Summary of video - excluding hardware at beginning (install game on SSD that is not your boot drive) and post processing. Key items: *Reflections* - None - 13:10 *Shadows* - Low - 16:10 *Character Model Limit (Set higher than Character Model Quality)* - Medium - 23:37 *Character Model Quality* - Low - 23:37 *Effect LOD* - TRUE - 28:47 *GW2 Shortcut Settings* Run this program as an administrator - TRUE - 4:46 Disable full-screen optimisations - TRUE - 5:23 Run this program in compatibility mode for - Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) - 5:33 *NVIDIA Control Panel (Not always recommended as effects skill icons)* Image Sharpening (Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > GW2) - 2.5 - 6:09 *Graphics Options* Resolution - Fullscreen - 6:45 Animation - High - 10:52 Antialiasing - User Preference - 11:10 Environment (Set lower for visibility in raids) - High - 11:47 LOD Distance - Ultra - 12:39 *Reflections* - None - 13:10 Textures - High - 15:12 Render Sampling - Native - 15:41 *Shadows* - Low - 16:10 Shaders (Set to low if you prefer higher player model quality) - High - 18:20 Postprocessing (User preference, bundles lots of settings into one) - None - 20:59 *Character Model Limit (Set higher than Character Model Quality)* - Medium - 23:37 *Character Model Quality* - Low - 23:37 Ambient Occlusion - TRUE - 27:21 Best Texture Filtering - TRUE - 27:48 Depth Blur - TRUE - 27:57 *Effect LOD* - TRUE - 28:47 High Res Character Textures - TRUE - 30:15 Light Adaptation - FALSE - 30:29 Vertical Sync - TRUE - 31:49 Motion Blur Power (Does nothing) - Anything - 32:41 *Sound Options* Sound Quality - Fastest - 34:10 *General Options* Content Guide - Off - 34:43 Show All Enemy Names - TRUE - 35:35 Show All NPC Names (Use shortcut to enable if needed) - FALSE - 35:35 Show All Player Names (Use shortcut to enable if needed) - FALSE - 35:35 Show All Useble Object Names - TRUE - 35:35 Thick Party Health Bars - TRUE - 36:45 Thick Squad Health Bars - TRUE - 36:45 *Dynamic HUD (In General Options)* Menu Bar - Never Show - 36:51 Skill Bar - Always Show (Default) - 36:51 Mount Skill Bar - Show Only in Combat - 36:51 Objectives - Show Only out of Combat - 36:51 Compass - Show Only out of Combat - 36:51 Rewards - Show Only out of Combat - 36:51 Party - Always Show (Default) - 36:51 Chat Panel - Show Only out of Combat - 36:51 Target - Always Show (Default) - 36:51 Competitive - Never Show - 36:51 Temporarily Show UI for Notifications - TRUE - 36:51 Use 'Show Ally Names' Key Bind - TRUE - 36:51 *Camera (In General Options)* Enable Camera Shake - TRUE - 37:41 Disable Player Camera Shake - TRUE - 38:27 Collision Sensitivity - Set slider to far left - 28:51 *Combat/Movement (In General Options)* Disable Area-of-Effect Rings (Try playing without! Enable for Skyhammer PvP map) - TRUE - 40:34 Mount: Enable Camera Roll (User preference, only affects skimmer) - TRUE - 43:21 *Addons* d912pxy (via GW2 Addon Manager - don't forget 8GB RAM preset) - Install - 44:06 Edit: formatting
For image sharpening, manage 3D settings > program settings > GW2, mine only goes to a max of 1.0, does this matter, should I leave it set to off or will putting it to 1.0 still look better? Also when I set the shortcut to run as administrator, I get a notification asking "do you want this app to make changes to this device" each time I start up GW2, is there a way to make it stop asking me each time?
i had to disable win vista compatibilty mode with the d912pxy addon or gw2 refused to start edit: if you play with addons like taco, its recommended to play in fullscreen windowed mode and also not as an admin because taco will not work. good vid though, made me think about switching from "just give me the visuals" to "lets think about performance" :D
damn. I've played the game for over 7 years and just now watching this video and changing my settings, my game not only LOOKS BETTER but my frames went from bouncing between 45-65 to a steady 70-75 in pretty much all areas. Everything feels so smooth. I thought I'd figured out the settings but this information made such a big difference.
I just realized I've been subbed to your channel for an eternity. Haven't touched GW2 in years, but I still like your content. Arenanet should send you a golden potato.
I know this video is more than two years old, but I just wanted you to know that you revolutionized my Guild Wars 2 experience with this video. Not a stutter, at 144fps, and everything is so pretty. Thank you a thousand times for making a game that I love even better.
Yea, I play on the lowest settings cause of my shitty PC but when I'm raiding I need to at least turn shaders and character models to medium to see certain important stuff, or when I'm in WvW I need to turn character model quality down too to save myself from lag during big fights. I wish it could automatically do that like how builds automatically change when you switch gamemodes.
Thank you so much for this video!! So comprehensive, especially for the layman. I feel like I understand what the settings do a lot more thanks to you. I will watch the video again with the game open and follow suit. :D
Outstanding video! I initially passed it up, but glad you plugged it a few times in other videos. Definitely saw an improvement with my now outdated 1080, and 4690k PC. Running the game in 4K, with these settings get me 30-40 in zergs, and 130+ everywhere else. Thanks for this, WP.
Thank you soooooo much! This video revolutionized my experience as a returning player, that didn't know about some of settings or the addons at the end. Really appreciate what you do Mr. WoodenPotatoes.
Dude thanks for the epic guide! You should really get rid of vertical sync, the input lag is aids and nobody should ever use it. Plus you paid a pretty penny for G-Sync :) Head to the Nvidia control panel and limit your global fps to a wholesome 140 fps (since you have a 144Hz monitor). This will ensure that your G-Sync is working as intended. The micro-stutter you were experiencing was your fps exceeding your monitor's refresh rate which disables G-Sync and creates stutter and tearing. There is zero benefit to having 300fps in games unless you have the refresh rate to match. Added bonus: Remember Amazon's New World beta that killed all those RTX 30XX cards? In some cases it was found that janky uncapped parts of the game just drove those cards too hard and killed them. By implementing this limit, your GPU is always protected from similar shenanigans. Similarly, a 165Hz G-Sync monitor would be locked to 160fps, 240Hz locked to 235fps etc. Happy gaming!
Ok this was really awesome. I had all my settings at highest and was only having trouble in really big zergs or world boss fights (and really they weren't that big of problems), but using your recommendations made my game look SO MUCH PRETTIER than the default high/ultra settings.
Wow thanks so much for this vid WP, can't believe i had my settings all wrong. My fps and graphics have improved so much. Playing without the red and white rings really does make a big difference and keys you appreciate the skill animations so much more
Hey WP I just want to thank you for helping me get over 100fps in game from these awesome tips and tricks! I really thought I was doing something wrong but in fact I just had the wrong settings on! I had the culling settings at highest/highest and reflections on high and shadows on high. I have since changed to your recommendations! YOU ARE THE MAN!! I scent seen these FPS numbers in a long time..
Cheers for this mate, my i5 laptop has gained nicely here, ive gone from 25-35fps to about 45-70fps and the game doesnt even look any worse for it, but plays so good now core tyria played fine but i noticed after PoF the game really slowed down and it was making me very apprehensive for EoD, youve saved me a few quid here trying to chase fps figures :)
Turning on the v-sync really did it for me. My amazing computer with G-sync monitor was constantly stuttering and dipping below 30 FPS because I had v-sync off (since I let my hardware handle the v-sync I don't need the in-game v-sync). Then you told me to turn on v-sync and now I'm getting 144+ FPS in most places. Amazing. I have no idea how this is possible, but I'm happy. Thanks!
Thanks for the video was very helpful. I found out one mistake though - I recommend setting sound quality on highest because fastest setting not only reduces quality but also sound amount including turning off sound effects of your character combat skill. Ty for your work.
If you're a Sylvari player, I would really suggest testing with Postprocessing set to None. Your glows will come out such much better than on High. It's the same for Shaders. A Low setting will make your natural Sylvari glow much brighter. I personally prefer High for Shaders as it will disable some visual effects such as the upward pulsing glow on the Maguuma set. As WP talks about, definitely worth messing around with those two settings and seeing which you prefer. Excellent video!
Don't think this one was mentioned, but in wvw (and PvP to some extent I guess) the standardised enemy/ally models can help a ton with FPS, especially combined with the normal culling settings
About the shaders: If you put them on low, you actually loose detail in some armor. The Aurene Crystalline Headpiece for example is just a blue mess on Low but on high you can see stars shining in it, so I suspect that you might gain an advantage, but youll also loose some with some items and skins, so be aware of that if its just about looks. Dont think that setting it to low is the ultimate end solution. PS: Bifrost also looks like shit with low shaders.
Another thing to note is that having them on low hides certain environmental features that can be crucial from you. For instance, Cairn has a compass in the middle of it's island that only shows up on Medium and higher, but you want to see the compass since standing inside it means you a avoid the stars that knock you back. In endgame it's pretty important to have them on medium at least.
Thank you for this video! I'm returning to the game soon, also got a new PC coming, and this will help me optimize. I play a lot of MMORPG's and I feel that this advice will help with those as well.
24:17 to be precise first of implementations of culling was server side, and you would not get even the nameplates - it was terrible couple weeks for wvw, where you would often get rolled through by zergs that server decides not to inform your client about. It was only later fixed for nameplates to show up and ultimately implemented into those options.
Old subscriber here considering returning to GW2 after many years break. Thank you for all your content! I only play as solo so hoping that it possible.
There are some environmental details that could be important in raids that only show up with medium or high shaders, just an fyi for anyone playing on low.
To avoid hitting the UI with the warrior spin going backwards, it is possible in the camera settings to move the focal point of your camera backwards. This gives you more room to aim skills in the area behind you.
Came back to the game recently. Battle for the Jade Sea was a slideshow that occasionally crashed pc on a 3700x and 6800xt. I think you just saved me with the character model thing, thanks.
Don't know how to thank you for this enough. Running on a potato computer so I wasn't able to increase my FPS much. But I did change a few things and the game looks much better without loosing frames either. Thanks a lot. The game is gorgeous :)
Very grateful for this video! I’m very incompetent when it comes to these kind of things. I literally saved a lot of money so that I could buy an expensive pc. I figured if I’d put the settings on best appearance - I would be set. Alternatively I followed your tips and advices and boy.. it has such a different feel now. In like the best possible way. Thank you so much! ✨
@@Snailmet U have to turn on 'post processing' and then u can toggle 'light adaptation' on or off. After you've done that, you can toggle 'post processing' back off if that's what you prefer. Hope that helps.
Thanks for this awesome guide, helped me so much...^^. Lol forgott postprocessing at highest first and wondered why it is so bad...;), then changed it and works now so good.
The audio quality setting adjusts the stereo field processing as far as I can tell. The easiest way to hear the difference is stand near a waterfall, and rotate your camera back and forth. When the setting is higher, the transition between left and right is much smoother. And distance/location is more easily differentiated at higher settings. That being said, it costs a lot of frame and introduces input delay when set higher. Leave it at normal or lower. Honestly, unless you're really sensitive to it, just set it at fastest.
Since now Anet is looking to do upgrades to the graphics of the game they should realy take a look at this video, its long as always but it realy goes in depth with the good and the bad of the game options, good job WP.
Here's my observations of the settings, somewhat contrary to what's said on the video: -Shaders can make armor look very different but it is not clear cut whether it's better or worse. Some armors look very low detail on medium. If you play in big zergs, this is an option that can help immensely with your frames depending on your hardware. -Most people play with shaders on high so if you really care about fashion wars then that is the setting you should use. -Bar the lowest character quality setting I have never been able to gain frames by messing with it, culling is the big hitter.
Hey WP, I just came back to this to fine-tune some stuff and saw your part on leaving vsync turned on and you said something about gysnc. I have a gysnc card + monitor and turning vsync on locks my game to 60fps max, so you may not have gsync setup properly. Edit: For anyone with a G-SYNC card + monitor, make sure the following is turned on: 1. Nvidia control panel -> Set up G-SYNC (left side) -> Enable & Enable for windowed and fullscreen mode if you play windowed fullscreen 2. Nvidia control panel -> Manage 3D settings -> global settings -> set Monitor Technology to G-SYNC (can also set this under program settings but not necessary) 3. Turn off Vertical Sync in GW2's game options
Oh my dearest WP, i can't thank you enough. I played this game for years with really bad performance, especially in Zergs. Sure i messed around with the settings every now and then, but now i know that i favored the wrong options. I think at some point i just "accepted" that the game will never run really well, no matter what i change. Watching your video gave me sooo much insight and i was able to double (!) my FPS without really losing any visual quality - seriously. Please feel hugged big time for this extremely helpful piece of content, love you
Thanks. I had never really messed with my settings. actually doubled my average FPS and improved my overall graphics quality by just tweaking a couple settings.
Do you have any videos on combat settings? The game keeps deselecting my targets. and when i try to reselect it picks something way over there-------> I would love a video on how to set up the combat options.
8:58 - DPI scaling scales UI based on your windows DPI scale - typing into task bar search "Change the size of text, apps, and other items" should take you to display settings and under "Scale and layout" you can change the percentage. 100% (the default on most monitors) will mean there is no change but if you set it to something else and enable that checkbox, your UI in GW2 will scale with that percentage. Note that this setting will likely not work properly if under the properties of your GW2 shortcut/executable, you have changed default high DPI settings to be overridden. Also, the gamma setting doesn't work for me either. Not sure what is going on there to be honest.
You need to be in fullscreen for gamma to work. It definitely works on my setup. I definitly remember DPI scaling wasn't always in the game.There was definitly a period where it the UI didnt work well for large screens. Mainly effects your skill bar and mouse cursor
I would be careful setting the sound quality slider to low - it will cut out sound channels including dialog. I've seen a couple posts on the reddit about this recently.
In the defense of the frame limiter, the only thing I notice when having FPS in excess of 60 is my room getting hotter. I have a 144hz monitor and a 1070 and personally see no visual improvement going above 60, so I actually cap my FPS in the nVidia control panel to 60fps. Another thing I do in the control panel is AA, I turn off every game's AA and just use that one, I don't necessarily know which gives better results in terms of quality or performance, but for more than a few games they have really poor AA options and that setting gives me some vague sense of consistency.
The 'DPI Scaling' setting only has an effect if you have a windows set to a scale other than 100%. It seems to overrule the windows setting with this off. I game on a TV and have a scaling of 125% on Windows to help me see things more easily, and turning this on makes the UI larger (approximately the same size as the next in-game step up). This was a very informative and helpful video for those of us trying to work with what they have until they can get a new video card. I was previously playing on the 'Best Performance' preset to get 120ish fps, but your suggested tweaks made the game look WAY better without a significant impact on performance.
Holy shit i have no words to describe how much better it is now. I love it now, it looks like a very beautiful classic mmorpg vibe which i love and the FPS... Dude, simply because of shadows i got from 90 to 130 fps. I love you for showing me this, i really appreciate it as much as possible
Gotta add this: disabling area-of-effect rings can be a bad idea still, not all of those orange telegraphs are shown, one recent example is Ryland's attacks during Dragonstorm. What I've noticed is: only skills that rely on RNG and/or have poor animation-telling have their telegraphs maintained, such as Destroyer Harpy's multi-projectile skill in Dragonstorm. I just wish the devs would add a version to disable only friendly area-of-effect rings since this can improve your FPS and reduce vision noise during big fights, also, as WP described, it helps a lot with immersion.
@@klavakkhazga3996 That's because they nerfed the visuals of many skills back in season 2 all because people were complaining that those skills were visual noise, not that that matters now since everything now exceeds in particle effects. I wish they would bring those effects back though and cull some of the new ones, I remember elementalist's core skills having much more visual impact.
apart from the aforementioned options there's one hotkey which has nothing to do with graphics that I learned to love. It translates all text on screen. I'm german playing the game with english audio/text and sometimes this feature comes in very handy and probably even helped to improve on my english!
Wonderful video WP. Over the years when I wanted to give GW2 a try, I looked for this content multiple times because I prefer high frames. May I suggest the title be changed to "Best Graphics & Performance Settings For Guild Wars 2". Will be easier to spot when someone like me searches for it.
It is worth noting that a lot of the FPS limitations of this game are due to congestion and how well their servers can handle it. Dont believe me? Watch CPU/GPU usage while in a highly populated areas experiencing low FPS. Your usage, on a decent machine, will not even be near full. Another way of doing this is check out your FPS/usage while playing conquest and compare that to Lions Arch or zerging in WvW. While settings may help this to a degree, especially in unpopulated areas, still a lot of the limitation is on arenanets side.
You mention using image sharpening in NVIDIA Control Panel and setting to 2.5, but when I go there it's just a percent meter. It's at 50% right now and goes between 0-100%. Thoughts? Also, Have you made any changes since the DX11 beta started?
I recommend setting a frame cap in nvidia control panel. Set it to your monitors max refresh rate and save your GPU a little bit of extra stress calculating 400+ fps
So either I'm crazy and/or don't know what specs to give but I'm using an GTX 970 GPU, with an i5-6500 CPU which to me seems like it's becoming a bit dated at this point but messing with the options you recommended to change or play around with... I saw almost no FPS changes. I tested in the condensed and populated area that is the Mistlock Sanctuary and while moving around and swinging my camera it seemed about the same give or take ~5 frames if I had some Reflections or Shadows at their highest or lowest options. I went to Crystal Oasis which had no players but has that very gorgeous area of water behind Amnoon. While I could visually tell the difference my frames surprisingly had zero change while playing around with my settings. Interestingly, the Depth Blur was actually very noticeable here. By swimming to the end of that lane of water connected to the Amnoon harbor and looking back at the main building it definintely goes from a fuzzy sometimes pixelated blur with it turned on to having everything have perfectly rigid outlines that make the area a busy mess to look at with it turned off. Lastly I went to Hoelbrak and Ember Bay seeing as they should have a decent player population as of me posting this (July 8, 2021) due to the Dragon Bash festival and return to Living World event. I'm not trying to find a zerg of players or anything but just something moderate. I joined an event of 10-15 players in Ember Bay near open water and in Hoelbrak I watched roller beetle racers for a little while to see how much they might affect my performance with their speed and constant resetting to the starting line. Playing around with the big settings again, Reflections and Shadows, I saw virtually no notable difference in my FPS. So I'm not sure what that means. Another interesting thing to note though was trying out Character Model Limit and Quality at different settings and seeing how they affected it. Your suggestion of Medium and Low was good, but my normal settings of Low and Highest weirdly(?) had higher consistent frames. I used to do Medium and Highest but because of newer maps such as Drizzlewood Coast I cannot run Model Limit on Medium without taking a massive nose dive in frames. Obviously Model Quality being Highest doesn't help here either. It goes from being a 10 fps slideshow to a stable 30~ fps meta event. Of course this means in the open world and WvW I am culling more players than may be necessary but honestly it doesn't bother me for immersion. Having 30, 50, 100+ players all attacking one enemy isn't exactly immersive for me anyways. The only downside I've ever noticed that mattered to me is that yes, visible players that are a bit of a distance away from me while I'm with a small group of players sometimes have their models default to standard enemy models for their armor class but I can't always even see them that well so I'm not missing out on much detail or beauty while they're so far away. TL;DR I don't know what I'm doing or what info I should provide for y'all but these setting changes might not be as drastic or hell even a noticeable increase on middle of the road specs!
Vertical sync is supposed to prevent tearing and stuttering at the cost of high input delay because it will prevent the graphics card from redrawing a frame until it can update the entire image. Tearing happens when you get half a frame updated while the other half still isn't updated before the whole thing gets a fresh frame. Since you made a point about input delay I figured it was important to mention that this is also a pick your poison kind of thing. GSync is made to remove the input delay and other issues that Vertical brings while doing the same job. However, while Vertical locks your framerate to monitor refresh rate, GSync only works below your refresh rate, so using GSync means you should limit your framerate to not get above the threshhold, that way you won't get any stutters or tearing at all. You should always disable Vertical when you're using a GSync/Freesync monitor. Additionally Vertical sync is always applied to Windows, meaning windowed borderless puts you on Vertical sync regardless - and you wouldn't want to get the input delay two times over. BattleNonSense is a great channel on this kind of stuff.
One thing to note: if you have an older graphics card/cpu or a monitor that has a 60Hz refresh rate, limiting the frames to 60 can actually lead to a more stable framerate since the PC saves some resources it might otherwise use to try and get more frames. Edit: I'm not sure of the exact cause of this. I've just noticed that a lot of the times, setting a framerate limit leads to more stable fps if you have issues with dips.
Wanted to come back and comment on this video after a few days of playing the game with them. I was one of the people that just kicked everything to Ultra and went about my day because I had a powerful rig, and holy fuck it's absurd the number of frames I've gained because of changing the settings. Makes the play experience so much better. I'm a casual GW2 player because my main in XIV, but one of the things about GW2 that made me less inclined to play was how horrible the frame drops were in big battles or even in town, but the game feels soooooo much better now so the whole "ugh, that runs like shit for me, I don't really feel like doing much." is gone. Thanks so much WP!
I'm playing with a I7 4790 8gb ram with integrated graphics due to gpus shortages and at 1080 i usually have 30is fps but after a few tweaks i saw on this video i manage to get up to 55 fps with little to no graphic quality loss. Thanks WP What still annoys me is that at some maps when i mount i get "stuck" inside the floor for a while i can se my char moving on the mini map but not on screen.
From what I have read if you skin a mount this mostly goes away. Every survey I get I mention that I think every player should get a skin for all the mounts that is very close to the default skin for free to get rid of this issue.
I have a 1440p ultrawide, and an 8k PC, 3090. In lions arch I get 20-50fps. Tip, change the 2 bottom things for characters to Medium Medium, and the reflections off helps a lot.
It’s so odd with my gw2 the only visual issue is that no matter what if I face my camera towards my character for screenshots, it seems to be in shadow? Like I can’t find good lighting anywhere at all.
The frame limiter is important for laptop users. Setting it can greatly reduce noise as the fans don't need to work as hard to keep it cool. Even on a desktop you should cap frames at the max refresh rate of your monitor as anything above that is just wasted effort for your cpu and gpu.
I cap mine at 60 even on desktop since I don't think input latency matters too much in an MMO. Though in general, keeping your FPS unlocked gives an input latency benefit no matter the max refresh rate, so it really isn't wasted.
I've noticed in my case, that If I put the refresh rate the same as my monitor, it changes the saturation and colors of the game. It doesn't look bad, but I find this weird. Do you know if this is normal or not?
Not sure why or how but light adaptation is checked and greyed out in my settings. I don't know if this means it's not active or just being controlled by something else but I can't change it nor find it in the settings xml file. Do I not worry about it?
I kept thinking this was a video about how to record it because I kept running into the issue of the game itself running buttery smooth for me, but my footage being nightmarish and choppy. It seems like from posts I have seen on the internet that software as an encoder for some odd reason results in choppy footage and to get smooth footage you need to both have a Nividia graphics card and set your encoder to hardware. Big RIP for my Ryzen3.
For the longest time I thought there was something wrong with my PC because shaders were so damn weird. It took getting a new machine to realize it wasn't a me problem. Also, did devs fix wings and mounts appearance not being affected by settings? I still remember "simplified" player models running around with all kinds of accessories, bringing FPS down.
Is it worth messing with my settings if I have a high end PC? 4070ti, i9-12900k, DDR5 32gb Ram, M.2 SSD, on an ultrawide 240hz monitor. Im hitting 150 fps average in towns with all the settings maxed out. Is this guide mostly for FPS boost or graphics boost? The performance isnt an issue for me, but I would like it to look a tiny but better if Im able to.
For any out there wondering Linux isn't supported but using Lutris I have zero issues running on dual 4k monitors for the desktop and a 1080p laptop. Only issue is Taco won't work since it relies on a Windows api that we havnt found a way to get running under wine yet but things like arcdps run fine.
