Guild Wars 2

After playing the beta over the weekend here are my thoughts:

I thought the experience was really good and I cannot wait for the expansion to go live. I played as the elemental and was able to complete all the events. I enjoy the different style of game style. It keeps things exciting and makes users adapt after playing the game for long periods of time, keeping it interesting. The story line and event type are good, the new enemies are interesting. The elite specializations make the characters a lot more versatile and fun to play. Overall I was really impressed with the new features and enjoy the mastery system, I believe that will add a lot of value and give players a goal to achieve for a while to come.

My recommendations:

1) My biggest concern is that I find the map to have a large learning curve and can be very frustrating at the beginning. It would be nice to have some type of direction system. Perhaps an NPC you can talk to that would direct you to the active events or something of that sort. More introduction in-game on how the new map works would be excellent instead of trial and error.

2) Moving around the map I find gets frustrating when you do not know the map, trying to get to a particular part of the map can take awhile. I would like to see an additional waypoint added to the top left of the map where the event chain begins. (sorry I am not in game and did not write down the location)

3) The event “Salvage damaged armaments to build bomb” I find the veterans at the top to be too powerful. As an elemental I was only able to survive 2 hits before dying. Since there all range attacks it is not difficult to get 2 hits on me either…

4) On the same event, “Salvage damaged armaments to build bomb” the aircraft salvage parts are not very noticeable. It would be nice to have a longer range with the control button on this event to be able to locate the aircraft parts.

5) I have noticed a bug with the animation of some characters at some points, instead of walking they slide for a few seconds before resuming there walking animation. I apologize, I forgot to write down which enemies or locations.

6) Elemental specific: When downed and using 4 to revive, as soon as you come to life if you mistakenly hit 4 again (while in fire mode with staff) you do a roll backwards. Given that the new map has a lot of cliffs, it is easy to get revived and then fall off a cliff. I would recommend shortening the distance of the roll so that you do not fall off or adding a short delay so that it does not trigger the skill immediately (although also cause problems on its own if you cannot do any moves after reviving).

Enemy’s that are too powerful:

I enjoy the fact that the new area is a challenge and the guys are tougher. With that being said I believe there are two specifically that could use a nurf.

1) Hammer Hylek by Mellaggan’s Valor WP is so strong. Given the power and range of his hammer attack he is able to wipe out an entire group in 1 hit. I would like to see this lowered a bit so that it can ruin a group but that you can still recover.

2) Champion Mordrem Guard Cavalier in Creakins Caverns area has a charge attack that can 1-hit. Given the small proximity of the area, this can be devastating to a group trying to take him out. I would like to see the damage a little less so that it has the ability to ruin a group, but if your hit once you can still recover.

Thanks for a great addition to the game, I’m really excited about it going live in October.

Me personally I like the new enemies. Sure it took me a bit of getting used to, but when I finally learned how to counter them, it was fun to fight. There might be a need to tweak their stats a little bit (take their HP down or up slightly), but IMHO no substantial changes are needed.
Woodenpotatoes described the hammer hylek in one of his videos pretty accurately. He isn’t that difficult or necessarily tanky, it’s just people fail to avoid his hits, which prolongs the fight a lot. Most of his attacks can be easily avoided by just walking out of his attack area, rest can be dodged as the attacks are clearly telegraphed long time before they hit. If players do this properly, the fight actually becomes pretty easy.

That being said, reason why I could keep up with the enemies was perhaps me playing a tanky profession (reaper necromancer). Even though I was full zerker, I had defensive utilities (a well that blinds) and an extra HP pool (DS). If you had trouble as an ele (which I can understand), you may consider changing one or two pieces of your armor for soldier’s/celestial or dropping an offensive utility skill for arcane shield. That should make you tanky enough to deal with the enemies. And I’m sure once you get enought experience, you’ll be able to switch back to full zerker and survive with no problem.

The deal with the new enemies is you cannot just spam your skills mindlessly, you actually have to adapt according to the exact type of the foe you’re fighting. Sometimes it’s DPS race, sometimes it’s CC spam, sometimes it’s battle of conditions. You also have to pay attention to positioning. Keep in mind that what now may seem hard, will become trivial over months. Because of that, I’m happy with the difficulty as of now (actually I would love to see harder fights and hope raids will deliver that) and I’d hate to see it become trivialized.

Since I haven’t played much, due to time constraints, I only have some simple feedback to offer. I took a look at the elite specs.These are more of quality of life things and cosmetic than anything else, and only my opinions:

Berserker:
I was stated that we can use the primal burst skills 3 times before berserk expires. From what I saw this is only true if you trait out burst cd reduction. I takes almost a seconds for you to enter berserk mode and get the switched adrenaline bar and burst skill.
Blood Reckoning: this skill should give stability or just immune to fear because it’s really frustrating when you activate it and sit in fear for half of it’s duration. (you are a berserker, an unstoppable murder machine, you are not supposed to have the emotion of fear)

Daredevil:
Staff auto attack chain – 3rd move, Punishing strikes, if we are all about evading, give it evade like ranger GS 3rd strike.
Dodges – dash could be a bit faster, stomp stops you in your tracks.
Debilitating Arc: the option to jumped back in the fray (like ranger) would be great.(sure, there is Vault, but you could use that to jump to another possible target or to dodge attacks)
/I don’t want thieves to be stronger than they already are, but these would just feel right/

Herald:
Facets – when active, they keep draining your energy even when you are not actually in combat, effectively keeping you in the state of combat. They should either apply their effects only in combat, or they should deactivate by themselves with a lower cd when leaving combat.
Ventari’s Tablet – if it would follow us we wouldn’t have to always pay attention to where in the blazes we left the kitten thing. Or it could teleport to us when we go too far like pets and minis do. It could also deactivate at the end of combat or follow us around and enter/exit combat with us.

Tempest:
Water overload still looks ridiculous. The action of the underwater skills where you ball up and then trow your arms and legs out would suit it much better. (with the bubble growing in the process)
Fire overload spinning could start out slower and end fast.
Water Globe would look better if it bounced off the ground as it travels.
Dust Storm – this skill could center on us and expand out instead of traveling. (most of the times I couldn’t even see where it was)
Shock and Aftershock – I know it’s been changed to only Aftershock, but if you want to keep it as a “2 stage” shout, it could be “Shock-after-shock” or something.
Flash-Freeze – Feels to long a name for what it does, could be simply Freeze!.
Rebound – Didn’t even bother using it after some time. The cd reduction would be great on elites that have long cds, but on simple skills it doesn’t do much. If you could use it more frequently it might be more useful, but like this, it’s not really worth the effort. Maybe give us a devastating storm centered on us or something. (we are tempest, caller of the storms)

Dragonhunter:
Puncture shot – the arrow could look better, more like something made out of concentrated light. (looks more like a bolt/really thick/ than an arrow right now)
True Shot – since we are already charging the attack (and rooted in place while we do so), maybe give it an actual charge bar, the longer it’s charged, the more powerful it becomes.
Symbol of Energy – the symbol could stay a bit longer, like the other ones do, and you could make it stand out more. (didn’t even notice it left a symbol for a while)
Hunter’s Ward – the cage still comes pretty late (at least the animation does), it should starts as soon as the arrows start raining in, effectively making the cage.
Wings of Resolve – I personally never noticed it has 600 range when using the jump, always seemed much shorter.
Traps – since they are called forth from light, maybe give them range placement to more easily place them where we need them. ( like this we need to eun up all the time to place them and fall back after)

Reaper:
You are all weaklings! – feels too long, it activates long before you finish shouting (Weaklings! would be enough imho)
Chilled to the Bone! – emphasize “chilled” a bit more, make it stand out as the core of the shout.
Shouts in general – they could feel more sinister (some are king of cute as they are now), maybe give them a frightening echo, like the god of death is looking over your shoulder and eyeing it’s prey.
Reaper’s Shroud – if it gave us a cloak and a hood with a skull mask, it would really improve our image as reapers.

Chronomancer:
Felt alright for the most part. Very solid.

Warhorn in general – the new sounds on warhorn skills are ridiculous if you ask me. (almost all of them)

Now, like I said at the beginning, these are only my opinions, no need to bash me for anything you might not agree with. It simply seems (to me at least) like they would make them more fun and consistent, and maybe even true to their names.