Guild Wars 2

I’m with the OP. I think it cheapens the rewards and seems like a cynical cash in on ArenaNet’s part

/signed in agreement with OP

I think that we should be encouraged to come out of beastmode for other reasons; e.g. there could be a trait that gives some boons to the pet when the ranger leaves beastmode

I think it’d be nice if there were a compelling reason to actually leave beastmode once ArenaNet implement a pet swap from within beastmode. As it is, I don’t see that there’s much incentive to switch around between regular (separate pet) play and beastmode play. Maybe there could be a trait that gave boons to your pet when you leave beastmode?

Do you mean the Guardian shout skill? If so, I use that skill and have not had this problem. :-/

Thanks again for all the helpful responses.

Fluffball: I know that I can’t use the same celestial armour on all 3 characters. I already have 3 ascended celestial sets; one for my ranger, guardian, and ele.

I am thinking I may try having the all offensive stat combos (e.g. Berserker for power, Viper/Sinister for condi) on armour and weapons and then alter my glassyness for PvE/WvW accordingly using trinkets (e.g. use more defensive Soldiers trinkets for WvW when using a power build, offensive Viper trinkets for PvE when using a condi build) and see how I go from there.

This way I will only need 2 sets of armour (one for power, one for condi) with 4 sets of trinkets that I can swap about (as they are relatively easy to obtain compared with armour)

That still leaves the question with what I should do with my ascended celestial armour. For now I will simply hold on to it and then try running offensive exotic armour (e.g. berserker). If I really get on with it, perhaps I will convert the ascended celestial in the mystic forge. But as it seems useful for certain builds, perhaps I should just keep it and therefore aim for 3 ascended armour sets (celestial, berseker and condi-based) per profession (seems a lot tho!)

One thing I don’t quite understand is whether the fully offensive stat builds (e.g. Berserker, Viper, Sinister, etc) are viable in WvW for players that have mediocre skill levels or whether I should aim for some toughness and vitality in there (such as Celestial, Soldiers and Dire.)

Thanks for all the feedback from all three of you.

Trailblazer’s is an interesting stat combo that I’d not considered. I will give it some thought, especially for WvW

I haven’t properly tried running a full set of berserkers or sinister/viper gear (I just assumed I wouldn’t get on with it) so I think I will try running that in exotic armour (perhaps from the karma merchants at the temples in Orr) and see how I get on.

The 3 professions I play the most are Ranger, Guardian and Elementalist.

I will hold on to my celestial ascended armour then and perhaps continue to use that in WvW as I do often roam alone/in smallish groups. The only difficulty is that I was hoping to be able to use at most 2 sets of armour across both PvE and WvW and it seems like this might not be possible if I keep hold of celestial and then have berserkers and vipers/sinister (making 3 sets.)

Thanks again for your help. If anyone has any other thoughts then please do share them.

Hi all,

I’m a long time but very average player of the game and as such I don’t feel able to run full Berserker’s stats for power builds or full Carrion/Sinister/Viper for condition builds – I think I need the benefit of added toughness and vitality to stay alive for a reasonable amount of time as I cannot rely on my (in)ability to dodge/block at the right time to stay alive.

I currently have a single set of celestial ascended armour and then I use Berserker weapons and trinkets for power builds and condition dmg-based weapons and trinkets for condition builds.

But I’m wondering whether it’s worth me converting my ascended celestial armour into soldier’s armour (power-toughness-vitality) for power builds and then crafting another set of ascended dire armour (cond dmg-toughness-vitality) for condi builds. Then the armour will be boosting the primary damage stat relevant for the build but at the same time providing me with survivability so I’m not too glassy.

Or alternatively, is there a better all-rounder stat combo than Celestial (such as Nomads?) that I could swap the Celestial armour for that would work effectively for both power builds and condi builds, thereby saving me the cost of another set of ascended armour?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Ben

Voted for Friday night

Xillllix.3485:

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the Balance Team:

As mentioned in our “Road Ahead for 2015” blog, our strategy for adjusting the meta-game in Guild Wars 2 after the release of Heart of Thorns focuses on releasing balance updates on a set cycle – each and every quarter.

Your strategy isn’t good.

First of all you need to fix broken skills that do 17-20k damage like Coalescence of Ruin or Gun Flame on the week we find out the issues, not 3 months later, because these press 1 button to win skills are ruining the game for everyone in the competitive modes.

Secondly, we don’t want “meta changes” where you are just stuck into playing the same build for 3 months. We want balanced skills so that we can have Build variety as it was promised with the new trait system. The players should be dictating the meta by creative thinking, Anet shouldn’t be dictating it for them and cornering them into meta-builds that they have no choice to run, as it currently is.

This, this, and this.

Thanks.

To save it to your computer, click “File” menu then “Download as”

I made a Google Sheets spreadsheet that shows how attribute stats are distributed across gear in PvE and WvW. It includes a nice pie chart to help visualise it.

You can find it here

I hope that some of you find it useful. All comments welcome. Cheers.

I swear that just last week it used to give me a decent amount of swiftness if I didn’t have any but now it’s practically useless as an “on the move” speed buff :-(

It used to be that Symbol of Swiftness granted X seconds of swiftness to those without swiftness on already and Y seconds of swiftness to those with swiftness on already. This currently seems broken resulting in only a small amount of swiftness being granted to those without it.

Am I going nuts or is this a bug?

I don’t see a year quoted at all – it just says “November 5th, 22:25”. Must be Anet’s rubbish forum software. :-P

Spartacus.3192:

Combatter.5123:

This cloaked update (I didn’t see any notice of it in the update notes) is definitely NOT an improvement to those of us who use the skill as a means to apply swiftness on the go. Please revert it. Many thanks.

Are you a necro? cos this post died 2 years ago and you brought it back.

It died a month ago. And I brought it back cos it’s still relevant. Is that a big problem for you?

This cloaked update (I didn’t see any notice of it in the update notes) is definitely NOT an improvement to those of us who use the skill as a means to apply swiftness on the go. Please revert it. Many thanks.

Proof of Heroics should be Account Bound

People pick a server when they first play the game. How are they supposed to know to check mos page before they know the game, the community, etc? Also, I know OP and we both chose Underworld on launch day

I also did not receive the login reward for yesterday (Tues 16th Dec) but my wife did. Humph!

So… what we need to know now from ArenaNet is are we all going to stay one day behind everyone else or are they going to fix it?

I guess you’re right tbh

You could say that about almost every WvW mechanic tbh. But this proposal would mean rewarding a less offensive style of play

I’m not opposed to highly skilled zerker players whom I have respect for and in no way would I wish to make their builds useless – I just don’t like the idea that everyone (esp. those in a mindless mob) should run zerker because all NPC mobs are low damage, high health, meaning zerker isn’t really risky because the mobs inflict low levels of damage and just take a long time to kill.

I think that the mechanics of WvW don’t really encourage defensive play. One of the problems caused by this is that if a World claim all objectives on their home world (for example), there is very little incentive to stay and defend so everyone moves to a different map and simply allows the opposition to claim back some objectives so that there is something to capture again.

This seems pretty silly and so I tried to think of a way to encourage those who like to defend. How about there being some kind of smallish bonus score offered if a world holds 100% of the objectives on a map? This would encourage players to defend a fully taken map.

Cheers, Ben

Astralporing.1957:

Molch.2078:

This would make zerk even better than it already is.

This.

But zerkers lack health and defence so if they were to get hit with immense damage, they would be downed quickly. Unless you mean in a group event type situation in which case the scaling should serve to give the foes more health/armour anyway.

So many of the foes we face in PvE tend to have low damage output and a high health/armour pool. Fights with these foes tends to be somewhat long and boring and also encourage people to run full damage builds (e.g. Berserker). Could we mix things up a bit have some foes that produce a very high damage output but with a lower health pool?

Zaxares – this has definitely happened to me before when they were neither too far from their spawn point nor unable to reach me. But in regards to the “too far from their spawn point”, in this case couldn’t they just return to their spawn point without rapidly regenerating health in this way (undoing any damage the player had done to them)?

That’s a good point Astral – but maybe to fix that problem they could have a lag-o-meter like the one that featured in Guild Wars 1 – a small circle that shows in red, yellow, or green depending on the last ping time.

Please remove the display of miniatures on the compass/minimap. It serves no practical purpose that I can tell and often causes me confusion when I think that a player is behind me in WvW only to realise that it’s just my mini.

I like my miniatures but I don’t need to see whereabouts they are on the minimap!

Thanks,
Ben

This has happened to me a number of times and is always immensely infuriating. Sometimes I will be in combat with an NPC and for no apparent reason, they will lose ‘interest’ in the fight and start returning to their initial location whilst very rapidly regenerating health. This often happens whilst I am attacking them so they aren’t regenerating due to being out of combat for a time.

I know that the game has a feature that if a foe is being attacked by someone but cannot fight back (e.g. attacked by a player from above and they cannot reach the player to attack back), they will act like this. This is an understandable mechanic to make it hard for players to farm NPCs like this.

However, please fix it so that foes don’t do this during regular combat when they can easily reach the player attacking them.

Thank you! :-)

… and the Crystal Desert music started playing … I got goosebumps. Amazing! Thank you so much! 8-)

Friendly? Chatty? GSOH? Then why not join [TooT] today?

We are a small, cosy guild looking for new members of ALL experience levels for general PvE, dungeoneering, WvW (Underworld), sPvP, and general chit-chat!

We have many upgrades and are looking for more friendly players of all ages, genders, and countries.

Whisper me, Combatter.5123 (in game type “/w Combatter.5123 hello”), for more info or to request an invite.

Ciao!

Jonki.3094:

Please no. Too many PC’s you come across already look absolutely ridiculous with all the excessive accessories that are available.

Let us not make Tyria any more of a circus than it already is.

But…but…looking absolutely ridiculous is my raison d’être!

Her words aren’t kittenlike – the forum replaced a four-letter word (that begins with “naz” and ends with “i”) with “kitten”! Also, we have some new tail ideas:

- a beaver tail
- a skunk tail
- a lion tail

My wife loves asura (“the superior race” in her rather kittenlike words!) but she thinks it’s a bit sad that they don’t have cute fluffy tails. This got me thinking:

Would it be possible to implement a back item that was actually a moving tail for the wearer? Ideas include:

- a fluffy rabbit cottontail
- a brown monkey tail
- a horses tail
- a fox tail
- a curly pink pig tail
- a dragon tail
- a scorption tail
- a rat/skritt tail

…etc. etc. etc…

This might be tricky to implement or it might be really easy. I don’t really know. Also, I’m not sure what you would do with charr characters (that already have a tail) – perhaps they could have their tails replaced or perhaps they could have TWO tails, like Miles from Sonic the Hedgehog 2! ;-)

Anyone else got any cool ideas for tails?

dancingmonkey.4902:

So what about the 6 of you here demanding it be changed, is so special that you think you deserve to have it changed simply because you do not like it. Myself and many many other really like the looks of them.

It is one thing to open dialogue on the issue. It is another to definitively claim “it needs to be changed” because the counter argument becomes “no, it doesn’t” .

The general reaction on these forums and with the player base in general seems to be that ascended armour looks kinda plain and uninteresting. I’m not demanding that it be changed. I’m just requesting that they be ‘beefed up’ a little – made to look a bit more special, perhaps with a slight glow. Nothing more

Boneheart.3561:

There’s also the future of Legendary armor to consider. Don’t wanna set the bar too high.

You could set the bar about three times higher than it is atm without it being too high :-P

Fatalyz.7168:

Because you get the legendary for the skin, not the stats. You get ascended for the stats, not the skins, well some people may like the skins, but the general idea was that they were for stats, not skins.

Can’t ascended armour have the best stats but also a nice skin? I’m not asking for an amazing look. I’m suggesting that armour that takes so much time and effort to craft should have a slightly special appearance. Atm, ascended armour is just very very “meh” imo.

Boneheart.3561:

The biggest offense is the dye job, good lord, I hope you’re more sensible than this example.

You have a point, although I think they do that to clearly show the different dye channels. I’ve tried preview mode with other dyes and although it looks better, it’s still uninteresting.

Zaxares.5419:

Also, some people deliberately keep the Ascended armor appearance so other players know that they’re wearing it, for showing off.

But my point, as stated in my original post, is that it looks very very plain. I don’t think it will be apparent as ‘special’ armour to players except those who know exactly what the ascended armour looks like. At least the ascended weapons have an “oooh!” factor even if you don’t know what the ascended weapons look like. Ascended armour is just.. plain boring.

Stooperdale.3560:

If ascended armor looked really good there would be little or no use for all the cosmetic alternatives the game provides. Yes that would be a bad thing.

It seems you didn’t read my original post in its entirety. I don’t want to make it look really good. I want to make it look a bit different. A bit special. Not fantastic-amazing-blow-your-head-off … just something that hints that the player is wearing ascended armour (that takes a lot of time and effort to craft.)

Why not? They’ve improved the appearance of legendary weapons in the past so why will they not improve the appearance of ascended armour (currently the best armour in the game)?

So I’m finally approaching a point where I will soon be able to start crafting ascended armour for my characters.

But now that I’ve taken the time to look at the actual appearance of the items, I have to say that I’m very disappointed. My main is a female sylvari ranger and therefore her ascended armour will look like this (taken from this wiki page on medium Illustrious armor )

• It looks rather plain and uninteresting tbh
• The helm and boots look metallic and heavy and thus not sensible for a Ranger

I understand that ArenaNet wish to make money through the transmutation charge system but I wish the ascended armour had a similar ‘special’ feel to it like the ascended weapons. In this way, whilst I will probably transmute the skins after a while anyway, before I do, I can feel that my armour appearance has a certain ‘wow’ factor and is easily identifiable as Ascended for that “look at meeee!” feel.

Whilst the ascended weapon skins are not out-of-this-world-amazing, they do have a unique style about them and also a different colour depending on the stat. This is enough to make them feel special and precious, unlike the ascended armour skins.

Would it be possible to add in some kind of special feature to the ascended armours? My immediate thought for something that could possibly be implemented quite easily would be to give all ascended armour pieces a slight glow in a colour that varies according to the stat chosen. But anything like that would be great really.

Tiscan: thanks for the link. That works but the name of the installed font ends up being “.[]”. Can this be changed easily?

I think the repair operation after the invasion of Lion’s Arch was a bit of missed opportunity.

I think it would have been much cooler if over the course of the 2 weeks, Lion’s Arch began to reform but gradually. For example, at some time, a merchant could have entered the city and started to set up a shop. The next day, perhaps a worker could have started work fixing a certain structure.

These changes could take the form of regular player-based events but if that is too complicated, I think it would just be a lot nicer and realistic if changes were a bit more gradual rather than… new patch is out, BAM! .. Lion’s Arch is suddenly mostly repaired!

Cheers, Ben

I think the decision to delay rewards for everyone is probably a good one all things considered but regardless of this, I would like to make a point: I played Guild Wars 1 for over 4 years and have been playing Guild Wars 2 since launch and, despite loving the feel, mechanics etc of both games, one thing stands out for me about ArenaNet w.r.t. to GW1 and GW2:

Their Quality Assurance process is poor

When I heard that they had changed from one GW2 game update every 4 weeks to one every 2 weeks, I felt little other than despair. I very rarely bother to play the game much on the day of a new release now because the chances are there will be at least another 2 game updates on their way to fix frankly rather major bugs.

ArenaNet: please use less resource on creating so many gem store items and more resource on creating polished releases without major bugs – that way you will be more likely to maintain a loyal player base who are then more likely to spend real cash in the gem store in the future!

Thanks for reading.

The legendary foes within Crown Pavilion have this buff on them:

“Indomitable : Cannot be blinded, chilled, crippled, immobilized, knocked down, launched, or pushed back. Cannot be removed”

Have ArenaNet thought about what this leaves for the rare kind of player that doesn’t want to go all out damage? They are even immune to stun and daze despite this not being mentioned in the buff

So this means that the “damage, control, support” idea becomes “damage, support” or should I say “damage, damage, damage, damage, damage, and support”?

:-(

Ah ok thanks, Charak. Do swords appear if a wall is getting hit by catapult too?

If my world researches “Hire Additional Guards” for a keep and some invaders attack these guards, will this cause white crossed swords to appear around the keep icon (and so act as a warning to us that the keep is under attack)?

If so, will it potentially contest a waypoint if the keep has one too?

Thanks in advance, Ben

In fact, with the implementation of megaserver, perhaps the idle kick timer for PvE explorable areas could be drastically increased too

Good riddance Frostgorge Sound champ train