Guild Wars 2

Adry.7512:

People dont want the do raids if it is a mission to qualify for it. People dont want to do raids if the pre-reqs are annoying to accomplish. People want to do raids for two things….a deep quest into the game’s lore, and a really cool environment to explore. GW2’s raids dont really provide enough of those to thing, considering the requirements to even participate in it. I just dont find it interesting. Guys, I know that you’re experimenting….but you desperately NEED a format…..this game’s players are sick and tired of your experiments. You can come up with a format, so come on. This game needs to be at least 70% figured out and steady, while 30% of the game’s resources/time is being used for “experiments”. You did do a good job with raids, but its no where near what it should be. The difficulty isnt whats wrong, its the requirements to participate that are wrong…..also the environment is not very fantastic….except the final boss…THAT was cool.

No and no. Most raiders do it for the challenge. I know I do, and my entire static as well. In fact if Anet perfectly nailed the two aspects of raiding you claim would make raiding better, but made them far easier, most of us wouldn’t do them.
Secondly, I love the raiding environments, the only place currently on par with them in my mind is Bloodstone Fen which just looks fantastic. All in all, raids are one of the best things about this game, and saying the problem is “requirements” is incredibly vague. Do you mean getting ascended armor? The masteries? Or are you referring to the fact that it’s difficult to get into a group with enough LI/kill proof?

Seriously guys, it needs to be a laptop, I’m on the move a lot. I can’t lug around a big tower and monitor every day.

Sytherek.7689:

Nilkemia.8507:

Was it prebuilt or custom built?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015PYYDMQ?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00

Oh thank you, I’ll look into this one! Other suggestions would be appreciated as well.

For those of you telling me to build a desktop, I’m on the move a lot. Like, a lot. I probably should have specified, but please don’t recommend desktops.

Hello forum, I’ve decided to buy a new laptop for HoT since my FPS drops to 1 every time I enter any of the new zones. I don’t know much about laptops, so I was wondering if you guys could help me find a laptop with the following prerequisites (or as many of them as possible).

First, I’d like it if no matter where I went in Guild Wars 2 I could keep at least 30 fps (hopefully more), even if I’m at the top of Verdant Brink fighting the wyvern at max graphics settings.

Second, the computer room in my house unfortunately is next to the heater, which makes it rather warm throughout the day. Because of this, I need a laptop with a very reliable and powerful cooling system.

Third, I’d like to spend as little money as possible on this laptop after buying it. In other words, a laptop with a good charger/battery that won’t bust in a few months.

Fourth, and here’s the tricky one, my budget is $1500.

Alright, that’s just about it for my brand new laptop. Sorry if I sound a little pushy about what I need, I just really want to get this right the first time :P thanks in advance!

I just got 10 stacks and got a bonus chest with 10 blooms. One bloom per stack? Is this real?

Your q is definitely bugged, I’ve been playing all day with 1-3 minute queues. Anet, plz lock post now.

BrickFurious.7169:

I’ve found that even 1 person on defense, either using the treb or aoe’s, can interrupt this “speed meta”. The doorbreakers die pretty easily to player attacks.

No they don’t XD not unless you’re squishy enough to get instantly downed by the enemy players. That’s the problem with SH right now, it’s not a “speed meta” it’s a “doorbreaker rush” meta. Doorbreakers simply have too much health for defending to be worth it.

Sunshine.5014:

Capitol City.4856:

I did try that, that’s why I made this post. When you defend, you have two options: go tanky so the enemy players beating on you while you attack doorbreakers don’t instantly down you, or: go glass cannon so you can take out the doorbreakers quickly.

Your guard instant down door breaker in one hit. And they attack other players too. Then you have the door to go in and out. Defending just have so much advantage, I’m not sure why you have problem with it. Unless you’re severely outmanned, I don’t see how you lose an equal fight defending.

The guards are dead as soon as the players walk out of the spawning area, unfortunately. That’s part of the problem with doorbreakers, their counter is dead before it counters.
As for the treb, I agree, I think if people learned how to use it, they could use it fairly effectively.

Number 3 is exactly why I made another post on here just a little while ago. I agree, defending is useless, just rush lord and hope your team does more damage then theirs.

I did try that, that’s why I made this post. When you defend, you have two options: go tanky so the enemy players beating on you while you attack doorbreakers don’t instantly down you, or: go glass cannon so you can take out the doorbreakers quickly.

If you go with the first option, the doorbreakers just ignore you and bust down the door. If you go with the second option, the enemy players burn right through you and kill you before you can kill the doorbreakers. And if you turn your attention to the enemy players instead of the doorbreakers, you might be able to ward off the players but then the doorbreakers have still easily and quickly broken right through your door. Defending is just a bad idea in all three of these circumstances.

I’ve been playing Stronghold today, and I’ve only done six or seven matches so I can’t say this with certainty, but it appears that there’s no point in defending because of the doorbreakers. In most of my games everyone opens by rushing door breakers with their first supply, and then run straight towards the enemy gates. I think this game is suppose to be set up so that 2 or 3 go to attack, and the rest defend, so that there’s some kind of interaction between teams, but doorbreakers have quite a bit of health and do a ton of damage to the gates, and so in just about every game I’ve played nobody goes to defend. The exception is if they enemy has gotten to your lord, then a few players will turn around to stop the enemy, but other than that and mist essence teams to fight each other because defending is so futile. Are my teams just as noobish as I am or are doorbreakers too OP to bother defending? You guys tell me.

Challenging PVE content? Pffft, it’s not like people have been asking for that since launch or anything…

Mobility IS the problem, slipping is NOT the solution XD

As for endurance being reduced when using a mobility skill or dodge, that’s not the worst idea in the world. Interestingly enough, in the beta for Guild Wars 2, there was an energy system that all skills took part in, and dodging just removed a large chunk of this energy. In the final version, as we can see, energy costs were completely removed from abilities and now dodging is the only energy consumer.
It’s sad that this game’s pve only allows one stat set for optimal builds, But the answer to this is simpler than an energy overhaul. What really needs to happen is that enemies need to hit faster. Currently everyone can run glass cannon builds and get away with it because of aegis, blind, and dodging. If enemies had quick moderate attacks instead of incredibly slow powerful attacks, characters would aegis, dodge, blind, and still run out of ways to avoid damage. This is a problem that I think they’re addressing in HoT, they’ve talked about more intelligent AI and now the introduction of the new condition taunt. I believe they’re moving more in a direction of players needing more than just dps in their groups, which if they can do correctly, will open up other stat sets. Also, condi stat sets will come in handy if they correctly fix pve condition damage. So all in all, I don’t think we’re getting fixes to pve until the xpac, but when HoT does come it’ll likely take care of our stat set problem.

CureForLiving.5360:

Broken Arietta.4631:

Grind the Silverwastes for a chance at getting 1000g drops
Grind fractals for a chance at the fractal tonic
Grind fractals for a chance at the fractal weapon skins

Grind the Silverwastes for a chance at getting into the beta

So fed up of this.

Think this has come up a few times already, but here’s my take: grind – mandatory, needed for progress (level grinding, gear grinding etc). Farming – optional, needed to gain items not necessary for progression (skins, tonic etc.).
So you’re farming not grinding.

I like this, I’m saving it for later.

Will magic find help us find the portals that allow access to the new closed beta? :P I know some people would be frustrated by that, but personally I’m kind of itching to pop my collection of magic find boosters+food.

Kordash.2197:

One : Berserker is not a build, it’s a gear stat.

Mini “Facebook game” activities to do just while you’re pming someone or chatting with the guild would actually be really awesome. I’d love to see something like fishing in GW2.

They’ll never, ever do it, but I would love to be able to run faster It does feel slow at times, especially when you’re running from one place to the next and all the sudden some wild animal puts you in combat.

Guhracie.3419:

Ayrilana.1396:

Guhracie.3419:

Ayrilana.1396:

Guhracie.3419:

Ayrilana.1396:

Ashen.2907:

A company with high standards of ethical business practices would honor your request OP. Good luck, but do not hold your breath here.

No. Companies do not allow refunds whenever and for whatever reasons customers want. SAB is coming back in the future as has been stated by Anet. Currently the team that designed SAB are wrapped up in finishing the expansion. When they’ve finished, this will free them to work on other projects such as SAB.

Not that I actually expect anyone to address this, but anytime the developers don’t follow through with something they’ve said will or will not happen, people are reminded that developers are apparently not supposed to be accountable for what they say. Is this an exception to that mindset?

When have they not followed through with SAB? Have they ever release a schedule? I don’t remember them saying when we’d get world 3. Any dates or timeframes were entirely player created. It wasn’t until relevantly that we saw that post on the other forums that confirmed that the SAB team were currently working on the expansion and would not be able to work on SAB until after the expansion is released. No other dates were given.

I’m saying that anytime developers say anything about the game and people are unhappy when it doesn’t happen, the go-to response is that people are unreasonable for treating statements by developers as a “promise.” But now, suddenly, because they’ve said that SAB will be back, it means it absolutely will be back? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, “This is why developers don’t tell the players anything- because players expect them to mean what they say!” in one breath, and then in the next say, “But they said this content will be coming back, so calm down and trust them.”

Where has it been stated that what Anet says shouldn’t be a promise? I’ve seen this mentioned in a few other threads and never understood where it originated.

Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here …… Shall I go on?

That is an argument you do NOT want to start, Ayrilana, that’s been a bitter complaint against Anet for a while now XD their feedback/promises/lack of info is infamously bad.

Seera.5916:

Capitol City.4856:

Okay, for starters I’m not sure what you’re talking about with this play style A thing. I said if I want to change up my build to fit a different play style, that’s really too bad. And yes, I understand that there will always be only one or two viable builds per class, but right now all of those builds revolve around a single play style. I don’t like using WoW as an example because I really didn’t like a lot of the gameplay, but they did something very right imo. If you’re a warrior in WoW, and you want to play dps, there’s only 1 or 2 different builds for dps. But if you play tank, now there’s 1 or 2 MORE viable builds that still exist within the meta of maxing out dps. In Guild Wars 2, there’s only 1 or 2 builds, but only 1 role, so there’s no switching at all. If you play a class, you’re going to play that class one of two ways, and that’s it. And that gets boring after a while.
I’m not asking for hard roles. I like how I don’t have to dig for a healer every time a make a dungeon group, and as long as you’re not a necro you can jump in to any dungeon group you want to at this point. But is it actually impossible for Anet to make it so there are build variations outside of the one or two that have perpetually been there? I want to switch up my play style without being a detriment to my team, but that’s not possible right now.

Play style A is a placeholder for whatever play style a person has.

And no it’s not possible for there to not be a meta that includes just a few builds. Because there will ALWAYS be one build (or a few builds) that just does a specific thing better than other builds. It’s the nature of MMO’s. The only way to do it is to get rid of every class except one, remove all weapon sets but one, remove all utility, heal, elite skills, to 1 heal, 3 utility, and 1 elite, and remove traits. But who wants to play a game where everyone can do literally the exact same thing and there is absolutely no variety. It can’t be better than other builds because there are no other builds.

And if you don’t like playing the meta, then don’t play the meta. Don’t ask for the meta to change just because you don’t like the meta.

Make your own groups and state that anyone is welcome regardless of build choice.

I know I don’t play the meta. I don’t have the skills for it and no real desire to get them.

Well as I said, other MMO’s have build variety. This is specific to Guild Wars 2, otherwise it never would have become a complaint in the first place. I’m asking if there’s a way to have build variety without roles, which is what Anet tried and failed to do.

Ayrilana.1396:

Manuhell.2759:

Ayrilana.1396:

It was an item for content that had limited availability with no set release schedule. It was quite obvious back then. If you chose to ignore that then it’s not really Anet at blame here. They provided an item that gave infinite lives in SAB. Everyone that bought it made use of it during World 2’s release. Anet plans to release the next world in the future so it’ll be used again.

SAB was released two times in less than six months during the first 15 months since the launch of the game. If anything, it was “quite obvious” at the time to expect constant releases, especially after they put an item such as the ICC on the gem store.

And it is useless that you keep repeating that they plan to release the next world in the future. Words are just that, words. Until they become something more than that, they’re completely and utterly useless. Words won’t make that coin work. A release will. Maybe along with the hobosacks’ removal, since us engineers have been waiting for them for more than a year as well. Again, something that they were supposedly looking upon and that never saw the light of a release.

Two instances is not a trend. They also likely started on the expansion early 2014 so the people that did SAB were pulled to focus on that. They said that they will release it so they will. You may not like that their current focus is on the expansion but that’s how it is.

Yeah, we know that’s how it is, that’s why people are complaining :P that’s not a good way for things to be “how they are”. I appreciate your zealous defense for Anet right now, but as you can see a lot of people think they screwed up here with the whole SAB thing. A lot of people. Just go look over there at that forum thread about SAB.

Seera.5916:

Capitol City.4856:

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

It just makes builds kind of stale, it’s been a very very long time since I’ve seen a new PVE build that was better than the ones made a year ago.

Gear =/= Build. Each time they did good change to trait and skill they can create new build. Phalanx is a great example of that.

Capitol City.4856:

. It would be cool if healing, toughness, and condition damage meant something in dungeons, but for now they just don’t.

Condition Damage definitively. Toughness no way. Healing maybe, but not really.

Capitol City.4856:

And not being able to switch up your build is just not fun.

That’s on you. I use a lot of different optimal build for each situation like all the record and speed run community.

I’m aware that gear doesn’t equal build, but neither is really changing. We change builds based on situation, not on whether we want to change our style of play. That’s the real problem, if I was playing CoF and now I want to do Arah, I’ll switch things like time warp to mass invis and whatnot, but that’s not really a build change. That’s just changing abilities to fit a situation. What I’m saying is, I’m not changing what I do, just how I do it. If I’m playing a guardian and I said “I don’t really feel like running this damage build, I want to make a support build to help my team stay alive”… well too bad :P I mean I could, but strictly speaking I’m disabling my team as long as their skilled enough. I can either make a build to max out my dps, or make any skilled party perform worse because I didn’t do so. And once again, I still like PVE, this isn’t the worst thing in the world for me, I just find it unfortunate.

So someone who enjoys Play style A has to change up their play style because you hate that play style? People don’t change play styles. They change their builds to match their play style. And there are way too many play styles to count and there’s probably a unique one for every player.

Has it ever occurred to you that no matter what they do to change up the game, that there will always be just one or two builds for each class that are considered optimal? That the speed run groups in dungeons on the LFG will just ask for that new meta. Because their goal is to get through the dungeon as fast as possible. To go through as fast as possible requires optimal conditions, which in turn requires optimal builds.

And if a different gear set and/or a radically different trait set up is required for each and every dungeon, then you’ll have people only doing a handful of them. Because there’s too much in this game to memorize and no one wants to carry around or store several different sets of gear. Or be forced to play certain classes if they want to do X content because they split up the gear. Or the community will find one or two builds that does each aspect well enough for decent times and that becomes the meta.

Okay, for starters I’m not sure what you’re talking about with this play style A thing. I said if I want to change up my build to fit a different play style, that’s really too bad. And yes, I understand that there will always be only one or two viable builds per class, but right now all of those builds revolve around a single play style. I don’t like using WoW as an example because I really didn’t like a lot of the gameplay, but they did something very right imo. If you’re a warrior in WoW, and you want to play dps, there’s only 1 or 2 different builds for dps. But if you play tank, now there’s 1 or 2 MORE viable builds that still exist within the meta of maxing out dps. In Guild Wars 2, there’s only 1 or 2 builds, but only 1 role, so there’s no switching at all. If you play a class, you’re going to play that class one of two ways, and that’s it. And that gets boring after a while.
I’m not asking for hard roles. I like how I don’t have to dig for a healer every time a make a dungeon group, and as long as you’re not a necro you can jump in to any dungeon group you want to at this point. But is it actually impossible for Anet to make it so there are build variations outside of the one or two that have perpetually been there? I want to switch up my play style without being a detriment to my team, but that’s not possible right now.

jmt.8517:

I want a refund as well, I have put in numerous tickets in game for a refund, with no response what so ever.

Well if you saw the answer I marked for this Q&A, unfortunately refunds are officially and most likely 100% out of the question :/ if we want value out of our coin, we’re just going to have wait… like we have for the past two years.

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

It just makes builds kind of stale, it’s been a very very long time since I’ve seen a new PVE build that was better than the ones made a year ago.

Gear =/= Build. Each time they did good change to trait and skill they can create new build. Phalanx is a great example of that.

Capitol City.4856:

. It would be cool if healing, toughness, and condition damage meant something in dungeons, but for now they just don’t.

Condition Damage definitively. Toughness no way. Healing maybe, but not really.

Capitol City.4856:

And not being able to switch up your build is just not fun.

That’s on you. I use a lot of different optimal build for each situation like all the record and speed run community.

I’m aware that gear doesn’t equal build, but neither is really changing. We change builds based on situation, not on whether we want to change our style of play. That’s the real problem, if I was playing CoF and now I want to do Arah, I’ll switch things like time warp to mass invis and whatnot, but that’s not really a build change. That’s just changing abilities to fit a situation. What I’m saying is, I’m not changing what I do, just how I do it. If I’m playing a guardian and I said “I don’t really feel like running this damage build, I want to make a support build to help my team stay alive”… well too bad :P I mean I could, but strictly speaking I’m disabling my team as long as their skilled enough. I can either make a build to max out my dps, or make any skilled party perform worse because I didn’t do so. And once again, I still like PVE, this isn’t the worst thing in the world for me, I just find it unfortunate.

I’m a PVE player, and I don’t have a problem with active defense, I have a problem with the fact that only one stat set (assassins is just a variation of the same stats) is viable at the top level. It just makes builds kind of stale, it’s been a very very long time since I’ve seen a new PVE build that was better than the ones made a year ago. It would be cool if healing, toughness, and condition damage meant something in dungeons, but for now they just don’t. And not being able to switch up your build is just not fun. Broken? No. Could vital improvements be made? Definitely.

Ayrilana.1396:

Mirta.5029:

Ayrilana.1396:

No. Companies do not allow refunds whenever and for whatever reasons customers want. SAB is coming back in the future as has been stated by Anet. Currently the team that designed SAB are wrapped up in finishing the expansion. When they’ve finished, this will free them to work on other projects such as SAB.

you see it’s a really bad practice to say “you will be able to use our product sometime in the abstract future and that’s why we’re not handing out refunds”. If they said “in a year” people would be like “oh, okay”, however when they say “it’s not a priority”, then I’m sorry, but how long till you release existing content back? 6 years? 8 years?

If they’re not willing to give a date then they should be willing to give a refund.

It was an item for content that had limited availability with no set release schedule. It was quite obvious back then. If you chose to ignore that then it’s not really Anet at blame here. They provided an item that gave infinite lives in SAB. Everyone that bought it made use of it during World 2’s release. Anet plans to release the next world in the future so it’ll be used again.

Obviously it wasn’t “quite obvious” back then or people wouldn’t be complaining about it now. Nor would they be complaining about the lack of SAB in the first place, and they wouldn’t have been surprised that it wasn’t here by April 1st 2015. My question was already answered, it’s a bad answer, but answered nonetheless. The debate now is whether that should remain the answer.

On April first there was quite a bit of rage concerning the lack of SAB. As I said, I’m only slightly bitter about this, I really enjoyed the ol’ box but I like other aspects of GW2 enough to let Anet slide on this one :P
I am however a bit upset about the infinite continue coin. I bought it a while back (obviously) assuming I was making a long term investment, which I now realize was a mistake. If I’d known the money I was throwing at the screen was going into an item that would have value for less than a month… I wouldn’t have thrown money at the screen.

If the Super Adventure Box isn’t coming back for another year, and Anet knows this, is there a way to get refunded for the coin? I could use the gems on like minis or something else of lasting value. Thanks

Behellagh.1468:

You forgot the “crucifix” posture this close to Easter. Seen that used as a source of offense.

I think the fact this was back to back with the guild bank/mail limitations have hit the “games are serious business” crowd a little hard. They’ve already squeezed all resemblance of play out of … play.

Oh my gosh, crucifix? I never even saw that one…
The “games are serious business” crowd is silly, but usually they’re just over-dramatizing a valid point. This airplane accusation is so out of hand, it’s hard to believe. Crucifix? I can only pray those are trolls making those kinds of complaints.

Okay, apparently even if I try to space out the word, it’s still blocked on here, so I’m just going to link you the word so everyone knows why the edit is there :P https://www.google.com/search?q=arsenal&oq=arsenal&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i59l3j69i60l2.866j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8#q=define+arsenal

There are two big complaints that seem to have spawned from April Fool’s Day today, which is
One: That this airplane April Fool’s Day prank is insensitive to the plane crash that occurred recently in Europe and
Two: That the Super Adventure Box didn’t return.

The first one is absurd. The only semblance between the tragedy and the joke here is the word “airplane”. As many have pointed out, following that logic Arena Net would have to pull everything from guns to missiles, considering the number of tragedies that occur daily from just about every modern weapon Guild Wars 2 has programmed into their game. Should their be an option to turn off “airplane mode”? Probably, but only because of animation and skill functionality errors, not because of offences that take huge stretches just to invent in the first place.

The second complaint would be valid if we weren’t talking about Anet here. They unfailingly disappoint us when it comes to content output, from weak, lackluster updates to painstakingly long hiatuses. Their only real mistake here was not telling us that it wasn’t coming out after rereleasing the SAB pets, because I assume this is what gave so many people false hope about the return of the Super Adventure box. Don’t get me wrong, I love Guild Wars 2, and I’m not saying the game as a whole is weak. I’m just particularly harsh on their content updates, considering how poorly done they’ve been in the past.

This forum needs to calm down, especially about the April Fool’s joke. As for SAB, I feel as though we’re only justified in complaining about its lack of return in the past year, not that it didn’t return on this particular day. You’d have to have too much faith in Anet to truly believe that they’d deliver when we’d want them to.

Edit: Apparently the word kitten n a l is blocked here, so I’m just replacing it with the word game.

WoodenPotatoes just said on his most recent video that there WILL be an update this Tuesday, although he didn’t specify what kind (so it could just be another balance update, but I find that unlikely). Cross your fingers, everyone

If only you could salvage ascended gear… those useless rings you get in FotM would be super cool

I’m thinking, since we had that raid CDI a while back, that when the marionette makes a return that it’ll come back as a raid of some sort.

But back to the two original questions, has there been an update on this?

Veneratio.1980:

No Tuesday, news day?

I was kinda expecting some news about what we might be getting next week to tide us over.

Please be SAB. Please be SAB. Please be SAB.

Yeah, I don’t mind if the news was vague, I just thought they would have filled us in somewhat by now. I also suspect that if they’re going to release the SAB before HoT, they’ll save it for this April 1st.

I’m almost sure they will, I’m guessing it’ll probably come out with HoT or soon after. Unfortunately that doesn’t address the BEFORE HoT questions, which is why I made this thread :P

Vert.5041:

Rangelost.4857:

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are two completely different genres of games. You couldn’t shove a trinity system in the latter because the game is designed around allowing anyone to play both alone and with anyone else.

In the original Guild Wars, you can’t play alone. The game is built around always having a party at your side. If it’s not players, it’s henchmen. Running around without a healer is asking for punishment, and without a tank to get in the way, mobs will take out the healers first.

In Guild Wars 2, you’re rewarded for dealing damage only. You can specialize your character to become a pure healer, or a pure tank, and you can be very efficient at it, but in a group, you will get no loot whatsoever. Furthermore, trying to do some exploring on your own without being able to deal a descent amount of damage is going to get tedious, and fast.

And no, going “full out DPS” is not very helpful. Most people don’t understand that you need to be able to survive, and the “zerker meta” is far from ideal in most cases. After all, you don’t deal any damage when you’re dead.

Your sentiments might be valid if this was the first few weeks of release. I’m sure when people were discovering dungeons s for the first time they went with all sorts of set ups. After 2 years, full zerk dps is the best option because the game relies almost exclusively on active defense to stay alive and when you know the boss or the party knows and explain to you when to dodge/block/blind what use have you of stats like healing/vitality/toughness.

If you cannot survive in the zerk meta, it’s a simple situation of Learn 2 Play. Also even when you are zerk you can add a kitten ton of survivability by simply switching a few traits while you L2P.

Also, if you want to play a healer might I suggest engie or ele. Even in full zerk you can provide excellent healing Burts to teammates if you see they are about to down.

For tank, you can go with guardian or mesmer as they both provide excellent defense e utility in the forms of reflects and condition removal.

For dps, you can go warrior/ranger to provide things like banners, frost spirit, spotter…etc.

There’s your trinity, you have classes that use defensive/healing/offensive utilities while still putting out damage. The trinity hasn’t died but simply evolved.

I like most of this post, but the end kind of ignores the problem that all this presents: other stats are kind of useless. You said it yourself, if you can’t do it in zerker gear, it’s a l2p problem, and not even very kittene at that. and once you’ve got it down, zerker stats are the way to go. I just think it’s kind of sad that we have all these other stats and they end up being almost completely useless once you know what you’re doing. Why does nobody have a problem with that?

Two weeks after season 2 ended they released a balance patch, which was probably to let us know that they’re still on a two week schedule (or maybe I’m just assuming things I really want :P ) so theoretically we should see a new patch around the 10th…? We’ll see whether they release another balance patch, maybe something a little cooler, or nothing at all. I wouldn’t mind all that much though, all I really want is some answers as to what to expect. The issue I’m having is that the fact that they haven’t said anything about it probably means they don’t want to say anything that’ll make us upset :/ which probably means that we’re not going to be seeing anything to keep us busy any time soon. Only time can tell, next week will give us some answers at least regardless of what happens.

Test.8734:

Orpheal.8263:

So their teams, which were responsible for the living world content, can all focus now on other projects, while the team(s), which was all the time in background working on oT can continue on that

Assuming that there has been a team working on HoT for a very long time now. As far as we know, HoT development could have started relatively recently, and what the “background team” was working on was the stuff we have seen in Gem Store.

I really really doubt that :P

Anyways, they already said they were going to be updating until the expansion, so as for your doubts in that matter, I’m not too worried. The original two questions I asked were details regarding those updates. It would just be nice to know.

Orpheal.8263:

I hope we don’t have until the Expansion now total silence.
Absolutely now its the time, where Anet can’t come up again with an excuse like – we can’t do this, it interferes with our living world time plan"

So now is the time to come up again with Patches to focus on more things like Game Perforcmance, Fun Aspects, Activities, Quality of Life Improvements, Massive Bug Fixes, Minor New Features or Redesigns of existing Content to bring new fresh air into certain areas of the Game, SpvP and WvW Improvements like adding new WvW Skills, fixing finally ther WvW Achievements and so on, as also more Class Balances regarding Traits, fixing the Trait System, fixing the Personal Story – the list of possibilities now is very long.

So these are the Top 10 things that I absolutely expect to see now before Heart of Thorns gets released: (We can still wait several months before this happens, at least until August 2015 I guess)

1) Super Adventure Box World 3 and the Return of Hard Mode for all 3 Worlds, so that those, which had not enough time to do Hard Mode last time, can do it this time and all can explore a new World
2) Implemention of finally Polymok, Bar Brawl and Shooting Range (seriously, whats Anet taking so long with this, that 2+ years after game release this Content is still not there, when it should have been from begin on in the game)
3) Personal Story Fixes
4) Implementation of Jeweler 500 and Chef 500 finally together with new Ascended Runes and Sigils as QoL together with Build Templates as Part of a small Feature Pack before HoT comes, to give pve and WvW finally the same simple Building System, that PvP has
5) Living World Season 1 Reimplementation with Achievements ect like S2-System
6) Redesign of either the Shatterer, Jormag or both similar to Tequatl
7) Return finally once again of Dragon Bash now that Scarlet is dead and nobody will disturb on Dragon Bash again, letting us finally get somehow the Mystic Dragon Minipet together with new Dragon Masks (Skin for Head that exists also in GW1) and Lanterns as toys
8) Another new WvW Season
9) Another Class Balance with Focus on Traits and Trait System Revamp
10) hopefully doing something within a Patch for the Game Performance, maybe as part of the small Feature Pack, like giving GW2 finally somethign like DX11 Support or giving the game also a 64bit Client, or integrating something new, that makes using SweetFX or Combat Mod part of the game officially, so that everyone can profitate from these things for better graphics and better combat system in regard of targeting for all.
(11) Would love to see that complete UI Redesing of Amax getting implemented into GW2 ^^, but its unlikely, that this would happen, so i count it as (11) outside of the Top 10 of mine.

I don’t EXPECT these things, but seeing even half of this list would be really nice. I didn’t even think of something like 10, but that would great for those of us with crappy computers :O in the end, what I’m really hoping for is content. I know everyone is already asking for SAB, but some other filler stuff would be nice as well. Just stuff to tide us over, I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to that regard. Mini games (polymock was a cool idea), new holidays, silly SAB-esq stuff. And above all that, i really hope it’s permanent.

Yeah, it’s too bad the racials are kind of useless, but even if they didn’t fix them (which they won’t) I wouldn’t be too upset. They’re fun to pull out just for kicks sometimes, and they’re not so bad that doing so will guarantee your loss. Not to mention since nobody expects them, they don’t really build for them, so some racials are good for catching people off guard as well.

I heard they were redoing season 1 from more than a few sources, I’m guessing they’re doing it in the same manner they did season 2 (replayable instances within the story journal). That would be really cool for them to bring in before the xpac, that way new players would know what was going on. More than anything I wish we could just get something official on this so I know what to expect.

Rauderi.8706:

krixis.9538:

Condition damage = SPVP / TPVP / WvWvW

Direct damage = PVE

Problem has been solved described. Good day, everyone.

FTFY
A lot.

lol, exactly :P there’s a problem with the fact that condi damage is useless in pve, let’s not try to overlook that.

Hmm. I wish we had a little more to go on than speculation. If bug fixes and an update in 3 months is all we’re getting, I might have to go look at some other stuff to bide my time. That wouldn’t be so bad, I might actually do my homework now…

That helps a bit, it clears out one of the three options I proposed in question 1 at least. It doesn’t actually answer question 1, and doesn’t say anything about question 2 unless it’s implied by “as you’d expect” that they’ll continue to come out on a two week basis. Thanks for the info though

Hey guys, I don’t know if this question has already been asked and clarified, or asked and buried, or what, so if you guys want to redirect me to another thread, that’s fine. I was wondering two things about the living world/misc updates that’ll lead up to Heart of Thorns. I already know that updates will be coming out until the expansion is released, so don’t worry, that’s not one of them.

1) What kind of updates will be coming out prior to Heart of Thorns?Are you guys starting season three before the expansion, is it going to be nothing but balance changes and holidays, or will we see some cool filler content such as the zephyr sanctum and the Super Adventure Box?

2) How frequently are we going to be seeing these updates? Are you guys staying on your two week schedule, or are you dialing back to once a month or maybe less?

Obviously both of these questions are directed at devs, who have a history of not revealing details around updates, but if you players have heard anything regarding these two questions from any official source, please tell me what’s up/send me to your sources. Thanks everyone.

I really like this post, I’m a huge advocate of build diversity (which pve lacks in nearly every regard). And as for people saying that changes to condition damage for pve might ruin pvp, you should go back and read the last patch. Confusion now does 33% more damage IN PVE ONLY. Obviously they can make changes exclusively to pve, so why not go the rest of the way and make these condi changes for pve only?

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. DO YOU SEE. THE PROBLEM HERE. You say I’m a bad mesmer because I’m not switching out my skills, and you might be right, and yet I’m clearing every dungeon with ease? Level 40+ fractals with ease? It’s because I don’t have to switch over to the best build, I cover so much ground on the few utility skills I stick to, without consequence, that I can be a bad mesmer and still fly through “difficult content”. Thank you for illustrating my point.

OK NOW I understand your point. The thing is, its not build diversity the problem. The game was designed like this.

Everything is viable in the game so that you can complete all content with whatever build you have. You can complete it naked, in zerker full dps, in clerics full healing build, etc. That’s not a problem that’s a design choice that was made day 1 of the game. It a game that is casual friendly at its core. Maybe the design choice is not appealing to you, but that’s the game they decided to do. What you see as lacking build diversity is freedom in build. You can complete content with any build. With better build you will complete it faster, with less good build it will take longer.

Actually I partly agree with this. Build freedom is extremely prevalent in Guild Wars 2 because you can get away with so many builds. But what ends up happening is that for veteran players, we don’t want to run whatever muck build we can, we want to run efficiently. And that’s when damage becomes the only build. And as explained above, no other roles are needed once you’re good enough because your utility skills cover every other base.
You’re right though, it’s because it’s a casual game. If they did make it so that other builds were needed, people wouldn’t be able to run whatever they wanted because at the very least the few builds that are needed now are mandatory. The real problem is that mandatory roles conflicts with the whole Guild Wars 2 philosophy: play how you want.
So what really needs to happen is when Heart of Thorns comes out, new challenging content can be released for veteran players only, a hard mode for dungeons or maybe just new dungeons that are incredibly difficult, where more diverse builds are required. The casuals will of course still be given content for them to run, maybe an easy mode version of these difficult dungeons, and then both parties can be appeased. I suppose we can only hope.

Thaddeus.4891:

Capitol City.4856:

Alright, this is a good point, I should clarify. I said in a later post that I actually do switch out every now and then, but the skills I posted are what I also fall back to. Yes, I do have other utility skills, but they’re situational. I’m not actually changing my build by switching to them, I’m just temporarily making a switch for a current situation. That’s not a build change people, the build remains the same. And that’s not a solution, as I’ve said earlier, that’s throwing a blanket over the problem.

Then what change would be enough for you to consider that a change of build? Because for me there is a big difference between those two build.

Mesmer : Zerker gear + Scholar Runes + 6/4/0/0/4 traits + S/S & S/P weapons + 3 mantras against a single boss without need a reflect

or

Mesmer : Asssasin gear + Rangers Runes + 6/4/0/4/4 traits + S/S & S/F weapons + 2 mantras & feedback for a fight that need a lot of reflection.

That’s just two possibilities. And I still don’t understand. You don’t want to use other build that could help you go through a dungeon a bit faster. Why don’t you want to use other build that could run dungeon a little bit slower? Cause for only a couple second less you could have a GS build, you could use Staff as secondary (the phantasm is a hard hitter against some boss).You can create great build with about anything in the game. Hell I even help someone make a staff guardian build that is not that bad. You don’t use 100% optimized build so what does it change if you do it 95% of the speed or 90% of the speed? That open so much diversity, why don’t you want to use it? I understand that diversity is not that great if you want to be 100% optimized, but you already aren’t 100% optimized so what’s the big deal. There is sea of build that are super good even if they are not optimized.

Let’s make this quick. The two builds you just mentioned when asking how far we’d want to take build diversity are both damage builds. That’s the problem. Fin.

Liz.1497:

Capitol City.4856:

I run a mesmer for instance, and every. single. dungeon. I run the condition healing mantra, the stability mantra, and feedback for my three utility slots. My elite is always time warp, which rarely varies for mass invis. That’s it. Out of all the skills my class has, I can run those three utility skills and my dungeon runs never fail. We never wipe, we run through it quickly, and I’ve only used 3 abilities aside from my weapons (wich by the way is always sword focus, because once again, I don’t need any other abilities). The post I quoted seems to believe that we’re choosing these builds, but there comes a point, as I said in my first post, where veteran players see the build that’ll work for dungeons, and from then on it’s over.

I’m very sorry to break it to you, but from one mesmer to another – you’re not a very good mesmer.
1) the stability mantra is useless 9.5/10 times, why would you run it permanently???
2) There are certain bosses where you really want to run null field, and one in particular where Arcane Thievery is quite useful. Likewise, there are some encounters where you really don’t need condition removal. Signet of midnight = aoe blind, great for groups of trash, in particularly if you don’t have a (or only have a bad) guardian/thief. I’ve even ran illusion of life before in groups where people kept dropping like flies. Veil/decoy/blink/mass invis are really quite nice for skipping mobs, a thiefless group will really appreciate it. Even portal really helps out in some dungeon situations.
3) You misinterpret the fact that you CAN get away with using unsuitable utility skills as ‘these are all I SHOULD run’. Dungeons have a really low skill cap, meaning that you can finish them successfully even if you don’t play your character to the fullest, in fact you can get away with messing up quite a bit. Heck I’ve played with full mantra build staff Mesmers that had a healing Sigil and Guardians that literally did nothing but spam staff 1-1-1-1-1-1 all for the entire duration of the run. The reason this is possible is because the game is (quite ingeniously I might add) designed so you can run pretty much whatever, which is exactly what their original design idea of “no trinity, never have to wait for a particularly set up character” exactly entailed.
4) You keep trying to not make this about zerker gear but the OP clearly talks about zerker gear in his first post. Your issue with the game (which is a non-issue btw, sorry bud, get gud) is not what this thread is about, so I suggest you make your own thread.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. DO YOU SEE. THE PROBLEM HERE. You say I’m a bad mesmer because I’m not switching out my skills, and you might be right, and yet I’m clearing every dungeon with ease? Level 40+ fractals with ease? It’s because I don’t have to switch over to the best build, I cover so much ground on the few utility skills I stick to, without consequence, that I can be a bad mesmer and still fly through “difficult content”. Thank you for illustrating my point.

The lack of build diversity comes from the fact that every class can cover every necessity with 3 utility skills, without sacrificing damage. Damage should be a build in and of itself, as soon as we give damage the ability to do everything else, every other build becomes pointless. Every class runs every role simultaneously, so only one build per class is optimal. We all run the same few utility skills, rarely switching, because shaving off a few seconds is hardly worth switching your skills for. And if it is worth it, then we switch to those skills for that single battle. And then we switch back. That’s not build diversity, that’s switching utility skills temporarily…