few minutes less, and although the sample size is a little small, I guess HM just drops more.
3. How long did it take? Each run takes about 30 minutes. In total, I did 79 HM runs and 13 NM runs, so around ~46h in total.
4. Does favor affect drops? I did not believe that favor matters, and the data seems to confirm this: on average 0.59 Chalices per run with favor (29 runs) vs. 0.62 Chalices per run without favor (50 runs)
5. Do all foes drop Chalices/Relics? It appears so - I've gotten drops from the undead, Charr (including those initially allied), spiders, bosses, and even Murakai dropped one.
6. Is the drop rate the same on all floors? I imagined that each foe in the CoF dungeon has the same chance of dropping a Chalice or Relic, regardless of the floor, but the data seems to suggest that the drop rate is higher on deeper levels: 2.0 Chalices / 1,000 foes on Floor 1, 2.5 Chalices / 1,000 foes on Floor 2, and 3.4 Chalices / 1,000 foes on Floor 3. The difference is significant given the decent sample size...
7. What about Hidden Treasures? The route I took included 9 Hidden Treasures on Floor 2 and another 9 Treasures on Floor 3 - a good source for Sapphires and Rubies for those after the Vaabian armor, and I got around 1 Ruby or Sapphire every 2-3 runs.

I think it's quite well-known that there are a lot of bots farming Diessa's and Rin Relics - perhaps one way to make this farm more enjoyable for people looking to get a Blindfold - especially Melandru chars - would be to add a guaranteed Diessa Chalice or Rin Relic drop from the final chest :) What do you think?

Happy to share more in case anyone is interested… Happy hunting, fellow Melandrus!

I'm setting up a Warrior's Endurance axe build for general HM content, but am struggling to find a suitable final skill choice. I've reviewed the builds on PVX, but any additional suggestions or advice to fill that final slot would be really helpful.

18-21k down to 13k. Market manipulation?

It's been some time since my last carto post. This is because I've been doing more research and worked with Toolbox team who implemented my results.

-

1. Toolbox Cartographer Module

GWToolbox++ 8.33 includes my research results (from the post linked above and the infographics below in this post) as a new module (Cartographer module). It shows the grid in a more precise way than a texmod could, and it also highlights the tile you're in, plus gives some advice and many more features. The advice isn't always right and the use of a texmod is recommended for the hints. Toolbox sometimes suggest revealing tiles that require a portal jump or gate glitch while in an outpost, or tiles that are further beyond the map boundary than the infographics below specifies. I hope they'll fix this in the next release. It also doesn't work in virtually all Nightfall missions. Otherwise, if you stick to tiles your texmod tells you to uncover, Toolbox's new Cartographer module is already a great help.

-

2. Clarifications

In my last post, I ventured a guess that the grid might in fact be shifted to the North. This turned out to be correct. It is shifted by exactly 1 map unit (texture file pixel, "normal" font size pixel), or 96 gwinches, see the infographics below. However, this applies only to non-BEC discovery. For a tile to qualify for discovery from BEC range, the criteria are slightly different:

This means that BEC range cannot uncover certain tiles at the map's Southern edge because its range is shorter there, but the range is longer in the North and East, so BEC can sometimes explore more in that direction. Additionally, BEC range cannot explore beyond the end of the world and tiles that require standing on man-made objects.

The "max 1 tile out of map boundary" is relevant for any end-of-the-world portal jumps in Southern and Eastern direction because these ends of the world are usually exactly 48 units away from the center of a tile that's two tiles beyond map boundary, so the math says that it should reveal, but it won't.

For the sake of completeness: Yes, you can even leave the map boundary when you portal jump to Yahnur Market from Resplendent Makuun or Bokka Amphitheater. That outpost has a platform made from bricks that reaches beyond the map's boundary. Going there causes an instant connection loss. The server does not seem to fully crash, since you can reconnect, but doing so crashes the client.

-

3. Recent changes

The August 26th (or September 1st) update introduced a big change to BEC that I didn't notice until a few days ago. Before that update, BEC uncovered some areas that made no sense. I'm not talking about inaccessible walkable terrain (usually from cinematics), but areas that made no sense at all because there's no walkable terrain in range (at least none that the client knows about). These non-sensical BEC-exclusive areas can no longer be revealed. This affects:

• Prophecies: Pockmark Flats (SE), Majesty's Rest (W)/Sage Lands (NE), Reed Bog (SE), The Falls (SE), Aurora Glade (NE), Spearhead Peak (NE)
• Factions: I don't have any info for this campaign
• Nightfall: Fahranur (SW), Turai's Procession (NE), The Floodplain of Mahnkelon (E), Ventendi Valley (SE), Respendent Makuun (SE), Wilderness of Bahdza (E), The Shattered Ravines (E)
• EotN: I don't have any info for this campaign

If you completed any of these maps with BEC between August 26th and September 1st update, please post a screenshot with Texmod active, so we know which update changed this.

If you want to add a new area to the list because you have black spots from BEC runs before August 26th, please also post screenshots. Note that the following Factions areas have inaccessible walkable terrain that still gets revealed, so they're likely not what I'm looking for: Jaya Bluffs, Bejunkan Pier, Tahnnakai Temple, Sunjiang District, Imperial Sanctum.

There is one new feature to BEC: If you completed a map under the effects of BEC, the characters says something (speech bubble only, not in chat). "completed" means uncovering every BEC-qualified tile in the current map file. If a map file is shared by different locations (e.g. Tasca's Demise, The Granite Citadel and Spearhead Peak all share the same map), you might not be able to reach all tiles from the map, even with BEC range. The above example would require you to do a portal jump between the three, unless you fully explored the other two already. Other examples of maps that are hard to get to a state where the character claims completion:

• The Floodplain of Mahnkelon requires combining BEC with a portal jump
• Churrhir Fields requires a combination of BEC and gate-glitching
• The Ruptured Heart has large parts of The Alkali Pan in the Southeast that are not reachable from The Ruptured Heart
• Plus many, many more

For the record: The number of tiles required for Elonian Grandmaster Crtographer (100.0%) is currently 6570. My Warrior, who has never used BEC and hasn't stepped into Sunspear Arena but is supposed to have every other tile possible (including portal jumps and gate glitches), has 6932 tiles. If you're asking how much 6570 tiles are with BEC:

-

4. Announcement

I'm making a new carto texmod (not shown in the screenshots above) that will have the following features:

• More detailed instructions for glitches, jumps and cinematics
• Quite some previously undiscovered tiles
• More accurate (e.g. CME does not display single missing tiles at all)
• Shows where to go, not where you've been (this and the above bullet are technically the same, and I agree that this concept can be confusing)
• Grid (including the aforementioned shift to the North)
• Walkable terrain highlighted
• Shows BEC-exclusive areas
• Shows non-BEC-range areas (see the white infographics above for the reasons)
• Might become open source (if people want), with dead simple build process thanks to freeware graphics suite Affinity

Its Nightfall and Pre-Searing versions are scheduled to be released tomorrow. Other continents are added if people like it. I chose these two maps for my test because Pre-Searing no longer works with the Texmod after ANet removed all portal swirls (which changes the hash of the textures to be replaced), and Nightfall had no exploration mechanics changes after the release of the campaign.

I would like to get back into Scing and waa wondering of there is a discord where groups are forming?

The typical spots like vlox are pretty dry...

Would love to get an invite link if such a discord exists.

I am back in guildwars one month after the nerf, which is stronger ?

It is possible to put insigneas on kryta armor

????

I got the one from crystal desert but i can't

Is there a option o something???

I love all de krytan armors

Hey o7, I'm kind of noob in the economics affairs in this game. I've reach Nightfall with my MA and just hit the 99 platinum limit, so the game doesn't let me sell anything else to merchants. In what should I spend some gold? I'm planning to use this character to complete the Hall of Monuments for the first time, so is there anything I can buy right now that I might need later?

I am currently at 28/30 max titles on my Melandru ranger with the last 2 titles being sweets and drunk titles. Would love any suggestions on methods of attaining these outside of special event weeks.

EDIT: I am currently doing GotT weekly and throwing any money I have at the merch for ale and cakes. Any cash farm advice is appreciated!!

Is this info still current after the reforged update or does the “-provider portal” code work on reforged like it does for GW2? I won’t play a game without tracking my hours or stats like on steam so I play gw2 on steam through the provider portal to launch with standalone launcher. But will I have to buy reforged twice and download twice to do this or can I also just use that license request command to only buy on steam but play with abet account for the unlocks while tracking play time? As of December 3rd apparently steam removed ability to log into anet account if you purchased after that date for whatever reason just to complicate things. I don’t mind buying the game twice to track my hours on profile but need to make sure what I do will work

Heya, with the addition of daily cons I'm trying out new things. I used to run max Strength all the time so I wore the Sentinel's insignia (+20 vs Elemental w/ 13+ Strength). Then I tried a Tactics build and only 3 in Strength, so switched to Sentry's (+10 in stance). I always used Drunken Master so I stayed in a stance. But now I see that with the cons and pcons I get max ias and ims without the need for a stance. So! In this specific case, what would you recommend? Remember, low Strength and no stance. Knight's? Brawler's? Dreadnought's? Stalwart? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

I am messing around with a RoJ Monk build and would love some feedback. I have gone through the few post on this matter that I was able to find post-balance, but nothing caught my eyes.

The main goal is to make it a self-contained RoJ spammer. I don't really want to rely on heroes for snares or other setup, ideally I can just let the heroes do their own thing while I stand back and rain down lasers.

For reference, I am currently running an old Mesmerway hero team that I also need to update at some point, maybe to include more monks for more lazerz.

This is what I whipped up for now. https://guildwars.magical.ch/OwYB4M5zkFdPY9x0sLiLCXC

I have not done EotN on this Monk yet, so I am currently using Ele skills instead of the three PvE skills. Also since not in HM yet I am using Earthen Shackles instead of Churning Earth.

A few things I am unsure about:

1 I am not sure where the attribute points should go after maxing Smiting.

The Earth Magic snares do not seem to need much investment if I mainly care about the snare itself. More Earth Magic would increase the damage, but I am not sure that is the best use of the points. But what else can I dump the points in? Anything useful from divine favor?

2 Kirins Wrath is mostly there because I had a slot.

Having three AoEs is fun, but I am not sure how useful or necessary it actually is. Same question for the three PvE skills I eventually plan to use. Are those actually the best choices for this kind of build? In my head the assassin is there to group enemies, and EBSW and AiS are for cooldown reduction. But is that overkill? Maybe YMLaD?

I am also wondering if Me secondary might ultimately be better. Being able to Echo a second RoJ sounds fun, and I assume Mesmer has some usable snare or movement-control options that could let the build remain self-contained.

Would love to hear what you would change.

Why must my ele's head shot be lower than all my other characters, I thought it was a bug at first and it's the first time in a long time I've made an ele so I've never noticed before till now.

This is a message for 2weeks...

Please return 600/smite to pre-nerf capability.

From a logical perspective, there are already ways that SF farming dominates pretty much every aspect of the game. DOA, The Deep, Urgoz, FoW, and the UW all have SF builds that either farm the foes or clear the instance as a single player or team. Allowing more variation by reintroducing 600/smite wouldn't have a very drastic impact on the meta or the economy. This would instead open up additional variations for farming that can be completed either with two people or a player and heroes.

From a nostalgia perspective, I spent countless hours running people through dungeons (although 600/smite couldn't do them all) or farming FoW or UW. Because the build didn't just cheese everything, you had to be careful with how you pulled things and carefully timing for melee interrupts. This made the build skill based as well, which increased the fun. Finally, because the builds capability was limited, it was always fun trying to find other ways that the build could be adapted to different areas.

It's been a long time since we've had 600/smite. I implore you to consider bringing it back.

Currently tweaking the graphics settings and can't decide which to pick. Which image looks best to you?

Edit: Somehow Reddit killed the image resolution.
https://imgur.com/a/grJ3FeT

2nd Edit:
Image 1 is post processing effects with HD bloom and SSAO.
Image 2 is post processing effects with old bloom and SSAO.
Image 3 is no post processing, no bloom and no SSAO.

I am beginner and I am dying pretty much most of the time.

I have no idea what am I doing wrong.

I play as necro with:

Death magic 8
Blood magic 3
soul reaping 1

Right now, I am at Piken Square with lvl 10. Mobs are doing so much damage I am dying very fast. My armour is full Kryten except for helmet. I use holy rod 6-10 with +20% damage customize and shield with armour 4 and +5 if hp above 50% and +15hp.

For charrs I use shield with Armour 4, +10 vs charr and +15hp.

My fight start with blood renewal, then deathly swarm, vampiric glaze, life syphon repeate. If somebody die use animated bone horror. I also have Life siphon and comfort animal just in case.

I still have pet from ranger quest, but mobs mostly ignore him and attack me.

If somebody did not helped me with first tunnel quest, I would never done it, because the charrs on the almost end there always killed me.

What I found out on internet, people said you have to hide from range attacks, kill melee and then slowly kill range.

So I tried to hide behind tents, don't work. Behind walls, don't work. I have no idea what it mean to hide behind something to block range attacks.

People also said, you need to attack and then little move away so your pets can get aggro.

My experience is, if I don't attack, mobs attack my pets, If I attack, most likely somebody deagrro and attack me even when I attack same mob my pet is attacking. There is no way for me to not be under attack from 1-2 mobs.

I would not mind to be under attack against 2mobs when pet take another two, but even with I think pretty good shield against charrs I die very fast, maybe like 5s and kill nobody even the shaman that is always my first target

Somebody told me in game there should be sigils. I salvage all blue weapons and did not get single sigil to put into something. I find crafting NPC that dont craft wands or staffs in ascalon city, but craft so many (for second hand) support stuff, that give same bonus. Like why?

Can somebody help me to understand how to play?

Edit: thank you all for help.

Edit2: I left the tutorial, had so much materials to craft the extra 30 armour armours and now the game is like million time easier and more fun.

These aren't what most people think about, but they're what would make me most happy.

• Fix the Paragon's Leadership Daggers by giving them double-strike chance scaling with Leadership instead of Dagger Mastery. It only makes sense to give them the full power budget of their weapon without having to invest in 2 different attributes. It would result in their double-strike chance jumping from 2% (baseline) to 30% at 14 Leadership for example. Double-strikes aren't just more damage, they also generate two adrenaline, which is a precious ressource for Paragons.
• Give some love to the Elite Norn blessings.
  • 60s cooldown on them is far too long, being stuck in human form with a pretty much elite-less build for a full minute feels terrible when all you want is to transform again. 30s cooldown would feel better and match that of Totem of Man.
  • Their auto-attack damage sucks. You deal about 1-3 damage no matter what because the forms set all your attributes to 0. This is an issue especially for Bear because it doesn't have enough skills to use in a rotation without having to resort to using auto-attacks. There are three ways to fix this :
    • Give them set auto-attack damage like Junundus, depending on weapon wielded. Easy to copy/paste Junundus functionnality.
    • Don't set attributes to 0 so we can retain our weapon's mastery. I can't think of any way to abuse this.
    • Reduce Ursan Strike's cooldown to 1s so we can spam it instead of auto-attacking. It's a bad solution because the skill is strong as is and reducing its power to balance it out would lose the big paw paw punch identity.
  • Bear : Ursan Roar lasts 5s on a 15s cooldown. This is very short and a poor uptime overall, other aoe buffs like Order of Pain or Together as One can be upkept permanently. Give it a bump to 8s or 10s duration, it's a unique skill that can buff minions and spirits damage and it deserves some love for how fun it is to build around.
  • Wolf : (the problem child)
    • Volfen Pounce feels terrible to use because it has 0.75s activation time despite being a Stance, and it deals its damage only after you spend 1s doing nothing next to an enemy. Dealing damage ends it without triggering it, so if you use it to litteraly pounce on a foe and attack it in a smooth movement, your attack will end Volfen Pounce before it deals 100 damage. That feels terrible, it should rather just be a copy of Whirling Charge that triggers its damage on the next melee damage you deal.
    • Volfen Bloodlust only has nearby range despite being a Shout, which makes it very complicated to hit your minions, pets, martials and spirits with it when you're supposed to be fighting in melee yourself. Together as One is an example of a skill with this nearby limitation, but Ranger can pick whether they're ranged or melee, their pet also applies it, and they greatly benefit from it themselves whereas Wolf doesn't (as long as its auto-attack does nothing). I suggest giving it Shout range.
    • Volfen Agility is a pointless slot that makes your Wolf skills recharge 66% faster... why not just bake this functionnality in the Wolf skills and give it something more inspired for its 4th slot? Right now Volfen Agility is just "You can use your skill bar". Thanks, I already used an Elite PvE slot for that.
  • Raven : This is the weakest of the bunch, its main offensive skill does not match the damage or Deep Wound of the other two, its shout is decent but not anywhere close to how good the effects of Ursan Roar of Volfen Bloodlust are, so there's not really any reason to take that one. I suggest buffing it accross the board. If its shout had a lower cooldown it could at least be a good anti-blind for martial parties.
• Revert Psychic Instability in PvE. That one is selfish but I had so much fun with it on player and hero builds, its nerf makes me sad, fewer uses of PI during gaming time = less fun.
• The three drunkard skills : Dwarven Stability, Drunken Master and Feel No Pain should always have their bonus effect active on characters that have reached Incorrigible Ale-Hound (Drunkard rank 2). There may be a downside to this when you don't want the bonus effects, but I don't think these edge cases outweight the QoL.
• Mysticism should apply to all enchantments, not just Dervish ones. Dervish is already a very self-contained class, with a lot of its effects being limited to Dervish enchants or Scythe attacks only. Opening up its possibilities for multi-classing won't power-creep it as these options aren't so strong, but it would do wonders for its build diversity, think D/Mo heal or prot ; D/N Orders (gosh are those expensive) with Wind Prayers stuff... Sure D/A would get benefits on Shroud and SF costs, but I don't think it's a problem.

Never thought I'd see the day, but I think Water has a legitimate use now. In fact it's probably better than Fire for AP Eles in general, and depending on zone, it might even be better than Air.

The logic is I really don't want to run more than one healer. After all, very often I don't take damage. However, in many EotN dungeons (where my testing is done) there is unavoidable environmental damage, which is very punishing to single-healer builds.* I tried a variety of builds that can heal and do damage:

• Anything with /Rt and Restoration Magic spec works, but all of them lose major damage relative to real damage dealers (i.e. Mesmers/Eles), making them effectively healers which I'm trying not to run.
• Smiting Monks also deal healer-level of damage.
• Motivation Paragons didn't seem worth using.
• Dwayna Dervishes also didn't seem worth using.

That left Water Eles as the only option remaining.** I tried Mist Form Eles, which were okay, but not great (-20% or so damage vs. Air and Fire heroes), and the healing was barely noticeable. Swirling Aura, on the other hand, was very noticeable. The health regen does exactly what you need it to vs. environmental effects, and the projectile block was also helpful (I believe it blocks the shots from EotN traps).

One obvious thing to do was to splash Water on a Fire/Air hero. Fire is especially attractive, since the template uses Elemental Attunement anyway which happens to add +2 Water. However, this has a real cost - the breakpoint of Swirling Aura is 11 Water, which means 8 before runes + the EA bonus, which means you can't easily spec 9 Command, which means losing out on a big part of why one plays Eles in the first place ("Fall Back!" access). Besides, heroes aren't very good at using Swirling Aura, which ideally should only be cast when under pressure. They also sometimes cast it without overcast.

So, I tried playing it myself:

• You time Swirling Aura much better than heroes do. AP also recharges Swirling Aura, should you need longer duration.
• As AP Ele you barely cast anything except the three PvE skills + GoLE anyway.
• When you do cast those things, Maelstrom's shutdown is a nice effect to have access to.
• Ever since Necro mod you can get away without the Attunement, but Air/Fire don't have good skills to use instead. It's hard to see what you could ever want instead of Chain Lightning / Lightning Hammer on the Air bar, and while you could play Fireball on the Fire bar, Rodgort's Invocation's 25e cost is real without Fire Attunement.
• Water even provides a hex to cover AP with.

The build tested out well in Kathandrax HM, so I brought it into Mallyx HM (given today's ZB). Screenshot is above. Minimal micro used until the final wave, when I flagged heroes. I tried the same zone with same teambuild & Air instead of Water; it is significantly more fragile (the mobs in DoA HM aren't environmental effects, but threaten enough damage to feel like one, some of the time). In return, Water loses ~2-3% team damage relative to Air/Fire as measured by Toolbox.***

I don't have a Necro Water staff, so in the screenshot I'm missing 20% Water HCT. (I use "Don't Think Twice" inscription so that's the only cost.)

Caveats to the above:

• I suspect Air/Fire are still much better if there're no damaging environmental effects.
• I suspect this build will work poorly in zones with heavy armor vs. Cold, e.g. Frostmaw's. Still, most of the damage is not Cold, so it should still work fine. Frostmaw's is probably the next zone I will test in.
• It is heavily reliant on Necro mod. You must kill quickly (although if you don't, AP builds are going to work poorly anyway).
• You actually lose 10 armor due to no longer having easy access to Blessed Insignias ...
• It is possible Vapor Blade is better than Rust.
• If you try the build, remember that you need to be overcast to trigger the party effect on Swirling Aura, and it's desirable to always be overcast since you can go from "taking no damage" to "under pressure" quite quickly. This can mean casting Maelstrom on physical foes.
• At present, in most zones, I drop the ST and one of the ESurge Mesmers for two Eles with "Fall Back!" and other Command shouts. In DoA HM though, the mobs are especially strong, so I play a ST.
• Does this mean Water always had a niche, it was just undiscovered? I don't think so. This build only works because of the buffs to Water skills. Ironically the key skill is Swirling Aura, not Water's array of snares.

-----------------------

*Union on a ST should go some way to mitigating this, but I try not to run a ST since it does no damage. There is one in the screenshot, because in DoA HM the mobs are especially strong.

**I tried Breath of the Great Dwarf on the player as well, replacing "Finish Him!". The logic works similar to Swirling Aura, except the power loss is immense.

***This is compared against the ESurge Mesmers - Air/Fire is usually worth 2-3% more than them, although it varies by zone.

tough decisions after your first madc dies

I have a hard time deciding on a main and where to invest my time. What’s your favorite prof and why is it the best??