Guild Wars 2

If it’s a bug, then it should get fixed. It doesn’t make sense to ask if a bug should stay…

That aside, please fix the x-ray glow, thank you.

And lastly a question: Will this apply to the Bloodseeker (Off hand focus with the same effect) and similar items too? I really hope so.

diax.2815:

Ridiculous, can you please set a requirement of atleast 500 or 1k wvw rank needed to vote??? I farmed months of EotM and I want to say that my WvW knowledge is automatically higher than anyone elses!
Who are these people disagreeing on MY SUPERIOR OPINION?! the last thing WvW needs by my standards is more kittening siege, focus on making fights more important, people who play WvW for sieging and karmatraining should stay in PvE because again my opinion on WvW is superior and I know it better than all those people who voted yes!

WvW should be focused around being mass PvP combat, siege should be secondary to the actual fights vs other players.
It’s kittening 2016 and you still haven’t figured out how to fix skill lag when 3 servers are fighting eachother, get your kittening priorities in order! And no I don’t want to go to PvP which is focused on PvP – I want WvW to be adapted so it’s basically PvP with more players! That’s by far better than having 2 distinct and unique modes! Look at my WvW rank, I know everything better!

Ahem. If you excuse me, I’ll go and actually test stuff now before I come back to the forums, leaving valuable feedback with arguments. How it should be.

RlyOsim.2497:

It would be nice if WvW was viewed as: fights; neural; ppt.

Try to balance additions around that because most fight people really really dislike this random extra siege updates.

“Most fight people” are still only a very vocal minority. Stop trying to make it sound as if WvW doesn’t want siege, that’s what WvW was, is and always will be. If you like vanilla PvP, please go ahead and join the PvP gamemode.

That said, a balance update would be much appreciated. Siege should be sort of Rock-Paper-Scissors but currently some Siege weapons just don’t live up to that while others are overbuffed. Aside from that, a bigger variety of siege to deepen the strategic aspect of WvW would be nice. Barricades, more traps, long range scout projectiles maybe?

It’d be smart aswell to add more mechanics against hackers and 3rd party software in WvW. Seing as people scream for the orb (Baffles me, that mechanic was bland and pulled from the PvP action that all of them want…) it will be targetted by flight/speed hackers like ut was before you patched it out. Teleport detection above max mesmer portal range? Speedchecks? Some things should definitly be implemented first.

Cheers.

morrolan.9608:

Akuni.8604:

If you want it or not, Siege is a defining part of WvW. Without Siege, WvW would turn into a mindless, generic mass zerg PvP #1 spamfest which you can find in literally every asia grinder out there.
tl&dr: If you prefer that stuff, kindly move to another game.

Yet what will happen is that the game will turn into a #1 spamfest on siege exactly what you apparently don’t want.

And no-one is talking about getting rid of siege its just keeping it as support for taking objectives thats all.

And why so? You guys just deliver baseless claims. You don’t know how those things will work out. Try them. They are implemented for testing after all. If you can’t give good arguments I’m not sure why I or anyone else should give you credit.

And yes. People do hate Siege with a passion. I’ve heard that delete siege claim often enough. If you don’t want that, good. There are those people though. And having more options to choose from is usually never bad (Do I wan’t Golems? Trebs? Cannons? What are the Up and Downsides?) – As long as they are properly balanced of course.

If you want it or not, Siege is a defining part of WvW. Without Siege, WvW would turn into a mindless, generic mass zerg PvP #1 spamfest which you can find in literally every asia grinder out there.
tl&dr: If you prefer that stuff, kindly move to another game.

What are the plus-sides of Siege?

Siege adds a strategic layer to large scale PvP. Since Siege is usually strong enough to kill players they are forced to adapt instead of mindlessly charging from A to B. This gives you the option to hold and cut off small passages, forcing the enemies to take the long way around. Meanwhile it enables that flashy play, where a Mesmer dives through and portals your Zerg behind the enemies. This would not be the case without Siege.

Siege evens out the difference between small groups and big zergs. Without Siege, defending a structure would be impossible if you didn’t have at least half the players the enemy zerg has – It would essentially invalidate the capture and hold mechanic of WvW since you literally can’t hold something longer than the usual 5 minutes until the invulnability of the NPC runs out… Without Siege, WvW would be Zerg up or gtfo – A hugh hit in the face also for all the havoc groups, roamers and scouts (You guys are the MVPs!).

Siege gives every class a reason to be in WvW. Without Siege there would be no warrior in WvW i.e.. Why? Lack of ranged combat, invulnerability is short timed, no constant AoE threat and so on. Their saving grace might be their revive banner but hey, downed players rarely live to see it go off in zerg fights… Without Siege, WvW would be AoE classes and ranged classes or combinations of them (Hello hammer Rev, we already love you guys mindlessly spamming #2 already, why not become the best class ever in a siegeless WvW?).

What are the down-sides of Siege?

It draws out fights. Since you have to either destroy the defensive Siege first or find a way around it, steamrolling over the enemy takes a while. This is, arguably, not a bad thing imo. – You don’t need a full zerg to siege enemy Siege. If you waste time standing around, the blame’s on you alone. Get some havoc groups. Group up again after clearing the Siege. Enjoy the Towers and Camps you flipped in between.

They hit hard and are a constant threat. This is great and actually not a downside. You invest into building Siege. If those things would do nothing you’d feel cheated. It also amplifies the power of a single player – That is great, as said above, as it balances the field between smaller groups and large zergs. Also, if something is clearly out of line it should be easy to simply adjust it numberwise.

Now what about deployable cannons?

They would fit nicely alongside Catapults and in between Ballistae and Arrow Carts. How so? Obviously, everything needs to be balanced accordingly (And I’m pretty sure it will) but as I see it, Cannons fulfill a similar role as Catapults (Ranged AoE threat for groups and Siege clearing) while being distinct enough (projectile arc, AoE range, damage, rate of fire, conditions vs. knockback). They are unique enough to be worth a shot in testing.
Now, why did I say in between Ballistae and Arrow Carts – Cannons should be shorter rangewise than Ballistae and longer than Arrow Carts. Meanwhile they have AoE over the single target (well, line AoE if traited) damage of Ballistae and a smaller AoE than Arrow Carts. Arrow Carts also focus on anti-player mechanics while cannons are slightly more anti-siege themed. All in all, cannons would offer something new in the known Rock-Paper-Scissors game.

But we have cannons already! Yes. And they are exclusivly defensive as they are stationary. If you build Siege in the range of a cannon without clearing them first, blame’s on you. Meanwhile, while these cannons are stationary they are of course balanced accordingly. Don’t loose your sh** guys, there is a multitude of levers which can be used for balancing/fine tuning (range, damage, AoE radii, rate of fire, durability etc.).

I could continue but that post is way too long already again – What I wanted to say: WvW is as unique and fun because it has Siege. Sure, balance might be off at some points but if you run into 5 Arrow Cart AoEs you deserve to die from the bleeding. That has nothing to do with Siege being op. Removing Siege would be like shooting yourself into the foot. Deployable cannons are worth a shot for Testing – Tough, they need to be balanced accordingly.

Cheers

Ellieanna.5027:

So I was having issues with GW2 (massive ping, etc). Ran ping plotter, found the nodes with issues, contacted my ISP and they went and escalated the issue to the nodes in question. So really, if you run ping plotter and see that it’s not an Anet issue, contact your ISP. They really do handle it. (Some ISPs are better then others so push if yours isn’t helping).

It is in fact a NCsoft problem tho. Pingplotter shows usually three ncsoft servers with 20+% package loss and one before (which is not labeled ncsoft-server) but is used by them nevertheless (you can check easily via whois for example).
That one, for example, popped up today in my traceroute: http://www.ip-adress.com/whois/213.71.135.138
It’s not labeled like the other ncsoft servers where the game is running, however it is clearly registered by NCsoft.

It’s sort of sad that there’s no word on the issue whatsoever. You should have seen the LoL forums back in the days before the serversplits – Way better communication.

Ayrilana.1396:

Akuni.8604:

Chris Cleary.8017:

Most of this price increase revolves around players that are pushing the value up due to the players willingness to pay more. If players are willing to pay more for an item, it’s going to keep increasing until eventually it hits a ceiling for the commodity. We’ve seen the same thing occur with numerous commodities over time.

Right now there is a consistent supply of mystic coins entering the game (way more than are being consumed) and churning through the trading post at a very slow rate. Most of the coins on the market are ones that have been flipped.

In retrospect, this is actually causing the daily login reward to be worth significantly more to players who wish to convert mystic coins to gold.

I don’t think it’s fair to say ‘people are willingly paying more’ when you tacked mystic coins almost everywhere into recipies which are used frequently to drain supply.

Just look at the HoT legendaries, if you actually want to wait and do it with login rewards you’re waiting for years.

In fact, players are sort of forced to just deal with the higher price. The majority wouldn’t be so ‘willingly’ and more ‘if i really must…’ if you’d asked them…

If politicians say ’it’s fine’ while waving their hand that doesn’t mean a certain issue will just poof away – Please don’t ignore coins. You did the same with other items which rose to hilarious prices (leather anyone?) until you finally agreed that there are issues…

His usage of the word is consistent with its definition. Players are not forced to craft legendaries or other items that use mystic coins. They simply willingly choose to do so because it is something that they want. They may not like the price of coins but if they still purchase them then the price wasn’t beyond what they were willing to pay for.

And that is exactly what I meant – If you say ’there’s no issue’ then there still is an issue. You just decided to ignore it.

People aren’t ‘forced’ to be unique with their skins… in gw2… where skins and expression of oneself is key… what is left if you strike going for skins? Pvp mostly i guess? Nevermind that there are better balanced pvp games.
Skins are the thing for post-80. In a sense players ARE forced to get them. It depends if you want to play the game 100% or not.

I’m not even trying to take your comment seriously. Why should I if you only look at 50% of the picture.

Chris Cleary.8017:

Most of this price increase revolves around players that are pushing the value up due to the players willingness to pay more. If players are willing to pay more for an item, it’s going to keep increasing until eventually it hits a ceiling for the commodity. We’ve seen the same thing occur with numerous commodities over time.

Right now there is a consistent supply of mystic coins entering the game (way more than are being consumed) and churning through the trading post at a very slow rate. Most of the coins on the market are ones that have been flipped.

In retrospect, this is actually causing the daily login reward to be worth significantly more to players who wish to convert mystic coins to gold.

I don’t think it’s fair to say ‘people are willingly paying more’ when you tacked mystic coins almost everywhere into recipies which are used frequently to drain supply.

Just look at the HoT legendaries, if you actually want to wait and do it with login rewards you’re waiting for years.

In fact, players are sort of forced to just deal with the higher price. The majority wouldn’t be so ‘willingly’ and more ‘if i really must…’ if you’d asked them…

If politicians say ’it’s fine’ while waving their hand that doesn’t mean a certain issue will just poof away – Please don’t ignore coins. You did the same with other items which rose to hilarious prices (leather anyone?) until you finally agreed that there are issues…

Mike O Brien.4613:

Thanks for all the comments. I know there’s nothing I’m going to say that will make you feel better, but I’ll share some final thoughts for the night.

I said three weeks ago I’d focus on sustainability and quality. I want to reiterate the part about sustainability. Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but how about the recent drought of content? That kind of thing happens when we spread ourselves too thin, and when we let the content development pipeline empty out so we can fight fires. What I think we actually owe you is sustainable, predictable, high-quality content. I’m making a decision that’s painful in the short-term so we can position ourselves to deliver that.

Akuni.8604:

Consider this… HoT currently has: 3 new maps (which are still buggy looking at DS) which are grindy as hell, Elite Specs which are heavy powercreep (pay to win in PvP…), a Story which is short but at least good (if you ignore the myriad of bugs f.e. in the Mordi battle), Guild halls, 2 Raids with 5 1/2 bosses, a new PvP map (which is quite unbalanced) and now only 4 legy weaps (3/4 being rarely used thanks to being underpowered or buggy)… That’s it?

I previously addressed the “half an expansion” thing, and I can point you to pages like this one and this one (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns), but that doesn’t matter because it’s just arguing. My job is to entertain you, not to argue with you.

I strongly believe that we will in fact entertain you. We’re a team of people who love the game that you love, and are working on things we’re confident you’ll love. But I’m not here to convince you of that, and I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for it. You can make that judgment in April, and each subsequent time we ship. I will work to make you happy, and I’ll do it by making you happy with what we ship, not with what we promise to ship.

Mo

Re the bold part: Like when you put 70 Devs on a new Xpac when the first is not fully implemented and fixed.

It’s not cool to take one side point and ignore the Elephant in the room. No one asked for that expansion. Concept and planning (which should come first) doesn’t need 70 people. You seriously lost credibility here and I for sure won’t get the next expansion until it’s been out and confirmed as full, bugfree package. If it’s HoT all over again I am not bothering to play gw2 anymore. And that I say freely after playing years and supporting the game where I could.

I vote with my money and it ain’t going there now.

Wolfey.3407:

Akuni.8604:

Wolfey.3407:

Nike.2631:

Wolfey.3407:

I must be one of the very few people who actually bothered to sit back and think before typing….

I’m sorry, were you about to launch into some apologist drivel? Because I stopped reading after you thought you’d open with insulting EVERYONE.

Someone of your caliber shouldn’t be talking nike. Unless you want your amusing past brought up

Akuni.8604:

Wolfey.3407:

I must be one of the very few people who actually bothered to sit back and think before typing….

I actually agree with Mike on this one… It’s better to focus on more important issues than more cosmetic options. Every weapon we can use in the game has a Legendary option. Currently, Legendary weapons offer nothing unique except for effects and hot swap stats. There is not even any real lore tied to any of them…. E.g. Who wielded Dreamer for the first time? what amazing feat did he or she do with it?….. All we know is that it’s a play on “The Lover and the Dreamer”.

I’d rather the Dev team focus on things such as :
-Buggy / Broken Quests and Story Missions
-Fixing known Fractal Issues
-Fixing and Releasing the Legendary Fractal Back pack
-Fixing WvW and making it playable
-Making PvP tolerable, the current Matchmaking system is garbage
-Improving rewards for PvP & WvW
-Working on Living Story 3
-Working on a ton of class bugs, such as the druid celestial avatar icon eating half the hp bar cosmetically.

There’s a ton in the Core game as well as HoT that needs to be addressed.

You can’t have everything, something has to be sacrificed … please do notice how he said suspended and not cancelled.

If anything, I’m more annoyed that WvW is still neglected heavily and PvP is still a broken mess.

Collin is gone, let Mike clean up any messes and lets see where things go.

The thing is you’re not getting those things. Because 70 Devs are worling on Xpac2 already without finishing Xpac1. Maybe you should have thought about that before typing…

Those people who are upset have a right to be so. They were promised content which is now put on hold not for LS3 but ultimately because Anet started with Xpac2 already which no one wanted/needed after HoT.

There’s nothing you can say against that. Not without making a total joke out of yourself.

I failed to see anywhere in Mikes post that he published today that stated all the resources are being pulled from every aspect of the game for Expansion 2.

“As game director I have to make tough trade-offs. One thing I believe is that we have to focus on the core game first before taking on additional responsibilities. I wrote in the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto in 2010 that our vision was to create a living, dynamic world, where there’s always something to do. Let’s ensure we succeed on that front.”

Ahhh the power of reading…. Amazing isn’kitten

Keep in mind, Mike is cleaning up what ever messes were left when Collin left. Stuff Collin was working on that Collin did not deliver on with Collins Team.

See a pattern?

I cannot express how utterly airheaded you sound. Your title seems to keep the proper volume of blood from reaching your head. Stick it. You’re not getting any credit, especially for your attitude.
And with that said, get back on topic, you’re breaching ToS by slinging mud (“I used my brain before typing compared to everyone else”). A great example and role model you are.

I love how you dodged the bolded point I brought up.

It’s almost like you don’t want Mike to succeed or give Mike the benefit of the doubt. All I’m seeing is you bringing up points that Mike has not brought up. I have failed to see anything in Mikes post that states hes going to take all developers and place them in Expansion #2. As you and others are going around and stating.

“120 devs working on live game, 70 devs on expansion 2, 30 devs on core teams that support both.” – Reddit AMA notes.

70 Devs which work on an expansion not even 1 year after the first. 70 Devs which would be direly needed to fix bugs, hook up collections, implement features (Guild Anthems anyone?) or generally improve/balance HoT and the base game.

Just because you choose to ignore that fact doesn’t mean it’s not there. But oh yes, taking 6 Devs off legendaries which were part of HoT which people paid for is clearly the best option… Let’s just pretend those 70 Devs are non-existant.

…….

Breathe my boy. In. Out. That O2 needs to get into your head. That said, I don’t have anything else to say to you. Consider yourself ignored and move on. Tüdelü~

Wolfey.3407:

I must be one of the very few people who actually bothered to sit back and think before typing….

I actually agree with Mike on this one… It’s better to focus on more important issues than more cosmetic options. Every weapon we can use in the game has a Legendary option. Currently, Legendary weapons offer nothing unique except for effects and hot swap stats. There is not even any real lore tied to any of them…. E.g. Who wielded Dreamer for the first time? what amazing feat did he or she do with it?….. All we know is that it’s a play on “The Lover and the Dreamer”.

I’d rather the Dev team focus on things such as :
-Buggy / Broken Quests and Story Missions
-Fixing known Fractal Issues
-Fixing and Releasing the Legendary Fractal Back pack
-Fixing WvW and making it playable
-Making PvP tolerable, the current Matchmaking system is garbage
-Improving rewards for PvP & WvW
-Working on Living Story 3
-Working on a ton of class bugs, such as the druid celestial avatar icon eating half the hp bar cosmetically.

There’s a ton in the Core game as well as HoT that needs to be addressed.

You can’t have everything, something has to be sacrificed … please do notice how he said suspended and not cancelled.

If anything, I’m more annoyed that WvW is still neglected heavily and PvP is still a broken mess.

Collin is gone, let Mike clean up any messes and lets see where things go.

The thing is you’re not getting those things. Because 70 Devs are worling on Xpac2 already without finishing Xpac1. Maybe you should have thought about that before typing…

Those people who are upset have a right to be so. They were promised content which is now put on hold not for LS3 but ultimately because Anet started with Xpac2 already which no one wanted/needed after HoT.

There’s nothing you can say against that. Not without making a total joke out of yourself.

Sartharina.3542:

islarose.7356:

Working toward legendary weapons provided way more engagement with content than the few hours it takes to run through the instanced, static, shallow “living” story.

This… so much this. When I want a Living World, I don’t want “Living Story”. I want things that keep the world alive. Dynamic Events, and a robust economy and players in every map do that. Blowing up Kessex Hills more doesn’t.

Yeah it will be Lions Arch all over again… Destroy it, let people repair it for a few years than kazaam new and shiny within a patch… Big value lost by not giving us that living world feeling over many patches…

James Quall.6029:

I love the people here that applaud the wisdom of their decision to stop working on legendaries and start working on story. Is that really what this game has done to people? Is the huge content drought we had before and after the expansion really made us so desperate?

NEWS FLASH It’s ok to expect BOTH, especially when they promised BOTH! We’re talking about trade-offs and compromises that shouldn’t have to be made in the first place and the fact that they’re making them isn’t something we should ever congratulate!

Yeah especially after being told that the lionshare of Devs is working on Xpac2 not even half a year after Xpac1…. Who the hell plans like that?!

Okay like what? Really? Are you freaking kidding me?

It’s been over half a year already since HoT shipped and many features are yet to be implemented, balanced or bugfixed. Reconsider striking the new legendaries. Get to work on all those promised features people paid a lot of money for. This is basically rip-off.

Consider this… HoT currently has: 3 new maps (which are still buggy looking at DS) which are grindy as hell, Elite Specs which are heavy powercreep (pay to win in PvP…), a Story which is short but at least good (if you ignore the myriad of bugs f.e. in the Mordi battle), Guild halls, 2 Raids with 5 1/2 bosses, a new PvP map (which is quite unbalanced) and now only 4 legy weaps (3/4 being rarely used thanks to being underpowered or buggy)… That’s it? If you’d announce that as the first Xpac with that price people wouldn’t bother! You’d need to cut off at least 10-20 bucks to make it reasonable.

Meanwhile you announced you work on the next Xpac – For crying out loud those Decs are needed to fix the first Xpac first! Stop trying to get yearly Xpacs, it will not work. You’ll leave broken content and promises with that approach.

Sorry Anet but as much as I was always on your side I am questioning if this game will run longer than 2 more years. As much as you burn your playerbase it’s to be expected that a lot of players are angry and disappointed.

Please. Fix and finish HoT. Fix WvW. Fix Underwater combat instead of phasing it out, Bubbles is still out there. Fix Fractals. Everything else should go on hold, especially new Xpacs. Hire people if you can’t get it done. Stop burning the playerbase!

On the topic of macros I think you should add an “aside from doing repetetive tasks such as opening bags, converting snowflakes etc.”. You can’t seriously think it’s fun to klick 14634677447735779 times on the same pixels to open ones bags from, let’s say, halloween. Since there’s no use/open all feature many bind a left klick to a repeatable key or the mousewheel. That should be legal and not fall under prohibited as atm.

Shaogin.2679:

I really hope this is just an oversight by anet and maybe someday they’ll fix it?

Probably not, they simply didn’t bother with splitting mechanics. DC procs on chill application and not on chill inducing skill/effect. If it would be the 2nd case you could just say let the dmg go through and ignore chill. They’d need to rewrite quite some code for that I guess…

Anchoku.8142:

MethaneGas.8357:

You are severely underestimating boon corrupts peeps!
I’m hoping it’s not as good as I think it will be…. but if it is… *que dramatic music *

I agree. Boon corruption on scepter will seriously counter builds with constant boon generation or those that use boons as counters, themselves.

Also, Corrupt Boon (I think it was) will get a much shorter cool down for more on-demand responsiveness, though the number of boons corrupted will be less.

The change coming Tuesday will give Necromancer a lot more boon hate capability. It is not merely boon stripping, which boon-spam professions can ignore, but corruption to some potentially suicidal conditions.

Taken together, the change to scepter and CB seems to imply Arenanet wants to take the boon punch-bowl away and force more active strategy into their use.

If you’d actually know Necro you’d know that corrupt boons is a corruption skill ans therefore has a self condi attached. Basically if someone spams CB they perma poison themself. So op, right?!

For crying out loud guys, your arguments are so onesided and misinformed it hurts. Wait for the 26th. See if it is actually op. THEN you can think about nerfs. Nerfing stuff before even trying them is plain stupid. It just ends up being underpowered – Just look at LoL which had several champs which were “so op” on PBE, got nerfed and hey, would you know that, actually came out up on release…

You guys are not designers. None of us is. Stop crying as you don’t even remotely have the bigger picture here.

Sooo… When I checked today my main acc got 1 outfit in the mail and my alt had… 2?

I mean it certaily doesn’t give me an advantage as outfits are freely choosable after unlocking once but I hope I didn’t get one which should have gone towards someone else…

So, is it okay Gaile or is somewhere someone running around in underwear right now while waiting for that misdelivered package?

P.S. We still need a response on the Karma boosters in enchanted boosters topic…

Just a flesh wound.3589:

After all, why should they respond? They know eventually we’ll give up and the thread will disappear.

They never respond when the answer is no and they don’t want to post the “No, it won’t change” answer and then get a bunch of angry responses. This is a behavior that they have demonstrated repeatedly and they think it’s working for them.

It’s not working. You loose customers that way. Ignoring the paying customers is the same as digging your own grave as an developer.

Why do you think they went that quickly with an expansion?! :p Player numbers have been dwindeling nonstop. The announcement gave it a boost but so far, they already lost all the players they gained with the announcement – numberwise – again. And I mean you don’t have to reimagine the game every few months. Look at Riot Games and LoL, the numbers remain high as ever only being a little in flux and they also just have months were the only content is skins/light balance changes.

Still nothing? This is such a joke. I’ve seen horrible decisions when it came to selling stuff and burning players – Aeriagames was pretty big with that stuff… But ArenaNet sure tries to surpass them little by little…
If you delete something from the game it’s freaking natural to at least give a small heads up. Doing it all hush-hush and trying to ignore the fire until it burned out is the worst buiseness decision one could ever choose.

And I feel really sad for all the people buying powder and bundeling Karma boosts. That slap to the customers was surely unneeded.

Also lol at those tickets. Send them the link to this topic – Surely they should have read it already when they tell you to go to the forums. After all they do read it and all the criticism /s

Meh, then again Norm males are far from being naturally bulky. They look like they had too much… substance. If you roll a female Norn they still have acceptable textures. It’s just an issue with male Norns as they are so… defomed. And Charrs sadly suffer from being non-humanoid modelwise :/ There are still aromorchoices which look good btw. My Char is wearing a mix between Phalanx and t3 with random parts. The textures are not blurred or clipped very much (on the sub 5% realm to me).

Minis still behave sort of like people. If you didn’t know… They count for “with active pet” effects like rune of the ranger. This was supposed to be fixed with the Rune revamp but it still works /shrugs
It’s a cheap alternative if you don’t want to buy expensive runes, simply have a Mini out all the time.

And yes, that has been tested throughoutly of course. Your damage without the runes and without a mini is about 7% lower compared to having the runes and a mini out… Glorious, glorious ingamebugs…

Crimson Clouds.4853:

I understand the point here- I too would absolutely love to customise our weapons.

However, the amount of dev time it would take to implement a feature like this retroactively would be huge. One thing would be coding it and redesigning to UI to allow it, but the other problem would be to design dye-fields on each and every weapon (in which there are thousands). Unlike armours, weapons were never designed to be dyed- for all we know it might be so difficult to implement that they would need to redesign the weapons entirely for such a feature to be able to work.

It would also mean that they would have to set aside extra time in the future for it when designing new weapons- for instance, the BL ticket weapons and gemstore weapons. Ultimately, this might mean that they can’t release new sets as often. Of course, this could impact their profits, even when ignoring the expenditure of re-hauling the system.

I understand that this was a feature of GW1, which is why a lot of people ask for it. GW1 was designed with this feature from the start, but also had far less weapons in total and fewer weapons released outside of expansions. I wasn’t able to calculate total unique weapon skins in GW1 due to some repetition, but it’s quite apparent that there are far fewer than the total of 2,004 that are currently present in GW2. (Here’s the list of weapon skins from GW1: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Weapons_by_family)

Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but afaik dyable weapons were ingame like the acc bound dyes in an early beta. Those features were removed afaik without much statement before launch. So this system wouldn’t be that new as there has to be source code floating around for it simply because the GW2 client is a modification of the GW client. We should be able to get it like the acc bound dyes.

The only reason which get’s thrown around against the dyable weapons is “particles” afaik. However, I’m not really sold on that one…
For tekkies, the way particles are usually drawn involves the base texture/model of the sprite in black and white (As seen with the guild emblem templates from the create a guild emblem contest btw) and a overlay which actually adds the color to the particle. This technique was also used in GW btw, you can see by datamining the client. So… By my understanding It really shouldn’t be an issue to actually change the color of a particles as you only need one base particle in B/W and a filter which is accessible for the player.
But then again, you can’t justify selling the same items 3 times with different colors (cough glowing eyes cough) /shrugs But hey, who am I – It’s not like I know about that stuff…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I think it can be helpful. I might purposely not send my mats to the bank when in need of selling off trophies, or needing tools/salvaging kits, etc. Sounds promising to me. =)

Or, you know… Just take a stacking item like fire ele powder and split it to almost every slot when in need of a salesman. Simply kill a mob, hope for 1 trash drop and ta-da, salesman.

……… Cheating the system I guess but oh well …..

Psychol.5783:

It boosts WvW exp? if yes then I can use WvW exp consumables and get more XP?

No, it just states +50% PvP reward track gain. WvW is not mentioned and therefore shouldn’t be affected (If not bugged or missing in the description).

This has nothing to do withn fairness or forcing players to buy gems. Look at the new boosters and what they give.

The Exp on for example: +50% Exp in ALL modes, +50% PvP reward track gain, up to +100% bonus exp per kill – This combines the current Exp booster effect in 2.0 (Old one just gave +50% Exp from Kills), the Killstreak booster AND the old PvP glory boosters. That are 3 boosters in 1. If anything, you should be complaining that people get another hour of value from the bought versions.

I usually don’t say that but… Stop being greedy :/ If you would activate the corresponding 3 boosters for 1h you would have the same value as using the 20min version 3 times. It’s okay is is.

And the new boosters shouldn’t be changable to the choosable ones. So you shouldn’t be able to loose 1h 40min of value by trying to safe bank space. If it does work however, please just don’t do it. You’d screw yourself over with what’s probably a bug or pretty badly planned implementations.

Cheers

Eh you white knights are not even remotely better than the Anti-Anet-Front. No one knows if it was a bug, a mistake or a planned decision except for Anet. So stop fighting over such a nonsense already!

That said, the only fact we do have is that there’s no statement about the matter yet – Not even via Twitter. Argue about that and if it’s good or bad PR for them but stop basically hitting each other with paperbags.

That said, I’m frustrated about Karma being removed from the bundled boosters. I bundled all the gathering and killstreak boosters to save space and change them to MF and Karma ones. I guess I should be happy that I still have my Exp boosters to upgrade in the Forge and the Karma boosters for FotM etc but… I feel really bad for all the people who got ripped by the change. This shouldn’t have happened. And Anet should better move it and give us a “we’re working on it”.
On the note of Exp boosters, those should have an alternative recipie which let’s you use a bundled booster instead of the Exp booster because I think nearly no one knows about the Forge recipie and they always end up packing them into the bundled boosters. A “noobtrap” shouldn’t exist in a game.

4/10 will still use light imbued symbols as traps :p

I’d dig a anti-paladin spec for guards tho. Would be nice to give them full access to dps in lieu of loosing all the support with a spec buuuuuuuut… I guess it will be put on the Rev/Warrior. Because reasons. ^^

Time gated “Be there” content is the worst kind of content one can design. And there are many arguments for that side and really none against. Tbh Anet should have stopped trying to keep those items unobtainable a long time ago.

If the content is not announced to be 1-chance it leads to players being frustrated afterwards because they missed the timeline (By whatever reason). That happened with the first halloween and wintersday rewards.
Meanwhile if you do announce it as 1-chance people will flock to the content leading to a huge amount of items being available. They hardly hold any value at that point.

As time goes players inevitably start quitting or not using thos items until so few are actually visible ingame that players start labeling them as prestige items. That leads to newer players who happen to see those items to ask for them. Again, this adds frustration as they are told that the items are not available.

As time goes by the number shrinks towards zero items visible and a heated argument about re-releasing the items is going on (Seems familiar?). By now the developer has two possibilities:
Don’t release them and add even more frustration to the pot by kittening of the majority of players to please a very small minority. Again, those items were not prestige to begin with until players made that one up based on percived rare-ness. In fact, agreeing on keeping them “rare” as a developer is a horrible choice and has no realistic background. As a developer this solution is a lose/lose situation.
Possibility two is to release the items again. At that point the very vocal minority which will feel “betrayed for loosing their prestige” (Which is still 100% player made-up) have two possibilities: Suck it up and deal with it like grown ups or leave the game. Since they are the minority that shouldn’t be a problem for the developer number-wise (No, even if you consider yourself a heavy spender) because the majority will be happy aswell as every new player starting afterwards because they get access to another item. For the developer this solution is usually a win/win situation because if it’s added to a store they even get extra money for it while they pleased the majority of their playerbase.

As a sidenote, at one point it won’t matter if you delete the “be there” item since so few people will use it. From an economic standpoint that is, however, the worst thing you can do so it’s always better to just release it again.

To shorten that whole stuff: Haviong “Be there” items adds a horrible amount of frustration, leads to people thinking they are special (lol) and is generally not worth the effort in the long run (You need designers to create them and so on just to have them vanish in a few months/years while other items stick around until the lights go out).

In my opinion, the only rare items should be gated by content which is actually challenging. The Aetherblade path Mini is a great way of doing so – It’s not as rare in a numerical sense that no one has it (In fact quite a few have it) but it’s far from the usual “everyone has it” like with the Mini mystical Dragon atm.
Most important is that the content is available to everyone all the time except (and that’s a big except) if it’s heavily tied into lore (Halloween for example is not this case as the mad king still lives aswell as people who can tell you his story to create mad memoires).

Also, stuff like Liadri can work as in only obtainable in a certain time of the year – The thing is it just has to be there every year at the same time.

That’s the way they should give out rare items. Fair and valuable. No playermade bs attached to it.

One last point for the left-over naysayers: Devil horns got re-released. There was no mass protest, no apocalypse, no zombie militaries riding dinosaurs – People were simply happy to have them again. That same stuff will happen with your oh so valuable prestige items one day. No one will care, the masses will be happy and you’ll have to move on. Because face it, that’s a way better choice for Anet than pleasing the interests of sub 10 players. It’s the same with FotM getting more open for newer players. Deal with it.

This skin was never attainable ingame, it was just datamined ages ago. It would have to be implemented as a reward or whatever. And that would fit well into including Stalward etc as obtainable armors too.
There’s no hidden MF recipie about it, sorry.

I’m all for new backpieces which make sense. I always wanted a quiver which fit’s my Sylvari better than the ascended one could – The “normal” look simply bites with the “Sylvariesque” leaflike look on my Ranger. At the same time adding Quivers with fur which fits Norn a bit better or some fancy high-tech ones who fit Asura would be nice. Same goes for every kind of Backpack please.

Also… Toxic hybrid… That thing has the most kitten plant-esque wings ever. If we could get those I’m sure you could make an amazing Sylvari with them. And hey, they sort of have the model for them ingame. They just have to delete all the bones/mesh-parts of the hybrid, copy the wings and rig it to a backpiece file. After that just add some finetuning on the mesh etc and boom, low cost gemstore item maybe. Or a thing you can get as reward in the Maguma jungle.

pdavis.8031:

Akuni.8604:

Also please don’t rip an argument apart to twist the intention.

What is the intention? That bosses are too easy, and that a stat increase won’t change that? That mistlock instabilities won’t change it? I countered with a very reasonable argument, and that argument happened to rip apart your first argument. I still contend, that adding increased stats, and new abilities with instabilities will make the fight harder, without having to re-code the boss for each level of fractal difficulty. That would be 100 versions of each boss.

In the end, a longer drawn out fight increases the likelihood of failure. Which is why beserker is the meta. The idea is to take down the boss before he can take down you. I believe that with the new instabilities, as well as the increased stats, these same fights will become more difficult. When they launch I guarantee that you’ll begin to see a bunch of QQ about how the bosses became too hard and need a nerf. Just like the Spider Queen in AC. The fight was fixed to not allow stacking on the stairs, and that same day the QQs starting rolling in.

If I only answer half of the argument while ignoring the other part which is instrumental that’s not really a good basis for discussions. No one is against adjusting boss hp and whatnot but that has to happen asap since we’re so powercreeped every part of the gw2 content is too easy. That leaves FotM being only adjusted above balanced values to make it “harder”, which is frankly no really a thing as stats stay the same.
I also don’t think that mistlock abilities add something because the only thing they add right now is taking some tools out of the players hands – One of the best examples here is reflect not working which invalidates 1 class fully and another one about half. They should rather add things to the mobs, bosses and enviroment.
Also I just want to make clear that you don’t need 100 boss variations. Simply because the new “rotations” seems to be like a dead set idea for Anet by now (Judging from other Dev posts etc). That leaves us with about 7 different versions of fractals if you really overwrite everything with a new mechanic for each variation. And that’s for the fractals atm – I’m still hoping they’ll at least give us the Abbadon fractal soon if not more which would further lower the variants. That said it’s perfectly fine to adjust every 2nd occurance maybe + low level fractals are actually better without any variations as those are usually played by players who still need to learn the bas mechanics.

Yes, that’s still a lot of work. No, that’s not even half as horrible as you paint it to be. It can be done and it would be a good way to add a system which can be expanded upon in the future. FotM is supposed to be the endgame for this game when it comes to dungeons, they need to put some work in to keep it the top difficulty in the game if they don’t give us something like 20 man raids which require tactic soon TM. You’re doing the same stuff over and over again. After their update you’ll do the same and you’ll need longer for it. I can see many reasons why people would quit over that. Not because “content’s too hard” but because Anet refuses to listen to the wishes of their players when it comes to challenging content.
Stop belitteling thos people. They spent almost 3 years doing the work of creative designers because Anet didn’t want to do it. That’s a huge amount of work done and something you should recognize.

pdavis.8031:

From what I understand is the fights are “easy” because you can burn down the enemy quickly, which prevents them using many of their really deadly skills. Which is why Beserker is meta. You can dodge powerful attacks and kill them before they can use the super strong ones. So if thats the case, making the fight longer would actually make the fight harder, as the enemies now have a greater chance of using skills that are rarely seen.

This is still a balance issue and not linked to the FotM challenge system comming with HoT. Also please don’t rip an argument apart to twist the intention. Aborminations start the fight with their skill. It’s not a rmaping effect that takes time and which you can skip with burst.

How do we know that some of the new Mystlock instabilities don’t do that exact thing? They are reworking old ones, and adding in new ones. It seems very likely that some of these will do just that. Add new and harder abilities to enemies, effectively changing the dynamics of a fight without having to rewrite the entire boss to do so.

Mistlock abilities affect all mobs in the instance so while you can say ‘every mob has new tricks!’ it’s basically no rewrite of their patterns. They will still run after you if you LoS them instead of just dropping hard AoE there or throwing you out of the corner by let say summoning an ice block there. You play the same except some areas will be handicapped – This is still the current system. The only new fuzz will be higher toughness/precision…

So what happens when a boss has dramatically increased toughness to render most physical damage useless, yet with stacking instabilities that reduce the damage of conditions or convert them to boons or send back to the player, and unblockable/unreflectable projectiles, as well as a much higher health pool, and a 100% crit rate, with say, crits cause stun for 2 secs?

How would you defeat it? Especially since the fight time has been increased by say 3 minutes due to the added stats? (Granted I am just throwing out random instability effects that may not even exist to illustrate a point. We don’t know what the instability effects are going to be yet.)

We’re talking about a boss which attacks are pretty much a guaranteed downstate? We already have that one. He’s called Kudu and is part of CoE story :p Therefore same strategy: damage him and rezz asap you see someone downed. Or sidestep his attacks. All the other effects make him just harder to kill. They don’t really change the flow of the battle.
In the end it doesn’t matter if you spend 5min or 30min on a boss if you’re just repeating one rotation over and over. That’s not really challenging.

laokoko.7403:

I think it’s your opinion fractal isn’t hard enough.

For me it is quite hard already. I have a very hard time dodging attacks, I’m not sure if it is my slow reaction time or my latency. Eventhough I know a few people with higher latency but have no problem with dodging.

I think the main problem with group content is it is too lenient. The penalty of getting downed or dying is too small. All Anet need to do is remove downstate and the ability to rez people in combat.

And of course boss hp is related to challenge. Right now boss dies in 10 second in organized group, you dont’ even need to do anything. If you want to know why it makes it more challenging, try to solo it. Because instead of needing to dodge once or twice, you need to make sure you dodge 20 times with no mistake. That’s why it is harder. Maybe your some uber player that can solo all fractal boss already with no problem, that’s why you want more mechanic change, but at least for me it is hard already.

Can’t you guys discuss anything without slinging snarky comments? Really? I said (Just right above you there) that hp adjustments are needed thanks to the balance patch. This is however no FotM issue but a general gameplay issue with powercreep.
If something has a known pattern you’ll know how to avoid it in no time. I mean currently fights are: Can you burst it? If yes, burst and continue. If no run in circles around the boss and kite it. Just adding stats there will only gut burst (Which is not 100% good btw. Because now you only have 1 way of playstyle left) and leave the ‘ring around the rosie’ tactic.
Look at Grawl shaman as a boss, his pattern is to bubble every 25% of his hp. That is the only ‘phase’ he has. Aside from that you’re constantly sidestepping his arrows while maybe dodging out of his firestorm. It frankly doesn’t matter if you can burst 25% currently in a few secs – You still have to deal with his bubble. Now, at lvl 100 we might need 15mins to get him that low (random numbers), do you really think he’s more challenging now? Because I’d just fall asleep while my muscle memory would continue to beat the boss. Nothing changes there. If he’s no challenge on lvl 1 he won’t be at 100 at least with the current system of instabilities. And as long as they just keep adding stuff like passive effects and not new patterns that won’t work any better.
That’s still no real reason for just keeping the statstick mentality.

Setz.9675:

To me it looks like you are a bit dishonest with yourself. Adding more abilities to a boss to increase it’s difficulty I understand, but if you don’t improve the HP bar with that bosses will still melt to 25 might/icebow 4 which makes all the extra abilities useless. A hard bossfight should atleast last over 1.5 minutes and that just won’t happen if the HP bar is made for starters.

At the same time it’s not much use just sticking more stats on an enemy. Look at the Orr Aborminations: They have a decent amount of vit/toughness and pack quite a punch in the power department. At the same time they are super slow with highly telegraphed attacks. If they had no skills whatsoever and the only thing they could do is walk after you and try hitting you those would be the easiest mobs ever. You’d simply kite them to death. Now comes a buff to the challenge, namely adding more vit and toughness + precision. Throw in some healing power maybe – They usually don’t heal, but more stats make it harder, eh? In fact the whole encounter would stay exactly the same it would just take longer. Now, let’s give them a skill, their iconic charge. Suddenly players have to watch out, use dodges or blocks. Up the challenge even more by making the charge more reliable with a shorter windup and let’s say an AoE explosion at the end. Push it even further and the charge pulls in enemies within a certain range. With every change you change the dynamic of the fight. It might not last 5 minutes but you’d have to plan ahead (Can I stack here or will it just annihilate our group with the AoE now? Do we need range to overcoe a new mechanic? Is a certain playstyle less effective now?). This is stuff you can never ever achieve with sticking stats on a mob.
And please note that I think (Personally) that this game is super imbalanced right now. The feature patch brought so much powercreep that adjustments are definitly needed. Sticking more stats there like vit might push the time up to 2min boss fights again but it doesn’t add challenge – And that’s what the blogpost is about. It’s not about rebalancing the patch aftermath, it’s about the new, challenging FotM.
So please stop viewing the FotM update as a balance fix! The game should be balanced beforehand.

Setz.9675:

And what the hell is up with people and their sick mindset of locking out entire playstyles for their own fantasys. To counter melee burst… pff, now you’re just embarrasing yourself. If anything, there should be more counters to playing ranged right now.

It’s called an example. That’s usually one idea among many others that’s pointed out to express ones opinion. You want more? Reflective aura around enemy to prevent range playstyle. Pulsing out conditions applied to them in an AoE to counter condition bombing. Getting regeneration or another effect whenever critically hit. Mirroring sigil procs back to the players. Encasing players while tagging the others with a delayed AoE which can break the encasing (And only that AoE can – This mechanic is actually a thing in the FF XIV Ramuh raid. If you don’t pull the lightning strikes to the stunned mates you’ll end up defenseless against all his attacks). And much much more. I even stated that I’d try and keep the post short by not writing out every idea I had. But I guess you didn’t read up until that point. Instead you slang a snarky comment at me without much reason. Way to go. I would punch you If you’d do that face to face, bless the internet for aking us all annonymous – Except there are still human beings sitting behind every screen. Way. To. Go. You.

If you’d like to contribute to the discussion now, please go ahead. I love brainstoring with others as that’s where the really good ideas come up. However, up until now I haven’t actually seen a good reason that goes for raising hp/tough except longer fights (Which should be a balance concern and not a challenge concern, but I’ll still count it here).
I really think Anet is going the wrong way here, so we should pull together and ask them to change it. If you (the reader) disagrees there, please add your input to the discussion.

laokoko.7403:

King’s fractal guide actually have a guardian just kiting those sanvir.

But I think your original question is, mobs and hp. My opinion, that is needed, because right now, bosses die too fast. There is absolutely no strategy involved, and people dont’ need to learn the fight mechanic.

For example Molten Duo, everyone just pop up reflect, and maybe ice bow and try to melt it. Many of the players I meet dont’ even know what dodge or jump is. People won’t need to learn any boss mechanic if the only strategy is kill the boss before they do any damage.

And in organized group, the fight is really easy, not because the players are mechanically better, but because people can do simple task like stack might and press 4 on icebow.

And I think they are doing some thing about mistlock stability. I remember the days doing those in pug. So they are actually changing the mechanics around. Some of the instability really does make the fight much harder.

But they’ll still never learn new tricks. Like how about berserker learning a shockwave that’s like the reverse tempest WH pushing forward while pushing all enemies aside which the wave hits? Anti stacking mechanics on the firestorm as in a firy AoE around him? I bet you can make the fight harder without making the bosses giant hp packed marshmallows which get a crusty caramel icing after the patch. Make em steel wool marshmallows to stay with the analogy. And I mean… We have new skill tech and stuff for the specs ingame or at least we will get it. It’s only fair for bosses to get some goodies too. Imagine a boss with slowness pbAoE to counter melee burst stacking for example~ Good stuff!

laokoko.7403:

You really only need to kill one ice elemental. Just run far away from them, you’ll loss agro, go back, kill one, and you are all set.

But it’s not reliable in pug. And for premade, they some time dont’ bother to waste the time to run far away.

IMO high end fractal is suppose to be hard. Hard enough that people that only do pug like me will probably never see. That’s a good thing.

Thing is: They are not hard. From 1 to 50 the mechanics are exactly the same with really really small differences (Like chanters disappearing below lv10 in cliffside if you hit the seal). They should add new mechanics and mob types instead of just making the existing mobs bigger statsticks, that was my point.

And I’m not talking about the ice elemental boss but the part before it where you melt the ice wall with the bonfire. I thought I made that more than clear, will check if I mistyped anything up there.

Additionally, for players who want just a little more help, a member of Dessa’s krewe is concocting some new consumables to aid your adventures in the fractals. These items will provide benefits that will stack with your other consumables to give you the boost you’re looking for to defeat a troublesome encounter. Visit her in Dessa’s Observatory after the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns to see what she has available.

This seems like a nice idea on paper but I fear it’ll just end up to be a necessary item to overcome to massive amount of health if they just give you x% damage against a certain type of enemy. I hope you’re going the route of adding utility effects via consumables that help you with a certain playstyle (Effects on dodge or block/reflect for example) instead of + damage.

Additionally, we’ve simplified the current system of daily reward chests into a system of new daily fractal achievements that have been separated into three distinct difficulty ranges: 1–20, 21–50, and 51 and above. Completing these dailies will give players a chance at the fractal weapon skins, ascended equipment, infused rings, and more. There also will be a new daily recommended fractal achievement that will rotate to different scales each day, giving you a focal scale to find other players looking to organize for a group.

Can we please expect the same amount of pristine fractal relics + normal fractal relics from those tiers and activities? Currently you can get up to 345 relics from the daily tier chests + the fractal end chests you’re opening. With that amount it still takes a while to get enough relics for something like the fully upgraded fractal backpiece (You’re sinking hours into doing all daily tiers for several days). Please don’t nerf the droprates to make saving up for something like the backpiece even worse.
This will be even more frustrating if it actually plays a role in saving up for the new legendary backpiece (Most likely).

And yes, I’m perfectly aware of how much work it is to add new mechanics and encounters to make content actually challenging. But it is actually necessary – Adding stats and making mobs effectively meat punchingbacks with razors on them is super boring.

Thank you for taking your time to read this.

Cheers
Akuni

First off, if I don’t quote a specific part of the blogpost that means that I totally agree with you and that I am actually happy with your changes. However, there are some points where I certainly went “No. No no no. Stop. Right. There.” And therefore I felt like it was necessary to open up this topic considering my (and maybe others) concerns.

Don’t go through with your changes outlined in the blogpost, please! FotM players spent the last few years asking for better fractals and they even gave you a bunch of ideas which came from brainstorming all over the place. Please don’t ignore all those players! Give us a high end dungeon which is actually challenging!
For examples I’ll stick to one fractal (Snowblind, that’s the one with the Ice elemental and the Svanir boss fyi) for now, that makes it easier to keep this post trimmed down and easier to read.

First off, specifically citing this part:

To start with, we’re raising the maximum fractal scale from 50 to 100. In addition, after scale 50, the difficulty curve will change to adjust not only the health and outgoing damage of creatures but also other stats like precision and toughness. The combination of these changes will increase the viability of different builds and give players more to think about when attempting to overcome a particular scale.

Adding toughness and precision does nothing to change the difficulty. It just adds a higher chance to wipe at certain chokepoints were you have to deal with lots of mobs at once. One example if the bonfire part of the snowblind fractal:
At lower levels the mobs are easy enough to kill them when they rush in to kill the players lighting the bonfire. This part is usually done by a group because it’s easier to deal with them.
On higher levels however that strategy changes: Since the mobs scale so high with vitality, power and sheer spawn number it is usually impossible to kill the mobs without dying and wiping as a group except if you’re a really well trained group. Most of the time this part is done by a single player like a thief or a Mesmer which has ways to light the bonfire and then jump out of the action (stealth, blinks etc) while the others wait.
Adding toughness and precision will not change this. It will even enforce the current way this part is played.
A more challenging way would be to add different mobs to the spawn, in example frost shamans – Those could cast an AoE, similar to the guardians ring of warding around players with aggro (In style of an ice wall to keep it thematically fit) which can be destroyed by teammates. Suddenly running around the bonfire is just possible for so long as a solo player. Instead a group would have to coordinate this part of the fractal to ensure success. It would add another form of challenge which is not only “can I survive the damage times X”…

Hello fellow posters and hopefully Anet devs,

I have a simple suggestion/issue that I’d like to have adressed in the (near) future: As you can read in the topic name, I’d like Post Processing to be split into all the different options that are bundled into this options currently.

I haven’t used Post Processing for over a year now and I gotta say I miss the shaders and whatnot from time to time – But at the same time I can’t stand the character inking that’s tied to PP. I’d love to have the option to turn on shaders, smooth lighting, screen tints like necro shroud and the rest without the need to take character inking and certain filters.
And I guess many feel the same. If they could I guess many would take specific points of the current PP but not all. Some for example prefer to not have the necro tint because it makes certain AoEs hard to see. Others would prefer no char inking like me because it kills immersion (Others love it because it’s easier to keep track of the chars in huge fights).

The new Light Adaption option is also tied to PP (You can’t take it with no PP enabled), that’s sad. I shouldn’t be forced to take a full pqackage when I only need a few things. You can also for example buy single bottles of water instead of being forced to take 12 every time… Okay that example may suck but you get the idea…

So with that said, please consider splitting PP. in the near future.

If you as a poster support this idea, please leave a short comment what you don’t like from the current PP settings being a bundle.

Thank you for reading this sorta rant, cheers!

Malchior.5732:

Grimreaper.5370:

Xillllix.3485:

Guilmon.9478:

you are all very delusional if you think an overload build wold be viable, it would be like walking up to someone and attempting to meteor shower at melee range, you will die literally in the blink of an eye without channeling fully even once

It’s like churning earth, it has 25% chance to work unless you have armor of earth, and even then it will make less damage than a backstab.

MOST UNDERWHELMING SKILL IN THE GAME :| I really don’t want more long channels like churning earth, this is what this game needs to avoid >.<

Actually, we need less instant crap. If more skills in the game had cast times, it’d be much better for everyone.

I agree. Instant casts especially coupled with cc is a big no-go since it gives you hardly any form of counterplay. The thing with long channels however is that they are hardly worth the time atm. Churning Earth does next to nothing and you’re stuck in the animation for such a long time. It’s the same with the Overloads – They are not worth the channel time. There needs to be a big number adjustment pass.

meeflak.9714:

Adding a rifle to this class would do exactly what specializations set out to do, bring a new play style to the class. Not improve the base class, no. But to bring a new play style to it.

Have you seen the Chronomancer reveal which is basically a Shatterer 2.0? Or the glorified Auramancer 2.0 Tempest Ele? ^^ At this point, saying sepcs add something new to the classes is basically lying to yourself… sadly.

Shiki.7148:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

TeuthidPurveyor.1970:

Anyway, the one thing I don’t understand is the complaint that “tempests don’t add anything new. We already had boons/auras/pbaoe/combo fields/etc.” This is where I betray my ignorance, because I can’t think of anything elementalists don’t already do. We have melee and ranged condition and crit damage, boons, combos, aoe, healing, cleanse, etc., etc. I really don’t know what an elementalist spec could do besides let us do the same stuff in a new way.

So there’s my question: What is the base elementalist lacking? (bonus question: how could either tempest or a hypothetical elite with a different name or weapon provide it?)

What Elementalists DON’T do:

- Torment
- Confusion
- Poison
- Fear
- Taunt
- Slow
- Aegis
- Quickness
- Resistance
- Converting conditions into boons
- Converting boons into conditions
- A viable zerker burst spec with enough defensive mechanics
- A viable condition spec
- Any viable spec without water+arcane
- A viable scepter spec
- A viable spec without cantrips
- Stealth
- Reflection
- 2-way Shadowsteps
- Portals
- Copying stuff

Just off the top of my head.

There is literally SO MUCH new stuff they could have given Tempest. But they didn’t they just gave us more of what we already have. Boo!

You can scrap 50% of that list because it includes other professions main/signature gimmicks, which should NEVER be given to a different profession. Ever.

Are you actually playing the game? ^^ All the buffs/Conditions are available on numerous professions (Torment Necro and Thief / Confusion Mesmer and Warrior / Poison Thief, Necro, Ranger etc / Fear Necro, Warrior, Thief etc / Taunt Revenant and Ranger / Slow Mesmer and Revenant / Aegis Mesmer and Guard / Quickness Mesmer and Guard / Resistance Revenant and Warrior… Do I have to continue?). Mechanics like boon stripping? Not only Necro stuff, Mesmer has it too. Viable different specs? That’s a given! Every class has at least 2 builds right now while Ele basically is always Auramancer with modifications.

The only thing you can strike there is the Portals point as that’s Mesmer only (Except if you have a watchwork portal device recipie :p)

I guess you should change that statement about never ever giving class gimmicks to others :p

rotten.9753:

Akuni.8604:

Thing is, Scepter needs some work and your argument is sorta weak in light of that. If scepter would work correctly we’d only really have focus for it.

How do you know scepter doesn’t work correctly? It has skills for both close range (e.g phoenix) and long range (air attunement). The same case as with staff – lava font is hardly effective at long range.

It’s pretty much that staff is used as a long range weapons and both one-handers as close range weapon. Ergo, a new offhand had to be a close range weapon. There was no difference in getting a sword instead of a warhorn except the former being a mainhand weapon and possibly being a different tool (no aoe support). People hating on sword just didn’t realise that they were asking for another close range weapon.

Well fir starters there’s the underwhelming AA on fire, earth and water, various casttimes which are frankly too long, “adjustments” which gave skills channel behaviour even though they were normal casts… Scpeter has issues. Fix them and probably not even half the people would play it close only. That said, all skills have a mid to long range and as someone pointed out above only because you use a longrange weapon close doesn’t make it a close range weapon plus if you use a ranged skill close that doesn’t make it a close range skill because it still /has/ the 600-900 range.
I’m seriously tired with this you use some skills close it’s close range argument. It’s a total strawman. And I might want to add that Rangers LB can outdps other ranger weapons even if used right infront of the enemy with the damage reduce. I guess that makes my 1500 range LB a close ranged weapon now. #facepalm

rotten.9753:

scerevisiae.1972:

Why oh why is it yet another close range option? dagger is already close range and sceptre is effectively close range as well.

support? we already do that on both S/? and D/?, we don’t need more.

and 2.75-5second channel, WTF are they smoking? Who is going to seriously channel for 2.75-5sec in WVW/PVP? Being locked out of attunements for 20sec?

I can’t see myself using any of the new stuff except just the warhorn. maybe.

If both mainhand weapons are close range then it should be obvious we’d get a close range offhand. I’m puzzled why anyone would wish otherwise.

The thing is… Scepter is meant to be a single target range weapon compared to the AoE range Staff. It is so bad however, that most just use it to spam air 2 with Fresh air as all the other skills are horribly weak. And then you might aswell go closerange to have a shorter travel time on phoenix.

Thing is, Scepter needs some work and your argument is sorta weak in light of that. If scepter would work correctly we’d only really have focus for it.

I also completly agree with the cost vs reward arguments. Right now they are far from being worth the channel – At least they changed them from being 180 range… Just imagine them right now with even less range…

Galedeep.5496:

For comparison you guys do realise that ye have a basic utility shout the does 75% more damage, casts 8 times faster, recharges 2.4 times faster, has a CC which ignores Stab and let’s you reflect projectiles compared to the Reapers Elite shout. Ye already do crazy amounts of damage, mobility and sustain. Now ye have access to more support options, boon strip AND boon share on 1 off hand and ye complain? Necro would kill for even half the stuff you guys are getting!

Dude, if I could I would gladly give you all of those :p It’s just not Ele to me. If I’d enjoy camping 1 attunement I could also just play a warri.

Well, I’m happy that I didn’t hype myself over the Tempest. And it feels good how all the “You just gotta play it!” and “You don’t know anything about it!” kiddos suddenly went quiet.

Class mechanic – Overcharge: You’re forced to camp an attunement to get a miniscule effect out of it. And not only that you’re so easy to interupt it’s not even funny anymore. If I’d get pre nerf FGS damage on an overcharge… sure, fair thing but atm? No.
At least they changed the range to be less…horrible I guess.

Weapon – Warhorn: Surprise, surprise! I wanna take the time to say “I told you” to everyone who was so stuck up on WH actually getting a good, new playstyle and not just 8x the wailing animation. New sounds do nothing there – It’s bad counterplay because as an enemy you never know what exactly is comming and as the ele you have no variance to look at. This is why people hated the idea behind WH. And they were kitten right with hating it beforehand.
Skills? Focus will still be superior in defense, dagger is still better with offense. Did you guys look at how Karl fought against Svanir/Chieftain? He put down some AoEs then ran in circles. That’s horrible. I stick with my fun D/D, D/F or Scepter playstyle thank you :p
Sure, the effects have some “new” mechanics which is nice, but I hardly see a future scenario which screams “This combination of skills! That’s it! Use it!”.

Traits: Oh boy… You can make them work but… It’s all auramancer again. After the class rework auramancer is already one of the most viable playstyles. I would have liked some more playstyles and not one of the only viable ones on steroids~
That’s a let-down. I guess Anet really want’s you to play with Auras…

Shouts: Welp… Some are nice – Certainly need number tuning though. The elite though… It’s a joke. I want to choose a viable elite to fit my playstyle. Not the Element because it’s mostly the least horrible or the glorified taxi aka FGS. I’m not even talking about the…other one…

Ah sigh, there would have been so much potential. So much stuff you could have done to make Ele spec fun. But alas, I guess I’ll stick with PvP builds in PvP or make a storage character out of my Ele. Luckily I have every profession on 80 fully geared out…

Thuggernaut.1250:

Akuni.8604:

YuiRS.8129:

Akuni.8604:

Please, I expect some serious buffs to OH axe on ranger then as it would be pretty much Whirling Defense 2.0 after it even got nerved with the missing +range trait. Could you warriors stop asking for more? The class is overloaded as f already.

It’s really not. Should they nerf Rampage Warrior will fall out of the meta. And OH Axe is useless, so what’s so bad about making it actually not blow nuts?

Are you playing both classes and/or know how to open the wiki? Because I guess not.

Stat———————-Ranger———————-Warrior
Damage—————-1008 (3.0)———————1005 (1.85)
Hits————————12——————————15
Total dmg——*12096*+(power*3)———15075+(power*1,85)
Range———-180 attack 90 reflect————-130 attack
Targets———————3———————————5
Finisher———-(Whirl)broken————————Whirl
Movement—————No——————————Yes
Others———-4sec Retail 1vuln/hit—————-nothing

To recap: Warrior damage is higher (with the same amount of power), they can move, their finisher works and they’d probably get the reflect range matching to the attack range.
Meanwhile the only thing Ranger would have is 4 sec of retaliation and maybe 1 or 2 stacks of vuln because who stands in whirling defense while the ranger is immobilized.

Also that rework down there is horrible, it does all things better than current weapons – That’s the definition of power-creep and the reason why Warrior was so strong for a large part of the game (People asked for more and even got it while warri actually deserved some nerfs like for example damage on hammer).

And no nerfing rampage does bat kitten about warrior in PvP btw. A warrior can 1-combo most classes even with stats like marauder or knight/valkyrie. He doesn’t even need rampage for that. Meanwhile he’s still durable enough to survive 3 people on him. Not to mention shoutbow still being strong (Thankfully not as strong as prepatch though). Stop complaining.

You’re simply asking for a 2.0. Nothing to argue about that.

Whirl finishers suck; anyone would prefer a reflect instead. No Ranger uses whirling defense for the whirl finisher or even for the damage… they use it because it reflects. Warrior axe 5 does inferior damage over time even compared to the auto-attack, using it in PvP just makes you an easy target. The only possible decent way to use axe 5 would be with frenzy, and even then, hundred blades + frenzy is straight up better.

Get the chip off your shoulder and you will realize that axe 5 just sucks, and that is why nobody uses it except for laughs in PvE.

How about you go up there and read my first post, understand the whole point of the comparison and then take a chip of your shoulder.
Because my point was that rangers skill is similar yet already weaker than warris and ofc warris ask for more again. I say: only if ranger get’s buffed too.

YuiRS.8129:

Akuni.8604:

Please, I expect some serious buffs to OH axe on ranger then as it would be pretty much Whirling Defense 2.0 after it even got nerved with the missing +range trait. Could you warriors stop asking for more? The class is overloaded as f already.

It’s really not. Should they nerf Rampage Warrior will fall out of the meta. And OH Axe is useless, so what’s so bad about making it actually not blow nuts?

Are you playing both classes and/or know how to open the wiki? Because I guess not.

Stat———————-Ranger———————-Warrior
Damage—————-1008 (3.0)———————1005 (1.85)
Hits————————12——————————15
Total dmg——*12096*+(power*3)———15075+(power*1,85)
Range———-180 attack 90 reflect————-130 attack
Targets———————3———————————5
Finisher———-(Whirl)broken————————Whirl
Movement—————No——————————Yes
Others———-4sec Retail 1vuln/hit—————-nothing

To recap: Warrior damage is higher (with the same amount of power), they can move, their finisher works and they’d probably get the reflect range matching to the attack range.
Meanwhile the only thing Ranger would have is 4 sec of retaliation and maybe 1 or 2 stacks of vuln because who stands in whirling defense while the ranger is immobilized.

Also that rework down there is horrible, it does all things better than current weapons – That’s the definition of power-creep and the reason why Warrior was so strong for a large part of the game (People asked for more and even got it while warri actually deserved some nerfs like for example damage on hammer).

And no nerfing rampage does bat kitten about warrior in PvP btw. A warrior can 1-combo most classes even with stats like marauder or knight/valkyrie. He doesn’t even need rampage for that. Meanwhile he’s still durable enough to survive 3 people on him. Not to mention shoutbow still being strong (Thankfully not as strong as prepatch though). Stop complaining.

You’re simply asking for a 2.0. Nothing to argue about that.

Please, I expect some serious buffs to OH axe on ranger then as it would be pretty much Whirling Defense 2.0 after it even got nerved with the missing +range trait. Could you warriors stop asking for more? The class is overloaded as f already.