Guild Wars 2

These vertical map thingie, that forces players to do jumping puzzles, is getting out of hand. If people want to explore the map, by jumping like spiders, for seeking PoIs and masteries… I’m ok with that, everyone is free to enjoy what they love the most. However, gating the LS behind JPs, no. No, really, don’t do it. I don’t want to spend 3 hours seeking to reach the next story step for just few second of text or 30 seconds of cinematic.

For me, I like the Living Story, I’ve never missed a chapter ’till now. However, I love to play to kill stuff, using skills the right moment, cooperate with others in some mechanics to take a huge boss down (yep, à la Raid)…

But spending 2 hours and a half jumping on a rock to reach the next story step is… ridiculous. If people loves spending time in exploring, getting PoIs and masteries in hiden corners in the map… it’s ok, it can be fun, and I also do that myself sometime. But gating the LS behind difficult jumping puzzles is just frustrating and reveals that Devs don’t have any idea on how to make PvE entertaining

I don’t really like jumping puzzles, since the early Super Mario games… ever hated.
But when the whole Living Story actually IS a jumping puzzle…

My friends and I usually use a phrase that could be rendered in English like “How are you stat-ed?” (obviously we’re not EN native speakers). So, I’d say “stat combination” sounds more non-native-friendly.

I have twenty billion karma.

Totally no, not even for legendaries. If you can play on a daily basis, solo-/duo-ing dungeons or fractals, some wvw, some pvp and 2-3 raids, or in extremis a boss train while watching your favorite tv series is more than enough to buy a legendary from other players.
I earn 10-30gold a day doing nothing in particular, just playing the game (sometime I get more, sometime far less), then once a month or two I sell or craft half of what I have in my bank: bam 600g out of nothing.

Well… I’m fine with cooldowns AND energy, but I feel like the two things combined offer a really little room to improvisations. I mean, if you can perform your rotation perfectly, it’s ok, the energy and the cooldowns are utterly balanced, but if something goes wrong, I simply don’t have enough energy to do anything. So as a rev, one is forced to a narrow succession of skills/abilities/legend swaps, otherwise your only choise is to flee away (… if you can: I saw a lot of revs “disappear/run away” faster than thieves in WvW, but I simply can’t).

So, I feel that lowering the energy cost by 10% for all of the weap. skills and the abilities would make the class a little bit more accessible to newbies.

(for energy cost, I exactly mean the “energy cost” one has to spend before the skill goes in cooldown. I’m not considering the “energy upkeep” here, which is fine and should stay as it is now.)

Adding a fixed NPC item to the recipe (like many other recipes require) to keep the prize high is more than enough. There’s no real need to force people make 1 piece per day, because that means that if I can play only on weekends I’m at disadvantage.

Same problem here. Unable to enter WvW, no queue apparently.

I just tested the skill and it seems that Phoenix continues to hit everything it meets when it comes back.
If you hit a mob with that skill, and the mob is walking to you, the mob get hit multiple times. I was able to hit a mob 7 times.
Can someone else verify if this actually is a bug, too?

Well I tried:

1. Mace/shield healing (vanilla) guardian with larger symbols: I know, it’s an unsual, broken, old build and people don’t like it in WvW. Healings are not that strong, but are constant: F2 ability and the elite signet constantly heal people arround me, while providing stability and a mobile shield to protect melee from casters during retreats. Let alone healing aegis and aegis on command with the shield skills… I know, it’s not the coolest or deadly build over there, its retail tick sucks, symbols are static, and in order to have high healing power, my armor and heal pool are trash. Any HoT spec can kill me with easy, even though I sacrified everything for healing power.

2. Staff healing (vanilla) ele with the 2 arcana blast skills to blast my own water fields. It can provide a nice healing burst, but that’s almost eveything it can do, since the only healing skills a vanilla ele has are the two in water attunment. It was once able to nicely share auras, but auras are now the tempest kingdom. Plus, as for the guardian, in order to have high healing power, armor and HP are low.

3. Axe/warhorn (vanilla) ranger with healing pets and 20% boon duration on trinkets. Ok, its dmg suck a lot, but it can share 2min regen, swift and fury to the whole zerg/blob. Regen tick is 385 (that is almost 4K every 10 seconds), with the water runes heal 1800 around me every 12 seconds and the pet 3K every 20 seconds.

I know, all of them are unusual, odd builds and I’m not complaining because I can’t play them (I have a lot of fun instead). The point is, even though I have sacrified everything (dmg, armor, HP), I still can’t compete with the high DPS HoT specs can provide: I mean, just to name one, the air overcharge skill can hit up to 17 times in 2 seconds, each of which hit deals 2K-2.5K dmg…

I’m not saying I want to kill them. My builds are supportive, and I’m supposed to heal and support ofc, but because my only strength is healing, I expect at least to survive enough time to be able to run away in a safe place (WvW-wise). While in PvE, it’s ok: I’m hyper slow at killing, but I can keep NPCs alive like a breaze, so I can do almost every event and even some dungeon alone, really really slowly, but I can.

I wonder if a boon with a retail-like mechanic, but scaling with healing power, could eventually work for healing builds.
Healing builds require you loose in dmg, overall HP pool and armor… so your “power” just rely on your healing and on your team mates. So, something that can be a modest threat against those who target you, could be nice.

What do you think?

I may try with CPC. But the self-weakness could be a problem, he can just come closer, in that case I can’t dodge at all.

I met a berserker with a lot of resistance and stability, even though I corrupt his boons, he has a lot of them and the pulsing resistance make my condies uneffective.
Plus, he can just CC me once and deals 11K with Gun Flame (3/4s cast time, 5s CD, burning, daze and 1500 range). I have not enough dodges or LF and cannot corrupt his boons fast enough to CC him with fear.
I’m a “standard” condi necro (I didn’t buy HoT).

Just reduce the Virtue #3 active CD. 60ish seconds are too much for just a 1 single damage negation, given that aegis already triggers every now and then with the Virtue #3 passive effect.
Other classes can dodge (thives/daredevils), be dmg immune (mesmers/chronos), heal themselves while been hit (revenants) a lot easier. Or they even have a secondary HP pool (necros/reapers). Guardians have a poor access to vigor (and swiftness) and the only valid alternatives are shelter (healing skill) and the med elite. If those two are in CD, you’re a dead guardian.

Imo, Spirit weapons should work like a mix of Nerco minions, Ele conjurers and Engi toolkits. So, you can use them as minions (Necro), or grab them to replace your #1-5 skills (Ele/Engi). I mean, there’s already tons of GS, hammer, LB and shield skills in the game, devs don’t have to create new ones, just give as AT LEAST a slightly weaker version of them.

Uhm… you are comparing 2 stacks of a single tick with a single hit in berserker stat.
When I play my trap ranger well, it can deal 5k-ish burning, 2k-ish bleeding and 2k-poison for 2ish ticks (14k dmg in 2s), and even tough my opponent is trying to run away, condies still hurt. A full berserker or an hybrid can’t do this.

Healing power should give you the chance to re-gain a little margin from your mystakes (a missed dodge, or an invuln ability used too late).
People now can just burst 20k-25k dmg in few instant in WvW, only because you weren’t able to dodge once! If you choose to go full healing, and since you won’t be able to kill almost anyone most of the time, you should AT LEAST be able to support your team with some burst heals (5K-6K HP).
Or add alternative mechanics to healing power, such as merging it with boon duration.

As Crapgame said, if I can simply (graphically) SEE a static field, I’ll just don’t step into it, but since those AoEs are pretty much identical I cannot say what I have before me. Same for ele earth #4, guard staff #5, mesmer focus #4 = necro utility wall… they are just red thingie on the ground.

All these AoEs requires different reactions: distinguishing a CC field from a condie field is essential.
CC field of any sort = Or you have stability and ok or you are dead
Condi field of any sort = you can decide to eat the dmg or not

However that’s not always possible even with full graphic settings on high.

My ele is healing- and support-oriented with p/v/t armor and healing sigils/runes, i slam my face against static field all the time, just because I can’t see it, i can’t see the electical cage. So, maybe I think it’s just a necro well or an ele chill field and instead I get stunned out of the blue.

My necro is power- and well-oriented with p/prec/tough armor and It’s like I’m the ball in a ping-pong match all the time. Plus I can’t always be able to see/understand/percieve where rapid shot come from.

However, the point is not how long condies last or the CC out of the blue, the problem is I can’t distinguish what I have in front of me and react properly. I just see red rings.

Fields in WvW, while fighting ZvZ are indistinguishable, they are all identical, just red rings on the ground.
One can predict the field by the size: meteor is the biggest one, but most of them are just medium size (necro wells, ele static fields… however warrior bow fields are a bit larger).

Even ranger AA, rapid fire, and the CC one are identical and indistinguishable (just whitish thin lines in the air), and the bow #5 is similar in size to the warrior bow fire field or the ele water #4. And also the engi magnetic CC thing is insivible.

I play mostly necro/ele in WvW since 3 yrs, with all high settings and 70-100 fps and honestly I’m really tired of all these unpredictable fields that are in front of me, but I cannot guess if its safe to pass through or not. I mean, I can stand a cripple/chill field, but not a burning field or a mesmer field. If I am inside an ele static field, I’d better don’t move, or use stability, whilst if I’m inside a necro boon-ripping field, I’d better move quickly. Or I’d better cast a magnetic aura if I see a Rapid shot coming from nowhere!

Any suggestion? Some option in the settings that let me see what happen arround me?

“Un-crittable” + “Un-conditionable” all-in-one? Are you kidding, right?

Personally, i won’t give them 50$ for just 1 reason: in 2-3 years I will have core game + HoT for free, plus the next expack.

Oh wait. That means, in 10ish years I’ll have core game +3 expacks for the same 50$.

Oh wait!!! That means before they’ll release GW3, I can have the core game and ALL THE EXPACKS for just 50$.

OH WAIT!!!!! That means Anet will never ever see my money anymore!

Don’t you have, guys, a Server Guild? I know for sure Piken Square has (or had?) one.
I think I will join one of these gigantic server guilds for fun and curiosity, while holding my personal guild for myself.

Rev traits are half-finished in the old trait system, IMHO no worth talking at the moment, since there (in the beta) you could mix them as you like. Who knows how devs will organize traits for the new system?

I happened to come across this build indipendently, for solo-roaming in WvW.
What I think is:

1. Amazing condi dmg (750 burning + 1k-1.9k bleeding + 250 poison via sigil), however easily cleanable. Stacking bleeding isn’t simple on thieves, they dodge a lot, blind you often and earth AA is a bit slow. But you keep dmging them even in stealth, if they don’t cleanse.

2. 4s of immunity is great, but on 50s CD is too long. Meanwhile, you can’t blink away, you can’t switch attunement and heal you (cuz you lose the “uncrittable” buff = instadead), swiftness is not enough to run away and gain time. Plus Vit/tough/HP and passive healing from the signet are not enough to sustain you while 5# earth is in CD.

3. 4# is really cool, but – again – is a long CD.

4. This build is weak vs high CC, high condi dmg, high mobility (blinks/dodges), is slower than condi engi/necro and can’t chase anyone… even a necro run faster than this build.

That said, the build is fun, and often confuse the opponent, cuz’ (s)he doesn’t expect so much condi dmg from an ele.

Interesting.

However, i’d like “Tomes” could be a new weapon for all classes in future. I like the ideas of Mesmers, Necros and Eles with their Tome.

I’m not sures a necro well pulses at the very beginning of the cast.
I think it’s more like:
1. you lay the well down (from second 0 to second 1)
2. first weak pulse (1° sec)
3. second weak pulse (2° sec)
4. third pulse, the strongest (3° sec)
5. well effect ends.

However, I may be wrong.

It is a bit hard for me to remember every single trait or skill for each class and I also find hard to be able to understand a well-written post, but full of acronyms. Also English is not my primary language, and while playing the game I’m more inclined to look at the icons, rather than skill/trait names.
How about implementing a simple and fast way (for both devs and the community) to include icons in the forum threads (i.e. in the same way one can add a simple smile)?

So, for exemple, when you type something like #Ms:MI or #Gt:HXI or even #Gt:PoV, those are converted into icons and:

- If you hover over the icon: you can read skill/trait name.
- If you right-click the icon: you’ll be redirected to the wiki page.

I think it would be a great tool to better integrate the community, such as new players and non-native english-speakers.

Note:
#Ms:MI = mesmer skill: mass invisibility
#Gt:HXI (or Gt:H11) = guardian trait: honor 11th trait (pure of voice)
#Gt:PoV = guardian trait: pure of voice (11th trait)

3 weak+1 strong = 4
2 weak + 1 strong = 3

32 here.
3 days ago was my birthday

I also can see the chronomancer as a sort of “glamourist” with their etheral fields that twist space and time (slow/quickness & some “wall” or even some enhanced portal, maybe an inverse portal => teleporting enemies to him/herself (there’s already in game mini-boss with that sort of inverse portal, in map 75).

Evil Seabass.5214:

I’m NOT happy about all wells becoming ground targeted. Personally, I prefer having them cast at my feet without requiring 2 clicks or 2 button-pushes…

In settings there’s already an option to click/push + release to cast a ground-targeted skill. Here your “2 actions in 1”.

They said they’ve increased in numbers the sources for retail.

Confirm it’s broken, tested a couple of time (considering the CD) and it doesn’t work.

Imho, confusion should last much longer and deals lesser damage.
I used to kill champions in curse shore dealing 6K with confusion. A 33% dmg increase would lead that 6K to 8K. A damage like that is ridiculously huge for a single condition. No other cond can reach those numbers.

I’d better prefer a long-lasting confusion (worthful in pve/pvp/wvw) that deals approx 1.000 max dmg per ticket (25 stacks), in line with every other condies

DI should be improved in DS mechanic, imho.
If you enter DS at – let’s say – 100-200 HP to desperately protect youself, you are already a walking zombie. Getting out of DS and try to use a long-casting healing skill is lethal most of the time.
Every classes have some sort of immunity or dmg negation/denial and have enough time to heal themselves.

Plus, LF already slowly goes down, that means that you loose a small LF amount in the time between the 1° struck and the 2° struck. Since this is the only mitigation damage a Nacro has (no blocks, no reflects, etc…), why should I have to loose LF by just standing?
LF is different from the other profession mechanics:
- Mesmer/Ranger → it’s like “go and kill”
- Warrior → it’s like “go and hit”
- Elementalist → it’s like “ability swap”
- Mesmer/Guardian/Thief → it’s like “insta-ability”

Necros have a more complicated mechanic, a sort of ability swap + HP (aka LF) replacement, it’s like a long-lasting state and need another kind of approach (= more integration between HP and LF and not just an “HP copy-paste”).

P.S. Sorry for my terrible English XD

Mesmer mobility is somehow different compared to other classes.
- 6 pt in Chaos line: 30% boon duration
- Rune of Speed: perma +25% speed, 30% swiftness duration, 15s random if you get stuck.
- Superior Sigil of Speed: 20s each enemy killed
- Signet of Inspiration: 10s random
- Switch to Focus: 12s

That is:
- Always: +25% speed
- Random: 19,5s + 16s (35,5s)
- Per enemy kill: 32s
- Focus: 19,2s
Total: from 51,2s to 1m30s (including random swiftness) per just 1 enemy killed.

The amount of swiftness you can stack per kill is so huge that you even dont need every single rune/sigil/trait/signet I suggested.

I just want to say that most of the Mesmer’s skill NEED a target.
So, yeah, we’ve portals, veils, MI, TW… etc… bla bla and more.
In ZvZ situations I just think “WHERE ARE MY CLONES? WHERE IS MY TARGET?” then I get controlled and smashed down by Warr/Guard’s hammers or an omnipresent Ele’s meteor unexpectedly hits me. And, if I can blink away safely, there are always some Thief/Necro/Ranger that finish the job.

I love Mesmers, but apart the well-known skills we have, its almost useless in large fights.

As it is now, Mimic could be usefull in PvE, PvP (or any 1v1) areas.
In WvW, it’s hard to use it cuz it treats projectiles and melee attacks in different ways:
you need to absorb a projectile to be immune from melee attacks, too. However you can’t absorb any projectile if a melee class controls you in the meantime.
Plus:
1. You get affected by the first projectile effect in any case (dazed, stunned, controlled, immobilized or any other condition, most of them make the follow up immuninty worthless).
2. If you are immune, you reflect any other projectile, but you don’t reflect melee attacks.

If you go full-signet build, as I’m running now, you can do exactly the same (1s immunity + reflection, (3signets + F4 = up to 6s), plus 3×1 condi cleanse). As it is now, Mimic is just planty of “if-then”’s.

Healing is a secondary aspect of the game, I mean everyone can heal themselves pretty well. A healing-oriented build is welcome, it can mitigate dmg taken by mates unable to heal because of the CD. However, a heavily healing-focused build is a sorta waste.
Plus, aside from mantras and their huge amount of healing, the rest is pretty selfish imho.

Speaking from a WvW-perspective, maybe sPvP is different.

Well, with the new trait changes, every class can change build and role on the fly.
My mesmer is signet-based, 4/4/6/0/0. In less than 1 sec, I can go 2/4/4/4/0, take the trait for healing mantras and voilà I’m a “healer”.
What I mean is that “roles” aren’t class-specific in this game and every class can be shaped and match the player’s taste.
Adding the “trinity” is like to dictate how a class MUST be played, but the game isn’t designed like that.

I would just to add that a channeling skill can be stopped if you’re in trouble and can’t continue. An Ele that casts Meteor Shower is rooted for some secs, too (almost 4second to cast). If he stops the cast, Meteor Shower would be weaker, less meteors would hit the ground or targets.
Since GS is a ranged weapon, you are supposed to use Mind Stab when you are “safe” enough (like Eles would do with Meteor Shower). And of course, if you can’t complete Mind Stab cast, you can stop it, but you wouldn’t gain the last “damage bonus” I’d suggested.

IMHO the only “true” AoE Mesmers have is Staff #5 (good enough for a pure condi build and for a power/boonsharing, too). Feedback, as a glamour, have a counter-productive trait Dazzling Glamour (if feedback reflects damages, why it should proc blindness? XD); plus Nullfield is just boon-ripping/condi-cleaning. They should add confusion via Blinding Befuddlement trait, but c’mon, 4 sec of confusion and 3 sec of blindness for 4 trait points (plus confusion nerf in WvW).

So, since Mind Stab is already an AoE, let’s make it a little bit “bigger”: hit the ground (thus increase the radius) and you rip 1 boon per pulse + a little damage (or medium damage if we want to add some randomness on where swords appear). Then, if you can fully cast, it causes the bigger damage bonus, otherwise it doesn’t.
I don’t see anything wrong, it wouldn’t work that much differently from what it does now.

I would suggest to make it similar to a smaller and faster Meteor Shower:
1) You hit the ground and it spawns 2-3 pink-ghostly swords each pulse (let’s say 3-4 pulses)
2) For each pulse, it deals little or medium damage and rips 1 boon.
3) When the channeling ends, all the ghostly swords on the ground get shattered and it deals an additional damage to foes/enemies that are still in the area.

Cast time: 4 sec
Pulses: 1 sec
Radius: 360 overall area (let’s say the “red ring”), 60 every single swords radius.

For the damage and the spawned swords, I don’t rly know, it’s up to the devs.

Personally, I’m ok with Traveller runes.
Chaos Storm and Signet of Inspiration provide a nice random swiftness, with 45% boons duration, it lasts enough.
Plus, Phase Retreat and Blink help a lot.
However, some class is still too fast than me (thieves, eles + firey swords, warriors+banners)… anyway who cares? Not every class is allowed to do everything.

Masterful Reflection + Triumphant Distortion: bug?

It seems that distortion from TD don’t trigger reflection from MR. Is it intentional or just a bug?
I’hv just noticed that MR now works well with Blurred Inscription (1 signet = 1s distortion = 1s reflection), i wonder why not with TD.

A signet build, plus TD and MR would be really interesting: almost perma-distortion and perma-reflection, a nightmare for long-range builds.

And what if Zhaitan’s Undead Minions reach the north from the sea and seize LA permanently?
If LA will be rebuild as it was early, the whole “Living World” concept is… gone.
I would more happy with a new main city somewhere else: Penguin’s Arch!

Just mere conjectures:
1) At least Scarlett is dead. However the last cinematic unveiled Mordremoth.
2) This Dragon is related to Maguma Jungle.
3) In that region, looking at the map, there is an unexplorable (huge) area between Rata Sum and the Grove.
4) All Dragons, if I’m not wrong, have their own dedicated map which they share the same peculiarities with. (The “icy” Dragon is in the “snowy” map etc…)
5) The next feature pack won’t add anything new to the Living Story, so LS teams can have more time to work on/finish/polish any further LS release.

That all said, I may hazard a guess: is a new map coming up?
What do you think about?

Besides TP, it would be nice to hire a merchant that sells your own staff in temporary shops, something like the book carts you can find across Divinity’s Reach streets.
The available slots should be limited (say, 9 slots), so you can hire the merchant for – say – few hours/days or 1 week, for a fee a bit lower than the TP’s tax (because if nobody buy your stuff, you have just spent money for nothing).
No “bid” allowed, just a “buy-now”.
That would be not cross-servers, so the “true” economy would be not altered that much.
I’d like it. A part the early Lion’s Arch, all major Cities are practically empty.

I use GS+Staff on my Mesmer. The build is focused on damage, crits, boon duration (Staff 4, 5 are much more effective) and signets (= passive healings every 3sec, 3sec distortion extra, 3x condie removers, 1x stunbreak/blind, +10% boon duration and random boons every 10sec plus the ability to spread them out).
The idea behind the build is using Staff skills to keep condies on enemies and let the Berserker and the Warlock do the damage. I don’t really care about condie damage, I just use them to increase Warlock damage, and the Berserker also add cripple (that is damage and +10% for the Warlock attack).
Warlocks use to hit 1,7k-7k (depends on crits + condies on my target) and can even hit 10-12k on bosses (ty Necros :P), that means 30k-36k with 3 Warlocks out (20-24k are more often reachable).
Mobility: rune of Traveler (25% perma-speed), Staff 5 (4sec swiftness random is not much effective, but can help), 15sec swiftness random from SoInspiration, Phase Retreat and Blink (maxed with FRM and MoM = 1.200 units every 24sec).
20/20/30/0/0 (3 traits for signets, 2 for manipulation, 2 traits to fasten CS and Staff). That’s all I need to go.