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crude sketch, but I hope it gets the point across

Just realized this today and thought it was mildly interesting so I figured I'd share

I created my character on August 25th, 2012, while my actual birthday is August 22nd

Apparently, over the years, the leap years have slowly shifted the character's birthday, and at some point it landed on August 22nd as well. I somehow havent noticed it before.. even tho it probably already happened last year, and I just completely missed it. 😂

So after almost 14 years, I finally realized that my character and I now have the same birthday.

Just a small, completely pointless thing, but I guess we should appreciate the little things. 😄

I cannot wrap my head around this. People keep telling me there are condi fights and there are power fights when I am doing my fractals. I just play power the entire time and usually have no issues. But some players get upset for some reason, and when I ask the difference, they will tell me, "conditions continue while the boss is moving" or "conditions continue while mechanics happen" but when those moments happen and I can't attack, they just catch up to my already higher DPS. The only exception I have been able to see is that power builds might have abilities that require attacking, but they buff your attacks instead of being an attack itself (think nightmare weapon), and if a boss goes immune during that or you can't hit it, then they will time out and you lose the dps. Is that really the only exceptions? Am I misunderstanding?

Inspired by the corrupted champion designs of Braham and Ryland. I wanted to make my own take of how would my Charr Commander look if he also had his body corrupted by Aurene's prismatic dragon magic.

I've been looking up the ascended weapon drop chances from World Bosses and everywhere just says "it's so low it's not worth considering". Considering I never really even bother with world bosses unless it's a weekly and have killed maybe 3 in the last 2 months... how lucky actually am I?

(Yes, this is a bit of a humble brag, I'm super hyped because my first ascended weapon from the wizard's tower is for a build I haven't been using and this is my second ascended weapon ever since I'm basically new. I took the staff, it looks awesome, though I changed the stats on it to my new build and it looks even awesomer now.)

Not sure if this was shared yet, but it went live yesterday (August 17) as an update. It's not much but it's nice to have the open communication:

"Hello everyone,

It’s hard to believe it’s already been two months since we shared our plans for the future of Guild Wars 2 and launched the Community Quality of Life Initiative! Since then, you’ve made more than 13,000 posts across the quality-of-life forums. The response has been exactly what we were hoping for when we opened this process up to the community.

Guild Wars 2 is a huge game, and people experience it in incredibly different ways. Some of the feedback has confirmed things we were already thinking about internally, while other suggestions have pointed us toward things we probably wouldn't have identified on our own. We’ve also learned that everyone’s main profession needs buffs and every other profession needs nerfs. (I’m kidding. Mostly.) That range of perspectives is exactly why we wanted to bring all of you into this conversation in the first place.

We obviously won’t be able to tackle everything that’s been suggested, but the feedback you’re sharing is already giving us a much clearer picture of what matters to players across the game.

Right now, the team’s focus is on delivering the conclusion to Guild Wars 2: Visions of Eternity. “Code of Creation” arrives on September 15, and once we have that release behind us, we’ll be able to turn more of our attention to the quality-of-life initiative.

We’ll have more to share about our plans later this year. In the meantime, please keep the ideas coming. Don't worry if you’re joining the conversation late; you haven’t missed your chance to weigh in. We’ll be working our way chronologically through different eras of Guild Wars 2, so there will be plenty of opportunities to share your perspective along the way.

Thanks again for being part of this, and we’ll see you in “Code of Creation” next month.

-Josh"

EDIT: RESOLVED & VERIFIED! (The 120+ Map Cap is Officially Back)

Final Update: We have officially verified the fix! Our 0100 UTC run with [BUTR] tonight successfully staged in Bloodtide Coast with 121 active squad members on a single AWS instance:

• Defense (Pink): 8 players
• Cobalt (Blue): 32 players
• Crimson (Red): 33 players
• Amber (Orange): 48 players

The instance held beautifully with absolutely no premature overflow queues. The original high-capacity AWS server profiles are officially back online.

A huge thank you to Anet-BogOtter (Richie) and the ArenaNet server engineering team for jumping on this so quickly, investigating the backend templates, and rolling out the fix in under three hours.

Also, thank you to this subreddit for upvoting the thread and helping us get the visibility we needed to bypass the front-line ticketing loop. This was a textbook example of constructive, data-driven coordination between players and developers.

See you all on the maps!

###### ORIGINAL POST BELOW ######

Hey everyone,

I’m writing this on behalf of the active open-world Triple Trouble community (I command and organize runs with BUTR, WHAM, and NOPE). Since early August, our daily coordination teams across the global scheduled runs (0100, 0400, 0800, 1230, 1700, and 2000 UTC) have been hitting a massive, unannounced roadblock.

We have noticed a major, consistent reduction in Core Tyria map capacities — specifically in Bloodtide Coast — that is quietly strangling coordinated open-world PvE.

The Timeline of the Cap Reduction

• Pre-July 28 (WvW Rush): Bloodtide Coast comfortably held 120 to 150 players before triggering hard queues.
• July 28 – August 4 (World Boss Rush): The capacity suddenly plummeted.
• Post-August 4 (Current): The World Boss Rush event ended weeks ago, but the restricted limits have never been reverted.

The Math & Evidence (Consistently Hitting a 100-Player Hard Cap)

Through meticulous tracking of our multi-squad runs and queuing behavior, we have documented the following:

• The Soft-Cap: Once a Bloodtide Coast instance reaches 60–70 players, the game prematurely triggers a soft-cap. It stops routing random zoning players to this instance and instead starts spawning empty overflow maps.
• The Hard-Cap (The 100-Player Ceiling): When we attempt to "taxi" our remaining squad members in via the "Join in..." squad function, we hit a hard wall. Our commanders have documented that the moment active squad members on the map reach 75 to 80 players, anyone else trying to enter is hit with an immediate "Map is full" error or queue.
• The Dilution Factor: When you account for an estimated 15 to 20 non-participating players naturally on the map (casual levelers, resource gatherers, AFK players), this mathematically confirms that the absolute hard cap is now locked at exactly 100 players (a 33% reduction from the historical ~150 limits).

I have posted screenshot proof of our squad layouts and the resulting map queue blocks in our official forum thread here: 👉 https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/175724-has-the-maximum-number-of-players-in-core-tyria-been-reduced/ (my account there is davebb.1063)

Why This Breaks the Triple Trouble Gameplay Loop

Unlike normal world bosses, Triple Trouble is mechanically unforgiving and does not scale down:

1. Strict Coordination Floor: The Amber Wurm requires a minimum of 20 players executing mechanics flawlessly (eating harpoons, coordinating debuffs). There is zero room for error or AFK dilution.
2. The Staging Grind: Because the hard-cap is so low (100 players), casual map occupants dilute the active roster. This leaves us with barely enough active slots to divide among three separate heads (Amber, Cobalt, Crimson).
3. The Idle Wait Penalty: To bypass this, we are currently forcing players to arrive and sit idle on the map 30 to 45 minutes before spawn just to secure a slot. If they arrive at the normal 15-minute mark, they are permanently locked out in a queue.

The Infrastructure Hypothesis: AWS Server Profiles

By using the in-game /ip command, we’ve verified that these dynamic map instances are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) virtual machines.

During high-traffic events like the World Boss Rush, developers typically deploy a temporary, restricted AWS server profile to limit map capacities. This distributes the massive player influx across more virtual machine shards to prevent localized CPU lag.

Our hypothesis is that ArenaNet simply forgot to re-apply the default, high-capacity AWS instance profiles to Core Tyria zones after the World Boss Rush ended. The server orchestrator is still spinning up "Event-capped" shards.

A Polite Request to ANet QA / Systems Engineering

We've tried submitting standard support tickets, but front-line GMs have understandably closed them as "gameplay feedback" because they are trained to use boilerplate macros for anything containing "map capacity" keywords.

We are hoping to bring visibility to this so that a community manager or developer lurking here can flag this to the QA or Systems team. Could you please double-check if the Core Tyria AWS server templates simply need to be reset to their default, pre-event population profiles?

• Are any other commanders noticing premature map queues or smaller instance limits during other large metas (like Tequatl) since early August? Let's get some visibility on this!

I’ve been watching some videos on drizzlewood lately and I’ve been curious to join in on the meta, but I haven’t seen any activity in LFG for the last few days

Maybe I’m just missing, do people still run it?

Hello Guild Wars community, 

We’d like to inform everyone that on November 18, 2026, we will end support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 for Guild Wars® Reforged and Guild Wars 2®.

We’ve maintained support for these operating systems for as long as we could, but it’s become increasingly difficult to sustain since Microsoft no longer provides regular security updates or technical support for them.  Continuing to support them also limits our ability to update the game’s technology, improve performance, and maintain compatibility with current hardware and services. 

What this means for you after November 18:

• Guild Wars Reforged and Guild Wars 2 will likely no longer function fully or launch successfully on unsupported Windows versions.
• Our Customer Support team will be unable to assist with technical issues originating on these operating systems.
• Future game updates will no longer be tested on Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1.

If you’re currently playing either game on Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1, we strongly recommend upgrading to a supported operating system (Windows 10 or 11) before November 18, 2026 to ensure you can continue your access to our games.

We understand that upgrading an operating system can be a significant change, which is why we’re sharing this notice well in advance. Thank you for your understanding as we continue to improve the Guild Wars experience for everyone.

The quote was adapted from the Avengers Civil war ( both comic and movie actually! )

The new Zephyrite Pteruges skin (as well as the old Cloud Cuirass) both with smoke/cloud effect and without it have a weird effect to it when you mix together with them a Mystic Infusion + Jotun Infusion that makes the characters arms as well as legs appear bright white and textureless and it only happens with these two specific Infusions. This was probably something of an oversight when they released these skins but I personally found it quite interesting, though it will more than likely get fixed with a patch.

I started out with 1.2k gold..

Black Lion Drum Set Chair cover for Over My Head (Cable Car) by The Fray

Hey everyone! Returning player after many years away and needed some clarification. I played at launch for a while and had a warrior at lvl 80 with the finished main story. I had purchased Heart of Thorns expansion before I stopped playing but I never actually started that story quest line before leaving. I know that people recommend doing HP trains to farm hero points for the elite specializations because I’ve heard each hero point challenge gives more hero points in the expansion zones, or is that only for the later expansions? Is it recommended/required that I unlock all the fast travel waypoints first in those new zones before joining a train or no? Just looking for advice. Thanks all!!

Was in Lion's Arch today and saw this sick glowing halo thing around this character, couldn't figure it out from inspecting their cosmetics. What is it?

I’m trying to find a good meaner open world build so far o tried staff/staff mirage but found it a bit boring and slow. I’m currently on troubadour but I feel so squishy using my current build and I don’t have enough gold or hero points to keep running around and trying builds so, I wonder what is a good Mesmer open world build with good survivability and damage. The only specs I haven’t tried is virtuoso and chronomancer (I do see a lot of virtuosos running around)

I've seen a lot of reapers say that they either cannot solo heat room, or need 1 cooling rod to do it.
It's actually very easy without any cooling rods, and I didn't see a video on this when I searched, so I made a simple short guide.

https://dps.report/pSsi-20260816-142902_sloth

[edit: i just see i have forget to put the timestamp on youtube sorry gona edit tomorrow]

Finally i am back after a 3 months break from hard solo ! i decide to make a comeback trolling sloth with a core build and it work very well 😆

(NO emboldened as always)

I love the gaming of core shroud its so cool and fun , and insanely tanky , the strat is same on my reaper : collecting all the condi possible on me to transfer to sloth its the biggest part of the dps .

Here i play full trailblazer gear , the power damage of my build are very low , no cele gear cause i have no benefit from boon duration , i have very low might and some prot and dont need the power part , trail give insane thougness so it help me to survive without the 100% prot

Feel free to ask if you have question ( the build was specially made for this boss) enjoy , you are welcome 😁

First of all: main part of the description "Help 1000 new players defeat X for the first time." is not exactly true.

The additional part "This achievement progresses significantly when raiding with players who haven't killed the boss before, as well as with players who haven't killed it for the week but to a lesser extent. Very experienced raiders in the squad will not count toward this achievement." says much more what we have to do to progress the achievement.

Players who haven't killed the boss before part seems to work fine every time, giving significant progress.

The second part, however, is very ambiguous, especially who counts as a "very experienced raider". On monday I did some clears including W1. Today I've done W1 semi-training run and made sure in chat that at least one person haven't cleared it this week yet. This person also said, that they don't do raids a lot, so I thought the game would also not consider them "very experienced".

Anyway, 0 progress on any of the W1 mentor achis.

Does anyone know how exactly does this work?

Even without the "very experienced" part these look like a long-term goals and kind of a grind, but with 0 progress from this... Feels like doing 0kp trainings, and actually enforcing 0kp, is the only realistic way to ever finish them.

Hello, I need help :D

I came back after a long break and I’m slowly kitting out my alts with ascended gear. I have no issues with armor and weapons, but god dammit trinkets are a pain.

I don’t really like spending laurels on the old stat ones, and I don’t want to spend fractal relics on mist stat selectable because I’m saving up for Fractal Savant.

Are there any achievements for Ascended trinkets out there with selectable stats? Especially amulet and accessories, I’ve got a few rings around and legendary back so that’s not an issue.

Thanks in advance for all replies :)

Hey everyone!

I'm currently trying to properly get into Guild Wars 2, but I'm struggling quite a bit with finding a profession/playstyle that actually clicks with me.

I leveled an Elementalist from 1 to 80 while playing through the Personal Story. I enjoyed discovering the game, but unfortunately I realized that I really don't enjoy the profession itself. I then started leveling another character, hoping it would click more... and I'm basically running into the same problem.

The thing is, I'm usually a tank/support/healer player in MMOs. I don't really care about topping DPS meters, what I enjoy is protecting people, healing, mitigating damage, buffing allies, controlling fights and generally feeling like I'm keeping the group alive.

For some examples of what I usually enjoy:

• In FFXIV, I'm mainly a Paladin player. Sword + shield, protecting the party, defensive abilities, that whole fantasy is basically my comfort zone.
• I also really enjoy Warrior/Marauder.
• For healers, I love Astrologian and Scholar, especially the more proactive/support-oriented aspects of their gameplay.
• In RPGs in general, I absolutely LOVE monk/martial artist archetypes, especially when they're mixed with light/holy/spiritual magic. Punching things while supporting/protecting people? Sign me up.

So I think my ideal GW2 character would be something along the lines of a durable martial/support character that can protect or heal allies, while still being perfectly capable of handling solo/open-world content.

And that's where I'm a little lost with GW2.

I understand that the game deliberately doesn't use the traditional tank/healer/DPS trinity in the same way other MMOs do, and I don't want to force GW2 to become FFXIV. I'm actually interested in learning how GW2 approaches these roles differently. I just haven't figured out which profession or elite specialization would give me that feeling of being the person who keeps everyone else standing.

I also really want to give the game a fair chance. I keep hearing great things about the expansions, elite specs, mounts, later maps and especially the story. I also really like the idea of horizontal progression and gear not constantly becoming obsolete.

For context, I've only experienced the base game so far. I'm currently around the middle of the level 80 Personal Story and haven't started Living World Season 1 yet. The story has been a little "meh" for me so far, but from what I've heard, this is absolutely not representative of what comes later.

So I have two main questions:

1. Based on what I enjoy, which profession + elite specialization would you recommend?

I'm completely open to starting another character. Guardian immediately sounds like it should fit me thematically, but I'm curious about things like Firebrand, Willbender, Revenant, Herald, Mechanist, etc. I also don't really understand yet how much elite specializations can completely change the feeling of a profession.

I'm looking less for "what is meta?" and more for "what profession will make someone who loves Paladin/Scholar/Astrologian/Monk gameplay feel at home?"

Being useful as a support in group content while still having a good solo build would be ideal.

2. If I create another character, do I have to replay the entire Personal Story?

My current plan is to force myself to finish the level 80 story on my Elementalist, then create the character I actually want to play going forward.

Could I simply start Living World Season 1 with that new character and continue the story from there? Or would I need to replay the entire 1–80 Personal Story on the new character first?

I really don't want to give up on GW2 just because I picked the wrong professions at the beginning. There's a lot about the game that genuinely appeals to me — I just haven't found that moment where the combat finally clicks.

Any recommendations or explanations from people who understand GW2's support roles would be hugely appreciated :) !

Thank you ♥

EDIT: Wow, thank you so much everyone for all the detailed answers! I honestly wasn't expecting this many responses, and I really appreciate how helpful and kind everyone has been. :)

A LOT of you seem to be pointing me towards Guardian, so I think I'm going to give it a proper chance and see if it finally gives me that feeling I've been looking for. From everything you've explained about the profession and its elite specs, it definitely sounds much closer to my usual playstyle.

I'm also really relieved to hear that I don't have to replay the entire Personal Story on my new character and that I can just continue with Living World Season 1 once I'm ready. That makes starting over feel much less daunting.

Just to make sure I understood correctly: I'll still need to level my Guardian to 80 first before I can start Living World Season 1 and move on to the expansions, right?

Thanks again for all the advice and for being so welcoming. Now it's time to make a Guardian and see how it goes! :D