Guild Wars 2

Bratec.7136:

Solution: since forced “stacking” happens because low buff range – increase buff range to 900.

I would instead want a sensible buff system.

Either make it like in WoW, have actual raid buffs (formalized, too), so that classes can bring various buffs and each buff can be brought by multiple classes and is either “there” or “not there” (no stupid stack radii or anything), or – and I’d prefer this – bring back the concentration buff system from DAoC.

This would in turn enable a “proper” buff role. Those roles have concentration buffs, which last until cancelled, but take from a pool of how many of these buffs you can have enabled at the same time.

One thing I’d rather see is some minor, ideally non-combat, benefit to having a profession. WoW had these minor bonuses though in their case they were combat-related.

For example, cooking could eventually result, via lots of really fancy food, in a special mount type only that character has. The special ability is that the mount functions as a (minor, non-lvl80) feast to other players because it carries food around in bags on the sides.

Chrono. It works for support, it works for conditions, it works for WvW, everything. Mirage is strictly inferior, so there’s really no reason to be worried about it much.

Well, the game is still an online multiplayer game.

This comes with a few inherent downsides, the biggest of which is that you will experience other players, and with that, there’s a very high chance you’ll run into a lot of toxic kittens. It’s just a sad reality of online gaming.

That being said, GW2 tries to, for the most part, alleviate this a bit. What it does is clever, for open world PvE, it makes “helping” one of the most efficient ways of going around. Loot is shared, xp is shared, there is no tagging, rezzing gives significant xp, and so on. As a result, even the toxic players feel less toxic, they get “triggered” less.

However, game modes where other players can “waste more time”, like raiding or sPvP, will inherently do what MOBAs do, and bring out the worst in these players, constantly getting them to rage.

I am… unsure where to fix this. Other than playing single player games, tbh (which is my favorite solution, much as I like playing together). I mean I can’t see many countries bringing out legislation where you need to pass a “driver’s license test” for the internet, and lacking that there’ll always be an endless amount of toxic players in every online game.

What could be done maybe is to make other game modes inherently more forgiving, much like open world PvE. In turn that’ll lead to cooperative, “nice” play being more optimal.

Sylent.3165:

It makes 0 sense to block each map behind a paywall for new or returning players.

Frankly, the maps feel so underdeveloped and “throwaway”, I feel they’re doing returning players a service by not letting them see them immediately. They’d just drive them off again :<

Ideas for minigames:

Rata Sum
Polymok Arena, a way to battle using mini pets. They have stats, they have skills, you can train them, teach them, and set strategies. You can either drop a team of 5-6 minipets off (they become unavailable for the time being), or you can actively fight with a smaller team but able to change tactics on the fly (which also gives you as the master some xp).
Prizes include a currency used to purchase various goods which can change seasonally, new minipets, titles, titles for minipets and fancy extras for minipets.

Lion’s Arch
Bar Brawl, basically Southsun Survival in a tavern with everyone so drunk even control fails half the time. Points are given for staying alive and drinking as much as you can (which in turn makes you weaker!).
Prizes include various titles, a mount, various special drinks which double as buff-food (rare-type), and access to a Brewing crafting skill which is used to create those buff-food drinks afterwards. To train, needs more bar brawl. The drinks are not superior to cooking, it’s just an alternative.

Divinity’s Reach
Masquerade, where you have to assassinate a player without knowing who they are, while avoiding your own assassin. Everyone seems like an NPC at first glance, so you need to observe behaviour. There would be ~12 players and ~30-40 extra NPCs constantly doing things thrown in, so it becomes difficult to know who the players are and what they’re doing. NPCs are highly randomized to make learning impossible.
Among the rewards could be fancy masks or a special home instance which is accessible while you are ranked high enough which is super fancy (no other effects, you just get to enjoy a fancy home instance).

The Grove
Dream Defense, a turret defense style game played cooperatively with up to 5 players, scaling on how many lanes enemies attack depending on player count. You recruit extra sylvari for defense, you build special “towers”, you can Dungeon Keeper style relinquish top-down control to temporarily control your own character normally and fight yourself.
Rewards should, IMO, include a sensible layout for the city. Failing to add that, cool rewards would be extra levels where to defend the dream (in other parts of the world basically), an aura, defensive turrets for your home instance which kill supposed assassins each day you can then loot for some small rewards, and a dream shadow mount skin for the skimmer, a floating eerie dragon-like creature.

Haven’t thought of something for the other two cities. Yet :P

Honestly as someone most would consider an “oldskool” MMORPG player (I started with EQ1 back before Ruins of Kunark released), I wish it would cost money to repair again.

Death has very little if any consequence in GW2, and I sometimes feel the game would educate a new player better about how to play their characters if death has meaningful downsides attached. It’d naturally edge players to be more on the defensive side, in turn teaching concepts such as dodging, avoidance, protection, blocking and healing or even defensive gear (which for many players would be very nice to have in the open world, if they don’t have aspirations to join a raid with that for example… and even then, raids work naked, they’d be fine in Nomad gear, too :P ).

In any case, frankly I’d return repair costs.

Considering what is coming in just 10 days, I think I’d rather want Mirror, Axe or Ambush buffs at this point.

Though, in general, I agree. But I’d rather have something called “winds of chaos” stronger than faster. Give it some character, make it slow. Frankly it should probably be a slow but 450 width projectile able to hit multiple people but not homing in on an enemy (basically, close to what the ambush is, now…).

But yeah, some staff buffs would be welcome.

Now, independent of how much I feel GW2 handles conditions wrong at a very core design level (way before looking at how much damage they deal), I want to say this:

OP, if you can honestly do 34k DPS with a condi warrior build but not break 10k DPS with a power warrior, then the problem is with you, not the game’s balance. Sorry, but that’s just how it is. I basically outdamage you while buffing the raid as a chrono.

Alin.2468:

It does not really matter how we rate it. If a profession can play condition damage, then it will be top, if not… well… we know where it will be. Condition damage is all that matters nowadays.

“Condition damage” is still just the role DPS. It hardly matters how the numbers you produce above the enemies’ heads is formatted.

Elessaria.9142:

and they can properly balance the Ambushes on the assumption that you will have 4 entities executing it, instead of balancing them on the possibility, and shafting anyone who doesn’t take that GM trait.

Well frankly, right now anything other than Scepter feels balanced for having between 7 and 10 clones …

zealex.9410:

I would pick 1 or the other u cant have ambush hit like thief’s and have them 5 times more accessible. Sure we can make some qol changes to some ambush skills and gs needs a decent power buff but if you are able to access cloak alot of the time then the dmg should remain the same.

Frankly ignoring scepter, those damage increases would merely make the ambush skills not be AAs with weird graphics. And the Scepter roots you, whenever you dodge, in the middle of your AA chain.

Aren’t ambush skills supposed to be stronger than just attacking regularly?

zealex.9410:

Which wont happen because it doesnt need it.

True. As beneficial as it would be (because let’s be honest, this spec was done from nothing but a name, no one had a concept they were following on a gameplay level, it’s quite noticeable), it’s not necessary. Just needs:

• Lots more mirror production. Make all Deception skills spawn mirrors, and give shatter skills mirror production if phantasms are shattered.
• x3-x7 damage on the ambush skills depending on which one it is.
• Mirrors last ~10 seconds.
• If this turns out too strong, make enemies able to destroy mirrors by touching them, but this generates a clone if a spot is free.

musu.9205:

gw2 in general isnt that hard , DH is one of easier dps . come on

It felt harder at first, but then I realized I don’t have boss-mods. Much of the difficulty I see in raids is “fake” difficulty, added by obfuscating information and hiding spell effects, not actual complexity and depth done with mechanics.

That’s not to say that WoW had truly difficult raids (well they had a few which were either huge gear grinds or actually complicated, true, but they were few and far between), but in contrast GW2’s are much simpler, yes.

The “adds insult to injury” is that they’re conceptually not that far away from a decent spec.

Stronger ambush skills across the board, longer mirror duration, more mirror generation and a “solution” for shatter skills (like not giving them to mirage, instead offering extra mirror generation through 1-3 F-skills), and it’d be a kitten nice spec.

Ahlen.7591:

Spellbreaker is liquid hot crap garbage in PVE, and I could not care less about PVP or WvW.

2/10.

Funny how the spec which brings a “mesmery” feel immediately feels weak to other players. Surprise surprise…

Shiki.7148:

No, it is not the EXCEPTION. Because if you want actually good mats, you have to ID. This system is majorly flawed. If the unidentifyed gear was colour-coded, sure. Then it would be the EXCEPTION to id green and blue stuff. But it isn’t. And thus you are pretty much forced to ID if you actually want to get the mats you need.

Didn’t really feel like that during the beta events, sorry.

As the income of rare items is majorly based off of champions, and you still get those champ bags, income of rares to salvage felt ok, only slightly lower than normal. While income of “trash filling up my inventory” (that is, greens and blue) was noticeably lower.

Ofc, this is a half-measure. I realize that. A proper lootsystem would just drop crafting mats and money, without making me spend extra clicks to sort out my inventory. But well, what can you do…

For, for me:

• Scourge 10/10. Unique transformative mechanical change, good re-alignment to something entirely different, pretty animations everything.
• Holosmith 8/10. Pretty, plays well, too sparkly though, I already mind the amount of spell effects.
• Soulbeast 7/10. Liked it a lot. Feels unique, looks pretty, felt very active with lots of buttons to use. Speaking of which…
• Weaver 7/10. Same reasons, really. Love the complexity.
• Mirage … does it have to be 0-10? Is -3/10 not ok? Really, this was such a huge letdown. You can clearly notice they had no consistent idea, just that name as they said in the video. There’s a bunch of ideas thrown in here which don’t work together at all, and even then are individually underpowered.

The underlying idea is sound. Trade defensive value (the movement) for offensive (the ambush).

That’s where the good ends. The ambushes are so badly balanced that most of the time I wish I could AA instead, and as a result the gain in damage can’t remotely hope to keep up with the loss of defense.

Further, beyond normal dodging our ability to gain cloak through mirrors is just… poor. Generation is astonishingly bad, and they last ~3x-4x too short. Should be 8-12 seconds.

Esplen.3940:

Again, you’re judging the entire product on one topping.

And again, why pre-order? It’s a net benefit to not pre-order. If it turns out that PoF is released unplayable and to get it working they have to disable 4 elite specs entirely until after christmas, you didn’t waste money on it.

Is that likely? No ofc not.

But is there a benefit to throwing money on a developer on goodwill alone? Nope. Might as well hold off and see how the finished product stacks up against its cost.

I’m still on the fence.

That is, whether my new main will be Holosmith, Scourge or Firebrand.

Mirage is just… you can notice that they had the name (and, most likely, nothing else) when they designed this. There’s no cohesive theme, no underpinning design, no nothing. A few random ideas which work against each other coupled with the usual what-if-a-Mesmer-kills-someone-in-PvP underbalance.

Esplen.3940:

I mean… that’s like being skeptical to buy a burger because you don’t know if they use Heinz Ketchup or Hunt’s. If you choose not to buy PoF because the elite spec of one of the professions isn’t what you want, that is.

Independent of which, it’s still always better to not buy into pre-order culture, and instead just buy after release.

You don’t exactly order that burger 10 weeks in advance without even knowing you’ll want a burger on that day, either. If someone values their main’s elite spec enough to be unsure whether they can enjoy the expansion if it (expectably) turns out to be rubbish, then that’s a very valid reason to not throw money at a company for an unreleased product.

I’ll stick with my opinion after multiple evenings of trying it:

• It’s not perfect yet (I still get some green and blue item drops which are just there to salvage and process).
• It would be better if it were split by rarity.
• However, it is already a really cool change, because it massively reduces the amount of trash loot I get, and instead of having to salvage through a lot of items taking up lots of space, I can salvage a single stack “equipment tokens”, directly.

As someone who always disliked how overly complicated the drop/loot system in GW2 is, this is a wonderful change, even if it doesn’t go as far as I’d personally like it to do.

My idea for an even better version:

• All gear drops this way.
• However, split by rarity. So I have one stack of unidentified exotic gear, one of rare, etc.
• I can either salvage these directly, which gives exactly the components (sans Sigils/Runes!) as salvaging the items would have.
• Or I can go to a vendor and pay some minor money to turn them into items, say because I know the exotics are worth it, or because I am gambling on skins I don’t have yet.

Yagudo.6759:

Eh, I like unidentified gear. It’s certainly better than filling my inventory with green and blue trash gear. It lets me go longer without having to stop and salvage/vendor everything. I also like that I can salvage the unidentified items without being stuck dealing a bunch of trash sigils/runes.

Exactly this. People need to realize that identifying the items will be the exception. The main way to handle unidentified gear is to salvage it directly. Because that’s what it is meant to do, provide a shortcut for the thing we do all the time, clean out our inventory.

zealex.9410:

Pretty much. Bcause they havent sold me the box yet because of how weaker the gen 2 soec seem compaired to gen1. Which tbf its understandable.

+1 in that case.

Always better to avoid the pre-order hype, and buy after release if reviews show that the software has what you actually wanted.

Including the cape?

Yeah, a lot of additions in the past year or so feel way over the top. It really doesn’t help combat either because you can barely see anything with all the auras and spell effects going off.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This seems like an extremely inane thing to me. The mirage isn’t a staff tempest. It doesn’t have long channels that get interrupted by having to dodge constantly.

I mean I get what they were going for:

• Extra access to dodges, slippery, difficult to hit.
• Gain (some) extra damage out of dodging due to the ambush skills.
• In return (as a balancing measure), lose movement on dodge.

That seems to be the on-paper design. It fails, on all accounts:

1. There isn’t much access to dodge. If at least all uses of deception skills places 1-2 mirrors, that’d be something. Or shattering phantasms did, by default.
2. Other than scepter, I wish Ambush didn’t overwrite the #1 button because frankly I’d rather AA. It’s not worth the tiny gain. Remove Infinite Horizon and make the skills deal 4x-5x the output of an AA, so it’s at least some damage gain.
3. This is fine, if the other two things are fixed.

But, as always, I’d go for a minimal fix:

• Mirrors now last 12 seconds.
• Illusionary Ambush spawns a mirror where you started.
• Same for Mirage Advance.
• Same for Jaunt, which does it every charge.
• Sand Through Glass leaves a second mirror halfway through the dodge distance.

That at least gives us some decent access to mirrors.

I know we used to have more varied dailies in the past, and I’d like to see a return of at least some, plus some entirely new ones.

This would lead to a less “samey” experience. Examples:

• Resurrect 10 downed players or NPCs.
• Refine something 10 times. (like crafting Bolts of Silk)
• Finish events in 3 different major areas (e.g.: Kryta, Ascalon, Heart of Maguuma).
• Dodge X attacks.
• Heal Y damage, either on yourself or others.

And so on. More variety! It feels that every day now is “Gather something somewhere”, “Do events in this zone” and two of “Visit Vista”, “Do minidungeon”, “Do JP” and “Do adventure”, with the odd MF or Fractal thrown in. It’s all the same, every day

Sadismo.7508:

There is an unfinished Polymok Arena just north of Rata Sum. I wonder if Anet are going to eventually implement it in-game. That would be awesome.

Only if management can think up a way to push it through the gem store or make an expansion out of it…

Blue.1207:

I remember a time when particle effects were getting toned down across the game, Mesmer wells were more or less deleted, Ele Auras were gutted, heck even Rev skills were toned down. And for what? Only to go back on your design philosophy and start making your game look like an off brand generic MMO?

There was no “going back”.

The class effects were getting toned down because we need to be able to see the shiney Outfits people spent $$$ on. What did you think why other effects were toned down.

Can’t be long before we can buy “spell effect packs”. Those will ofc be super shiney, because well, you paid for them.

I would do something like this:

• 25 Vitality
• Barrier effects applied to you are 5% stronger.
• 50 Vitality
• Barrier effects applied to you are 10% stronger. (stacks with the 2-piece)
• 100 Vitality
• As long as you have Barrier on you, gain 100 Power and Condition Damage.

Ryouzanpaku.1273:

So position of Chronomancer should be dedicated buffbot with zero personal damage?

…. I am sooo kittened right now

You know, if they leave that it’s fine. That’s what the spec was clearly aimed to be from day 1.

Problematic would be if they nerf that support.

Esplen.3940:

Hahaha, you’re funny. There’s a reason a weaker version of that was nerfed (and later removed) from Persistence of Memory and it’s because you could infinitely negate damage via Shield4 + Sword2 + F4 (and a few other trait synergies).

And? All you’re doing is causing ignorable clone shatter damage. I fail to see the problem, powerful spec choices, if you want to be a nigh-invulnerable juggernaut brought down only by CC (and the 145356375653423 unblockable attacks in the game by now), then so be it.

I would go even further and do it like this:

• For each clone shattered, +1% damage for 60 seconds.
• For each phantasm shattered, +5% damage for 60 seconds.
• Affects the mesmer and phantasms.
• Shattering clones recharges phantasm CDs by 1-2 seconds.

Esplen.3940:

But that stacks with Alacrity, so you can make them have even shorter attack animations. All you have to do is not give Alacrity to your teammates.

So basically, if your raid teammates are too bad at dealing damage, you wish you could flag a “prioritize my phantasms”-option?

Frankly if they just dared to make Mirrors useful (12s duration if on the ground, all Deception skills create mirrors, shattering phantasms creates mirrors), then the spec could have a unique design element.

With sometimes having 5-10 mirrors up in an area, Mirage would be a spec which can survive very well in a confined space but suffers from having to move or being barraged by AE (well to be fair, that’s shared with all Mesmer specs).

OriOri.8724:

No, what will happen is something about mirage or even core mesmer will be nerfed for no reason because a bad deadeye or holosmith player died to a scourge and blamed the mirage for “confusing him”.

Exactly this. Also that nerf will nerf the already sub-par PvE damage, because of course it does!

Refia Montes.3205:

I definitely understand people’s frustrations with Mirage, but I think the theme has some potential just that they really undertuned it/were really conservative on the numbers.

I think this can be summed up as “Mesmer”.

In fact, the state of being severely undertuned due to worries about excessive performance leading to frustration for other players should from now on be called “mesmer”.

Examples:

• “Warriors felt very mesmer this season.”
• “That’s a mesmer skill.”
• Mirage

Sylent.3165:

In most games if you go melee you usually get some form of reward for doing so such as higher defense or higher armor and defenses that truly shine in melee.

Well, not quite. Depends on the game. In some (early MMOs comes to mind), ranged players simply interrupted their damage output by moving). While melee players could continue attacking.

But I agree, in previous games there was always some direct benefit to daring to go into melee.

Honestly I feel as if at this point, only the most trivial of changes would make it through. It’s 1 month to release.

I said in another thread that I could imagine two changes to together alleviate the very worst of the issues, and those would be:

• Make mirrors last ~8-12 seconds.
• (slightly more complex) Make all Deception skills spawn a Mirror, including Jaunt which leaves it where you began the teleport.

There are ofc a ton more things to change to make the spec good, sure. But this would at least make it maybe somewhat competitive with core mesmer, or even something which isn’t a burden upon any party you join.

Skuzz.6580:

and? Where does it say that this Elite spec should out damage a core spec and out evade another?
Elite specs are not meant to be far superior than other core specs, so yes, probably another core spec has more evades, another has more damage, Elite specs are meant to open more options and diversity, not give you an overpowered version of other core specs.

Well, I agree 110%. Only, I wish they’d rebalance the gen1 elite specs this way, which were by and large much stronger than the base classes.

That’s kinda the big problem here, there’s very little reason to not just play Chrono instead of Mirage. Even if the playstyle differs, one could always make another class to get a more aggressive (and better balanced) playstyle.

OriOri.8724:

I don’t think the GW2 engine can even handle convincing illusions. The other player would have to be on a different team for you to damage them, but if they areon a different team then they can also damage you.

Yeah, I think best we could do – but I’d hate that with a passion, effective as it would be – is if clones cast actual skills, including the fields and AE effects and everything. They would do nothing at all, just be graphics, but that’d be slightly more confusing then.

Yeah the trivial “fix” to Mirage Mirror is:

• Lasts 8-12 seconds.
• All Deception-skills spawn them (making it their “thing”), including Jaunt which places it where you left.

Yeah I was thinking that, too. I’d maybe even remove all the Ambush rubbish (let’s be honest, most of them make you wish they wouldn’t temporarily replace the AA…), and just go Mirrors and Mirrors and Mirrors.

Keep the restricted Dodge (since we can get access to tons of dodges with enough ways to produce Mirror), and go wild on them.

As you said, shattering Phantasms should creative mirrors at the very lines. I also feel enemies touching Mirrors should result in damage + a clone spawning.

Yep, Mirage in PvE truly showed just how bad of a disaster this elite spec is.

• No cohesive design.
• No specific element it provides.
• Rubbish “unique mechanic” in the ambushes which make you wish it wouldn’t overwrite your AA button.
• Punishing weaker dodge, which could be balanced if those ambushes were strong but they’re not.
• Gimmicky mirror mechanic which again is so undertuned there’s just no point.
• Weak, weak, weak, weak. That’s the only cohesive thing about this spec. “Weak”.

At the very least, I’d change this:

• Mirrors now last 12 seconds.
• All deception-skills cause a mirror, including Jaunt (leaves it where you left!).
• Jaunt has 600 range.
• All Ambush skills significantly improved, from ~x3 (Scepter) to x10 (Greatsword) the damage they do now.
• Infinite Horizon removed.
• Mirrors which are touched by opponents shatter, creating a clone and weakening foes (but not giving you cloak). They can cause the sand effect from the Grandmaster trait!

zealex.9410:

There axe is close range condi weapon with clone generation. And some ok mobility.

Well it is intended to be, but both damage and clone generation are a wee bit low. Clone generation is in fact very low, when contrasting it with the already advantaged scepter (optional range, stronger ambush, block with strong counter effect and extra clone, very strong 3 skill). The axe’s only advantage is mobility, but that skill fails so often, I’m tempted to just not count it into any comparisons and file it under “bugged, test later”.

mortrialus.3062:

I mean is it really that much more powerful than Chronomancer’s Chronophantasma?

It’d actually be significantly weaker. While it decreases ramp-up time we have plenty tools to deal with that already, while Chronophantasma also makes your phantasms better able to “tank” damage. Two phantasms would just die in the same amount of hits due to cleave/AE damage, two summoned in succession need twice as many hits to bring down.

I’d reword it slightly with the new way Mantras work:

Mantra of Command
Cast time: 2,25 seconds
Cooldown: 45 seconds
Charge cooldown: 15 seconds
Maximum ammo: 2
Channel your mantra, allowing you to cast Phantasmal Command. When this ability is fully charged, refresh your phantasm abilities and heal all existing phantasms back to full health. While this ability has any charges left, your phantasms exist for up to 10 seconds after their target dies, waiting for a command.

Phantasmal Command
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Cast time: instant
Command all your current Phantasms to attack your current target.

Interesting. Could be a third map, next to ABL and DBL, have a “Time-lost Borderlands”:

• Only base traitlines.
• No tricks.
• No shield generators.
• No upgrades to structures.

Tiresias.6473:

It’s also worse than Chronomancer in almost every way.

There, FTFY.

;)