Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to give you guys some positive feedback (since I know a lot of the time you guys get negative feedback en masse).

I really love the change that came related to the way that buffs target party members before other allies. My main is a guardian (although I love my mes and my ele too), and buffs are a big dynamic for this class in a party situation. I spend most of my playing time partied up with my friends, and when we do metas I was rarely able to help them out (such as throwing stability on them to protect them from the golem’s knockback) since my buffs would go to other people in the vicinity as opposed to them.

This new change has been great because I can contribute in a supporting role better to my party by buffing them when we decide to do events where there are a lot of other people (or NPCs) around.

Just thought you guys would like to know that this change was definitely one for the better!

Thanks for all of your hard work.

Yes this was smart and necessary.

Another great thing I noticed is that when I’m trying to self-combo in a Zerg it actually works now. This is the one I’m usually doing:

Black Powder + Heartseeker = Stealth

But before the last patch I’d always end up triggering somebody else’s field and getting Flame Shield or something instead. Now it seems to prioritize my own field first, so I can consistently get stealth even if there’s a mess of other fields around.

This is generally a nice thing (hopefully they remembered to do the same for ranger pets) although there is one exception that I can think of. During the last balthazar escort event it would be better if you are not in a party since the new priorities would make it harder to heal the NPCs.

On the other hand what should really happen is that they should fix the event so people wouldn’t have to do that sort of contortion.

Hmm… Good point Khisanth. I guess I didn’t think about those case scenarios. There are times when you want to buff an npc over a party member, such as in AC p1 when you want to heal hodgins when the gravelings are pummeling him, or when you try to keep Grast alive during p3 so you don’t get crushed by the ceiling.

As a programmer myself I can see how it would be hard to go into every instance where you might want NPCs to take buff priority and change the logic so that NPCs in those cases outweigh other party members. I guess if I had to choose one way or the other I like it with party priority, and then just try to cope with situations where you need NPCs to be buffed instead, such as keeping your party out of range of you when you throw buffs and want them to hit the NPC.

eleshazar.6902:

Hmm… Good point Khisanth. I guess I didn’t think about those case scenarios. There are times when you want to buff an npc over a party member, such as in AC p1 when you want to heal hodgins when the gravelings are pummeling him, or when you try to keep Grast alive during p3 so you don’t get crushed by the ceiling.

As a programmer myself I can see how it would be hard to go into every instance where you might want NPCs to take buff priority and change the logic so that NPCs in those cases outweigh other party members. I guess if I had to choose one way or the other I like it with party priority, and then just try to cope with situations where you need NPCs to be buffed instead, such as keeping your party out of range of you when you throw buffs and want them to hit the NPC.

Hodgins shouldn’t be an issue. You’re not going to have the whole party on Hodgins … well if you did you’ll probably fail that part regardless of priorities. Not sure how that works out with Grast.

The Balthazar escorts is probably a special case. I actually forgot about the other escort there from Conquest Marina. We were trying to do that a couple of weeks ago, with just two players my friend had no problem keeping the NPCs alive but once a 3rd person joins it was no longer possible.