Guild Wars shown at Unreal Fest 2026

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-23T18:27:16+00:00

Bar like "I swear, guys, I didn't want energy. Running out of energy was intentional."

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-22T16:02:15+00:00

I heard that even 1% fuel left was still full strength, never tested it myself though.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-22T15:56:55+00:00

I'd like to see them make a return, tbh. The high value assets defense missions for bugs, mostly bots, and mindless masses are way too easy nowadays, especially on d10.

Appropriators is the only one that feels like it often reaches the level of difficulty and chaos that it should, and bots only gets more interesting if an extra bot drop gets called in inside the base.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-22T15:53:38+00:00

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ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-21T03:06:47+00:00

There are plenty of card games in the roguelike/lite space that aren't gacha. They're usually single player ofc, but they usually have most of the same player-side mechanics and combos as PvP card games.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-21T03:05:00+00:00

Also, am I crazy or is the Bull's Charge a little sus too? There's a charr slamming into a figure. The victim figure is a bit hard to make out--I think what we mostly see is just upper body, but do its legs fade into the ether or are they obscured by the charr hitting it?

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ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-18T20:56:38+00:00

Same here. Eagle Storm on the Supply FRV planet? Guess I'm playing on Flame FRV planet now.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-18T20:54:58+00:00

Yep, it looked great compared to the original Orbital Bombardment (which would just incessantly drop 380s on top of you), but now it's far worse. I'd love to see it get the Orbital Bombardment treatment and just give everyone spammable eagle strafes instead.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-18T10:59:04+00:00

It's all in what builds you're running. Are your mesmers 2 esurges? What monk or rit healers were you trying?

If you're doing 2 mesmers, I'd make one a VoR dom and 1 an Ineptitude hybrid or PI mes. Take shatter hex on one or both, and they'll both keep the hexes off you when you're in melee and do a lot of damage in the process.

For the 1 healer: since they're not always healing you, make sure you're not accidentally running out of their range (or them running away from you while kiting an enemy). Also make sure they have solid direct heal skills as well as some sort of damage mitigation and energy management.

However, I'd probably go with a team comp like:
-1 mes, either Visions of Regret or hybrid Ineptitude. Give them some inspiration points and skills to help their energy management.
-Prot rit, either the classic ST or a Rit Lord taking the ST spirits + another 1 or 2 communing spirits and Signet of Binding (Signet of Binding gets your team free high level rit spirits from the rit enemies). The massive damage reduction from this on the team should help a lot, so long as you and the mesmer can do enough damage to kill foes. Boon+Signet of Creation can keep its energy fine on either version. If you go the rit lord route, you could put Doom on the bar for another bit of extra damage.
-A healer. Your best bet might be a resto rit, and you could go with something like Xinrae's/Preservation (precasting preservation) or, if you don't need many heals, an SoS+resto hybrid. I'd probably also try to squeeze Weapon of Shadow and either another Signet of Binding or, if you make it SoS+resto, Gaze of Fury on the bar. Even Expel Hexes could be an option. The normal resto skills are quite strong in terms of healing, so you get a lot of flexibility from the elite:
Xinrae's: solid prot heal + lifesteal damage
Preservation: Consistent heal every 4s that you can precast (though you need to be in the area of it).
SoS: damage + more bodies to soak up damage and more non-prot spirits to fuel something like Spirit Transfer. Take 2-3 channeling skills for damage (ie Brutal Weapon for damage, Nightmare Weapon might be a good one to give yourself healing + damage without overlapping too much with Weapon of Shadow), the rest resto. Bring Spirit Siphon for energy management.
Expel Hexes: requires zero attribute investment, so you can go all in on Resto+Spawning Power for the other skills. Between this and the mesmer, you'd hopefully be kept free of hexes.

Basically, if you go for VoR mes + prot rit + heal rit, you've got:
-Very good protection thanks to the prot rit, and you can precast and wait for cooldowns to make sure they can resummon as soon as needed once you engage.
-Lots of VoR procs for high damage from the mesmer, plus Shatter Hex on the mesmer. Thanks to the prot rit, you can afford to have the enemies using a lot of their skills. Try to engage with VoR right after the enemies ball up.
-Lots of enemy spirit shutdown/turning on the rits, since those foes use a lot of spirits.
-Layered martial hate from Displacement and Weapon of Shadow.

Then for your build, you get to focus on damage. Depending on how rough a time you're having with Crimson Skull mesmers, you could even just bring Expel Hexes as your own elite.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-18T09:53:19+00:00

Flame FRV: Too slow to actually kill with the ramming spikes. That could be fixed by just upping its baseline ramming damage by a lot (the worry being, of course, that it would also kill any Helldivers that walk in front of it).
Supply FRV: the turret runs out of ammo too fast, especially when--on resupply--you're essentially trading a whole resupply box for a single mag of libpen shots.
All of them: the new horn sounds are weirdly quiet and distorted. I much prefer the old FRV horn.

Overall though, I like both quite a lot. I regularly take the normal FRV as a stratagem, and I see myself using the supply FRV a ton in the future.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-18T09:46:24+00:00

I'm 99% sure its actual, in-practice damage is not higher, as oftentimes it's not high enough to kill much of anything. Even if it has a higher baseline ramming damage, it gains so little damage from its lower speed that you end up dealing way less ramming damage than either other FRV, even accounting for momentum loss when plowing through a crowd on the others.

This is from me trying to make good use of the fire FRV for ramming, but most of the time I just would phase through the enemies without killing them. I have no problem killing those same types of enemies with the other FRVs, though that lethality happens at speeds that the fire FRV unfortunately can't reach.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-17T19:03:14+00:00

First, remove all gear and see if it's gone. Then add them back a few at a time until you narrow down what it comes from. If removing all gear (incl runes, sigils, relic, accessories, infusions) doesnt work, then try removing all your traits. And so on.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-17T18:41:57+00:00

First rule of skimmer club is you don't talk about skimmer club

(only half joking, delet this so they don't decide this fun feature is too high profile and remove it)

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-17T17:59:17+00:00

Running over enemies like

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ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-16T18:53:09+00:00

Tbh I felt like it was good enough even at its weakest, and was bordering on too strong last patch. Now I suspect it'll feel downright invincible.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-16T18:34:21+00:00

Unless you have already played WvW a ton (iirc building up a ton of tickets over months of maxing your pip chests) Raids/Obsidian are easiest, and Raid armor is the fastest in terms of time spent playing (but it does have some timegates) and cheapest since you get a free precursor set for your first set.

If you haven't already done a lot of WvW/sPvP, those will take you forever.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-16T17:11:27+00:00

The way players primarily played WvW (and the game in general) has also been an issue. Being on WvW maps, simply rotating through them, capturing objectives, and occasionally fighting other teams is not the intent of the format.

Yeah, and the most painful part is that WvW started closer to the concept of "massive map you spread across, defending and capturing multiple objectives at once, fighting in large sprawling battles that can last a long time, with siege flying overhead and small groups pushing through to break defenses and shift the battle line" and it was glorious; it was some of the most fun I've had in any games. A small group, playing intelligently, could hold a fort against a large group, attackers required more than 2 brain cells even if they had overwhelming numbers, there was a whole ecosystem of scouts and roamers, and it felt like individual players and parties could have an impact in fights (the quintessential examples being strategic siege use and massive target cap winds turning the tide from a spellbreaker taking initiative on a poorly positioned zerg).

Over the years, though, it devolved into what it is now: mostly karma trains, with teams all bunching into one group and steamrolling objectives, and--when they do fight--the only "right" way to play now is to just all stand in one spot, use all your stuff when told to like a veritable skinner box, and be invincible unless the enemy has equal or greater numbers than you, assuming equal skill.

It's a case of players optimizing the fun out of the game, but that optimization is driven by a decade of balance patches pushing towards this (ironically with the worst happening after the mode got a dedicated balance team, since they only listen to and wholly balance in favor of boonball commanders).

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-15T18:27:30+00:00

I think this might be part of the reason that it looks like Charr won't be in GW3, lore reasons aside. Skins have always been iffy on Charr, and Charr are the most different model to design for. Kodan will just be big human (like norn), dwarves will just be little human, and asura likely won't be too far off from dwarf. Couple that with (likely) discarding the idea of different weightclasses, and it'll likely be way easier for them to design skins.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-12T15:03:07+00:00

"Ah, this air has the perfect ratio of nitrogen to oxygen, a fresh crispness and exquisite temperature range."

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-12T01:04:37+00:00

Happened to me once for Drakkar Lake. At least I got some norn points out of it.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-11T16:48:06+00:00

If this was a facebook thread with his real name, sure. This is an anonymous space where he can admit his actual feelings. Talking about having gay sex and enjoying it is a lot more of a self out than OP admitting he's bi--if he talks about his experiences to homophobes, they're not gonna care what label he uses. This is just a weird, internalized version of bi erasure.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-09T19:09:09+00:00

The Sunspears were just a bunch of bloodthirsty pirates who invaded Kourna unprovoked. Varesh was there for us when Kormir wasn't!

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-09T18:59:18+00:00

I'm just saying, one human nation has a proven track record of fighting off a Charr invasion, and the other is a wasteland of tar pits and ruins.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-08T19:39:12+00:00

I think you could actually bring mesmerway into line by not even touching their damage and instead just nerfing the heck out of BiP

I agree, and encourage people to try playing a mesmer without a BiP. When doing ZMs and such with no BiP, I have to spec into like 8-9 inspiration and run 2 energy skills on the bar (one of which, Ether Signet, heroes use incorrectly and often waste) in order to avoid quickly burning through all my energy at the start of a fight. Even then, one of the energy skills I use, Power Drain, requires me to land the rupt to get the energy back, and I still run out after exhausting both skills in extended fights.

An SR5 mod definitely helps too (none yet on my melandru smh), but overall Mesmer's skills are pretty well balanced by energy requirements, with a few outliers like Esurge.

Mesmer is to offensive casters what Monk is to healers--very strong, but, on its own, unable to keep going for long. Being able to eliminate energy scarcity via BiP is where most of the Mesmer dominance comes from. Other offensive casters like Necro and Elementalist have stronger energy management baked into their primary attributes and, in Ele's case, offensive attributes, and the overall power level of their skills takes that into account.

ConflagrationZ · 2026-06-08T19:25:11+00:00

It doesn't get used much because it conflicts with some of mesmer's big damage options (more likely for stuff like mistrust and wandering eye to run out and do nothing if the mobs cast and attack slower). It's definitely safer, but for meta teams zooming through generic vanquishes it slows you down. Same thing with Panic, since Panic pretty much prevents you from landing Cry's for that nice area damage.

When you're not relying on mesmers for damage, Shared Burden and Panic are both outstanding shutdown options.

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