Guild Wars 2

With PoF introducing mounts and bringing back Palawa Joko into the storyline, I can’t think of a better time to reintroduce the legendary Gum Drops (erm, Mr. Gum Drops), Mad King Thorn’s invisible pony, back into the game: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gum_Drops,_the_Noble_Steed

There was even a quest involved with Palawa Joko and Mr. Gum Drops! https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mad_Little_Pony

Anyone reading this can already understand why it’s a great time: mounts, an invisible pony, Halloween, it’s all too fitting!

1. Not a fan of global cooldowns as it takes away the fun of attunement switching and combo making.
2. Barriers are really weak. I feel like the default barrier values should be much higher and decay slower, especially if you’re giving up so much easy and quick access to mobility options and defensive options in other builds.
3. AA chain can be completely interrupted when switching attunements. If I perform the first 2 attacks in air and switch to earth, I expect the final hit of the earth AA chain to occur.
4. For now, AA chains feel weak.
5. Twist of Fate stance is sluggish. If I stun break, I expect to get out of danger ASAP, not slowly spin away. Weave Self is too punishing after switching to all elements.

Has anyone had their progress on the Withered Rose achievement reset over the weekend? I distinctly remember only needing to talk to Dahlia one more time, but since the event was stalled, I couldn’t talk to her so I logged out. I logged in just now and found my progress for the achievement is gone.

From the preview videos and streams, it doesn’t look like you can switch pet stances in beastmode. So if I want to switch to a different stance, I’d have to:

1. Disable beastmode (thus triggering the 10 second cooldown)
2. Switch pets
3. Enter beastmode once available.

While it seems like a balance mechanic (during those 10 seconds outside of beastmode, the pet could die if focused on), does it seem cumbersome to switch stances? I know it’s too early to tell, but I can’t help but get the feeling that it’ll prove an irritation in the middle of combat.

It’s been awhile since I posted, but I had to say something.

Let’s be honest here, many of us are thinking it anyway: it’s the Avatar State (from Avatar: The Last Airbender).

So I’m guessing this is most likely a C or D level bug, but it has existed since release and probably even during the beta weekends. Whenever you get critically hit by an enemy, you play an audio line that I suspect is meant to be played when the player critically hits enemies.

The meteor shower nerf is extremely painful to say the least. Well, on the bright side, armor of earth, arcane shield, and ride the lightning has their cooldowns reduced. Ridethe lighting is back to it’s pre-nerf days and if you hit a target, the cooldown should be less than its initial release version’s cooldown (15 seconds if you hit a target as opposed to initial release’s 20 seconds).

The nerf to meteor shower makes me wonder if meteor shower was the major culprit or if it was a combination of meteor shower + pre nerf lava font.

If we’re getting slight nerfs my guess is that they’re going to hit meteor shower, lava font (yes, again), maybe overload fire, ice storm, and perhaps some traits. What really sucks is that there haven’t been any meaningful changes to some skills that are just lackluster or are rarely used. What a shame.

To be clear, I’m talking about BF as in Bitterfrost Frontier (because 46 characters is apparently too much).

It’s incredibly rare that I find myself killing mushrooms and using their fertilizer on pungent herbs to create savory herbs. I think that’s mostly because I rarely see pungent herbs anywhere and I spend more time gathering the savory herbs to save time. If anything, I think there needs to be more incentive to kill mushrooms and use their fertilizer.

Right now, the ratio of pungent herbs to savory herbs (which are created from pungent herbs) are too lopsided.

I have a Razer mouse with a button that double clicks once each time I press it. It’s included with Razer’s software so I figured it’d be ok to use.

Usually when I have many consumables (such as chests) that I need opened/consumed, I rapidly mash the double click button and it works fine.

However, it seems that with this update, I’m unable to mash the double click button to rapidly consume things. Pressing the button once works fine, but immediately pressing it again (basically double clicking a button that is set to double click) doesn’t seem to register.

I checked my mouse settings and software settings and everything seems fine on my end.

Has anyone else noticed this change?

Adry.7512:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

This is a summary of what was said in 2013 about new races and new professions

“In 2013 in an interview with Matt Visual, Colin talked about the possibility of adding another race that the player base really wanted. (and we STILL really want them) After that interview, he went back to ANet and they had a discussion on adding another race vs adding another class. They came to the conclusion that adding another race really did not add much to the game while adding another class added a lot to the game. Which is why they stopped looking at adding another race and went full steam into working on the Revenant.

The reasons for adding a new race would be:
1. A new playable race
2. New stories and lore
3. Adding a few racial skills and elites
4. A new city and zone for 1-15 levels that do not affect the core plot with Zhaitan/LS 1 & 2.
5. Appease fans who are asking for it

The reasons against adding a new race:
1. Hiring a new male/female voice actor to be the voice of the main characters (pricy and gotta work their schedules)
2. Building another personal story (takes time)
3. Personalizing to the race, certain interactions with NPCs (racism, curiosity, etc) (often overlooked and takes a lot of time)
4. Adjusting EVERY piece of armor in the entire game(and those yet to come) to fit the new race (This would take months on its own)
5. Slows down production on all future armors, racial interactions, scenes where your playable character has to speak new lines, etc. (for every set, they have to customize 6-18 pieces of armor for 6 different races)
6. Racial skills are generally far weaker than the normal class skills/used rarely (nornbear pre nerf exception)
7. Setting the precedent that with an expansion you get a new race (meaning someday they would be making 6-18 pieces of armor for 7-8 races… ouch on the budget)

Pros for making a new class:
1. This directly affects the core of GW2. The gameplay, the fights!
2. Completely new playstyle and experience for players to enjoy playing as/with/against 3. Potentially turning the pve/pvp/wvw meta on its head- goodbye GWEN
4. Addition of Revenant lore
5. Bringing in that missing blend from ritualists/dervish from GWf1
6. A new change to team compositions that is drastically different than it would be if it was just a new race

Cons:
1. Another class to balance skills/traits/specialties
Taking the arguments for one or the other with those facts in mind, I am not surprised that ANet chose to pursue the Revenant instead of Kodan/Tengu. In future expansions they may make the same choice again. In terms of affecting gameplay, adding another class will always have a bigger impact than adding a new race. Because of that we may never see a new playable race. It just forces Anet to dedicate much more resources every time they make something new.

On the flip side, ANet does recognize and even Colin himself would love to play a new race. But can they justify the cost? Perhaps if the community spoke loudly enough."

Link to full after-party notes/commentary – http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2tsiox/pax_afterparty_lessons_learned/

Coilin is nonexistent now. Additionally this tells me absolutely nothing. All it states is why people like new races….the hardwork required for a new race….for ANY mmo….and the obvious…balancing. This clearly states nothing more, oh and that for the first Xpac they decided to focus on a new class instead of a new race…Xpac 1 already came out….meaning that none of this is relevant anymore. Sorry

I kind of took those statements by Collin as more of a cost-benefit analysis and it seems to me the costs of a new race clearly outweigh the benefits.

While I’d love to see more armor in GW2, the devs have gone on record saying that armor sets are incredibly time and resource intensive.

Here’s an estimate perceived breakdown on what Anet might have to account for:

• Four to six unique races (norn and sylvari are humanoid but there are some noticeable differences so I don’t know how much reuse can happen with them)
• Two genders, assuming even slightly different body shape, would effectively double the amount of work. Even if male and female charr and asura use the same armor appearance while norn, human, and sylvari don’t, that’s still eight unique appearances (2 human + 2 sylvari + 2 norn + 1 charr + 1 asura)
• At six armor pieces for a set, and using the number in the previous bullet point, that’s at least 48 different armor pieces. (6 pieces * 8 possible gender and race combos assuming male and female asura/charr are the same).
• That also means all 48 armor pieces basically have to have some sort of testing with all other armor pieces to ensure there aren’t any major bugs or issues (minor clipping and texture stretching is ignored in favor of fixing the glaringly obvious issues)
• Dye channels on each armor pieces have to be tested (don’t know how much of this can be automated)

That’s all for one single set of armor. Imagine having to release 10, or even 20 sets of armor. That’d be a huge amount of art inhouse work/outsourcing, QA, and project management. (Note: I have no clue if Anet has the capability to do this sort of stuff over one or two years while creating new NPCs, creatures, environment art, special effects, and maintaining some sort of memory budget)

Gaile Gray.6029:

I was wondering: I can check with the team, of course, but perhaps the “free play” period was designed to allow people to get into the map, choose their location, and be ready to start a round of songs. If that was eliminated, might there be complaints about how we players are always joining in the middle of a session, which means we’d lose the ability to get maximum rewards? I’m just speculating here, but it crossed my mind.

What about an optional queue to enter a new map? At a high level, if a player is in a trigger volume, prompt the player with a dialogue box to see if they would like to enter a map currently in progress or queue for a new map. Additionally, removing the “free play” period would be nice. I never stick around through that period unless I’m frustrated with finding a new map and just wait it out.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Yes, you said. In your previous post a few months back.

Again, this forum is for the western version of GW2. Feedback for the Chinese version is best posted on the Chinese GW2 forums, as indicated in the Knowledge Base (accessed via the Support link above/below).

Good luck.

Maybe the reason he’s posting in the western forums is that he hopes more developers will see it and consider taking action? If he goes through the trouble of posting on the western forums, that might be an indicator of another problem not involved with the game itself, but by business matters that led to the current problems he listed.

An endless BLSK?? How many do you manage to use so many (and on what item rarity)!? I have an almost full bank tab (-3 spaces from full) and one of them still has 4 charges left and that particular kit took me almost a year to go through 21 charges.

Skill splits are necessary and I say it’s about time it happened.

I say yes, remove the boob armor because it’s thematically inappropriate. Charr and Asuran females aren’t human females, therefore, they shouldn’t have plates/cups on their chests. It doesn’t matter if it’s flat, the fact that the pieces there in the first place represents the thought that the armor was made first for human-like bodies rather than for the appropriate race.

Don’t even get me started on the insane armor clipping across a multitude of armor sets on these often ignored edge cases (non humanoid female bodies).

I’m hoping the long term sustainability plans includes the formation of a new dungeon team. Currently, it’s an embarrassment with their current state.

I’d like to see this change too. It used to be instant during the betas, but had a delay added to to it to prevent it from being too powerful—pre-HoT. Now that the expansion is out, we need to remove the delay. If the devs are worried about the PvP situation, let me ask them this: how often is staff equipped in PvP situations?

If the answer is really low, then removing the delay might be something to look into.

The patch notes accidentally listed profession specific ground targeting crosshairs but they weren’t completed yet. Perhaps this is an early one?

OP, I think in that case, UA would need to cleave with each hit within a given radius of the current target. Losing 2 hits means that even 1 jump away from the original target makes it a sizable damage reduction (including 2 less stacks of might overall).

Also, this is some weird math so please correct me if I’m wrong:

7 hits = original total damage (base damage with power modifier)
7 hits – 2 hits = 5 (the new hits without the 10% increase in damage)
5 / 2 = .4 (comparing the new version to the original version, the original has 40% more hits)

So that means:

5 * 1.4 = 7 (this would be the increase needed to reach the original total damage with base damage and power modifier)

For UA to regain it’s full base damage + power modifier (not including the might bonuses here), wouldn’t that mean each individual hit would need a multiplicative increase of 40% to both base damage and power modifier?

Also, with a .5 decrease in evasion, that’s a 25% reduction in evasion on top of the 2 less stacks of might so there’s that too. I honestly think adding a 240 radius cleave (you won’t gain might with each target hit in a cleave, but rather, the first target hit, so the might will still be 5 stacks at the end assuming all attacks hit)would compensate even with the supposed 10% damage increase.

So… where are the scepter buffs?? They said buffs as in plural, so I dare to assume that would mean improvements to at least two or more skills. This isn’t multiple buffs, it’s a single buff to a lackluster skill.

Yashuoa.9527:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

DanAlcedo.3281:

I dont think you know what a preview is…..

Since the game was released EVERY SINGLE BALANCE PREVIEW WAS 100% OF THE CHANGES.

Didnt they say that these were not all the balance changes?

In the past, almost all the planned changes were previewed on twitch prior to patch release. I think it’s a safe bet to assume that these are all the changes that Anet made. If it weren’t, it would make more sense for them to explicitly say something along the lines of “this is the only change for x weapon or profession that we’re revealing for now, but there’s more next week.”

These slots seriously need to be movable to either the top most or bottommost row in the inventory. At the moment, hiding bags with these 5 slots at the topmost row shifts everything and makes it look unsightly.

700 gems for 1 single slot is way too much. I get why it would be for a single slot because it adds a tremendous amount of value for the infinite use items, but 700 for 1 slot is a very tough pill to swallow.

Also, the 5 permanent slots added to the top of the inventory has now messed up my inventory view by shifting all the slots to the right! If anything, I think these 5 slots should be movable to the top or the bottom so it won’t throw off inventory slot icons when the bags are hidden.

I love the over exaggerations OP. 9/10, great troll post.

On a serious note though, get crowd controlled twice in a row while you have one stack of stability while overloading and tell me how great it can be to overload. Alternatively, tell me how you can pop armor of earth on cooldown every time you overload and how useful and helpful that can be.

I’m certain Lord Faren is voiced by Yuri Lowenthal (who voiced the Prince from Prince of Persia: Sands of Time).

Ruka is voiced by Steve Blum and I know that because Ruka’s voice sounds exactly like Ensign Wilton (spelling?), one of the NPCs you have to speak to just before you start the third story mission. Also, once you’ve heard Steve Blum’s voice, it’s hard to “unhear” it—at least for me.

The only thing left is the pristine claw. I hate having to try and get it since killing veteran smokescales isn’t fun—especially when they’re using their smoke field right after their smoke assault and you have to move away slowly.

FINALLY, it requires a normal amount now.

Firelysm.4967:

DanteZero.9736:

It could be much, much worse than what is going on right now. At least there’s an option to pay for gems with gold, some mmo devs don’t even allow that option.

I dont want to pay it with GEMS or GOLD, they deserve neither, i want to earn it in game.

If you don’t want to pay it with gems or gold, then where will the devs get money to make content? I suppose you’re willing to pay X amount per month for more content where you can earn it through playing said content? By the way, if you want to refer to GW1 for examples, be sure to keep in mind that the dev team from back then was much smaller (about 150 people if I remember correctly) compared to the current team of 300+ people.

It could be much, much worse than what is going on right now. At least there’s an option to pay for gems with gold, some mmo devs don’t even allow that option.

Jungle/fantasy forest landscapes with weird flying creatures (and floating terrain) are not unique or original concepts. It’s been done countless times before and will be redone countless times after. Having said that, GW1’s Maguuma Jungle had plenty of floating rocks, illuminated plants, etc and that was well before Avatar and in GW2, insane verticality is pretty normal.

If you don’t believe me, take a dive in Frostgorge Sound and note how deep the underwater parts are. If the underwater section was devoid of all water effects, I would bet that the depth is comparable to the depth of the HoT maps. The point I’m trying to make is that this stuff is nothing new, and I highly doubt Anet got this inspiration solely from Avatar.

I get that the size was reduced to match that of a rifle/pistol shot, but a fireball thematically isn’t supposed to be a small bullet. If anything, the big problem with visual noise seems to be the hit effects that occur on enemies. Bring back the old fireball appearance Anet.

I unlocked the tabs requiring Ley-Line essence and Airship essence yesterday, but today, they are locked out saying I have to buy them. The window still shows that I can make 1 purchase in their respective tabs though.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I love that map. It’s beautiful and complex. Nuhoc wallows help a lot to navigate the map.

It’s funny, I hate the map. Finding all the PoIs, vistas, and hero challenges is a painful task and I frequently found myself running in circles.

So with all the things the revenant can do, I get that conditions are supposed to be the big weakness. Does anyone know how to deal with a vast amount of conditions in pve? I’m really used to running around with condition removal, but it seems the options are very heavily limited for a revenant when exploring maps.

Some immediate thoughts on the final boss fight:

1. The part where he breaks the room is nice, but it’s also the worst part of the fight. In fact, if the updrafts were easier to see, it might not be such a problem. Right now, the updrafts blend in too well with all the weird smoky/whispey effects going on. It doesn’t help that the sky box’s dark colors makes the whole place tough to see.
2. To keep flying, I have to fly onto the updrafts, which I had little idea I had to do that the first two times I attempted the fight. In fact, this is probably the only time I ever encountered flying into a small spiral on the ground that would propel me upwards. All previous encounters with anything like this functionality was from the giant swirling wind columns in Verdant Brink. Therefore, I attributed an updraft as a giant swirling wind column, not a tiny spiral on the ground.
3. The updrafts functionality is different from the bouncing mushrooms. While I did recognize that they are supposed to launch you into the air, I assumed I had to jump on the updraft much like a bouncing mushroom rather than just run into it.
4. The boss was a bipedal creature reminiscent of the Mouth of Zhaitan. In my opinion, it’s not visually distinct and I doubt I can pick out its silhouette when compared to the Mouth of Zhaitan’s silhouette. I think it should have a vastly different and highly stylized body shape. The Mouth of Zhaitan had what was basically a giant beer gut; so did the final boss in HoT.

I know tempest is supposed to be high risk/reward, but I really can’t stand getting into melee range while having so little base and modified health. Also, I tried it with fresh air and found it far more palatable than before, but I still really don’t like getting into melee range. However, given the mobs’ propensity to jump around and move a lot more, I suppose melee range will have to do for now.

The pacing was fine up until Rata Novus, after that, it felt rushed. In my opinion, more missions between Rata Novus and the Dragon’s Stand would have helped to better improve the pacing.

As for the ending, it did feel abrupt, but hey, at least Trehearne is dead—and by our hand too. As for Eir, it’s terrible that Eir died, but I guess it was foreshadowed from a mile away in the living story season 2.

All-in-all, I think the story’s ending, where we face off against Mordremoth was nice. Mind you, I wasn’t a fan of the flying bits, but I can live with it. Now if only we could get something like that for Zhaitan. Oh well, too bad there’s no time travel or major retconning on that one.

Ah ha, the link provided show me bolt to the heart, not fresh air, I’ll try the using fresh air in this case.

MadRabbit.3179:

Yeah, I wrote up a short guide at the bottom of this thread here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Casual-PvE-Air-Earth-Tempest/first#post5693384

Other than the strength runes, that’s basically the build I tried out with the soldier armor/zerk trinket combo (minus the strength runes, they aren’t cheap).

I’m really underwhelmed by the Tempest so far.

Well, I’ve been trying to play as a tempest or at least occasionally use the overload skills. To say that I’m really underwhelmed would be under exaggerating. Has anyone had any luck with playing a staff tempest and if so, do you have any advice? I’ve tried running full zerk, and semi-soldier (armor)/zerk(trinkets) and both don’t seem to cut it.

Seven days is a lot of in-game play time, how did you manage to get your hands on 168 XP boosters? BL chests? Farming? All of the above?

So… about the animation. Is it the same or has it been changed to the standard “swing-swing-thrust” animation chain? I ask because I really prefer that series of animations to the “swing-thrust-downward swing” animation that was present in the BWEs.

The concept of overloading is cool. Just, well, I didn’t find overloading any sort of fun at all during the beta.

I don’t care about the damage component of lightning flash. I get that the damage component is meant to make it an offensive ability, but I don’t like it. To me, lightning flash has always been a form of escape tool, and having it stunbreak made a lot of sense. I’m still bitter that some random glyph whose effect you would want active before a combat encounter became a stunbreak.

Well, it did take Anet years to do a full ele rebalance in GW1. By the time the rebalance happened, GW2 was already out and I was focusing only on GW2. I wouldn’t expect a major rework for any class for a long time.

At least 4 of the 5 new pets have all these cool abilities and new functionalities, and I can’t help but notice that the base pets have very boring abilities. What makes me wonder is now that rangers have access to fire fields and what is considered to be a very tanky pet, will there be buffs or changes to the base pets and pet families? Looking at various drakes and the lynx, they have their incredibly slow pet skill (1.5-3 seconds takes an eternity), and drakes don’t have an on demand blast finisher, it’s AI controlled.

I’m one of the folks who wanted to see the previous interval cut in half and it has happened for the upcoming BWE. However, thinking about it more deeply, Shiro’s kit isn’t really about survivability in general which is why I wanted to see some form condition transfer in his heal skill as condition transfer has always been part of Shiro’s skills.

Having a heal skill that can be used offensively is fine—provided that the healing component is adequate and can reduce pressure on the user. Currently, enchanted daggers just doesn’t seem to do the job.

Kidel.2057:

Not happening. They want Shiro’s heal to be offensive oriented, that’s why daggers deal 800 damage each.

It’s a good thing I didn’t say “remove the damage component.” It’s still offense oriented with my second suggestion so yes, it will still deal the 800 damage per dagger.