Guild Wars 2

I will not be getting ascended gear — it just requires too much effort put into a part of the game I don’t really enjoy. I will still be playing, and kicking kitten in WvW though. Ascended gear isn’t enough to change that, but the thing that irks me, and make me look forward to other games (potentially) becoming available, is the design philosophy behind it — now people who grind (and yes, it definitely constitutes as grind to me, having played 30 fractals without a single drop progress towards ascended gear means I would have to play way too many to reliably be able to get it, not to mention the mats cost which is way easier to make up for in pve) pve will be able to get better gear than people who play only wvw can get.

It’s a design issue, but as of yet, its effects on actual gameplay won’t be major.

The funny thing about people saying that lower tier matches are so much better is that I remember back on GH when I would die maybe once, possibly twice during an entire evening against main enemy forces, if we didn’t do well. You may think whatever you wish to make you feel better, but the actual fight improve as you go up in tier.

Sure, there is likely less off-hour capping at lower tiers, but really, as long as the fights I participate in are better … That’s why I find it so funny that people keep saying it’s completely legit for a competitive guild to transfer to a bottom tier server — as if the likelyhood of good fights will be very good there. Just sayin’.

Also, enough of this RUIN drama. It is what it is, just play the game, IMO.

Not to mention the fact that afaik, the other guilds were welcomed and invited by the server, while RUIN (if indeed they’re transferring — I know I saw Archaos here :[) is transferring despite the server saying no. There’s a difference between jumping on a winning server, and helping to build it up.

I always like fighting JUG in small scale, happy to see you still enjoying yourself.

All I can think is no no no.

Great fun in BT borderlands today. Unfortunately, CIR seemed to be the only organized group there, so when both Deso and VS started pushing we decided to defend against the french, holding off many relentless attacks, but as a result Deso crept up on the west side. When we managed to catch a break against the french (or so we thought) we went to deal with them, only to be too late to get back to the hills.

Now, I have to take a break, but I hope the fights are as good when I get back. And on a side note: good to see some IRON again, as we sadly have seemed to deploy in different borderlands before. You still put up good fights.

PS. I think you’ve got some paranoid people on deso.

Props to the Deso and Vizu players still bringing it. You guys are awesome!

People really should stop complaining about the thieves. I’m pretty sure most players in serious guilds are not holding it against anyone; even if it’s annoying there’s no exploiting involved in it. Instead of whining, try to adapt. If it gets altered in the future, that’s in the future, not now.

Thank you for all the good fights thus far, been a blast. Keep it up!

I see some people still don’t get it, but there are a lot of good posts here too. The most common suggestions being engi and ele, and I can see where both are coming from. I haven’t tried engi at all, and while I have tried an ele, since my ele is only lvl 21, I can’t say I have had the full experience — the ele might (possibly) work if it becomes tanky enough to stay near the front line, since any form of burst healing is PBAoE (I know a healing ele is tanky in SPvP, but the question is if it’s tanky enough in WvW, where there’s a lot more potential damage flying around). The engi seems more similar to my necro, which isn’t a bad thing — as I’ve said, my condition necro is definitely closer to what I want than both my guardian and a shout warrior.

@Ravenblade
You do have to pay attention to the health bars in other games, but it’s more like having them in the back of your mind than actually staring at them. If they take priority over watching the actual battle, you were doing something wrong, at least in PvP (I can’t speak of PvE).

Calae.1738:

You miss staring at 2 dimensional boxes on the corner of your screen with green bars moving left and right?

I don’t.

Good healers have never been doing that. That’s one of the things i was talking about with the experience being so dramatically different between really good healers, and those that are less so.

I suppose one problem with the typical healer is that most players, even among those playing the class in question, never gets any good at it, and for them it’s a boring watch over health bars and relatively thoughtless spamming of some heals. There’s a reason why ~80% (random number based on my own observation) of healers in a typical MMO tend to perform at less than half the efficiency of the top 10% (it’s not the only role where skill makes a difference, but I believe it’s the only classical role where the experience differs so dramatically between the tiers). But I’m sure there’s some way to implement the playstyle without its deficiencies. Well, at least I hope there is.

I’ll say this, though, to help the discussion move forward, or maybe die if people have said all the relevant things they want to say: You’re absolutely right in most of the things you’re saying. It’s just that it’s not relevant to what I was saying.

How many times do I have to say that it’s not the actual healing or w/e that I’m missing. I’ll say this again: it’s the hectic support playstyle, where reacting half a second too late means you kittened up, where you have to manage several short cooldown abilities across multiple targets, and still read the battle flow to be able to react. It’s the slow pace and impersonality of the support that is making me miss healing — not the lack of green numbers. As I said: the closest thing I’ve come is a condition necro with chills that’s barely putting out any heals; I understand perfectly well that there are other ways to support. Healing in PvP in other MMOs I’ve played is an adrenaline pump that I have not managed to find in this game, while at the same time satisfying my fluffy rabbit inside that wants to help my lovely allies.

I’ll let this rest now, unless someone comes with an actually relevant response — be it agreement, suggestions on how to achieve it in GW2, or some highly suspicious psychological essay on how I can get this desire satisfied without playing that way.

What people don’t seem to understand is that I’m not talking about wanting trinity healing. I’m talking about wanting the same gameplay. This could’ve been achieved with some sort of support/semi-heal profession like the guardian (without having to make it into a stronger, or even as strong a, healer overall than the guardian), if it had been done differently (see my above posts), or maybe by some whole new idea that provides the same challenges and opportunities.

The reason I made the post was to see if I was alone in missing the gameplay, not the super strong healing. As I’ve said before, I’m happy that they’ve moved beyond the trinity. Of course, there’s always a small, utterly suppressed, hope that if many people agree with me, ANet may consider bringing something to satisfy us into the game in at a later stage. That hope, however, can, and probably should, be ignored.

I only play PvP. I do not need dozens of abilities. All my points are still valid. We really are not (no matter how much you seem to think so) saying that we want healers in this game.

PS> I never played WoW either. Though a lot of players can easily share references about WoW, some of us simply cannot — and therefore are not, so trying to interpret everything we say as if we are talking about WoW is probably a bad idea.

Tolmos.8395:

MMOs are entertainment mechanisms, not cars. If every MMO clones each other’s features, such as the God awful holy trinity system that only 3 or 4 people on these forums seem to miss, then we’ll get mighty tired of them really quickly and they will lose their value entirely.

I want to point out that nobody is saying bring back the trinity. We’ve said that we miss the playstyle that the typical healer has offered us before, and that we expected a more varied and dynamic forms of support when we read “no trinity.”

Most of us are also still having fun with the game; this is simply a discussion about what we expected, what we are missing, and maybe how we can get close to it.

EDIT: Also:

Prot monking would be so much fun in this game.

Makes me sad just thinking about it.

Amen to this.

Tolmos.8395:

I’ve never had a problem going full heal on my ele in sPvP. Its the only way I play. You just have to pick your heals properly. Don’t drop your rain right when everyone is running to a new point. Do drop it, however, when you are fighting at a point. Make sure to lead with the geyser- don’t drop it where they are standing now but where they will be standing in 1.5 seconds.

I can honestly say I LOVE playing healer in sPvP.

Again, I’m not saying there are not effective healing builds out there — eles and guardians being two of them, supposedly engis can do it as well. I can’t say I have managed to try them all, but I have come to the realization that none of them will play out like I want to play. I refer you to my previous posts on this matter.

atropos.3074:

Regarding the OP… the problem I see is that in this game, you can sacrifice survival skills for damage output, and you will see a pretty significant increase in how hard you hit. But going the other way (sacrificing dps for heal power etc) doesn’t give you the same sort of result. You certainly nerf your DPS, but don’t really see a proportional gain in the healing department etc.

Perhaps thats intended, but it’s also probably why you feel that you’re missing that role.

I doubt that’s the only reason why. As I said, my main issue is that the support builds I’ve been able to come up with in this game play out completely different, and not in a way that satisfies me. They all basically come down to rotating in a few group heals or w/e while otherwise doing your best to assist dps — there’s nothing dynamic or hectic about it at all.

The only other means of supporting I have found is CC (a condition necro with chills is the closest I have managed to come to my preferred playstyle) and some guardian skills. Unfortunately the guardian skills are again basically chucked on top of whatever else you’re supposed to be doing, since they operate on too long cooldowns (and are too few) to become a main part of your gameplay [EDIT: let me clarify this — I certainly don’t mean that they cannot be central to your build, only that they make up a small part of what you’re actively doing]. And when it comes to CC the necro gets closer than I expected (and as a WvW player I escape some of the more annoying problems we necros face in TPvP), but it’s definitely not the same.

On that note, have you managed to come up with something that comes close to satisfying the playstyle you’re missing?

Oh, and, I do have a lot of fun when playing with the guild, and I definitely appreciate the effort of removing the trinity. I really think that’s a good thing too. I just have trouble finding a build/class that really suits my playstyle. I would like there to be something in the game that suits that playstyle, without destroying what they’ve already done.

I did not mean to say “Plz gief healorz!” I simply wanted to know if I am the only one who truly misses the playstyle they (in my experience) entailed.

You’re right. There definitely are effective support builds, but the majority of the classes cannot expect to actually heal (which in itself is fine, since that’s the way it’s always been). My main gripe is that the support builds in this game are incredibly boring compared to the healing I’m used to from previous MMOs. I want the hectic feeling where your reaction time is tested because reacting half a second too slow means you kittened up, and where you’re managing multiple heals (or similar abilities) on short cooldowns across multiple targets, and all the while have to pay attention to the fight to read what’s going to be needed where etc.

If there’s anything like that in GW2, please point the way.

I really like playing support, but any heavy support build here not only tends to be subpar (in most cases) but they’re also slow gameplay wise and not at all as hectic and fun as the typical healing playstyle in MMOs. Not to mention the fact that the lack of non-group heals etc. makes the supporting less personal. (This all from a PvP perspective — both in this game and in others).

Am I really the only one who feels this way, or have others sharing my sentiment done the sensible thing and accepted that we’ll never get that in GW2?

Dear guardians, does anyone know the healing amount of the trait Pure of Heart (aegis heals on removal)?

My own personal opinion on FS and Elona is that I seriously doubt there’s a coalition. Most things have a simpler explanation; just because we focus on one side in a 3-way fight (which we sometimes do) doesn’t mean we’re allied with the other side — it just means we deem it more important to kill our targets. Similarly, we ourselves many times run past small enemy groups if we’re going somewhere more important. Then there’s the personal grudge angle alluded to before, and the fact that if we deem server 1 our main focus at the time, server 2 forces can fall under the “the enemy of my enemy” clause.

Of course, I have only managed to play a few hours last night. So I haven’t seen much of what’s going on in game myself. It just seems to me that a conspiracy is a less likely cause of w/e is being observed.

It spreads them to a maximum of five new targets. Easily tested on the golem bunch in Heart of the Mists.

You only stay and fight for the server community if the server community is something you want to fight for. If people are happy with the server and the community, they won’t transfer even if they’re losing — it’s when they don’t have bonds to the server they leave for a better home.

Based on the fact that your LF percentage no longer decreases when you put points into Soulreaping, clearly something has changed (because I know it used to decrease slightly for every point you put into it, indicating a higher max LF). And based on your findings, it seems to be that SR no longer increases LF pool.

These are good advice, and I’ll add my voice behind them.

Well, I can only speak out of my own experience, but I haven’t had it randomly miss once yet after the patch. Then again, I was using it for a week or so before the patch and didn’t experience any “random misses” then either — only the very annoying blocks when I forgot to blow up aegis beforehand. This all regarding Corrupt Boon, of course.

Well, if there’s exploiting, I trust you reported it. I would if I had seen it; I still haven’t, but maybe I’m just delusional (I see no continued action after anyone gets past the wall). I’m not saying that those who saw the entire thing shouldn’t report it if there’s more to it, but that video does not show it, as far as I can tell. I don’t see any evidence of the hacks mentioned in the chat in the video, either, only people attempting to utilize jumps that to the observer (including me) should not be available, and the elementalist bubble. If they used either of those to actually assault the keep, then it would seem to be a bug exploit. If they performed them, and then jumped out without using them to assault the keep, then they probably tried it, for whatever reason (knowing it can be done so they can counter it, reporting it, curiosity, you name it). If they didn’t use it to actually assault the keep, then they didn’t do anything wrong. Do you understand what I’m saying?

In my first post I merely pointed out three things:

• The video does not show them using any of the exploits to assault the keep. (Again, if they did, then I hope you reported them.)
• Me, personally, have never seen foul play from Xaoc. Neither when I played against them nor when I’ve played with them.
• I know that it’s common on these forums to claim the opposition is exploiting in situations where they are not.

Furthermore, we all know that that there may be individual players or small groups of players willing to use exploits on all servers (I’ve myself been attacked from below the ground by Seafarer’s). With a large community like Xaoc, I imagine it’s hard to police for sure — next time maybe you can try a) reporting it officially, as I’m sure you did now, and b) contact Xaoc leadership when it happens. If there’s foul play going on, then at least that should help them combat it in their own ranks.

My point was more that there’s no footage of them actually moving forces inside the keep, which (to be fair) wouldn’t have been hard to capture if that’s what happened after the recorded piece was done. Now, I don’t have the whole story, but what I am saying is that making conclusions like that based solely on the footage is about as brilliant as the guy who concluded students became shorter when they studied social sciences. Are you able to follow now, or do you want me to break it down even more?

I’ve experienced nothing but fair play from Xaoc, both when fighting against them and when fighting with them. Is it possible that I’ve simply never seen things like this? Yes. However, the video doesn’t actually show them exploiting it to attack the keep — as far as I know they were testing it for reports, or some other reason.

I do know people cry foul too quickly; I’ve seen it before on these forums at times when I know for a fact that there was no exploiting going on. We ourselves have had mesmers hidden in a keep for 2 hours straight before we called it off because we didn’t have the manpower to divert to an attack.

I feel for you guys at Seafarer’s. We’ve had some fun fight against groups of you. I hope things change for the better for you.

Just tested Spiteful Vigor + Ritual of Protection with WoB, and I got both boons — protection and retaliation.

You guys are aware that we breached your gates a while before I logged off (and that was more than an hour ago). Newsflash: the mesmer who gets in can walk somewhere else and place a portal there.

Apart from that: thank you for the good fights thus far.

Don’t be ridiculous, Consume Conditions does not need to be buffed.

I know elementalists have a CD on their Evasive Arcana (though it’s a separate one for each attunement).

It affects WoB, Regeneration, and Deathly Invigoration.

I have tested it. MoB on a critter to get regeneration, pop DS and wait X seconds, leave DS — you now have 4X less LF% than before you popped DS, just as you would if you didn’t have regeneration.

Andele.1306:

No healing skills, but the regenration boon~ the transformation thing is, if you are healing in a transformation, heals affect the hp gained from it first, then your hp that you will have after you get out of it (whats even more screwed up with life force), for short heals that hit you in lich form if you took any damage essencially just healed you for 2/3 of the amount, heals in plague for 1/2 because going out of the transformation takes away hp.

No, regeneration does not affect LF at all while in DS, nor does any other sort of healing, as I said the first time. Hence it’s not at all similar to other transformations, though you are (as we all know) correct in how heals affect those.

Basically, what JP said was that they were afraid of how strong necros would be able to become once they mastered DS. He went on to say that that did not mean they weren’t looking to fix some things, and that they definitely wanted to broaden the amount of viable builds.

None of this equates with him telling us to learn to play, and it certainly does not mean he has to be able to do it. All it means is that theoretically, they’ve seen possibilities that they don’t think we’re utilizing (to their full potential); that is not an insult. Yes, SC2, is a more complex game than GW2, but remember how long it took before the meta started to develop into anything near what it’s at now? And that’s in a game with an actual sick professional scene trying to figure it out. Remember also that old SC:BW players still predicted it would change even though they couldn’t do it themselves yet?

When I read the post, I thought to myself: “Huh, I kind of agree with that.” Especially since at the time, the forums seemed to be mostly upset that we could not match the dps of other classes, and he did not say that the necros were in a perfect place, balance wise — only that he/they did not think that the people crying foul the loudest had learned to properly manage DS and play to their strengths. I think he was right. I also think that now, which is quite a bit later, relative to the age of the game, they have an updated point of view. You’re being silly if you think they still hold exactly the same opinions on everything.

As to the play showed in the video: yes, it does seem surprisingly underwhelming, but that’s no big deal — I’ve never seen a developer be able to stand up against competitive gamers in their own game.

@Andele

I’m in full Clerics actually, and no healing affects my life force in any way, and that’s not the same as any other transformation. Any heal that hits you while in DS is completely wasted, while in other transformations, it does still heal you. All of this has nothing to do with non-specific traits not working in transformations.

Though, I have to admit, that it doesn’t necessarily “have” to get fixed. I’m fine with it being a part of the skill of using DS — timing it so that others don’t blow their heals on it (and not wasting the WoB heal with it). That’s completely acceptable, even though it’s something only the necro would have to be mindful of. If they were to change it, however, I would not be sorry.

I already reported on the difference between dropping out of Plague and Lich Form, but it’s good to have it confirmed (let this serve as a note that there have been two reports of it). Getting feared while in plague form likely happened through corruption of the stability boon — which turns it into fear — or just boon stripping followed by fear. I’ll also say that I’ve never had any cc effect affect me while in plague form with the stability still on me, so I doubt that it is broken.

Lastly: no, currently you cannot be healed (whether through regeneration, or some other healing ability) while in DS. This is definitely something that should be fixed, one way or the other. It doesn’t matter if it’s done by letting heals affect LF or heal through DS.

Axe is useful in WvW for the large AoE cripple, and for stacking vulnerability on buffed supervisors/lords.

As a support necro, I think it’s great. A couple of things however:

• Transfusion (heal from Life Transfer) does not (as Karther noted) scale with Healing Power.
• Deathly Invigoration does scale with healing power, but only heals for about the same as one single tick from Well of Blood. This and the above point are things I hope they fix/reconsider; maybe double the Deathly Invigoration heal, and make Transfusion scale, even if it means nerfing it a bit for necros with no Healing Power.
• Shrouded Removal is an instant cast condition removal on a 10 sec cooldown. I wish I had room for it in my build.
• Foot in the Grave is, imo, very useful in SPvP and TPvP, but I guess opinions differ.

Not to mention the fact that Spectral Grasp is a projectile, so if they have projectile reflection up, it in fact pulls you to them, and chills you.

It is not. Channeled skills are skills that apply their effect continuously during the cast, such as Life Transfer, or the act of reviving an ally.

That a skill has a cast time does not mean it’s channeled.

Chillblains fix confirmed.

I’m still waiting for “fixes” for my heals (because I know one is not a bug, and I sometimes have a hard time believing the other is — though it is listed in the bugs thread, I’m thinking maybe it’s just a poor judgement call on the dev side), but this fix is still gonna be awesome! Suddenly my Chillblains will no longer be puny, now ya’ll will eat that kitten!

@Dirame

Maybe it’s SPvP(/TPvP) specific then? Has anyone else noticed it (or noticed it not happening to them) there?