I remember tempest getting buffed/changed quite a bit after the preview for HoT specs. We’ll see. Weaver doesn’t feel so good now, yeah some people are going to make it work in some ways but it doesn’t seem ready at all. Ele in general really seems to be a mess now, either support bunker (boring build in pvp everyone knows for the past 2-3 years?), or you’re fresh air dps and really just spamming a gimmick cooldown more than doing any real interesting gameplay. RIP ele of launch.
They absolutely do look ridiculous. But some people like them, and it is making Anet a lot of money, so I don’t think we can do anything but moan about it.
Can’t imagine we will see many games anymore keeping their artistic integrity, since they’ve realized how much money they can make off kitten like this (and cash shops in general).
If they’re really bad, matchmaking will sort them out and put them with/against each other and you shouldn’t need to see them anymore. Unless, gasp, you’re no better than them.
Anyway isn’t this true of a healthy pvp scene that there should be people playing all kinds of builds and strategies, and the serious and meta ones are concentrated at the top, while the rest are scattered below doing whatever they want and having fun? Or should the goal be to shout at new players and hope they leave so that you’re left with the same stagnant pool of players ?
Most people used to solo into Team Arena just fine…
To the people thinking AT is a suitable replacement for organized 5man play…At best you can play 1-2 a day or none. Every 8 hours doesn’t give much flexibility for people with tight schedules. And where are people meant to practice for this and build teams? Unranked while everyone else is pushing ranked??
Going ham and using all the charges is assuming little to no pressure on the elementalist. In that case, yeah it will be more dps (and lightning hammer certainly…). I like lightning hammer quickness for use with an overload, not sure how much else you’ll get out of it except a couple autos.
Not really an exciting rework (like spirit weapons got, for example). Some of the new effects are interesting but not really game changing. The changes to duration/charges…reducing duration but giving unlimited charges…it feels more like a nerf than a buff to be honest.
Playing conjures forever in PvE and PvP, really not any more excited about it now, maybe less so.
Trying to buy PoF from the gem store using my Visa credit card. The entry form requires a 4 digit security code, but to my knowledge only American Express has 4 digit security codes while Visa has 3 digits. Never had this issue before and have purchased hundreds of dollars of gems.
That’s really odd, Celtus! Can you send me a screenshot of what you’re seeing, so I can share it with the team?
Thanks.
Gaile,
I ended up using PayPal. Tried to recreate it just now to send you a screenshot, and was getting the same problem (error message saying “Please enter at least 4 characters.”) even with Visa selected. However when I removed all of my personal info and billing information (as I obviously didn’t want to post a screenshot here with all of that), I clicked the field again with Visa selected and it correctly said “Please enter at least 3 characters”. So if anyone else encounters this issue, try resetting all of the billing and e-mail info.
Also, I noticed my payment was defaulting to an AMEX card, which I think I only used once (long ago, and have bought many gems on the Visa since), maybe the system was somehow confused into keeping the digit requirement for this, even after choosing the selection to be Visa? Not sure. But, again, it was working this way in my past purchases where it would start as AMEX and I’d change to Visa and it would be correctly recognized in the security code field so I’m not sure where the issue is.
I hope my rambling may have helped, and thank you for your reply. Best luck with your work in the coming weeks with PoF.
Trying to buy PoF from the gem store using my Visa credit card. The entry form requires a 4 digit security code, but to my knowledge only American Express has 4 digit security codes while Visa has 3 digits. Never had this issue before and have purchased hundreds of dollars of gems.
Alright I guess. Ice spike wasn’t really bad though. Air 2 has been the worst for a long time. Longest cooldown of all the #2 staff skills, and its a long cast preventative skill (blind) with just medium damage. Playing air in staff just doesn’t flow at all, there is nothing to spam or work on while in the attunement waiting for skills to come up. In fire you can keep dpsing with fireball, etc…in water, healing with water blasts, etc…in earth, spam weakness/projectile finisher and eruption is up fairly often. Then you go into air and…lightning bolt spam? Ugh.
More of a little prison now than a big wall. Easier for people to walk around it if they are outside the field now that it is smaller. But yeah they can’t really dodge or move around within the field anymore, which is good.
So am I reading this right, only the top team each month will have access to Champion’s Rest?
“First place in the monthlies gets 500 gold, 100 mystic coins, 3 ascended armor boxes, a llama box, a title, and 4 weeks of access to Champion’s Rest. My hope, is that we’ll be able to change out rewards as we get access to them.”
Assuming there are other ways, like leaderboard position or division. Otherwise lol whats the point of such a place if only 5 people can go.
Check your combat log while you’re doing it. I did, and noticed I think 3 hits of inspiring reinforcement. So yes, it will help the road to hit multiple times. Is it worth making a big play for (given the energy and opportunity cost), probably not.
Need to make money and make sure everyone gets paid. I’d expect $40-60 and I guess they would plan to include HoT in that? Gw2 still has the most consumer friendly business model of any current mmorpg that I am aware of. Everyone else seems to gate content/convenience features behind sub fee/cash shop/dlc.
I appreciate the effort to give more cues about what is happening during the match, in this case the audio cues about your cap status. But…it is too much for most people and I think overall it’s annoying and makes it harder to hear the more important combat sounds. At least give an option to turn on/off, or go back to the drawing board on this one and come up with some other way of emphasizing the changing of the cap.
Interesting seeing how different many of these lists are. I guess we’ll see what the reality is when everyone puts on their tryhard pants in the coming weeks.
I don’t have a list to contribute, but I will say I’ve noticed fewer cookie cutter builds than I’ve seen in a very long time. Could just be that things are still shook up from the last patch and people haven’t had a chance to see/copy what the top performing builds are.
ArenaNet, can you make a better solution than just “wait until people
have quit”? How about trying to keep renewed player interest and growing the mode instead of just having it unable to meet the demand? And yes I know there are probably lower or no queues in off-hours, but people should be able to play with their friends and their guilds when they want to, not need to sneak in queue one by one. It is bad design.
Will we be able to queue with full team (and anywhere from 1 to 4 other players…like old times) again in season 7? Or are you planning on keeping it as duo queue?
I think it would be better for the launch and growth of Automated Tournaments if people could play as a 5man team in ranked once again. And we have seen the duo queue ladder be exploited enough to show that it isn’t the ultimate solution, at least not such that it is preferable to full team play (for so many seasons now). Also if anyone remembers or cares, guild missions/guild teams do not function in ranked when it is capped to duo-queue, which is again features clashing with each other.
Still waiting to see an example of skill-splitting improving a game’s pvp. As alluded in OP, it just puts a bigger rift between the game modes, isolating and alienating them each further from each other.
Maybe in an ideal word where splits were done diligently and completely, it would work out (which would be a massive effort/more work). But as it always seems to play out, it is done very sloppily, messes with other parts of the game, and makes it harder/much more confusing for players to cross between game modes.
History lesson/opinion: Skill splitting didn’t help Gw1 PvP at all. It just led to lazy power creep in PvE skill versions and neglect in PvP.
And of course making an effort to balance the game again to make it fun. It has been totally out of control since HoT and pre-HoT patches. Build variation is crap and unless you’ve got some combination of immunities, blocks, dodge spams, invulns, etc you’re dead almost instantly. Compare the effects-per-action in the game now vs a couple years ago and its laughable how far away it has gone from being watchable and competition worthy.
Yeah they should have had trade-offs from the beginning to make them an alternative not a must-have. Problem is, in almost every imaginable case, elite specs offer your profession the best in offense and defense. Now people are left begging for more elite specs to balance it in some sick way…
Not surprising at all. The ESL venture started at a poor time in the game’s balance and competitive structure (HoT balance, changes/removal of ranked/team/solo/leaderboards, etc.), and continued throughout it.
Maybe more troubling for me is the absolute lack of direction with the game now. We really don’t get updates anymore of what is being worked on in any areas of the game in the long term. Yes, we get small “living story” patches, “new” competitive seasons with minor adjustments and balances, and rehashed festivals. We are all guessing there is an expansion pack coming, but it has been about 1.5 years since HoT, when will we hear about this? It has been over a year since Colin left, and I know Mike’s policy is not to talk until the product is ready. But how about talking at all? To not lose the interest of your consumers?
And I don’t think the game’s current state is due to lack of market demand for this type of game. But rather due to the continued fumbling on ArenaNet’s part. As much as people laugh about the words “pvp” and “mmorpg” used together, I really think it is in demand, and Gw2 (thanks to the ease of entry/gear availability/etc) should be in the best position to make it work. Very hard to remain optimistic though…
I know a lot of people are so opposed to class stacking…But suppose this game ever gets its head out of its kitten , and some semblance of build diversity returns and you can have multiple possible builds per profession filling different roles. I really think the calls for limit of class per-team would be a terrible move then.
Especially because before releasing GW2, the devs said that they didn’t like having that many skills in GW1 as many were not being used, therefore they would have created a lot less stuff to choose from..but more useful overall.
As we all know that’s definitely not the case…
This lol. And now just after we saw the “PvP/PvE balance split” so that the devs can be more flexible and make more frequent changes…and immediately the balance cycle is pushed to be going on 4 months since last “major” (lol yeah right) balance update at end of October. It isn’t really the same dev team anymore (who is even on the dev team now? it is so unstable) so I guess we can’t hold them accountable for what was said back then… but come on.
Edit: btw balance frequency in Gw1 was much faster. Until much later in its life it was monthly, I think even twice per month. Can look in archives of Gw1 wiki/game updates to verify.
qft…and we can blame these people for gaming the system so much, and for not honorably representing the ‘pro league’ and esports (can’t type that with a straight face), for further sending the ‘pvp scene’ down the gutter.
But really ArenaNet has been floundering around forever about how to reinvent the pvp systems, always with some glaring flaws or another, never distinctly better than at the beginning, etc. And the balance is still kittened and very little room for build making/creativity/‘guild warsing’ since the patches leading up to HoT.
Evan doing well. The skill based leaderboard will allow top solo players to prove themselves and then join teams. This is how it used to work.
Lol, join what teams though? Jk I know you’re aware of it. But yeah, some steps forward, mixed with steps back as usual. And the number one issue: class balance and power creep (and amulets/ restrictive statting imo); is still a big question mark.
Race change would make a lot of money, they should figure it out. Reset the PS on the ‘new-race’ character if needed (though quite honestly your race only seems to determine choices from level 1-30 in the story). As for the race specific armor you might have on your character, convert it to the appropriate tier of the new race, or just send the armor to wardrobe and outfit the char with basic appearance 80 gear.
In before bug/tooltip fixes and the rest of the patch goes toward tempest tweaks and amulet removals. (Please for the love of Guild Wars, let me be wrong)
Got it done. Please leave a timer/ or date reminder in game on the title track too though. Like “ends season x”. As others said, it wasn’t hard to get the capricorn achievements, but I’m sure there are plenty of players who still didn’t know the time constraints of it (believe it or not, not every player is also scanning the forums,reddit,facebook,twitter, update notes,etc for in game info).
