Guild Wars 2

Belenwyn.8674:

Many players will lose 30% boon/condition duration. It will be interesting to see how this will be compensated.

Many of those are offered on specific traits naow.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vayne.8563:

There are always changes in MMOs. It’s part of the landscape. Adapting to changes has always been part of the MMO landscape. Sometimes that sucks and sometimes it doesn’t. Your build gets nerfed or your profession gets buffed. Either way, the name of the game is adapting.

I wouldn’t expect a refund.

Actually I think this problem is pretty unique to Anet. At least all the MMO’s i’ve played in the past gear was tied to your class, you didn’t get to pick what kind you wanted.

In WoW for example, if you were playing a healing paladin you got healing paladin gear. There was very little choice in what gear you took. If they changed stats it didn’t matter because you still used healing paladin gear.

Gw2 is unique in that aspect where changes to balance can actually change what gear you wear. Even after 3 years I still haven’t decided if that is something I like or not, I go back and forth depending on the week.

It certainly isn’t “necessary” for them to offer us a one time stat change. I am personally plenty rich enough to just get a new set of armor if I need it. However I do think it would be a nice gesture and get Anet some good will, which imo is something they could really use.

Until they got rid of healing power and it became spell power, which was also used by Ret paladins. Priest healers were suddenly rolling against mages, other priests, warlocks and, at the time, there was no compelling benefit to using your own armor type, so any other healing class could also roll on their cloth pieces.

Then they got rid of mp5 and rolled mana regen into intelligence, further muddying the spell-casting waters.

Spirited Was Eceni.3869:

That’s true Vayne and was especially so in GW1 where the skills were almost constantly changing in an attempt to keep the game balanced. This is to be accepted as the ongoing evolution of an MMORPG as a massive population is working to find niche builds for the little or large advantage and a small group of developers are working to keep everything in balance. I like this evolution as it keeps the game fresh.

But to wipe out several years of combined effort across all chars on an account in one hit? To render all my equipment unusable to me? That is a little hard to swallow from a game that prides itself on being casual with no gear grind.

I must be misunderstanding this and should have been paying more attention to the announcements as I really don’t think ANet would do that.

I’m not sure I understand several years of combined efforts. First of all, ascended armor doesn’t really give you much more than exotic armor, and ascended weapons, once you’ve leveled your crafting to 500 are easy to make. It’s the leveling to 500 that’s really expensive.

Just playing the game should get you enough mats to make any ascended weapon you want. As for ascended armor, while it might take longer, it’s not years of work to get ascended armor.

Of course, we’re also seeing this without seeing the update and we don’t know how fast or hard it will be to get ascended armor drops in maguuma either. But right now, I could outfit all my characters with ascended weapons quite easily and ascended armor is just a matter of the mats themselves.

Not to mention, I don’t think most people are going to be affected. You have to be some kind of min/maxer to worry about the kinds of numbers you’re talking about. I’m pretty sure a huge percentage of the population won’t be affected.

Sure, dungeon speed runners may, and I’m sure they have plenty of money to change their armor.

This just likely means that players in areas below level 80 will hit the stat cap much easier.

I’ll stick with Knight gear, no change here.

And this is one of the reasons that Ascended was such a stupid idea. A firm, easily achieved gear ceiling allows for players to constantly adapt without a huge loss in time and gold. Instead, progression addicts convinced ArenaNet that we needed a long, expensive crawl to BiS gear unprecedented in any of the tiers leading up to it.

Ah well. Three year’s water under the bridge.

Spirited Was Eceni.3869:

Putting 6 points in the trait line which gives precision equals 300 prec. 21 precision points (if I remember correctly) equals 1% crit chance. That would be a loss of 14.29% crit chance or in my case I’d have 35.71% crit chance. That mean every 3rd hit can activate my on crit stuff instead of every 2nd hit. That is hardly a minor issue.

Also, how do I replace a few trinkets or maybe a piece of armour in order to gain 300 precision points above what my gear already gives me now?

As it looks to me now it can’t be right, I must be missing something so will stop worrying about it and just wait and see.

You don’t need to gain 300 because of the other two changes.

• Base player stats will be increased from 926 to 1000.
• Base attribute points on equipment will be increased so that all the gear in the game will give higher stats than it did before. This should account for most of the missing points

Depending on details you might not need to change anything or you would swap something between beserker/valkyrie/cavalier/soldier/captain/knight and similarly for the condition based stats. I don’t see much impact for healing sets, you become tankier and your weapon becomes a soggier noodle?

Having to swap in magi/assassin/sentinel/carrion accessory will be annoying though since those require finishing dungeon collections.

Mea.5491:

I’ll stick with Knight gear, no change here.

You misspelled Celestial. :P

hiya guys, ive been asking some of my friend players about the new trait system, and none could tell me, basically like how we are traited atm with say, 0/2/6/6/0 as an example. are they gonna give us the whole triple 6’s for our new traits? ty all:)

There will be 5 core lines, just as now. Each line will have 3 minor, 3 adept, 3 master and 3 grandmaster traits. You will be able to select 3 of the 5 lines, and will be able to pick 1 each of the adept, master and GM options. You will get all 3 minors just for picking the line. You’re getting what would have been 18 points in the current system, but can no longer partially spec into a line. The trait lines will be called “specializations.”

Stat points will no longer be connected to trait lines. Instead, the primary stats at 80 will be boosted from 926 to 1000 and points will be added to gear to compensate for the loss — to a point where we’ll have close to the same number of total points.

Something like this, I guess.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgABqAKoA6g~

As the “leaked” Patch Notes on Dragon Season! show, the current stupid way to unlock your traits is replaced by simply buying them with the new Hero Points.

The Training Tab
as well as your traits are now locked inside the new Training tab. To unlock these skills and traits, open up your Hero Panel and go to the Training tab, then select a track under Core Skills or Core Specializations. In order to train, you will need to spend Hero Points (previously Skill Points) in a selected track.

Right?
I am reading this correctly?

Edit:Or rather, let´s hope those patch notes are the real deal.
BTW IBTL

lol, did this just get unlocked? Wasn’t it locked a few minutes ago?

yeah it was locked

Edit: some of the others that were locked are now unlocked

Thanks, just making sure I’m not crazy

Hope I don’t get infracted for making an observation.

+1 for the use of the word “JUBILATIONS!”.

Yea, the forum mods are a bit trigger happy now that those “patch notes” are out and generating all that sturm und drang about how their builds are now “ruined”. Everyone has a post on it.

I see consolidation in the near future.

So much for trying to bring skill capping back. Probably was simply too late for the attempt for it to be possible.

I am a bit confused. What is the big deal? Wasn’t this announced several weeks ago in the blog posts already?

Wow! Just saw the new presentation about the specializations on dulfy.
Lead the Wind will now affect the recharge of harpoon gun skills, too.
Good work, guys! I hope, you still consider the other classes, I listed here, as well.

http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/gw2-ranger-marksmanship-trait-changes.jpg

Not about underwater weapons, but why do the elite specializations do not feature any traits to affect the cooldown of the new weapons they can use? Or the new skills? At first, you allow us to trait every weapon and skill, we can use in the new trait system (with at least with the standard 20% CD reduction) and now, the new attacks do not have a cooldown reduction at all?

Reapers can buff their greatsword (plus CD reduction).
Dragonhuters can trait a bonus for the longbow. But no CD reduction?
And Chronomacers cannot get any buffs at all for wielding their new shield.

Thief got new boni for harpoon and spear. Good work! Seems, like this thread really has been read by you guys. (^.^)
But, we are not finished yet.
Poor Necromancers and Guardians still cannot trait/buff spear AND trident.

I like the new UI for the most part (I would like to have the name of each specialization shown without having to mouse over it, but that’s another story), but when reading traits, good god the flashing is really distracting. I get that they’re unselected, I’m trying to solve that issue but I can hardly read the trait description without the flashing of the icons distracting me. Any chance this could be reduced in frequency or changed to a steady glow, just something more subtle?

I had the same problem. I just selected some at random to make them stop, so I could settle down to read without getting an aneurysm.

My level 30 ele logged in today and I discovered she is 100% specced to Earth.

I don’t use the Earth traits.

Ever.

I can’t refund or switch, that’s 60 points wasted in something i don’t want. Trying to switch to Air which I do want tells me I have no points to spend.

My other ele was ALSO 100% specced to Earth. I’ve talked to other ele players under 30. They were also specced to Earth.

Why was this chosen as the default? Do I have to remake this character to fix her so I can enjoy leveling? I don’t have tomes to ‘insta-80’ and I don’t want to on top of that. I do map completion to level and I prefer to enjoy the game instead of force grinding.

This isn’t my mistake. I would have never chosen Earth for her and I don’t even want to play her now because why should I be forced to grind 50 levels to get the Air and Fire traits when I should HAVE one of those by now but instead, some one thought “hey, earth is great for a lightning ele”.

Really, allowing a one time refund of traits if we don’t like the ones you picked would be reasonable. I’m pretty sure I had zero points in Earth pre-patch so no idea why both my eles are now completely kittened and can’t be played the way I want.

Agreed. I opened the menu and had no idea what I was looking at. I clicked on something thinking it was going to give me the points back, but instead it spent more points on something I don’t want. I wouldn’t even mind having to pay a little (in game money) for some sort of “respec” item or something. But please let me change this crap.

The new traits and skills UI pages are awful.

Traits page:

Why not just have all 5 lines visible in their entirety as with the old trait page. you “check” the three of them that you want, then select the individual traits. Nice and simple.

Right now with the split windows (all traits visible on the left panel, but traits only selectable on the right panel) it’s a mess. Also, the traits you selected for each trait line should not be forgotten when you deselect that trait line.

Skills pages:

The circles just take up too much space. Is there even a functional purpose for using a circle? What’s wrong with arranging them linearly in rows, with each row being all skills of the same skill type? It’s not like there are that many. This would allow us to see all skills on a single page.

IMO GW2’s UI in general is pretty poorly done. Remember the horrid grid of currencies?

Anet has done a great job polishing and making it look nice, even leveling it up looks more fun now!
But there a huge downside to this, too. Most traits that I loved are removed or changed, making my builds useless.

I had a necromancer I ran a full berserker build with, and with fury I could get up to a 100% crit chance. Now, half of what was good with the build is gone, the rest is scattered in the graves of previous patches.

Something probably more people can relate to, the staff elementalist build. I personally loved running this in dungeons, but now I can’t. The increased range on meteor shower, for example, is now gone. (Kill me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t find anything related to the same thing.)

I’m guessing my healing shout warrior build is also in ruins now, although I haven’t checked it yet.

These are my opinions on the new trait system at least, in the meantime I will see what my necromancer will be able to do with all the gear I spent a long time achieving.

The trait aspect of the build I could care less about. It’s the gear that bothers me. It has taken me three years to kit out my guardian in ascended berserker gear. Now that they’ve been nerfed to hell, the gear is worthless. I expect this sort of gear turnover in WoW; not in GW2. All I can think of now is all the gold I need to spend to re-gear.

Even the ability to re-stat my ascended will cost a pretty penny since all of the upgrades are lost. New runes and all new agony resists will be needed. Ugh! My legendary weapon plans are once again on hold.

dude…that’s what a meta shift is. it can be a very good thing.

I logged into my ranger and i don’t know what the fuss is about the increase in condi damage. With the ridiculously increased damage given to other class’s my ranger died in a matter of a few sec’s. My bleeds stacked and do hardly any damage my old build is lost this update is a complete failure in my eyes. With the game upgrade costing $100 buy a freaking test server before you add crap to a good game that once upon a time was worth playing.

Mordalus.8146:

The trait aspect of the build I could care less about. It’s the gear that bothers me. It has taken me three years to kit out my guardian in ascended berserker gear. Now that they’ve been nerfed to hell, the gear is worthless. I expect this sort of gear turnover in WoW; not in GW2. All I can think of now is all the gold I need to spend to re-gear.

Even the ability to re-stat my ascended will cost a pretty penny since all of the upgrades are lost. New runes and all new agony resists will be needed. Ugh! My legendary weapon plans are once again on hold.

Added a Mystic Forge recipe to change the stats on ascended weapons and armor. The recipe is as follows:
Ingredient 1: An ascended weapon or armor piece.
Ingredient 2: The exotic insignia or inscription for the desired stats.
Ingredient 3: Five globs of ectoplasm.
Ingredient 4: An Anthology of Heroes, purchased from Miyani for 10 spirit shards.
Result: A piece of ascended gear with the stats of the inscription or insignia of the same type as the piece of gear that went in.
Example: Zojja’s Claymore + Knight’s Orichalcum Imbued Inscription + Five Globs of Ectoplasm + Anthology of Heroes = Beigarth’s Claymore
NOTE: All upgrades are lost as part of this conversion.

I feel the pain too.
But take a look around the forums and don’t do anything rash for a while. The REAL beta test is under way, and reacting in any way involving gear changes based on what we have today, or even for the next week or month may be a huge mistake. Things as they are now are going to change a lot, and over more than one fix, more like a series of fixes. I don’t even consider the new traits as set in stone, either in position or effect.

Consider using ‘get by’ rares or cheap exotics you can salvage later for ectos and dark matter if you just have to make a change. That is what I am doing.

At 60 I was Air and Fire, corresponding to where all my trait points were spent before the patch. I guess they could have just given everyone a skill point refund.

thanks ANET you have finally excluded me from you game. It took me forever to adjust everything on each of my toons to be able to play like a normal person. yes i am physically handicapped and dont play pvp or wvw due it being to fast paced for me so for three years i roamed the maps with builds that allowed me to keep up. all the traits that made that possible for me are now gone. i do have 8 toon slots so i tried every class to find the most successful ones for me so it wasn’t easy. that also shows you i was a loyal fan. this is my farewell to the great freinds i met ingame, the game that made me feel a little more normal for 10 years. it saddens me greatly of the trait changes you made . i dont feel you think about the dynamics of some of your changes make on parts of your community anymore ive seen it going more and more towards pvp and wvw and less towards pve anynay i was hoping hot would change it but for me its simply to hard anynore so this is my farewell in tears thanks for the let down

Explain your builds? Maybe someone here can help you with it!

can i have your stuff?

op you can’t be serious? what trait that helped you survive through the maps have gone? You may be overreacting a little bit.

You must comply with how they want you to play, decisions at the player level were removed for your protection /end sarcasm.

imagine if every new character that is created was given a template they MUST play based on how Anet interprets their playstyle. this makes as much sense as making that decision on behalf of every sub 80 toon in the game without any kind of reset option.

And of course the issue will be ignored until those toons turn 80 and it isnt an issue anymore. But I have 2 friends who started playing the game last month with only 1 character who are no longer playing this game thanks to this horrible decision.

hahah yeah, my trapper ranger was traited so badly I had to laugh.

I can’t use the “Piercing rifle/harpoon shots” and “Run faster while wielding melee weapons” traits at the same time any more. I know this sounds minor, but this really p$@&ed me off and left me in a sour mood while trying to explore LA. I hate when they decide to take freedom of customizability and ramp it down like this.

Play the Anet way or the highway.

Disengage brains, you are not allowed to choose what you want. Anet know best.

You will comply citizen.

Resistance is futile.

Lack of choice = Bad.

Calm down everyone. Jon Peters explained the process and decisions behind it in this forum, and it makes sense. The good news is that when you’re 80 you do indeed have plenty of points to unlock everything, so if the process didn’t accurately interpret your prior build you will be able to fix it… in time. Yeah, for some people it’s not ideal, but it’s not permanent or irreparable.

I for one am loving the new trait system, but not necessarily for its diversity, so here’s my take on it.

Ever since GW2 launched the trait system has been largely unchanged, yes there were a few reallocations and value adjustments and a few traits added, but nothing too radical, as traits largely offered little fragmented effects of which you can pick a total of 7.

What the above did was cause the theorycrafting scene to go stagnant as some build proved to be the most effective in all three game modes, and this stagnantion can only be tolerated for so long before it starts affecting game lifespan and player retention.

With the new patch ANet turned the whole meta on its head and changed, added, and consolidated many traits and skills, and while this may seem bad to some, it is a breath of fresh air aimed to rekindle the long dead theorycrafting flame that should be inside every GW2 player.

Yes, there are builds that no longer work (though ANet asked SPECIFICALLY asked us to tell them about your build that may die with the changes so they can try keep its spirit), but there is also room for new and exciting builds that act upon skills and weapons that were a lot less favored before, and imo the people who whine about the changes atm are those who go on meta battle and copy pasta a build without having any input in it whatsoever.

Stop whining, start creating, use that organ inside your skull for once instead of letting others use theirs for you.

where there is change, people whine. can not get away from it. I really can not be bothered with my old build or new build. I use the tools i have available. Never played meta builds either. Just what works for me

Aenesthesia.1697:

op you can’t be serious? what trait that helped you survive through the maps have gone? You may be overreacting a little bit.

It probably isn’t that they are “gone” gone, they are probably still there but due to the new trait system being significantly more rigid than the old system the build has become inaccessible. For example In my builds I would frequently use multiple T1 traits instead of socketing a T2 trait or two T2s instead of a T3. Now you are forced to socket exactly one T1 one T2 and one T3.

They could have just added 4pts to the old build system and called it a day. Which would have given people the ability to strait spec three, which is effectively what the new system lets you do. Plus it would have allowed people to mix and match more to their individual play styles.

I remember the old dervish change. It was horrible, i wanted to ditch my derv after the years spent on him.

Then i actually played around with what they offered and i ended up with a massively superior, far more fun to play character. Took a while admittedly, but it wasnt game over.

The same happened with Lotro. Again, wasnt happy with the complete overhaul couple of years ago, but you learn to adjust and adapt the tools once more.

Frankly i didnt look at the GW2 changes before, knowing Id just accept what was on offer. Sure the changes lack the original synergy and specialisations have no real definition on some classes, but ive not had any toon destroyed. A couple have even improved.

Seems like it “forces” you to re-think builds, possibly limiting choices, while making the 3 specializations actually more powerful. Haven’t played my 8 characters, but for 4 of them, I honestly feel the builds are even better, am am not missing the things here and there that am no longer able to incorporate due to the 3 specialization limit.

The only thing that doesn’t make sense is the back and forth of ANet’s game philosophy-I thought they liked the “new” (now obsolete) trait system change, and this is kind of a retro-build move. I nevertheless find the new options and consolidated powers quite fun, though I suppose many won’t share my enthusiasm (I feel it adds new life to the game.)

RapidSausage.4620:

Stop whining, start creating, use that organ inside your skull for once instead of letting others use theirs for you.

+1. Totally agree. I’ve known people in GW1 who were gifted build creators and have met others who just used builds from websites. I think I fall into the middle. I’ve already found some nice traits/skills synergy which I’ll be testing further tonight. I also look forward to new builds being posted so I can chop and change anything I missed for my usage.

Overall as you say, it’s injected some much needed life into the game and I like it.