Guild Wars 2

I know it wasn’t opened for this question, but any toughts on the two reward options? There is a 25 and a 15 token one, and I guess we kind of “scam” the poor guy if we take the first option, since as I recall (I might remember wrong) he pays more for spleen but we can offer tendons only.

I just want to hop on the praise train. You guys really nailed this story episode.

- I love the Silverwastes, probably even more than Dry Top, specialy the idea that the whole map is almost a huge event area (I hope you can make it popular and insteresting beyond the achievement hunting that will keep people there)

- The new areas of the library were stunning enough alone, but my jaw dropped even lower when I moved forward the story

- The Hidden Arcana boss fights are fun and refreshing. Hope to see that area again later added to Fractals (or at least the very last part as a new boss level)

I was kind of getting away from the game lately, but this new LS just reminded me why I love to play GW2 so much. Thanks for the experience and keep up the good work.

My main reasons for a Guild Hall:

It’s a shared home for your guild and it would improve social life inside that community, which I consider a form of QoL improvement. It’s also a shared goal to improve to work for as a team. It’s a place to customize, to change, to improve, to attract more players, to have some fun with tonics, spend some karma on beer, maybe roleplay a bit and so on. It’s not just about the utility, it’s a private funpark. If it’s done well, it could serve as a reminder of your guilds progression and past in this game. For me it would have more emotional values than practical ones, though I can think of some features like a dueling arena, where we can test some builds or even hold some minicompetitions. All in all guild halls are opportunities if I’m allowed to be a bit vague at this moment.

Some random toughts on alliances:

First: Why do we want an alliance?

For me the reason would be to have a wider group of people, who can help out each other with forming groups for fractals, dungeons, guild activites probably. So basicaly it’s a friendship between 2 or 3 (or possibly more) guilds. Each can keep its own identity, but together they have the numbers for different kinds of activites (maybe raids in the future). That’s an alliance I can imagine.

I would definately differntiate this from “task/goal-oriented guilds” – at least that’s what I call them. You know very big guilds with non-dominant social life, created only for a single purpose like kill three-headed-wurm, WvW guild for the server, Dry Top farmers or whatever you can imagine.

The biggest question I have with alliances is that how global or individual should it be?
- the alliance is a rigid, global thing, each member is inside the exact same alliance
- alliances are guild-based choices, each guild can form its own group of alliance
- alliancer are presonal choices, each player can be in the alliance they want to

I would rule out the third, individual option immediately, because that’s not a real alliance, that’s just creating a platform for having all the guilds you are in connected somehow. It’s basicaly a friend list and doesn’t add anything to the social life that a good alliance should fulfill.

Separate alliances for each guild seem better at first sight, because it offers freedom for every guild to surround itself allies it wants to, plus it would create a web of connections, but it might raise some problems in action. For example “alliance chat” is out of question that way, because I would see different members there than one of my allied guild member is seeing, because his guild might have a different set of allies. But if there isn’t any alliance chat, than what practical things would it offer. Why would it be better than unofficial alliances that we can already have today, like “I ask XY guild, they are kind, they might help us out.” I have some ideas, like you could invite your allies to your guild hall (for a dinner party :P) but that will be another topic I guess.

On the other hand if alliances are rigid and not guild-based that would raise the question that who would decide about inviting a new guild to the alliance. Imagine two guilds that are already partners but one would like to add a third one. It shouldn’t be a problem between partners and I’m sure most of the guilds can sort it out, but technically we would rely on being fair and considerate with other, which is a human issue afterall. Relationships usually have bumps so we should think about how would kicking a guild out of an alliance work, or should we have that option in the first place.

So all in all the biggest question for me, before we would go into details about alliances, that would they be non-overlaping social cricles (even with their own name) or do we want different alliances for each guild, but then we should deal with the issues that it raises.

I know I’m not offering many answers here , but I really consider this a core point of alliances and I can come up with many pros and cons for both types.

Nike.2631:

Donari.5237:

Proposal Overview
Make it very hard to leave a guild by accident.

Small and focused as this is, I really do approve/agree.

Yeah, it’s a really minor thing, but I consider it important too.
Maybe use the same method as they use at destroying rare+ items?
You should type in the guild name to a pop-up box to leave it.

Okay, lets except that they are right, they researched it, and we are the minority.

Then wouldn’t it be better to make this system as a first-character-progression only? I mean think about it. If you have learnt the mechanics already, why teach it again?

To be fair the solution is very easy: Introduce a consumable that allows players to bypass the very first levels. We already have the level 20 scroll, but since we are getting elites on level 40 only, it would be better to at least have an option to mystic forge a level 40 scroll using the level 20 we get from birthdays and achievement chests and what we should get for finishing story mode too probably.

So the leveling, skill unlocking part would be solved by a simple consumable, all they need to add is fix the trait hunting which could be done by making the unlocking account bound.

This way they would have their new player experience, and everyone would be encouraged to make alternate characters. If we would have the opportunity to start from level 40, bypass all the leveling madness and have all our traits already unlocked, we would buy a lot more character slots. At least I know that I would.

Honestly, I do believe that the community is starting to exaggerate this whole thing. Yes I hate the new leveling and hated the new trait system from the start, but there are things that we can certainly appreciate as well. I’m also 100% for the old level-up system, never had problem with that one, but I really think that hate towards Anet is getting a bit over-the-top sometimes.

With all that said I do believe that the community can come up with very good and solid ideas and it can be disappointing when these suggestions are neglected completely and we do not receive even a single comment about why they are disagreeing with us on certain issues. I can understand that they cannot talk about future plans, but they probably can talk about suggestions, that they consider non-viable.

With all that said, it doesn’t change the fact, that after 2 amazing years, we are still playing this game. We had our ups and downs for sure, but I still believe that calm and logical discussion would be more helpful than another “we told you so”/“listen to us please” post, and constant blaming and I know a lot of you would say “we are over that already”. I’m a bit concerned about the tone the complaints strike sometimes, and the last thing I would like to see is alienating devs, because if I were them I wouldn’t be up for communicating with my community in such a toxic atmoshpere.

I’m not saying that we should take everything quietly, just that we both have the same goals: we all want to enjoy this game for a long time, and Anet is probably interested in that too. I think we all get that when they make a change, they make it with an intention to please the community, because they probably need happy players to stay and play this game for a long time. They sometimes hit a miss or make a wrong step, but don’t forget about the stuff they did right (fractals, wardrobe system, living story, dry top, so on…).

I can imagine “Leveling & Traits” as a CDI topic where we can discuss the whole thing, that could be a platform, where their ideas and plans can get closer to our demands and concerns. I rather want a discussion and a solution than an uneffective outcry :-/

Proposal Overview:
Info Card – extra information on player on hovering over their names

Goal of Proposal:
Allow players to share their
- character/account age
- profession they spent the most time on (main)
- PvP, WvW, Fractals ranks
- Commander Badge status (do they have one or not)
This should help new guild mates and bigger guilds to have a quick idea about barely known members + it’s just generaly a cool thing to have.

Proposal Functionality:
Like I said, by hovering over player names could bring up a slightly bigger box with the above mentioned information. You can add it to the options too, so everyone can decide on sharing or not sharing these information (maybe having a third option for sharing it with friends/guildmates only). It even can be a more global feature.

Associated Risks:
Might raise player-elitism, and I’m completely against that, but I’m willing to stay optimistic about it and have hope in our community.

Proposal Overview:
Guild Calendar and/or Separate tab for ‘Message of the Day’

Goal of Proposal:
To make organization easier without forcing guild to use guild websites and forums to share information with each other.

Proposal Functionality:
A separate tab would be great for the calendar or at least make a new tab for ‘Message of the Day’. The main window part of it is too tiny and cannot be resized, so I mainly read it on the history tab, but I consider it only a workaround method, because this way I think it doesn’t get that much attention.

The downside of the calendar is, that it will need probably a few extra additions in order to make it functional enough to implement it. Thinking about basic stuff like editing, deleting certain events or a little more advanced ones like allowing members to sign up for them to have an information feedback on their interests.

This topic just gave me an idea, to organize a “Spooning with Jennah” tour in our guild collecting spoons with mini Jennahs on. For reasons.

Vayne.8563:

I think as you get further on in the leveling process, you’ll see exactly why it’s good.

Can you just “spoil” it for me? Because as I said I might be wrong, so I’m just curious what are the benefits for a player (new & alt-leveler) starting this slow when he gets further in the leveling process.

I really feel bad for Anet right now, because it must have been a lot of work and I bet they truly wanted to improve it, but I just don’t get why is it good. So basically all the limitations should serve new players and help them to slowly experience every single part of the game, but I still see it as counterproductive.

Curiosity is a huge part of new player experience, and it just feels like that I’m walking into a restaurant and the waiter is telling me, that I cannot have a menu, until I taste the daily special. I mean if a new player is capable of using, learning, unterstanding new skill and aspects of the game, why hold him back? I’m pretty sure if someone is confused by the game (A) he will go with autoattacks by his own will until he is comfortable with using more (B) ask around in mapchat and experience the helpful community of the game and feel welcomed.

I had no problem at all with leveling up 2 years ago, since then I leveled up many alts, most of them with 100% world completion and I’m still waiting since april to level up an engi. Created one a couple of weeks ago, because I hoped you will redesign the trait-system, and now I will wait more. It’s just time consuming and I wouldn’t like to waste significantly more time on leveling an alt, because I want to play the Living Story (which is great by the way) or participate in the WvW season.

The best thing would be to go back to our roots with leveling, because it was perfectly fine. I’m not against changes, I loved most of the improvements you have done so far, but this particular think failed I’m afraid (although one thing I like, the built-in tutorials on starting maps, that was a good idea).

I just really want to understand your side of the story, because I get that you wanted to help new players, I just don’t get that why did you think dumbing/slowing down leveling is helpful. I even give you that you might be right, I just cannot see the benefits of it all.

In case you still believe in your new system, at least you can please the experienced players by allowing them to get traits in bulk (like the old way – you can even raise the price of trait books, I don’t care) and give them an opportunity to start from a higher level. For example I would happily mystic forge level-20 scrolls to upgrade them into level-40-60-80 ones.

All in all I feel bad for the new players, because they will reach the awesome parts of this game so much slower then we did, and I feel bad for Anet, because they must have worked a lot on this change and I know that I won’t level up my alt until it is fixed.

Some more ideas for the “quickfix” while they rework the whole thing (hopefully):

Adept:
- visiting certain POIs and Vistas (1-35 areas only)
- maybe 5 city mapcompletion (1 for each trait line)

Master
- doing World Bosses (simpler ones)
- finishing minidungeons
- completing Jumping Puzzles

Grandmaster
- doing World Bosses (more difficult ones)
- finishing dungeon story modes
- reaching 100 skillpoints / 150 vistas / 150 heart quests / 250 waypoints / 300 POIs
(conveniently there is one category for each trait line)

Definitely avoid full map completions, story progression and generaly abandoned champions.

As I already suggested, I’m still in favor of handing out traits upon leveling. This way you will be rewarded when you get a level and you will have the freedom to choose a trait what you would like to try out. With this option, players will get their traits just by playing and leveling without any particular task or restriction and they still will be introduced to all the traits one-by-one.

I don’t know, it just feels so much userfriendly, logical and natural to me.

Plus I think I only went to level 50-60+ zones after I reached level 80, so I think new players will have a harder time if you stick to your new method. What a new player will experience is that he/she has to hunt down a certain champion for a certain trait and he/she will be probably alone for that. Waiting for a trait, because noone is near to the champ that will give unlock it will be very frustrating I assume. (If you really like your new method, at least consider changing unlock to “finding” those champs.)

Oh and don’t forget that once you leveled up one character, you already have a good knowledge about how things work, so even if your method is truly more educational to new players, their alt characters will be still hindered in trait unlocking.

p.s.: Whatever happens, I’m really glad that your shared your view on the trait system.

Just a sudden out of the blue idea: I can imagine a mechanism, where we have to kill branded adds to use their branded shards to protect ourselves from a special dragon attack and while reflecting that attack, damage the Shatterer too. It can be a special phase at each 25% maybe.

In general: everything that makes us move around is helpful, really.

Okay I will look back a bit more, I probably missed it. Thanks for the info.

I hope I’m not the only one who is interested in this topic, but I find it a major issue, and I think it’s a pretty important part of the game, that needs solution soon. I admit, I was always a fan of conditions (I main a necro since I tried out a curse necro N/Me in GW1), and while it’s fun in WvW/PvP, I still feel like the middle stepchild in PvE.

Currently condition builds are considered useless in PvE, because weaker ones can overwrite the high ones and the condi cap is an obvious burden too. I think condi is weak in PvE for different reasons, partialy because it is already powerful in PvP and Anet tends to balance for that game mode for obvious reasons.

My question is for you: How would you make conditions viable in PvE? Split PvP and PvE in terms of balancing? Make stronger condis outpower weaker ones? Increase condi cap? Make condi damage scale better if you stat for it? Any other radical ideas?

Can you see any scenario in the near future where 1 or 2 condi players will be welcomed in dungeon/fractal groups, or whatever we do with condis, it will always remain “zerker or go home”?

Just share your ideas, brainstorm a bit, if you feel that it is an issue that needs a solution.

For female humans, make up could be a fun addition I think.
And still waiting for Elona/Cantha to get different type of facial structures with them.
I guess it will come eventualy…

As a necro, happy for the DS interaction, it was a really essential thing to do finaly and of course the extra swiftness seems cool too (using warhorn in WvW), but that’s it. Kind of semi-happy right now.

Nothing really done on the condition side, so I’m still waiting to make condi classes somewhat viable for PvE and completely split the game modes. I guess these changes are okay for PvP, but really not helping in PvE so far.

Hope something happens on that field soon.
I mean it’s not only for necros, it should be really a general change to split PvP/PvE once and for all…

Still feeling like the middle stepchild of GW2 classes as a necro.

Nick.6972:

Option B – Dedicate specific time of my day to organize server to do Tequattl, get people in TS, explain newcomers mechanics and wait for about an hour in advance – all that for ~1 Gold.

And then you get randomly DCed for whatever reason and you can no longer get in.
No thanks.

Maybe we had different experiences, but when I do it (EU server @ day change), there isn’t any organization going on, we just have 4 people badged up, everyone finds their spot and we just do it. We almost always have the DPS to chain the battery defenses from 75% on, and most of the time have 9 mins remaining on the clock when the reward chest spawns. The only downside is, that you do have to AFK 20-40 mins to get into a good zone with dedicated players, I will admit that, but other than that, the only organization in map chat is giving info about bonfires and banners to each other (mostly everyone is AFKing until spawn time).

I’m not arguing that it’s better than dungeons, I’m just saying that you can do a dungeon path and Teq once a day, so they are really not competing with each other and the only two world bosses I make sure to visit each day is the Karka Queen and Tequatl.

Nick.6972:

Add appropriate rewards first to Tequatl, then buff the other bosses. If I have to endure huge zerging, lag spikes, low FPS and DCs I don’t want to be rewarded with few greens and occasional gold.

I think Tequatl has pretty good rewards. You get 1g guaranteed for 10-15 mins of actual gameplay (not counting AFKing), and normal world bosses require the same amount of time from your side. You get pretty much karma, usually 2-4 rare items, maybe an exotic on every second week and still have a chance for ascended chest. When I do Tequatl, there is always a guy on the map who gets a pink container, so theoreticaly you can be the lucky one one day.

Yes, I would be happy for more loots too, who wouldn’t be, but let’s be fair, Tequatl is already in another league concernin the rewards than other world bosses (Karka Queen included).

I personaly consider Tequatl / Scarlet (on the ship) fights the right direction. It needs a certain amount of people, not hard at all, once everyone gets to know the fight mechanics.

The problem with the Wurm is, that it needs syncing and while I can imagine something like that a Guild Challenge (branded one for example), it’s certainly not good for az open world megaboss, specialy with the megaservers. It’s pretty problematic to organize it.

I can consider the other world bosses less fun than Teq, specially the Claw of Jormag (somehow I really hate that). If I could chose from the fight mechanics I like at world bosses, Fire Ele (with more health) and Golem Mark II (with less health) would be my favourites, only just because avoiding AoE-s make it a bit more fun. Other then those, Teq is definitely my favourite of all bosses (although not a fan of AFKing half an hour for it).

Generaly I do enjoy simple and elegant armors, but I could mix and match some really good combinations so far, so I’m not going to say that all armors are rubbish.

What I realized was, that:
- it’s harder to make a charr or an asura unique than the other races
- the lighter the armor class, the more I like them, I really suffer to find attractive heavy ones
- it’s annoying when colors work differently on certain parts, when you trying to mix-match them (for example the darkest you can get from the profane armor set is medium gray)

As for desired, non-gw armors, I really like the styles of Aion armor. Never played the game, but seen some really cool concept arts online, and simply loved them. I’m not saying that every armor should be like, what I like, but some selections from this style would definitely add to diversity. Personaly I found more GW1 armors suitin my taste, but it’s probably really hard to please everyone’s fashion prefences so I except my situation.

1) Build Diversity / Profession Equality —-> Split PvP and PvE more!

Probably the biggest issue for me. I’m kind of getting sick of the max DPS, go zerker or go home meta in PvE, and the sad thing is that most of these voices have a really valid point, I have to admit, even as a huge condi-fan. I think that the main issue is that build balances are made from a PvP point of view, and a well-balanced PvP certainly won’t make my condi necro needed in a dungeon group. :S

All in all, the most thing I love to see in this game, is that a good condi/support build can provide as much utility for a group as a pure raw damage, DPS build does.

Condi cap should be probably revisited or at least rework in a way that stronger conditions just simply overwrite the weak one, plus condis (and healing power) should scale more radically. Now a raw damage build is causing more significant secondary damage from condis (without stating for it) than a condi damage build is causing with a secondary raw damage. I know that condis are still the way to go for PvP, but I would really love to play a condi necro and be useful in PvE too.

When a dungeon group has no hard feelings for taking necros, engis or rangers to a dungeon or when a condi/support build is welcomed to any parties, then I would say we have a really good balance in PvE.

2) Dyeable weapons

Just based on the smilar looking weapons (like the ascended ones), I guess it won’t happen, but imagine how the demand would change for certain weaponsets. I mean I think everyone has a certain skin that he loves for the shape, but the color is simply off for him. While I hate every “add fire to it to make it look awesome” concepts, I can really imagine the Fused Weapons with “black fire” for my necro. It would be like pure darkness dripping off from rusty chains. Would be so awesome… And that’s only one idea.

3) Mystic Forging ascended rings and ascended materials

I just want to throw in 4 unwanted rings and get 1 random. Not asking for anything fancier.

Oh and I really want to do something with all those bloodstone/dragonite/empyreal stuff as well… Maybe implement something time gated in the future, that requires all of those, like the Vision Crystals, but make them tradeable, so that players who play all aspects of the game, and have like 100+ bricks, ingots, stars stocked up already in their bank, can have at least some kind of daily income from selling their end products.

I guess it was my fault, when I interpreted “New Player”-Experience as New “Player Experience”, when I read the title.

I still think they made some good minor modifications for new players or alt-levelers, but they really need to focus on solving the “trait unlocking” issue, because it was pretty quick and general how I got my traits before, and now it’s just pain and really not in the mood to make new characters while this trait-hunting is still on. I already shared my opinion about it in the “Game Updates: Traits” thread, and won’t kitten about getting nothing heavy so far as an old player (still have my fingers crossed for next week announcements), I’m just rather surprised, that they haven’t fixed the trait issue, specialy because they seem like that they want to help new players and encourage old ones to make new alts.

I have like 30-40+ of the normal ones with my Fractals character (for emergency), but never really used them. You can damage your armor 7 times before you have one broken, so it’s really not an issue for me. I usually visit a capital once or twice a day and I’m even lazy to repair armor on a daily basis, if I have just 1 or 2 piece broken at the time.

I would be amazed if a thing like this would be a big hit.

On the other hand, I can see endless revive orbs or endless transmutation charges as popular premium loots from Black Lion Chests.

I really want to dual wield asuras with my norn

Happy Birthday to everyone who contributed to this game!
We have are ups and downs, but I still LOVE it, and I hope it will lasts for many many more years

Concerning some recent “ups”: I’m REALLY happy that you guys started to react to forum feedbacks more.

This seemed like the best to share this, so here we go…

If you really want to make the life of new players easier, just allow them to get traits more easily. I have a lot of alts and all I can tell you is that it was pretty fun and fluid to level them back when I started the game, there was nothing wrong with it to be honest.

On the other hand, just wanted to make az engineer, but waited a bit, because I was hoping that you will introduce another system to get traits, because unlock missions are cool in general if we are talking about a PvP reward track or something more “high-end” stuff, but this is simply killing build-diversity at the start and doesn’t help us to get to now a certain profession or even start to love them.

When I’m experimenting with new professions, I like to play around the build and traits, try out different ideas, see that what potentials are in there, and is that class for me or not. Without having a decent option to get access to all the traits this is pretty hard, and all I know is, that previously I loved leveling an alt, and now it feels like a bit painful for me, because of all the limitations I’m getting.

Yes, I know, I can unlock them at trait vendor, but I consider those prices pretty high, escpecialy when I’m drowning in skill points scrolls. I would be very pleased with an option, what offers us traits for only skillpoints without the money, or implement them for level ups. Maybe “trait books” dropping like skillpoint scrolls of level-up tomes?

Having the ability to scavengehunt certain Adept traits only above level 40 is not cool.
You have 5 trait lines, 6 adept, 4 masters and 3 grandmasters on each. Why not introduce them on level progressions?

What if from level 16 on (up to level 80) the player just selects a single trait to unlock? Like:
16-45 – Unlock an Adept trait
46-65 – Unlock a Master trait
66-80 – Unlock a Grandmaster trait

This way leveling up sure seems rewarding for me, plus it would feel really natural to learn new tricks with each level when I progress, not to mention the “what should I unlock now” excitement at each level.

I know that you probably want people to visit the different aspects of the game, experience everything, travel around in PvE, but I think if they enjoy the game, they would do them anyways, no need to force certain activites on people when they are leveling.

In fact I alraedy have 100% world completion for most of my alt, and want to have that for the remaining ones as well, because I just like to and I think it’s kind of fun, but I would be a happier player if I could experience a new class while I’m doing this.

So for me, your character leveling was just fine from the start already. I guess some new features will be useful for new players, but all in all I still think that “trait unlocking” is just a very unpleasent, overcomplicated experience right now, and that needs to be fixed somehow.

Thanks for the contest and congrats to the winners. Really happy to see the male samurai winning, that was my favourite as well in the whole competition. Of course I’m still biased towards my own, but that’s just normal I guess, but it’s always inspiring to see creative armor mixes

John Smith.4610:

It’s the Christmas present you always wanted, but never received.

So it’s a pony!

I think I wasn’t mad and wasn’t complaining, just simply pointed out an issue what affects me personaly. Probably it won’t change anything, but I just felt like to share my point of view on this issue. That’s it, no need to agree on that or anything.

So far Anet made absolutely cool decisions on how to makte achievements and titles not sticked to a single time period, like they did it with their second season of the Living Story. I think it was their interest too to allow people to enjoy the game when they have time for that. I know PvE and a WvW tournament are completely different things, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone if they just think about it. It might won’t change for this season, but it can help maybe for a future one. There’s nothing wrong with sharing these kind of issues, in fact it should help them.

Oh and the last two lines were a joke…

I can see a lot of improvements in the upcoming season, and really for happy for those, but extremely sad in the same time, because I will go for a 10 days vacation (which is YAY! for me), but it will cover an entire match week, which means I cannot get the title, no matter how hard I would play on the other three weeks.

Missing out on the weekly tickets is one thing, I’m okay with it, it is fair, but not getting the title if I cannot show up 4 weeks straight feels slightly unjust. It’s like not giving a medal to a player on a sports tournament who misses only one matchup.

I have all the previous WvW titles, and would love to own all of them, just for simply showing my enthusiasm towards this part of the game, but this system would deny me from doing that. I hope the devs will consider this and come up with some solution that will allow players in these shoes to have a work around to snatch that title, because I’m sure, I’m not the only one who has this problem.

Maybe 3 out of 4 weeks? Pretty please!
I can offer you cyberhugs from my cuddly necro

He means complete outfits that don’t consist of armor parts, like these to be specific:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Outfits

I modified my gunslinger thief to a “Space Ninja” concept for you, in case you want to be a ninja, but still be a bit different than the others.

All colors are Midnight Ice (you can see the cold blueish tone on the metalic parts, while the other parts remain darker than the simple Abyss). Used Starry Night as a third color on the chest/leggins pieces to make it more vibrant.

Head: Falconer’s Mask (Human T2)
Shoulder: Duty of Koda (Dungeon)
Chest: Strider’s Tunic (Gemstore)
Hand: Rogue Gloves (Loot)
Leg: Strider’s Leggings (Gemstore)
Foot: Sneakhief Sandals (Loot)

For the head, you can choose from a lot of mask options, I went with the Falconer one, just because it adds a bit more to the metalic concept. For the foot I haven’t seen any perfect choices, so still found the Sniekthief one as the best for ninjas, although the Strider foot armor matches greatly the concept too, perhaps even better (I use that for my thief).

I mean the rotating stones in the air at the Ley Line Hub.

If not that one particularly, something similar to it. Not because of the difficulty, but I can imagine it as a cool mechanic implemented in a JP somehow. Not even sure if it’s doable, since standing on top of waterwheels doesn’t bother us too much, but I had to share this fixation of mine, even though I’m pretty sure I’m not the first one who thought of that.

Almost everything was said about necromancers, that I wanted to add, but I would emphasize two things. For me great balance is about:

- making each class the best of something, what others can’t compete with
- make this thing needed, helpful and viable in every single part of the game

Currently it bugs me so much that “zerkers only” is the basic mentality inside PvE, and I would like to see high end stuff, where the condition classes have an upperhand. And no, it shouldn’t be solved by some bosses like husks at wurm, ideally I would consider it balanced, if condi damage could at least come close to power damage in PvE. It makes me sad, when I read all the arguments about how PvE doesn’t need support and condi classes, because it should be more versatile in my opinion. Let us – condition fans – feel important and special too for once.

I would suggest to think about the balances with PvE-minds too, like:
“Okay, now after this update, why would I take a necro into a level 45 Fractals, instead of a Warrior/Guardian.”
- If you do not have an answer for that, then it’s probably not balanced.

I have the same issue exactly… When I check the achievement tab, I see 4th, and we were 2nd, and haven’t recieved the chest so far, while a couple of my guildmates already got it and they correctly see our 2nd placement at the achievements.

Shall we wait for a general fix, or just write for the support individualy?

So far I have seen the april update as the best thing since the game started, but I have a few issue with the schedule. The main thing that concerns me is the limitation of high-end bosses to 3 times / day (which is more like 1 time for each timezone, to be fair).

Wouldn’t it be so much better to start all 3 of them on every red time slot? So as a CET player I have the three opportunities for Karka/Tequatl/Wurm at 18/19/20 now, but do not have the freedom to choose from those 3 encounters.

- If I really like to do the Wurm, I will have only 1 chance / day during prime time
- If someone is working – lets say 9-17 – and cannot get home for Karka at 18:00 CET, the person would miss out on an entire boss completely, because the other two timeslots are not an option for him

Or even better… just simply make the schedule tighter to offer freedom of choice for the people, who play in a 1-3 hour window each day. I think this way, most of the people would be okay with the changes:

_:00 – The Shatterer / Megadestroyer / Taidha Covington / TBD
_:15 – Jungle Wurm / Svanir Shaman
_:30 – Claw of Jormag / Golem Mark II / Modniir Ulgoth / TBD
_:45 – Shadow Behemoth / Fire Elemental

ODD hours – Tequatl / Karka Queen
EVEN hours – 3-Headed Wurm

Plus I’m still curious what will happen, when the Megaserver kicks in on 1-15 areas, but not on others. Are we going to have a schedule only on the starting level bosses? Because if not, we are a bit screwed… I mean I will have a single shot for Tequatl each day, and since my home server almost never does it, I would have to guest for somewhere else, where everyone is guesting for that one and only primetime encounter of the day. I hope it’s not the case. :S

All in all, I still think that the schedule is good idea, but not in this way. It’s just simply not tight enough, and doesn’t give you choices at all. It’s kind of a “be there or miss it” situation right now for primetime players, and doesn’t provide any chance to correct a fail on the same day at high-end bosses, if you are really into one of them.

Well, first of all, thanks for all the feedbacks, I checked it again today, and now it seems the same for me as before, so getting around 0.9xR ectos, where R is the number of rares I salvaged. So yeah, probably yesterday was just an exceptional bad day for me, but I just felt to rather ask around, since first it seemed an anomaly for me based on previous salvages.

The point of the post was to find out if someone has the similar situation or not. I wrote 20, because I usually end up with about that many rares after doing just a couple of world bosses, not all. I wouldn’t have started the topic, if there were noone else with the same issue, but yeah, there’s always an option, that a couple of us just had exceptional bad luck yesterday. I will check it again today, and thanks for your feedback.

Probably a bug, not sure yet, but I usually salvage rares with Mystic Kit and usually end up with a bit less ectos, than the rares I had. Lets say 90%, so 9 ectos from 10 rares.

Today I salvaged like 20 rares and got only 2 ectos altogether. Since I rather believe in chances and math and not in bad luck, I asked around the map, and a couple of people were experiencing the same issue.

Anyone else has the same problem? I doubt that it’s intentional, so probably a bug?

Who would have thought that love skins can be that cool. Finally something new and fresh, not just the “throw in some flames, it will make it kitten” approach. Very good job on this set anet! My aetherblade thief will definately get the pistol-dagger-sword combo.

Plus please make a Gargoyle Scepter for necros.

Just a few – in my opinion – realistic and doable upgrades that can help a lot for necros:
- allow the use of utility skills when in DS (its kind of a must have)
- put a passive signet like regen skill into the healing slot, which heals our actual HP back slowly while we are in DS and which gives us 25% of our life force pool back on use, but it shuts down the regen (so it can adapt to offensive and defensive use of DS)
- make it more useful for condimancers, even if you do it only by traits, I think it will be popular
- let us revive mates and finish foes in DS (its not even close to stealth, and still not allowed)

For me, dire armor + rabid trinkets/weapons works well… You don’t need that much precision that full rabid offers, but I’m not a DPS-freak glass cannon fan at all.

The worst thing is that Life Siphon is one of the few necro-specific toys, that we could (and I guess, a lot of us really would try out to) enjoy, if it was at least somewhat useful. And to be fair, this skill could have been useful as well, if it was scaled properly.

I thought the basic mindset behind balancing is about making each profession equally dangerous to others (even if each should have stronger or weaker matchups), or just thinking about that what does it bring to the table in a dungeon/fractal group. When only 2-3 professions are welcomed in high level fractals, and theres a “go zerker or go home” mentality all around in PvE, then you should probably have to rethink one or few basic things about the game.

Shouldn’t versatility and creativity concerning build designs be helped and encouraged?

My answer will be quite general, but this is how I feel.

As someone, who played necro as a main back in GW1 and now in GW2, the biggest thing I miss compared to the old days is “feeling special”. As a necro I want to be useful in a unique way that only a necro can bring you to the table. I’m not sure what this can be, since conditions aren’t that special and they are looked down specially in PvE environment.

Since we have the damage and support part covered by other professions, I would rather like to see my necro as a pain in the kitten in our enemies eyes. A profession that can punish others for doing their own stuff, make them reconsider their moves, be a burden to them, while providing a decent sustained damage over time. You can argue that chill and fear can give you that, but it PvE situations, they are simply not that impressive, specially on boss fights.

Generally necro should be a “kill me fast or die slowly” kind of profession do deal with.

To point out some good stuff, I would say that “Epidemic” is THE ONE from the current necro skill choices, that represents the class the most for me, and I even fancy Plague form, something what should have been more fun as the DeathShroud. And we can mention the boon-condition conversions as well as a good way to go. Oh and the corruption method is a good idea, that we have to apply conditions on ourselves to get our power from.

On the other hand, for me, GW1 necro was “Spiteful Spirits + Reckless Haste”, and I want to get back at least part of that approach. Probably a special necro-only condition, that drains not exact health points but certain percentage of full health. Or give us a pending skill that punishes enemies on condition removal or heal or on stacking up boons.

So in a few words, I want necros to be special, to be the master of conditions, to burden enemies more than other classes (not necessarily by doing damage).

On a sidenote I want conditions to be a viable choice, I want them to outshine the boring zerker gears in SOME of the situations. I do not want them to be superior, I just simply want a field, when its needed. Balancing from a PvP perspective is one thing, not getting invited to dungeon/fractal groups, because you are a necro is another… They should consider that as well.

p.s.: The one thing I miss the most of GW1 is having seconday classes. That just gave us tons os versatility and creativity concerning build designs. This would single handedly solve the “go zerker or go home” approach that I hate so much.

Probably I’m in the middle… I absolutely love the character. It’s funny, it has a great voice acting, great lines written to her, but on the other hand, I feel that she is a bit overused now. I do not want her to vanish at all, but it would be much better to keep her around as a wild card and use her twice every year for Living Story materials and introduce others as well.

She would work better as a comic book villain, not as Moriarty. And I’m not saying this because she annoys me, on the opposite, I wouldn’t like her to get overused and written off completely.

But to be fair, it was an early JP, and people weren’t as skilled with JPs as today. I remember that back in the early weeks I even had problems with reaching certain vistas, now I’m a jumpaholic and have all the JPs in the game, and I still love the Clocktower. Somehow it’s just have a special place in my heart, don’t ask why, probably because it was a “first” in so many levels last year.

p.s.: I would really like to see a jumping puzzle title. Not for elitism, just simply for showing our love for JPs.

The problem is that it would have been nice to see a Halloween themed scepter, dagger, axe or any underwater weapon for example. It’s not about monopoly, just a bit disappointing to get only ONE (!) new weapon skin, that a necro can use on Halloween. I get your point, but its a bit sad if you are running a necro, and you are specially waited for this event, because its kind of a home field for them.