Guild Wars 2

What’s with these textures? XD Seems like they are all over the place.

From sharp to pixel blob… Is it my settings or the armor? (my settings are on max but…)

mirror blade (greatsword 2) doesn’t work either

I’m writing this from the perspective of a Chronomancer that has played over 2000 hours since the release of HoT. I’ve raided, gathered 200+ insights and done all the content the game has to offer so I think I can provide an honest impression regarding this boon stack change. I’d also like to express a thing or two about the game and why it is (was?) fun for me.

Like many others, I share the sentiment that this balance patch did nothing to make the game better in PvE. I’m not talking about the massive nerf to SoI; I know it was OP in WvW, but that is not what irks me the most. In fact, I’m kinda learning to like this new iteration of the skill.
What is bothering me the most, and the reason I’m writing this post is the Boon 5 stack cap introduced.
Why is this cap bothering me? For 2 reasons mainly.
The first: As a Chronomancer, this invisible barrier is making my skills randomly half as effective OR totally ineffective half the time. In other words, my skills are being subject of diminishing returns half the time.
As an example: Tides of times being 2 stacks will cause my next Well of Action or Signet of inspiration only give me 3 seconds of quickness a lot of times, granted I am at a over +18 seconds of quickness. This seems to be the magical barrier. Quickness under 18 seconds> your skill will be 100% effective. Quickness over 18 seconds> a LOT of times the skill will be 50% effective.
What happens with my elite skill Time warp? The fact that it gives so many stacks will make everything bad. Seeing my Timewarp active on the field and me inside… and then hovering my quickness icon, and seeing it tick down from 20 to 13s… is probably the most frustrating thing ever.

Example of Timewarp being useless https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdUKwiGjySg&feature=youtu.be

As you can see, my elite skill has been butchered to only grant whooping 4 seconds quickness here.

Now my question is… Why must I have to be Penalized for using my skills and my cooldowns too fast? Why am I being penalized and having my skills be half as useful or not useful at all even though I blew my cooldown? To be honest this doesn’t seem fair at all. This is the equivalent of having a warrior and his skills randomly starting to hit for half of their normal damage only because he exceeded 15k dps.

Regarding the 2nd point that bothers me: I was browsing Qt’s new updated chrono guides, and I found this chart.

http://puu.sh/rQE2I/ce8b55c1fd.png (source http://qtfy.enjin.com/mesmer#DomiRecall)

It is explaining a rotation and how to land it so you don’t overstack your quickness. That is when it hit me and I asked myself “Why in the world do we have to get to a point of making an excel chart so our Chrono skills don’t overlap and become half as effective?” I agree charts are great, and if they help you figure out how to be more efficient with dps numbers and rotations, all is great. But this? This is a chart so we use our skills and specific order so they don’t kitten each other! I am being penalized simply because I’m playing too fast or in a different cooldown order!

Many will ask, “What’s wrong with playing slower?” “Why must you play so fast to a degree your skills suffer diminishing returns?”

The thing is, that’s precisely the reason why I loved this game, its fast combat system. The fact that only Boon classes are subject to diminishing returns is unbearable to me. I don’t see thieves or Eles hitting arbitrary damage caps simply because someone decided that THEY SHALL NOT PASS over 30k dps for example.

Before the patch I could play fast, dodge, watch the boss, appreciate mechanics, do my thing, help, res a downed player, use my cooldowns when I knew were good and useful to keep the quickness love going. But now after this patch, the feeling of knowing that if i blew a cooldown half a second too early it might be useless is just too overwhelming. It sucks the fun out of this game, I feel like have to slow myself down and start ticking numbers in my head, I feel like I have to play with my eyes plastered to the cooldown timers ticking down so I have a small cue to know that its safe to cast something else.
This might have sounded like a Rant for some, and I apologize for it, but I had to take this out of my chest and express how I feel in hopes someone will notice and fix this… It’s the first time since HoT released that i feel i don’t want to raid anymore, and its the first time i feel I want to quit the game because I can’t play Chrono how I want to play it. I don’t want to have to start making excel graphs and play like a robot…

TLDR: The 5 max boon cap has made playing Chrono feel like a bother. Skills have a huge risk all the time of suffering diminishing returns despite you blowing your full cooldown. The cap feels restrictive, unintuitive and forces the gameplay to be slower and more calculated so you don’t overstack your boons.

Ever since LS2, Anet has been introducing slowly a series of Upgrade components and skins that grant cosmetic auras in the same vein as legendary weapons.

Chak egg sac, Preserved Queen Bee, Poly-luminescent Undulating Refractors, Moto’s Unstable Baubles, Night fury, ghostly infusions, etc to name a few.

One issue I notice though, is that ANET doesn’t seem to follow any rhyme or reason regarding their implementation.

Sometimes they are shoulder skins… sometimes they are infusions… and sometimes they are exotic quality celestial stats gem-like upgrades…

Why? This only reduces the choices players have to use these items.
why cant I use my Shoulder Scarf item from the gem store with snowflakes aura this xmas? wink

Or worse, why do I have to kitten myself and my raid by using exotic trinkets with worse stats so I can use the Chak egg sac with… celestial stats I don’t want on my chrono tank?

So far, the only upgrades that have been safe of these issues have been the moto baubles and the ghostly infusions, precisely because their infusion nature. You can already use them with the best gear possible, enjoy them in the stats of your choice, and enjoy the aura at the same time without messing up with your stats or overall looks.

These ultra vanity items, just like legendary weapons, should always be compatible with the best tier of gear possible, ascended gear, and provide selectable stats of the same nature. And regarding the shoulder skins, they should not interfere with other armor skins and work like just auras instead.

Would it be possible, (maybe possible is not the right word here, cuz they can do anything they wanted with the game lol) for Anet to unify this?

Ideally, all these items should always be a +5 +9 infusion and function the same way as the Moto baubles, which are to me the best implementation of such cosmetic items in the game.

I just wanted to bring this issue up and hopefully have Anet notice before we are swimming with a plethora of cosmetic items that each follow their own convention, ending in a hockeypockey of different kinds of upgrades all over the place.

been trying to kill mathias for a few hours since the new patch. reflects will fail literally half the time, projectiles will get reflected, you can see the 0s but they wont take stacks off and its making the fight extremely frustrating.

I’m in the same position as you are, please anet add all the options to deconstruct everything

I have a few +16 agony infusions i’d like to deconstruct to make the new ones, but the deconstruct golem wont take these as the max is 13 > 12, could we have an option to deconstruct all the infusions please?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Die 8 times
Go to WvW
Get repaired
Come back
? ? ? ? ?
Profit

You are missing the point here. So instead of going to anvil, i have to go wvw, and endure 2 loading screens? what if im in the middle of nowhere in a hot map? lose my participation?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Apraxas.3685:

So when are we getting this one? I want it

??? ???

Where are you going that you die 8+ times without passing by an anvil?

i dont want to pass by an anvil

So when are we getting this one? I want it

????????? ?????????

I greatly dislike the Sigil of Energy nerf. I’ve used this one for 3 years, in every single build, only because i enjoy playing a supportive role, healing my friends with Selfless Daring….

Faster hammer auto attack+less lag on auto attacks

Faster mace auto attack

Faster mace symbol

Faster mace block so you can react to big hitters and block em

Faster shield of judgement so you can react and block something

Sword 3 let us move while casting it

Faster Torch cleansing flames

Friendlier staff 2, easier to hit people with

Downed symbol to stop you from losing hp while down

A better and rewarding virtue of justice

Elite signet to pulse much much more often (and healing per pulse lowered accordingly)

Being able to see the characters hp without hovering with your mouse over them.

I noticed that, now with the increased emphasis on healing skills and healing specialized classes, i need a more visually helpful UI more than ever.

This issue didn’t exist before because most, if not all skills did the healing themselves, or targeted whoever needed without my input, but now that healing requires a more active play style and actually aiming, It would be tremendously helpful to have a way to display Friendly players HP Bar right above their heads at all times, not only when you hover your mouse over.

Soaring devastation, Divine intervention; aimed druid healing skills, targeted symbols and consecrations, Envoy of exuberance, Ventrari Tablet heals and barriers, they all would receive a great indirect buff if i was able to see where the damaged allies are in the battlefield and rapidly use my stuff to protect them, instead of guessing who is who looking at the hp portraits and then finding them in the chaos.

I’d like to see a teammate at 50% hp right in the battlefield, without looking at the party bars at the left corner, and knowing right there that using my soaring devastation and landing on him is the best course of action intuitively, instead of losing 2-3 seconds figuring out where or who is this damaged person.

I always play support guardian so i’ll focus on Protection aspects and support first.

Mechanics

?I don’t enjoy my class mechanic skills (virtues) have traits that both discourage and encourage their use… (supreme justice+permeating wrath X Big game hunter and tether spear) should allow us to keep the passives always.

Weapon Skills

? I would be so very happy if the Hammer auto attacks got reworked a little… I hate SOO much that long long windup and after cast on the attacks, especially the 3rd in the chain. I would rather the symbol be 1 second shorter, but the cast time on the 3rd attack be much faster. I feel Hammer 2 is clunky if I have quickness on it.

?This goes equally for the mace auto attacks, make the hits faster, and symbol of faith faster cast too please. Make mace 3 much faster so we can react and block without being hindered by cast time

?Shield of judgement, I love it since last patch, just wish it was faster cast time too, reactionary blocking comes into play.

? Sword 3, make it so we can move at the same time, i never hit anyone with this.

?Greatsword 3, Make the leap travel the same distance regardless of having quickness or slow? , I dont like when I know i would have hit someone, but because quickness i didn’t reach.

? Staff orb of light, so clunky to use

? Torch cleansing flame, wish it was slightly faster cast time.

?Valor — Strength of the fallen seems super weak in its current state, the game is devolving into condition wars and 1 random condi every 10 seconds that i cant even keep track of is bad… Stalward defender is sooo boring with extra toughness. I’d wish it was Merged with communal defenses or something….

? Virtues — Supreme justice and permeating wrath give me a headache, so I’m supposed to NOT use my dragon hunter tether so i can keep burning, or use it for Big game hunter?

?Honor — Protector’s impact… i dont remember a single time ive used this in 3 years.

?Radiance — Radiant retaliation is like only a 5% dmg increase if i was FULL CONDI dmg vs FULL POWER, it should seriously do something else fun an exciting

Utilities

? all spirit weapons, the incredibly long cast time and then cooldowns make me not wanna use them ever.

?Save yourselves, give it 3 seconds of resistance? that way we would be able to react.. just in case we gave ourselves 20 stacks of burn and instantly die.

?Sanctuary, i dont remember having seen anyone use this for 2 years other than to block fractal projectiles at the 4 golems boss

?Merciful Intervention, i feel its seriously undertuned for this, needs more OOMf, or reduced cd.

?Signet of courage, i wish the passive heal worked at much much faster rate, (tick every 2 seconds for example) and at a much lower healing ratio to compensate, have it heal the same per second, but at a more steady pace. Cast time and CD too long.

? Feel my wrath, I know at 30s was too good, but at 45 i feel all my rotations messed up, make it 40? ;p

?Symbol of judgement (downed 3), wish i didnt lose hp while inside the symbol and while casting it, by the time the symbol stopped ticking i already lost 1 tick worth of hp because i keep losing hp.

As the title says, Feel my Wrath and Receive the Light are not working properly with runes of the trooper and the sort. The shouts will fail remove conditions randomly, sometimes they will remove a condition, and sometimes it wont.

I might sound like a weirdo… but i REALLY loved the old hunters fortification giving protection. It was a perfect match for the protective/support/healer build i wanted to play, and the aoe protection made it super fun.

now i got no reason to play dragon hunter after all XD

My suggestion

A sorting button on your inventory!!!
so you can sort all that random kitten , in ranks
exotics rares, greens blues, consumables, junk, and easily salvage or do w/e you want

My 2 cents on this…

I have absolutely not feel this happy playing my guardian since release. FMW gave guardian a totally different play style, i feel i have a meaningful useful elite for my party and myself while roaming and solo pve.

I absolutely have fallen in love w guardian again and I hope it stays the way it is. The short cooldown gives me a feeling of RARW DESTROY every fight when i press it and wwrath those mobs like crazy tornado. It feels so satisfying…

Idk why people would want this such amazing skill nerfed… I mean, its like we have been clamoring for a super awesome skill other than renewed focus for years, and when they gave it to us we just go “we dont want it”.

I’m not exactly sure if this could be considered a bug or not, but hopefully it reaches the appropriate developers.

On the most recent update, leap skills were modified so they ignore movement boost/impairment effects so they always traversed the same exact distance and I find this a great change.

This issue with quickness has been present in the game since it was released years ago, and the problem is that if you have quickness, your leap skills will not reach the proper distance (usually half of what it should because the animation ends much faster) and more often than not, the leap skill will finish while being in the air, and then your character will be in fall animation for half a second or so.

This is pretty obvious with skills such as Mighty blow and Leap of Faith. I was wondering if leap skills could receive the same treatment as with speed up/down boons and conditions while having quickness so it always traveled the same distance and ended properly when you hit the floor.

I suppose a way to fix it would be that the travel speed of these leap skills while on quickness would be also doubled.

I wonder if you would travel twice as far if you had slowness condition on you?

I’ve added a couple screenshots to illustrate what I’m trying to explain using Leap of faith as an example.

Thanks for reading.

I dont particularly like the idea of being forced to either have writ of persistence or Pure of voice now….

like i was really happy having a way to have shorter CD on all my shouts and still have a way to heal through symbols, but now its either, good symbols with NO cd reduct on shouts , or cd reduct on shouts but my symbols wont heal anymore.

wish the symbols trait was in valor lol.

On the same boat here, I’ve been using boon duration builds since day 1 and this is quite a significant change. I thought this would promote build diversity but it just killed one of the most fun ones.

have fun! and good luck

GL with this sir

TBH id be happy if they just removed the spirit weapons and gave us something else, I hate pets.

removed some of the bugs from the list, thank you anet, keep squashing em!!

foofad.5162:

The direction Orb of Light travels is based off of camera angle. Your character has an invisible “extra” axis that you can’t see which determines where the projectiles you fire without a target go. If you move forward while aiming the camera up, your projectiles shoot up. Most people play looking about 30 degrees down at the ground or so, so that’s why your shots go into the ground.

correct, its impossible to aim to your allies using only targetting, you need to aim like a fps.

foofad.5162:

Apraxas.3685:

foofad.5162:

I don’t see this on the OP – Purging Flames does not have its duration increased by Master of Consecrations.

Remember you should not trust tooltips as they are mostly bugged, did you verify the actual duration or just based on tooltip?

I tested this extensively, it doesn’t get a duration increase.

I tested this just now using the tooltip timers as checkmarks.

traited purging flames is in the field from 31 to 25, which is 6 seconds.
untraited purging flames is in the field from 39 to 34, which is 5 seconds.

i believe it does increase the duration fine, but since its only 1 second more its hard to notice it.

retreat and SyG are not bugged with this trait, so there is no point mentioning them ;p

the boons are not random, they are always the same depending on what condition got converted.

It is the condi removal thing that is random because it may or may not get removed, but u wont get a boon regardless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rptkuc238Ic

Viralseed.9362:

After some previous testing, I’ve noticed that certain boons do not stack when gaining the effect from Pure of Voice. For example, Hold the Line! gives the regeneration boon, but removing poison does not stack the regeneration boon. However, the protection boon did stack. I’m not sure what the conditions are, but I’ve always removed the conditions. Converting is the main issue. As for Save Yourselves!, you should still remove two conditions, but those two conditions must have previously been on the Guardian. It will not give your allies’ conditions to you and then remove two.

The condition removal is totally random, it may or may not cure it, and it will never give you the boon back with save yourselves or hold the line, I have used these 2 shouts since beta and they always behaved the same way, they are NOT reliable in any way with pure of voice.

No bug, its just that the projectiles come from inside the enemy hitbox, meaning that most if not all will hit.

I know we will prob never have something like this until maybe a full expansion is released, but id totally love this.

• Pure of voice only reliably affects stand your ground and retreat
• It always removes bleed effects first giving you vigor
• I’m pretty sure the conditions are removed in a certain order regardless of application time, but i’ve been unable to determine this order due bleeds being so common.

Overall I’d say the trait can be still useful in its current state because you can use it to pretty much obtain all the other boons to which you don’t normally have access, especially when you need them the most, but the bug really cripples it.

Mrowqa.3861:

Here is official thread in Spvp forums about this Specifig BUG presented in this thread in video.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Projectile-Ducking-Game-breaking/first#post1077367

official? is there a stamp or something that makes it so or just because you felt like it?

Iavra.8510:

Seriously You just basically copied same thread from Spvp forums about how broken are all weapons. Every single ranged weapon if your enemy moves like this acts the same. You won’t hit him at all.

Not tested but i would guess that thiefs SB doesn’t bug out like that as it pretty much always hits moving targets.

As for the rest i notices that my staff #2 leads my target and tries to guess where he will be based on the direction he is moving and his speed. So if you are moving in zig-zag very fast, this mechanism fails.

As mentioned aboved, i don’t know if thiefs SB behaves the same way as it seems to instantly change direction according to enemy movements.

correct, thief short bow does not have this issue, ranger bow arrows got a speed buff to fix this.

Smileyhat.6783:

Not sure if this one has been pointed out:

The Sword Wave skill with the 1h sword (third attack in the 1-key attack chain) is unable to hit some attackable objects.

Example in the screenshot: you can see me stabbing the crates, but it never registers a hit. It doesn’t happen with every object, though; I was able to hit the cannons in the same area.

added to the list.

Quarktastic.1027:

Stop using scepters in pvp. Or move into melee range.

Sure, because having to go into melee range to use our ranged weapon makes a whole lot of sense.

Needless to say it was really dissapointing to fight when one of my friend started twitching to completely negate my auto attacks.

Rangers got a buff to stop this from happening, and thieves short bow doesn’t have this issue.

Isn’t it time for some scepter love?
If the link doesn’t work just copy paste it on your browser

Barnabus Stinson.1409:

Absolute resolution – Increase in passive regen is shown on tool tip but wasnt actually giving that much

Just saw that I didnt catch it with the tool tip up, But it was meant to be 266.

Virtue of Resolve
When improved with Absolute Resolution the tooltip indicates an erroneous healing number, showing a 97% increase instead of the correct 25%.

Blude.6812:

“Bad Link” message.

Maybe one day people will learn that this forum is bad w links and you need to COPY PASTE the link on your browser.

Friisky.2483:

30 points in the Guardians Virtues branch shows “Increase Virtue Recharge Rate by 30%.”

The three virtues have base recharge rates of 30 / 60 / 90

It seems a 30% reduction should equate out to 21 / 42 / 63

In game though the values are only reduced to 23 / 46.5 / 69.5

These are obviously not exact values as I am not given exact numbers in game to work with but they should be close enough to illustrate the point.

In summation, the traits screen shows a 30% reduction when the actual reduction is ~22.5%

Perhaps my math is off or I am misinterpreting the information so feel free to tell me if this is the case.

Yes this has been discussed previously, its working as intended. The post with the full explanation should be in the first couple pages.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

also, be happy that you didn’t accidently transmute the wrong skin. its a possible mistake that could be made by someone not paying attention. lol

what I dont understand is the reason for you to come all guns blazing against this. ANET Said is a Bug, both Legendary And Exotics have the SAME STATS, there is no other thing here than just a massive oversight on ANET part for not including a way to get the stats you wanted.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I honestly don’t know if it’s a bug or not, or where you heard that info, I’m just confirming what I just tested using some transmutation stones.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Legendary-Weapon-Transmutation/first#post662766

here

Something I noticed recently. If auto cast is enabled on your auto attack, you are able to cancel the auto attack animations with other skills, but if auto attack is disabled, you must wait until the auto attack has finished the entire animation before your other skills activate.

hold your horses. It was stated before that this was indeed a bug, now anet changed their minds?

I’ve been unable to find any other component to combine with snowflakes in the mystic forge other than phylo stones.

Hello, Has anyone been able to find the mats to create this infusion?

http://www.gw2db.com/items/72486-bounteous-infusion

1% duration +5 agony resist.

Just throwing this out around here

• Virtue of Justice
  Burn duration only lasts for 4 seconds for 4 tics of damage instead of 5 as indicated in the tooltip.

• Nov 15th patch notes
  Empower: This skill’s might duration increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.
  ( only tool tip got updated, but it never lasted 10 seconds)

• Dec 14th patch notes
  Empower: Skill fact has been updated to display the proper amount and duration of might. ( 8 seconds)

The hell happened here?

Also, it seems that nothing got fixed from this Huge list of bugs…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Bugs-compilation/first

Etaoin.4362:

Giver’s Insignia not increasing boon duration: The new Giver’s Insignia does not seem to be increasing the duration of boons as its description text says it does.

Just a heads-up.

well 1% is so small i dont think it’ll even be displayed on the tooltip or ingame duration, you would need like 5 pieces to actually be able to notice it ;/

• Virtue of Justice
  Burn duration only lasts for 4 seconds for 4 tics of damage instead of 5 as indicated in the tooltip.

• Nov 15th patch notes
  Empower: This skill’s might duration increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.
  ( only tool tip got updated, but it never lasted 10 seconds)

• Dec 14th patch notes
  Empower: Skill fact has been updated to display the proper amount and duration of might. ( 8 seconds)

The hell happened here?

Also, it seems that nothing got fixed from this Huge list of bugs…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Bugs-compilation/first

victus.8563:

Justice will never trigger outside of melee range, either passive or activated. Using a ranged weapon in melee range will trigger it. Also, the burn duration of Justice is not affected by runes or sigils increasing burn duration.

I checked this and found something interesting, the Runes and sigils DO increase the duration. for example, Justice ticked 6 seconds with +55% burn duration, JI ticked 4 times. The funny thing is that.. Without any runes or sigils justice only ticked 4 times.. which is odd considering its supposed to be 5 seconds for 5 ticks, This leads me to believe justice burn duration is actually shorted than indicated. Im adding this to the list.