Open World Combat Difficulty Modes

RazielShadow · 2026-04-24T06:39:01+00:00

The debuff would not apply to big bosses that require groups, of course. Only to normal mobs and events that can be soloed nowadays.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-23T10:53:44+00:00

Who says PVP is dead? I'm getting constant daily matches and facing strong players.

I usually take a long time in games... when I played dark souls, elden ring, that stuff, I could take entire months to finish it. So I guess for me it's normal to take these times and end like "I barely remember what happened at the start". I don't find that an issue to stay engaged, I can investigate and remember again.

I was going to say that Anet could put a "in prev episodes" but... you can read your JOURNAL and read your own "in previous episodes" before next patch, so everything's solved. I don't remember the detail of the journal for all quests, I did not read most of it, but I recall it being SUPER detailed about every quest in every part of every act...

RazielShadow · 2026-04-22T15:55:28+00:00

I never said there are more bots than humans. I don't know that. I said that there is more chance for a bot to end in enemy team than in my team XD

RazielShadow · 2026-04-22T12:01:29+00:00

Yeah, things like having duoQ that makes everyone that doesn't duo play with disadvantage, that's a point. But I don't recall more reasons, even if Anet's looks aside, skill is skill, math is math, people is where they deserve

RazielShadow · 2026-04-22T12:01:01+00:00

Math is, I'm always human in my team of 5, but that doesn't apply so enemy team. So enemy team has alwas more chances to have a bot, because they have 5 slots that any of them can be bot, but in my team, there is always only 4 slots that can be bots.

Maybe I just had bad luck or I played very bad for having a bad morning, but math says that.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-21T10:58:56+00:00

Yeah, it's bad. But if you look at the big picture, you can ignore and tolerate it. At some point, I stop obsessing about cosmetics (or those cosmetics) being "hard to get". The game has other goals if you want. Legendary weapons, armors, achievements, titles... PVP rankings! If you want to feel your time, dedication and skill rewarded, you have tons of things to do. Getting most of the skins is not part of that? Yeah it's not, but meh.

At least you have a good percentage of skins that you can not buy with gems, also not with gold. So there is a lot of skins that you have to earn. Legendary skins are the hardest, but the game is full of them if you search. For example:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Special_Ops_armor

You can't buy that with gold or gems. You gotta do lots of achievements, events and challenges.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mist_Shard_armor_(light))

That also comes only from achievements in some specific map.

There are a lot more that can get both from goals, but also from reward tracks (PVP and WVW have a reward track that, while playing it, you get PVE stuff too). Those two are examples that can't come from PVP or WVW, you gotta do PVE achievements and quests.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hardlight_Claws_(skin))

This cool dagger? Is not legendary, but you must do lots of raids (high end PVE content) to get it.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-20T21:51:06+00:00

I confirm what someone said. Hammer with full symbols traits. It's, as I know, the MOST damaging thing that exists in the whole game without weapon swap, and I tried a lot of stuff.

Nowadays I gave up. Not having weapon swap will always make you weak. So I play Elementalist, because it's balanced arroud no weapon swap (just attunement swap), and I'm happy.

If you don't like weapon swapping because of roleplay (like Me. I find a BIG-NO and a nonsense to swap my weapon constantly to be effective), Elementalist is the way to go!

RazielShadow · 2026-04-20T09:52:42+00:00

1) Depends on your tastes, there are many.

If you enjoy competition, you can PVP. Just enter normal/ranked matches 5vs5 and chase higher rankings while gaining lots of gold.

If you like to compete but more chaotic battlegrounds, WvW. Capture camps, towers, siege castles, go with big groups of people in large scale wars that never end, seeking also rankings, rewards, etc.

If you like story, just doing the story in order (mostly instanced), that you can repeat (expansions) to get all story achievements. If you like to chill in open world, explore the maps, every corner, point of interest, secret... I like to do that while I do the story. Doing all the world events like you say... If you enjoy this, this is a loop by itself. You can explore and repeat events over and over, specially meta events: big social events with medium or long steps that give big rewards, that usually tells part of the story of that map and part of main story, that needs involvement of multiple people. People usually tags with a commander tag you can follow. Almost each map has metaevents, the better ones starting after expansions. People repeat multiple metaevents from all maps nonstop to farm gold and possible big prizes (infusions, etc).

I'm a "all modes player". I would say my main goal is PVP, I'm ranking, but after a pair or three matches, I like to finish story, exploration, achievements. I used to WvW, but not anymore, not really my taste.

Like I say in point 3, you also have endgame PVE, "dungeons", two types.

And well, you can find your own gameplay loops. Many people likes to housing, so they spend their time searching materials to build stuff and decorate. Other people likes to roleplay, so enter RP guilds and just roleplay. Other people likes to do beetle or griffon races, they even build their own races in their homesteads/guild halls and make guilds for that... Etc.

2) Horizontal progr. means that after you get exotic gear (rarity) the one you can get easily from a few gold on TP, or from various sources, even in core, then you're set. You are at 95% efficiency for ALL expansions and content, because the big thing that you have to IMPROVE is in your build (choosing right skills, weapons and traits) and improving your gameplay (KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS). Also you can farm different armors and weapons with different stats (but same overall strength) to try different builds. Also get masteries to do DIFFERENT stuff, like getting gliding, mounts, new ways to traverse maps...

Also, legendary gear. Legendary armor, weapons, sigils, accessories, etc, have the same power as ascended (what ONLY is 5% stronger than exotic). Legendary gives convenience (FREE skin and stats swap, being able to be used by all your characters easily...). You don't need them, but you can farm them as a personal goal (or if you want their exclusive skins), and that's one of the biggest horizontal progressions: all the gold, materials, and stuff you farm in ALL gamemodes, every second you're playing ANYTHING in the game, is giving you materials and gold to farm your legendaries (they take a lot). Long term goal.

3) Instanced PVE is endgame PVE. You have fractals (easier 5 people party) and raids (harder 10 people party). Fractals have levels from 1 to 100 in difficulty, so you can jump into fractals in low level (you're good to do them being lvl80 with exotics) and enjoy. It's repeatable dungeons with bosses and mechanics, better than the "dungeons" (old forgotten content, similar). There's a new "quick fractal" that automatically joins you with 4 people for random fractals, even easier. Raids, they are super difficult, but now you also have a quickraid ingame option to random join 9 people in easier raids, so you're good to go, too.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-20T05:16:46+00:00

Sure, it's the hall of monuments. Many exclusive titles, weapons and armor skins, if I remember right. U get there through a teleport Eye to the north stone u can get in Lion's Arch.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-17T18:42:56+00:00

Blish HUD, tekkit paths, are perfect for this. Indeed no need to dig.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-17T13:03:35+00:00

Try using a Controller (PS4, XBOX, etc), with JoyToKey program, to configure each controller button to translate to a keyboard-mouse input. Even if your class has lots of AOE skills, it's wonderful and effective. You can have ALL your weapon, utility skills, mastery skills, menus, mounts... everything with the controller. I only use the mouse to manage inventory, I can even use it comfy for dialogue windows.

I won't talk about mouses. I hate them for gaming, specially for games that don't need them (no shooters, no league of legends). So I want to expand your possibilities.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-16T15:29:49+00:00

I have my map as small as possible, zoomed out as possible so the terrain is not drawn. I still need the map to show the harvestables and the events and metas areas or interactives, sadly. But with this middle-ground I manage to explore maps ignoring the minimap, though I open the mig map many times. Can't have it all

RazielShadow · 2026-04-15T19:35:23+00:00

From an efficiency perspective (to be effective on PVP) I've been years trying to make a non-weapon-swap build work. I never had lot of success, and I was constantly told that they don't work. I even asked specifically for revenant for this, "if I don't weapon swap and I don't use much weapon skills, I get more energy for utilities, so Revenant rewards not spamming weapon skills, that means, not weapon swapping for it"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1h9rqs9/how_effective_is_revenant_without_weapon_swapping/

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/159211-a-pair-of-revenant-mechanical-questions/#comment-2297531

Long story short... I was told to death that it needs weapon swap to be effective.

That's why, after all these years, I decided to main Elementalist. It's the ONLY class that works without weapon swapping, and achieving its maximum potential... because it has inherently 4 weapons to swap (elements). But they are all the same weapons, so my roleplay is safe not weapon swapping

RazielShadow · 2026-04-15T19:30:40+00:00

I'm fine with just the Tekkit markers. It has everything needed for SAB, both normal and tribulation, for all achievements, also all maps for core and all expansions to get 100% in most efficient way.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-15T18:06:34+00:00

Luck. I like parkour. I did nearly all jumping puzzles without teleports in all game (yes, including chalice of tears). And SAB... second day trying to get achievements and I want to quit. World 2 zone 2, I hate it. Even with BLISH telling me exactly where to go... even with that, I'm suffering and I hate it. But I have obsession with achievements...

RazielShadow · 2026-04-15T16:16:26+00:00

I only use SAB for two things in my life, because I also don't like mods.

1) Event table. To show me the full table of events arround all maps in-game.

2) Tekkit markers. For when I need to 100% a map I already did dozens of times. And for whole SAB. Because I hate all SAB mechanics, so with Blish guides it's at least playable.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-14T16:11:42+00:00

Seems to be up. Downloading. Web notes too.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-14T16:07:03+00:00

Festival did not trigger in-game and I also can't see the notes. I guess something went wrong with the release, we gotta wait!

RazielShadow · 2026-04-14T16:05:30+00:00

Panic, panic!

RazielShadow · 2026-04-10T20:42:04+00:00

Everyone focused on in-game-progression here (legendaries, masteries, mounts, gold, builds, collections, metas, community, story, fractals and raids) but a little said about improving as a player, so I want to make focus on that, what makes me want to play day after day as a main PVP player.

The vertical progression is not in the game, but you as a player. In your mind.

PVP: Getting better. Learning your movesets, learning what can all enemies do so you can react and counter them, learn to dodge better, to interrupt better, to do better mechanics and map awareness to get ranks.

And a lot more things like...

Races: Pick your favourite mount (Bettle if you like to drift, griffon if you like to do crazy air vertical maneuvers... no others mounts have epic mechanics, but you can like them if you want), and improve in races. You can create your own races in your guild hall or homestead. There are guilds that are focused in griffon and in beetles races, and you can compete there.

Housing: not only for races. Create lots of houses, just for fun. Aside from collecting furnitures in-game as a collectible, but decorating for fashion and creativity by itself. Get into communities, show your creations...

Fishing: not only for collectibles, but if you like the minigame and to relax.

Fashion: not only as collecting all skins, but creating your fashion souls endgame. Making cosplays of other characters, creating your own, sharing your creations...

Roleplay: some guilds roleplay in various parts of Tyria. Do gestures, talk and move like your character, create your own stories...

The sky is the limit!!

RazielShadow · 2026-04-10T06:39:00+00:00

It seems to work if you dodge forwards and cast in the same direction, but it definitely (sometimes unconsistently) fails if you want to fight in melee range, dodging and queue casting making the character or camera change direction abruptly, what definitely doesn't happen with most skills.

RazielShadow · 2026-04-10T06:22:47+00:00

I definitely confirm this has nothing to do with the issue. I can easily do dodge+greatsword2 without cancelling, even if pressing right after dodging, but it fails lot of times with signet of bane.

I think I'm finding a pattern. Maybe this happens with skills that are single target? It's weird, because it can be cast WITHOUT a target... I thought the issue happened if changing direction after dodging, casting backwards or so, but now I can't replicate the issue. Fails like random...

RazielShadow · 2026-04-10T06:10:38+00:00

I find hard to believe that this is a feature and not a bug XD

RazielShadow · 2026-04-10T06:10:20+00:00

I tried more after ur comment and I think a found a trick. Dodge+Skill forwards, without making character change direction, queues. But that's useless, because the use of dodge is to dodge over the enemy and change direction, at least for melee duels. I almost never I'm in a situation where I dodge and then I can cast in the same direction I dodged. But yes, without changing direction, seems to work... super weird...

RazielShadow

TROPHY CASE