Guild Wars 2

SlyDevil.3952:

So the question is, “How much dps does Byron do on necro?”.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/hudl-internal-assets/alot/ALOT.png

PetboyJoshua.3108:

BobbyStein.2315:

Some notes regarding story presentation in raids:

• As stated in the Twitchcon interview, the first raid wing takes place shortly after the conclusion of the HoT story in the timeline.

But… wait, does this mean that if I try to do the first wing during the last Beta Weekend, I’ll be spoiled about HoT’s conclusion ?

No. Any items that directly reference the HoT ending aren’t in the raid beta.

Paul Ella.2037:

We are already here

Who let Paul in here?

Some notes regarding story presentation in raids:

• As stated in the Twitchcon interview, the first raid wing takes place shortly after the conclusion of the HoT story in the timeline.
• All three wings are connected via theme and plot. Ideally, players will experience them in linear order for the best possible experience but, like Living World releases or dungeons you can play them in whatever order you choose, as many times as you like.
• You can play the first area of the first raid wing in this weekend’s beta. I encourage folks to form a raid team and check it out. If you have thoughts or opinions on how we’re presenting the story stuff we’d like to hear them. Just bear in mind that some things in this area were intentionally turned off for the beta to avoid spoilers. The final version will have some extra stuff. Not going to be any more specific than that.
• We’ve added Raids to the Dungeons and Fractals forum. Please consider adding your thoughts, ideas, and feedback there to keep things organized.
• I can’t talk about the “huge awesome mega reveals” other than to say that since the wings are essentially a multi-part story you will learn things along the way. Anything vital to the raid story will happen naturally and unobtrusively, but we’ll also have some optional stuff scattered around to discover. You’ll see elements of this in the beta that are carried through the entire first wing.
• Lots more I’d like to talk about but now’s not the time. My advice: log in and check it out for yourself this weekend!

ProphecyWillow.5426:

Question. We have been told several times now that many of the raid fights require gliding, boss fights in particular. With all our previous beta characters removed, does that mean that all our mastery progression from previous beta weekends has also been lost?

That is correct, all beta progress has been reset for BWE3.

And this is a fantastic thread. Constructive, detailed, thoughtful, well expressed.

Thank you all.

panda the chop chop.4712:

Alright well let’s discuss, a full explanation in complete detail in why these changes were made, why was ranger boons were discussed on Twitter rather than the ranger community to begin with, why was the inherent issues of “boon duration” discussed via Twitter only to have two side changes made on top of those durations made without announcement ANYWHERE?
I hope you understand how disrespected and shocked many of of us are, hundreds? Thousands of us. I hope you realize that some of them don’t want to stand up but that’s why those of us who will fight for those who can’t are right here to stand up against this unjust treatment. We diserve better than a Twitter feed.
IGN: Itspanda

All this has already been asked and answered. Closed. NOT because we’re trying to stop discussion, but because we’re trying to make the most of everyone’s time and efforts in sharing their thoughts.

dlonie.6547:

Cameron Rich.3905:

We’ve spent a lot of time and poured a lot of love into this content, and simply cannot wait for players to get their hands on it.

I believe this, and that’s why I’m giving HoT a shot. As others have mentioned, though, it’s hard to have faith that the content won’t be left to rot shortly after release. All the developer passion in the world won’t matter if the higher-ups decide to axe the content.

Please tell your bosses to take instanced PvE seriously this time around. I’d like to be able to tell friends that this game is worth getting invested in again.

Thanks for stopping by, Cameron, hopefully you’ll stick around a bit. It’d be great if a redpost here wasn’t such a rare occasion.

We’re definitely serious about raids. It’s something that players have wanted (including myself) for a long time, and we’re hoping to deliver a truly special experience.

I’m here to stay. Not leaving anytime… soon™.

kevvy.5081:

Mcrocha.3891:

Look at all the red posts. Let this night go down in history as The Ranger Riots of 1328 AE.

And rightly so.

Nothing will turn eyes away faster than a riot. Don’t even go there! (Even if you were kidding, which I hope you were. )

Let’s provide actual, gameplay-based feedback and look for changes in the future. But let’s not post to be rude, comment to add nothing, or repeat endlessly the same reactions. Give details, give solid input, that’s what we should do. And yes, “we” includes… me!

Curious: I’m still at work. Have you guys played with WHaO yet since the change? I’ll be trotting out my Ranger tonight, but I wondered if you’re basing your thoughts on statistics — which I can respect — or on playtime — which also is valuable.

We have forums for a reason. While Twitter is great for a lot of things, for something of this depth, you can’t have a meaningful discussion at 140 characters.

If you have feedback, place it here. Don’t ping devs on Twitter or other places — just share your thoughts here!

Just verifying that this thread is being read by the developers. I know it’s long, and there’s a lot of detail here, but thank you for participating!

Proto — if you’re in the other thread, would you mind if I close this one, to focus the conversation?

Yay — the thread is revived! Thanks for understanding, everyone!

Kitty.1502:

Gail why do the devs dislike ranger? Is there a way we can get a dev to have more interaction with the community so that we can get this class fixed?

Kitty — you can’t believe that! If there’s a dev who provably “hates” Rangers, I’ll hunt him down and TP his desk! I’ll put Honey Nut Cheerios in his burrito! I’ll wreak havoc every way from Sunday!

I have talked to Irenio a lot, and I’ll continue to talk to him. And I’ll talk to, wave my hands in the air, and natter with any other dev who wants to get the feedback of a not-very-good-but-absolutely-passionate Ranger.

Thank you for remaking, Shadelang. (And again, I’m sorry for the mis-merging!)

xarallei.4279:

I really wish they’d talk to us. On here and not on twitter. Communication is something desperately needed.

Yes, talking here is much more valuable, and I believe this is where the meaningful discussion will take place.

oshilator.4681:

What guarantee do we have that they’ll read any of this?

Because one of the key designers stood at my desk 20 minutes ago and told me. I trust him. I hope you trust me enough to know I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true: This thread will be read.

But again, constructive is the key, and I’m hoping that people won’t continue to flare, but will give good, substantive feedback.

Edit to add: Many of the comments are constructive and valuable. Didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.

Shadelang.3012:

…Id like to dispute my thread being merged into this one. As it was on the subject of the other shout utilities and NOT on heal as one. Is there a way for me to request that it be re-seperated?

Yes! I apologize — I didn’t realize that. Could you please point out your initial post? Or could you simply post a new thread with a title such as “Shout Utility Discussion” so that I don’t make that mistake again.

I’m very sorry for my error.

And yes, thanks to the lovely time-stamp merging, we know that some conversations can get a little odd. That’s not a big deal. Forum members can sort it out as they read and post. More importantly, perhaps, devs can see the preponderant ideas and make decisions about them.

Hey,

This thread was merged at the request of the designers. Having one thread, instead of a dozen, makes reviewing easier and makes your feedback more meaningful. For one thing, having a merged thread hopefully persuades people to not post a dozen times with the same comment, and it encourage people to read the thread and see “That’s what I feel” so they can quote and add, instead of being redundant.

The objective absolutely is not to silence you, or brush the subject under the rug. The objective is to facilitate your feedback getting to the devs, and helping them review, appraise, and decide on any potential changes.

I am sorry. The forums are tricky, and merging can sometimes be a mess. I’m so sorry if I made an error on that.

We need to restart that thread. Would you be able to find the first post? Maybe copy it over? Or flag it for me via PM? I can’t pull out all the posts in a thread — they get sorted into the merged thread by timestamp — but we could restart the thread if it’s not about the topic of WHaO — which really needs to be merged to let the designers see all the feedback.

We are already here

Kitty.1502:

ArenaNet stopped supporting Dungeons with new content 3 years ago.
ArenaNet stopped supporting Fractals with new content 2 years ago.
ArenaNet stopped supporting Guild Missions with new content 2 years ago.
ArenaNet stopped supporting Raids with new content.. starting Oct?

Ultimately I only bring this up because ArenaNet has a strong history of not supporting us with new content. I just wonder when this will happen for raids too, another aspect some of us will grow to love and it will then lose support. With that said, they are adding supposedly new world bosses that are challenging, so we got that going for us?

Fractals is getting a revamp and additional rewards (like the new weapon skins we announced) with the expansion. You can read more about this here:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-brand-new-fractals-of-the-mists-legendary-backpacks-ascended-salvaging-and-more/

Guild Missions, as we have announced this week, will be getting a lot of love so to align with the new guilds structure coming with Heart of Thorns. I’m personally very excited for this! There’s a blog post here with much more info:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-mission-changes-and-improvements/

We’re serious about delivering quality, challenging encounters with our raid content, and as Steven said in our announcement of Raids, we have 3 raid wings being developed, the first of which will become available shortly after HoT launch. These raids are going to be intense, and ask of players not just their time, but their skill.

Don’t just take my word for it, this weekend we’re allowing you to play our content as part of the Beta Weekend Event. We’ve spent a lot of time and poured a lot of love into this content, and simply cannot wait for players to get their hands on it.

Bug Fixes:
General

• Fixed a client crash.
• Fixed a server crash.
• Fixed a bug that caused some rune effects that are triggered by heal skills to not function properly.

Engineer

• Fixed a bug that caused Med Blaster to grant excessive healing.

Ranger

• Fixed an issue in which the trait Beastly Warden interrupted pet-activated skills.
• We Heal As One: Tuned the copied boons to use flat duration values per boon and apply boons to the ranger pet before copying boons back to the player. This skill will now only grant three stacks of might if that boon is copied.

Amante.8109:

Thank you for the heads up!

Out of curiosity, what is the rationale behind the exclusion of Sinister as an premade Ascended choice? Sinister is most people’s stat package of choice for Condition builds, and it would be helpful to test builds designed around it on the first raid encounter.

I agree, that is the main reason why I’m giving a heads up. The issue here wasn’t that we didn’t want them in, it’s just that by the time this was built it was too late to go back and add sets to it.

Since this topic has come up multiple times, and there are some stat/consumable sets that are not going to be provided (sorry), I have put together a list of what will be available with BWE3 inside the raid.

Since we have wiped Beta Characters, we will again be importing your storage to beta. If you intend on needing stat/consumable sets that are not provided, and want them for BWE3, I suggest banking them BEFORE creating your first Beta Character.

This will be available inside the raid instance from a vendor. You will need to convert your squad to Raid before being able to enter.

Ascended Stat Selection
Apothecary’s
Assassin’s
Berserker’s
Carrion
Cavalier’s
Celestial
Cleric’s
Dire
Knight’s
Magi’s
Rabid
Rampager’s
Sentinel’s
Settler’s
Shaman’s
Soldier’s
Valkyrie
Berserker’s & Valkrie (Back/Jewelry Only)
Rabid and Apothecary’s (Back/Jewelry Only)

Armor Runes
Strength
Undead
Vampirism
Lyssa
Krait
Trooper
Monk
Ogre
Scavenging
Hoelbrak
Traveler
Scholar

Weapon Sigils
Fire
Force
Air
Bloodlust
Corruption
Perception
Geomancy
Energy
Bursting
Hydromancy
Night (Day/Night Sigils do not work inside the raid)
Torment
Earth
Leeching

Consumables
Master Tuning Crystal
Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
Lemongrass Poultry Soup
Rare Veggie Pizzas
Fried Golden Dumpling
Omnomberry Ghost
Superior Sharpening Stones
Dragon Revelry Starcakes

Edit: Strength not Strenght

Seems reasonable; I’ll toss it onto the backlog.

Yeah, removed those from the list since they were just returning ErrBadParam. See this github issue.

Update: The issue is fixed in our development environment and should go live when HoT launches, if all goes according to schedule. No one should have lost any story progress—the bug was with how we were displaying the Story Journal information, not with the progress information itself.

Thanks for your patience.

Working through some minor issues on the skins API — have a fix for this that will go out the next time we deploy the API code. Sorry about that!

Forgot I was repping my bank guild.

<3

Please use this thread to provide your constructive feedback on the changes to We Heal as One. I know the developers are looking at your comments and concerns, so this merged thread will help them get the bulk of what you have to say.

Please note: If you’re rude, aggressive, or non-constructive, your posts will be removed. It’s that simple: Have a dialogue, a discussion, but please keep it valuable.

Thanks.

Animation update: All dodge animations are in the process of being iterated on. With that being said, in the next Beta weekend each custom dodge ability has had its animation replaced with what is called a ‘stub’, or a placeholder.
These stubs aren’t necessarily what the final animation will look like and may not even resemble the final product remotely (Huge disclaimer: Everything’s subject to change). However, we needed to replace the previously existing animations due to issues that couldn’t be resolved otherwise (i.e. Lag).

We are looking forward to the new functionality, but there’s a few pains that we’re getting through. During the next beta weekend, you’ll find that the Leap combo finisher for Bounding Dodger only works if you land inside a field. This is not intended and we’re already working on the fix for it (it’s in testing now). For now, it’s going to be trickier to get your leap finisher from Black Powder. There’s also a bug in the skill facts that indicate that it delivers a blast finisher, but it in fact a leap and will remain as such.

Other stuff:
As I talked about last update, Channeled Vigor’s now being tested as a 0.75 second cast (down from 2.25 seconds). We’re also toying with the endurance/healing values. The role of this heal is shaping more toward being high spike healing for the thief.

-Karl

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Revenants will start at level 1 like any other character.

Out of curiosity, we know their starting legend will be Jalis, but what about the weapon? Will it be sword or something else? New characters usually start with the most simple/straightforward kind of weapon which in this case I think it’s sword for revenant.

Currently it’s set to mace. It could go either way between sword and mace though.

blokejoe.6590:

Roy,
hows the Retribution Grand master trait coming.

It’s done internally.

FYI the damage increases weren’t part of a re-work of pistols or anything (something I’ve discussed in the past). We realize it still needs some work to get it to where we want, but we wanted to get it closer to being to that point with these changes. We’ll be looking at pistols more in-depth in the future.

-Karl

Revenants will start at level 1 like any other character.

I totally failed on properly discussing the MoTD today. So I have some information I think you’ll enjoy (or hope you and others enjoy) concerning it.

1. Whenever you log into game you will see the MotD broadcast to your chat for that guild you are representing at the time of log in.
2. Whenever you represent a guild you will see that guild’s MotD broadcast into your chat.
3. Whenever someone in your guild edits the MotD (they will need guild permissions to do this), you will see your guild’s MotD broadcast to the chat.

Also, to touch on the concerns about the size of the field for the MotD: The “Attributes” section I spoke of at end of stream will only be as wide as the roster tab. We will still have a fairly large field to work with for the message of the day. But should the player(s) miss the MotD, they will have that message broadcast to their chat each time they log in and represent, and when someone edits it.

I hope this is an encouragement and thank you for bringing the subject up. And thank you all for your feedback for the Guild Halls content and for joining us on the stream today!

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug in which achievements unintentionally displayed in the Hero panel.
• Fixed an issue in which the Ranger trait Go for the Eyes interrupted pet-activated skills.

The new pets do not require that you have the druid elite specialization.
They will require that you find and tame them (outside of PvP).

The pets can be found on new jungle maps, so you’ll need to have Heart of Thorns to gain access to those new companions.

I hope that clarifies some of the confusion!

Boon stacking and condition removal prioritizes your subgroup first.

StinVec.3621:

It was mentioned in the twitch stream that the new pets are not only for the Druid elite spec, but “for all rangers” as well.

https://youtu.be/K2ZHhJQn0B8?t=1650

Irenio – “’There are new pets that will be available in Heart of Thorns.”
Rubi – “And this is for all rangers, not just the druid.”
Irenio – “That’s right. This is kind of the thing that all rangers are getting access to in the Heart of Thorns.”

This is confusing to me. How can it be “all rangers” if the new pets are only available in HoT areas for those that own HoT? It would not be for all rangers, it would be only for rangers that own HoT.

As the juvenile form of the pet needs to be charmed, a regular ranger would not be able to get them as the juvenile form would only be available in HoT-only areas.

@Gaile (hiya, Gaile!)

• Is this just incomplete information given during the twitch stream by Rubi and Irenio or incorrect words used?
• Do the new pets actually require HoT and the Druid elite specialization unlocked to get them, but once gotten they can be used by non-druid rangers?
• Or is it as it came off as being – that HoT is not required to get the new pets as it was said that all rangers will have access to them?
• And if they are available to all rangers, does this possibly mean that pact Tyria will be seeing Mordrem and the juveniles of the new pets for base rangers to charm so base rangers can charm them outside of HoT-only content areas?

Interesting questions! I’m going to ask Irenio if he has a chance to take a look at these. I’m vested in the Ranger in a major way, and I don’t want to misspeak.

The team is aware of a bug with the engineer’s Medkit #1 skill “Med Blaster” that causes it to perform more powerfully than intended. In order to take time to correct this and prevent the use of this skill in its current form, Medkit #1 has been temporarily disabled. Once this issue is addressed, the skill will again be available for engineers.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where Daily Login Rewards were given out more frequently than intended.

I’m hearing arguments for not showing badges during a match, but what about just standing around in the lobby?

Azure.8670:

Dont expect any word on scepter until a few months after HoT. due to the amount of clones scepter produces, pretty sure the devs are keeping a close eye on chronomancer to see what crazy builds people come up with. Scepter may become much more popular than it is

Scepter is difficult to balance because of the clone generation on AA. As a mesmer player I’d like it if the last attack wasn’t so slow too, but increasing the speed of the final attack risks imbalancing mesmer DPS by increasing clone generation speed.

Angel de Lyssa.4716:

If the necro, already has two unique conditions (fear dps and chill dps), why not also make mesmer, have their own unique condition “wastrel”? Specialized only for the scepter.

Fear and chill are not unique to necromancer. Necromancer has traits that modify these conditions but what you’re asking for is an entirely new condition which has a lot of balance implications to it and is very unlikely to happen.

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

As for the animation on axe 1, it was changed because of an exploit with cancel casting that allowed players to get significantly more damage from the skill by continually canceling it. At the time I tried to just adjust the original animation so we could keep it but due to its construction that ended up not being feasible. The resulting animation looked extremely choppy and didn’t sync well across races. You are always welcome to make suggestions on alternate animations you’d like to see, but going back to the original animation at this point is extremely unlikely.

I wanted to quickly mention – we’re investigating the med kit 1 issue right now!

Hey all,

We’re aware of these issues and have a pair of fixes in progress!

These updates are in now.