Guild Wars 2

The main problem with ele in wvw it is weak defensively and offensively compared to other classes. It is a jack of all trades, master of none and you are usually dead before you get to use many of your abilities unless you stick firmly to the backlines with a crew that has a clue how to defend backliners.

I agree 100 percent. No reasonable person could disagree with what you write here. Of course the white knights are going to bombard you with the usual l2p and “entitlement” nonsense. The fact is many aspects of HoT were specifically designed to be frustrating either due to sheer stupidity or the warped belief that people play games because they enjoy being frustrated. There is simply no other rationalization for the frustrating anti-fun crap that weighs this game down.

This is hands down the most frustrating “game” I’ve ever “played.” It should stand as an example going forward to all game developers of how not to make a game if you don’t want your customers to hate you. I am honestly kittened off that I wasted money on this abomination just to have a bunch of sadistic jerks plays head games with me and dare to call it “fun.”

Aside from the graphics which are excellent GW2 has never been a masterpiece of game design and has always been plagued with mediocre design choices and lack of attention to quality control and quality-of-life issues,. But HoT took the stupid to unprecedented levels. They produced a game which is the precise opposite of what their players said they want.

Qugi.2653:

Say Anet do everything they do like before HoT expansion release. Video, blog and allow beta if prepurchase. Will you prepurchase? Curious.

I won’t pre- or post-purchase. I am done giving this company my money if this is the level of product they create.

Molesworth.1684:

Am I the only one finding it frustrating that mastery points are tied to these difficult and annoying mini games? It’s nigh on impossible to get even bronze on many of them. Coupled with the fact that they’re often closed, I have given up hope of ever getting enough mastery points to max my level.

I agree absolutely. These are excessively difficult and or boring and not something I would ever do if I wasn’t forced to to get the mastery points. Just another frustrating grind in a game that is way to full of grind as it is.

Sigfodr.9576:

Ronihn.9824:

Lol did you just insinuate people may be shallow cause they don’t want to play a certain character style LOL …. too funny you may need to get out more.

You just need to be in party with a sylvari If you really hate sylvari so bad that you are not able to be in party with one for the 10 min. it takes to do this vary importent achivement.. then I think the achivement is not that importent to you, or that you are shallow, yes. sry.

I mean, its not fair that I need to play wvw to get the wvw achivements or play pvp for the pvp achivements either right?..

anyway.. lol

I don’t mind playing with Sylvari, it’s just that I don’t have a rent-a-Sylvari on hand who doesn’t have the achievement and is willing to run through this tedious crap content again just so I can get an achievement. It is, as always, stupid design.

I just ran into this today and it sucks. I already did the story on one toon and don’t want to do it on any others, but if I want to get Auric map completion on all toons, I have to grind through that boring as crap story on every one of them.

There is just way too much gating in this game, and it blows. Really frustrating, anti-fun game design forcing you into a corner at every turn.

Traditional full zerker longbow ranger is pretty “easy” to play in HoT…if you know how to use it properly. If not you’re a wet noodle and will be stomped accordingly. I have played ranger for years in WvW and the instincts I honed there serve me well in HoT. Dodging for example is automatic and not something I need to think about. Same with hunter’s shot. It just happens when it needs to.

But for someone new to the class they may be in for a rude awakening in HoT, something I didn’t experience on my insta-80, no clue how to gear, play or spell the name of this thing revenant. So ranger is strong if you know how to play and because our pets can now tank in PVE. They still suck in WvW and are tough for anyone new to the class, as is ele. Druid sucks.

The necro is also very strong and is a tagging machine if you are grinding rep. I often charge into groups of HoT mobs in reaper shroud with little fear of being killed, not that I don’t get killed from time to time. Necros do not suck in WvW, and are very forgiving for players new to the class with great survival even with zerker builds. Unlike ranger I am new to the necro and don’t know how to play it properly but it doesn’t matter.

But as you say, the simplicity/familiarity of combat on the ranger has made it my default class for initially exploring the new maps and getting the mastery points and some of the achievements out of the way. Pet tanking is a huge advantage. After that comes the necro by which time I know the maps fairly well and can send my hopeless staff ele in.

Labjax.2465:

Longbow skill 4 is a Knockback (if you don’t know this already, you’re probably a Ranger)

How true. Half the fun in this game is making warriors chase mobs all over the map with my ranger knockback

I especially enjoy rescuing thieves from certain death in WvW with a well-timed knockback. I aim for the aoe circles; there is often a thief on top of them.

sticky this

The rest of this post is meaningless fluff so I could write the two words above.

One of the reasons for constant failures on VB and other maps is that the waypoints are often contested and people can’t easily get to the area without running through the 3d fustercluck/rat maze. Also some of the events are a PITA and take forever to complete, and involve a lot of running around. So you have dozens of people clustered around the Pact Encampment events as the wp is always accessible and the events are straightforward, and few people doing the Ordinance Corps events as the wp is usually contested, the events are scattered all over and the Airplane Salvage mission takes forever (not to mention landing in the middle of a group of elite and veteran frogs and getting ganked, even when there are only two people doing the event).

The contested waypoint thing has always been one of the stupidest things Anet has ever done, and they have persisted in this stupidity despite people complaining about it from day one. There may be a few spots where it is needed so that people can’t bypass parts of the events, but for the most part it serves no purpose other than to limit mobility and frustrate people.

Ohoni.6057:

To each his own, but can you understand that someone who doesn’t enjoy self-pain might not appreciate it as much? If that’s the experience you want, then might I suggest just removing your armor, and allowing the rest of us to also have fun?

This is precisely the problem. It isn’t that I don’t like genuinely challenging content, it is that the “challenge” is gimmicky and not reasonable in many cases, leading to frustration rather than fun. Anyone can make a game with invincible mobs that one-shot you and call it a “challenge,” but few non-masochists would find such a game to be fun. This is a cheap gimmick and not what a well-designed game should be. Now HoT doesn’t quite go that far, but it comes perilously close at times.

I was solo defending one of those ordinance tower construction events in VB the other day on my mesmer. Since I was alone, the only mobs attacking were a vet frog thumper and two Coztic shadowleapers. This should have been doable, and it was…sorta. The problem is that when I attacked them I would continually see ’MISS, MISS, MISS, EVADE, EVADE, EVADE" over and over again and I simply could not hit them many times. I kept getting shot up and having to run away to restart the fight again and again until I finally finished the event. This was intensely frustrating and the mechanics felt really cheezy.

Making things tough is not the same as making them fun. Doing this (normal) event was tough but it was not fun. A good game will be challenging in a way that is fun and rewarding, rather than using some deus ex machina mechanic to flatten you out of nowhere or make it so you can’t fight back, hit anything or evade attacks as a substitute for intelligent and challenging AI.

Another example of tough but not fun is making it take forever to kill some mobs that are otherwise easy to fight (eg. jungle tendrils). This is not a “challenge” but just another lame way of making things mindlessly difficult without providing rewarding gameplay. I freaking hate weed-whacking those things over and over again.

Osu.6307:

One or two at a time, they are no problem. The problem occurs in the event chains when you get 4-5 appearing out of thin air in a confined space laying down so many of those fire lines that there is no safe place to stand. Some of the events in VB I just stopped doing because unless you have a group of 10 players, you’ll wipe.

I’ve seen this a number of times doing the Pale Reaver outpost stuff in that southern area with the Salvage Pit. You have narrow corridors where a number of snipers will spawn instantly completely covering the corridor with those fire lines wiping the whole group in one moment because they cannot dodge sideways or move to avoid them. I would be happy to see the fire lines removed but otherwise keep them strong. You only have two dodges so getting swarmed by these guys can be a problem even for a group. Having them parachute in behind you out of nowhere and backshoot you kinda sucks as well.

I agree with you. Ele needs an hp buff, period. Anyone who tells me he has no trouble dealing with a vet frog or can solo a champ on ele is full of it. I want to see the video. Some people with issues feel the need to attack people who report having problems with the game. It happens in every thread.

I have no problem dealing with the frogs on ranger, reaper/necro or mesmer. I can do many of the hp champs with my ranger. But those frogs are a PITA on ele because they hit hard and ele does crap damage. I have to heal my way through most fights with frogs.

I had the same problem. The updraft shown in the Dulfy guide seems to have been moved further away and further up, making it impossible to reach from the ledge Dulfy jumps from. Very frustrating.

People have been complaining about the bags-in-a-bag clickfest grind forever, but they keep making it worse. They are tone-deaf on this issue.

I’m rather glad stick-boy bought the farm. That monotone posh English accent was like nails on a chalkboard. What an annoying character!

I agree that gating our pets behind this event is an extremely unfair and ill-considered mechanic—like pretty much everything else with this class. I wish whoever designs this class would stop trying so kitten ed hard to make playing it suck as much as possible but instead make things accessible and fun by applying a modicum of common sense to balance out the sadism. People are already frustrated with the amount of gating in this game and now you gate our pets behind a tediously long event with no guarantee we will get the pet?

You might note other classes are complaining about the presence of rangers who are just there to get the pet.

Magnificently dumb idea

I’m also getting stuck at the part where you “follow Taimi to the draw of ley energy.” after you fight the group of mobs she just gets stuck there and you can’t progress.

I have enough mastery points to do the Pact Commander line just curious how long it takes to grind the experience doing maps on an insta-80 revenant or other toon with no map exp at all. . I have birthday boosters also.

Don’t worry, Anet will ignore the user base as it always has.

What’s worse is even if you are capable of soloing some of the champs, the developers put a kittenING TIME LIMIT on killing them so there is usually no way you can kill them in time unless you do massive dps. With some champs you can wait nearby and hope other players show but many are on small platforms where you will be in combat from the second you land (if you are not two-shotted out of the sky first).

They clearly don’t want you to solo anything so they box you into a corner of having to coax other players into doing a massive, frustrating grind with you which is further complicated by the fact everyone is doing different stuff.

Unreal. I have never seen such incompetent and thoughtless game design. This is absolutely rock bottom terrible.

Norrath.5910:

ANet #1: “Yo dude this skill is bugged, it’s doing 50% more damage than it should and we didn’t know about it during beta, what should we do?”

ANet #2: “Oh wow, we messed up. Which class was it?”

ANet #1: “Ranger.”

ANet #2: "WHAT!??? NERF it and break a completely different skill’s utility too! WE MUST PUNISH THOSE FILTHY RANGERS FOR HAVING SOMETHING GOOD. I bet they are hyped about our expansion too, even after we tried to kill it by making them into dedicated healers, I bet they are actually adapting to it and are calling it “viable”. They will suffer for having something good. I want it destroyed next hotfix.

ANet #1: But those are only for bugs right now, we want to wait and see if things are actually strong and not nerf it 2 days into the expansion.

ANet #2: Ranger being viable is a bug.

Sadly, this is closer to the truth than not. Any indication that rangers are becoming viable and they immediately break out the nerf bat. They don’t want this class to work which is why #craphealer. But hey, we can’t fix that other unintended bug where Halloween events don’t give you Tyria credit, because that might break the game.

They are so full of kitten it’s beyond belief.

The new “objective captured” pop-up blocks my view when I am playing making it hard to see things particularly if I am looking up. It is extremely annoying and killing WvW for me. Please make this alert optional.

We have been asking for the option to remove unnecessary and annoying info boxes that block the view in wvw. but this one is the worst as it is right in the center of the screen.

4 for fun, -10 for frustration so net of -6

Mobs are too tough and too many, can’t find enough people to do hero points and events and rat mazes went out with last century RPGs. Insane grind and difficulty accessing mastery points.

Annoying “objective captured” pop-up blocking my view in WvW has pretty much ruined that aspect of the game for me as well unless they remove it.

The fact is it is hard to get a group, and a lot of people already in a group have what they need and aren’t willing to invite or help others. I got lucky once and glided into a hero point on the first try just as a group was finishing up the champ there. Otherwise, i wouldn’t have stood a chance.

That is not how it usually works.. Usually, I spend 20 minutes trying to get to the hero point just to find out I don’t have the requisite mastery or I get two shot out of the sky by the two veterans guarding it or some frustrating variation thereof.

For something as essential as your hero points, the content should be soloable. It’s already a miserable, unfun grind just to get to the hero points without making it impossible with champ guards. Group content should be for optional stuff.

This “expansion” truly sucks.

Anet apparently agrees that games should be tough and not fun.

Yes, I had this bug. I tried relogging but it didn’t help. Then I guested on another server and I was able to talk to him.

Yes, you do have to play this thing to get anywhere. Good luck having any fun with this Silverwastes retread grindfest.

That’s the part Anet keeps missing—the fun part. Keep making “games” that are nothing but makework chores identical to all the other content we are all burned out on by now only make it harder and more grindy as if that magically makes it fun.

Ranger still broken, What a surprise.

In a word: crap

Can someone explain WHERE you have to grind this exp? I assume it’s Silverwastes 2.0 for the Maguma masteries but can you do the Tyria stuff in WvW or do you have to go to Tyrian maps and do PVE stuff all over again to get it?

In some countries, you could be shot for this level of incompetence. Most frustrating, boring and unfun expansion I’ve ever played. A hideous grindfest with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Total fail.

I have 26 Tyria Mastery points but can’t seem to use them. Am I supposed to grind experience in Tyria doing the same PVE content over and over again before I can actually use these mastery points? I can’t find a simple explanation anywhere for this they all imply you just need the mastery points.

This game has become an ungodly grindfest from hell. I have 8 toons. I was going to make a revanent, but forget about that it will be hard enough to grind just one toon to full mastery and specializations. I don’t even know how to earn the experience for the masteries as I have yet to see an explanation in plain English anywhere. Obviously I can run around in the new maps for Maguuma masteries but do you have to grind PVE events in Tyria to get the Tyria masteries? I have 26 Tyria mastery points but now have to grind experience to use them? HTF does this work?

X T D.6458:

-Get rid of the wildlife, or turn them nonhostile, gets annoying having enemies rallying off of them, or having them putting you in combat. Get rid of the mosquito event in EB, why on earth is that there..

I couldn’t agree more. The NPCs (aka thief decoys) can be a PITA when you are trying to fight someone who can can dance in and out of invisibility constantly. They also tend to aid large zergs as they are easily dispatched by big zergs but tend to annoy the hell out of squishies in smaller zergs. It is way too easy to aggro them with aoe abilities and sigils.

It also sucks to try and use your movement skills only to fly into a wall or attack the nearest NPC if you have auto-target on. Come to think of it a button to target auto-target on and off so we can quickly switch it off to use our movement skills for evasion would be nice.

I play LB glass ranger in WvW and without a doubt, other rangers are my easiest kills as well as my weakest adversaries. This holds true for every other class I play as well, making rangers only truly effective against other rangers or players with all CDs blown. If you are having trouble with glass rangers, you’re going to have a rough go with unkillable necros or thieves who can both do more damage from the downed state to me then I can to them when they’re downed.

I agree an out of combat weapon swap is a must and not unbalanced in any way. It would be great to be able to switch from staff to d/d instantly in WvW depending upon what kind of opposition you are facing. Once you’re in combat you are committed to your choice so this does not affect balance.

I would also like the ability to switch attunements out of combat without triggering a long cooldown like everyone else can do. I can see having a cd in combat but out of combat just seems an unfair and clumsy disadvantage that makes it difficult to set up the combos you want to use.

PS If you do go into WvW as a ranger, get used to being called a ’rallybot" meaning every time the enemy rallies from the downed state due to the death of a player that fired at them, it will be blamed on you. Get used to people bypassing everyone else to dogpile on you because you are correctly considered an easy kill.

Ranger is fine for roaming around in PVE, but then, so it everything else. It can be very weak in WvW due to having poor survivability with glass builds and poor sustained damage due to getting eaten alive by retaliation. Non-glass builds do crap damage. The pet dies instantly in zergs and tends to run forward into the aoe when you stop or lags behind when you dodge out of aoe getting killed for no reason. Anet has failed to address fundamental problems with this class that have existed since day 1. There is a reason so many are asking for a pet-free ranger option.

Necro is very strong in WvW by contrast if not op.

…or will it be a relentless grind like the current system? I have still not unlocked all the grandmaster skills on all my toons due to the fact it is such a chore to do so and having to wait on temples being available is tedious and unnecessarily arduous in a game that is supposed to be fun.

I hope the new boss will not be the same as the old boss.

Thanks for the responses. According to the link given, and doing the math, we now get 30 less laurels less per year than before (455 vs 480).

Old: 365 daily laurels plus 120 monthly laurels or 485 total.
New: 35 laurels per cycle times 13 cycles per year equals kitten total (That’s four hundred and fifty five as Anet edited the number).

Edit: based on above responses I now see that you get a “Chest of Loyalty” at the end of the 28 days which allows you to choose 20 laurels from among other options, so this could mean a net of 230 more laurels per year vs the old if you choose this option every time.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chest_of_Loyalty

I agree this is not a matter of opinion. It is objectively worse for many players than the old system. What else can I conclude when I was in Iron Marches last night and all you could see were “any events” inquiries repeated over and over again from people who had a hard time finding four events to fill that one requirement of the daily? I was there just to get waypoints on my new toon but I found running around randomly I could not find four events to do there and had to wp to where people said they were happening.

Doing the dailies in WvW might be easier…so far, but the rewards are crap. Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges! You get plenty of badges just running around capping camps. If you are going to give badges make them a decent amount, at least.

Do we get a laurel and mystic coin every day for just logging in? Or are the laurels and coins given out in those variable bags that we get for logging in? If the latter, I only seem to have gotten one laurel and one coin so far. Do we get more laurels or coins in latter bags or is this RNG at work? It seems to me at the moment not understanding the new system that we will be getting less laurels and coins overall per 28 days then we did before.

Also, do we have to log in 28 times within a month to get full rewards or is that just 28 times whenever we get to do it, with the “month” resetting after 28 days?

How does this all work?

Thx.

I agree. This game is a clickfest from hell. Wintersday is a particularly hideous example. The interface in this game is horrible when it comes to opening and salvaging items. Click, click, click, click, click gets to be a bit too much when there are obvious and easy ways to streamline this. You get the impression this is another tedious time-sink in a game overloaded with grind and make-work. Let’s add repetitive stress injuries to the downside of this game.

I read somewhere that maxing out luck will require you to salvage 144,000 items. WTF? That’s just the luck grind. That’s just one clickapalooza. Then there’s the opening the bags grind and the bags inside of boxes and salvage items inside of bags grind. Then there’s buying items in bulk from vendors…click, click, click.

A simple “open all bags” command would eliminate this mess while still providing the convenience of bagged loot.

Give players what THEY want, not what YOU want and they will be happy and continue to play your game. The solution is to put all currencies in the wallet as requested. Who cares how big the wallet is?

We already have enough crap “complimenting” our inventories.

My wolf is named “Undercover Sheep” and my jungle spider is “I Ate Lil Ms Muffet.” My bear is “Sits in the Woods.”

Other pets I like to name “Juvenile Delinquent” due to the huge number of pets running around with the “Juvenile XXX” default name. Always fun when people catch the change.

What it means is we have to go out of our way to do activities we may not want to do just to get the daily done, rather than earning the daily doing whatever it is you like to do. Hence, it is busywork. I already find having to log in on multiple toons to craft every day due to time-gated content a hassle. This is not how I want to play the game. I find most PVE events to be boring as hell and don’t want to waypoint around multiple zones to do them.

In then end this might make it easier for WvWers depending on the WvW changes (if it isn’t something outrageous like take an enemy keep in the borderlands), but harder for PVE-oriented players.

It’s all speculation now and this may turn out better than the op fears, but his comments and concerns are spot on and whatever it is Anet does, they should bear these concerns in mind and make the dailies better for all players, not just the AP hunters.

Excellent analysis and summation of the problem. Anet doesn’t seem to realize that this game is already too grindy and we really don’t need any more busy work; we need fun and meaningful content to make the game worth playing!

That’s just the point. I am just as uncomfortable having large amounts of money in my game wallets as I would be having $10,000 cash in $1,000 bills in my real world wallet. It is easy to make mistakes in the tp and radically overpay for items.

Besides I am talking about depositing money, not withdrawing it. There should be no limit on when you can deposit money; withdrawals generally require permission for most people anyway and if the guild leader has constant access, any problems can be solved by going to the guild leader.

There is also a 1000g cap on guild deposits that should be lifted as well.

People been asking for a way to store money outside our wallets so we don’t accidentally spend it. This is a much needed request that has long been ignored. Many of us are forced to make personal storage guilds so we can use them to store our money. Usually we switch in and out of these guilds and our everyday guilds to do so.

Today when I tried to deposit money in my personal guild bank, I got the message that I had to be a member of the guild for 3 days to do so, even though I am the “guild leader” and only member. This is really frustrating and I can’t see the purpose of requiring the guild leader to be a member for 3 days just to deposit money. Now I am stuck for 3 days unable to deposit money. I hope this isn’t an anti-storage guild measure.

Please fix this. It is counterproductive. Guild leader has to have access to funds at all times or the guild bank is pointless.

Thank you.

PS. After typing this I noticed the money I attempted to deposit did actually go into the bank, and I tried depositing and withdrawing a few silver which worked. So the “you must be a member of this guild for 3 days” message may be a bug.