Guild Wars 2

I’m surprised they don’t have a consolidated thread for this yet. Ok, here are my impressions of the first few hours in the beta:

Reventant: The new moves are WAY more fun than the old moves. I spent half of the test with sword/sword, the other half with sword/axe. I liked the latter better, very mobile. I tried to also use staff, but it’s just completely ineffective as a weapon. Also, the staff attack icons all look very similar, it’s hard to tell what they do at a glance like you can with other sets. One problem I had was with healing, the Shiro heal was very weak, especially if you weren’t in a position to attack enemies. Given the amount of damage in this area, like hive trolls, this was a horrible experience. On any other class, you could just switch to a different heal, but with Revenant you’re stuck with the heal that comes with the Legend, so every one of them needs to be great ALL the time. That’s the deal, you don’t give us choice, then every choice you make for us needs to be the best choice. Also, with the axe #4, it tends to cause you to overshoot the target, which makes it useless on large chunks of this map because of all the ledges.

Map: I enjoyed the Verdant Brink map so far, learning how it flows. It’s rather painful at first though, without access to the glider. I got the glider right before I quit for the day, and even a few minutes with it was a world of difference. The map is kind of “broken” in a way that most others aren’t, in that you can very easily end up on a spot where your only option is to fall to your death (without a glider). Most other maps are designed so that there is almost always a safe path to the ground, or back up to where you came from.

Content: I ran a few missions around the Itzel, and also some of the Pale Raider chain. The Pale Raiders are just AWFUL. The part where you have to hold while they try to bomb open an area took WAY longer than it was any fun, even though we kept the mobs off them most of the time. Many of the smaller scale mobs seemed to teleport to the top of the cliff, making it impossible to snipe them. The Husks barely took any sniper damage, and took zero damage from every hit after the first in a chain. It was very boring and frustrating.

Then we escorted them up a cliff, where it got even worse. I went with Laranthir, and when I got to the top I had to wait around with nothing to do for several minutes until the other team got into position, which caused many of the players in my area to wander off. Please put in something to do here while you wait, not necessarily something necessary, that could fail the mission if not done, but some little time killing activity that is more rewarding than going AFK.

Then the battle started and it was full of menders and trolls on a tiny bridge. Didn’t you guys learn from Silverwastes, you can’t spawn large packs of Menders because they become literally invincible. Yes, if you have a sufficiently large team with a sufficient amount of CC you can stop them, but the spawning patterns seem to have no relation to the number of people actually there to kill them. 3+ menders with only 1-2 people to fight them cannot be stopped, especially with two trolls throwing bees at you. I had no idea what was going on during this section, I just tried to kill enemies as best I could, and died many times. The run back from the waypoint was not worth it. There needs to be a faster way to get back into the action. I gave up on it when it didn’t seem to be going anywhere and just went back to the Itzel area.

they also need to add up or down indicator to the events, can’t tell if i’m supposed to go up, or down :P

I’ll bang off a few quick points;

- Feels like some optimisation is in place. The heavy smoke is still a horrid fps drain, but it is much more playable than it was during the stress test

- loved the Tempest (judging by the ele forums, I could be the only one!) Can’t comment on balance, but it was great fun to play!

- not a fan of the map design. Feels very broken up and messy to navigate. I appreciate it’ll be easier when I unlock gliding and that it improves through the map, but the starting part of VB felt all over the place in terms of terrain design and pathing. It also lacked much of a “jungle feel”.

- loved some of the new mobs and the Mordrem guard were suitably tougher. Densities of mobs felt quite high for non-Mordrem though. it wont be an issue at launch due to high population, but long term as the playerbase spreads out it might needs a couple of thins down linking pathways.

Didn’t really look at much else. Will play more on Sunday.

Please note I played about two hours so far, intending on working more on this. For my Rev I wanted to attempt a hard hitting constant crit build. Using a mix of assassin’s gear along with zerker or Valkyrie for some added vitality this is very possible. When playing solo one can utilize fierce infusion + rolling mists for a constant 30% boost to critical hits, meaning you only need to worry about reaching 70%. Add in either a warrior or thief probably drops this down to 65 or thereabouts.

Anyways, Mainhand sword truly makes me feel like Shiro. #2 feels a bit underwhelming compared to a strong auto attack with cleave and that holy jeebus #3 skill. I don’t like how the camera struggles to keep up with the 3 skill though, it feels a bit like being jerked around after the animation ends. Still highly useful and AMAZING for using the signet of strength to quickly build might. This might be because I rocked mostly assassin’s gear, but damage felt low. As I keep playing I will try to use the damage tracker in the text box rather than just the on screen numbers, but the big hits were coming in at about 4k. Now, 4k + Impossible Odds makes even auto attack REALLy good, but genuinely i thought it could hit a bit harder (5k to 6k would be understandable considering I was not utilizing a max strength build) Off hand sword is not on par. Block was functional most of the time, but are enemies now anticipating blocks? Only sure way to trigger it was to stand in an AOE. If enemies are supposed to be reactive like that, holy crap that’s some awesomely written code. #5 is the big problem though. It worked just fine during the story parts of the mission, but when I got outside of that I could not for the life of me proc it. That’s the main asset of off hand sword and not working means I’m switching to axe. By the way, like one of the previous posters said, sword/axe for some crowd control gets my nod.

Hammer feels much better, the boosts really shine through especially on the #3 skill. Haven’t had time to check staff, but about my only use for it was that awesome gap closer #5. Shiro has one that I feel is better, which still leaves the availability of a ranged weapon when need be.

Again i realize I’m not rolling strength, so if those who are can state what their sword hits are coming in at, that would be awesome for some comparison.

I’m enjoying everything for now: great elements of the story when playing as a sylvari; Verdant Brink is awesome and is very active.
The only cons I have is that my FPS drops a lot!

Right don’t normally post on these forums, or what not but figured since there’s a thread up and someone suggested trying to tell the Arena Net team my thoughts, here we go.

Glider
- Glider is lovely, I tend to think of my time from Aion although I can’t tell if I’m going down too quickly or not. Also feels a bit odd having not starting off with these, perhaps a possible tutorial mission after the first mission entering the zone?
- Would be very handy to see the glider bar recharge after landing. Let me know how much is in it for my next jump, I plan to do consecutive jumps and such in the future, can’t recall if the flight length gets extended, possible thing to add as a mastery perk possibly.
- I doubt this will happen due to certain jumping puzzles but if you can somehow allow gliding into places outside of the thorns expansion I can think of a million places I would love to leap off from to get into that.
- Was a little confused by the mastery points at first, didn’t realize that my experience goes to the tyria one and the ones in the top section at the same time. Very nice that it goes to multiple sources, however when I got my first mastery point after learning how to glide I was confused about where to spend them until it clicked when I examined the masteries a bit more and noticed the different numbers on some of them. Which is fine no problems there just mentioning my experience.
- Speed buffs do not effect glider, intentional/unintentional?
- Actually forgot to check if there was more than the one glider skin available but this got me wondering if those wing skins that have been knocking about could be available for such.

Revenant
- Leaped into the deep end with it, hadn’t looked up details on the class before hand so wasn’t sure of every mechanic but I figured it out in the first half hour.
- Was initially confused about how to change legendary stances to something other than Shiro and the Dwarf. I thought for some reason it was tied to my weapons but when I saw it didn’t change (Was in combat most of the time when I was looking at it) I noticed the little switch arrow then it became obvious from there.
- The very very first thing I did when I got my revenant was open all the little boxes in my inventory… I know that’s probably a beta only thing so people can custamise but I ended up spending a chunk of time emptying my inventory afterwards due to accidentally overloading my inventory then trying to continue the story with little room since I wanted to experiment with the different stats, opted to empty my inventory aside from the boxes I had left over though.
- Mainly played on the Shiro and the Ventari stance but it ws enjoyable, flowed but I found myself mainly using the weopan skills and one or two of the legendary skills most of the time, however still and enjoyable class.

Area
- I realize its only a small chunk of the area but I’m really hoping to spread my wings so to speak soon and get to leap off high peaks and glide around. (I blame this on my compulsive need to glide around from Aion and other games)
- Think I died mainly from falling but I imagine that’l be solved when I unlock the ability to use those air currents on the glider.
- Pathing was tricky at times in the hylek village, found myself getting turned around when I tried to rush to an event to help.

Looking forward to more! Hope this helps. No bugs so far, thought the modrem wolves teleporting around was a bug at first, probably the way they don’t move during it possibly.

my only issue is when you make a revenant you are instantly 80 with all the skills and traits all ready for use but with no knowledge on how to use it or how to use them effectivly in combat when the next beta event comes have the revenant class start at level one at the usual racial starting zones as if creating a normal character to start off getting to know each skill at a time without feeling intimidated by being level 80 instant this will allow the beta participants to know how to the use the revenant better and develop certian play styles and i know that may not happen because you also want to show off the new zone so at least during character creation in the beta give the player the choice to either be lvl 80 instantly and explore the new zone or to choose to start at level one to allow beta players to experience the revenant class better through progression.

Also i feel like a revenant should be able to weild a greatsword as sort of a melee weapon close quarters while the hammer is a ranged

they also need to add up or down indicator to the events, can’t tell if i’m supposed to go up, or down :P

Definitely, this is a very vertical map, and it’s very hard to figure out how to reach an event the first time around.

It also lacked much of a “jungle feel”.

I think that’s fine, this is only the edge of the jungle, where it meets the desert. The “real” jungle will be one or two more maps deep. We’ll see how that goes. I thought the Itzel village was quite jungley.

I don’t like how the camera struggles to keep up with the 3 skill though, it feels a bit like being jerked around after the animation ends.

It doesn’t move at all during the first hits, and only moves at the end. It would be worse if it didn’t though, the camera would be all over the place. I’m kind of used to these moves from playing Marvel Heroes. One thing I did love is that it chases enemies wherever they go, so if you activate it on a wolf as he runs past you at full speed, you’ll zip along after them and eventually end up 3000+ range from where you started.

Ok a little bit from me in my really bad english LOL

- Some texts spoken from chars in the PS-part are not overvoiced (into german), but…ist beta^^
- Problem for Rev with changing legends. They are not completly visual on the Monitor (see Picture below).

- Like the weapon swap for Rev. It really feels more fluid within fights to have an option for switching melee-ranged combat.
- Rev should also have 5 Utility-skills per legend to choose from. In that case it’s in line with other professions (20 utilitys, 5x 4 legends)

- Reaper: Chill Duration increase fom “Cold Shoulder” (Minor 3, Reaper-line) is reduced to 10% from 20%. This is sad =‘(
- Chill from 3rd GS Auto attack is reduced from 4s to 2s. I think, this is ok, 4s was way to op.
- Chill damage from “Deathly Chill” seems to scale very low with Cond.Dmg (seems to be 0,12 for <50% HP and 0,083 for >50% HP. I think, this shoule be increased a Little bit, cause it’s a not in intensity stacking condition. Something like 0,25 for <50% and 0,15 for >50% HP shoudn’t be OP.
- Like the fact, that u can use all reaper Skills while moving, this feels really fluid.

- Like the changes for Reaper skills, esp. the shroud skills. Pls, let it as it be

- The new Mordrem hunter are really…hard with ist shoot…..i like it…but…ist hard….and from time to time a Little bit frustrating XD….

I think thats it for the moment.
Only Issue I had, I could’nt cast the “2”-Skills while moving the char with “w”. But I think, thats a bug, hopefully it’s solved asap^^.

So first Beta Weekend trying out the Necromancer with the Greatsword.

I want to like it, I really do, but it feels a tad off (and too slow). It also doesn’t feel, well necromancer enough. I read or heard somewhere that it was supposed to have this big horror movie monster theme like feel, falls a little flat on that.

Damage output could use some improvement as well. I get that it is supposed to be kind of tank-ish (or that is how it seems to come off as being) but Necro could use a little push on their damage output, as a light armor wearer we need it.

The Reaper line is lackluster, and really if you are going to insist on having it tied to the greatsword, maybe show it some more greatsword love. Honestly though, it just sort of seems like you just threw the line and weapon together, it doesn’t really flow well with the GS.

And I gotta say I HATE the idea of the new weapons being forced to certain specialization lines, takes away from the feeling of customizing and playing your character how you want to.

I’ve played a few hours so far. The thing that sticks out to me the most is the repetition and tedium when working on masteries. I understand that we only have 25% of the map, that not everything is complete, and that events can bug out.

But man. During the day it’s hard to find any events to do. And when night comes I found myself doing the same escort and defend missions. I could’ve branched out and went to another area of the map, but navigating the map is tough when I haven’t unlocked my gliding. It was easier to stay in that corner of the map to farm the xp.

I would like to see more event variation and more events in general in one area, rather than 1 defense event and 1 escort event that repeat or 1 defense event that ends and then nothing. This way, earning the initial XP to unlock the movement abilities doesn’t get repetitive immediately. Sometimes it was difficult to even find an event running.

Played a small amount and I have to say I enjoyed using the Reaper (just did a quick slap together build to test it out) and the Revenant is much improved from the last time, and with the added Assassin legend it has some real damage behind it now. I enjoyed the look of the new area, have not played too much.

I noticed that in the new area the enemies are dealing alot of damage, this was on revenant and I had 3000+ toughness and about 24000 hp and I could take about 2 mordrem enemies on at once but anything more could be a little challenging. The Mordrem with the twin dagger, not usre of their name but they share Caithes skill set it seems, managed to still keep damaging me though I was using the block skill with the staff on Revenant . Also the Revenant Laceration effect does not say what it actually does so I am not sure if it was actually doing anything or not.

I have enjoyed the Revenant greatly so far and enjoy that it has been improved and feel it is getting on its way but I feel like it needs at least another ranged weapon as atm it only has the hammer, which is good, but I feel it should have at least another with its basic 1 combo being a more mist related attack where the hammer one is pure power by throwing it. I only tested the Shiro and Ventari legends today and I felt that the shiro one is fantastic and same with Ventari though its regen buff range could be a tad larger as I am basically hugging it to get the effects and that the regen offers a little more restored hp or gaining a greater amount of restoration the closer you are to it maybe, I love how you can tell it where to go, that is just brilliant.

Just one brief comment OP on your comments. You talked about how little damage rifles did to husks. Husks are far more sensitive to condition damage than direct damage. Always try using conditions on husks. It’ll go much faster.

Just one brief comment OP on your comments. You talked about how little damage rifles did to husks. Husks are far more sensitive to condition damage than direct damage. Always try using conditions on husks. It’ll go much faster.

True, and in general this is good to keep in mind, but my feeling on this event was that we were meant to be able to snipe enemies before they got close, and the rifle was the only tool at hand for that purpose. I wouldn’t even mind if the Husks were intended to be mostly immune to the rifles, if the smaller enemies could be more reliably hit, but they move too fast and erratically to hit often with the delay on the rifle.

small thing; I loved the jungle drums. They add great flavor and a cool beat.

I’m pretty tired so I’ll just make some short notes:

I tried out Chronomancer, Dragonhunter, and Reaper, in that order. I liked each one more than the last (though I disliked none of them). I might have liked Chrono more if I hadn’t wanted to test out brand new utilities, thus losing Mirror Image which is a usual Mesmer staple for me. I love a constant flow of clones/phantasms. Also it was the most complex of the three to figure out; I have yet to get a good instinct on using F5 or what any of the synergies are. I will probably make one of my mesmers a Chronomancer, but not all of them.

Dragonhunter had some lovely use for the traps, at least when the enemies came to me. There wasn’t much to do with ranged foes but charge up to them to drop traps on their feet, at least as I was able to discern in my first test drive of the profession. I did keep scepter/focus as a backup to the bow, and of course the bow could help out with ranged foes except it didn’t feel nearly as damaging as the traps. Both my guardians will at least try out being Dragonhunters.

Reaper, wow. So fun! The GS was faster than I expected based on comments, the shroud abilities felt amazing, the shouts were useful though not yet intuitive for me as to when best to use which. All my necros are heading for Reaper. Though I don’t actually use them for PvE as a rule so it may just be RP flavor for them. Otoh if it continues to be the case that each alt doing the story gets a mastery point for the account, well, all 14 of my 80’s had better step up to the plate.

I felt like I had to change my gear in the Maguuma jungle to my soldier gear instead of Berserker because of the enemies.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m surprised they don’t have a consolidated thread for this yet. Ok, here are my impressions of the first few hours in the beta:

Reventant: The new moves are WAY more fun than the old moves. I spent half of the test with sword/sword, the other half with sword/axe. I liked the latter better, very mobile. I tried to also use staff, but it’s just completely ineffective as a weapon. Also, the staff attack icons all look very similar, it’s hard to tell what they do at a glance like you can with other sets. One problem I had was with healing, the Shiro heal was very weak, especially if you weren’t in a position to attack enemies. Given the amount of damage in this area, like hive trolls, this was a horrible experience. On any other class, you could just switch to a different heal, but with Revenant you’re stuck with the heal that comes with the Legend, so every one of them needs to be great ALL the time. That’s the deal, you don’t give us choice, then every choice you make for us needs to be the best choice. Also, with the axe #4, it tends to cause you to overshoot the target, which makes it useless on large chunks of this map because of all the ledges.

Map: I enjoyed the Verdant Brink map so far, learning how it flows. It’s rather painful at first though, without access to the glider. I got the glider right before I quit for the day, and even a few minutes with it was a world of difference. The map is kind of “broken” in a way that most others aren’t, in that you can very easily end up on a spot where your only option is to fall to your death (without a glider). Most other maps are designed so that there is almost always a safe path to the ground, or back up to where you came from.

Content: I ran a few missions around the Itzel, and also some of the Pale Raider chain. The Pale Raiders are just AWFUL. The part where you have to hold while they try to bomb open an area took WAY longer than it was any fun, even though we kept the mobs off them most of the time. Many of the smaller scale mobs seemed to teleport to the top of the cliff, making it impossible to snipe them. The Husks barely took any sniper damage, and took zero damage from every hit after the first in a chain. It was very boring and frustrating.

Then we escorted them up a cliff, where it got even worse. I went with Laranthir, and when I got to the top I had to wait around with nothing to do for several minutes until the other team got into position, which caused many of the players in my area to wander off. Please put in something to do here while you wait, not necessarily something necessary, that could fail the mission if not done, but some little time killing activity that is more rewarding than going AFK.

Then the battle started and it was full of menders and trolls on a tiny bridge. Didn’t you guys learn from Silverwastes, you can’t spawn large packs of Menders because they become literally invincible. Yes, if you have a sufficiently large team with a sufficient amount of CC you can stop them, but the spawning patterns seem to have no relation to the number of people actually there to kill them. 3+ menders with only 1-2 people to fight them cannot be stopped, especially with two trolls throwing bees at you. I had no idea what was going on during this section, I just tried to kill enemies as best I could, and died many times. The run back from the waypoint was not worth it. There needs to be a faster way to get back into the action. I gave up on it when it didn’t seem to be going anywhere and just went back to the Itzel area.

It sounds like your group on the bombs part wasnt getting the roles needed to be given during the bomb event? Im assuming you’re talking about when the 2 captains were planting bombs into the wall, the husks weren’t that hard to kill at all because the mechanic was you had to take away their defiance in order for the people with sniper rifles to kill them instantly. You needed to have a ground unit team to round up the mobs on the bottom floor and a top unit with snipers and to take pressure off the NPC mobs. Again, it just sounds like you guys didn’t understand the mechanics of the mobs or event. Thus why it took so long. If you need help going through some of these events, I would gladly show you how.

The beta is fun so far playing mainly rev and having a lot of fun with the animations are really awesome but i will have to say shrio is hard to play because his heal is to weak to you have to swamp legends to the dwarf to get a proper heal. Because the shards don’t give you enough heal per a attack then the other heals do in a bust heal or over time. I also had a problem with how the rev fights against other classes i feel its lackluster of DPS or sustain by how on rev the duel swords or swords in general can almost bring enough dps but is very lacking compared to the other classes when they go all zerk on a build like for an example guard has its boons to keep its dps, warrior has its CC but rev doesn’t seem to have anything to help its spike dps or sustain dps. The beta is fun so far and i really love how the skills work but i believe some need to be buffed or have adds on so that a zerk rev can match with its opposing classes. Thank you for listening

I played a bit more, starting up a Tempest and Reaper. I’ll address each of those in their respective boards, but short story is I really enjoyed both so far. The intro story was easier on both classes than it was on the Rev. Btw, a simple beta suggestion, instead of starting everyone in Celestial gear, maybe start them in Soldiers? Celestial gear is pretty much good for nothing, while Soldiers is at least decent for a lot of builds and offers solid survivability.

I also did some more gliding, and also unlocked the Mushroom Bounce mastery (if you get gliding first, you might want to swap to that before continuing to level your tracks, just a personal choice). It’s a fun thing, I was expecting a bouncy pad, but it’s actually more like the Tequatl jump pads, automatically sending you flipping to a specific location each time. I’m working on updrafts next. The zone feels a lot better when you have at least the glider, so much of getting around is based on it.

Again, it just sounds like you guys didn’t understand the mechanics of the mobs or event. Thus why it took so long. If you need help going through some of these events, I would gladly show you how.

If that’s a mechanic of the event, then the event should do a better job of making that clear to the players. It should not require outside help. Just playing it I was getting no indication that there was any way to make the Husks more vulnerable to sniper fire.

My points from the Beta: Revnant – A bit dissapointed still trying to work out what he/she is,, a healer or a warrior…from initially being excited about the new profession I am not sure I will make a Revnant now after the Beta.
World and Scenery: Awesome,, very good… I did the story which wasnt too bad, then once I exited,, it just seemed to degenerate into the boring zerg fest of silverwastes. I think this aspect will get very boring very quickly.
I am hoping that GW2HoT PvE can capture some of the adventure and magic of GW1, which was really based around instanced play with a good storyline.
I would just love this game so much if you bought back heroes,, not everyone is in a huge Guild, and heroes allows players to do missions which they wouldnt be able to do solo.
All in all I feel no hype or excitement for GW2HoT there was a sameness about the beta which meant that I played on and off for about 4hrs then logged off and played something else.
I have prepurchased and I certainly dont regret it,, I am hoping that GW2HoT can deliver that same sense of adventure that GW1 did. Yours in PvE.

Few things I’ve noticed so far:

1. In playing a Tempest with berserker gear, I died every few seconds in the VB first story mission. I may just be a bad player (I didn’t think so), but holy cow was it VERY squishy. Unplayably so.
2. The Chronomancer is a lot of fun, but again, I died a lot in the story mission. Overall, I think the story mission is too tough for the cloth armor toons.
3. The masteries hints are better than before, but it still isn’t clear that you have to train first before you can apply points. I was trying to apply points and there was nothing to inform me I had to “level up” training first.
4. After the story mission, you’re just kind of dumped there with no real direction. I understand there are no hearts or anything, but for the first map in a new expansion, a little direction guidance would be nice.
5. Not sure what can be done about this, but I found it extremely difficult to try to learn an entirely different playstyle (specializations) against these tough enemies. Again, maybe I am just a scrub…
6. I like the look and mechanics of the enemies. I think they should be nerfed a little bit, though, at least until a little bit further into the map.
7. Chronomancer wells are great, but the duration is too short, in my opinion. The animations are beautiful, though.
8. In the POI about the Tempest, we were told the warhorn was a way to get elementalists closer to the fight, but I found I couldn’t take on more than one bad guy at a time without trying to get away. Once more, perhaps I am a scrub. Would love to know what other more experienced eles think.

Vayne.8563:

Just one brief comment OP on your comments. You talked about how little damage rifles did to husks. Husks are far more sensitive to condition damage than direct damage. Always try using conditions on husks. It’ll go much faster.

Do not fight with them if u do not have condition build

1. In playing a Tempest with berserker gear, I died every few seconds in the VB first story mission. I may just be a bad player (I didn’t think so), but holy cow was it VERY squishy. Unplayably so.

After playing through three times on different classes, the problem definitely seems to be the snipers. They seem to have three moves as near as I can tell, a “headshot” move ala Southsun Survival, a rapid fire move ala Ranger LB #2, and a charged attack that leaves a flame trail on the ground. Any one of these attacks can kill you if it hits. They’re dodgeable, but if two or more Snipers are attacking, you typically can’t avoid all of it.

I find that it does help if you let all the supporting characters go ahead of you and split up the agro. If you try to charge the enemy first, chances all all the agro goes to you and they just keep one-shotting you.

I’m not saying these enemies are too hard to exist, not by any stretch, but I do think that in their current form they are too difficult for the basic storymode of the first mission we get. I know some people like really challenging games, and want GW2 to be one of those games, but that’s not what GW2 is, or should be. There are other games for that. GW2 should be welcoming to players of all skill levels, and elements like this should be reserved for later in the HoT campaign at the least, ideally behind a challenge-mote or something that is completely optional, not the mandatory story for entering the map.

3. The masteries hints are better than before, but it still isn’t clear that you have to train first before you can apply points. I was trying to apply points and there was nothing to inform me I had to “level up” training first.

The UI is a bit confusing at first.

I really like the part of verdant brink we play in the beta. With all those hostile mobs, it is not a walk in the park – and it should not be, because we are crashed in the jungle and are confused and alone first.

And I was surprised how much fun gliding in the map and trying to glide from point to point really is.

I had a lot of fun in this (small part of a) map. But please fix the events before the beta weekend is over, so that I can play the events how they were supposed to be.

Followup on my previous quick post on impressions of the professions:

I tested Revenant today with Shiro/Jalis. I used Berserker armor and … um … Sentinel trinkets I think? I felt reasonably effective, even soloing a pile of spiders in the Itzel village area. However I found it difficult to keep in mind which mix of Legend and weapon I was in. The variations led to a lot of complexity moment to moment and I died a couple of times thanks to forgetting if I was ranged or melee at the time.

This is not a bad thing. It just means Revenant may not end up being a main profession for me and should appeal to those who enjoy Ele attunement dancing or Engie kit swapping.

My guildie trying a Rev at the same time as me did staff with Shiro and said it had pretty amazing damage. I stuck with hammer (and sword/sword) as I have a reasonable feel for hammer skills by now.

I still have had the most fun with Reaper, which feels most intuitive to me. I have not tried Tempest and likely won’t because I like the four alts I made and don’t want to unlock the wp’s in the Brink yet again.

Now to try to find working events so I can get Updrafts then begin work on the Itzel language. Reaper … awaaaay!

One issue I had was with the event at the stairs where there are sniper rifles and Husks which are immune until break bar is broken. The setup was fine but it went on too long, speeding up the rate the bar went up and increasing the number of enemy spawns could make it more exciting and faster.

Overall I really like the new stuff, but here’s a few technical issues with some of the new moves:

Dragonhunter:
Symbol of Energy – Feels awkward that it can only be placed ahead of you. Should be able to target anywhere within its range around you (like the Thief Shortbow’s Choking Gas).
Spear of Justice – Feels awkward that it can be wasted by activating without successfully targeting something. It should require a valid target to activate.

Reaper:
Death’s Charge – Feels really awkward right now, with how it just dashes straight forward in whatever way your character is facing. Should either be target tracking (like Warrior Greatsword’s Rush) or manually targeted (like Warrior Greatsword’s Whirlwind Attack).

Using the questions provided in the announcement post -

- Do the elite specializations feel like they are creating an entirely new role for your main profession?: As a ranger, I did not have the opportunity to try any new elite specialization.

- Do you feel the need to use your entire skill bar in battles?: I play my ranger specifically so I can use my entire skill bar to my benefit. I’m pretty good at deploying skills at the right times so I can be as effective as possible.

- Does teaming up with other players feel more rewarding?: It feels more rewarding now than it has in the last two years, but less rewarding than it did when the game launched and people were playing WITH each other, not AROUND each other.

- Do you find yourself wanting to change your skills and traits to overcome encounters?: Nope. I’ve been playing this ranger setup since the day GW2 launched.

- Does night feel different from the daytime?: Yes.

- Does it change the way you play while night is active?: Yes.

- Is the nighttime meta-event experience that we’ve shown so far engaging and fun?: I feel like once the night-time events are polished and the entire map is available, yes.

- Does the Mastery system feel like a system that works to provide meaningful progression?: I’m not a huge fan of metagaming, and none of the mastery skills particularly interest me or seem helpful for my play style.

- Does it make you care about experience and Mastery points?: Nope.

- Does it provide a framework that you think we could regularly add to in live updates?: I’m sure you could for the people who use it.

- Does it improve the experience of gathering materials if you’re working on building items that require specific crafting materials that previously had no clear place to earn them?: I have no information with which to answer this question.

- Does it feel like it will help keep the core world we’ve built today still a place you’ll want to return to and play in, and do you feel rewarded for doing so?: So far, yes.

Thank you very much for the Beta weekend and the four Beta character slots.

I’d say that I am getting a new experience on all the toons, which adds to enjoyment. The Dragonhunter F-skills and weapon probably feels the least different out of the four, but the traps do feel different.

I tried ‘pure’ new builds. That is, full new wells, traps, shouts; rather than a mix with old skills. As such, although I would like to use the new set for the joy of the newness and for ‘thematic’ reasons, in WvW I didn’t feel as competent as with a mix. The reason is that I would be lacking in personal healing, or stability, or ‘escapability’, etc.

The mastery info and use was much better than the last time I was in Beta. Kudos. With more than one Beta toon, I notice that things are synched across toons so that there won’t be any wasted XP in leveling up masteries. If I select a specific mastery to work on on one toon and log into another; that new toon—even if it had a different mastery selected to level up when it logged out—is switched to whatever the previous toon had as its latest mastery selection. And the mastery XP bar is at the same number on all toons.

I saw that Tomes of Knowledge when used at level 80 just give the Spirit Shard and do not additionally level up the Masteryt XP bar—something I thought was going to be true but wanted to check to be sure.

I would have liked to see how many Hero Points elite specializations are going to cost so I could be sure I’d have all I needed across toons before HoT comes out.

All for now. Once again, thank you very much. Hope all of you have a great time at work and in game.

im kind of bored with this beta with the event chains being bugged and progress halted its hard to give constructive feedback. that being said the little i have played is very engaging.

the ai of the mobs is finally at a point where its fun, i like the idea that mobs are dangerous they can kill us and will if we screw around and toy with them, i just wish some mobs had a higher aggro radius and had some sort of limitation on them so you dont get overwhelmed. all of the mobs aside from the boars are in a good place at the moment i wouldn’t make them easier or nerf them in the slightest.

there are some events that over stay their welcome in small groups defeating the large vines takes way too long, defending the upper terrace with the rifles while npc’s plant explosives was good, but it doesnt need to take any longer than 5-10min its a very long and drawn out event and i get so bored half way though asking people “is this done yet?”

overall from what i’ve gotten to play and experienced i like this it would be great if i could play more of the events to their full extent instead of being blocked by a progress halting glitch,but for now this was an ok weekend i am happy i had access to it.

I played a bit more today, and kind of flamed out. There only seemed to be two events going on, the village bug one, and the Pale Reapers one. With both stalled dead, there was nothing to do in the zone. I could not progress my masteries by more than grinding mobs, and even grinding mobs was difficult as the mobs in this zone are not nearly as solo-friendly as in other zones, so I was left with randomly wandering around. I mean, it’s betas, I forgive you that the events stall out, but you know as well as I that the live game has had events that retained stall bugs months after going live, so the solution is to make sure that events stalling don’t ruin everything.

There needs to be more events going on that have nothing to do with long event chains. In fact, less long event chains in general. I like Dry Top well enough, as a limited experience, but I don’t want more of those. I don’t like long event chains for the same reason I don’t like Fractals, I don’t like to be tied down to a single task for a long time if I want to get the reward. I prefer events that take 5-15 minutes in total, where I can get in, do that thing, and then go to an entirely different map if I want to, without having to say to myself “well I’ve progressed the meta mission this far, it’d be a waste to not complete it. . .”

I also tried the flame thrower adventure (the other one never seems to be working). I did not enjoy it. We were told that other players wouldn’t be able to “kill steal” in adventures, but the other players seemed to be doing that. Also, the UI could be a bit more “in your face,” with the running tally of how many you’ve gotten right in the middle of the screen instead of in the corner where you can barely notice it. Also, on completion it should show how well you did on the leaderboard, even if you’re nowhere near the top.

Also, it expected way too much. I mean, I’m sure I could do better than I did, but I only got around 70, with 90 required for silver, and 140 for gold? I think the highest score at the time, from anyone, was 136. That’s too high. Gold should be relatively obtainable by all players, because there is a reward there. As for those that cry “but we want super hard content!” Well that’s what the leaderboard is for. Set gold at 100 or so, but if someone does get 136, great for him, he did better than the guy that did 134. Can anyone make 137? That’s the real challenge, beating other players high scores. There shouldn’t be an overwhelming challenge in just beating the score of the game.

Also, one interesting bug (I think), was that after completing the adventure, I think I had a “mini chest” in the UI that I hadn’t noticed, and then switched over to a character in the live game. When I did this, I noticed the chest and opened it, and got one of those “?” items on my main account. I’m not sure how many places you can do this.

PART 1:

- Do the elite specializations feel like they are creating an entirely new role for your main profession?: No. I main a Ranger and was playing the Dragonhunter. This very much feels like it is a ranger, just a bit slower and with more team support and no pet. Not knowing what the Druid will give, I feel that this dragonhunter would have suited a ranger version 2 instead. It would give us more team support and no pet to take care of for the cost of speed. I would very much buy that as a specialisation for the ranger, but it wasn’t as fun to play as guardian.

- Do you feel the need to use your entire skill bar in battles?: Well, the mobs are harder in Verdant Brink (Good!!) so you need to play smarter and using more of your skills. Stability seems to be in high demand, so guardian is doing quite well.

- Does teaming up with other players feel more rewarding?: Well I played through one whole day-night cycle and yes, you can’t do it alone but it doesn’t feel more rewarding then trying to do the same in for example Silverwaste. Actually Silverwaste feels much more rewarding! I like when events chain up, so you can follow one chain through a period of time as in Silverwaste but here it was a bit tedious just defeding a rallypoint and helping pact members with supplies.

- Do you find yourself wanting to change your skills and traits to overcome encounters?: No, I like having a setup I’m familiar with and chaging back and forth is just too cumbersome. You need different gear, and you need to write down your traitlines and choices since you can’t save them and reload them later. Better to find one build that is applicable to as much as possible and then learn to play it good.

- Does night feel different from the daytime?: No, not much. Well it gets dark and the events change but not much more. It is still some events that needs to be done, not much harder from daytime and what you achieve during day/night does not change how you play during the other part. I don’t see the connection of what we acheive during day or night to impact the day/night.

- Does it change the way you play while night is active?: In some way. During night I’m more defeding, standing still at rally point. doing some quite boring clean up of mobs. Druing day there are more going on, you feel more like exploring and ‘doing your own stuff’.

I know the Silverwaste map can be quite boring after one or maybe two rounds but at least it feels rewaring and quite wellpaced. This map during night time feels very long and not much of a variation. It is ok to play now in the begining but it will need pretty good rewards to keep me staying in the area.

- Is the nighttime meta-event experience that we’ve shown so far engaging and fun?:
It can be. The concept is nice, but right now – No. Too tedious and all the same for too long time.

- Does the Mastery system feel like a system that works to provide meaningful progression?: I like the idea of progression in this way and I will certainly unlock it all in time. I think when we see the big picture it is a good way to ‘reward’ progression (unlocking vendors, areas, skills etc), but just in the beta it feels abit too little.

I hope it will bring more ‘troublesolving’ into the game, right now there are some main ways to get things which all are nice, like killing/farming things, jumping puzzles, crafting and collections. I would love to see some more troublesolving, maybe connected to lore or finding clues in the world. Nothing too easy which you can just read the solution on dulfy/wiki the day after release and then run around and do. It needs to be more clever implemented, maybe that you need to find clues hidden/given to you randomly if you play the game and then piece them together.

- Does it make you care about experience and Mastery points?: Well, it seems as long as I just play the game I’ll get experience enough to unlock masteries. Since I like map completion I hope this will tie into that so you need to take all mastery point to get map completion (I really hope map completion will come back in the expansion!!).
As long as the reward is worth it I will keep unlocking masteries.

- Does it provide a framework that you think we could regularly add to in live updates?: Yes, I think it can be really good as long as it gives the feeling of progressing into something worthwhile. Coming to lvl 80 unlocks a lot of things, giving you new maps, gear and stuff. The same needs to be done with the masteries. You will probably find out that some masteries just isn’t worth the time spent and will only be unlocked last, when there is nothing more to unlock.

PART 2:

- Does it (the map rewards) improve the experience of gathering materials if you’re working on building items that require specific crafting materials that previously had no clear place to earn them?:
I have given some feedback about this in another post. But as a general – No.
Well it is pobably good that you can more reliably farm hard to get items like giant eyes, dyes and silver dubloons. But for example farming wool scaps it was not worth it. The return rate was way too low. In an hour I had only gotten 2 boubble thingies, given me 60 silver… In silverwaste I would have gotten at least a few wool/cotton scraps in the same time.

It will be some quite tedious farming to collect whatever is needed. Wouldn’t it be better to overall rise the droprate and be more specific (if that is the problem) of which mobs/maps the mats will drop?

We had a system before there for example dyes would drop. This was enterily removed. Why not just enter them into the loot table again (in a wider area/more mobs dropping it), but at a low possibility? The same with giant eyes.
It has worked quite well with cores/lodestones. They are now easier to loot, but not so much that they are flooding the market.

Will this get me to run the lower maps more regularly? No, only if it is my only mean to get the the mat I need. In a whole I don’t like this soloution.
To populate lower zones, the rewards need to be in the zone-level (not mainly lvl 80 gear if you are in a zone 30). this would get me running more in lower zones since I need mats for ascended… If I’m sure I’ll get wool/cotton/linen/softwood/iron ore etc when salvageing loot then I would spend more time there.
The solution now is to try to stall progression on a alt and farm as much loot as possible.

- Does it feel like it will help keep the core world we’ve built today still a place you’ll want to return to and play in, and do you feel rewarded for doing so?: No.

I also want to add that I really like the story and how voicing and storytelling is coming together. I longing to see more of the story.

Also the explainations of how to spend mastery points and how the mastery system work is now quite up to speed! Good work. The only thing I’m missing now is the explaination on HOW to train a mastery. It is not explained very well. Do I only need to grind mobs in a certain area, or do events or both? Is there some special events that will give me more training? etc.

Looking forward to playing HoT soon!!

I played a bit more today on my Reaper.

First, I was doing some Itzel stuff. It was on a phase where hunters would go out in either direction. I joined and failed about four of these attempts. Either we wouldn’t be able to kill things fast enough to hit the timer, or a kitten-ton of enemies would spawn and obliterate the party. This event just does not seem to scale properly to the number of players present.

Then I joined a group trying to do the Pale Reavers chain. On the map I was on, it got stalled right near the cliffs. I tried guesting to another server and joined a map where they’d managed to progress it a bit. The Pale Reaver snipers seemed to be bugged, even when their area was clear (blue) they would not attack anything, meaning the players had to drop the Vine Tenders themselves. We got to the explosives bit (which is still way too slow to progress), but then soon after entering the ruins the NPCs just stopped moving.

I know bugs will happen, but you’ve GOT to stop designing events in which it is POSSIBLE for NPCs to stall. You’ve got to design in failsafes, and failsafes on top of those failsafes, so that no matter how twisted around the NPC AIs get, something can kick them back into action. Events are important to this game, you can’t keep allowing them to break like this and just accepting that as part of the process.

Also, many of the mobs seemed to have break bars, but the current UI does a hideous job of explaining what this means and what you’re meant to do about it. So here are some solutions:

1. If a mob has a break bar, this needs to be visible above his head at all times, even when he’s not targeted. The top-of-screen indicator is worthless for this, because targets are gained and lost constantly in combat.

2. There needs to be a clear UI indicator as to how to remove that break bar. It needs to say “Use Crowd Control abilities to break the bar” or something in the top-of-screen UI, whatever the rule for that mob is.

3. When you do reduce the bar, there needs to be a clear expression of that, like a “pop” or some special floating damage number to indicate that a stack of break bar was reduced. You should be able to easily tell how much (or little) you are contributing to the effort.

Basically, this time on the explosive phase I was down at the bottom with my Reaper, hitting enemies with my shouts and attacks, and hopefully helping to soften them up, but I really had no idea how much or little I was contributing, I basically would just be wailing away at enemies that were taking zero damage for a while, and then suddenly they would be taking a ton of damage and die within a couple seconds.