Guild Wars 2

I pretty much already quit because Thief got Staff instead of Rifle. If they get another melee weapon, I will just throw my hands up in the air and give up any faith I have in Anet devs.

Not buying it myself. Not until it hits $30 where I felt like the price should have been at the start. I didn’t care for the specializations shown, and wasn’t overly thrilled with the trait redesign before that either. Masteries seemed like a good idea for horizontal expression, but really not liking the reports of the grind. I remember back during that first beta test (the one that needed a bunch of grinding to access), and getting beyond Tier 2 gliding was basically impossible during that period.

As it is, I don’t think there’s a lot for me to actually do in GW2 until I buy HoT. I’ll be missing the Elite Spec, which looks like basically a mandatory specialization with the way they were designed. And there will be no more updates done for people who haven’t bought HoT, and indeed, nearly everything added in the HoT patch isn’t for regular players. It puts just a bit of a bad taste in my mouth at how exclusionary they are with all the expansion stuff. Even the Halloween event seems like it’s a stripped out version compared to the previous years. Not even a fancy meta achievement reward.

The current idle animation for staff is where the Staff is held like a hammer, one end pointed down, the other held high over the shoulder. It just doesn’t look like. The front should be held high in front, ready to parry an incoming blow or make a quick downward strike, not pointing to the ground.

Honestly bet this is just going to be a heavy support style spec. Get into melee, hit them a bunch, get some boons for defense, maybe condi removal, buffs for other people. Probably an attack with evades built in.

Or it could just be a complete mimic of the skills from Sword/Dagger.

Well, since the elite spec is Staff, looks like Ricochet won’t be coming back even as the Elite.

So disappointed. All my dreams of being able to actually have a long ranged playstyle as a thief are gone. throws in towel and leaves

Rifle all the way. I’d love to have a viable weaponset that works at range. Pistol/Pistol just doesn’t really work well outside of Unload, and shortbow is more of a utility weapon than anything.

And I just don’t really see Staff offering anything new to Thieves beyond just replacing something one of the other weapon sets can do.

Seriously? My thread about wanting checkpoints for the jumping puzzle got merged into this thread? That’s only partially related!

I find the main areas pretty boring too. The commodore quarter and outlying areas are all pretty nice. But….the giant Lobster and Squid and stuff? Just…eck.

I agree with the Tour Guide NPC.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Coldin.2840:

This jumping puzzle is just walk the tight ropes and make jumps that your character can only just reach. (Getting on top of some of those smokestacks is really cumbersome.) There is no skill really involved here.

If there is no skill involved then what are you complaining about? It should be a cake walk for you.

Coldin.2840:

Jumps where if you went short or long you’d be screwed.

Sounds like what you described above when you said this:

Coldin.2840:

This jumping puzzle is just walk the tight ropes and make jumps that your character can only just reach.

Having completed the puzzle I can tell you that there are many, many jumps if you jump too short or too long you fail.

You really aren’t getting it. Or you’re just intentionally not getting it.

The tight rope walks are just how steady you can keep the camera and walk in a straight line. The jumps are not difficult or challenging. They are just annoying. For example, there is a smokestack you have to jump on early in the puzzle. It it just high enough to get onto if you get the sloped edge. But, because it is just high enough, that makes you usually have to make several attempts at it from different angles until you get the one that lets you go up over it. It’s not challenging or interesting, it’s just annoying.

I would say several parts have been relatively easy. I’ve made it to the third chest many times so far. The blind jump after however screwed me over and I made it past that once….only to fall down when I had to inch around a tower because of the ledge being a bit too small.

Eventually I’ll muster up the patience to get this done. But it will be done ONCE, and then forgotten. It is simply not interesting enough to hold my attention when the lack of checkpoints makes it too frustrating for multiple attempts.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Phyrex.5174:

You get screwed completly if you do the slightest mistake.

Like the Mad King Clock Tower and Winter Wonderland. They are shorter but equally unforgiving but at least with this JP you get a chance to pause and look what at you need to do. That is what makes this new jump puzzle an elite jump puzzle. It isn’t for everyone. It takes persistance and patience. 10/10 will do again.

It’s not even close to Mad King or Winter Wonderland. Those required very fast pace and well executed jumps. Jumps where if you went short or long you’d be screwed.

This jumping puzzle is just walk the tight ropes and make jumps that your character can only just reach. (Getting on top of some of those smokestacks is really cumbersome.) There is no skill really involved here.

If anything, the closest comparison is the jumping puzzle in Silverwastes. It’s long but has very few moments of precise jumping, just finding the right path to go. But that one gives you checkpoints.

That would be typical. Thief gets recycled stuff.

I have no clue what they’re going to do for Thief ranged though. With the P/P nerfs, and the lack of trait support for Shortbow, it’s like they want thief be a purely melee class. And that’s stupid when other classes get to have options for both playstyles.

I like the additional functionality. Not as much having to use F2. Probably just a matter of getting used to, but feels a little more clunky than it used to.

Part of the thing that really bugs me is that most of the times I fall in this jumping puzzle, it’s not due to a tricky jump or some kind of timing. It’s because I had to narrowly walk on this small ledge that my body barely fits on. Or I hit a spot that looks safe, but it makes me do the slide and momentum carries me off. Never feels like it was my fault, but just the imprecise physics screwing me over.

That’s not so much teamwork, as “Bring Mesmers”. And I can’t say I really care for a system that makes it so only one profession is useful.

Yeah. But that thing around his head looks much more like a blindfold than a headband. And the colors really aren’t completely off for Revenant. Revenant is Red Black and White.

Ballads.2509:

There are a few “shortcuts” one can find to get themselves back up to a point past the start. While not checkpoints and not obvious, once found allow you a couple places to get back up.

Any examples? I tried looking for them, but all the places that got me close were blocked off with netting.

And Southsun is hard…but more about precision jumping. It’s also relatively short in comparison. This is more about if physics are going to screw you over walking on a small wire.

Still say that looks more like a Revenent than a Thief.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Sorry, I understand the sentiment, but no. There are plenty of long and brutal JPs, but checkpoints has never been a thing, and shouldn’t be.

Quite a few jumping puzzles have “checkpoints”. Though you might not think of them in the literal sense. But many jump puzzles have phases. Where after you complete a section, you’re in a whole new area of the jumping puzzle and only have to make your way back to the start of that. Many of the really long ones have checkpoints, Silverwastes being a good example of it.

As it is, a few mesmers working together can already give themselves infinite checkpoints at any point in the course. So not having any checkpoints on a particularly long JP like this is really just screwing over anyone not playing a mesmer.

Dinks.2478:

They did it in Silverwastes. Where have you been? With that said, this JP isn’t that bad. I ran it 3 times yesterday for the guild. Bring a mesmer and lay a lot of emergency portals.

That’s not really doing it as intended though. Having a bunch of mesmer portals basically are your checkpoints.

Wow my thread got buried fast. Guess no one cares much about checkpoints….

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

alain.1659:

Before finishing my kitten long post, I would like to remind you all something. Especially to those who claim that thieves are meant to be “melee only”; " Robin Hood was a bloody THIEF.

Robin Hood was using a bow. :/

Funny thing. We don’t even have a single trait that buffs our shortbow. Not a range increase, damage increase, or anything. It’s really sad honestly.

Losing the ability to get some Vitality from Precision really hurt. The extra Ferocity is nice, but really does make thief even more glass cannon than before. Invigorating Precision might have been a good way of making thief less squishy, but it’s the big hits that are going to hurt more than the little ones. Plus, giving up a lot of damage not having No Quarter or Hidden Killer..

I love the little bits of this jumping puzzle. Doing each section is kind of fun, and it’s not to get up to the higher points in LA.

But why oh why are there no checkpoints throughout the whole thing? One would think there would be at least a checkpoint once you reach one of the chests. Or some other way up. Having to start all the way back at the beginning is just so painful when it’s such a long jumping puzzle with so many little ledges to run across. The puzzle itself doesn’t feel that difficult, but the punishment for falling is just severe.

I was having a hard time with this. Seems like sometimes the Karka just don’t show up, even though I’m hearing them chitter around me. Makes it almost impossible to actually hit them when you can’t see where to aim.

Looks like all the pistol stuff is basically gone. Did the extra range and ricochet get rolled into the baseline?

Or maybe Sniper is real, and pistol stuff will be part of it.

Elrey.5472:

Coldin.2840:

That chain of events was pretty cool. Though our instance didn’t get any wyvern at the end. We planted the eggs, event completed, then nothing happened. Did you claim the outpost once the wyvern died? I was kind of bummed we didn’t get the outpost because the quest chain broke.

Maybe you failed the event at placing the eggs? We did get them done succesfully and then the wyvern landed without issues. After that we didn’t had to claim the outpost, it was automatically claimed.

No. It certainly bugged. We placed all the eggs. The lorekeeper mentioned a wyverrn attacking, but then nothing happened.

Thankfully, it did work right in the final beta test.

That chain of events was pretty cool. Though our instance didn’t get any wyvern at the end. We planted the eggs, event completed, then nothing happened. Did you claim the outpost once the wyvern died? I was kind of bummed we didn’t get the outpost because the quest chain broke.

Welcome to the same situation SOR was in after the end of Season 1. You’ll basically have to wait out the season until your rank can drop again.

I have to agree with the other posters to ignore the Guard Lines until you have enough points. You’re not likely to get 115 points that quickly if you’re only playing WvW casually, and until you get there, those points are essentially being wasted. All those lines really help are with roaming or small groups anyway, and roaming is a lousy way of earning WvW xp.

Supply Master T4, Repair Mastery T1, and Build Mastery T1 should be the priorities. They’re a very quick and easy boost that really benefits actually attacking and defending towers and keeps.

I recommend Ram or Arrowcart after that, as they are both very useful pieces of siege for both small and large groups. Or even the solo player when defending a tower against a zerg. Catapult isn’t a bad choice for a few points either, if only to get more damage against walls.

Beyond that, the choices are pretty up in the air. By the time you get all of those leveled, you should have some idea of what you actually like doing in WvW and can prioritize your points accordingly. Then when the next reset comes around, if you have the sufficient points, you can put them into the Guard lines for the buffs.

CeNedro.7560:

Mistforged Hero’s weapons can either be purchased directly for tickets or crafted in the Mystic Forge with one Hero’s Weapon, one Gift of Heroes, four bottles of Elonian Wine, and ten Piles of Crystalline Dust. This is to allow players who don’t have enough tickets after 1 tournament to purchase a weapon and upgrade it after a subsequent tournament.

So it’s possible to get one with 100 tokens.

No. You still need 300 to get a Mistforged weapon. 100 tokens will only get you a regular hero weapon (no particle effects on it). So anyone that got less than 300 tickets will need to wait till the end of next season to get a Mistforged weapon.

Bugabuga.9721:

Delois.3974:

Everyone who wants everyone to get rewards, what should the incentive be for winning?

Um.. to get even more reward? It’s a difference between winners getting 5+ weapons and losing servers getting 1 or 2, versus having to wait several more months, and then grind the whole achievement thing again to get one. (presuming that current skins would not be upgraded to newer other skins)

Or worse, they change their mind about the whole reward structure and the 200 tickets do become worthless.

CaboSoul.1204:

Woohooo just 18 more seasons (19 for me if I don’t get my chest) untill I have all 19 weapons. >_>

That’s assuming your server always gets 300 or more tickets. Some servers aren’t even getting 1 mistforged this season.

Basically what the above poster said. SOR fought hard and worked as best as we could, but we had no chance of placing above 6th place. We really didn’t have any reason to even still be in Silver League with our current numbers.

I’m not even sure why anyone would bother buying a Hero Weapon when it’s just a rare. They’re incredibly common, and any player that played enough to finish the Meta likely has full exotics. Better to save the cost of the wine and dust, and wait till next season.

All this really does is further increase the incentive to ditch a badly performing world and pile onto the Gold Tier servers. You may not end up in 1st, but you’ll still get enough tickets to buy a skin.

Astralporing.1957:

Bawzdawg.2839:

omg guys chill.. its not hard to farm silk is it? Go farm events in cursed shore for one day and get like a full stack of silk scraps… next to lots of rares and tier 6 mats.

And you happen to need two full stacks for a daily crafting of damask. And you overestimate amount of silk gained, by the way.

Basically this.

Silk drops are plentiful, but not so when you consider the sheer amount needed to craft just one Bolt of Damask. It’s kind of absurd actually that you need more than one full stack of silk scraps just to make one bolt of damask. All the other materials I can farm enough to fill my collection and then have enough to make 2 ascended materials at least.

It would be nice if they at least started by reducing the amount of Silk Bolts required to 50 to match mithril and thick leather.

Even if a server was able to constantly support a fully queued map, this actually wouldn’t be a problem for the system. If the max players allowed on the server was lower than the current number, numbers would eventually diminish through various logouts, map switches and disconnects. It wouldn’t be a quick diminish, but then it’s not supposed to either. The idea here is that it would slowly balance out populations while still leaving some margin for change.

As for servers trying to exploit the system, at best they’d just be able to lower the cap enough that they could fill the server with their group. However, this would not serve them well as the average population would still keep them below or equal to whatever the most populous server is currently on the map.

Maybe if they were 25 slot.

And I’d put the costs at 3 ascended material, 1 lesser vision crystal, and a superior rune.

I’ve tried to use Acrobatics 30 a few times, but I just don’t feel like I get enough benefit out of it. Assassin’s Reward just feels too weak, and the healing power fades once initiative is all spent.

There’s a lot in there to boost dodging abilities, but I feel that it’s lacking enough in that respect. One of the main issues is that Dodging is shut down by immobilize, which is becoming increasingly common in PvP. Perhaps if we had some trait that allowed dodging to remove immobilize, it would be more useful. If Fleet of Foot was moved to Grandmaster tier, and removed 2 conditions of all types, then we might see a reason to go 30 in acrobatics.

The problem is…just so many of the Acrobatic Traits are kitten

assin’s Retreat is basically pointless. Master Trapper is only good if you like traps, which I don’t feel are potent enough. Pain Response doesn’t help much against condition spam builds as bleeds just stack right back up. Hard to Catch actually hurts the thief more than helps. Assassin’s Reward is simply too weak of healing to be useful. And Quick Pockets just doesn’t provide enough Initiative.

I’ve seen quite a few suggestions to limit the population caps on the WvW maps. While I agree that this could solve some of the population imbalances between servers, I don’t like that it’s not scalable.

My suggestion is that every map’s population cap will instead be based on the average number of players playing on that map per server. At the end of every tick, a new average is computed and set as the new cap. This way each map’s cap scales up and down based on the number of people playing at the time. It also keeps larger servers from completely outnumbering every other server, while still giving them a slight advantage.

Example:

Red Borderlands starts the matchup with a 50 player cap for each server. Red server brings a full 50 people into the map to play. Blue server brings in 40 people, and Green server brings in 30 people. After the next tick, the new cap is computed at 40. People already in the map of course don’t get booted, but this puts a queue on both Red and Blue servers, while Green still has room for 10 more people. If every server is always bringing in enough people to queue, then nothing changes.

Of course, there would still have to be some minimum and maximum numbers set so that maps don’t become completely unpopulated. There would also have to be some way to increase the caps during peak hours. In these cases, I suggest the cap increases by +5 per tick as long as at least two servers are queued and the average remains the same or higher than the last tick.

I know quite a few people are opposed to introducing any kind of stricter population caps, but I believe this might strike a nice balance. Let me know what you guy think.

I’m sick of stealth too. Mainly that I pretty much have to take stealth specs to be at all competitive. All of a thief’s toughness comes from being able to stealth, and remove conditions/heal while in stealth.

All of the non-stealth based abilities are just not as good. Acrobatics gets some access to dodging and healing when using initiative, but the dodging gets shut down by immobilize spam and the healing just isn’t as good as the stealth based healing. Signet of Malice still requires outputting hits, and while it’s great combined with AOE, it’s not as great in a solo fight or if taking big hits. (Simply not as good as Warrior’s signet)

The only saving grace at the moment is the Pistol Whip spam that works pretty well against newbs that don’t know how to counter it.

Someday I hope thieves won’t have to rely so heavily on stealth in PvP/WvW. But that will take some more serious reworking of the Acrobatics line before that happens.

Zaxares.5419:

Ultimately though, I think the fault lies with ANet for not including a solution that lets people who just want to do the JP for the achievement get through without any trouble from other players. They should have put an NPC at the start of the JP that gives you the Determined buff so you’re completely invulnerable to other players, but also disables all your skills.

Or even simply letting one get an infinite stealth buff without the movement speed decrease. They put in those nice mystic wells, but you have to first reach them and they slow you down. Plus you still have to drop it to get through the dark phase and up the arena area.

Konrad Knox.5162:

Well said. Someone who understands PvP.

Everything else is just QQ. Why should the game reward the loser equally to the winner? If everyone gets a trophy, it’s not really a tournament anymore.

Yes. That’s why Anet is completely redesigning their SPVP reward structure such that you’re always making progress towards big rewards whether one wins or loses.

This would be nice. It could also lower the bar for the meta achievement while still giving the big WvW players something to strive for. I honestly don’t know why it’s not set up like that in the first place.

Offair.2563:

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

Coldin.2840:

It’s very depressing that out the outset of Season 2, no matter how hard we fight or the effort an individual puts in, they simply have no hope of getting a Mistforged Weapon this season. Meanwhile, someone that transferred to a server will a sure shot at placing even 3rd or 4th and puts in the minimum work for the Meta gets a guaranteed 300+ tickets.

If it makes you feel any better, the free transfers to high-ranked servers have ruined the fun for people already on those servers too. Gandara’s queues have gone from 60/20/0/0 to 200/150/150/150. GG Anet.

Thats not Anets fault but the greedy people stacking on a server with high potential to win the league.

I’ll still hold Anet partially responsible since they designed the tournament in such a way that server stacking is encouraged to have the best chance of winning awards. Also offering the free transfers to a selection of servers that players could simply choose one to stack on.

Chunky Milk.2130:

Caring about skins more than fights. This game…

As it is, low ranked servers barely get any good fights. If I want something close to resembling a good fight, I have to head to just one borderlands and even then it’s still pretty stacked against us. Otherwise I head to EOTM, but I could do that any server.

So, from my perspective, I’m not getting good fights or skins.

What might be interesting is if they left the traps, but turned off the PVP. So you can still play against the other servers with the traps, but straight up fights aren’t allowed.

So, as I understand it, only the top 5 servers of each league will get enough tickets to buy a Mistforged Weapon this season. This means that for Silver League, 4 servers will be stuck without them. My own server SoR doesn’t even have a chance at competing at present, though I still hope we’ll rally.

It’s very depressing that out the outset of Season 2, no matter how hard we fight or the effort an individual puts in, they simply have no hope of getting a Mistforged Weapon this season. Meanwhile, someone that transferred to a server will a sure shot at placing even 3rd or 4th and puts in the minimum work for the Meta gets a guaranteed 300+ tickets.

This just doesn’t seem like a fair way to distribute the rewards when servers within a league are so disparately balanced. I suggest all end of season chests contain enough tickets for 1 mistforged weapon with maybe a charge of tokens for lower placed servers. Servers that place in the top three simply can get an extra Mistforged, or have those extra tickets for the other rewards. That would be more balanced in my opinion.

Sigh. Unfortunately this happens every time they add an Achievement in the WvW jumping puzzles.

One or two fights breaking out in the puzzle isn’t too bad. What I really take offense towards is when you have have a group of 6+ all in the front of the puzzle, killing every person that jumps down. Since the platforms are so high up, you basically have to jump down to engage in combat, giving up any advantage. And since the respawn is right there, it doesn’t matter how many you kill, the battle just keeps going on.

Honestly, they should redesign the start of Obsidian Sanctum so you have a bit of time without any fighting, that way people camping have a longer walk to get into the fight, and people getting camped have a better opportunity to fight back.

Of course, all the kittens out there who love to camp will say “It’s PVP! Get over it!” But just because it’s a PVP area doesn’t mean you should have the right to camp. Even the real WvW maps have breakout events to prevent being boxed in.

There’s also all those people who simply hide in certain parts of the puzzle with knockbacks and ambushes. Those types are even worse, since it’s straight up griefing.

It hurts seeing SOR predicted to be at the bottom of the ranks, though I’m not disputing that’s incredibly likely. The fallout from Season 1 hit us hard. Hope we’ll still be able to put up a bit of a fight.

Hobbs.9260:

sorry, I have only spent laurels once and that was in LA before it was destroyed, since then I didnt know where else I could.

Every other main city has a Laurel Vendor. The Rata Sum one is pretty easy to find.