Guild Wars 2

Berserker’s main stat is still power which is currently the only useful offensive stat on world bosses like Tequatl. For conditions you either have hybrid builds that use Rampager’s (precision main stat) or full condition builds that use Rabid/Carrion/Dire (condition main stat). That said, not being able to crit is also a condition based problem because crits generally mean bleeds/burns due to traits and sigils.

The issue here is that the right tools for current world bosses is you are either a power build or you are useless for attacking the boss. Defending the turrets is one thing but the current problems with conditions/critical hits and world bosses really needs to be addressed sooner rather than later so that newer fights can be designed with them in mind.

We’re basically turret kittens since staff marks don’t trigger, conditions are entirely useless against Tequatl, and our power build relies heavily on critical damage (and lacks range). Conditions in general need a serious overhaul against world bosses, Tequatl only exacerbates the problem.

This would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce Guild Encounters into the guild mission system. For example Guild Encounter: Tequatl would allow you to spend merits to unlock the encounter and then influence to activate it. Guild Encounters could be balanced around a reasonable number, say 20 people and it would scale up from there along with better rewards for higher tiers due to difficulty (20 people, 40 people, 60 people).

With this in mind the open world tequatl could be made slightly easier than the guild encounter tequatl but also have slightly worse rewards than the guild encounter tequatl.

This isn’t really condition specific but it is part of a condition build however, nevertheless necromancer marks on the staff 2,3,4 really need to be triggered by world bosses as well as static objects. Most necro condi builds (hyrbid not included) use sceptre/dagger and staff which makes that specific build even more bad against bosses like tequatl since marks are unable to be triggered by him.

Rather than removing the conditions of that type I think it would be better if every condition over the cap was converted into direct damage that scales based off condition damage. That way the sustained condition damage would still be there and the condition builds would still get the proper amount of damage done to the target.

Example:
25 stacks of bleed
You apply a bleed that does 1000 damage over 10 seconds (for ease of math). Instead of doing zero damage due to the cap you will convert it to a certain percentage that scales off condition damage, say 50% + 2% per 100 condition damage. This means that with 2000 condition damage your 1000 damage over 10 second bleed would end up doing 50% + 40% = 90% of the damage or 900 damage. Obviously these numbers will need to be tested for balance before being implemented into live.

As for objects in the world the only thing I can say is realism be kitten ed. We absolutely need bleed, poison, burn, and torment to work on objects that are thus far immune to conditions. Condition classes are completely and utterly useless against these objects and it really ruins the build in many areas and it needs to be changed.

Keep up this style of event for the other major bosses and I will love you forever and ever. <3

Personally I’ve always though that when the bleed stack is reached that every additional bleed applied should be converted into direct damage that scales off condition damage instead of power. This way the technical limitation of a 25 stack isn’t a problem and having it scale off condition damage instead of power would still make it useful for rabid builds.

Norn is the only option.

Milennin.4825:

So, it’s only a reward if it’s temporary? Why is the content not a reward if it’s there to stay? What does anyone gain from someone missing out on temporary content?

It’s a reward for the people that are playing the game for the two weeks that it is available, you end up remembering one time events far longer than you will another dungeon that will just be phased out of play as it is not CoF P1. The point of it is you can say “I was there” in 3 years when new players are still joining the game and admiring your fused gauntlets. It brings more history to the game and the dedicated players will be seen as something to aspire to by the newer players in the future.

Personally I love the fact that the game keeps having one time events like this, it really makes it worthwhile to actually play on a consistent basis so you can experience the events unfold. It also rewards the people that are dedicated enough to be playing more often rather than those that play for a week and take three months off. Basically the more frequently you play the more you should get out of the game, in my opinion there is nothing wrong with that.

Quote from the news section

“Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. "

Zen.1740:

Encaladus.5291:

velmeister.4187:

Please do not argue based on fallacies. ANET is introducing gear treadmill to please wow crybabies by deviating from the core principle of this franchise. That’s the issue here.

so what u are saying is they shouldnt facilitate the ‘WoW crybabies’ but should instead facilitate the ‘GW1 crybabies’ contradictory much?

i assume this post will be deleted again, as my last post pointing out my OPINION was…. oh well my opinion doesnt count for much it seems……

Except you’re insulting GW1 players who have 10x the right to voice their opinion of GW2 than MMO hoppers do. Do us a favour, yeah. Please learn what you’re talking about before insulting people.

This isn’t Guild Wars 1, it’s Guild Wars 2. Stop feeling so entitled that you were a dedicated GW1 player (I was too).

velmeister.4187:

Why do it then? Why fix something that is not broken? Why not merely add agony resistance to the existing armors after completing a story-mode version of FotM?

Please do not argue based on fallacies. ANET is introducing gear treadmill to please wow crybabies by deviating from the core principle of this franchise. That’s the issue here.

Adding in ascended gear is not a gear treadmill, it is adding in a harder to obtain tier of gear that actually feels like you worked for it. It would only become a treadmill if they
increased the stats of them every single content patch forcing you to participate in dungeons to “keep up”.

I’ll state this again, you do not need ascended gear to do the fractals dungeon, and presumably further dungeons down the road. The only time you will ever need it is for agony resistance which only matters at the absolute hardest end of the repeatable dungeon, I can almost guarantee this won’t apply to most people playing this game. Think of it as “hard mode” gear, something to strive for beyond exotics.

If two ring slots and a backpack makes you not want to log in I’m pretty sure you have other issues you need to address. That said even with full ascended sets exotics will be far from useless seeing as the power increase is so minute it won’t even be noticed, the only major increase will be Agony resistance which only matters at the absolute hardest levels of the dungeon.

nofo.8469:

Khemizt.5104:

nofo.8469:

Khemizt.5104:

Snow.5269:

Having played numerous MMO’s I eventually identified the one characteristic which drove me away from all of them. The gear treadmill. A gear treadmill is a linear design concept where every time new content is released, new gear is added with higher stats, effectively making all previous acquired gear obsolete (As well as your previous time & effort).

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

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“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content."

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Perhaps I am misinterpreting your meaning but what I am reading as a customer is:

“We are going to continue to add better gear with addition of every content update rendering your previous gear void & oh yeah, your friends who haven’t logged on in a few months they will no longer be able to do content with you because they are not ascended.”

Now if I am not mistaken in GW2’s mission statement/manifesto was it not stated that GW2 would “NOT” be a gear treadmill based MMO?

There is no other way to make a MMO other than using the treadmill. Theres no progression without a treadmill… How do you guys not see that, how can sitting in the same gear since you turned level 80, and downing bosses that don’t vary in toughness be fun!?

This has to be a troll post.

Nobody is this ignorant surely.

Have you played any MMO’s before WoW butchered the market?

Every decent MMO uses the treadmill system weather you know it or not, please name one that doesen’t.

DAoC, SB.

All of which had strong communities playing for 10 years+

This game will be dead within 1 year if it continues down this path.

Quoted so I can look back on this post and laugh in a year.

To the OP: We have absolutely no idea at all how this gear will work, relax and see how it plays out before telling us the sky is falling. The way I interpreted the article was that a new rarity of gear was being added that will keep the same level of stat distribution from here on out. Yes the stats go up very minutely now but they will be stabilized for the foreseeable future, but again this is just pure speculation. As I said earlier, relax and see how it plays it.

You won’t really get a proper poll result from this because in general these forums are a place to voice negativity towards something, sad but true. People that are happy with the game basically have no reason to read these forums.

They also never said that ascended gear would continually get better throughout the content patches, from what we can ascertain from that article it is just another rarity of item that will be used to determine the difficulty tuning of new dungeons. It’s no more of a gear treadmill/grind than getting cosmetic skins from dungeon vendors when you could have just crafted it.

aliquis.9180:

Sparda.9356:

On the left corner, we have elitist complain no endgame, on right corner we have casual complain about gear treadmill. Sigh, I guess it IMPOSSIBLE to make everyone happy

Certainly not when you market a game to casuals, because you know that’s where the big money is, and 3 months later go “psych” and turn the game over to the elitists.

This is an honest question, as a casual player why would they be worried about getting +15 more stats and an Infusion that only negates Agony at the absolute hardest end of a dungeon that can be happily played without requiring any ascended gear at all?

Casual players already have an absolute boat full of things to do in this game, this is something for the “hardcore” players to strive for.

I’ll see you in Lion’s Arch during the world event.

This honestly isn’t a gear barrier at all, from what I understand the only time you will run into Agony that you will actually need infusions for is at the very hardest tier of the dungeon. In that case you most likely have the ascended gear just from all of the previous times you’ve run the dungeon anyway.

Also I think the biggest thing people are misinterpreting from the ascended item article is that anet never said it would continually increase in stats with each new dungeon release. From my understanding it is literally just a new tier of item that will continually stay with the same amount of stats through each content update rather than scaling up in stats like normal gear inflation.

Dungeons were always there for getting the look you wanted, absolutely nothing has changed.

Excited. Nowhere in their hype up of the game did it say they would be against minimal stat gains to show a sense of character progression.

Let’s be honest, adding +15 power/precision to a ring won’t even be noticeable and Infusions are there to add an even harder version of the dungeon than explorable mode is. I can almost guarantee the majority of players won’t even get to utilize Infusions to counter Agony anyway as it seems to be the most dangerous at the extreme tiers of the dungeon.

Also these posts are entirely skewed because most of the people still enjoying the game are actually playing instead of whining on a forum about a new dungeon where ANET is testing out a new method of progression.

ITT: The sky is falling.

How about we actually give it a try with the grand total of 3 pieces available to us before we judge it to be the thing that will “ruin GW2”.

I’m assuming this is for PvE/Dungeons and not for sPvP.

This is what I will be running at 80, it’s basically the Power/Condition damage hybrid

Scepter/Dagger (conditions, sustained), Axe/focus (burst)

30 Spite with Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death, Close to Death
30 Curses with Hemophilia, Weakening Shroud, Lingering Curse
10 Blood Magic with Vampiric Precision

Use Power/Precision/Condition damage armor with Power/Vitality/Condition damage accessories. Also you should be using superior sigils of earth (60% chance to apply bleed on crit) for both scepter and axe. For offhand sigils you can really go for whatever since most of the time they don’t even seem to work.

The basic idea is to start off with scepter and apply all of your conditions to a single target and then use epidemic to transfer them to all nearby foes, then swap to axe/focus or go into death shroud and burst down the targets that need to die first. By doing this you will have your sustained damage putting constant pressure on all enemies as well as your burst for the mobs you want to kill faster.

Epidemic is also extremely valuable if you have other condition based professions in the party with you, mesmer for example. A simple Chaos Storm followed by an epidemic is absolutely brutal sustained damage output.

Edit: forgot to say which utility skills
I’m going with Consume Conditions (no brainer) for the heal
6-9 will be Well of Corruption (use this before switching to burst), Blood is Power (use this during scepter condition ramp up), Epidemic (another no brainer).
Elite skill can either be Lich Form if you want more burst or Plague if you want more sustained.

I’d have to disagree with changing anything, Hoelbrak is easily my favourite city with the Black Citadel a close second. Just because it isn’t as built up as Lion’s Arch or Divinity’s Reach doesn’t mean it isn’t grand in its own way. I think the worst cities are The Grove and Rata Sum, which others seem to love. The point is it really comes down to personal preference so changing anything would honestly be a huge mistake.

Also the entire point of Hoelbrak is that it is the first time the Norn have ever built a settlement with a population that size, of course they would want to spread out as much as possible seeing as Norn are secluded throughout most of history and not used to being close to so many others.

This is way better, thanks for the continued hard work!

Charr look great in the god temple armour (boots are just Vigil in the picture). The one thing I will say though is pretty much every helmet I have come across looks awful on a charr, but real charr have no need to hide their face behind such silly things.

Stun break, dodge away, enjoy 50% extra damage for 4 seconds vs the rooted warrior because he likely used frenzy.