Guild Wars 2

The Chantry. It counts as its own map, see all the “why do I have one thing left for world completion” threads.

Paulytnz.7619:

Pretty much this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Living-World-Season-Three/first

MO clearly states they will be similar to the “quarterlies” but they will try and do better/sooner. So to me that’s 3-4 months.

Lets see.

A year is 12 months.

A quarter of that is 3 months.

More frequently than quarterly means less than 3 months. MO even capped the most as 6 times a year, at best, which is every 2 months.

So, no idea how you got 4 months out of that post. Which is why people are questioning you.

With the changes to ascended trinkets/infusions, is it now possible to slot the Preserved Queen Bee into an ascended trinket, or not?

Glenstorm.4059:

They certainly are doing their best to kill off the Ele in PvP.

Chill out dude, Anet will probably do a hot fix pretty soon. Not that big of a deal.

I kittening love the new map. Its so charming, decently hard to navigate at first, but not in the horrible way that TD was. I don’t even mind that its compact its already one of my favorite maps in the game

They really are killing it. Their servers can’t handle the large fights in WvW as it is, but now that boonshare is rampant and now conditions can be applied to siege, not to mention venomshare becoming baseline… casting skills in large WvW fights is nearly impossible… takes a good 5-8 seconds to get any skills off, and by that time your target has moved away from where you cast.

They’ve dealt with balance solely from a PvE perspective and completely ignored how badly it ruins fights in WvW, causing their servers to slow to a crawl. It is quite literally killing it, and it has become unplayable in many instances. I can only imagine how bad the weekly WvW reset is going to be now. RIP WvW population…

i personally loved it ,i couldnt finish the story in the hours I played, because i try to not devour the content like there was no tomorrow. speedrushing it and then complaining it is too shorr makes no sense. the story was fun, loved the voice acting, the map was really nice, and i havent yet tried tje new fractal and pvp map. im looking forward to it.

Hi,

these are my observations, correct me if I’m wrong:

• it seems to me that a Mighty Infusion (+5 power, +7 AR) is much easier and cheaper to get! Before the patch, a mighty infusion cost about 100g, while the Versatile Mighty Infusion cost about 350g! (btw, it doesn’t seem fair to players who crafted those infusions before the patch)
• it is possible to put a mighty infusion in armor. Previously, you had to put a versatile mighty infusion
• you can put agony infusions in armor and weapons (for ex. +1 agony infusion)
• you can no longer buy +5 versatile infusion for 75 fractal relics and upgrade it to a +7 versatile infusion for another 75 fractal relics
• amulets are used exlusively for utility/enriched infusions

However, Anet said in the patch notes that it is a work in progress, quote “Finally, after making these changes to the Infusion system, we had some loose ends that needed to be tied up.”

Also, as expected, the price of Stabilizing Matrix has increased as of yesterday.

There were no hero points, three vistas, a handful of POIs and a handful of way points. This made the map feel smallish to me. I got map completion without trying for it. I literally had a chest in the lower right hand corner and was perplexed as to what it was for until I opened it and realized it was a map completion reward – that is pretty dinky. But I started playing a month before HoT launched, so I do not know how big patches should be. I still have content to finish, so for me this hasn’t been a content drought, but if I had been playing for 3 or 4 years I would probably be bored to tears with what’s out there.

For me is the fact that there are no new guild decorations aside from the monuments!

I’d be a lot more excited about the monuments if I didn’t have to request separate permissions to place them…

It’s great the cap has been raised, but I was kind of expecting some more types of decorations. Maybe even some that can implement the new monuments as a base decoration?

This was a decent size patch when using the old release time scale. I’m kinda surprised that there is so little content considering how long it took to get out.
As for the map being “vertical” being equal to being a large map.. no. I accidentally finished map completion on it within the first few hours. Wasn’t even trying. Just doing basic exploration and chasing events.
It’s a great map. Well done for the Living Story, but it is definitely also small.

Hi,

please let us deconstruct our “+7” and “+6” agony infusions to “+6” and “+5” infusions, primarily because the infusions used to get the attribute agony infusions (mighty, malign…) from INFUZ-5959 are 3x “+5” agony infusion and 10 stabilizing matrices.

Ty

Yeah, the verticality and design of the map are interesting, but there is a lot of negative space. There are a lot of empty areas where there are just mobs pasted here and there aren’t that many events. The ones that are there aren’t extremely interesting. They kind of seem like a culmination of current events copy and pasted into the map. That’s a bit harsh, I know, but once you play through it there doesn’t seem to be much drawing you back in. At least not for me anyway.

When I’m in the map, I’m just seeing a few events here and there, a lot of places to glide from, and a bunch of random easy to beat down mobs that drop 1 or 2 of a currency I’m going to need THOUSANDS of. So in short it really just seems like a farm map for mats and currency for new stat ascended pieces. Which is good, but in comparison to something like the Silverwastes that is still one of the most populated to this day it doesn’t hold much to it.

It’s definitely a story device map, and probably meant to include non-raiders or get a taste of the raid’s atmosphere, but is it enough to hold us over for 3 months until we may or may not get another map?

Are they all going to be this size?

I’ve been posting a lot of negative things about the content, and I’m trying not to be too negative because I still enjoy the game and the detail they put into it… but I am a little underwhelmed.

Perhaps the new fractal and pvp map will make up for some of my disappointment.

I wanted to reserve my judgement of this patch and its content until after I had played it and got some idea of what I was looking at, so here is what I will say for each individual aspect:

PvE:

I have waited…. 9 months, for a zone the size of Dry Top? I know that you clearly put effort and time into making the new mobs, events, and asthetic of the area, I am hard to please honestly. I like the visual design, but frankly I do not think that this new map alone was worth 9 months of waiting, its barley if at all a new zone, its actually “smaller” than dry-top when you eliminate its verticality.

Story:

The story was fantastic, the writers get my absoleute 10/10 this time round, I loved it, I wont go to far into details but I can say I was “not” dissapointed when it came to the writing of the story, the consistancy of the flow and helping pick up where heart of thorns left off and fixing that abysmally poor storyline that it had left behind.

The story, was what carried this patch entirely for me.

In conclusion:

Was this worth 9 months of my life waiting for new content outside of raiding which I dont take an interest in, or fractals which again, I dont really care for?

No.

Is it a GOOD patch with a decent sized amount of content.

Maybe.

It depends how much you’re willing to give A-net a chance to impress you, as I said, this wasnt all bad but there are things about it that keep it from being “good” in my mind.

Moving Forwards:

In order for arena-net to really make this work they need to stop being fair. I have seen you in bias develop content for raiders over 2 months that came out on a regular basis, along with tornaments of pvp.

Its time you did the same for the living story, the next patch should be focused almost biasedly, towards new content on the pve side of development, and giving us maps that actually drive us to play consistantly, I hope, in some way, you find some soft-way of returning to the old vanilia heart quest style of pve progression, and map progression because these “zerg” maps are getting tedious.

That being said, I am going to say it right now, the writing was the best ive ever seen, the voice acting was amazing, and I think you deserve a massive kiss/hug/pat on the back take your pick for that at least.

Again, this isnt to say you didnt try, its to say you should have thought about just how much content your playerbase was expecting for 9 months of drought.

Hopefully, you can fix that with the next 2-3 patches.

Isnt this the first patch of like…8?

cptaylor.2670:

Yeah, the verticality and design of the map are interesting, but there is a lot of negative space. There are a lot of empty areas where there are just mobs pasted here and there aren’t that many events. The ones that are there aren’t extremely interesting. They kind of seem like a culmination of current events copy and pasted into the map. That’s a bit harsh, I know, but once you play through it there doesn’t seem to be much drawing you back in. At least not for me anyway.

When I’m in the map, I’m just seeing a few events here and there, a lot of places to glide from, and a bunch of random easy to beat down mobs that drop 1 or 2 of a currency I’m going to need THOUSANDS of. So in short it really just seems like a farm map for mats and currency for new stat ascended pieces. Which is good, but in comparison to something like the Silverwastes that is still one of the most populated to this day it doesn’t hold much to it.

It’s definitely a story device map, and probably meant to include non-raiders or get a taste of the raid’s atmosphere, but is it enough to hold us over for 3 months until we may or may not get another map?

Are they all going to be this size?

I’ve been posting a lot of negative things about the content, and I’m trying not to be too negative because I still enjoy the game and the detail they put into it… but I am a little underwhelmed.

Perhaps the new fractal and pvp map will make up for some of my disappointment.

These were more or less my thoughts as well. The new map isn’t that -bad- per say. I like the aesthetic, the mobs work well enough if a bit overstocked on hitpoints in some cases, and I would have loved to see a full sized map made of it. But as it is, the new map is small and exceedingly short on content and new ground to explore after a long shortage for the open-world pve crowd.

I’ve been suffering some from burnout on GW2, and I know a fair few others who’ve felt the same in recent months. If this is all we’re going to get per patch, with months long waits in between as some people have been saying, I’m afraid the feeling is only going to get worse. And I enjoy both PvP and WvW as well; it must be far worse for non-raiding pve-only crowd.

Just ignore the vocal minority of negative people on the forum and reddit. They do that for sports. If you go ingame the absolute majority is having a ton of fun. Its a good patch, love the map and the story episode very much. If they rather play generic repetitive dated old school mmo maps like certain terrible asian games its they’re own choice.

and also for those above +13AR i.e. +14AR, +15AR, +16AR etc etc……

I must confess to being utterly confused about the infusion changes. I’ve had one amulet infusion removed and mailed to me that I don’t know what to do with and I visited the new infusion vendor to be greeted by a bewildering array of tabs, treating all the +X infusions as different currencies. If the objective was to clarify and/or simplify then it’s a fail….

I for one have no issues with the length and the content of this patch. It’s just about right if you ask me. I’d be super annoyed if they added something grindy/timegated so that we are busy for the next 2-3 months.

This patch was just amazing.

Anet could atleast have added some new armour/weapons we could work on until the next update. I would really like to gather some rare map currencies for speciel looking armor. I did like the story, the map is okay but I miss something to do on it besides gathering all that stuff for the gliding skills.

This won’t be enough to satisfy even half of the playerbase until the next update. If there isn’t anything more in the next update than this, I might take a break aswell. Hoping the next expansion will be massive!

I liked the living world story, that we got a new map, that we can collect items on the new map to get a new backpack. The best of two worlds from season 1 & 2. BUT my current worry is, if we are gonna get content updates every 2-3 months with “only” this amount of content in each im afraid gw2 will become a game which veterans cant play anymore due to no content. It will become a game where you login every 2-3 months and play for 2-3 weeks to later go back to their main game which gives more content. This will result in no selling of gems for anet and they cant support their game since its heavily based on gemstore and expansions (hot was underwhelming with 4 maps, just saying, didnt keep players playing for long).

Here’s my take on it, just in terms of the PvE content, not so much the mechanics.

The story was good, the big reveal VO was hohum but other than that it was good, nothing really weak.
The new map is good, visually beautiful, and lots to grind for those who want it.
I’d give it a solid 8.5.

Does it make up for the almost year drought? No.
Does it make up for the fact that the raid (even though timeline wise it’s now beaten) still doesn’t have a very easily accessible clear state that a person can run around in (especially to make up for the 3-4 month gap before chapter 2)? No.
Is it somewhat insulting that the raid map is bigger than the new map? Kind of (but the raid is linear so not really?)
Is it kind of insulting that they said the raid story would be a “side” story and ends up being the entire focus of the LS S3 plot? A little. (I’m aware there are NPCs and books that update non-raiders on what happened, but then I ask… Why not just let us in the stupid raid in the first place now that it’s beaten? Why do all that work when the raid instance is sitting RIGHT there?)
Was it good enough for a 3-4 month gap? … I don’t know.

Very strong patch and update, but I still have some bitterness about some things and probably won’t go away until the raid is explorable and/or the next raid they come out is handled a lot better in terms of content release balancing.

There’s a lot of vocal complaining about the infusion changes, but the changes really clean up the system and make obtaining agony resistance easier. Slots that were capped at +7 from from versatile infusion can now go up to +20 (realistically +11). As someone trying to break into higher level fractals, this is a very welcome change!

On top of that, it is now also possible to get up to +15 stats (say power or vitality) in rings that are both attuned and infused. This is a great benefit to pve players who don’t do fractals, wvw players, and raids.

The removal of defensive/offensive slots also makes things a lot easier. If I want 6 power infusions in my armor I can do it now.

Thanks for the great update!

we have new emotes and thats great but please can we have have new faces added in the future eg Older faces, scarred faces, non-European faces (for both norn and humans) (Black,Asian,Indian,native american Latino etc ) like skin color options are fine but hair and faces… its not really a demand just something for the devs to consider and hopefully add in the future.

The size was like LS2, but I think the quality really was noticeably increased. This was a good story, a bit short, but good. They definitely need to keep up this quality, though, and not slip. They have a lot of ground to make up for all that drought.
3-4 months was probably never said by the devs, but from what I/we know of them, I am inclined to pessimistically think that that’s what 2-3 months means.

GW2 is typical of MMO’s in terms of content. And, there’s a wide variety of things to do off the story track. The previous monthly updates were not bad from a player/story perspective but rather from a software engineering perspective. It’s not sustainable; it’s just not.

My problem is more with direction. HoT is not the game I bought and if I thought HoT was it I’d be gone. But, in terms of general content release I’m quite happy. That said I don’t have a problem with boredom IRL. I actually don’t understand it. I would have to consciously not pay attention in order to be bored so perhaps I’m not a good barometer here.

The big QoL change for me was salvaging. It’s elegant and I love it.
Playing through the story and really enjoying it so far. I felt the time in the first story step was appropriate given the events and from there everything has flowed and been a lot of fun. Currently in the new zone working on stuff there and it feels like a good addition to the new HoT maps.

Not tried the new fractal, ran out of time but looking forward to checking that out soon.

Big thumbs up from me.

Amazing work. Map feels very unique. Fractal is well done (and unique, despite worries about reused assets). Bosses feel engaging (maybe a little too easy but that is subjective). Story steps balance dialogue and action well. The two guild hall upgrades were both well done. I haven’t found a balance change that I would call extreme or unwarranted yet. I haven’t really done the revamped Capricorn pvp map yet, but people seem to like it.

On the con side, my biggest concern comes with content that seems to be slipping through the cracks between the Living Story and other teams – specifically, guild missions . Why were no new guild missions included in this update and is that even a part of the game you plan to add to this year at all? Seems like this would have been the time to add new missions in the HOT maps and I worry that they opportunity may not arise again for a really long time.

The patch was great from a LS and fractal perspective.
I did not see much on the WvW end and balance seemed lacking in regards to vanilla vs specialization.
Are there any significant changes still on the very near horizon?
Also, is there any talk about giving laurel refunds back for the amulet changes? I have about 8-9 extra wvw infusions with no place to put them and have no real desire to put any enrichment infusions in a necklace.
Thanks

The only fault I’ve been able to find with the patch so far was that /fistshake (my personal favourite from GW1) wasn’t brought back as an emote, but I understand that the new emotes we were given access to already existed in the game. I hope in the future we’ll receive more emotes and this is coming from a non-RPer who just likes to mess around in the guild hall before missions start.

While on the subject of guild missions, I echo Blaeys there in that they need some TLC. Especially given that bounties were broken beyond belief last night with spawns in the air, out of sync for various people in the squad and interactions not happening to trigger fights. Was glad to see that races now seem to be fixed though. One thing I’d like to see added is a counter in the guild UI that lets you know how many more successes you need for guild credit if you’re piggybacking on another guild’s race which is already in progress.

LOVED the story so far for LS3 – this is the ANet that I fell in love with in GW1 in terms of lore and story. Will obviously not give away any spoilers but even though I and some guildies had figured out parts of the story (and the location of this installment) through lore musing on Teamspeak, we didn’t get the twist at the end. The one person who did guess our next destination is probably feeling smug as heck because the rest of us went with totally different options.

The new map gives me echos of the Realm of Torment which I’m pretty sure was the intention. For me, it’s how Tangled Depths should have worked in terms of verticality and I love it. Will be spending a fair amount of time there earning my Viper’s amulet and the other nice things on sale. One quibble – how come the home instance node is 50g on top of the map currency? That seems incredibly steep given costs of other nodes that are buyable from NPCs.
I’m enjoying the events a lot, even when a new build caused me to respawn on a champ (which I might have kited onto a nearby ANet staff member…). Open world VG was a hoot with many of us jokingly calling as if we were in SV (GREEN!).

Not tried the new fractal yet but am so grateful that Vials/Globs/Shards are now buyable and that infusions are a lot more user-friendly (and affordable). Not happy that it seems that certain testers leaked information to give friends an economic boost as was being discussed on Reddit last night. The new fractal UI is a work of art and I had a guildie breaking my eardrums with his squeeing when he saw it, followed by me returning the favour on my discovery.

Special shoutout to the QoL updates, particularly ‘Salvage All…’ and seeing % health on HP bars – as a Reaper who got frustrated with timing Gravedigger, this makes me a happy corpse-fondler!

All in all, thank you for a great patch and I hope to see more of the same standard in the future!

I’ve enjoyed most of it so far. The only suggestions would be more story content included as this release feels like the size of the specific episodes of LS2 which came with DT and SW but with a few QoL features.

You added a new fractal map and PvP map but I don’t see you being able to maintain that cadence with the LS releases based on a Reddit post yesterday that the fractal took 5-6 months to create if I remember correctly.

It’s only been one episode but it feels like we’re getting the amount of content that we got in LS2 but with releases further spread apart.

Things I like, in no particular order:
Combat skills while gliding, and a map that lets me have real fun with ley line gliding. I’ve been waiting for gliding combat, and I’m really glad to see it!

New fractal: I’ve been hoping for new fractal content since forever and I’m very glad to see more added, especially since it seems to confirm that fractals are now some level of priority for new content rather than being left to stagnate.

New map: I really enjoy the new map, though it can be a bit hard to see what’s going on while in the air amongst all the red. The new events are fun and the map is creative, and I appreciate how it took the tiered feel of VB and simplified the transitioning between upper and lower tiers without sacrificing the distinct feel of each.

New enemies/mechanics: I loved the new, more difficult mechanics that were added to mobs when HoT was released, and I’m loving the new, more difficult mechanics that were added to mobs in the new map. I hope this trend of creativity continues. I also appreciate that it gives an opportunity for players to learn things that enemies in the raids use, which will help people who have previously had a difficult time in raids jump in a little faster.

New LS: I called it when the first raid wing came out and wasn’t disappointed. In the interest of not spoiling anything I won’t say much, but I do really appreciate the direction the game is going in with it in terms of both the next indicated expansion and the continuation of the LS. Speaking of, I’m glad that they seem to be tackling different things rather than one simply being a lead-up to another. While the dialogue of the big bads in the last portion of the episode was a little campy, overall I appreciated the story-telling and use of resources. I also really appreciated that it didn’t try to do too many different things while still involving a ton of different plot lines intersecting.

More HoT Mastery points! Yes!

Soliciting forum feedback from players? YES!! I know we can be a hotheaded bunch, but I think we all appreciate that you at least asked us to provide any feedback. We know you read the forums but it’s nice to see an actual post regarding it

Things I don’t like, in no particular order:
Elementalist skill CD nerf was a necessary evil, but the damage decrease feels a little heavy handed as does the nerf to healing. While I understand the intent was to reduce the multitasking that an elementalist is very good at in raids, it left my character having a woefully difficult time keeping myself alive since I simply could not heal well enough unless I sacrificed damage or toughness/vit to put on healing power gear. I believe that a more effective nerf to “Wash the Pain Away” would have been to reduce the healing to everyone other than the elementalist rather than a flat 1/3 reduction

The Bloodstone Crown should have been ascended, since all other LS episode rewards are ascended.

As I have not played the other professions that were changed yet, I won’t speak to them, but a lot of the changes to Guardians have been ones that have been requested for a long time, so I’m glad to see community feedback on balance appears to have been considered when these changes were made.

@Anet as a whole: So far, I’m loving this new content, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where it goes. I’m glad that y’all aren’t trying to do the 2 weeks releases anymore, because I don’t want y’all to burn out. Keep up the good work!

I had so much fun I forgot to eat before going out grocery shopping. I did enough LS with a friend to get to Bloodstone Fen, then got super distracted running around doing events and achieves. When the server crash patch came that stopped me from playing further until after groceries and dinner (normally I would watch TV w/ my husband after that, but last night I made an exception and even missed DNC coverage).

I got back in, my friend hadn’t progressed without me, so we completed the LS together, enjoying the heck out of the dialogue and feeling pretty good about figuring out puzzles and mechanics without guides or spoilers.

I really like Bloodstone Fen for the visuals and the mobility it offers. I’m hoping that once I fully assemble the three journals I can read them in order, as often I had to grab a paper scrap and high tail it out of there without reading thanks to crazed White Mantle. Having the separate dailies is pretty cool, but I do suggest this not become a general thing — one specialized set to help get the scads of currency needed for the vendor rewards is one thing, but the more daily subsets you add the more of a chore it will be to get to them all.

The QoL changes are great, although I am going to have to be very careful and winnow through my inventories to see which alts don’t need to keep some blues and greens for costuming before I risk clicking anything other than Use on the salvage kits. Permanently naming my Druid’s pets is on today’s to-do list.

The one QoL I really would have liked to see but is still missing afaik is having the updrafts in Lost Precipice be permanently on. I’m not a Reddit user, and had too much time pressure to attend the AMA anyway, but that is a question I’d have posed: Why are these updrafts turned off once one claims the hall? If there’s a serious game performance issue, I could resign myself to this annoyance, but we’ve had only silence from the devs on the reasoning behind it. Which leads to the impression that some have stated that it was done due to the guild hall devs liking Gilded Hollow more and wanting to dissuade LP use. That can’t be right, yet the feeling lingers and could be dispelled with one straight up answer on the subject.

→ LS3: Really like it.
→ New map zone: Awesome.
→ Chaos Fractal: Great.
→ QoL Stuff: Very cool…..New Gemstore item suggestion: Unlimited Use Junk Salvage/Sell tool.
→ Balance: understand the reasoning, but the Ele nerf seems a bit much to do all at once.

Overall, I think you guys did a great job with this update. If this is setting the bar for what we can expect every few months, then woot woot!!

Is it possible to do something about the spirit shard reward when you’ve maxed out all your masteries? At the moment, if you don’t raid for various reasons and therefore don’t have the raid mastery track unlocked then you just get nothing even if you’ve got everything else unlocked. Can there be an exemption for this specific mastery track or just unlock the mastery track by default for everybody?

All around it seems the quality really shows this time around.

Quality of Life features and bug fixes: Excellent over all.

Story—— It was pretty good so far. Mechanics was on par with HoT (which is a good thing). Narrative wise was a huge improvement over HoT. Probably could have gone on a bit longer. I am not too sure on the narrative bridge that connects the raid and season 3. Due to the raid being a prologue to these events. Even though it’s recounted what happens in wing 1 & 2 by Bennett. It seems wing 3 was kept in the dark on purpose, since Bennett was not present for that event. Even though our character was there apparently.

Map—— Decent enough. It remind me of Southsun. Only difference it crammed full of events and enemies. I do like the vertical movement over some of the previous HoT maps. Though I have a bias for tangled depths. Interesting drop system with lower tier materials dropping (very impressive idea).

PvP—— Have not touched the new map. Not a huge fan of conquest. Actually play stronghold more.

Fractal —-— I will give this a go probably in the near future. Therefore will edit my post when I do.

Replay Value——— This is where the biggest problem is for this update. Especially for the new map. First it’s nice to see ascended stuff you can buy in this map. So you can get HoT stat for rings, amulet, and a back piece. However an accessory ascended jewelry is missing. Hopefully this gets added down the line. Beyond that: why was there no new weapon set for us to go after here? I can sort of understand why there is no new armor set, because what was stated in the reddit AMA. Nevertheless Balck Lion Weapons are still getting spit out continuously, and that idea kind of seems like a no brainier/missed opportunity. In the end you need something to keep us occupy till the next major episode drops.

I haven’t tried the new story, nor have I tried the new PvP map, but here’s my take on the changes:

The good

• Eles definitely needed to be brought down a bit in DPS within PvE.
• The /gg commands are nice, but the choice to apply finishers to yourself was genius. Well done.
• So happy to see new emotes added. Hoping to see more of these. /facepalm is great.
• Baseline venom share was a good move. Not sure if this makes venom share good enough to be meta, but it’s still good, directionally.
• Glad to see a new PvP map. Haven’t tried it, but it looks great. Love the open feel.
• Glad to see spirit shards available for excess XP.

The Bad

• Ele rotations definitely sound a bit clunky, but it’s hard to tell if that’s really so bad or if eles are just salty about a damage nerf (even thought they’re still DPS kings).
• Engis are still crap for raids. They’re technically viable, but only get taken into groups out of pity or because the raid leader can’t find a decent player of another profession.
• Thief still has a terrible rotation for staff PvE.
• Eles seem to be hit hard by cleric removal. Not sure that this was necessary. Last meta wasn’t too bunker heavy.
• DH changes don’t seem to matter for PvE. Still seems like they just camp hammer for best DPS.
• There’s still no class that can range DPS like an ele and ele nerfs don’t seem to change anything aside from lowering group DPS.

I’m probably missing a lot, but that’s what’s on my mind at the moment at least.

I have really enjoyed the patch so far. I spend most of my time roaming in WvW as a mesmer, but I play some PVE as well.

Balance changes were good. I have some things to think about, but I know I have a build I like and can continue to use. Torch improvements were enough to push me over the edge and actually build and equip Rodgort.

Salvage change is awesome.

New map looks really interesting. I played with my son and had fun going through the start of the story. It looks like a ton of work was invested there, and I’m sure it will take me quite a while to get through the whole episode. It’s also encouraging me to finish up my glider masteries.

Only confusing thing was the change to ascended amulets. As a primarily WvW player, I didn’t really understand what had happened and what I should do now. It would be cool if some WvW vendor sold whatever the new thing is that I can slot in the amulet.

Thx for the great work!

Even though I no longer main a Guardian, the changes to that profession definitely raised my eyebrow (in a good way).

I’ve always enjoyed Guardian scepter/torch even though many people think it’s kitten. Pre-patch with the right traits (and no help whatsoever from sigils/runes) I could keep up around 20-22 stacks of might. Last night during my brief stint in the game I easily kept a full 25. It’s my hope that the smite becoming a might-granting symbol and the aa attacking just a bit faster will allow some people to look at a cool weapon they may have otherwise already dismissed.

I won’t be able to comment on S3, ‘cause at this time I’m determined to wait until it’s finished before I start it.

I’m frightened at the prospect of seeing a gaggle of Norns with ’fros.

~EW

It’s all mostly positive besides how the elementalist nerf was done.

Build diversity has once again taken a huge hit for the class.

Something more drastic has to be done to make the elementalist fun to play and diverse again.

Here’s my feedback after blasting through the whole update:

Storytelling has improved a lot and the plot is very intriguing. Unfortunately though, the amount of content is a bit lacking. I finished every achievement within one day of the patch and none of them was even remotely challenging for me to feel I’ve actually accomplished a challenge. Encounters should have been more difficult and there should have been some really hard achievements to keep players engaged in the living world. This is pretty much just one day of content. Content quality is amazing, but quantity not so much.

The new fractal is awesome. Enjoyed every part of it. Not much else to add, this is exactly what I want from fractals.

The QoL was perhaps the best addition in this patch, I loved it, keep it coming. Can’t stress out enough how immensely helpful “salvage all” option is. I won’t be able to live without it anymore. There are also some further QoL suggestions from other people, I would like to see them adressed in the next couple of patches.

PvP I don’t play at all, but this new map (especially since it has new achievements tied to it) might actually get me interested enough to give it a shot. Since I don’t really understand the intricacies of PvP, I won’t be sharing my feedback on this.

Overall I’m very satisfied with the content quality, map design and dialogues, but I’m kinda disappointed in the difficulty tuning and length. It would be amazing as one of your bi-weekly updates, but absolutely won’t be able to keep me occupied for the next 3 months.

• Amazing PvE balance changes. I like the idea of having damage more normalized in PvE, it was getting out of hand with tempests, regardless of how upset people seem in this moment. I can finally play my engineer, ranger, and mesmer in PvE without feeling totally useless. It got to the point where I would only play my elementalist. That being said, I think ranger and mesmer could use a little PvE damage bump up, they are as far behind in damage as tempest was ahead.

• Not sure how PvP will turn out, I stopped playing ranked after I got enough tickets for the wings- but elementalist is probably a little too behind now that the heal bunker is nerfed, and warrrior’s 10% adrenal health might not be enough to make it not God mode.

• I can finally use bloodstone dust for something Can the gliding bonuses hit open world outside of the Fen? Also, would love to see similar things for dragonstone ore and empyreal fragments

• Only thing I don’t like: the amulet enrichment. I lost my 150 AR and it is very expensive to buy infusions to get it back. Can amulets have both an enrichment and a versatile infusion?

QoL update was good, the salvaging update is great, hopefully with that system in place we will get an “open all” feature next time for champ bags/chests etc,

The new map is nicely made, the only complaint I have is the White Mantle range attacks when gliding are crazy, like half way across the map crazy, even if you use stealth while gliding they still pip you out of the sky, im not sure how much replay ability the new map will have when people get the achievements etc, but time will tell on that.

The “update” to some skills is over the top, the minions from the necro seem to just die now, and don’t do much, so much so ive dropped them from my skills, ive seen others talking about ele and Mesmer but I don’t main either of them, hopefully you will take feedback from them topics and adjust skills accordingly, I dropped guardian awhile back because it was lacklustre in high level fractals due to retal, but the update according to a friend who mains guard, has said the update is good for guards so I guess that’s a positive.

I was disappointed that a topic that has come up time and time again in recent months, wasn’t addressed, and that was to do with the daily AP cap, you’s are keep a firm silence stance on that, and it looks like an update to this is never coming, with content being spaced out months apart, this really slows/ ( or stops ) progress to the achievement chests for armor etc, can we please get an update on this at some point in the near future, in 95 days I will hit the cap, and then im not sure I will bother playing daily anymore, as I really wont have a lot to log in for. ( do you have any info on this topic Gaile )

The story twist at the end was amazing, was a nice throwback to GW1, and cant actually wait to see where this goes now.

living story 3 fist episode is really good , story/art/mechanics are awesome, but it’s a bit short… i mean , it’s long like a single episode of LS2 , but the episodes of the ls2 was realeased every 2 week (and sometimes there was a long break , like winter stuff or summer stuff) now is every 2-3 months… it’s a bit bad have a short story and long break between episode

it’s like watching a tv series that have 2 episode every 2-3 months….

I love it,LS3 and all new changes makes this patch really good,only problem i have with it is that it took you too much time to make it.Now i have nothing to do for next 2-3 months since im not really fractial-raid lover…but ok,i understand that most of the members of the team working on expansion so not gonna hate here.
Content was awesome,just we need more of it.

“When the Allow Skill Retargeting option is enabled and instant ground targeting is used, any ground-targeted skill can now update its target point while the skill is preparing to execute.”

Terrible change. I love to you use instant casting while running around, dodging and rotating my camera around while holding the right mouse button. Then I cast something like a meteor at a specific position (still holding the right mouse button). The moment after I pressed and placed that skill I’m already again rotating around my camera while holding the right mouse button (it’s an “action” game, so I’m rotating my camera around a lot). Then finally when the meteor is starting to cast it’s on a complete other location, because I rotated my camera.

I vote for a toggle option for ground target skills. This right now is terrible and breaks my whole gameplay.

And of course, the elementalist CD mess up.

Overall feel and personal key thoughts summary: Enjoyed new story, welcome Guardian buff and Scrapper nerf. Thank you so much for salvage all. New map is boring, along with no new weapons, armors, and stat combo’s. Two out of Five Empyreal Stars

Good

• LS3, I enjoyed the dialogue, intrigued to find out where it goes.
• New fractal
• New PvP map is good.
• Added New PvE map along with glider attacks
• Class Balance, Guard changes were nice, along with some other buffs to other areas. The Scrapper change was good(coming from a Engi main) but…

Bad

• Class balance …I don’t feel like the Scrapper spec excels at any keyrole still, but thats a longstanding multiclass plague. New Rev bugs, the Ele change just makes it clunky in a lot of situations now. I understand some of the reason behind it, but I feel like it should have been handled differently.
• Caudecus’s exit. Really? More omg, its the hero, what do we do? Poof Portal. Find a new exit please
• The new gemstore armor and weapon set tied with the release. They don’t look good.
• Everything about the new PvE map, Bloodstone Fen. I enjoyed it at first, but the lack of space, variety, and new obtainable items killed it in less than an hour. There just isn’t incentive to play the new map for me and it just doesn’t feel fun.
• The glider skills, I don’t feel any incentive to use them, Im not in the air long or close enough to effictively use them while also being in range to not have them heal/reset. The only time they feel useful is when a zerg is blasting the same guy to bypass that. Also the fact some npc’s have annoying anti-air attacks make me want to avoid using the glider when they’re present.
• Unbound magic, the currency feels pointless, nothing purchasable appeals to me other than the Asc backpack. The ammy and rings aren’t inline with how easy they are to obtain through other means. You could have made some of the new armors seen on npc’s purchasable with it, along with the new weapons, or something :|
• Size, Events, NPC’s, and Appearance. With how small it is combined with the meta events it has, I feel like I’m just walking from one end of the hall to another, there’s not much to explore or see, the maps ugly, it has Orr vibes. Most events I just spam auto on key npc spawns to complete(Seekers & Rift). The larger ones aren’t as bad when it comes to being actively playing.
• Changes to Infusions, lack of refund seems shortsighted and RUDE.

removing amulets kills diversity people want to play support or tank not just condi or power the system of removing instead of balancing is not the answer imo.

also in the future since hairstyles are added and stuff please can we have have new racially diverse faces and hair added in the future eg Older faces, scarred faces, weathered faces,non-European faces (for both norn and humans) (Black,Asian,Indian,native american Latino etc ) like skin color options are fine but hair and faces… its not really a demand just something for the devs to consider and hopefully add in the future because atm its not really represented.

overall decent patch

Story – not very far into it so far, but I like what I’m seeing so far. Except for the glaring grammar issue that detracts and distracts from the story. I AM NOT A DRAGON MINION and resent being the leader of a guild that says I am. See this thread…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/SPOILER-Why-are-we-now-working-for-the-Dragons/first#post6260584

Balance – not a big fan right now of the balance. I’m a Revenant fan and nothing was really changed for them except a few bug fixes and more bugs added. As for most of the other classes, the jury is still out there.

Map – again haven’t made it far, but it is well done in my opinion. Seems a bit recycled from the from how the branded feel, but overall much more evolved