Guild Wars 2

Hey, thx for inviting. Here some thoughts/pictures from my testing time.

1. The supply spots in keeps are kinda invisible, at least in Air keep when you try to defend the inner gates, I don’t think I saw a supply depot nearby. There was 1 near POI, but that’s on the outer region of keep. If I remember right there are 3 only near each of the outer gates. I think one near lord room would be nice too – the area there offers kinda equal distance to both inner gates. Also some icons on minimap (at least after zooming in) to help locate them would be nice, or if we could see them from a bit further distance through the textures? Dunno which one is better choice.

2. The shrines. They have nice mechanics giving strong abilities that are really worth to control and I think it will be worth to have some squads dedicated to keeping control of them – especially Air keep shrines – you don’t want to jump down and then see that enemy took the shrine and you are gonna splat on the ground Maybe it needs some deactivation time, for example the “buff” icon starts blinking after enemy took 1 of the 3 and you have that couple seconds to notice “I better get out of lava” or “I shouln’t jump now”.
They could also have some tooltip description about the effects, some new players might not know it from the start. http://i.imgur.com/9WF8PSO.jpg “If your world control 1…2…3… shrines then you gain x,y,z effects”.
The guards at shrines are pretty easy to kill solo and they don’t do much dmg.

3. Keep gates were kinda confusing to find at start unless we zoom in the mini map and take a look at it to notice the structures, but with time we can get use to it. Similiar for the walls, not that easy to spot untill you get to the place.
http://i.imgur.com/KpVtZo5.jpg
At Fire keep the map wasn’t zooming for the underground levels.
http://i.imgur.com/BNkUxUC.jpg

4. The guards. This is troublesome, depending on how many ppl are attacking. Larger groups should have no problems because they will just streamroll through any guards, but when its a small group, not to mention if they have no ranged classes they might have a problem, especially at Fire keep, the Charred Fleshreavers. It feels weird when we attacked the ones on ground and they use taunt ability all at the same time. The ones at top walls bombing us all the time as well.
At one gate there were 3, at other there were 4 of them.
http://imgur.com/pGZvv2n,pfpvHnS#0
Also the locations seemed to differ depending on the keep. In Fire or Earth keep they have rather good placements causing most if not all of the guards on higher levels to attack the intruders, but later in Air keep the tengu guards were a bit far away in some places and didn’t seem to care that keep is under attack :P
http://i.imgur.com/lzuTkaF.jpg

5. The lords – they seem really nice made, thought a bit strong for small groups especially if defenders show up at last minute, the lord will very likely be a deciding factor in who wins the fight. We even managed to kill several larger groups when they ‘tunnel vision’ at lord and ignored the attackers – bad habits from other maps. Good job on these. Btw, isn’t Fire Keep lord named after Tirzah? :P http://i.imgur.com/jp2rZUf.jpg

6. Inner areas of keeps are very large compared to old ones so a duo team of mesmer+thief can have good times hiding there. However it’s called keep for a reason, if you want to keep it you will have to check for such things – prepare stealth traps.
Another thing is that the inner gates are relatively far inside and the road to supply camp is quite long – in case you miss that 5 last supply to finish ram. If there are defenders inside, I think Supply traps will be very effective. Once again, improvements for defenders!

7. The fall dmg traits – I really see a lot of use for them on this map. At some point I just started to use them constantly. A lot of vertical level differences in terrain should allow to use them a lot more often than ever before!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWYl39HMMBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5ebUaANPJU

8. Other bugs and concerning things – Some stuff I haven’t seen in other threads yet.

- in far NE area there were some Wyvern champions, we had no clue what are they doing there. http://i.imgur.com/IDlAKr0.jpg

- the opposite side was pretty empty, but we found the Quaggans not gonna put spoilers here though

- Gandalf Eagles http://i.imgur.com/mNW0hIN.jpg

- If you fall here by accident you can’t jump out, only waypoint, NE tower stairs/wall http://i.imgur.com/Sm5vAqD.jpg

- Noth exit from Air keep, I thought it’s a nice hiding spot, but when I couldn’t come out I realized it’s just a bug http://i.imgur.com/JlJYZDJ.jpg

- The Shield generator seem pretty strong, especially the large bubble skill #3 that gives immunity to arrowcart fire. 2 of these generators could allow bigger group of attackers to relatively easy block most of projectiles + arrowcart fire, and in that situation the defenders would be left only with trying to get the generators or call bigger forces to defend.

That’s all. I have to say the map is beautiful and nicely optimized as well, I have much nicer fps compared to other maps on the same settings, it only dropped a bit couple of times near Earth keep when we watched it from south, but other than that it was pretty smooth even in bigger fights. I wasn’t part of any big 3-way fights though.

September 2nd test

Some bugs/problems found or other suggestions.

1. Banners – they are strong with good skills, especially Turtle and Dragon banners.

- Centaur one might be a bit lacking compared to the other 2, but maybe in hands of roamers, camp defenders or condi build player it would work better, I didn’t play condi build so can’t tell how well it would work vs other players. The skill #5 on Centaur banner transforms the player into rampaging centaur, but it doesn’t add any stats boost which is a bit troublesome – but again I was just playing on squishy elementalist, so it might be different for other tanky classes. The knockbacks are nice and not in too big area, additional effects to choose are fine too, cripple, blind and the last one that I forgot atm. A little defensive stat boost would be welcome though.

- Turtle banner provides really nice defensive utilities, protection on auto attack is very nice/strong to support your allies. Other skills fit in really nice as well.

- Dragon banner seems pretty good as the offensive one. On berserker build with lot of dmg modifiers I was able to hit players with skill #5 for around 8-9k and that coupled with standing in the fire field which gives quickness can bring real devastation in choke points. Maybe it would need a little toning down, 10-20%. Hard to say because it depends on what build the player is using, tanky guardian commander would probably have less lower numbers. Skill #3 didn’t have information about what range it works in in the tooltip – seems like around 600 range.

The common problem with banners is that they do not share cooldown when used by different players. This leads to situation: A uses banner #5, drops banner, B pick up banner, use #5 and drops it, C pick up banner …. For such situation it really need to have global cooldowns for all players, not just cooldown per player. If it couldn’t be done, because it’s upgrade thingy taken from keep/tower, maybe it should not be allowed to drop it – ofc would have to inform the player in tooltip about it or something.’

Another problem is that the banners, just like other ‘spawned’ weapons like conjures from ele or warrior banners – can be picked up while using golem. Here is a short video to present it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw-JVi8iqqE

2. Guild claiming & tactics

I have little suggestion, if it can be done ofc. The panel with all info about structure could also show how much supply is in there – for ally only view. http://i.imgur.com/06B6xTO.jpg Just a nice feature to have, but if it can’t be implemented in some way it’s fine as it is atm as well. We will just have to ask in map chat or go there to check.

About tactics, some icons might be a little confusing for new players, especially if they didn’t take a look at guild upgrades in the guild panel, so it could be nice to have a short text descritpion as well. “Supply drop”, “Centaur Banner”, “Invulnerable walls & gates”… http://i.imgur.com/vtZkctp.jpg

Automatic turrets upgrade is very annoying at the gates, for small groups it takes a lot of time and effort/patience to attack keep which has this upgrade slotted. The turrets can’t be destroyed and attack quite often, every attack deals quite high dmg and knock-back. Maybe the interval between attacks could be a little higher, or the dmg lower/no certain knock-back on every attack. At least they can be blocked, but for that need to use certain skills from certain classes.

Atoss.1056:

2. Guild claiming & tactics

I have little suggestion, if it can be done ofc. The panel with all info about structure could also sto show how much supply is in there – for ally only view.

Second this.

Atoss.1056:

About tactics, some icons might be a little confusing for new players, especially if they didn’t take a look at guild upgrades in the guild panel, so it could be nice to have a short text descritpion as well. “Supply drop”, “Centaur Banner”, “Invulnerable walls & gates”… http://i.imgur.com/vtZkctp.jpg

To be honest, I found those icons terrible. I would much prefer a name on it.

Atoss.1056:

Automatic turrets upgrade is very annoying at the gates, for small groups it takes a lot of time and effort/patience to attack keep which has this upgrade slotted. The turrets can’t be destroyed and attack quite often, every attack deals quite high dmg and knock-back. Maybe the interval between attacks could be a little higher, or the dmg lower/no certain knock-back on every attack. At least they can be blocked, but for that need to use certain skills from certain classes.

Second this as well. I guess I was following you for a bit last night, I’ve found those turrets + guards + siege a bit too much.

Just found 1 more video I recorded today.

It’s about Fps drop when facing Earth Keep (garrison) from north. I walked around a bit trying to see why it happens, but it was like this every time (when looking towards garri from north). When we get close or fight inside it’s just fine, normal Fps.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuBOf5mANv4 – when looking any other direction it’s 50+ but when facing towards the keep it goes to 25+/-.