Guild Wars 2

Thank you invite stress test, I enjoyed 4 hours.
Glider was so fun XD Seems Revenant is a bit OP, but we saw only 3 line traits and 2 weapon sets.
I am looking for HoT launch (and more beta, if I can join).

Skullmarked.8705:

I did feel like there was a but of lag with the skills (the Jalis elite visual kicked in about 5-8 seconds after I activated it).

It took me a bit to realize it was a channeled skill. My guy raised his arm and glowed for a bit and I’m pretty sure there was a channeling bar — it blended into the background quite a bit, and I have problem seeing channels on things like the CoE bomb panel — so it wasn’t lag, it was cast time before getting the effect. Or so it seemed to me.

Maybe the animation or channel bar need to be more obvious. I’m pretty sure it’s channeled so in PvP situations it can be interrupted before everyone gets stoned, so to speak.

I LOVED IT! I had a blast. Thanks so much Anet it was really a lot of fun. I like the class revenant very much i felt a guard/necro vibe to it. I do like the F1 keys to chg who you channel. The spells themselves for each weapon was a lot of fun. Spell 3 for hammer did throw me off a bit leaping and returning kiting. i did find this to be something that works good in a more standstill situation not so much prolly for pvp (as a kiter).

Hangliding was great. I do see it being an issue at first not have many updrafts around to help you get higher up and regain so i hope they add some in the starter area especially since we are just learning it and i felt a lot of us fell Splat a lot.

I did crash quite a lot during Wyrven. I didnt during all other aspects. I’ve attached SS of what popup i received each time I crashed.

I also found during Wyrven only that several of us were cloaked in this white blanket armor. Did this happen for anyone else?

I want to thank Anet for being wonderful an giving me this opportunity to try it out xoxo

The stress test was fun, not much lag and the fps pretty steady thank you for letting me experience the new content 1st hand

Even though at 1st i thought the new weapons would be available for other classes, I created Engineer since I want to see it with my own eyes a hammer wielding engineer, was hoping it will be full melee, unlike some rumors that saying Engineer hammer will be like Ravenant ><;

But it wasn’t there… So once i wrapped the test I re-roll as Ravenant and join the Ravenant hordes hahaha

I’m very pleased

was having so much fun with the glide mastery too bad the muhsroom ones are bugged…

but hey, who can resist that glide mastery haha

Thanks for the invitation!

I participated in the second session on a ranger, and performance was mostly good. I noted a framerate crash to single digits around the 1:45 mark, but I had no trouble prior to that, even in the most populated wyvern fight I did. That was about 25 players, and from the numbers and the effects, I would have expected a huge FPS drop in a Pact Tyria fight of similar magnitude and effects level. Ping seemed stable around 120-125 each time I checked, which is about as good as I can expect here in Rural Broadbandania. Usually my ping approaches 250-300 when my framerate crashes that hard, but it seemed to hold steady even when my fps fell to 4-5.

System: Acer Aspire 7750, Windows 7 64 bit SP-1, Intel i3-2350M CPU @ 2.3 GHz, 6 Gb RAM, integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics. (Clearly not bought for its visual impact, but my gaming machine is in dire need of a complete overhaul. And a new monitor.)

I had a bit of a weird experience in the last few minutes with a “sticky” F to deploy glider button that popped up at the end of a long jump when I was not intending to glide. It stayed on the screen while I ran by the Tendril adventure area, and I clicked it to see what would happen. The button disappeared, but the light/particle effect of a glider launch blinked over my character briefly, like it started to launch and then realized I was on valid terrain and cancelled it.

I would like to apologize for sending the most embarrassing bug report of my life, in which I started to say that Heal as One was not working properly to heal my pet, realized that I had misremembered and that it was actually working as intended, and then instead of cancelling, I hit Submit on an incomplete and incorrect thought. Very facepalm. In my defense, I was also trying not to be cooked by a wyvern at the time.

I enjoyed the events available to us. I thought the Tendril adventure was a good introduction to the adventure concept, the Wyvern fight was a good introduction to somewhat more intelligent enemies and was forgiving enough to let players adjust to the break bar before encountering it “in the wild,” and that the Breacher event seemed well scaled and well paced whether there were five or fifteen players involved.

In particular, I was pleased that the actual gliding portion did not trigger my vertigo, though I confess that I had a little trouble making my character jump off the cliff to try it. Kudos to the artists for making it close enough to real even on my lower-end graphic capability. I found the deploy glider button showed up later than I would have wanted it. I found the timing of the actual deployment to be where I expected it once I stopped waiting for the button to appear, when considered against an expected mastery for a quicker launch.

Finally, I would like to say that I would love to see a Miniature Pocket Raptor Flock in the form of three extra-pocket pocket raptors, like the dust mites or karka hatchlings. I have never before squealed with so much delight at something that wanted to eat my face, and I would be happy to spend gems to have my own little flock of them.

Cheers!

Thank you so much for the invitation!
i loved the stresstest. gliding is awesome, had a lot of fun trying out the revenant. apart from a critical error at about 20 minutes into the stresstest (at the wyvern boss), everything went smoothly in my case.

Ty Anet & Nsoft, you are a great company and you have created a super awesome game. I love you for being curagious and trying new things and for pushing borders. Your connection with the community is great and the prosocial mechanics of the game are just genius.

Hyped! Keep it up <3

My experience was amazing, all ran so smoothly, no bugs, no lag. I like my character talk, and i look foreward to see how the story is going. Good job Anet.

Wyvern fight was aweful for me, state of the art pc, can usualy run anyhing in the game @ 60-100fps. But this fight was just horrible, almost all of the animations were broken for the entire of, but some basic attacks, The wyvern pretty much only “graphicly blinked from spot to spot” on the platform and we never really got it to see it, other then when it blinked from spot to spot and used some auto attacks .

Thank you for inviting me to participate in the stress test! It was fun and exciting
So here are some notes that I’ve made while playing:
1. The revenant.
+ Animation of the skills is awesome
+ I liked mace/axe combos more
- On jalis basically revenant has almost unlimited source of stability (not good in comparison with a guardian)
- Double heal while switching Jalis/Mallyx
-+ Activation time for some of revenant skills are a bit long
- Incomplete traits line (but I hope we will see it on other tests. So it’s early to judge)
- Skills descriptions are a bit confusing
2. Gliding
+ The idea is perfect but performance is very bad
- The activation is a bit confusing and slow
- Control system of a flight is horrible
3. Masteries
+ Love the idea
- But need to work out. I didnt like the idea of placing it in a corner of a screen. I’d like to have it in a Hero panel like Traits)
- Selecting system of masteries is a bit confusing
+- Descriptions on the mastery traits should have more info
- Mushrooms masteries seem bugged
4. Wyvern
-Wyvern fight was too easy for revenant, all you had to do was to equip hammer, range it and dodge
- Disappears too fast after been killed
5. Other
+ Great armor skin for heavy class (I’d like more unique armor skins for HoT. Armor and not only styles in GemShop)
+ New mushrooms (very curious about it) hope we will get 500 lvl for rest of crafting professions
+ Map and music are very very good
+ No crashes, no frame issues
- Some of the events have bugs and were confusing (like with rifle or flamethrower)
- Husks in the event with Larenthir didnt get any dmg.

Hello,

First thanks for giving me the opportunity to be part of the beta test. I want to give my feedback, the beta was amazing, the fight with the dragon is very well done and I’m happy with aNet for the great work. My only complain is that I feel the hammer skills a bit boring, I don’t know, is something that I don’t like about it, maybe is only me or maybe I need more time to spend with. For everything else it was a great experience and I’ll be one of the first players who will get a copy of HoT asap.
Thanks!

Just an info to everyone complaining that mushroom mastery is bugged. It is actually not but it is quite confusing for a reason. Masteries are not unlocked directly after you spend points in them.

To completely unlock a mastery, you need to:

1. spend the required amount of mastery points for the desired mastery and mastery level in the mastery panel
2. set this mastery as your active mastery (it will replace your mastery-xp bar)
3. fill the mastery-xp bar to 100%.

Then, and then only, will your mastery (or your mastery level if > 1) be available for you to use. You will notice in the mastery UI on every newly unlocked mastery level (by spending points) that there is a number telling you how much % you are through the 2nd unlocking step.

What got many players confused in this test is that, bug or not, the gliding mastery level 1 does not require you to go through this 2 steps process. The 2nd part is directly granted upon spending the mastery points. IMHO it is deliberate because gliding is very important.

As a consequence, most players did not realise there exists a 2 step mechanism for unlocking masteries because most, if not all, went directly for the gliding mastery level 1 and assumed others worked the same way (if you look at gliding level 2, it also requires you to go through the 2nd step mastery-xp bar filling process).

At first I also thought mushroom mastery was bugged, but I felt there was something fishy with the mastery UI spelling so I spent some time understanding it. What triggered my understanding was this “activate mastery” button which had no use with actually using a mastery since I could still glide while gliding was not my active mastery.

To be honest, there were 2-3 hints concerning masteries, but I did not read them and I don’t think anyone else actually took the time to. They may have explained the thing. If they did not, I think Anet should make the mastery unlocking system a bit more obvious.

I enjoyed a lot taking part to this stress test. Thanks for inviting me in. By tomorrow I will have finished writing down a news article in both english and french. It will be linked here, on reddit and on my community board.

As far as I went in the beta, I found the visuals are gorgeous and really impressive. Anet did not lie when they said they are taking verticality to a whole new level. As a former Aion player, among other MMORPGs, I instantly loved gliding in the air which reminded some fond memories and I was happy to discover that some strategies aimed at allowing gliding down huge distances worked here to. I had a blast gliding all over the “pint sized” raptor canyon.

The adventure was nice too and I am expecting some fun earning myself gold medals.

Masteries are quite an interesting way of expanding character development and, as Lore addict, I can’t wait to put my hands on these 3 people related masteries. As explained in the above post, I still think thought that the mastery unlocking mechanisms really lacks some explanation (as demonstrated by the shear number of reviewers stating in this thread that mushroom mastery was broken).

I hope next beta test will include the night cycle so that we can have a better insight at how it affects “bastion” (don’t remember the word) events.

I note that I did not see any broken event over the beta duration. And, as a ranger, I really hope that more pets will be tameable. Dinosaurs as pets would be great !

Some suggestions:

1. in my opinion, the events in the pale reaver area were happening too often. For example, you could board the helicopter to the wyvern, kill it, come back and almost immediatly board the next helicopter. Events should stop during the wyvern fight at least. I however suppose the rythm was increased on purpose since it was a STRESS test
2. it would be wonderful if the glider could also include forward and backward controls, not only left and right. Forward would increase horizontal and vertical descending speed, while backward would do the opposite. A late change in this field may however affect how various parts of the map can be reached through gliding if the map level design is already near completion.
3. being able to throw the first attack while gliding would also be wonderful (it should of course fold the glider right away) (yes I know, I am trying to bring back a full Aion experience, true flying left aside)
4. the radius of the flamethrower #2 skill in the adventure is a bit too tiny. I expect an AoE effect to be able to hit at least two ennemies and in many places, it failed to in many places while aiming right to the middle of the axis going through two close jungle vines. IMHO it should be around 15% wider
5. during the event when players need to blast the vine huge monster with ammunitions salvaged from choppers, the ammunition could last 5 more seconds before self-exploding. The timing is really short right now.

Some bugs:

1. ranger pets (at least melee pets, could not try a ranged one) can’t attack the wyvern (target not in range)
2. the flamethrower #2 skill in the adventure is a bit buggy when attacking vines standing on vertical walls. Sometimes you can hit right on them yet they do not die (may cause the feeling with #2 aoe radius)
3. not exactly a bug but a really annoying feature: while using a pale reaver snipping rifle, it is still possible to have loot drop from really remote ennemies (as far as the gun can hit, i.e. > 3000 units and across a chasm). You can see the glint and the special cursor, but of course you can’t go gather your loot (otherwise you become useless in the event). It would be great if players using these snipping rifles could have loot ported to them just like loot works in WvW.

Thankyou for allowing me to do your Stress test. I understand that it was mostly important in the sense of seeing how things performed with more users.

Here are my pro’s and cons

PRO’s

1. Background artwork and animations were beautiful. My first step into it was awe inspiring as you wanted. It definitely had a massive feel to it.
2. The events were fun that you had, I liked being able to run around in chaos.
3. I loved the bit of story we got and felt a bigger urgency then I have had in the past to complete it, to save people ect. I am a WvWer and PvPer mostly so it was nice to care about a storyline.
4. I loved the pocket raptors. They were awesome! (your other creatures were pretty cool to but not as cool as them but I am biased)
5. I enjoyed the daemon form of the Revenant most.

Con’s:
1. Hang gliding was less impactful then I hoped because I was constantly worried on the fall down about getting it to deploy. It took to long it would be better if there wasnt such a long time period for it to deploy. Also, I would have to change the key binding as it was very easy to accidently fall out of it so you may not want its default set up to be space bar.

2. The mastery system was a tad bit confusing I finally realized after killing the Wyvern that even though you had put points into it, you had not done an event to unlock it. Maybe you should not be able to put points in until you unlock it to avoid confusion. I leapt to my death thinking I had it all set up lol. (which was comical.)

3. The Revenant was fun, I loved the Daemon side, I seemed a bit to indestructible however. The amount of condi output and resistance to condi, combined with double heal abilities was really strong. I like the strength of the character but I can tell you as a devout necro lover, unless that greatsword is amazing this character will replace a lot of necros. I did not enjoy the Jalis side of the rev but I am byist so I am not a good judge of it.

Okay, i play on mac and, after the fps drop post-patch, I didn’t have so much hope to be able to join the stress test, but it worked even better than the main game itself and I was even able to fight with a lot of player the wyvern without suffering…
I wasn’t disappointed by the lack of contents, after all it was a first test and we get the chance to try the revenant.
I’m still a bit worried about the revenant abilities, I found this class really OP and I hope they will fix it before the launch, or my beloved PvP will be completely ruined
Can’t wait for new beta test ^^

I would also like to reiterate my thanks for being selected for the Beta. I enjoyed the overall environment. It was a lot of fun to be able to access so much of the map (from a vertical standpoint).

- The events were fun, but it took a while to get used to the Revenant’s skills with each weapon set, especially running right in to a fight (on the other hand it was exciting testing it out on the fly). I found I enjoyed the hammer more than mace/axe, but I still had fun with the latter.
- Switching Legendaries took a little getting used to (I liked using both, but found the Dwarf’s to be a bit easier to play). Like others here, I found healing to be very easy by healing in one aspect and immediately changing to the other and healing there. I think that is a very nice mechanic, but would think the CD between switching Legendaries should be a little longer.
- Applying Mastery points was very confusing without any direction. I agree that applying points should be straightforward, click on the skill you wish to learn and…voila!
- I truly enjoyed gliding, but had to fall a few times before I understood what was going on. I also felt it took too long for the “deploy” dialog box to appear. After I figured out that my gliding time would be extremely short at first, I made sure to aim for nearby landing zones to keep from falling to my death. After I was able to apply points in “updrafts,” I found gliding to be much more enjoyable.
- Overall game play was enjoyable. I really did not experience any lags and the only “glitch” I found is when I was attempting to jump onto a ledge. I would fail multiple times and then all of a sudden be “teleported” to the spot I was trying to jump to. Maybe that was a bit of lag. I’m not certain.
- I felt the Wyvern fight was quite doable with 8-10 people. However, I agree that the Revenant needs some sort of ranged weapon (unless I wasn’t playing it correctly) because it seemed you had to get close to do any damage.

Hello,
After Stress Test and getting to play Revenant a little me and many other players spotted that skill 1 on hammer is not replaced by Juggernaut’s model or any effect. After taking a while to test it out in current game’s version I found the cause of it.

Using a warrior with equipped Juggernaut and getting downed in pvp match by a friend who was ranged I started to basically throw stones at him, as opposed to Predator or legendary Greatswords, The Juggernaut does not change projectile effect at all, so there is the cause for missing effect for Revenant.

Warriors and Guardians up to this point didnt had any projectile skills on hammers so this was basically overlooked in design, I would like to point it out.

I’m sure it’s not too much of work to just add this effect to The Juggernaut and have it out of head before HoT kicks in.

Thanks in advance.

For those complaining it was hard to steer the glider, do you keyboard or mouse move? I’m a long time mouse mover and steering was a breeze. I went exactly where I wanted every time.

I did have some trouble judging altitude for the dismount. Somehow I was looking down enough at my character that I thought I was much higher over the wyvern platform than I was. I never fell very far when putting away the glider so as to land in a safe spot. That could get deceptive in spots where there really is a longer plunge.

Palador.2170:

The map is active, but overly so. There’s no place that feels like you can catch your breath or get your head together. This is actually a problem for me, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

We need the occasional safe point to reorient ourselves and catch our breath. If it’s all action all the time it soon becomes nothing but noise.

That’s what I was afraid of. Why does ANet make beautiful maps, then prevent us from enjoying them because we always need to be on our toes?

I’m starting to prefer beginner zones. At least those let players relax, go off the beaten path and enjoy the scenery.

For being a stress test, it went pretty well overall. Since it’s a beta, I’ll just touch on some things that didn’t feel right or were confusing.

Revenant Hammer
The weapon is geared toward being at ranged most of the time. So the #3 (camera moves forward, chills, and moves back) didn’t really fit. Seemed like a complete waste of time. The #1 felt inconsequential and I’d rather just use #2 all the time. Neither of the two available legends really synergized with hammer; both were melee to short range, whereas to use the power of hammer #2, I wanted to stay at max range.

Mallyx
I get the general feel of the legend: put condis on yourself so that when you use abilities, you get the bonus. However, the bonus is usually double or more stacks from the base. From a PvP background, this is looking overly powerful.

Mastery UI
Very confusing. It’s not clear that you need to gain experience to complete the mastery after unlocking it with mastery points. It also seems like a lot of wasted space spanning the entire screen. Making it a new UI window with an easy-access reassignment pop-up from the XP bar might work better.

Adventures
The idea seems good. I like the challenging of doing something really well which wasn’t easy. The vine burning one, however, felt un-polished. The flamethrower was hard to control and you couldn’t stop the #1 to use other abilities like the engineer flamethrower kit. Also, it wasn’t clear how the shells were going off my first few times through. It seemed like other players were walking by them and setting them off on me.

Wyvern
Mechanics seemed too trivial. Maybe it was just dumbed down for the demo? All the previews said it was an area control fight where beating the break bar was important. I just stood on top of it or next to it where there wasn’t fire and attacked it. With all the revenants using their road ability, and being on a guardian, it was hard to even notice the chain knockback.

Revenant Abilities and Traits
Some of them can be abused with cancel-cast (stow weapon or dodge during the cast), allowing the effect to be triggered constantly which wasn’t the intent. Rite of the Great Dwarf was the main one I saw that could be abused like this. From what I was told, you could use it to break stun then cancel it and you could immediately use it again to break another stun.

The stress test felt pretty smooth. Connection was stable (~160 ping from EU to Na servers) and FPS stayed around 60. The only exception was every time I got that cut scene of the vines popping out and spitting gunk. That kept being very choppy.

I noticed some texture errors at the area where we met up with with all the NPCs and we made out choice about trusting the Sylvari or not. There were some dust/dirt planes sticking up if you looked from certain angles.

About the Revenant hammer. While I like the weapon, I found the camera on skill 3 very annoying. I angle and use the camera a lot while in combat and the fact that it kept locking with that skill and turning was just annoying me.
Other than that I very much enjoyed the hammer.
The axe and mace were lovely, I like the combos with it and that teleport skill on nr4 was awesome.

The Wyvern fight I also enjoyed a lot. And while he’s easy enough to range he is also quite fun at close range.

The Mastery UI seems way too big. It just covers way too much of the screen and is not closable using escape. It seems like it may be nicer to make is smaller and also make is easier to see how many Masteries there are in a tab as I did not instantly notice that I could scroll down. This had me confused for a while. There should also be more explanation as to when and how to activate the masteries. It was not instantly clear how to select them after putting points in them and which one was active at that time.

As for how long it takes to unlock them, it seemed slow. But it is hard to judge at this point since we were limited to such a small area.

The Glider, while fun, seems to take pretty long before it can be used. I understand that further mastery would allow for this to be sped up but it just feel like at this moment it may take a bit too long. It just does not feel good.

That all said. The armour and weapons look great and I enjoyed the zone sofar. Can’t wait to see more of it!

Project Name: ArenaNet – Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns. Closed Beta Stress Test.

Test Platform Specification:-

CPU: Intel 8 Core i7 5960X

RAM: 16GB Quad Channel DDR4

Storage: 2x 512GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD’s (OS Installed here)
1x 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD (Game is installed here)
1x 4TB Western Digital Green Mass storage HDD

Video: 2x 6GB GeForce GTX Titan in SLI Configuration Driver version 348.52

Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster ZxR PCIe Driver Version 1.0.23

Motherboard: Asus Rampage V Extreme

Network: Wired Intel Ethernet I218-V Gbit Connection.

Router: Draytek 2830VN+ ADSL2 Router/Firewall Device

Input Devices: Logitech G710+ Keyboard, Thermaltake Level 10M Mouse

OS: * Windows 8.1 Pro x64

*Location: Perth, Western Australia

Game Configuration.

Resolution: 1920×1080
Enabled: Hi resolution character textures
Enabled: FXAA
Enabled: LoD
Enabled: Depth of Field

All other settings are set to High.

Overall Experience of Play

I’m impressed. The expansion looks beautiful and the expansion runs admirably on my computer. I enjoyed the increased level of voicework on the characters in the opening scene, it is very absorbing and helps with pulling the player into the world. I played with the Revenant (big surprise) which I found to have a diverse and interesting mix of skills. I have to say however that it seems engineered specifically to fight Mordremoth. The real test of balance will be when I decide to use my (lets say) Elementalist to battle the Wyvern. Would that character be effective without Forceful Engagement? It seems that balance may be a problem for the older character classes.

In addition to this the starting/initial areas of the demo had an open playfield that involved two distinct playstyles. Snipers in a high perch and a group of close combat fighters on the ground with players split between the two. This works right now, but I’d be concerned about the workability of this as the population dwindles. Let me give you an example, there are multiple areas dotted around the Jade Sea region of Guild Wars 1 that are essentially unreachable because they require player elements on both sides of an artificial divide in order for either side to progress. Such design has frustrated efforts for new GW2 players to go back and acquire HoM points in the Eye of the North. I’m concerned about issues like this going forward in GW2.

Issues experienced during play.

No specific technical issues other than expected lag. I played alongside a fellow guild member who experienced 48ms ping response while I experienced 480 ms. I live in Australia however and the server I use is European because my guild are located there.

Notable items.

Great environments and I particularly enjoyed the Revenant. The play was fun and The Wyvern though challenging was largely disarmed through Forceful Engagement, I wonder how a Warrior or Elementalist will achieve this.

Test Platform Specification:-

CPU: Intel Hex-Core i7 3930X @3.8Ghz

RAM: 32GB DDR3

Storage: 1x 256 GB OCZ Vertex kitten (OS Installed here,Game is installed here)
1x 256GB WD Velociraptor 10KRPM (Swaps/User)
2x 1 TB Western Digital Red storage HDD (The rest)

Video: 2x 3GB GeForce GTX 780 in SLI Configuration Driver version 347.88

Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme

Input Devices: Corsair K95, Sharkoon Drkonoid Black

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Game Configuration.

Resolution: 1920×1200
Enabled: Hi resolution character textures
Enabled: FXAA
Enabled: LoD
Enabled: Depth of Field

All other settings are set to High/Ultra.

I’d like to add (posted on the 3rd page first time I guess:

The LOCATION of the mastery bar is awkward. I would expect it to be coupled to the skills and traits menu., I understand it should be easiliy accessible, BUT make sure we can find it as well through this method as it is WAY more natural and logical in reflection to our present unlocks and builds..

SO either add a link to the mastery pane OR reduce the mastery box so we can only select where the experience goes and we can manage everything in the skills/traits and MASTERIES tab.

i felt revenant hammer skill was very clunky and stiff,,,,, the skill where u leap was erratic and i found it very hard tell if my auto attack is hitting at all…

also i noticed that a lot of place around magus fall have lvl 80 mark on it so i guess those map would be available when the expansion is released, that said i am curious if anet will delve more into another pale tree like the one where Malyck the harbinger came from??

there was a lot of fps drop and too much stuff going on specially the smoke and falling animation felt glitchy,,,,,,

First of all, thank you so much for including my in the beta stress test.
So in return, I’d like to some little feedback.

Overall, I have no performance issues when playing. The game was smooth and I really enjoyed the new instance/maps. The visual and sound effects are breathtaking.

As many might have said already in similar terms, I just had a few issues (in my opinion) during my gameplay that I’d like to see them improved once the expansion is released.

1. Revenant:
I spent most of my time going through this new class’s available skills and traits in this beta version.
Revenant skills are visually beautiful and showcasing new technologies and I’m very excited I’d love to see these technologies to be featured in vanilla classes as well (both base class as well as specialisation).
However, I have the impression that revenant skills and traits are very omnipotent functionally and can get easily overpowered, compared to vanilla classes’ current kitten nal in GW2.

2. Mastery UI:
The mastery UI looks a bit clunky and hard to figure out (this is clearly subjective opinion). It also takes up too much space and can’t be easily closed with Esc button.
A more streamlined and more intuitive version similar to WvW ability window would be a nice improvement.

3. Gliding:
Needless to say, gliding is really cool feature. But like many others already suggested, gliders are deployed too slow after falling but I hope this is intended and if I invest more points in this mastery I can deploy gliders faster or even better, deploy before running off cliffs. Also another minor issue I have is that the character screaming (as they do when they fall from great heights), this really breaks immersion.

Thats all I have for now.
Again, thanks for inviting me to the beta test and I hope my feedback is useful.

Let me start off by giving a BIG “Thank You” to ANet, for allowing me to participate in the Stress Beta. I’m not the greatest player, but I try!

All in all, I really enjoyed the Beta testing. Were there “bugs”? Of course, but that was to be expected. I don’t think focusing on the negatives is very productive though, considering there have already been more than a half dozen pages worth of posts, pointing out the obvious.

Although I wish there would have been more activities to do, I was impressed with the ones we were given. Considering my computer lags sometimes, I was really surprised with how smoothly the Beta ran. When I first fought the Wyvern, there were only 4 of us, and it took awhile. During the 2nd part of Beta testing, there were more people fighting/killing it, so it was easier to take him/her down.

I am really looking forward to gliding around and exploring! I also found that by just putting 1 point in to the Gliding Mastery, it made gliding to the Wyvern, much easier. Even though we got a mere taste of what is in store, with the expansion, I am pretty hyped for the release. Here’s to hoping I’ll get to Beta test again, someday! Thanks again, ANet!

Exedore.6320:

Revenant Hammer
The weapon is geared toward being at ranged most of the time. So the #3 (camera moves forward, chills, and moves back) didn’t really fit. Seemed like a complete waste of time. The #1 felt inconsequential and I’d rather just use #2 all the time. Neither of the two available legends really synergized with hammer; both were melee to short range, whereas to use the power of hammer #2, I wanted to stay at max range.

I’ve seen a number of posts talking about skill 3 affecting the camera (I weighed in on it before). This is the first I’ve seen where it leaps the camera forward then back to position. I did not experience that, my camera remained still and I saw a ghostly form arc to the mob then back to me.

So that may be a bug, or dependent on camera settings. I’m curious as to which camera behavior is intended.

I keep fairly zoomed out, camera centered over my head and raised up, wide FoV, use-character-height toggled on. How was your camera set?

Mostly everything I wanted to say I think got covered but here’s my input:

Note: Everything was on max settings (PC specs at the bottom)

Bouncing Mushrooms didn’t work, even after leveling the mastery

WvW panel was active (might want to disable that when you’ve disabled Guild and sPvP panels as well).

Revenant was pretty cool, wish I could have toyed around with the traits because I saw the potential for a decent torment build. I honestly preferred the hammer over mace/axe even though the latter provides more conditions. Probably because the hammer provides more AoE.

Wyvern fights were great. Decals really gave off the fire/lava effect and I didn’t lag at all. Best part is that you could melee if you positioned correctly.

For the Defiance bar, I honestly thought the metal bar would tick down to nothing and when it did, that’s when we apply the CC before the Wyvern started to fly off. Of course I figured out that when the bar disappeared completely and the teal bar appeared is when you apply CC as fast as possible.

For the Mastery System, the UI isn’t intuitive enough. I was really confused at first on how it worked. I think I read somewhere above that the WvW progression UI would be a good fit. I agree but maybe have a progression bar below each mastery line to know how far you’ve progressed into one of the options in the line; or maybe show it only for the selected mastery line. Also, if kept as is (popping up from XP bar), I’d prefer if it was slimmed down a bit horizontally; I felt my vision was obscured not being able to see on the bottom sides.

For more clarity of the mastery options in a line: You can dull out the options that aren’t unlocked, color in the options you have and color in but also border line (and maybe increase the icon size a bit) the option you’re working on.

Another thing that had me curious is the number of Mastery points needed to progress. For example, if I pour all my points into the glider and legendary lines but I need something in the 2nd part of the Mushroom line to continue the story, I hoping there’s enough ways to get the points needed. Not too worried about this but just something that popped into my head.

Other than that, I found this HoT build to be pretty solid tech-wise.

Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1
Processor: i7 4770k
Cooling: Corsair h100i
Graphics: Nvidia Geforce GTX 780
RAM: Corsair Vengence Pro 16 GB
PSU: Corsair Plat+ 760w (fully modular)
SSD: Adata 256 GB
HD: WD Caviar Blue 1TB

Everything ran smooth as far as I could tell on my end. Ran first test as Rev, second as Ele. That Rev is suffering horribly at the moment without the ability to put power into the build, second test my staff ele, dropping ice bows made the Wyvren fight take less time than the first one I did which had almost twice as many people, even though it was not the point of the test, my conclusion on the mobs and the Wyvren is that the current PvE power meta will hold rock steady into the mechanics as presented.

On other things, I don’t think there were enough vines in the adventure to even get gold unless it’s something that required grouping? And even then, the respawn on them was kinda low for 200 or so, I assume?

The mastery Orb near that adventure also seemed to have no way to get to it at the moment, or at least none available in the test because it looked like it might be possible if I had been able to get outside the testing area.

In the Wyvren fight zone, I would love to have been able to land on so many of those vines and shredded airship pieces, most didn’t have any collision at all.

Other things one could run across if gliding down below the testing area were many invisible walls. I think placing a vine growth to cover these would be more aesthetically pleasing to keep people from getting stuck in nooks of vines.

My frame rate seemed to hold steady enough, only may have had hiccups in all the places one usually finds them, like the middle of large explosions, large groups or some combination there of. But nothing earth shattering for me personally.

Donari.5237:

Exedore.6320:

Revenant Hammer
The weapon is geared toward being at ranged most of the time. So the #3 (camera moves forward, chills, and moves back) didn’t really fit. Seemed like a complete waste of time. The #1 felt inconsequential and I’d rather just use #2 all the time. Neither of the two available legends really synergized with hammer; both were melee to short range, whereas to use the power of hammer #2, I wanted to stay at max range.

I’ve seen a number of posts talking about skill 3 affecting the camera (I weighed in on it before). This is the first I’ve seen where it leaps the camera forward then back to position. I did not experience that, my camera remained still and I saw a ghostly form arc to the mob then back to me.

So that may be a bug, or dependent on camera settings. I’m curious as to which camera behavior is intended.

I keep fairly zoomed out, camera centered over my head and raised up, wide FoV, use-character-height toggled on. How was your camera set?

The camera is meant to stay in the spot where you cast the skill. Yet, in spite of this, your character actually does move to the targeted area (hence why casting it into the Wyvren fire caused you to ignite and take 1 tick of the damage). So you move, the camera is not supposed to. (And there were people talking of using this to get one of the mastery orbs)

I really enjoyed the beta stress test!

The only stress I noticed was my own. I wanted to do everything possible in the test which caused me some stress early on.

I did experience a disconnect but it was due to my ISP. It resets a few times a day which just happed to occur during the test.

Most of the items I wanted to give feedback on have been covered already.

I’m not sure if anyone mentioned the jump dialog that showed up as “Jump [F]” for the bouncing mushrooms. F is not my jump key and I seem to recall F not working where the jump key did. Minor detail but it may be the cause of some not being able to use the mushrooms even after getting experience into the mastery.

Along the same lines, the Plant Bomb dialog would stay up even after the ordinance would auto deploy. So, I found myself trying to deploy what was no longer in my hands.

Glider! I really enjoyed it. I ended up somewhere in the stratosphere at one point and I have no idea how I ended up that high above the map. Flying around with it was very intuitive and I had no issues controlling it.

Please let my revenant out of beta jail !!! I really want to use it in other maps right now

I’m not sure what some players were expecting from this stress test, but it sounds like it was a lot more than what they got.
I for one, however was pleased with the amount of game play we had. It was only a 2 hour stress test after all.
I found the PS engaging, although not overwhelming. I would have liked the option to choose a different path to play, but suspect that will come with future BETA tests.
The Malyx skills were great to use once you got on to drawing conditions to yourself and then trading them off to foes.
I particularly enjoyed the hunt for the Mastery Orbs and trying to get the ones that obviously need a (Link type) skill upgrade to reach at some later point in the game.
The Wyvern fight was a little disappointing as it seemed with a group of about 20 players Revenant and other class mix, we just ranged and brought him down with little effort and if you are placed at just the right spot (in front of edge barriers) during his wing gusts you cannot be forced over the edge.
The Glide skill needs a bit of tweaking at starting level for opening of the wings a little sooner. I realize that this will be an upgrade in the Mastery chain later on but still feel for starting, the lead time is too slow.
I did encounter problems with the jumping mushrooms and after putting the necessary Mastery points into the levels was NOT able to use them for some reason. Then as I was playing along in the second round of the BETA stress test for some reason a message popped up on the screen indicating that “Mushroom Jumping was now activated”. It was unclear if that was an intentional game inclusion or a bug in the system.
Having said all of the above, I was pleased with my experience and hope to get more invitations to future test sessions and am looking forward to release day.
Just remember a test is just that “a Test”, like when you were in school and you had a test it only covered part of what you learned not everything you learned the entire semester or year. Be patient.

Nozaton, you had to not only spend the point on mushrooms, you had to then click a box to make it your active Mastery line, and then you had to go get XP (via Wyvern fights mostly) to make the mushrooms usable. You likely got the notification when you got that level ding.

There’s been a lot of feedback on how unintuitive this is and how much work the UI needs; your post is the first I’ve heard that there’s a popup (I likely got one, but it didn’t sink into my consciousness since I was watching the xp bar and expecting it at that point).

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Beta user feedback

The Mastery Skills were fun once I found out how to use them. The hints may have been either too quick or ignored so I inquired to the players on its whereabouts, as I was receiving these Mastery Points with no idea how to redeem them. The Mastery icon in the bottom right was perhaps too small and innocuous for me to notice during gameplay. As a result, I had only time to experiment with Gliding in the second beta session.

The Revenant Profession was a delight to play, to the point where I forgot to try out the other professions for the Specialisations. After testing the various weapon skills in combination with utility skills, I soon favoured the Hammer instead of the Mace/Axe combo, as I found the former to deal more damage with ranged attacks of significant distance. At first I had considered the range of 1200 to make the Hammer overpowered, but it proved useful in the Wyvern Boss battle, making the fight rather easy to accomplish with enough numbers. I still may suggest bringing this down as a range coupled with the damage output still makes it rather overpowered. Legend switching to different skill-sets was interesting, but I did not have enough time to play around with them more. It certainly would have made immobilisation mitigation more enjoyable.

I wish I had a bit more time to play with the Specialisation, but from what I saw of the other players and their comments, it looked fun.

The new storyline path is intriguing, exploring deeper into Maguuma as well as revealing more about Mordremoth and his influence. Won’t say much more as I enjoy the Guild Wars storytelling enough to not warrant spoilers.

The two new areas are enjoyable, although in Verdant Brink after the fight with the Wyvern and you return back on that raised platform, due to camera placement resulting in an obscured character, I sidestepped and fell off into the abyss below. Despite the zone restriction, there was quite a bit of the map to explore and I really wanted to explore past the boundary. The events in VB were enjoyable, though did require more cooperation amongst players to complete. One thing that was refreshing to see was the NPC AI doing a much better job than usual in switching between fighting and event objectives. The same goes for the NPCs in the Wyvern Boss Fight that were also resurrecting downed players, showing non invincibility while being set on fire, thus adding to the risk normal players would endure under the same circumstances. The Adventures are nice little activity-like games and challenges which is a nice little break from the fighting.

The Legendary Wyvern Boss Fight is great fun, although for the most part, coupled with ranged attacks and stability and/or condition mitigation, it just takes a bit of time and patience to whittle the health down. I do get a sense of a non-repeating pattern in the attacks, which helps keep it dynamic and variable, while at the same time offer enough of an indication and time to prepare and interrupt the Boss attacks. The fact that you can fall off and be teleported back to the WP or even manage to glide yourself back onto the platform keeps the pace up, although at first I thought I ended up in another server with the same event running (due to the loading screen). Definitely felt
like a real dragon fight.

Notable reported oddities:
While facing off against numerous mobs in Verdant Brink for soloing experimentation during the Bomb collection event, I had died (usual AOE barrage + immobilisation). When waypointing back I had noticed that my shoulder armour had become damaged. Prior mob deaths never did this, and was confirmed by other players that it had never happened to them either. The lack of repair stations explained this beforehand, however the damaged armour did not have any noticeable effects on gameplay. This is probably more of a beta operational process issue than of the content itself.

The Mastery Orb at the top of the rock column was hard to get to due to its height above the players’ reach. Most kept spamming the Interact button as the player could not get close enough to it for longer than a second before sliding back down. I’m thinking that this was meant to be jumped up on in some manner, not using a glitch to obtain it.

Not everything in the chasm below has collision meshes. I should either be able to land on the big vines below, or they should not be there at all.

Bring on the next test . . .

Hello everyone!

Thank you very much for inviting me to the first closed stress test of HoT. I appreciated it a lot. Even though I have already seen other youtubers playing this part before, it was very fun to play it by myself.

First, I have to say that I enjoyed very much the visuals; they were simply splendid…! The map felt really immersive and the decors breath taking! Just wow – GW2, actually… I did not get any graphic bug, nor any clunky rock was found, but I did get a lower FPS at some points; even though it did not bother my machine, I guess it could bother lower configurations. But except from that, visuals: OMG. I cannot wait to play the new WvW borderlands map, which I recall also being desert-ish themed.

Another thing that I enjoyed very much is the organization ef the events.The chain was quite flawless and did not felt like slowing down or dropping the rythm of the game – like an akward pause between two related events or on the contrary, an overwhelming non sense that no one could follow. I found it almost flawless. As immersive as the map around, it was a bless. I wish you could somehow impliment this kind of immersive chain events and this kind of living world to Arah territories… but hey, this is another conversation…!

To continue on a good vibe, I ahave to say that the Revenant feels right. It just clicks. This class was the class we were waiting for, and even though we only took a short look at only a part of it, it already felt really good. It still needs some balancing though, because it felt really overpowered, in my opinion – especially the amount of stability we could get as a stone hammered dwarf… I think that if it stays like it is now, WvW would suffer a lot from that too large amount. But except from that, I did not see any major issues with it – and playing Mallyx with the very very cool idea of the more alterations I have, the more you will suffer, it is a delight..! I enjoyed a little less the Jallis mode, I have to say, but not because of the gameplay or skills, not at all; but because of the hammer. Yes, as much as I love the Revenant and it’s weapons, I find very annoying the fact that the auto attack on the hammer is just a spin above the head. I mean, even though it is only a ranged weapon, I still think we may get more of it – like three different animations, in order to have some variety (like in DCUO, they implimented different animations even for weapons like shuriken, where the character had 3 animated shuriken throwing stances, not just one. Moreover, the way the hammer is spinned doesn’t convince me a lot. It is a shame, because it is a great weapon. But except from that, everything seemed and felt right with this newborn class. I cannot wait to see the other legends and weapons…!

Concerning the big boss fight, I have to say that I was very surprised, and in a good sense. It was fun, the difficulty was correct and the fire animation just awsome! Nothing to say, except that the ranged people seemed a little more advantaged thet the close ranged ones – but this may just be a result from the fact that everyone was a revenant. Moreover, the gliding was so enjoyable that I sometimes spent more time flying that helping my comrades… I wish we could personalize the wings (for example, with the wings we bought at the gem store recently; that would be great).

Next is the mastery system; I looked into it and I cannot wait to get’em all! It is such an inovating way to interess people in the end game – and to tell them there is no end game! This is another thing I love about GW2; it does not feel like after level 80, there is nothing to do but one map farm and maybe 2 dungeons and 2 raids, like in other classic MMOs. And I am sure the mastery system will give us even more the impression of a never ending game…!

Last but not least, the burning of tentacles activity: very fun and a lil troll-ish, just the right amount (like, I already see people exploding the bombs to throw out their friends when they reach 47/50). Even though it was short, it was interesting. I hope there will be a lot of them.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the test, which raised the hype a lot for me, and I cannot wait to play the expansion!

PS: silly request, but not so silly: I really wish we could change the colour of our back pieces in the game; do you think you could imliment this with HoT? I mean, I really like being able to spend dozens of hours to get my super Maudrey or my Dwayna back piece (farming, crafting…), but then they only go with an armor wich is colored the same as the back piece, so I am kind of stuck with only a very few options for the character that proudly wears that back piece…

PPS: I also wonder if you will impliment some method in order to save builds and gear… could it be possible that you finally impliment an option to save builds with this expansion, like you did for GW1…? That would help a lot, for both PvE and PvP players, and honestly, that is the second feature I was the most looking for since the beginning of this game – the first being a better camera and the first person possibility. I am also thinking you could develop something to save a set of armor (kind of like in DCUO, but without needing the armory – just by including an option in the inventory), so that changing the build AND the armor could become very easy and very intuitive, without always having to spend priceless time in the inventory – and sometimes forget to change something or changing it to the wrong stuff… because when I have to deal with four different builds/armor for one character and switch from one to another constantly, depending on how I have to play, it can become very confusing and annoying – also giving the fact that I have about 10 level 80 characters, all different classes and all having at least 2-3 builds/armor combinations, and knowing that I am far from being the only one in that position. That would ease things a lot…!

PPPS: Heroes. Player characters as heroes, like in GW1. You could impliment them into zones that demand other players to play through, so that lone wolfs like me – and noobs – could also play without being shouted at or excluded from the group because he/she does not know the instance or the specific tactic (so a very good thing for training) – like dungeons and fractals. I mean, in SWTOR, it was almost compulsory to get a companion with you everywhere, but if you put them only in instances that need other players, that would be fine. Just a lil idea I had some time ago…

PPPPS: A question not so related to HoT: what do you think about the fact that lately, the devs not only avoid commenting on Cantha, but also dodge the subject completly when someone tries to amorce it? I watched some videos from youtubers that interviewed Colin at PAXS (like MattVisual and AuroraPeachy), and every time they mention the word “Cantha”, Colin gets on the akward mute mode… I know it is unlikely we get Cantha anytime soon in GW2, but still, that would be nice to have some feedback from you – like what role will the canthan Xunlai agents play in LA during its reconstruction and will they take advantage of it (someone bothered including them in LA’s story, after all), how will canthan refugees deal with Zaitan’s death (will they try to get in touch with their patry?), etc. Cantha is a massive part of the original lore; you wouldn’t simply wipe it out, would you…?

first and foremost, Thanks for the chance to try the stress testing portion of the beta! Now for my opinions of the testing…

This was a whirlwind experience! there was a small learning curve at first to figure out what weapons did what and what was effective against what. No problems there except I found that some of the skills were clunky to activate, and I found that even though I had enough power, it would take 2-3 key presses of the same skill to get it to activate. Lag wise, I didnt experience much and typically the times I did was just before all the events popped, or the Wyrven landing on the platform. I have a fairly decent rig, consisting of 16 gig ram and geforce 650 gtx’s and a 3.0 gig processor. I played it as well on a slower rig that I have,noticed quite a bit more lag. maybe due to bloom and particle effects? anywho, it seemed vid card dependant.

Mechanics of the game, gliding was weird possibly due to the new camera angles and all, but seemed it would pop open and instantly i was spawned about 3-5 meters above where i popped the glider. I would recomend a less amount of time to have the glider open, say after 2m fall? maybe that will lessen the lag in the opening of the glider to spawn about where you pressed the key from. Jumping seemed fine, I didnt have any issues with that. That was about all i had time to play with on that stress, but overall, playability seemed ok, not alot of internet lag, i think most is in the clients end. I look forward to actually playing in the beta portion now!

Forgot to mention something from my post ages back.

PLEASE change the masteries interface at the bottom. It literally covered my whole screen (not good when being attacked) and I found it really confusing. I didn’t know how many points I had actually spent on gliding, and whether or not the next level of gliding mastery required 2 more points or whether it just meant I had spent 2 points (in total) on it.

I would much rather prefer an interface like the World Ability Points interface for WvW. I find that one a whole lot cleaner and easier to read in general.