Guild Wars 2

My lists
3 pros:
- Salvage all fine, masterwork and rare is the top feature, me think.
- Glider skills is the second. It’s a new mechanic and I looking forward to they spread the feature to the other areas.
- The third is the new PvE content. I know it seems a bit short, but the previous seasons doesn’t have a full area in every single chapter neither.
3 cons:
- Guardians Spirit weapons are still useless
- Guardians Spirit weapons are still useless
- Guardians Spirit weapons are still useless

ProDecius.2609:

Well I just deleted my elementalist which had full commander’s armor with ascended celestial trinkets. . . I had only just gotten my last gear piece the night before the patch as well, and had been working very VERY hard on my elementalist to get all of that stuff. I’ve never been this stressed out from a video game patch before, Hundred of hours wasted on a toon that I end up deleting because of it’s newfound uselessness.. . . This patch was utterly violating for elementalist players. There is no role for us in spvp anymore. Ele is probably not going to be used whatsoever in spvp. You guys might as well delete the class. : (

And when it goes back to being powerful six months from now after another patch you’re going to kick yourself. I don’t know why people feel they need to delete a nerfed character.

It’s still more powerful than most professions anyway.

MMOs are all about adapting to changed. Not be able to adapt is the only real way to lose in an MMO.

The Qol updates are great, 15/10 for all these changes and updates for pvp & fotm.

But 4/10 for living world if i say. No criticism for the map design, path of story and chracters’ perform, these are wonderful. It’s just the quantity, obviously has influenced the quality of living world. Regardless of nine months drought, still so tiny for a two or three months patch which only took me 2 hours to finish.

No challengeable boss fight had been designed for this episode, no cooperation needed for events. Consider about this, i think the two-week-patch of LS2 contained a better content than LS3, even the grindy festivals provided more fun than LS3.

As for the armor skins, as you people didn’t want to add anymore armor sets, why not make the dungeons soloable, or playable like fotm so we could earn dungeon armors through dungeons, not from PvP or WvW reward track.

Well, seemed that the dungeons had been abandoned for years and the living world would not deserve more efforts, armors had been replaced by outfits. So i wonder which one is the next part to be threw aside? Meta event? Raid? Elder dragons? Or you guys just hold the same ideal about “Two-hours-content for two months is enough, go ahead and enjoy something else expect Gw2.”

Sorry for my mad, i always appreciate you people to create such a wonderful world, all you had finished is great, but……….. not enough, really.

It is a great update and the story is good. However, thinking that this is it for 8-12 weeks does not make me overly optimistic. Well more time to play my backlog of games.

Anyways, the map is fantastic… but there are a few odd things with it. Namely how the access to the map is handled from the rest of the world. Also, some of the mechanics raise questions (the white mantle throwing rocks outside of render range is one and the flying abilities not being tied to the mastery system is another, when the latter seems like such a perfect fit for that system).

The curse of cliffhangers seems to continue to plague living story, unfortunately now it is set to stay a cliffhanger for a lot longer than it used to be.

Feedback:

Story and Narrative: Oh my gosh this is gold! I am an aspiring writer and I LOVE the way the story is progressing!

Voice Acting: Spot on. Again, pure gold!

Maps: Copy-Paste-Print above.

Balance: You failed SO BADLY!

1. Stop making Mesmer more and more broken and start addressing this train wreck of brokenness! I refer to the torch improvements – this was unwarranted and made kittenous build even more cancerous. More condition damage on a weapon that was already used by overpowered condition damage builds. Improve things that see little use, not things that are commonly used and already powerful. This is strike #2 on this issue, I raised this exact same point last time there was a developer AMA. You need to stop buffing the Mesmer and start bringing it back in line with other classes. Talk to the community for ideas and listen to what they say or has been already said.

2. Condition damage is broken currently and has been broken for some time. This is damage that bypasses all defenses. The excuse that conditions can be cleansed is invalid – condition builds can re-apply deadly amounts of condition damage faster than any condition cleanse available – with the possible exception of the condition damage builds that are being mentioned. For example : my Chronomancer build can apply (exact numbers) 4,639 – 9,278 Torment damage over 11.75 seconds every 4.75 seconds with an additional 5,489 confusion damage over 14.75 seconds and 868 damage each time they do something every 9.75 seconds. That is roughly 25,000 damage applied within 10 seconds, every 10 seconds. This is just from two skills, one is a defensive skill (Scepter 2 and 3)! This is not balance! And this is just the water around the iceberg! Throw shatters into the mix and I have seen 20+ stacks of BOTH Torment AND confusion! And this is on a build with 26,387 health and 2,809 armor! Nothing is sacrificed for this unblockable power!

)))))YOU NEED TO ADDRESS CONDITIONS!!

I love the new map so far. I didn’t even know they were adding one.

The Guardian changes have made me so happy. We have a much higher DPS build thanks to Sword and Scepter buffs now.

I always dreamed of using the Sword again.

After months of feeling sad as a Guardian, this patch really, really, really made me happy.

Thanks Anet

I really liked the patch in general, or at least what I have experienced of it yet.

1. I have played thorugh the LS3 episode and I think it is the best one yet. Very entertaining, good cliffhanger, great dialogs, only Lazarus could have been better voiced.

2. The new map is pretty cool, and I may finally be able to get my hands on some bloodstone dust (I usually open bags with lv53 chars). I do have a problem with some of the events though, as they are quite repetitive and get boring very quickly. Especially the one with the seekers and the dude hiding inside his bubble is tiring.

3. Skills while flying? Sign me up! I would have expected class specific skills, though. Still nice.

4. The QoL changes are awesome! Opening bags and salvaging their contents is finally doable in a reasonable amount of time. The selection screen for fractals is nice as well.

5. “Level ups”/Spirit shards after completing masteries. I have to raid to get this? SRSLY? If I really have to finish these masteries as well, then make them available WITHOUT DOING RAIDS! Making this exclusive for raiders is just stupid.

6. Balance Changes: I am curious to see how venomshare will play out, both in WvW and PvE. I kinda like having some support options, I don’t like having to use conditions to do so. (Honestly, why is Assassin’s Presence for revenants a thing? Should have been for thieves) Also, why are venoms still in the Shadow Arts line? They clearly belong to Deadly Arts, as that’s the one that cares about conditions (Traps are way better for Shadow Arts…).

7. I like the use of the special action button.

“Glue Shot” now cripples.
Made me smile in joy.

PVP: The penetrance with which I should be forced as a solo player in Premades is annoying. Makes the crap can be switched off. Balancing is designed only to Premades. Again, no solo queue. I make only the Daily now.

WvW: Amulet change at our expense. Nevertheless, the only game area as a solo player still worthwhile. Despite great efforts by ArenaNet. You get us Solo Roamer not dead.

PVE: Available, I do not care.

Right click to salvage.
Perplexity rune change.
/Facepalm.

Pets keeping their names
/crossarms
Quickening Zephyr cooldown reduction

QZ was actually a big one for me. I use it a lot and I always found that for what it does (Quickness/Superspeed/Fury) it’s cooldown was a bit long. It feels like it’s at a more reasonable area now and I’m happy with it.

Pets not keeping their names never bothered me all that much to be honest. I love naming things so I had no issue having to re-enter pet names when I swapped them. The change has definitely made it more convenient however so I’m definitely happy with it. Gave every pet a name so they’ve always got one when I swap.

And /crossarms just makes me happy for going idle. It’s how I often stand IRL and I really enjoy giving my character that kind of chill/reserved/smug stance.

I was deeply disappointed that 6-7 months of wait came with such meager class balance changes that did little to address the massive PvE DPS and build viability disparities that currently exist.

Ranger and Necromancer greatswords remain terrible weapons.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

How can you say you want all classes to have some viable builds for different roles, yet you have some classes doing triple the DPS of others because there is a refusal to buff weapon autoattacks and ability damage for the underperforming classes like mesmer and ranger?

You can’t say utility is a reason, because warriors bring the strongest DPS boosting utility in game and yet they do around 12.1k more DPS than mesmer and 9.1k more DPS than power ranger.

How can you allow these disparities to exist for so long?

You say you want power necromancers to be viable and created an elite specialization with a greatsword that simply is not used in either raids, WvW, or spvp as it’s a weak weapon you haven’t bothered to buff.

Mesmers do 13.7k DPS while thieves and elementalists and guardians are doing more than 30k DPS now. Why is that?

You now have the tools to split PvE balance from PvP, so why do you continue to hold mesmer and ranger back for their performance in PvP?

Why are necromancer’s survival tools like Rise getting nerfed while warriors are now allowed to stack their 10+ second long chains of invulnerability even more effectively while having more CC and burst than a power necromancer?

You made chill a core aspect of reapers, and yet it is a useless condition outside breakbars in PvE, which seldom activate in an encounter.

Classes like daredevils and warriors ignore chill completely either with easy access to removals by dodging or massive resistance uptimes.

I really don’t understand why we’re seeing such anemic class balance efforts, and why class balance continues to be tied around PvP seasons when there’s a massively larger PvE and WvW player base ailing due to these balance changes being tied solely around spvp.

I now look at patches and approach them with little expectations because it has been 4 years and the massive class disparities in effectiveness in PvE and WvW continue to fester with little indication of changing.

On infusion changes:
+5 attribute/AR infusions are much more accessible, however I don’t know what to do with thousands of fractal relics, now.

Can we get a fractal relic sink or the ability to trade them for stabilizing matrices, for ex., since I primarily used them for obtaining +7 versatile simple infusions before the patch?

Thanks

Happy to see a feedback thread, it’s good to hear what the community has to say.
So here’s my two cents on the subject:

The good:

• Really high quility of content. the overall addition of a new pve map, LS, new fractal and old fractals tweaks, pvp map and more were done with a keen eye for details and quility.

• The LS episode went in a good pace. i really appreciate the animated cutscenes that were first introduced in HoT story, it shows a great deal of devotion to the quility of the story. it’s not that the in-game engine cutscenes are horrible, but they don’t deliver the story in the best way.

• QoL updates that were MUCH needed finally came. the “salvage all” and health bar precentage are things that i personally wished to happen for a long time, and it was a pleasent surprise. also, the new fractal interface – amazing! great job!

The bad:

• The length of the overall update and aditions is reletively short for a 3 month time span untill the next episode. i understand the entire update takes a great deal of time to make, so i don’t expect an episode with the length of HoT story to be released each couple of months. what i do think could be done is to do the same thing that has been done in the silverwastes. a great map that has just a bit more content than the new bloodstone fen, but what kept it alive for so long after release is the massive collections and achievment hunting for the luminate armor. (and further more the map farming, but that’s a whole different issue)

• The balance update was a bit harsh. as a main ranger i understood the need of my nerfs in pvp, but as a raiding elementalist i was really disappointed. raid and high skill level content were hard enough as it is, and now my ele can hardly heal himself let alone deal the amount of damege needed in raids. were elementalist nerfs needed? probably. but i think the nerfs went too far. (i didn’t really checked other proffesions updates since i don’t play with them so much, so i won’t talk about that. also, side note – much thanks to the ranger pet love! hope to see more in the future)

Overall im really happy about this update, and i hope to see more updates with the high quility this one had, thanks again for hearing the community!

The new PvE map is incredible. I was trying to focus solely on finishing my story, but found myself completely distracted with exploring the map. It is beautiful. It seemed chaotic and disjointed when I was first dumped into it, but getting the hang of travel through the map made it a lot easier. I haven’t been in love with the idea of more vertical maps, but I find this one much easier to navigate than others. Maybe I’m just getting used to the travel mechanics, but A+ job on the map. I am sad that we didn’t get the chance to explore it BEFORE everything went boom, but it’s still a wonderful place to explore.

I also found the map content and the story content to be challenging, but not impossible. I wasn’t constantly dying trying to get from point A to point B on my own, which is a problem I still sometimes have in the HoT maps. I didn’t feel like I had to wait around for 20+ people to finish events before I could explore. It was easy enough to either stop and participate or head on to my next goal. I thought the balance between group content and challenging, but doable solo exploration was really well done, better than I expected, tbh.

So, so thankful for the QOL changes, especially the salvaging. That was a change that I had been waiting for for a really long time and I am glad to see it finally came around. Little fixes like that make a huge difference to people like me.

I haven’t tried the new pvp map or gone into wvw to try out the balance fixes. I’m not that into pvp modes anyway, and the changes haven’t enticed me to get into it so far, so I’ll leave that up to the people that play those areas.

I’ve really enjoyed this update. I do wish it was a little longer, especially since the statement that releases would be spaced out more, but it was an excellent start and I’m still excited to play in the new map even though I’ve finished all the achievements for it. I like the events.

Update:
- I like the story
- I hate the Chak
- much chatter (Taimi and the others)
- I hate the Chak
- I hate DCs
- QoL +1
- new Map +1

Things I liked :

• salvage change
• the story is nice
• BF daily is a a good help for people whose masteries are not maxed

Things I didn’t like :

• the new map. I hate verticality and the frustration that comes with it
• voiced story means you can not skip cinematics and are obliged to listen to the same thing several times if you want to do the story with several characters
• the content is too thin after such a long draught, especially if we have to wait another 2 to 3 months for the next episode
• we absolutely need a keyring, and everything that is used as a currency or a crafting material should go in wallet or material collection. Please stop adding new things to my already overpopulated inventory !
• I don’t understand one word of what happened to infusions, and why my WvW infusions have been given back to me

PvP and fractals are not my cup of tea, so no feelings about this new content.

Really enjoyed the patch except for the clerics amulet removal it removes too many support builds (Ventari/Glint Heralds relied on it to achieve minimum sustain).
Since Magis and menders are terrible substitutes having a amulet like power/healing power toughness/concentration would be great.
Also in so far Revenge of the Capricorn map layout feels great side objective isn’t too intrusive (which is good).

The good
- Mass salvaging is a bliss.
- The new fractal UI is absolutely gorgeous.
- Love the HP bar percentage option.
- Finally combat during gliding! I was kinda hoping for profession specific gliding combat, but I’m also really satisfied with this version.
- The story is of impeccable quality. From moments of grief to humorous dialogues (Canach ftw), I absolutely loved playing LS3. Also props to the music department, the voice actors, the animation guys (keep these kind of high quality cutscenes coming!) and the map creators, you did an amazing job on this one!
- Open world PvE implementation of raid mechanics (especially Vale Guardian) is great!
- Finally my bloodstone dust is useful for something. Also, prices for gliding skills are acceptable.
- Unlocking the new mastery was really enjoyable since it did’t take me long at all and I had quite some fun doing events on the new map. It took me some time to find out how to use the mastery in the story to break the enemy’s invulnerability phase though.
- Great new Chaos Fractal. I had a blast playing it, aswell as the other revamped fractals.

The bad
- Elementalist changes to CD. Since ele’s don’t have access to a second weapon set, I would have understood either a slight damage nerf or a CD reduction to 25%, tops. But the current 20% just make the staff ele feel really clunky.
- Mossman is really underwhelming. The first time I did swampland, I didn’t even notice we were fighting the Mossman. At this stage, your character model artists should take away some of those Mossman muscles, because he now looks more frightening than he actually is.
- Bloomhunger has a mob spawning phase during which he/she/it is invincible, and that particular phase felt way too long. It should be 30s tops. The time reduction could be compensated with more mobs spawning, or AoE’s forcing players to move around.
- Make Bloomhunger phase every 33% of his HP, not every 25%. In lower fractals, this really doesn’t feel right.

The long awaited hairstyles are the /Facepalm of the patch

This is a cross-post and I apologize ahead of time.

ArenaNet, I made a rather large post in the past thanking you for making such a great game. That still stands today! However, as a paying customer (I use the store often to support you folks and continued development as many others have and are), I feel the need to express my thoughts regarding some of the Engineer profession changes.
I try to participate in every game mode. I have not done PvP yet, but I have done WvW, Raids, et al. I feel as though the changes to the Engineer in this patch are rather lackluster. The engineer is my favorite class and many of my skills feel like they don’t have purpose for damage or utility. I think more drastic changes were needed because now I need to wait another 3-4 months for the next update to change things (in another small way).
I really love the concept of gyros. However, some of their tool-belt skills are just bad, the gyros should be buffable (at the very least if they can’t inherit our stats). Turrets are not effective. The gadgets are not effective. In addition, the traits that affect these items are also not effective. I feel pigeon-holed into using the “highest” damage skills and one spec. It’s discouraging when I look at the Raid LFG/LFM and I don’t see any need for an engineer.
Perhaps I should just roll another profession and move on?
I posted here because it doesn’t seem that any devs have posted on our engineer forums and perhaps other professions may feel the same way. On a more positive note, the content added in this patch blew away my expectations. Thank you!
-Padre

Some more feedback:

I absolutely love the dailies for the new map, and would love to see that system expanded further for 2 main reasons.

1st, maps with currencies linked to them can always, in my opinion, use a bit of a boost to the receipt of said currencies

2nd, older maps that are underused because their rewards are lower than, say, AB or Silverwastes, could greatly benefit from having dailies attached to them in terms of helping players feel like they are worth going back to.

The attraction of dailies on each map for me is largely that it provides a plethora of reasons to go and do neglected content which in a lot of cases many people may have never done before. As an example, I was feeling burnt out on HoT maps awhile ago so I decided to go and take my time exploring Frostgorge Sound on my Norn Guardian and tried a bit of solo RP, just for kicks. It was wonderful, and even though I’ve mapped FS on nearly all my characters I still found events and content that I’d never played before. For the more reward-driven players, dailies such as these would give good reason to go back (I also think it would help increase the repeatability of the older content and alleviate the issues with content drought and burnout by giving people rewards for playing the locations of their choosing rather than feeling like they are limited to the standby rewards maps; AB and Silverwastes).

With the new loot introduced in the new map, I think this opens a huge door. The salvageable items that can reward crafting materials of any tier is a huge boon since previously you had to go farm in maps with low gains in order to get the low-mid tier materials (hence why they are so expensive). The dailies could simply reward some of these items and some map currency (in maps where a currency exists) and I think that would be enough.

ProDecius.2609:

Well I just deleted my elementalist which had full commander’s armor with ascended celestial trinkets. . . I had only just gotten my last gear piece the night before the patch as well, and had been working very VERY hard on my elementalist to get all of that stuff. I’ve never been this stressed out from a video game patch before, Hundred of hours wasted on a toon that I end up deleting because of it’s newfound uselessness.. . . This patch was utterly violating for elementalist players. There is no role for us in spvp anymore. Ele is probably not going to be used whatsoever in spvp. You guys might as well delete the class. : (

Why would you do that? You need self control man. I didn’t lose hope when Guardian was in a bad state… Tough it out

ProDecius.2609:

Well I just deleted my elementalist which had full commander’s armor with ascended celestial trinkets. . . I had only just gotten my last gear piece the night before the patch as well, and had been working very VERY hard on my elementalist to get all of that stuff. I’ve never been this stressed out from a video game patch before, Hundred of hours wasted on a toon that I end up deleting because of it’s newfound uselessness.. . . This patch was utterly violating for elementalist players. There is no role for us in spvp anymore. Ele is probably not going to be used whatsoever in spvp. You guys might as well delete the class. : (

Sorry but I just don’t believe you.

As for Ele main left behind pve when raids where introduced and HoT showed it’s little replay value…

Patch killed completely pvp ele by amulet change, nerfs and zero rework and no buffs to even make alternative builds to compete in unchanged meta game. In this game build, in this meta and in pvp ELE IS DEAD. Patch was so horrible and unfair that I look with hate at game and don’t bothered to see new story or new map.

I have the feeling that Ele’s “Wash the Pain Away!” was hit too hard.
Just to help everyone remember:
“Wash the Pain Away!”: The base healing per level for this skill has been decreased by 33%. The healing power contribution has been increased by 150%. The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in all game types.

When you got to use your dedicated healing skill, you want to heal a large chunk of points. Taking away a third of that ability is a big blow to the skill. Why the large number? A bit of restraint on the use of the nerf hammer would have been a better way. Why not start with 20% and see if that’s not already over the top?
As a Ele which still runs a fair bit of “out of meta” Cele stats in PvE/WvW (for a total of 440 healing power), the effect of the 150% contribution is fairly negligible. I think it is fair for non-healing power combos (e.g. zerker) to be weaker, but balanced builds should not be as bad as they are now casting the skill.

I see where the balance idea is coming from (sPvP bunkering with Clerics + Water trait), but doesn’t the group heal effect be the part that should have been addressed? Why not keep the individual heal at the original numbers and reduce the party heal by 50%?

Yes the cool down reduction means 20% more healing compared to before (narrowing down the “loss” to 13%, but that only applies if you can use the skill over and over again. It does not apply if the skill does not help you ward off a spike of damage, which will kill you, because the health is not going up significantly.

Lets not forget that Elemental Bastion got a similar treatment, which also contributes to the sorry state of “Wash the pain away”.

Please take a look at this skill nerf again and strengthen the individual heal to something useful again, if you had some investment in healing power.

I finally did Chaos fractal last night. It was visually stunning but quite annoying. I’m sure it will get easier in time.

I hated it at first and then was starting to like, but once I started to like it the fractal was over. Will be interesting to see if they add more of this sequence in the next few years.

(The worst part about it was the damage during the snowstorm part. Seemed a bit too harsh amidst all of the tentacle slaps.)

Why did every class get a slate-wide buff while rangers received a ton of garbage pet fluff? Ranger received zero quality of life. Ah, favoritism.

UnitedChaos.8364:

Why did every class get a slate-wide buff while rangers received a ton of garbage pet fluff? Ranger received zero quality of life. Ah, favoritism.

You always could get ele balance treatment and don’t have any builds to use… ok maybe for suicide ( in pvp) .

No WvW balance is extremely unsatisfying. Since PvP amulets can be pulled out on a whim, balance in that category does not line up with WvW anymore.
-Thieves can now spam basilisk venom at no cost to their attack power.
-Dire makes classes like mesmer unkillable condi gods
-Adrenal Health makes a marauder warrior tank enough to face tank three people (actually easier than tanking 1 person because arc divider is so easy to land)
-Minstrel gear allows druids to kite around and never die but still do large damage with buffed pets
-Zerg meta is still the same from launch
-Ride the lightning is still the worst gap closer in the gane
-Anti projectile is very polarized (absolutely none or omg my longbow does 0 damage)
-Necromancer does mediocre damage and can’t handle more than 1 foe at a time, so it sucks at roaming
-Paper siege sucks and superior siege is really good. This means that only rich people can command.
-Many classes cannot function without specific traitlines (Soul Reaping/Defense/Water) in competitive WvW.
I don’t believe that WvW is supposed to be such a weird balance calamity, so I hope that our balance team can finally put some real effort into improving WvW for certain classes.

Please add a way to get into the new maps in the future that is not linked to an item in the same map and the story, i did the story but sometime i like to farm with other characters.

In the future, if you don’t have the Living Story unlocked, you can’t go to the map (only with teleport to a friend) unless you buy the episode on the gem store.

Hopefully in the future you guys will add an entrance or something to that map.

Well if we considere quality one of the best patches u had in nearly 4 years. If we considre quantity u had ur first content update beside raids since Hot release and it was to short. Most of ur promises for Hot arent even live. and if we considre every 3 Month new LS story and the coverage of LS 2 it will take more then 2 years when the new addon will come.

So basicly to slow to short. But quality is good.

Having a great time with LS3! Great job, ArenaNet, and thank you!!!

Gorani.7205:

I have the feeling that Ele’s “Wash the Pain Away!” was hit too hard.
Just to help everyone remember:
“Wash the Pain Away!”: The base healing per level for this skill has been decreased by 33%. The healing power contribution has been increased by 150%. The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in all game types.

When you got to use your dedicated healing skill, you want to heal a large chunk of points. Taking away a third of that ability is a big blow to the skill. Why the large number? A bit of restraint on the use of the nerf hammer would have been a better way. Why not start with 20% and see if that’s not already over the top?
As a Ele which still runs a fair bit of “out of meta” Cele stats in PvE/WvW (for a total of 440 healing power), the effect of the 150% contribution is fairly negligible. I think it is fair for non-healing power combos (e.g. zerker) to be weaker, but balanced builds should not be as bad as they are now casting the skill.

I see where the balance idea is coming from (sPvP bunkering with Clerics + Water trait), but doesn’t the group heal effect be the part that should have been addressed? Why not keep the individual heal at the original numbers and reduce the party heal by 50%?

Yes the cool down reduction means 20% more healing compared to before (narrowing down the “loss” to 13%, but that only applies if you can use the skill over and over again. It does not apply if the skill does not help you ward off a spike of damage, which will kill you, because the health is not going up significantly.

Lets not forget that Elemental Bastion got a similar treatment, which also contributes to the sorry state of “Wash the pain away”.

Please take a look at this skill nerf again and strengthen the individual heal to something useful again, if you had some investment in healing power.

I think you misunderstand the way the balance team works.
What they did is remove Wash the Pain Away from pvp. Nobody is doing to equip it now; since we can’t even stay alive ourselves why would we try to keep others alive?

It’s like the Ice Bow nerf, they surely didn’t think 50% gave good and balanced damage output results, they just wanted it out of the game. I have never seen anyone equip one in pvp or wvw since the nerf.

What we got here is a balance team that wants to dictate the builds we use instead of a balance team that wants to create build variety, it’s the complete opposite of how it was when the game was first released. Apparently there seems to have been a failure of communication between the pvp team and the balance team gave result that we lost the only amulet that would have made our class perhaps viable in pvp avec the other drastic nerfs.

Here are my thoughts:

Likes:

• Salvage all is great!
• Very happy to get new story instances and new map
• Plot was interesting
• Canach

Dislikes:

• Dialogue system — It is very passive. You just watch your character talk and never get an option to select dialogue except for asking very general questions. I would like more input into what the pc says and also to be able to select a reaction/opinion on topics discussed as well as perhaps make a few choices.
• Raid story in Living World — I didn’t do the raids and found the information from the raids in LW confusing. I would prefer these stories be separate, so that you only have to do LW to understand the story of LW.

One thing I’ve noticed is a delay when going to some maps. When I go to my Norn home map it takes 10-20 seconds to render. Starts with the back ground then people followed by other details. I got the same thing when going to the instance for the memorial for Eir. I’ve seen it randomly on other maps to.

Why, anet? Why? I’m enjoying this update, this map, the achievements…..

….but why the invisible wall on the south side of Collosseum of the Faithful? There’s a set of stairs there that, unlike any other stairs around the colloseum, you can’t walk up because there’s an INVISIBLE wall across them. If you didn’t want players to walk up those stairs the appropriate thing would have been to make it a cliff, or use some other visual indicator that it’s inaccessible. Instead, you created these lovely looking stairs that are inaccessible. That’s just poor design. You did it in core, you did it in HOT and you’re still doing it.

Please, anet. Stop with the arbitrary invisible walls. Let the visual design of the landscape tell us where we can go.

• I love this Episode, but I feel it is somewhat short – though the quality of story and writing is YEARS ahead of anything previous…

• Ele nerf: I don’t mind the power downgrade too much but the increased cooldown is problematic

• Those blue speech bubbles from the “tron” skins… REALLY annoying

Given the heavy correlation between the raid and the living story, it might have been nice to have had a much longer story in the form of personal story scenarios in which we first go through at least some of the bosses in the raid with a group of npc’s and maybe only 1 or 2 of the mechanics of each boss. That way people would have not only gotten to experience the raid atmosphere, learned some base mechanics, and been more attuned with how it relates to the living season 3.

Good
-QOL improvements
-DH buffs
-Ele heal skill nerf

Bad
-Ele skill cooldown changes in pve
-Ele viability in pvp
-Thief venom share in wvw

Man these forums really depress me. I’ve never seen so much QQ and I frequent D3 forums as well. I guess that’s just the nature of all official forums.

On topic:

- Voice acting was fantastic. I can never get bored of listening to the voice acting, especially Taimi. Holy kitten she’s awesome. I want her as a kid, even the asura side of her.
- Episode was too short
- The map is decent but graphically gorgeous. (Don’t take it too personally, it’s just hard to win me over with vertical maps. Especially after the disastrous mess of TD, and even some parts of AB)
- New dailies are cool and wouldn’t mind seeing this type of thing implemented in other maps, especially older maps.

Exclamatory.8351:

- Voice acting was fantastic. I can never get bored of listening to the voice acting, especially Taimi. Holy kitten she’s awesome. I want her as a kid, even the asura side of her.

Haha, yeah Taimi’s character is always the highlight of every LS. Her voice actor is fantastic.

On that note I think overall the writers have done a great job this episode – the characters and story carried it.

I like flying in the new zone and collecting unbound magic (on wings of gold is by far my favourite adventure in AB), although do get tired of the red scenery.

Salvage all is by far the second best thing in this patch (Taimi is of course the best thing). Now I’d just like a way to not get overloaded with useless minor/major runes from all the salvaging.

The most annoying change is the infusion change – it wasn’t clear you could now extract infusions for cheap (25s) providing you have the fractal mastery tier unlocked to access the vendor…. I ended up overwriting 7 wvw infusions with other wvw infusions (wasting 35 laurels) before finding out about this vendor, which is gated behind a mastery.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Why, anet? Why? I’m enjoying this update, this map, the achievements…..

….but why the invisible wall on the south side of Collosseum of the Faithful? There’s a set of stairs there that, unlike any other stairs around the colloseum, you can’t walk up because there’s an INVISIBLE wall across them. If you didn’t want players to walk up those stairs the appropriate thing would have been to make it a cliff, or use some other visual indicator that it’s inaccessible. Instead, you created these lovely looking stairs that are inaccessible. That’s just poor design. You did it in core, you did it in HOT and you’re still doing it.

Please, anet. Stop with the arbitrary invisible walls. Let the visual design of the landscape tell us where we can go.

ANet loves their invisible walls. Invisible walls ruin the maps.

Here are my 2 cents on this patch:
1) QoL is much needed and much apreciated;
2) The new map is good, but those sniping monsters with agro range of a killometer is an overkill i think;
3) Guardian rework is fantastic, im looking forward playing him;
4) Fractals are decent, but ive noticed that a few fractals dificulty was raised (t3);
5) LS3 is godly, ive had tons of fun going through those dialogues, especially that “Rytlock Trombone” thing gave me a good laugh.
6) The sad part about this patch is elementalist balance fixes. I am an elementalis main since i began to play guildwars2. I have seen some ups and downs of that profession. But these nerfs are overkill, i think a lot of eles are happy that clerics is gone. I surely am, but i hoped that there would be some sort of rework or a buff to our least used skills. But on the other hand we got nerfed, not just the meta build, but all of those offmeta builds got hit a lot more.
I am not a game developer in any way, so i cant say if it is bad or good for the class, but i would appreciate if anyone of the dev team could drop down here or ele forums section and explain current developers stand on elementalist as a profession. For example, what is the profession meant to be, and what is it meant to do. And please im not asking on a direct build or anything, just tell us if there is some kind of godlike/good build for elementalists that actually can make it to spvp. A simple “yes there is a way, you need to figure it out” will do, or “no, there is nothing, we will consider elementalist on our priority list for fixing”.

Thank you for a wonderfull update, i really apreciate it, and hope for some communication from developers on the only problem i have with this update – elementalist current state.

soulknight.9620:

I am not a game developer in any way, so i cant say if it is bad or good for the class, but i would appreciate if anyone of the dev team could drop down here or ele forums section and explain current developers stand on elementalist as a profession. For example, what is the profession meant to be, and what is it meant to do. .

Perhaps Karl, since he’s in charge of the elementalist balance changes, could play a dozen competitive pvp matches on Twitch to demonstrate how to play the class in a competitive environment? How would particularly like to see how Wash the Pain Away is now more balanced for pvp.

The patch has good sides and less good sides.
Pros:
1. The new map. I never expected a new map even if this patch launched the LS3. This is a HUGE bonus (at least for me)
2. The possibility to know which recipe you learned on the account. No need to keep a recipe, to store it and to check with every alt if the recipe is known or not. I don’t know if this is a patch feature – I only noticed it after the patch. A big THANK YOU.
3. Mass salvage – excellent idea. Very good implementation – no room for errors :-)) Excellent, again.

Neutral:
1. The Swamp rework – I still don’t know if this is better or worse than before. Now the Swamp is longer. Is also harder. Maybe is only my opinion, but after every burn phase on Bloomhunger it seems a little bit boring? Again – only my opinion.
2. Not played yet the new fractal – still upset for the amulet change. I don’t know if I will step into this fractal too soon.

Cons:
1. The amulet change – it seems to became a common Anet behavior: to change something the players owned. I don’t debate here that after downgrading the +11 / +12 infusions I will end with more gold than now. The fact is I had something, Anet changed it and now I had to do something extra to have what I already had. Taking this into consideration I’m a bit worried: tomorrow Anet may change any gear piece.
2. The lack of respect Anet shows for the efforts of the players: By changing the way the AR works, the Mastery for fractals is now irrelevant. You can have 150 AR without problems. You can now buy the shards needed for the infused rings. What was the point to force so many players to grind XP and to spend MP in the fractal Mastery?
3. The fight during the flight.

I think y’all did a good job on this patch.

Loved the voice acting. Especially Taimi. Hers was excellent. The dialog was believable and full of lore tidbits.

I also want to give a thumbs up to the new map as being very good. Both for showing a magic and explosion ravaged land as well as enabling flight on this map in a map specific but believable way with the updrafts and Ley lines.

Thank you for putting in more mastery points in that map that are achievable by regular playing.

One thing I didn’t like in the story line play through was the part where we break the shield using the special skill from the bloodstone. PLEASE make that a regular skill if you do something like that again, as in make it replace your skill bar as a skill one then go back to weapon skills after you click it. I use action camera when playing and it was so awkward. I’d have to disable action camera. Then move the mouse pointer over to the icon and click it. Then enable action camera again to fight. It felt very kludgey and poorly designed. I would much rather have a skill one appear, click it and get weapons skills back to continue fighting instead.

Amulets and infusions.
Y’all should have allowed us to get our laurels back. The argument that laurels could be exchanged for gold was weak as we earned those laurels in the first place by logging in and playing. In effect, y’all negated our effort and didn’t give us anything back as compensation. I remember y’all saying you wouldn’t invalidate our work in progressing our chars. But you did with this change. Y’all should have given the refund for what we spent on infusions.

Edit: thanks for the change to salvaging and account wide recipes. Both were greatly appreciated.

Short, really short.
A short and mostly uninteresting story and a small map, it feels about the size of an average season 2 release.
I haven’t played the new fractal yet, nor the “new” pvp map but assuming they aren’t wildly different from the other maps in their categories this update’ll still be rather small.
Somehow I thought the 3 months per release meant more content per release.

Some other points:
Positive:

• Salvage all
• Account wide recipes

Negative:

• The enemies being the White Mantle was obvious months ago through the raids and “current events”.
• The new infusion (as in anti-spectral agony infusion, not ascended equipment infusion) mechanic was fun exactly twice, the first time I used it and the first time I used it to break a shield, very quickly I wanted the passive infusion back instead of having to press – every time.

I think there is really much to like in this update. The story was great (especially the VO), the map is quite fun (more below) and I hear the fractal changes and new PvP map are good as well.

What I didn’t like though:

• Balance changes missed the mark for many professions. There clearly are skills and specs that are used disproportionately often, and some that are never used. I’m waiting for the day you finally balance these things out (or keep on balancing them) to make every skill and spec useful in some way. Also I don’t think it’s a good thing that some professions are basically mandatory in proper raid compositions, you should make every profession replaceable by some other professions and strive to balance dmg, healing and utility across professions as much as possible.

• The new map feels empty in terms of story. There are these notes all over the place, the small Pact encampment and (afaik) two notable (named) event bosses. Other than that it could very well be a Super Mario map, without any RPG elements whatsoever. Like: Those WM soldiers are just standing around the Bloodstone shards, evenly spread out, picking daisies and waiting to be killed. It’s as if some dev used a special painting brush to let one spawn every 15m and call it a day. No patrols, no resting miners, no campfires, no named NPCs with little stories, no piles of Bloodstone ore, no ways to transport the ore, nothing. And most events are just “here are some random mobs spawning because magic, please kill them”, without any stories behind them, apart from the overall setting itself. Why not let us help some named creature get back to where it came from or have a small rebellion withing the WM or see how they deal with this apparent Bloodstone frenzy? I’m sure you could come up with great little event stories, but you just didn’t.
  It makes this map feel shallow to me and that’s really sad, because the gameplay is actually quite good, the art design is brilliant and the story behind this map is great as well. Why not fill the map with a few stories (apart from just notes) that make it feel believable?

• The sudden introduction of Primordus at the end. I mean it makes sense and clearly had some buildup (one elder dragon has to be the next after all), but you could have done more than just slap a mention at the end of a story chapter that had nothing to to with Primordus (as far as we know).

• I would like to see a new map that is not either completely destroyed or has death waiting around every corner. I mean it’s great and all, but it gets old after a while. Please make a map with civilizations, settlements, cities and temples that are still in tact, working as intended and with characters that live there. I’m sure you can still come up with nice stories surrounding it, and it’s much more satisfying to protect stuff that is still standing instead of ruins and burning camps. Also event stories can be much more political and/or personal in nature if it’s not this constant disaster prevention.

Other than that I think it was a really good update!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

One thing I didn’t like in the story line play through was the part where we break the shield using the special skill from the bloodstone. PLEASE make that a regular skill if you do something like that again, as in make it replace your skill bar as a skill one then go back to weapon skills after you click it.

You don’t have to mouse click it. Go into keybinds and pick a key to be your Special Action. Then hit that key when the box pops up over your health area. I had it on S until I realized that was my lean techniques stall button .. moved it to Q and will have to find action camera toggle space somewhere else at some point (I don’t use action camera except in Shooting Gallery as it screws up my mouse move reflexes).

That said, I’d like that box to be somewhere else. Ideally for me it would be just under the target’s health bar or just to the right of the target bar/portrait. I’m having to learn to spot the special action box with peripheral vision as I typically am looking towards the middle and top of my screen during combat.