Guild Wars 2

Firebrand
The axe autoattack chain is a pure PvE condi stacking. I tried axe in PvP and it’s really bad. Skills #2 and #3 are great though. I like the AoE daze and the pull works great. It’s just you pull the enemy and then what… you have to swap weapons to do any damage but axe is the only condi weapon so. Players are not PvP testing golems.
Unrelenting criticism This trait limits the pool of weapons to axe only. Is it possible to make it: Your attacks have 33% to apply bleeding…? Also please consider adding a blast finisher to Weighty Terms. Every tome has a combo field but no way to blast them without stowing the tome.

Mysticjedi.6053:

Kind of more of the same.

Tomes feel really important to the specialization and so should work more like elementalist attunements with a shorter cooldown. Maybe have pages charge in some way.

We can’t have such powerful skills on so short CD. Otherwise tome skills would be nerfed into oblivion. If I have to choose I choose to have a powerful skill on long CD rather than a garbage one on a short CD.

Axe
I gotta admit it feels incredibly clunky (in PvP). AA chain doesn’t really deal that much condition damage. I went for a marauder amulet instead of a viper one and it actually felt better.

On the other hand Axe #3 – Blazing Edge is very effective.

I saw people complaining on Symbol of Vengence. It’s true it has long casting time but with Stoic Demeanor trait it is possible to combo it with Blazing Edge. Pull into daze. Besides that Symbol of Vengence is an AoE 180~240 radius Daze. I think people don’t yet realize how strong it is especially when you can grant yourself Quickness and Might via Potent Haste and shorten the casting time.

Mantras
Can’t say much about them except the simple fact… mantras are fun to use.

Tomes
I have mixed feelings about them. On the one hand entering combat with tome already active helps a lot: unexpected pull, protective bubble, stability. But besides that tomes are mostly useless skills on the skillbar. You can’t use them in 1v1. Same if you get caught in the teamfight. If you don’t cancel your tome you’re dead.

Suggestions
I have in mind some trait changes.

1. Archivist of Whispers is not a match for other two traits in the Major Adpet traitline. A slight change can make it viable as well as improve the usage of tomes.

Archivist of Whispers

Your Virtues gain additional pages. Take reduced damage while casting a tome skill.

Additional Charges: 3
Damage Reduced: 20%

2. Canceling your tome without really utilizing it feels bad. The important part is that you have to stove your tome and not use all the pages. Additionally Swiftness will allow you to relocate.

Loremaster / Quick Learner

Tome skills get reduced recharge. Retain Virtues passives while they are on cooldown. Gain health for every unused page and place a Lesser Symbol of Swiftness while stowing your tome.

Recharge Reduced: 33%
Healing per unused page: 150

3. Each of the tomes has a combo field: fire, water, light. But there is no way to blast them on your own. Weighty Terms could change final charges of Firebrand’s mantras into blast finishers. Because right now there is no actual incentive to use/waste a final charge.

Weighty Terms

The final charge of your Mantra skills inflict immobilize and cause a blast. Mantras gain reduced recharge.

Immobilize (2s): Unable to move.
Recharge Reduced: 20%
Damage: 850
Combo Finisher: Blast

edit.

After 20 more PvP matches I have to say I got used to the tomes. Though my statement hasn’t changed for a tome to be effective it has to be actvated before the combat starts. Tome of Justice offers good damage even if you don’t use Viper’s Amulet. After all I think Firebrand is the most balanced spec among the GenII elite specs. It’s certainly not broken.

I don’t know if it’s Firebrand only or a general bug, but Zealous Scepter trait doesn’t provide that 1 stack of might when your SoJ procs while playing as Fireband and wielding weapon different than scepter. (it works fine for scepter though)

No, you are right.

If you use Firebrand’s trait which reduces the tome recharge you will have them on: 20, 30, 60s CD. If you further reduce it by 15% via Virtues trait line it’s: 17, 25, 50s. Tome of Justice seems pretty good on 17s CD.

Don’t like the idea. Mounts are unique this way: slight delay, no strafing. I don’t want them to feel generic. Why does it happen so often in GW2 that instead of learning the new movement patterns people want more of the old ones…

Whatever you do please do not change the mount’s movement delay. Right know with the delay it feels very natural and completly different than running/gliding.

Well, think that the main support capabilities this spec has are containet in tome #5 skills:

We need burst: tome of justice >>> #5 >>> #2 >>> deactivate
We need healing: tome of resolve >>> #5 >>> #4 >>> #3 >>> spam #1
We need stability: tome of courage >>>#5>>> spam #1

I expect Firebrand to be a more situational support.

Except the fact that Spirit Weapons are to most useless skill type in the game and a ton of traits that grant Retaliation on proc and nothing more. Other than that guard is in a good spot.

PS. I bet if they released the data on the most and least popular skill types Spirit Weapons would be closing that list.

I would rather prefer them to rework some Aegis related traits.

For example:
Instead of getting Retal on Aegis proc…
Gain 250 barier on each Aegis proc. Including Aegis you grant to your allies.

Yeah, there is no problem. Firebrand has the purity of purpose. I can see axe/torch being popular in low PvP tiers insane cleave and 3,5s of slow every 5s thanks to axe #2 and #3. More tome oriented builds in higher PvP tiers. Other than that it has a huge raid and fractal potential. Come on a mantra (healing skill) which gives aegis to nearby allies and can be casted 3 times in a row. And of course Quickness. It does look good.

I have mixed feelings on the Mantra of Liberation. Looks like a “Stand Your Ground!”. But with 2 charges, twice higher CD and you have to channel it again out of combat. A bit too weak for the elite. The only upside for me is the ability to cast it again real quick if your stability was stripped.

PS.
Radius
Mantra of Liberation: 300 < “Stand Your Ground!”: 600

Extra pips for being outnumbered doesn’t break the balance. People who have the outnumbered buff are incentivised to roam. It prevents people from ragequtting out of the map.

This attitude though. ANet gives extra rewards and a few days leater complaining starts yet again.

RabbitUp.8294:

-Battle Presense: Maintain the passive effect of your virtues when you activate them. Activating a virtue increases the duration of boons currently on you by 2 seconds.

I like it by choosing to maintain the passive effect of your virtues you have to resign from picking either Permeating Wrath or Indomitable Courage. Which would make this trait balanced.

Those changes would make Virtue of Justice broken when it comes to potential future elite specs.

I only agree that Battle Presence is really underwhelming. I get that this is meant to be a fun trait. But it’s just a worse version of Writ of Persistence.

Perhaps ANet should merge Absolute Resolution with Battle Presence like they did with Permeanting Wrath.

Virtue of Resolve’s effect passive is stronger and can be shared with nearby allies. Activating Virtue of Resolve removes 3 conditions from nearby allies.

What about impacting the PvP/PvE meta by adding some missing healing & elite skills? Are there any plans too add those skills in the future?

Blaeys.3102:

It definitely needs to happen for a lot of reasons – from accessibility to story to keeping raids more relevant for larger groups of people. Most of these points have been raised MANY times in the past year. It really is in the hands of the devs now.

Be wary, however – the general reaction to these topics in this particular subforum is often less than cordial. The general strategy is often to shame (“its already easy – you must suck at the game” style comments) or insult people asking for this until they give up.

With that in mind, I am glad to see the topic resurfacing on a regular basis. It’s important that developers know there is a desire for this in the game’s community – despite the trolling and attempts to shut the conversation down.

Except the fact that the conversation was nailed by the Raid Team long time ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/A-Suggestion-For-Raids/first#post6403471

A lot of new people is just not aware of the mechanics other that attacking the target with #1 skill and occasionally dodging.

In my opinion ANet should further rework the starting zones. Add more tutorials.

We have already seen the Dodge Tutorial. The important part of it is the map icon. But dodging in and out is not enough. There should be more. An NPC that would explaing to the new players that they have to observe opponent’s animations and dodge when the attack is comming. And also explain them that dodge is not the only option.

Combat Movement Tutorial- teaching players about the reduced movement speed while in combat, skill range and avoiding attacks by getting out of range (That’s really simple to make. Just draw two lines on the ground. One where the attacks hit you and one where you are out of range.), showing them how they can simply preemptively move out of the AoE fields instead of dodging also this guide has to explain what the Line of Sight is and how to hide behind the objects.

Blocking Tutorial- already in game, but avaible mostly for human characters. In the Township of Claypool you can take part in the training that will teach you when to block and when to attack when your opponent is not blocking. Sadly this is only a part of the Renown heart and does not have a special map icon also this tutorial is not avaible in other starting zones. That’s a shame since it provides a perfect solutions: You pick an environmental weapon shield/sword so classed that might not have access to the blocking skills at the start of the game can still learn how to block. Also it has a voice-over.

ConditionTutorial- teaching players about the damaging & movement imparing conditions. Player should be able to pick an environmental weapons offering different skills. Also it requires a map icon & voice-over.

BreakbarTutorial - same thing

There is more: reflecting, jumping over the tidal waves & shock waves.

And trust me it is not that much to learn for a new player.

Two things:

1. Map feels so much bigger because it has just two waypoints. It pushes the players to explore and do the events.

2. I quite like the ending of this episode and that “real” talk between our character and Braham. Up until now everyone basically agreed with our opinion as a commander. It was so unrealistic. I like it so much that finally the main characters of this story have their own ideas and they are willing to pursue their own goals. Like quaggan

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Why does Open world Pve have a monopoly on Legendary weapons locked behind it? Why does only that gamemode get this utility?

Only if they give Legendary Weapons through Other means. Right now each game mode sans WvW has at least 1 Legendary exclusive to it, with open world Pve having the biggest monopoly.

But WvW is PvE… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tatYahtANC0

Are you going to remove an old fractal and replace it with this one? Or you are you going to play with the order (position on the list) of fractals?

Ohoni.6057:

Well the reason I say less or no rewards is its kinda like the current fractal daily rewards. ascended armor and weapon boxes don’t drop out of t1 boxes, but out of t4. (Though with my luck I never get them, but that’s not the point, the all knowing wiki says it does.) So if they do add a easy mode (or tiered system) the “t1” wont give LI but the “t4” will. Make sense?

No, it doesn’t make sense. All that would do is encourage players to “train up” and do the hard mode version, but the entire point is to allow players who do not enjoy hard mode to not do hard mode. You shouldn’t have to do t4 Fractals unless t4 Fractals are something you actually enjoy doing. If you do enjoy t4 Fractals, then they should be the most efficient use of your time, but if you don’t, then you should be able to do t1 if you like, and still progress towards your eventual goals. There is no merit in having players doing content that they do not enjoy.

sorry but when i read that, for me it means that raid tier difficulty like fractals won’t happen, because raid were not developped with that in mind.

They didn’t have to be developed with tiers in mind for tiers to be implemented. They already have all the tools they need to copy/paste the raid, then tweak the bosses down slightly, then provide players access to these duplicate wings via the same UI they currently use to choose between raid wings. All the bits already exists, they just need to combine them.

We got here a clear info from a dev stating: “No tiered difficulties for raids” so just get over it.

Just so you know you are not a special snowflake or anything. Everyone who got into raids as a PUG = most raiders, who later formed guilds by just meeting other competent and knowledgeable people in raids had exactly the same experiences at the begining.

I spend 40 hours in Spirit Vale the week wing 1 was released (probably half of that on LFG). And at the end of the week I got the kill. With a group of random pugs. Back in the day there was no meta, no optimal team comps, no strategies, 0 knowledge about the mechanics. I was tanking the VG as a knight/berserker DH, because litteraly no one knew how to pull the VG correctly. We got to 33% hp on VG and then we got wrecked by the AoE damage because we had just discovered a new mechanic we had no idea about earlier.

And you think that raids are stressful when there are guides, training groups, VODs on YT and optimal builds & rotations on metabattle…

You seem to lack a lot of the first timer’s experience where you enter the raid witout any informations about the boss. You have to figure it out yourself. Except you read some guides watched some videos and you thought you were prepared. And in fact you had the knowledge but you didn’t have any real expereince in combat. You tried to just read the guide and learn everything at once instead of doing it step by step.

I might sound dumb, but I really appreciate those kind of experiences and I really, really think you had just jumped on a deep water without preparation.

PS. I also think that raid rewards are in a good spot because the last thing you want in any game mode PvP, WvW, Raids is a bunch of people joining in for an easy rewards. Raids reward you with an experience that’s the most important thing, ascended stuff and legendary armor should stay in the background.

This is a good time to bring up this VOD: Success and Failure in raids (before SV release).

An article like this and many others were to be expected after ANet revealed the features of Legendary Armor. People had an entire year to prepare for it and somehow there are still individuals who expect ANet to change their way of delivering Leg Armor… a year has passed and it hasn’t changed. More than that the expected ‘easy mode’ has not appeared, we got the exact recipes for legendary armor etc. ANet had plenty of time to change their philosophy and they didn’t maybe it means something?

Guild Wars 2 is not a casual game.
Though the leveling process in GW2 and the overall difficulty of the game is low it doesn’t mean that there should not be a part of the game that requires more effort to overcome it.

A good raid team won’t serve you a boss kill on a plate.
A lot of people believes that raids are not difficult, you just need a good team. Not true. Raids are difficult. Yeasterday I was on a training run with my guild. We had 7 expereinced players including me and 3 newbies. Even though we explained all the mechanics, covered all the canons, heavy bombs, provided vocal informations where to go etc. People still didn’t know what to do with the green bombs, they tried to dodge through the flamewall on Sabetha or they didn’t avoid it at all. After two hours of training we barely passed 75%.

Meta builds exist to help casuals.
Meta exist on the sole purpose to provide optimal builds, team comps and strategies not for the experienced 10-man groups, but for the casuals. As Derior said (not an exact quote): “In GW2 you can play however you want, but it doesn’t mean that you can complete everything however you want.”

Legendary Armor is a convenience item.
Someone here said that legendary armor has features which ascended armor doesn’t have – stat swapping and for that reason it is more useful for casual players than for actual raiders. Stat swapping via mystic forge (~20g) is much cheaper than crafting the legendary armor (~3000g). The second thing is what is a casual player going to do with the legendary armor? Is this player going to use it to farm Silverwastes or to AFK in LA showing that he wears some extraordinary gear? Or is he going to spend time in the testing area together with his team swapping stats and comparing the results to share them with the community? Which would later help casual players, because they didn’t need to experiment on their own and waste gold. BTW raid guilds have been doing that since the introduction of raids and with legendary armor it will become even easier. Sure, legendary armor is a convenience item, but it doesn’t mean that players so dedicated a year to obtain it deserve it less than players who have done nothing. Legendary items are useful for every player and those items are locked behind certain game areas to incentivise players into playing different game modes.

One more thing I’ve noticed.
I am fully aware that GW2Efficiency does not reflect the exact state of GW2 population. But it reflects a fair porion of the community – about 100k accounts. So we can easily check what portion of players has been preparing for legendary armor!? And I am not talking here about raid content. Legendary Armor requires a lot more than raiding. It requires Provisioner Tokens. https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.provisionerTokens

Barely 0,5 players have enough tokens to build a legendary armor… 0,5%! though obtaining this currency takes a few minutes of crafting and waypointing. There are more people having 1LI than people having 1 Provisioner Token.

I have no words. Is the effort to exchange 1 rare item for a token is really too much? Is this too ‘elitist’? Or is it too grindy, 5 minutes a day? Other excuses? Or is GW2 community simply getting lazy and expects devs to cater the community.

Raven.1793:

Most importantly, it puts an end to any arguments that the devs are not addressing the perceived inaccessibility of raids and makes a clear statement that the raids themselves will not be altered.

Devs did adress it in the Stronghold of the Faithful. Players provided a lot of feedback stating that Slothosor was to hard to be a 1st boss of the raid wing. Not too hard overall but too hard to be a 1st boss. So in the Stronghold of the Faithful they delivered easier bosses at the begining. Siege the Stronghold does not even feel like a real boss encounter, but fine it is a first encounter and it has a lot of interesting mechanics. Then Keep Construct, which is a very forgiving boss. He doesn’t deal a lot of damage. Plus a lot of the damage can be easily mitigated. The only difficulty here are ghosts which can’t connect. Using WSAD to keep them away is not hard. Xera is much harder than those two bosses, but still not as hard as Matthias.

All in all devs do listen too feedback, but they are not going to add tones of modes no one will play except they they will provide raids with the growing difficulty. Like the Stronghold.

Eponet.4829:

You seem to have missed the point completely, the issue isn’t that there aren’t enough facts to properly understand the story, but that the way it is presented makes the story significantly weaker.

There are player who simply choose to be involved with the story and seek for aditional informations and those players have much more insight. And there is a second group of players which chooses to play the story missions and be done with it. For those people story will alwas seem weaker. Not because it is weak, but because they chose to only to get the basic story. At any point they can go deeper into it.

At this point it’s not the way they presented it. It’s the way you see it, because you chose not be involved.

Eponet.4829:

you suddenly go from the White Mantle being almost complete unknowns to anyone that isn’t also a human, to them suddenly being everywhere and apparently major antagonists despite them never properly building themselves up as such, leaving the audience with almost no personal feelings towards them.

Where have you been for the last months?

The current events section has been setting WM all that time.

• Bandits and Inquest drop “Encoded Orders” with White Mantle logo on them!
• There are White Mantle propaganda posters in Kryta, which directly support Caudecus:“Minister Caudecus fights for us—get the rest of the council replaced!”, “Caudecus the Wise has gone to Divinity’s Reach to knock some sense into the council—three cheers!”
• Justiciar Bauer’s Memoirs makes it clear that Inquest have been working with the WM ever since Arah P2
• Other diaries confirm that bandits at Fort Vandal were not just a random bandits but a White Mantle agents.
• Lost Badges found in Silverwastes.

All a regular player has to do is to think a little and connect the obvious facts. I quess it is too hard to read the three avaiable diaries in Bloodstone Fen and then deduce that the actual story is wider than anyone could expect. It touches on seemingly unimportant events like Inquest making reserch on Mursaat in Arah P2.

It’s an insanely good storytelling. It makes players go to that old places like Caudecus’s Manor and Arah. It adds more meaning to those stories.

After reading your comments I clearly see that you decided not to connect any facts. Shame.

Eponet.4829:

The issue isn’t that the story is impossible to understand, it’s that they just assumed that the audience had already played the raids, and designed the story around that, then threw in exposition dumps as afterthoughts for everyone else.

Forsaken Thicket story:
1. Find and save Pact Squad.
2. Find and save Bennett.
3. Finish the local WM leader.

Bloodstone Fen story:
1. Pursue Caudecus.
2. Pressume that Caudecus caused the explosion and sucked up all the magic.
3. Learn that Caudecus is actually a White Mantle confessor and he’s not crazy like everyone else down there on the ground so he wasn’t affected by the explosion.
4. Lazarus appears.

Two completly different stories. They designed Bloodstone Fen the way Forsaken Thicket was designed. First you make it through the encounters then you have time to gather all the notes, read them and sum up the informations to learn what had really happened. There is a minimal amount of lore in the encounters and a ton of optional lore.

And all of sudden it is so difficult for people to understand that bloodstone explosion wasn’t caused by the events which happened in raid, it wasn’t caused by Caudecus. It was caused by a player character who killed Zhaitan and Mordremoth. It overloaded the Bloodstone, its ‘shell’ was damaged by the WM experiments which didn’t have place in raids and ultimately led to its explosion. The exlosion is a result of HoT’s story not raid’s story. There is nothing about it in raid. All the informations come from NPCs and notes in Bloodstone Fen.

And also they didn’t assume that audience already went though the raid, because Bennett has two different sets of dialogs. One for players who managed to save him and the other for players who didn’t play the raid.

It’s amazing how much people think they know.

SkinnyT.5382:

I have been playing guild wars since 2006…
Never did I need fall into a META, in order to defeat a boss. Until now.

So you want to tell me that you have never used this website with META builds?
http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/PvX_wiki

I don’t buy it.

Getting your first Ascended Armor from raids is a pretty bad idea, because you need one to keep up with your team. Buying Ascended stuff with Magnetide Shards works well only if you really want to have an alt profession to raid with.

By the way to get full Ascended Set for druid or any other profession you would need 2300 shards which is 16 weeks of raiding (assuming you get 150 shards every week) and about 100 gold. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scholar_Glenna

I am sure you could get your ascended set faster by farming hard wood logs and selling it. I earn about 150g weekly by doing this so it would take me about 6 weeks to have enough gold for an ascended set. Or maybe less than that.

That level of sarcasm though… My favourite achievement so far.

Raids were never meant to be easy. Raids were even planned to be a guild only content. ANet though that this content would be so hard that only experienced guild teams will be able to make it thourgh. Full-ascened no exceptions etc.

Why would they like to make easy mode when:

• More players than they have ever expected plays raids. They didn’t expect that PuGs can organize, talk about team compositions, traits and specific tactics, because you can kill the boss using multiple tactics.
• Players manage to kill bosses wearing Exotic/Rare gear.
• Players manage to kill bosses in the 4,5,6,7,8,9-man groups.
• Challenge motes are not so hard after all.
• Players organize teaching runs, create guides and give tips on forums and reddit.

Raid Team talking on raids before HoT release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FUkGRxuxV0&index=31&list=PLDCvogxNKN3nyxCvzZLKShAQEzlSTOfmO

Raid community after only 8 months works better than any PvP or WvW community. I don’t see any teaching runs for PvP or WvW. If you go there you have to learn everything yourself. Even in fractals. While raid community offers planty of opportunities to learn how to raid and how to better utilize your profession.

Players managed to overcome all the impossible things, challenge motes and created their own hard mode by decreasing number of players in squad or using Masterwork/Rare/Exotic gear. That doesn’t look like a content which needs an easy mode.

Ohoni.6057:

People are defending raids so much (including me) because everyone wants envoy armor without playing raids which is unfair towards raiders because then all the effort to get the LI would mean nothing.

No, it wouldn’t, and it’s sad that you would feel that way. The effort to earn the Legendary armor your way would have already been fully compensated. At minimum, you would have the armor for months before any easy mode players could get it, because you’d have a huge head start, and be taking the shortest route. That’s reason enough.

But more importantly, you’d be playing a mode that you claim to enjoy, and that is all the reward you should EVER need for it. If all you care about is having armor that few other people have, then I sorry, that’s an immensely selfish motivation, and you should never be rewarded for that.

If I didn’t enjoy raids I would not play them. But I am not afraid to say that I am playing raids to get Legendary Armor. I set this goal for myself when I first time watched members of Raid Team on Guild Chat or maybe it was a footage from some Twitch event stating that raids are going to be the ultimate difficulty PvE content and this content will reward players with Legendary Armor progression. I told myself that I want to be a part of the hardcore group of players which would manage to clear raid wings consistently. I would never expect that it will take me less than a few hours to clear all Forsaken Thicket bosses. But I didn’t sit on the forum and beg ANet for easy raids I spent hours in the raid zone instead. I invested gold into the gear and food and a lot of time into practice.

And here I am only 2 weeks away from 150+ LI. After that I am still going to raid and gain more and more experience. So my selfish desires motivated me to play raids and rewarded me with the possibility of crafting the Envoy Legendary Armor while your selfish desires motivated you to cry on forum and rewarded you with nothing.

Sykper.6583

I am not saying that your idea is bad I even think otherwise.

Put an “accessible” set of different Legendary Armor outside raids.

Sure, I think that every game mode deserves a different legendary armor. And if you want the certain armor you have to play that game mode. People are defending raids so much (including me) because everyone wants envoy armor without playing raids which is unfair towards raiders because then all the effort to get the LI would mean nothing.

Sykper.6583:

I got a decent proposal.

- Let’s have Arenanet do this ‘lore’ based instance of the raid, tuned down with rewards similar to what we get from doing LS achievements. Put the LS/Expansion teams on it, Raid team and their dedicated resources are not involved.

- Put an “accessible” set of different Legendary Armor outside raids.

Boom, done.

Boom, everybody learns that legendary armor costs ~3500gold. Armor still stays unaccesible to the majority of the community. Nothing changes.

One thing changes though:
People complaining about the 150LI requirement and raid accesibility.
People complaining about 300 Provisioner Tokens and 4800 T6 materials requirement. Because everybody thinks that legendary armor is free if you play raids.

What!? I have been raiding since the Spirit Vale release – 8 months and I am currently standing at 139LI. I still need 2 more weeks to complete my preparations for legendary armor and you think that 4 months is a lot?

I am all in for the 150 LI requirement = less people buying raids.

I also can’t agree to any of your 1-3 propositions. You basically want to farm insights.
I can see all the AFK people on WvW and on guild arenas on PvP – “Join red team for LI farm”. Adding LI to PvP and WvW reward tracks is unfair towards the people who raid for months to get the LI. Reward Tracks have nothing to with raids and also nothing difficult in them it’s a pure farm.

Basically this thread turned into “Ohoni thinks that all the rewards should be avaible for everyone starting with raid rewards, because this is a game not the real life and in a game you shouldn’t work towards something. It should be handed to you on a plate.”

Now in response will I get a short anecdote about cookies? Or maybe about work?

edit: It’s a shame there is no reward for crying on forums. How can you expect to be taken seriously by devs, by anyone if all your ideas are subjective: I don’t want to play raids, but I want the rewards. I want the rewards…

You restrain yourself from playing raids, because you foolishly belive that ANet will one day send a free Legendary Armor set to you?

I’ve seen that Mini Llama, which was a reward for a Proffesional PvP Players can be now bought by everyone who managed to play a few games in PvP and reached Emerald Rank.
That’s a shame though. Previously you could see that this guy accomplished something, because he had Mini Llama. Now everyone can have it and no one wants it because it’s worthless. Why would you like to have something everyone already has? I don’t really understand why ANet had taken away this small sign of prestige from proffesionals.

I am concerned even more, because Queen’s Gauntlet is around the corner. I hope ANet will add a differend miniature than Mini Liadri this year. Mini Liadri is the most prestigious miniature in PvE outside of the raid miniatures.

People who own it managed to beat Liadri:

• without the ascended gear,
• without three full trait lines,
• without OP elite specs.

It would be unfair towards those people if the miniature could be obtained by using “the powercreep elite specs”. And after that all the prestige would be gone.

Same for me. This bug blocks the collection’s progress. Separatist event does not end and kill the giant event does not start.

Auramancer can cover reflects while attuned to Earth. Every single player will get Magnetic Aura.

• Staff – Magnetic Aura,
• Dagger/Warhorn – Sand Squall,
• Aftershock,
• Rebound,
• Overload Earth.

Plenty of reflects. No one would need Wall of Reflection in a 5-man raid.

Currently you can’t be sure that everyone will get the Magnetic Aura, so WoR works better, but in 5-man group there is a 100% chance that every single party member will be affected by the Magnetic Aura.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

There is never enough damage. Commander chronotank gonna be a thing.

I have forgotten how crucial Chronomancer is for Matthias and Sloth.

Is this how the mentality of the mass works?

A few days ago there was a ton of posts about how meta is important in raids and that casual players who spend their lives on playing general PvE can’t access raids because they don’t feel like following the meta . You can read any thread touching on raids and you will find people saying something exacly like this. But all of sudden it’s no longer a problem the 10-man raid squads are.

Imagine 5-man raid party and then think about the meta.

NO CLASS COMPOSITION DIVERSITY

Meta party composition if we had 5-man raids:

• PS,
• Tempest,
• Tempest,
• Druid (tank),
• Chronomancer, because this class offers more DMG than Revenant due to quickenss and alacrity and with 2 elementalists there would be enough damage even without increased boon duration.

This would be the most optimal composition for almost any of the bosses.

Other classes can forget about being taken into raids. We would rarely see a necromancer and a revenant. But classes like: guardian, engineer and thief wouldn’t be taken into raids.

Think about that. 5-man raids would not only cause the creation of meta builds for raids, but also a strict party composition.

I’m pretty sure that changing the build to go into raid is easier for a casual player than creating a completly new profession + getting an ascended gear only to try out raids.

Of course full-ascended gear would be always required. In a 5-man group each person would be even more responisble for DPS so losing 5% of your stats makes much bigger deal in a 5-man group than in a 10-man group. There would be less people to cover the DPS loss.

PS. A lot of raid related discussions quickly goes off-topic. I wish to remind you that this discussion is not about “tiered difficulties” or any other similar ideas. I urge the group of people who argue about the same thing in every raid related topic to stay away from this one. Thank you.

edit: I misplaced mesmer with revenant.

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

What would prevent her – or someone as powerful as her – from just carting a bunch of bloodstone shards into DR?

After all, with the barrels of bloodstone shards being shipped about (or so the raid wings imply), isn’t that what the White Mantle are doing already?

Logistics. A full-on frontal assault would be impractical. Sure, they could run caravans full of bloodstone shards, I suppose, but I think they’d be overwhelmed by the Seraph and players before they’d break through the city defenses.

Could they sneak in barrels over time? Maybe. But it wasn’t their priority. Xera was doing something very specific in the raid, and all her resources were focused on its completion.

I have thought she prefers to work silently, because of an other, more strategic reason.

If White Mantle wants to rule the Kryta they have to play nice. Of course no one knows that they are kidnapping people, taking valuable informations out of them and then taking their lives. No one survives to tell the story, so it’s cool. They don’t want to be seen as an opressors because then the population of Kryta would most likely rally against them. The same story as in Guild Wars. People had liked them until they learnt the truth. So the full-blown open war is a lost cause. They have to use propaganda to win this political battle – White Mantle posters added in the recent patches. If it is not enough? No problem. They can dress like a bandits, attack the Krytan settlements and then when all hope is lost the White Mantle would come together with some briliant ideas/reforms from Caudecus to save the day. It would be enough to get the support of the citizens of Kryta.

PS:
I like how the Guild Wars 2 story in the expansions is darker than the core personal story. And then the story in Forsaken Thicket is even more ominous.

Edit: typo

Anhim.3156:

I had the issue two weeks in a row, submitted a ticket and after they confirmed my KC kill they gave me the item. Not a bug fix, but at least a way to get your item.

Well, thanks. I decided to post it on forums first. Because I thought that it will be adressed, but I still can’t see anything about it in the Known Issue Tracker’s list. It might not be a bug, but this item still doesn’t appear to be working properly. After a third attempt to loot it I did what you adviced.

It seems ley line energy is able to create a completly new forms of life when it leaks out. The coalescences are clearly alive like sparks. The latest living world events revealed to us beings very similar to Vale Guardian – Ley Line Anomalies.

Well they are not exactly like Vale Guardian.
One significant difference we can easily observe is that Ley Line Anomalies use to roam like crazy all over the maps. While Vale Guardian doesn’t want to leave his boss area. Or does he? They also consume magic, but later about that.

Why doesn’t the Vale Guardian simply do the same?
It seems that Vale Guardian is none different than anomalies we can fight currently in Gendarran Fields, Iron Marches and Timberline Falls. Except it is unable to roam freely. Let’s start the speculations! Every time we get the boss down to 66% and 33% it disappears. Well, I would say it tries to escape. After the CC phase Ley Line anomalies clearly appear to be scared. They use /cower emote, then they run, they don’t want to fight stright on. Let’s go back to the Vale Guardian. Later its energy is manifested as the Blue Guardian, Red Guardian and the Green Guardian. So does it split intentionaly or maybe its energy is being stopped by the three different pillars we can see placed around the boss area. Vale Guardian is basically forced to fight. When we destroy the boss we also break the pillars and allow the ley line energy to flow freely. It’s no longer trapped in the area.

What about the trash mobs before the boss?
It seems that energy which leaked from the pillars outside of the ring creates a lesser ley line anomalies.

Who did build the pillars?
We know exactly that White Mantle members did it a long time ago. Bandits want to rebuild them but they don’t know how so they want to ship some extra barrels of bloodstone shards to buy this knowledge.

Is defending the Vale the real role of Vale Guardian?
Bandits think that Vale Guardian is there to protect them. It’s kinda true But is it all?
Hey you know we have our master Lazarus here and he needs a lot of magic so… we don’t want any anomalies to drain it. It might be a little silly from my side because anomalies are made of ley line magic and we also can see ley lines all over the Forsaken Thicket, but it might have a little sence. Not only they captured an anomaly to protect them, but they also prevented it from suking up the magic they need for Lazarus.

Well one thing I don’t know is why we are even fighting the ley line anomalies?
At the begining Priory, Consortium and Inquest wanted to make reserch on coalescences, but now we are simply killing the anomalies. They don’t seem to be hostile though. And what’s the point of killing them? We kill the anomaly, it released the magic and then another anomaly will be created from this magic. That’s pointless.

Edit: One more thing. Are ley line anomalies protecting the natural order?
Do they try to stabilize the ley lines after the death of Mordremoth? Is it a safety mechanism… maybe we shouldn’t be killing them then. Well Vale Guardian was the first known anomaly and it appeared in the Forsaken Thicked because this place was already imbued with high amount of magic. It was trapped inside the pillars. But now lesser anomalies appear all over the world to consume magic which leaks from the ley lines.

Hi there!

Last week after beating the Keep Construct I didn’t get Spirit Strings item even though I had the buff on myself when we were killing the boss, but I also had auto loot turned on. As i learned later auto loot might had been an issue.

So this week I’ve followed the instructions on wiki. I turned off auto loot, reaplied the poison before opening the boss chest… and I still didn’t get it.
I’ve seen similar threads on reddit, but I can’t see anything about it here: Known Issue Tracker

edit: typo

Existance of the White Mantle was revealed even earlier in the human personal story. Why we don’t complain about it? Why it’s only for humans? Maybe my sylvari want to experience it as well? Maybe I don’t have enough character slots to create a human and experience it? It’s all sarcasm of course. But it’s none different than saying that only raiders can interract with the White Mantle.

Yep it’s as Walhalla says. If someone wants to experience the fight he can just go for the training run. Many of training raids are only to teach mechanic of the boss not to beat it and players don’t need ascended armor for it, exotic is enough. Everyone can experience the fight.

I do raids for the story and for the LI, fancy titles, exclusive skins, miniatures and everything else it offers. And I really read everything and interact with everything. I run with my Spirit Quest Tonic here and there looking for some hints. Glenna’s Journal has more informations about Spirit Vale and Salvation Pass than you can find by doing those wings. But you have to read it all. Why you can’t understand that reading books and interacting with objects is a way to experience story in raids.

I am a lore freak. I try to find out everything I can about events, characters etc. If I can’t do it in game I look for more on reddit on wiki. And there is nothing wrong with learining about the raid’s story from this sources of from cleared instances.

I bet majority of players that love story so much didn’t know that:

Silverwastes map revealed it 1,5 year ago – [Lost Badge] White Mantle was teased a long time ago as well as connections between bandits from Brisban Wildlands and White Mantle members from Silverwastes. Just read the notes in bandit camps (Brisban) and notes in Silverwastes they are talking about the same things: unsusual events & further observations.

But they keep saying that White Mantle was revealed in raids. And that is incorrect!

Well not in raids. Story in raids is gated between the encounters.

Stronghost of the Faithful:

• Glenna sums up the events.
• McLeod encounter.
• Then you can explore the stronghold and interact with objects.
• Keep Construct encounter.
• Then you can explore the Twisted Castle (nothing in there, but you can play inside even in the cleared instance).
• Xera encounter.
• You can explore Temple of The Awakening and interact with object. All the dialogs here come from Glenna and from interacting with the objects. And you don’t even need to read your character will comment on it.