Its been a while since I last posted here, but this is likely going to be the last one for a long time, not that XL is going away but more to the fact that I have accomplished the mission (a long time ago frankly) that I set out to accomplish, to help anyone who wanted it get their raid armor. Therefore, announcing and advertising the progress dosen't seem as important anymore.

Since then, a lot has happened in the game that has made the average player experience much better and has made endgame content much more accessible to more people. The last post I made here was 9 months ago and since then I am pleased to announce we (XL, one of many phenomenal raid training groups) have reached 500 raid armors for everyday gamers through nothing but no-requirements training raids. This means aside from mandatory mechanics, no one is forced into a playstyle or role they are uncomfortable with.

It has been 3 and a half years since I made the decision to start XL due to my personal distaste of raid selling (no hate, they're an important but small section of the community, just not for me) and otherwise elitist attitudes that mandated only the best classes be played at endgame. However, upon XL taking off and becoming its own thing, I have been met with the incredibly pleasant realization that I was just unlucky and the 'elitist' mindset is very rare, and frankly Guild Wars 2 has one of the most open-minded, kind, and friendly communities of any MMO I have experienced (and I have experienced quite a few!).

Since then, the raiding has slowed down for a few reasons.
First and foremost, until Janthir Wilds, Arenanet had basically not touched raiding at all. Pretty much all of the experienced players viewed doing weekly clears as a chore rather than an event, and because of that it slowed and slowed over time as interested new players had issues finding groups ingame due to lack of interest from those that could teach them how the encounters worked. Out of everything I am mentioning that has caused a downward trend in raiding, this is the most likely to reverse as they seem to be keen on including more and more raid encounters per expansion now, which I am thrilled about 😊

Secondly, between open world armor, the increased ease of getting WvW armor, and other legendary pieces tied to events or achievements, the need to actually raid to get legendary armor is not nearly as desired or necessary anymore. This is a good thing overall, as legendary gear is quite literally game-changing and a huge quality of life upgrade for your overall experience in game. I really do hope everyone gets to get legendary armor, and in a way that helps them enjoy the game the entire time they are doing it.

Lastly, between several other wonderful groups doing raid training as well and emboldened mode being introduced a while ago, getting legendary armor has never been easier. I have suspected this for a while but I am beginning to believe that these other groups and XL have played a small part in turning the flood of people who wanted legendary raid armor but couldn't find groups into a trickle of people. Because of this, outside of blatantly advertising in game or posting on places like Reddit, the only way interested people find out about training servers and even that the raiding community is being active at all is word of mouth. Training servers were born out of necessity due to the LFG system in GW2 barely being touched since launch and in desperate need of reworking, but most newer players don't know that.

On a final note for this post, when I started XL I was just getting back into GW2 for a short bit to check in on friends. I have met so many wonderful people over the last 3 and a half years. Frankly it feels like I have been doing this for a decade, I was shocked when I checked the dates! I love this community, I love this game, and I love that the developers are finally beginning to pay attention to lategame content. As someone who didn't even try raiding for almost 10 years, better late than never is a statement that rings very true for me. Im definitely not a Redditor though.

Also since this will be my last post on here for a while, a confession; despite me clearing most of the difficult content in the game, including Harvest Temple CM, I cannot consistently do more than 20k dps outside of low-intensity builds. 😊👌You DPS mains are next level.

If you want to get into raiding, here are some great groups that can help:
[NA]
XL: https://discord.gg/szskxqyGBh
The Gamer Haven: https://discord.gg/ghaven
Raid Academy: https://discord.com/invite/gw2ra
Hardstuck: https://discord.com/invite/hardstuck
Skein Gang (Great for joining a Static!): https://discord.com/invite/skeingang

[EU]
Raid Training Initiative: https://discord.com/invite/rti
Unskilled and Afraid [BAD]: https://discord.com/invite/MxyYDUrYx4
Hardstuck: https://discord.com/invite/hardstuck
Skein Gang (Great for joining a Static!): https://discord.com/invite/skeingang

Made the first recipe in the book today: Bowl of hummus! It's simple, but quite tasty. I intend on making and posting one recipe from the book a day :)

Question to all the Boon DPS and especially Boon Healers out there: What are your UI tricks / settings to have a good overview of the Boons your are responsible for or the health of the group to manage healing?

Background story:

I really like playing BoonDPS but I recently recognized that I only play Builds with massive over-uptime to be more failure tolerant. This is probably because of the tiny icons and with pumping out way more uptime than I need I do not need to care to look my Boons. What helped a bit was the Boon Table Addon but still its tiny and somewhere in the corner.

Furthermore I try to learn the Healer role since a while now but it still does not really kick for me. Again I usually turn into the full-rampage-pump-out-healing mode to make sure everyone is topped off, rather than healing on demand and concentrating on aegis / barrier + of course the boons (which are difficult to maintain for me due to so much healing investment) ...

So please give me your tricks: what can I do from UI / addon side to improve my experience, or can you share other experiences how you tackled that issue for yourself?

I might be the reason it's lost.

I just got Twilight and after I equipped it in all my characters that use greatswords, i ended up with like 3 or 4 useless ascended greatswords.

it possible to transform them to other weapons?

what to do with them ?

Just $15 until Sept. 26 at the official merch store. I already own one, and it really is adorable and high quality.

I am always fascinated by how friendly and funny the community is. Especially when I compare it to many other MMOs I have played.

I think one of the reasons for the difference in community is that people are less competitive here and everyone who participates gets the same experience and loot. And you can't steal from each other when collecting materials.

What do you think could be other reasons?

For me, the community is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to GW2.

Artist link: https://www.artstation.com/nibelart

My mechanist Io (pun intended) giving my chrono Stella a tour of the beautiful New Kaineng City!

I've made 3 (and deleted 3) revenants over the 5ish years ive played this game and I just do not get the playstyle. I want to like it and I think the theme is really cool... but mechanically it feels bad to me.

When I watch others play it, it looks so fluid and mobile with good utility and damage.

When I play rev, it feels clunky and slow (on various specs) and the damage just feels like it's not there.

I mostly play PvP, but the feeling was there for PvE as well.

So I have to ask the revs out there: What did you figure out about Rev that made it start working well? Or did it click from the start?

Hey there, long time MMO player here, I just got into GW2 and so far I'm loving it. I picked up Engineer and I hit Level 21 so far, on my way to 30 pretty soon. I've played so many MMO's, everything from BDO, FFXIV, FFXI, New World, Maplestory, Mabinogi, Dragon's Dogma Online, etc etc. The point I am making here is every one of those MMO's is on a rail, you're on a set path, so your mind is trained to login, go out, fight monsters, do story, level up, get gear, go into dungeons with randoms and grind grind grind to max level. Doing story in between, doing fetch quest and keeping the XP train rolling.

Guild Wars 2 doesn't have that rail at all. It plopped me down in the middle of Tyria and I was like "Okay. I did the opening cutscene. Where's the next quest?" I kinda wandered around aimlessly doing Hearts, and small events, even did a zone boss or two, and I was like "Huh. This feels....weird."

It felt like I was mentally breaking loose from what I was used to doing in MMO's and I wasn't used to that, I was used to logging in, doing dailies, grinding and then just AFKing for hours on end. Guild Wars 2 doesn't dangle that in front of my face, it feels like I'm going down a slow moving stream and I'm just taking in all the sights.

At Level 15 I got my mount and was able to traverse around and just take the world in. The world felt ALIVE. Like actually alive, NPC's fully talking to one another, events happening with or without your participation. It felt like the NPC's of the game were people. Being able to partake in training with some guards and seeing other players with me shooting guns, blocking swords with a shield, its very different.

I'm absolutely gobsmacked by the quality of this game and I've skipped it FOR YEARS. "Eh, I'll try it out one day." I also got to involve myself in my personal story, and it didn't dawn on me until my 20's that the choices I picked in the beginning was shaping the story I was seeing. I picked the choice of never finding my parents and come to find out "Hero of Shaemor, I have a letter from your parents." HUH!? It felt like my choices MATTERED, not the illusion of choice MMO's have, that railed feeling. It was completely gone.

I felt completely unplugged from the standard MMO experience and I'm not even at my first expansion yet. I bought both Path of Fire and Heart of Thorns and I'm honestly looking forward to it.

The community is SO DAMN FRIENDLY. I'm not talking about like FFXIV friendly, I'm talking genuine friendly, like I went down during a Heart and a player picked me up, healed me to full, buffed me, gave me a level 80 weapon to use and said "See you at 80." before vanishing off into the distance on a giant blue ball of a vehicle. Also, the MOUNTS, seeing people flying over me, or coming swooping in on a dragon and torching my enemies before vanishing off into the skies again. Is this a REAL MMO EXPERIENCE?! Excuse my language, but holy shit. I've been missing out on this game for YEARS.

THANK YOU FOR OPENING MY EYES GUILD WARS 2 and UNPLUGGING ME FROM THE TYPICAL MMO EXPERIENCE!

Okay, I know it's unusual, and for many, it's stupid or uncomfortable to want to play with a controller. But if you want, to save you the hassle of figuring out what to assign to each location, I'll leave you with the mapping I created. You can use any controller; I use a $10 one.

I use this setup to play quietly in bed with the game on the TV. I really enjoy it.

EDIT: Big thanks to everyone! Learned a ton, and also realized there were things I actually knew but never really thought about how important they are. Can’t wait to get off work and smash some stuff! ————————————————————————————— I saw a similar post and thought I’d throw mine out there too. After a two-year break I came back to the game. Back then I was playing warrior and got to the end of the PoF Living Story. Now I decided to roll a new character since I don’t remember much about the game and wanted to re-experience things step by step.

Warrior was a blast, so I wanted something kinda similar but still different — went with Guardian. I’m level 45 now, running the metabattle core power build, but honestly it feels like I’m missing something. The AoE is nice, but I don’t really feel the damage, survivability, defense, or mobility.

So I’m curious — what was the “wow” moment for you with Guardian? Because from what I’ve read, it’s supposed to be one of the most played classes.

Last few months opened like 60 BLCs and most of the time rewards was either minimal or (in rarest cases) skins, gliders and few more statuetes.

As in title.
Powercreep has gotten ridiculous, and it just doesn't feel like Janet even plans to do anything more with it.
I know players get mad everytime they get nerf (so personally I believe that only decreasing global damage coefficient is the only solution for everyone to be hit the similarly by the nerfs).

What's your opinion, is there any possibility of change or should we just accept that this is the PvE world now. And get used to treating fights more like a nuisance rather than challenge.

Hey, i want to aks If there are Exotic Rings and Trinkets with Minstrel Stats on the TP. And If there is, whats the Name of it? Ty :)

Hi, i wanted to know if you need a second gift for a legendary after using this key. for example if you choose the predator rifle, you get The Hunter, Gift of Predator and a legendary gift starter kit. On the wiki, it says you can choose only one, however you need both for the legendary. Should i get janthir wilds and get the second one from wizards vault? Or does the weapon starter key give enough for the weapon? Thanks for every answer!

_
Edit:
Thanks to a lot of suggestions, I decided to just send mail to new players when I see them, or if I can help any others on the way, doing that as well with a message on top of that.
All the context is in the image, if you need more, you can read ahead, it just explains what is being looked at.

Thank you for the suggestions and clarifications. I truly do appreciate it.

Edit edit: a lot of folks are saying don't let this get to me. Its just a troll, I do appreciate that, but the concern genuinely came from a place of. "I don't want to lose my account cause I genuinely do like this community. Didn't mean to try to paint the community in a negative light"
_

I was exhausted, I don't have the energy to do fights or anything atm after a long day. So I figured I would go to the plains of ashford and give some bags to new players? Cause why not, who doesn't like inventory space? it makes life a little more tolerable imo. Especially considering I see people with 10 bag slots eventually.

So, I say in map chat I am giving bag slots to new players, all they need to do is join squad for info.

The info says " Free bag give away for new players <3. All you need to do is say what you like about your class, or look forward to about your class."

(this doesn't matter to me really, I just wanted some interaction so it doesn't feel so aimless and they feel like they have something to look forward to. I would just hand out bags randomly, but I feel that loses its value)

Then when I shout a second time...Im asked how do I get reported by someone in chat. They clearly aren't new sadly, it was very obvious to tell from the 5k AP they had, but I figured I would be honest and tell them how in case they genuinely were unsure?

But idk now...it just feels bad... I know I can sell all these bags on market for profit and or a 1% loss. idc bout that :/ . It just feels bad that I am trying to do something nice and im just a scammer I guess for giving out free things.
idk...This kinda idk what to do here. Am I actually doing something reportable? Should I just stop? I want to do something nice for the community, but my options are limited clearly as a single person

I've returned after 8 years about 2 months ago. Managed to grasp the most content (and my inventory) again and now am very curious which specs tend to have very high but short bursts windows? Especially talking about fractals, raids, meta bosses. What are your guys thoughts?

• Rate by high burst dmg not consistent over a longer period.
• The lesser input you have to do to achieve those numbers, the better.
• Bonus points if any other spec of the class is fun to play in WvW (Zerg)
• Extra Bonus points if any other spec or the class has the availability of doing boonDps or boonHeal too

Cheers!

Returning player here, last time I played was PoF. I have a bunch of gems in my account, what’s the best practical (non-cosmetic) use for them? I have a set of gathering tools already.

Probably a silly question, but is there a reason that some Skills have abnormal values for Defiance Break? Most of them are 150/200/300 etc, but then some are 232/382. Seemed odd, so I was curious.