Guild Wars 2

Removing Settler’s? Is there actually a good reason for this? I’m guessing to reduce bunkers being hard to kill, but could you at least have a something like Sage’s but with toughness instead of vit?

Like many, I was anticipating the raids since they were first announced. Before GW2 was brought out, I was a big raider in a high up raiding guild in World of Warcraft, and so the thought of being able to raid again was very appealing. Although the raids themselves are very well made and I love the fact that they’ve been made to always be relevant, without having anything making them too easy in the future, there just seemed to be something missing.

At first I was raiding with my guild and even joining in with pugs whenever I could. Getting the first boss down was a great feeling, just like with any new raid boss kill I’ve been a part of in WoW, but with one main difference: There’s nothing to say you ever did it with your guild. Nothing in or outside of the game to say you were a part of your guild and helped kill this boss at this time. Even your personal achievements won’t tell you the date in which you killed it. There’s no leadership board to show which guilds have killed first. So there’s no real guild pride to show off any kills, other than posts on facebook or other social sites.

Looking at the pvp league at the moment, that has a great drive to get your team higher. You personally have a mark to show where you stand in the ranks and an in game leadership board to show where your team is. This kind of thing would be great with the raiding. Not just something to do to get a great item of armour made, but something to really have pride about.

In WoW, people loved to raid for the content and higher armour, but true raiders did it to get their guild higher on that board. To be the first guild to kill a boss and have your name belong to the group that did it. For a true raider, the only reason to get the higher gear, was to make getting the next boss down possible. As in GW2 gear is redundant, this means the achievement is that much more sacred. That there’s less about lucky drops that helped a certain group more than others.

Achievements would be great with a date. Having guild achievements, or perhaps just having the history list more in depth and showing that you truly make a difference to the guild, would be amazing. Having something like with the pvp team leadership board, but with times and guilds for the raid kills, would really make the raid experience, like with the guild hall, a truly great reason to belong to any guild.

If there’s a fear of having people leaving guilds just to be a higher raid guilds, well, that’s already happening. But at least in GW2 there’s an option to be in many guilds and perhaps this could actually help control that. People will have pure raiding guilds for getting higher in the board, and another guild for everything else. There are already pure raiding guilds, but without anything to really make kills noticeable, those guilds might as well only exist instead of a LFR.

I just can’t believe how soul destroying that was. Finally get to the last battle of Dragon’s Stand after many many tries, only to dc and miss everything.

After all those times I’ve joined the map and for it to not even start due to a lack of people or not enough time. All those times of failing to get the 3 towers down because people didn’t understand what to do, or again, not enough time. After all the other dc’s at bad times, like when my guild claimed the hall and most of us were knocked out of the game. After saying to people how good this game is and defending it against those that have found fault with it. I’ve just had enough.

I even tried using the 64 client as a few people said it solved the dc problem. So not only do I find it still happens, but I now get really bad lag during combat. Good job on that one.

I need a break from this. I hope you get the game fixed, or at the very least, playable, while I take one.

Here’s how to fix the problem of people losing rewards due to D/Cs and stop players just fighting a little in each event for a few minutes, then go to another, just to gain as many stacks as possible:

Get rid of the defender stacks.

Base the rewards on what medal they get (Bronze, Silver or Gold) when each event is completed and have the rewards be awarded then, and not at the very end of the 30 minutes.
Get knocked off the game? Not a problem as long as you get back on the game to finish the event.
Want to try and get as many blooms as you can? Just do as much as you can in each event. Doing a little to get to another event will mean you’ll lose out on bigger rewards.

See? Easy.

This may even help fix this annoying ‘No reward’ bug that still hasn’t been fixed. I finally get my wife to try the game again as she liked the idea of working for the Halo, only to have no chance of getting any, let alone enough Blooms, to get it. Bravo on that one.

Here’s how to fix the problem of people losing rewards due to D/Cs and stop players just fighting a little in each event for a few minutes, then go to another, just to gain as many stacks as possible:

Get rid of the defender stacks.

Base the rewards on what medal they get (Bronze, Silver or Gold) when each event is completed and have the rewards be awarded then, and not at the very end of the 30 minutes.
Get knocked off the game? Not a problem as long as you get back on the game to finish the event.
Want to try and get as many blooms as you can? Just do as much as you can in each event. Doing a little to get to another event will mean you’ll lose out on bigger rewards.

See? Easy.

This may even help fix this annoying ‘No reward’ bug that still hasn’t been fixed. I finally get my wife to try the game again as she liked the idea of working for the Halo, only to have no chance of getting any, let alone enough Blooms, to get it. Bravo on that one.

I used to always want the dual pistol, as many do; but I was just thinking how cool it would be to have a hammer. To summon a phantasm that knocks the crap out of your foe. It would be pretty interesting to have an illusion skill for a knockback.

I am really curious what skills we’ll have with the shield though. Shame it’ll only be two, but one will be a phantasm. We already have the defender, so I can’t wait to find out what it could be.

The Mesmer is by far my favourite profession, perhaps even out of every MMO I’ve ever played and there’s very little I could ever comment in a negative way, when it comes to them. Saying that, there has been something sitting in my mind that could be improved with one thing I noticed quite a while ago.

When it comes to the downed skills of the class, they are far better than they were in the early stages of the beta and I even gave ideas on this forum about how they could be improved and the current skills are very similar, if not the same as what I suggested. However, there is a small problem;

The red arrow and delayed appearance on the real Mesmer, makes the 2nd skill kinda pointless. Yes, it’s good to use to avoid a finisher, but as soon as you avoid it, it’s only a matter of time till you get it again. You disappear and anyone with a little experience against a Mesmer in sPvP will know that the clone will then pop up and to finish off the second Mesmer to appear. Even if you’re not sure which one popped up first, you have a nice big arrow to let you know which is the real Mesmer, making the clone pointless. This just makes the 2nd skill a poor man’s version of the Thief’s skill.

There are many ways this could be fixed. Here are two of the best ones I can think of;

1) The Mesmer and clone appear at the same time and the arrow can’t be seen by the enemy.

This would mean the 2nd skill would be a good way to dodge the finisher but would also waste the enemy’s time as they try to figure out who’s real (which is what a clone is meant to do). People on your team can see the arrow and make a res if able, with no mix up.

2) The second skill acts like ‘Phase retreat’ but with a few seconds of stealth for the Mesmer.

This would be a little like it is now but with no disappearing. The enemy will try to finish or attack and it’ll turn out to be the clone and the real Mesmer is just a short distance away in stealth. This would also give the clone it’s true purpose of deception and time wasting.

Both of these ideas are the best I have come up with, to not be over-powered but still giving a good use for the clone. As it is now, it’s just too obvious which is the clone and thus, no deception or purpose.

Having a messenger system where you hear ‘rumours’ when the dragon is likely to come wherever you are in the world, instead of the external timer system we have now would be awesome. More random instead of timed too.

They also really need to make it where the dragons could actually win and then fly off to cause a new chain of events else where. That would give a sense of success when you down it but a way to get revenge if you don’t. Plus it would help those that missed out on the dragon the first time round and time to get more backup.

Just a quick one and sorry if it’s been said before, but during the fractal ‘Urban Battlegrounds’ I can never make a clone by dodging when this trait should be active. With the build I use and so many mobs in this fractal, this can be a real problem. The trait works it seems in all other fractals.

They shouldn’t have bothered with the stat increases with the Ascended gear. Having the infusion to deal with Agony as something you can add to existing gear and have new armor skins would’ve been a much better idea.

I also see a problem with some professions being able to deal with Agony a lot better than others. Agony may reduce health as a percentage over time, meaning it won’t matter how much health you have, but some professions have health regen more readily available. Those without a way to easily get the boon will suffer as they get deeper into fractals. Regen professions will be preferred to party with even when many have Ascended gear.

Clones also put bleeds on.

GS and Staff

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQJARWlwzaoXTzoGZNJiJF9GyhWAJFqWqVmBudhA;ToAg1CqosxYjwGrNObk2s8YUB

I use this for my PvP but I do use the same points used for my PvE build too. I change Illusionary Defense for Debilitating Dissipation in general PvE unless in dungeon, as the extra random condition is great and I don’t take as much damage. I use different utilities for PvE also, but change them around depending on the area/situations (Elites especially).

I actually call this my Martyr build, as I rely just as much on the clones getting destroyed through replacements or actual attack, than I do using shatters. Anyone near a clone when they go, get a stack on confusion per clone (and a random condition if using Debilitating Defense). With 40% less CD for getting illusions out and the dodge clone, there’s a lot of exploding clones around.

The reduced CD’s using GS Training and Chaotic Dampening are not only great for getting illusions out even faster, but it means less waiting to use all skills. Plus the extra power on the GS is nice and changing to staff with it’s extra toughness really helps to survive many crowded situations.

I hope no future changes cause me to lose this build as I love how when my clones are alive, they give bleeds but when killed, they give confusion. And I seem to have the right balance with the power, crit and condition damage to make it all count. I did use the Divinity runes but now prefer Dolyak now for the extra toughness in PvP.

My PvP look and PvE garb

Yeah, I was thinking about if the money actually scaled with your level too. The same could be done with the personal stories too, where the item you get gets scaled. So if you leave your story till later, you still get a useful reward in the end. Our level gets scaled down for areas, it’s not really great when we get useless items for doing lower levelled areas (including personal story).

Waypoint charges to the lower areas to complete Hearts and such don’t change to suit the level of the area, so they should really have every reward in that area scaled up.

I completely agree with this thread. There are too many times I wish people would stop defending something just to see what happens. I think when we retake something that has been taken over, we get a real sense of purpose and achievement in the world. If it’s just continuously defending something, it almost make me wonder why they have guard NPCs. It’s much nicer to have an avenger feel and running in to save the day, rather than just making sure a place is safe.

Quite a few people are saying it’s too hard to make money in the game and there needs to be more to do in the game passed max level. I was just thinking that giving the Hearts a respawn time so once they are done, they don’t stay done. After all, just because you tidy up a place or kill a few rats where needed, doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way.

I have heard the Hearts might be taken out one day and why they were put in to begin with. My idea is that they just get changed so that you get these areas where there’s always something to do and once it’s done, you come back later or the next day and it might need doing again with some money as a reward. This could help people get money too outside of dungeons, crafting and gathering. There’s so much in Tyria to do with the Dynamic Events, but if people have completed all the Hearts, Vistas, Points of interest, Skills points and jumping puzzles, there’s only the meta events and gathering to pull people back into areas. If Hearts were repeatable, it would mean everyone could go anywhere and know where something for sure was happening and get money for it.

I think it would give more of a sense that the world of Tyria was always active and forever changing. It doesn’t make sense to do what’s needed in an area and never need to help again but every one else does.

It would also be great for those that are running with players new to area. Even if you’ve done the Heart before and you with someone that needs to do it, you’ll be able to do it with them and get rewarded for it instead of waiting around or helping them by only speeding up their kills.

Quite a few people are saying it’s too hard to make money in the game and there needs to be more to do in the game passed max level. I was just thinking that giving the Hearts a respawn time so once they are done, they don’t stay done. After all, just because you tidy up a place or kill a few rats where needed, doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way.

I have heard the Hearts might be taken out one day and why they were put in to begin with. My idea is that they just get changed so that you get these areas where there’s always something to do and once it’s done, you come back later or the next day and it might need doing again with some money as a reward. This could help people get money too outside of dungeons, crafting and gathering. There’s so much in Tyria to do with the Dynamic Events, but if people have completed all the Hearts, Vistas, Points of interest, Skills points and jumping puzzles, there’s only the meta events and gathering to pull people back into areas. If Hearts were repeatable, it would mean everyone could go anywhere and know where something for sure was happening and get money for it.

I think it would give more of a sense that the world of Tyria was always active and forever changing. It doesn’t make sense to do what’s needed in an area and never need to help again but every one else does.

It would also be great for those that are running with players new to area. Even if you’ve done the Heart before and you with someone that needs to do it, you’ll be able to do it with them and get rewarded for it instead of waiting around or helping them by only speeding up their kills.

Smudge.3874:

Dark Blue.4530:

Just thinking it would be a good incentive for being in a good guild.

What do you class as a “good guild”? Size? The guild i belong to has only 18 members, but 90% of us have been together for 4+ years through GW1, to penalize us because we do not have x number of members would seem harsh.

My term of a good guild was one that had friendly members helping each other out and not the size. If your guild was on the small side, you perhaps wouldn’t need as many materials to increase the size of the town, and therefore it should scale with the amount that can gather and craft.

So being in an anti-social guild of any size wouldn’t be a good thing. It might actually give people pride about their guild and truly bring people together.

The issue of conditions being useless against inanimate object has popped up quite a lot and I’m sure it’s being looked into.

This suggestion is an idea of how to fix it. Have Condition damage turn into ‘Corrosion’ damage. Any ability that puts a condition on an enemy will simply be a DOT of corrosion that stacks in strength like bleed does. Any gear or traits that boost condition damage will affect Corrosion, so whether you trait for direct damage or conditions, you’ll get the object down just as effectively.

I think a better option would be to be able to see where people are. Have them as a different colour to party member on your mini-map.

Being able to see others would mean you would know if it was worth waypointing when downed but you could also see if there are enough people in an area to get group events going too. Too often I’ll be at an NPC for a group event and not even sure if there is anyone else around to start it with or whether to just leave it.

You could have the mini-map markers able to be turned off for those already in a big group, so their mini-maps don’t get cluttered with the dots.

Just thinking it would be a good incentive for being in a good guild and might be easier for ArenaNet to have just one big instanced area instead of hundreds of small ones (although that might not be true as they already have seperate ones for the home instances).

What if (and sorry if anyone has already mentioned this) we had an instance that belonged to your guild and you could build your house in there and your guild mates are your neighbours?

A little town that your guild owns and perhaps even the location could be picked. Crafters and gathers of the guild could help build things in there to make new buildings (shops, banks, etc) or items for each house. You could pick which house you want to be next to your friends in the guild and decorate it how you want.

This could be instead a the guild hall and actually have where you eventually build a guild town center (or have the building there built as default) that could have trophies and such of PvE, PvP and WvW events done as a guild. Member’s names on the wall if they did something big in the game.

Maybe even choose to build portals to useful areas to help guild members save gold using waypoints.

Sorry for the big wall of text there. It was just spewing out of me and needed to get it all out as faster as possible.

I just feel at the moment it’s like with some schools when it comes to sports. Many these days have all the kids winning medals whether they won the race or not. Kids love getting the medals and they don’t want the ones that didn’t win feeling bad, but why should the kid busting a gut to get first place be treated the same as the rest?

It’s the same with GW2. Everyone is able to get the same as everyone else. This is great in many ways, but there’s no way for people or guilds to stand out and feel exceptional. WvW and soon PvP have rankings but there’s not really anything for those that love just PvE. No title or unique armor to say ‘I was there and did this’. Sure we have the dungeon armor and legendaries, but they are open for all and only a matter of time.

There needs to be more titles and for them to be shown better. Titles for people that go hunting down every dragon that spawns for example. Areas with really hard bosses that take a lot of effort to take down and those that managed it get a really good reward and not just a chest. It would give PvE guilds an event to try for. Planning a certain night just to kill this hard boss that a normal group of people can’t get down.

I love this game and the more I play it, the more I can’t stop playing. But I have started to notice things that are missing.

1) We have titles but they are usually from doing things we do naturally and they only show when clicking on someone’s name. We need titles to always be shown next to character name and be of things that make you want to show off. Some of the PvP titles are quite prestigous, but you get them eventually if you play a lot of PvP. Nothing really to work hard to get.

2) Rankings and public achievements can be quite a big thing for many people. At the moment, it’s only our servers that are getting any sort of ranking. We do have PvP ranks but unless you go around shouting what rank you are, it’s just there to put you against similar skilled players in the matches.
Even if it’s having your name down as achievements you’ve down in your guild, can mean a lot to people. Having your name noticed for anything, in game or out, is a really nice thing and gives a sense of challenge and reward.

3) Actually having something to work for as a guild. I’m really hoping there will be ‘Guild Wars’ in the future when we get our guild halls. And I do know the game is named ‘Guild Wars 2’ because it’s meant to have them (although I did hear that was the original reason for the name) but to have a game where you have server vs server, guild vs guild and sPvP would give this game something no other game has and a reason to be in a really good guild. It would go really well with the title and achievement side of things too. Your guild being high in the ranking and being proud to be in that guild and if you actually helped them get there, you have a title and your name down in a guild achievement.
It doesn’t even have to be just a PvP thing. People could get achievements by helping the guild with crafting. Perhaps having an element in the guild halls where things can only be made or achieved by crafting or killing certain bosses. Trophies in the hall and titles for those that killed a really rare bosses in PvE. Needing crafters or gatherers to have things in the Guild vs Guild fights would be awesome and every member of the guild, PvP and PvE, could add things to help win. Having pure PvP guilds would mean they’d be the best in the fights as they’d need members out in the world to get things for the fights.
And if the game never has raids, what if different maps of Guild vs Guild has a PvE aspect? Where just like in many sPvP maps and WvW there’s a NPC aspect, there could be a huge NPC army and boss to deal with as well as the other players. You could have PvE players just to take on the NPC’s to take a needed area while the PvPers fight and distract the opposing guild. Killing the NPCs could either add to points or the area is needed like in WvW to set up siege, get NPC’s on your side or just for defense. It could even be that a portal to an instance is gained and killing all the NPC’s inside help gain the area or have NPC’s on your side.

I feel if the changes to the phantasm’s CDs are because of PvP, then their HP should be increased to help with the PvE. Phantasms aren’t generally the first target in PvP so a little more health won’t really make a difference. In PvE however, more health can make a huge difference and make the extended CDs less of a problem. It would really help those with phantasm builds, especially in dungeons and yet have little effect in PvP.

On another note, many keep saying about the aoe side of things for DEs and such and that mesmers have little effect before other professions kill all the mobs. We could do with chaos storm causing faster damage and bounce effects either having more bounces, or a completely new skill. What if we had a Kamikaze phantasm that was an instant shatter with a poison or bleed aoe affect? A utility skill perhaps that makes a phantasm that runs to where you want (ground target) and then explodes. That would help with our need for aoe and a ground target skill that’s really useful. It wouldn’t be OP in PvP because it could be dodged but in PvE/dungeons would be amazing. To make a phantasm where it doesn’t matter if you had a target would be great too. Too often a mob would die in a group and the illusion army you were about to shatter it wasted.

Another thing that could help is if the Greatsword’s skill 3, Mind stab, had a bigger radius. It says affects up to 5 targets but at that radius they would need to stack on each other to all be hit!

I’m sure there’s a reason for the Phantasm CD increases, but I really don’t understand why the Duelist got a CD increase of 5 seconds when the swordsman got just 3. The duelist being range and hitting 8 times in one go made him great for my build, but the swordsman hits for more damage and is quicker to use their skill. I just can’t see why the duelist would have 2 more seconds over him.

And if the reason for the increase is to help balance for PvP then maybe phantasms should get a little more health, as in PvP they are not the first target but they usually are in PvE. So when we finally pop then out, they can survive a little more. The CD increases will make it harder for those that have Phantasm builds. Increase the HP of them and using them in dungeons and such will mean the extra CD’s won’t make it such a problem.

I have this in my PvP build. It helps a lot even with the 90 sec cooldown. I think if this skill and other profession’s version of it had a shorter cooldown, it could be really annoying for those that rely on using stuns for their play style. Especially when we can dodge stuns as well.

I just did some testing and none of the sigils had an affect on the phantasms. They didn’t trigger any of the sigil effects and any effect that was triggered (by skills) was only put on the mesmer.

Also, it didn’t matter which weapon the sigil was placed into to trigger it. I would have the sigil in the offhand and I would still get the effect when only using skills 1-3 and vice versa.

Having the traits Confusing Comabatants or Crippling Dissipation ( as cripple kinda conflicts with confusion) with Debilitating Dissipation if you use the Deceptive Evation (awesome trait!). As you make new clones by dodging or skills, the old are ‘killed’ off and spread the conditions, aswell as when the enemy is killing them. So kiting around making clones is not just annoying and hard to target us, it also hurts them to be too close. I use the Undead runes too as I put a lot of bleed and such, whether I stand still or keep moving and have the armor to survive standing in aoe to keep that point.

The Bloodlust sigil stacks twice as fast if you use two, so wouldn’t be surprised if others stack twice as fast too. I have tried to find this out when using Sigil of Earth, but as my illusions stack bleeds and random conditions, it’s hard to know where the bleeds are coming from.

They really need to fix that crit chance information thing. It shows the increases to bleed duration when using Agony, but not basic things like if your crit really has been increased.

It really needs to a wider AoE that is ground cast or a smaller one that is target cast, but with something else (more damage, condition etc). The damage is too low and the secondary effect is more of what you’d have in a utility skill. The 1st skill at full range does more damage and the second have 3 bounces, leaving vulnerability. The 3rd needs something more.

Perhaps making the illusionary wave as the 3rd with a shorter CD and then having a more powerful Mind stab with a longer CD would make more sense. It would keep the fluid kiting of the weapon and have the mind stab more practical and situational in PvE as well as PvP.

I was just thinking actually how good it would be if the 3rd skill was a proper ‘mind stab’ and caused a daze of some kind. That could work better with the single targetting of the 1st skill. Let them get in close, use 2nd skill to make them vulnerable and you with might, use the 5th skill to push them back and then stun them with the 3rd. With the distance being greater and the boon/condition combo, there would be a lot of dps there. Plus the phantasm would cripple them as they try to get back to you.

The second skill is already a sort of aoe with the bouncing, so perhaps the 3rd doesn’t need to be one as well. Plus the phantasm hits more than one foe. The profession does lack ground aoes, but with the illusions, shatters and bounces, I don’t think it really needs them.

Creslin.1758:

Yeah I agree with you guys, GS3 in its current state is pretty poor. It doesn’t do amazing damage and has no other effects, it locks you in place, the area is really small for an AoE, and its ground-targeted.

Mirror blade is like 100% better in all aspects. I would like if they either increased the area for mind stab, added an additional effect (condition) that it does, or made in targetable like mirror blade.

Pretty much my thoughts on the skill. The radius is too small. It says up to 5 can be affected by it, but with that radius they’d have to be standing all in the same spot and not moving while you cast it. And while would you want to cast it for the ‘1 boon removal’ anyway? Just one boon that could be replaced with 10 seconds. There are quite a few utility skills, a phantasm and sigil that could do a better job of removing a boon or two.

Back in beta, the 3rd skills most annoy aspect was that it took too long to cast and actually made you vulnerable (ironically) while using it to put vulnerability on someone. It did give nice damage and ease of casting (minus the cast time). The vulnerability has been removed and put on the 2nd skill instead. The 2nd skill now gives several targets vulnerability when the main purpose of the weapon is single targetting, making the condition pretty much wasted on the extra targets. IF the 3rd skill had a bigger radius and/or something extra (more damage or condition), this would synergise perfectly with the 2nd skill’s change.

Something needs to change with this skill. I don’t like using the weapon because it feels like I’m trading weapons with 5 skills for one with only 4. Plus the other skills don’t mesh together as well as other weapons. Fixing the 3rd skill would help in so many ways.