Guild Wars 2

Phil.8901:

@DevilLordLaser.8619

Probably you are new in this section but rewards to keep people playing in legendary or to continue seasons after you finished the wings are a real problem.

In this forum people gave a lot of suggestions so it’ s pointless to repeat always the same answers.

Just read the old topics, you’ll get all answers you want.

I spend hardly any time on the forums, actually. I’ve learned from past experience that spending my days here is the best way I can think of to ensure that I don’t want to spend my nights actually in the game anymore. To hear folks in this stinkhole say it, Guild Wars 2 is a teetering wreck built and maintained by lobotomized goblins on the very brink of collapse,as opposed to one of the most successful MMOs in the world.

By all means, suggest away. But as someone who’s watched the PvE side of the game get hammered again and again and again and again and again and again and AGAIN in the name of sPvP balance – from all the whole hella way back to Guild Wars 1 and the steady, systematic destruction of both the Assassin and the Paragon – well, pardon me for not being particularly enthusiastic over the sPvP folks demanding that they also be given drastically greater absolute levels of rewards as well as free-and-easy PvP access to all PvE, Wuv, and Raid ‘exclusive’ rewards on top of being the near-exclusive focus of future development going forward.

Everybody deserves their turn. But ‘everybody’ includes us ‘filthy PvE scrubs’ too, ne?

Trigr.6481:

Since I’m bored I’m just going to go over a list of tons of things that need to be changed in spvp and me giving explanations for said changes.

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Balancing SPvP individually——-

- This is probably the single most important change that the SPvP community needs whether you realize it or not. Not only does this make sense, but since SPvP is already isolated, not one change you make here effects the rest of the game. The way it currently works the devs expect us as players to think about the rest of the game before giving changes to a specific game type, however this way of thinking will never create good balance and the reason why is the majority of changes people suggest are obviously only made and will work for Spvp. WvW and PvE are very different in terms of balance and changes for one often conflict with the other two making the change almost meaningless to begin with.

I know nobody who plays sPvP cares…but you are aware that skill splits are a very considerable barrier to entry for your sPvP game mode people are constantly complaining is chronically underpopulated, right? If PvE Player Z wanders into the Heart of the Mists to try PvP for the first time, only to discover that not only is all of his gear and all of his knowledge of the game from non-PvP modes useless, but none of his skills work anything like the same way they normally work, he’s going to say to himself “this is kitten droppings. To Torment with this” and walk right back out again. And you folks will still be clamoring about how nobody wants to play sPvP.

There’s a reason ArenaNet has tried to avoid major skill splits, or skill splits for every skill. I know sPvP guys are generally really big on just isolating themselves from the rest of Guild Wars completely and utterly, but you’ve got to get your player base from somewhere, don’cha? The learning curve for sPvP is already vicious and full of venom-fanged devils who seem to exist specifically to castigate and chase away anyone who isn’t Supah L33t Pros@uce…do you really want to add “also you have to relearn what every single skill in GW2 does” to the list of Things One Needs To Do Before sPvP is Actually Fun?

Trigr.6481:

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Proper Rewards——-

Never in a million years would I consider cosmetic wings that make you look like a kittened butterfly rewarding for my effort in “leagues”. The way it is now Spvp’ers are second class citizens compared to the rest of the game in terms of rewards and gold. Give the player choice when it comes to customizing their characters aesthetics. This can be accomplished in one way which is the following

- Giving the player considerable gold per win in ranked que, getting more gold per tier in division , so they can save up to buy skins from the action house.

I’ll admit, after being redirected here from Dulfy to check the important devpost, this is the one that really caught my ire. I’m a little confused as to why sPvP guys feel they should be showered in dozens of gold for winning a ten-minute match when everyone else has to either grind for weeks, learn to play the trading post (which is its own psychotic and impossible-to-learn sub-game, full of people who are actively incentivized to sabotage your efforts as much as humanly possible rather than help you figure it out), or kick I-worked-for-this real money into the system for gem-to-gold conversion.

You guys already get ‘Reward Tracks’ that just hand you – for free, with the only requirement being a few days of farming newbies for easy RT points – things everyone else in the game actually has to play the game to earn. Outside of soul-shriveling grinding for various materials, ArenaNet allows regular PvE players to earn two gold per. Day. Of ‘dailies’ rewards. Everything else they get, they have to hew from the bones of the earth.

Why should sPvP folks also get hundreds of gold a day just for clubbing the same poor sorry seals they’ve been going after for years now?

Do events. A lot of them. It is a Participation percentage – best way to increase it is to participate.

Heart of Thorns tends to require much more active use of defensive/utility abilities. Simply switching to Nomad gear doesn’t help, while planning out how to actively deal with threats means you still get by all right with offensive gear.

HoT wants you to get your head in the game and pay close attention. My beta builds turned out to be awful, and I’m using skills I’d never considered before. Stunbreaks matter for the first time in PvE history, and if you don’t have an answer for conditions then you’re going to end up with your face in the ground. A lot. It also really does insist on teamplay in ways the base game never did. Nobody is soloing those godawful champion hero challenges, but because of that you can usually manage to scrape up a group. Follow commander tags, or if you have one of your own throw it up and watch people turn up.

It’s definitely a shock to the system, but once you start getting a grip on the new difficulty curve it’s also a lot more engaging and fun. I still feel a little bit of a vindictive thrill every time I put down one of those @%#!ing Mordrem Snipers (and furthermore, I really want that crazy burnline shot for, say, a future Thief elite spec…), as much because I survived its nonsense as because I eventually killed it.

It’s a good feeling, starting to properly conquer the jungle.

I suppose the issue is that PvP in games like this is infamous throughout the Internet for being full of toxic, villainous trolls who thrive on the humiliation, denigration, and eventual flight in tears of anyone who is not a top-tier tournament-worthy Internet Hardcase.

Now, I get that legendaries should be legendary, I do. I even agree, and I can sympathize with PvP sorts who want to be able to work towards legendaries whilst still drinking the blood and tears of their enemies and /dancing on their corpses…but you’re never going to get people to say “it’s okay” to force PvP in a game where forced PvP has been, time and time again, strongly rejected by the player base on the strength of being an original core tenet of GW2.

Telling people “It’s okay that you have to subject yourself to psychological damage to try for a Legendary” is, somewhat ironically…not really okay.

Anyone who complains about P/P being overpowered, even by indirect inference like that, has clearly never played Thieves, been in a party with Thieves, or so much as seen a Thief at the zoo.

By far the weakest weapon set on the class, probably one of the weakest weapon sets in all of GW2. PvP folks really ought to at least make some token attempt to remember that the game does not begin and end in the Mists.

They haven’t responded because they don’t need to. Making any trait baseline is extremely bad for this game. The only reason Illusionary Persona was made baseline was because that was the only way to guarantee that Mesmers weren’t the only profession in the game that could get zero effect from their profession mechanic. Blasting Staff? That was eliminating what turned out to be a poorly designed trait and rebalancing the weapon it had previously worked on to function the way it should have in the first place. Weapon rebalancing happens all the time*, and in this instance helped ArenaNet smooth out their new specializations.

Baselining Fast Hands? That means letting Warriors have ten traits – ten actual traits, not “let’s rebalance E-Staff” or “Let’s ensure Mesmers can use their profession mechanic properly”, but “Let’s give Warriors a free trait for no cost” – while telling other professions that have ‘necessary’ traits in equally necessary traitlines to go flush themselves. It means a pretty huge amount of power creep, and it also means breaking the current rule ArenaNet’s held to that professions all have a similar baseline performance.

Your base stats, your swap time, your footspeed, all the fundamentals are identical across all professions. You don’t have to keep track of a hundred and one things that’re different between the nine. There’s base health, there’s armor type, and then there’s your skills, weapons and traits. Those last three are how you’re supposed to differentiate your character, not “Warriors get quick swaps, but Rangers have a natural 10% movement boost, then Engineers gain an extra boost to Vulnerable targets, except after that Guardians…”

There’s a consensus here for baseline Fast Hands? Of course there is! If there’s one thing the official forums for any game are absolutely masters of, it’s deciding what the devs should be doing but aren’t. This is the Warrior PvP Complaints subforum, where PvP players go to complain about the fact that the Warrior is clearly* and inarguably* the WORST profession in sPvP – do you expect there to not be wide agreement that an enormous upgrade to the class, which would allow them to ignore an entire traitline forevermore, would be Awesome To Have?

The argument is “Fast Hands is already in every Warrior build ever. All this does is give us back free choice of three traitlines.” A’ight, coo’. What about Elementalists? Most Elementalist players I know feel that cantrips are flat required, as is EAtt, and thus they’re hard-locked into both Water and Arcane. Would they feel it’s perfectly fine for Warriors to get their Fast Hands baseline’d, such that they can freely pick whichever three traits give them the most stunbreaks or the most deep cleanses or the most +10%-while-[X]? How ’bout Necromancers, who maintain that Vital Persistence is critical for any build worth playing and are thus locked into Soul Reaping?

Why can’t those guys get their ‘absolutely essential, cannot-play-class-without’ traits baselined as well? I’m sure you all have a reason – what reason would that be? When you have it…turn it around, and ask yourself “why does this not apply to Warriors?”

Now, I get it. It’s frustrating to be forced into a line you might not want to pick by the realities of the game, and Fast Hands feels like one of those things that could safely be baselined without upsetting balance too much. I can see the logic, as I’ve said elsewhere. But the more I’ve thought about this recently, the more I’ve become convinced it’s exactly the sort of can of worms that nobody really wants to open. This isn’t just about Warriors in a vacuum – this is about figuring out if it’s cool for ArenaNet to start baselining half a dozen traits per profession, letting the power creep get absolutely, unacceptably disgusting, and dealing a heavy blow to an already complex game’s ease of use and intuitive ability to switch between classes, all in the name of ‘this would make PvP better!’

I don’t PvP. And as a PvE player in a PvE guild, I am sick unto death of the PvP guys absolutely, crushingly dominating the game’s balancing and driving ninety percent of ArenaNet’s class/profession-based decision-making. Discipline is an excellent line, as opposed to, ohh, say…Water. Maybe it’d be all right to not shaft everyone who doesn’t spend all night standing in control points, just this once?

Choppy.4183:

Do they? Or do they want those traits because they’re the best option on an otherwise bad line?

Would a power build choose Burning Arrows over Stick and Move? Would a condi build take it over Body Blow? I wouldn’t.

See, that’s the thing. If we have decent traits spread all over the place, then they just won’t be taken as much as they should. Pull PS out of Tactics and give it the overhaul it needs. It’s not a good traitline, and PS is the only thing propping it up… and only some of the time. Vigorous Shouts is a shell of its former self, and the warhorn’s meh too.

Tactics isn’t a great line, no.

So the solution is to take everything that halfway works in Tactics, move it to other lines, and make Tactics an abhorrent line? A free skip for Warriors? I don’t think so.

Fix Vigorous Shouts, put purification back on the warhorn, roll Burning Arrows’ burning into Dual Shot baseline and do something else with the bow trait, and make Tactics into a powerful and useful group support line the way it’s supposed to be, with Phalanx Strength one of the capstones of that line. Don’t put every trait Warriors take in Strength and then say “Huzzah, now I can skip even unlocking the other traitlines!”

PS is not a Strength trait. Not everything gets to be in one convenient line. That is, once again, just bad game design.

I favor it with no ICD whatsoever, but ArenaNet has done sillier things with ICDs in the past.

As for “why not just merge it with PS, then move PS to Strength”? Well…because Tactics has to have a purpose. People want Burning Arrows, PS, and Leg Specialist all out of Tactics and “into lines I actually use!” Frankly, that’s a horsemanure reason to do something. if you want multiple traits in Tactics, take Tactics. No, Tactics is not a big personal DPS increase. Not everything has to be. Gutting the line of everything except the worst traits in the Warrior set-up, then saying “There, good. Now we just never speak of Tactics again and everything will be fine” is utterly awful game design.

PS is an excellent fit for the Tactics line, which is supposed to focus on group support, boon sharing, and otherwise being a good party player. PS is the definition of being a good party player. Why should it move to Strength, which is an intrinsically selfish line whose only real role is personal DPS?

Off the top of my head:

Burst Precision, in Arms, is kinda crap. Guaranteed crit for bursts is easily figured out in other ways, and if you have enough team support you get 100% natural crit rate anyways. The Arms traitline, however, is definitely the Precision-y, crit-based traitline, and Might benefits Malice specs as much as it does Power specs. I’d split the Might-on-crit from Forceful Greatsword off into a new Arms Grandmaster replacing Burst Precision. Call it Savage Momentum, give it a 1s ICD if ArenaNet can’t tolerate anything but Greatsword generating Might on crit (though I can’t see why it’d cause any problem we don’t already have). Forceful Greatsword is a 10% damage boost and a 20% recharge reduction for greatswords and spears – that’s probably enough to go on for it.

Now, you can Phalanx Strength by going Arms/Tactics/* and pick your choice of weapon to do it with. It does, however, mean that you have to give up bonus adrenaline/Malice from Furious or IAS from Dual Wielding, so you give up some options for bolstering personal damage to gain that juicy might stacking. it does still require two lines, but for a build as ridiculously powerful as Phalanx Strength, I think that’s okay. Savage Momentum would also stand by itself – being able to tack Might onto weapons other than the utterly awful Greatsword makes Arms a lot more attractive, though again it may end up inviting an ICD to try and curb things like Axe AA spam for instant 25 might.

Most importantly though, you can do Phalanx Strength with any weapon you bloody well please. That opens up real diversity of builds and brings a large number of weapons back into the top-end PvE game. Maybe a place to start?

Thuggernaut.1250:

Posting big damage pictures of a full 100b on a stationary, defenseless target golem doesn’t prove anything “overpowered.” Forceful Greatsword is pretty much the only thing propping up Warrior in PvE… nerf that, and Phalanx Strength alone can’t save Warrior from irrelevance.

Sure Forceful Greatsword can pump out decent DPS in PvE, but it’s nothing that any Ele can’t do, and you see a lot more of them in the dungeon meta anyway. People need it more for the synergy with Phalanx Strength to stack might than for the raw personal damage. PvE is just a DPS game against canned content, so I don’t see a problem.

Calling for PvE nerfs is just pointless. There’s no competitive aspect, and people just want to grind through repetitive content faster.

Do you see me in here saying that all PvP people want is to be jerks to their fellow players/dance on their stomped bodies?

Geh…insults aside. I’d rather see Forceful Greatsword’s might generation split into a new, separate Grandmaster trait with a reasonable ICD (2s tops) that works with any weapon, and then do something else to make greatsword pop. Forceful Greatsword is necessary for Phalanx Strength builds, but the greatsword itself is a junk weapon that doesn’t work at all with the group-supportive nature of a PS build.

Un-tethering Warrior might generation from the greatsword would be one of the single greatest changes they could make for PvE build diversity. Instead of every PS Warrior ever being the same Strength/Tactics/Discipline build with identical trait selection, you could do a Phalanx Strength version of any weapon you preferred, tailoring the rest of your loadout to what your guild likes or what whichever bit of content you’re doing needs. Would even allow the Berserker to mesh better with PvE groups, since they could do their PS thing on, say, Sword/Torch and still contribute whilst also setting all the things on fire.

Silly me, thinking Warriors had by-far-bar-none the best condition handling in the game. Maybe an Alchemical Tinctures Engineer comes close, but only if they take Elixir C as one of their options.

As someone who plays and loves their Necromancer, I can state that Ryn can only dream of being able to rinse off conditions as easily and regularly as Warriors do.

In a very guarded way, and recalling that I don’t PvP so I suppose my opinion is invalid anyways, I can agree with the logic. One must remember, however, that baselining Fast Hands means that Warriors get ten traits to every other class’ nine, and they also get freedom of spec selection that other classes with ‘essential’ traits don’t. Many Necromancers believe that Vital Persistence is an absolutely mandatory trait forcing the selection of Soul Reaping, while Elementalists will generally tell you that you can’t make an Elementalist build worth playing without Elemental Attunement, thus forcing Arcane.

Everyone has the same problem, to a greater or lesser extent, and baselining all the things(!!) is in no way a viable solution. Warriors are fortunate in that Discipline is also an excellent traitline in general and not a waste to take. I do understand and agree that Fast Hands feels like a Warrior thing and, considered in a vacuum, would not overly disrupt the class’ balance and might in fact help make up for the adrenaline system’s inadequacies as a class mechanic…but it’s also the sort of move that would incite instantaneous and immediate fiery nerdrage in other classes not blessed with the ability to take an essential trait to their class for free, and it would allow Warriors to gain a versatility of roles and builds not permitted to other professions.

You can’t consider solely the impact for the Warrior. Let Warriors have Fast Hands, and what argument do you have for not making Vital Persistence or Eatt baseline, too? That’s an awful lot of power creep to allow into the game, and it makes me awfully leery.

Choppy.4183:

In general I agree with you though. I think “mandatory” trait lines for any class is something to work against wherever possible.

This is something to keep strongly in mind. ‘Baseline’ traits are something ArenaNet hates; I remain convinced that the only reason Illusionary Persona became baseline was because without that change, Mesmers were the only class in the game who could push their F* buttons, put them on full cooldown, and get zero effects from them. Every other class got something when they pushed F*, but a Mesmer without clones up popped a cooldown and accomplished absolutely nothing.

Ever since they made that change, every profession forum has started listing a dozen traits they think are ‘MANDATORY BASELINE’ traits, but really – how mandatory are these ideas? I can see the argument for Fast Hands, but try and think of it this way – if Warrior players can bang their heads long enough and hard enough to get Fast Hands baseline’d, that will likely be it. That will be the only trait you ever get to fold into the base class because ArenaNet hates baselining traits for a number of very good reasons.

Is Fast Hands worth being the only baseline trait you ever get?

The Engineer’s rifle is awful. I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say ‘Horrible’, but that is a word that comes to mind when I think about it. So is ‘abomination’, but then again I’m sort of attached to the notion of rifles that are actually viable firearms. Weird, I know.

The E-rifle is an unfocused schizophrenic mess that has no idea what it wants to do or where it wants to be. Three of its five skills either create or maintain distance (Net Shot, Overcharged Shot, Jump Shot – all range creators), and four of the five skills on the thing are either utility or Power-based…but then the big-punch attack on the gun is a point-blank melee-range Malice skill?

What. The. Frog.

As well, by your own admission you enjoy the rifle as a wacky-hijinks medium-range weapon. Congratulations, Engineer has you covered. The Warrior’s rifle has been a distance marksman weapon since inception – turning it into a melee-range buckshot gun would immediately invalidate the builds of anyone who’s been using it in the role ArenaNet presented it as, and would also consign it to uselessness next to the Warrior’s existing staggering plethora of melee options. The Ranger’s longbow may be similar, but it’s also on the Ranger. If I wanted to play longbow Ranger, I’d do that. If I wanted a lousy, barely-functional shotgun kit, I’d use the rifle on my Engineer.

I would argue that a shotgun-style spec for the Warrior would fit better on pistol, and thusly be introduced as a new elite spec. Fix the rifle to actually do the ranged single-target damage job it’s supposed to, whether or not you also add in the extra control I theorized above, and use a new elite spec – provided we ever actually get new elite specs – to do the brawling melee-range gun thing.

No evidence has yet been provided for why gutting the weapon and turning it into a sword-range blunderbuss is a stronger alternative than making the W-rifle work in its intended role as a distance single-target killer.

Speaking purely from a PvE perspective (I know, I know, this isn’t a PvE forum. Sue me!), I would skin my own foot to be able to do something like Sword/Warhorn or even Mace/Warhorn on my frontline support Phalanx Strength build. I use greatsword because it’s nigh-required, but I actually kinda hate the greatsword. It’s boring beyond belief. I would very much prefer to use a mainhand and the warhorn, or a hammer, or something that did more than a bunch of random damage.

The baseline traits thing is a discussion I’m not really informed enough to discuss properly on the Warrior PvP Complaints subforum, but I know that the current trait set-up, while still better than a number of classes, feels…disjointed, I suppose. The Warrior has so many weapon options that it needs to sacrifice more than half its traits for “Required 20% + [X] Weapon” traits, and as such you keep ending up making weird trait choices because that’s all you have, or because they had to put something in Tactics despite the half-dozen threads I’ve seen today that basically say “take every trait out of Tactics and put it somewhere else because **** Tactics.”

I almost wish Warrior traits would consolidate down into weapon groups rather than individual weapons. Things like Swordmaster working for both swords and greatswords, Sundering Mace being reworked to handle both mace and hammer, stuff like that. Stop making every trait in the Warrior traitlines single weapon specific and instead put thematically similar weapons together so the class has more room to have traits that aren’t hard-linked to weapons and otherwise useless.

If that requires some nerfs, or requires Fast Hands to be baseline’d, or whatever, then do it and see what happens.

It is failing on the goal of single-target DPS, but to me that doesn’t say “turn this into a sword-range shotgun kit instead”.

If I had my druthers and could pick any rifle set-up for ArenaNet to experiment with? Hmm, lessee…

1.) “Merciless Shot”: Damage, extra adrenaline against Vuln or Crippled targets.
2.) “Knee Shot”: Cripple your target with a precise shot to the knee (6s Cripple). If the target is already crippled, Immobilize them instead (2s).
3.) “Volley”: Fire 5 shots at your target (same shot rate as Rapid Fire, i.e. half cast time). If all five shots hit, the final shot knocks the target down.
4.) “Brutal Shot”: Vulns target. If target is impaired (same ‘impaired’ list as Predator’s Onslaught), 4 extra stacks of Vuln and bonus damage.
5.) “Rifle Butt”: Knock enemies back. If an enemy is knocked back, gain 33% increased rifle damage for the next 2s.
A.) “Kill Shot”: Deals damage. Deals X bonus damage if target is Vulnerable. Deals Y bonus damage if target is Crippled. Deals X and Y if target is both.

Off the top of my head, this would be the start of a better rifle kit. Adjust numbers as needed to be competitive with options like R-Longbow, but also give it options for harrying an enemy, making it a more offensive-controlling weapon that can inhibit the target’s movement. More cripples (via the new Crack Shot in my first post), an immobilize, a ranged knockdown, and if someone gets close to the Warrior through all of that, then Rifle Butt sets them up for extra damage as well as backs them off. Kill Shot rewards properly setting up the target with a huge spike of damage, and just overall the whole set gels together better. Knee Shot on crippled target to immobilize it into Volley to knock it down, after which you Brutal Shot for deep Vu;n and extra damage and/or Kill Shot For Big Deeps.

Is it an Absolute Plan for what ArenaNet must do this instant to fix W-Rifle? no, of course not. But I think something like this, tweaking up and adjusting the existing set and making it more cohesive, giving it a Plan, is a much better idea than gutting it and turning the ‘Rifle’ into a sword-range nonsense stick. If I’m in sword range I’ll use my sword. When I’m at rifle range, I kinda want to use my rifle. In point of fact, my Warrior was my first GW2 character precisely because I wanted to try for this sort of merciless-marksman plan, and I remain disappointed that I’m forced into random melee shenanigans by the fact that both the longbow and the rifle are butt.

Turn the rifle into a ranged harrier’s weapon, something that inhibits its enemy and weakens their ability to escape the inevitable Kill Shot. Don’t turn it into a random shotgun.

So…turn it into a worse version of Engineer gadget stick?

I get the idea, but the thing you’re forgetting is that the Warrior is currently the only rifle user in GW2 that uses the weapon in a remotely rifle-like manner. The Engineer’s ‘rifle’ is a schizophrenic nigh-unusable mess, and ArenaNet has pretty conclusively demonstrated that the only other class with any remote chance for a rifle-style rifle – the Thief – is never going to see the weapon.

If the Engineer’s rifle is a crazy giggle-worthy gadgetstick, and the Warrior’s rifle is a shotgun now…where’s the class for people who want to use a rifle and fight like it’s a rifle?

Better idea, in my eyes, would be to correct the rifle such that it fits better with the general Warrior pace of battle and actually deals the solid, reliable damage it’s supposed to rather than being bad at the only thing it does. Gutting the thing entirely and turning it into a sword-range weapon does nobody any good. Better to make it a more interesting, dynamic rifle rather than saying “Warriors are bruisers. Let’s make this a melee-range shotgun.”

Half the reason Warrior rifle is awful is because it has zero trait support, with the only trait in the class that functions with rifles being in direct competition with the fantastic Warrior’s Sprint. I get that the Warrior has too many weapons for every single one of them to get an appropriate trait, but in that case one needs to re-examine what traits are out there.

Crack Shot is awful. The pierce does nobody any good outside of Wuv zergs due to the incredibly narrow hitbox of a rifle bullet, and with Gun Flame beaten into the ground they’ve removed the only reason to bother with Crack Shot. Repurpose this trait. The rifle is currently configured to try and keep distance between the Warrior and his target, if Aimed Shot and Rifle Butt are to be believed. Crack Shot competes with Warrior’s Sprint, which lets a melee Warrior easily close with his target. Why not make Crack Shot perform the opposite function for a distance Warrior?

“Crack Shot: Critical hits with Rifle inflict Cripple (2s). 2s ICD. 20% cooldown reduction for rifle skills.”

Now, Crack Shot helps a rifle Warrior keep his enemies at a comfortable distance, letting him better control their movement. Matter of fact, if I were to redo rifle completely…I wouldn’t. But I would adjust it for better interplay between its skills, as right now none of the rifle’s skills really work together or play into each other. They’re individually weak, and they don’t gel together into a stronger whole. Kill Shot is functional but boring, Volley is same, and neither Aimed Shot nor Brutal Shot provide enough utility to justify dealing poop damage. Compare the weapon to Ranger Longbow, which is much more functional while also being significantly less boring.

Rapid Fire has the same cast time as Volley…except it fires twice the shots, deals more overall damage, and also stacks more Vuln with higher uptime than Brutal Shot. This one singular Longbow skill is better than half the Warrior rifle skillbar.

Barrage is a big AoE that deals huge damage and cripples entire groups of enemies. Aimed Shotis a null-damage skill that cripples one enemy for a short time. Sure, Aimed Shot has a drastically shorter cooldown, but Barrage is significantly more interesting, has a much better payoff, and is just more fun to use.

Hunter’s Shot is an escape skill the Warrior gets no equivalent for, because the R-longbow does everything the W-rifle does in…what? Two skills? Ranger gets weapon stealth to clear out of trouble, and Warrior gets…nada.

PBS even manages to beat out Rifle Butt – RB may have a higher target cap, but PBS hits at 1200 range and thus because a ranged interrupt skill.

To be honest? Writing all this, it’s become pretty clear the only real problem with Warrior rifle is that it’s been ignored in every single gameplay pass the devs do. It’s never had the tune-ups, adjustments, or realignments things like the Ranger’s longbow have benefited from; it’s in the same crappy state it’s been in since launch, except the rest of the game around it has generally gotten much better. I’m not going to presume to do a Brand New Rifle Skillset…but it’d be nice if ArenaNet found a week or two with which to go over the W-rifle and see about tuning it to not only be useful, but also fun and interesting to use.

Since, y’know, it’s the only actual rifle we’re ever going to get.

Yeesh…why do I subject myself to this place?

Zealot’s armor is a thing that exists, folks. Seriously. Not everything needs to be set up to perform optimally in Berserker gear. Poor healing coefficients hurts game diversity – if you want to play a pure-Berserker Druid, then accept that you should by all rights heal for less than someone in Zealot’s armor. Just like the Zealot’s guy needs to accept that he’s not going to hit as hard as the Berserker guy.

Telling the Zealot’s-wearing guy that he gets no return on his investment of Healing Power is kinda awful. If you go Berserker stats, you lose healing efficiency. That’s what you get for taking a support class and giving it zero supportive ability.

Minor additional feedback, since I can flat guarantee the Ranger subforum has spent all thirteen of these pages pointing out everything that’s wrong with the spec already.

I actually really liked the ‘Blackout’ Druid playstyle, focusing on Moment of Clarity and multiple long-duration Dazes. To me, it was really cool to be able to play that duality of role – heal my pet/allies with the Druid’s crazy greenbar paste, but also prevent enemies from doing damage in the first place with multiple hefty Dazes. Ancestral Grace was awesome for getting where I needed to be to hit a Daze. Yeah, the staff damage was a lot lower than I wanted it to be, but given the frequency with which I could lock enemies out of their abilities, it didn’t matter quite as much as it otherwise might have.

When HoT goes live, I honestly think the Blackout Druid – if it still exists – is going to save my Ranger. I haven’t been able to figure out anything worthwhile to do with my Ranger in basically ever, but this was a lot of fun to mess with. It’s a semi-unique role in GW2 so far; we’ve never really had anything that could frequently soft-lock multiple enemies and stop them from actively harming you. Heh…I have the usual list of buff requests I’d like to see to really make the character pop, but I’m going to forego it. No doubt Irenio’s already got thirteen pages of hissing spitting frothing-mouthed nastiness all informing him of exactly what he needs to do to make the class better…but I’m not a game dev.

So. Feedback Summary:

Good:
-‘Blackout’-style Druid, with MoC traited in Marksmanship and Primal Echoes, Glyph of Equality, and Lunar Impact was surprisingly cool to play, and felt like a valuable disruptor/lockdown expert instead of nothing but a passive healbot. More support for this playstyle would be awesome.

-Smokescales are fantastic and I want more of them. No srsly – Smoky Bandit is best pet. Would double-Smokescale if could.

-Ancestral Grace is fantastic for quick spot-heals and also maneuvering around the battlefield. It was crucial to me contributing properly in my first and currently only Wyvern fight – having something to get between safe spots amidst the fire was awesome.

Bad:
-Staff damage is…not really there. I’m utterly certain this has been covered, however.

-Bristleback did not really feel at all like a ‘brutal condition-applying dinosaur’. It has two bleed attacks, both on long-ish cooldowns with moderate size and duration of bleed stacks. I love the way it looks (spiky war-quaggan!), and the Wild Growth SUPAH-BRISTLEBACK glitch makes my entire guild giggle like drunken sorority girls – Psyckos wants it to be left alone desperately...but it doesn’t feel very impactful as a pet. Maybe some bleeds on AA? I’unno. All I know was that it did not feel like a brutal anything dinosaur.

Ugly:
-Solar Beam’s (sylvari) animation was…weird. The pose for it looked actively painful to the Ranger (staff above head, back arched way back, head twisted sharply to the side), and the odd gargling-rocks SFX were very off-putting. I really wanted to switch to the awesome hipfire animation for Vine Surge from the HoT reveal trailer back in January, and have the SFX sound more like a beam of energy and less like…well, gargling rocks.

Mono.7320:

Nike can I go with SB/Axe-Dagger Instead of Sword for more bleed condi?

I’m not Nike, but still :P

There’s nothing really stopping you, though my experiments with it make getting everything you want for an Axe/Dagger or Axe/Torch Malice build really difficult with Druid. Either you give up ALLDAFIRE from Skirmishing’s Trapper’s Expertise, extra Malice and cooldown reductions for the Torch and Dagger from Ambidexterity in Wilderness (as well as Wilderness Knowledge), or you give up Winter’s Bite in Beast. You can’t take all three lines and still be a Druid, and each of those is generally pretty heavily leaned on in the Malice builds I know of.

You can probably go Skirmish/Beast/Druid if you want if you want a Malice Druid, but you almost have to take Verdant Etchings and multiple glyphs. Which really isn’t a bother, I suppose, VE is amazeballs and some of those glyphs are pretty intense. Still, the axe doesn’t work nearly as well without Winter’s Bite. Hrmm…will be interesting to see where the math falls out on that.

Some of my wild theorycrafting has been focusing on frontline support with Greatsword. Yes yes, I know, p!ss-poor damage and all that, but the greatsword does have both a daze and a knock to help trigger Ancient Seeds, and Verdant Etchings is pretty baller cleanse support with 3+ Glyphs. Not as ridiculous as an Elixirs Engineer or such, but pretty solid. Moment of Clarity is pretty intense, and the Druid seems to be fairly well able to set up Predator’s Onslaught, as well. Beyond a metric grip of dazes, I mean.

I honestly don’t see the problem. Yes, it has a ton of healing. No, that is not all it does. I’m rather looking forward to experimenting with it.

Clearly Nike, the answer to your unasked question is “Druid is a Better [Monk] than [Monk].”

Fashion Mage.3712:

It’s more like a somewhat nature-flavoured monk than what a druid typically is, in my opinion.

Ironically, actual druids – as in historical druids, not the horrific abortion D&D has made of the term – were, in fact, mostly nature-flavored monks :P

The cycles of the moon and stars is a common theme in druidic or other natural systems of magic. Lunar/celestial effects show up all the time. C’mon, man. Chillax. Could be worse – they could’ve been shapeshifters. That would’ve been a real disaster.

The words “you can’t dodge everything” doesn’t mean “we’re hard-coding Trinity back into the game.”

It means you can no longer have an entire party of people wear exclusively Berserker (offensive) armor, slot exclusively offensive, +X% damage traits, and take exclusively offensive utilities, and expect to clear endgame content by pressing Dodge once every ten seconds. People wanted more challenging content – part of that is expanding the rest of the game beyond[ the extremely tired, worn out ZerkAss speed clear meta.

Will you need – as in be unable to complete without including – Druids to get through content? probably not. You may, however, be presented with the choice of taking a Druid or two, or baking some toughness – both the stat and the basic concept – into your characters. Take Iron-Blooded instead of HGH on your Engineers. Swap your trinkets for Knight’s instead of Berserker’s. Grab some extra block traits, or some extra Regen sources.

You can’t dodge absolutely 123% everything anymore, but you can still dodge the biggest, nastiest hits. Yes, after that you’ll need to deal with spillover damage and incidental, and that will take more than wearing Zerker armor with nothing but +X% traits and offensive utilities. You may need some defensive gear, or some defensive traits, or some defensive utilities. One, or maybe even two, of the three on a few characters.

Quit sobbing. All they’re doing is taking away your ability to heap scorn and derision on people in Knight’s or Zealot’s gear with a balanced trait spread and tell them they’re awful GW2 players who should uninstall, burn their computers and proceed to drown themselves in the toilet. Frankly, that’s needed to happen for…oh, ’bout three years now.

Blast finishers are about a thousand times more desirable than whirls, though.

It also potentially disincentivizes the rest of the hammer skills – any time you don’t spend swinging your AA and generating piles of blasts is time that could be better spent swinging your AA and generating piles of blasts, or so the meta thinking will run.

Personally I find it an interesting notion, and something that might fit with the Scrapper’s theme, but you also have to remember that one of the things that controls the Dodgedevil’s whirl AA is that Thieves/Dodgedevils have utter crap for fields of their own. Sure, they can generate a lot of extra damage with staff AA in things like fire fields, but they need another class to generate those fire fields for them. They can’t really take advantage of their whirl finisher at all by themselves, save for a couple of questionable smoke fields.

Engineer, on the other hand? The Engineer is drowning in fields of all shapes and sizes. Giving it the most desirable combo finisher type while also allowing it to be one of the classes with the broadest, easiest access to a great many different field types could well be pushing the bounds of what’s permitted on an AA too far.

Knighthonor.4061:

I am going to laugh at all you Doomsday Rangers posting here, when Druid becomes the most popular and most requested class in HoT….

The point isn’t to diss Druids, KH. The point is just having some fun with the wildly outlandish crazed-hooligan threads that come up with every new spec reveal claiming that, say, Scrappers are now better at being Guardians than Guardians. Or that Dragonhunters are just reskinned Rangers. Or that Chronomancers are nothing more than Mes/Necs from GW1. All in the blatantly transparent hopes of securing some sort of buff or tweak-up of their chosen class.

Everyone here is likely hoping Druid is indeed awesome. We’re just poking some fun, mang. Pet a kitten or two and lighten up. They are awfully fluffy…

Ahh…this was a nice laugh to start my day with. Yes, my days start at noon, eat me :p

I want to contribute, but I honestly can’t think of anything as shiny and crinkly as Nike’s. Well…maybe…

“Oh my GOD Anet!! They’re fixing pet A.I.!! Why would they DO that, don’t they know it’d make MM Necromancers just completely useless?! Stupid kitteny kitten meowmeowmeow…time to reroll, I suppose…”

Nike.2631:

Orpheal was certainly actively involved .

You might find these interesting reading~

The New Masters – Suggesting releasing New Weapons, Utilities, and weapons skins as a package to expand class options without adding sub-classes. Others would later refine the idea to adding a new line of utility skills with a common tag like we see today.

Here’s the studio design director getting on board. Note he’s the one suggesting what we now see in terms on linear tracks for trait lines that that you buy your way through in order.

Here’s the magic moment where sub-classes become not an additional trait line but a substitute trait line. Of course we didn’t know back then that they’d be locking us into three trait lines at a time, and I admit I’m a bit surprised we can combine an Espec line with the old class trait lines (the 5th line always being linked to class mechanics). But is was quite gratifying to see the idea get used.

Of course I might have had some inkling…

I don’t doubt that the horizontal progression CDI was important to ArenaNet formulating the idea for elite specs, no. Heh, but the CDI was also hundreds of players all contributing ideas and potential improvements – for any one single player to believe that they are the ones solely/primarily responsible for the implementation of something as momentous as elite specs is…less than fully cognizant of the realities of game development, shall we say?

I’m aware Orpheal posts a lot, and I’m a nobody. Heh, trust me, I get that. I am, however, sick unto death of the man demanding ArenaNet call the Reaper ‘Dervish’ on the grounds of ‘Dervish’ being race-neutral when it is no such g’danged thing. Dervishes were among the GW1 professions most closely affiliated with the Six, and they had absolutely nothing in common with the Reaper save for the verymost superficial overlaps (multi-target focus, the existence of a scythe). I’ve seen him push the notion on people at least half a dozen times now, and I’ll admit – I snapped.

As for the rest of it? Well, it’s the Dragonhunter problem all over again – Dragonhunter is an awful name, the only name worse than Dragonhunter is all the things the community wanted to call it. ‘Artificer’ has nothing to do with a hammer-swinging melee bruiser with semi-disposable drones dive-bombing the enemy – it’s a word that evokes a man sitting in a lab somewhere tinkering with watches or crafting delicate mechanical dolls.

‘Reaper’, as a word, evokes the image of just exactly what the Reaper is – a lifetaker cloaked in deathly energies that reaps a harvest of his enemies’ faces. Were they also the title given to servants of Grenth back in the day? Sure – but the basic language the game is played in attaches a much more impactful and broadly applicable meaning to the word which means it makes perfectly fine sense as the name for the spec.

Anyways. Apologies for the bitterness, at the very least. I’m not having the best day, and between this and the Function Gyro nonsense in the Engineer PvP Compalints subforum…-_-

…gotcha.

A’ight then. I forgot – Engineer PvP Complaints subforum. Do pardon, I keep forgetting that PvP players don’t care about anyone or anything that doesn’t have to do with being a giant **** to everyone else on the map.

You’re totally right. PvE players didn’t want anything new or cool to do with their Engineers anyways. Carry on.

For the love of…

A’ight, full disclosure here: my Engineer is a Flamethrower build, Firearms/Inventions/Alchemy. I use Sinister armor and Iron-Blooded. I’m not one of the rampant Zerk-or-go-home jackwads who believes that any trait with doesn’t read “+10% damage while [X]” is useless and any skill which is not a fire field, a blast finisher, or an AoE stealth is also useless.

I’m not talking Dungeon speed clears or lvl9000 Fractals. Those guys are never going to be happy with anything ArenaNet does anyways. What I’m talking is PvE, i.e. “any space in which one’s objective is not to defeat other human players.” Open world, Living Story, dungeons/fractals, raids, whatever. That segment of the game – the one in which the vast majority of the players in this game operate, if not the majority of forum guys – is getting a half-functional elite specialization at best.

Let’s flip this around – if ArenaNet had released the Scrapper, and its Function Gyro was strictly a PvE utility thingus – auto-gathering, distance interact prompts, whatever – and had no ability to res or stomp at all, would that have been kosher with you PvP guys? If the ability had stated “This ability cannot be used in PvP”, would that not have caused a gigantic forum explosion akin to the Dragonhunter name fracas or the mere existence of the Tempest?

Why is it okay for the same thing to be done to the majority of the playerbase on the PvE side, instead?

Tyaen.5148:

First, yes I’m fine with the state of Engineer in PvE. When Anet forces me into that game mode, which is too often, I’ve never felt the class was lacking.

Second, I’m not an sPvP player, I primarily WvW. They are completely separate game modes (that is not an opinion, but a statement of fact). If you believe differently don’t reply. This Elite adds something that this class has lacked in WvW and sorely needs. Pending actually seeing it in action, iI am very excited.

Didn’t ask if you were fine with the state of Engineer in PvE. I asked if you were okay with PvE Engineer players not getting an elite spec. Because right now we’re not getting one. Or at least we’re not getting a complete spec; only PvP players, either structured or Wuv – and no, the two game modes are not as different from each other as they communally are from PvE – are getting a complete spec.

I’m not asking for them to rebuild the Scrapper completely. Even if they had time to do it, I wouldn’t want them to. The base, fundamental concept of the function gyro is awesome. It’s like a universal remote; it’s incredibly Engineer-y and flavorful and I think it’s exactly the sort of thing that could set the Scrapper apart. Right now, though? its functionality is intensely limited and essentially nonexistent in PvE; for something specifically named “the Function Gyro”, it does not have much function.

Let it take the place of the Scrapper’s normal interact. Gather at range, or leave the Function Gyro to do world prompts while the Scrapper itself smashes faces with a hammer. Disable the Scrapper’s own interacts while the Gyro is doing its thing – no double-button-pushing or such, but if the Scrapper’s new mechanic is a universal remote, make it universal. That would be awesome, and it wouldn’t impact the PvP types whatsoever. You could still remote-stomp. It’s simply that the rest of us would also be able to enjoy having a cool new elite spec to play around with.

Tyaen.5148:

1/3.

And frankly, PvE needed the least help.

So you’re completely okay with PvE Engineers not getting an elite specialization?

I get it, PvP guys are pretty well known for being…well, things ArenaNet doesn’t want me calling my fellow players, but c’mon, man. C’mon. Nobody’s even really talking about changing this ‘extremely satisfying’ mechanic, just adding to it such that it’s not a nonfactor in what is inargueably the most densely populated and played leg of the game. And yet your response is basically “Cry some more. You guys don’t need anything else.”

Given that sPvP has utterly dominated game balancing passes since the game’s inception, methinks maybe – maybe - you could show a bit more empathy and solidarity with your fellow players, regardless of game mode. After all, I haven’t tromped in here after every balance pass going “WHERE’S THE FIXES FOR *” on the PvE side, hm?

What point?

Seriously: what friggin’ fraggin’ froggin’ point?

You just claimed personal credit for the entire idea of elite specializations. Don’t remember doing that? Let me refresh your memory. Ahem:

“For me personally its very disappointing as thats not what I personally envisioned for the game, when I proposed in the CDI the idea of Sub Classes, what practically lead to where we are now.”

When you type something like that, you give up all credibility, dude. Here’s the deal – I don’t give a fat rat what you ‘personally envisioned’ for the game, and if you were personally and solely responsible for ArenaNet developing elite specializations I will eat my pants without sauce.

Seriously. Every time I see you post it’s to castigate ArenaNet over their name choices and to push for your own incredibly awful ideas. Clue for you: “Artificer” is a crafting discipline. It cannot also be a profession. Dervishes were devout followers of the Six who made use of godly avatar forms and weird enchantment mechanics. The only similarity between Dervishes and Reapers is that the Reaper has a gigantic spirit scythe in its Shroud form and Dervishes used weaponized farming implements also referred to as ‘scythes’.

Just…knock it off already, will ya? Either that or apply to ArenaNet and see if they’re willing to pay you for your ideas. I’m fairly sure I know how the interview will go.

Ranger hammers should only come with tameable rabbits.

Jus’ sayin’.

Orpheal.

REAPERS. ARE. NOT. DERVISHES.

Stop demanding ArenaNet change that one. Your naming sense stinks, man. It really does. I have yet to see a name suggestion from you that didn’t make me do the Excalibur Face. Man I’m glad ArenaNet ignores the community on the naming front…

I know, I know – this is actually the “Engineer PvP Complaints” subforum, and I’m showing my useless noobocity just by saying this – but…well, the Function Gyro is a big fat waste of time for the PvE side of the game. To me it’d be something you do for a trait, not the big profession mechanic change, considering it’s essentially useless in the most densely populated/played third of the game.

Don’t get me wrong – I actually really enjoyed the Toxic Alliance needing stomping, and I wish that the mechanic would proliferate to other PvE enemies. I am sorely disappointed that the Mordrem Guard doesn’t need stepping on. But if they’re not going to proliferate the requirement to finish downed foes throughout PvE…then building an elite spec around the notion of being uncommonly good at finishing enemies seems just a twitch unfair to folks who don’t spend all their time in the competitive modes.

Hell, if you’re going to make it a function gyro, make it a FUNCTION Gyro. Let me dump the kitten thing at everything that needs an ‘F’ prompt. Have it gather remotely for me or hit in-world prompts from a distance. Hell, let’s be honest – being able to point it at a gathering node, send it off, and continue on our merry way would be more than sufficient compensation for the utter lack of half the gyro’s nominal purpose in PvE.

It wouldn’t be great, mind – ‘automated mining, yay!’ is not really the basis of a solid elite spec – but at least it would be something. Which is more than the PvE leg of the game gets right now.

‘Forge’ was, let’s admit it, a pretty awful name. Maybe not Dragonhunter awful…but honestly, I’d rather be a Dragonhunter than a ‘Forge’. One of those hunts dragons; the other one gets hit by hammers a lot.

‘Scrapper’ is a pretty solid name choice for the spec. It’s evocative of what the spec does in multiple ways – you’re (theoretically) a close-combat powerhouse meant to stick to targets and make them hate you, and you’re also a tinkerer of mechanics that probably works with scrap. I like it.

What I don’t like are a few of the mechanics and the incredible ripoff that is the function gyro…but that’s a discussion for another thread. The name’s perfectly fine, even for charr. Words can have multiple meanings even to the same person. It’s all in the context.

It’s Wuv. The devs have gone on record as saying that perfect balance isn’t something they’re looking for in Wuv. It’s supposed to be huge, messy, chaotic, and prone to epic tomfoolery – that’s what it’s there for. Perfectly balanced play is what sPvP is for.

Well, that and ruining every other game mode in every other update with crazed insanity ‘adjustments’ that make negative sense…unless you’re strictly an sPvP player.

Blagh.

Most of the problem with ‘stacking’ is that it removes the mobility aspect of GW2 combat from the game. While claiming that stacking ‘removes/devalues teamplay’ is clearly dumb, some people would prefer to have fights where you constantly have to move, reposition, scatter, respond to likewise scattered threats, and otherwise engage with the fight rather than “stand here – HERE, IN THIS ONE SINGLE SPOT – and hit your rotations, and we’ll all collect loot at the highest possible speed. If you have to dodge, do it, but then get your butt back to THE ONE SPOT as quickly as you can and pick up your rotations.”

That is what’s tired, boring, and not really any better than a trinity fight. if your stack has to move – if you have to try and get all that pooled boon sharing, healing, cleansing, whatever, while also dealing with, say, constant artillery fire or spontaneous magma pools or cleaving ten-foot axe strikes or Space Lasers or some other junk that heavily punishes STATIONARY stacking, you’d have a much better overall game. Groups coordinated enough to stack whilst moving reap the benefits of being awesome, but if you’re not that awesome you’re better off scattering rather than trying to force “stand in each other’kittenboxes in this corner and spam the everlovin’ hell out of everything you’ve got.”

People against stacking are not necessarily against teamplay, methinks. Not the reasonable ones, anyways. What they don’t want is the current bogus, completely stationary horse manure cheesefights wherein you may as well have roots instead of feeties.

Give us more opportunity to use our feeties, and we’ll be good.

Juggernaut, Bunker Down, HGH, Strength runes/sigils, utility bar full of magic beer, Precision armor. Tailor the rest to personal taste. Flamethrower/Bunker Down is hellaciously fun and surprisingly effective in PvE, and saves on the carpal tunnel over the grenade kit. I run mine with Iron-Blooded over HGH for the hefty damage reduction and Flame Legion runes to extend burning durations for extra FT damage and still tend to sit on ~15 Might in a heavy fracas, without any Might-sharing classes around me.

It may not be bleeding-edge optimal, no, but it’s certainly viable, and it’s a whole lot more interesting and flexible than grenades.

Forge gets a hammer that doesn’t actually deal damage. Every hammer skill commands the drones to do your attacking, and does so by smashing the hammer harmlessly into the face of whatever you want the drones to damage.

Yep. That’s how it’s going to work.

PlatinumMember.5274:

A lot of people would rather have a functional skill than a skill that doesn’t work and only exist due to some arbitrary theme. I like the theme of a slow movie monster however, that theme ignores the fact that a movie monster ALWAYS gets his prey. Right now we have no viable way of getting to that prey.

If GS5 worked in all situations great, but it doesn’t and given the complexity of that skill it probably will not work. Most would prefer a functional skill to a non functional. It doesn’t have to be a leap it can be a teleport similar to DS2. If keeping the theme is important, well we have already have a precedent for teleportation. Also movie monsters are always on their prey even where they hide, somehow they appear behind them.

The problem I have is that leaps are almost as nonfunctional as pulls on uneven terrain. Both things need to work better, but eliminating one from the game entirely (pulls) in favor of the slightly more functional leaps is just…no.

Better to try and get ArenaNet to figure out why elevation changes screw their positioning skills up so badly and sort that out, at which point the difference between leaps and pulls becomes, as it should be, a matter of theme and preference.

On the other hand, I sorta agree with the intent. I’d rather that Spectral Grasp/Grasping Darkness be tweaked to work properly than they give the greatsword seven leaps because the PvP guys would like to play a Warrior with shadow-magic seasoning.

The thematic differences between the two classes are important to folks. It just feels more Necromancer-y to drag enemies to you rather than fling yourself to them, and yes – in PvE, which is where at least one out of thirty-five people in the Necromancer PvP Complaints Subforum (i.e. this place) do in fact spend some time…Grasping Darkness is pretty killer. Quirky, and unfortunately prone to issues, but killer when it works.

Turning it into Savage Leap would suck, and I would protest such a change. Can we, like…not do that, please? I get that Necromancer does have a lot of issues, and it’d be nice if they were corrected, but this isn’t really one of them. Or the correct way of addressing the problem.

Hm. I was thinking the same in my tests; the life siphon on Soul Eater seems lackluster outside of a handful of best-possible-scenario issues, and the cooldown thing, while interesting, doesn’t seem terribly impactful and honestly sorta rewards bad play (i.e. blow all your cooldowns as quickly as possible, then Gravespam to earn as much cooldown recharge as possible before next fight. Blegh).

Recalling from the Reaper coverage that the top line is supposed to be the multiple-enemies, face-eating brawler line focusing on the Reaper’s area coverage and group-slaughtering attacks, and continuing in my own assertion that the Reaper’s defenses are just not up to snuff for the mass AoE brawling ArenaNet wants it to do…

Thought Experiment:

“Soul Harvest: Gain Protection when striking multiple enemies with your greatsword (1s per enemy, 10s ICD). Greatsword skills that hit more than one target recharge 33% faster.”

Still encourages ganging up multiple enemies on the Reaper, but actually gives them some of the desperately needed defenses they need to survive the focused attention of multiple threats. I like that ArenaNet is trying to do interesting things with recharge traits and wanted to continue that, but we also want to reward smart/efficient play, and besides which – Gravedigger hits hard enough that you don’t generally get a ton of recharge off of the existing modifier anyways. It doesn’t take a lot of Gravedigger for your enemies to drop.

This way, using the GS skills against multiple foes as ArenaNet encourages nets you a hefty recharge bonus, but using the weapon against single foes leaves you high and dry. No Protection, no recharge bonuses. In those situations you’d naturally want to move onto Dagger for a while, which helps keep the Dagger relevant in PvE as ArenaNet’s been intending to do. This trait, on the other hand, is great if you’re looking to grind down huge mobs of junk, and might actually compete with the other excellent choices in the Master tier.

Currently my choice is build around Decimate Defenses or build around the Chilling Victory/Blighter’s Boon combo; Soul Eater just doesn’t measure up at all. A trait that provides Protection in group fights and also heavily reduces cooldowns in same fights? That would make me agonize over the choice more.

Make any sense?

Plenty of people like underwater exploration and movement.

Nobody likes underwater combat.

Gliding is the exploration and movement without the combat. Ergo, good. Also you can save yourself from Death Falls and maneuver in ways the game never let you do before in the primary game sphere, so hey. Also good.

I’m not quite sure why this thread is as devoid of feedback as it is…but to rectify that to some extent:

Specializations
• Were they fun ?
-I played the Reaper, Berserker, and Dodgedevil during the beta. I am such an awful Elementalist player that my feedback on the Tempest would not be useful, the Chronomancer is pretty much done so far as I’m concerned, and I’ve lost interest in the Rev and thus avoided the Herald. I’ll get into more detail below, but in short:

REAPER: Yes
BERSERKER: Yes
DAREDEVIL: No

• Did they Change how you play your profession in a meaningful way?
REAPER: Enormously. The greatsword is fantastic fun to play and makes me approach battles much differently than either the dagger or the axe, my previous weapon preferences. The improvements to Gravedigger were amazing – Gravedigger might be my new favorite thing. The weapon performed much better overall, though with crappy beta gear I still had some issues reliably maintaining Chill in PvE. A few of the shouts made their way onto my bar, though the zone didn’t heavily encourage their use.

BERSERKER: To some extent. The torch is a nice addition and combo’d very well into my existing Warr set-up – Flames of War into savage Leap into weapswap into Whirling Axe was highly amusing and reasonably effective. The berserk mechanic was fun and the traits supported multiple build types quite well. It wasn’t so much a revolutionary change in the Warrior as it was a handy new set of tools, but that’s fine. I played a Sinister hybrid Bleedwarr anyways, the Berserker was a natural fit for me.

DAREDEVIL: Yes and no both – and that’s the problem. When I tried Daredevil with my typical S/P PvE build, I found myself using neither the weapon nor the utilities nor the elite, and the traits were lackluster. The funky dodges screwed with me more than anything. When I specifically rebuilt the beta character as a Lotus Training condispammer with P/D and Uncatchable – as Daredevil-y a build as Daredevil could get – it started taking me a year and a half to drop anything, and I was a lot less safe doing it. Disappoint. Perhaps it’s simply because my existing Thief build does everything I want it to nicely and it’s difficult to swap stuff out without rebuilding it completely, but…well.

• How were the improvements to the previous Specializations? (Dragon Hunter, Tempest, Chronomancer, Reaper)
See above

• Feedback on new specializations, as well as any changes to the old
REAPER: The Reaper’s defenses are still too weak for what it’s trying to do. I can’t reasonably engage multiple targets, and thus maximize my giant sword and my shouts, because when I try I get dropped like a sack of bricks even with Rise!. This spec feels like it desperately needs some Protection somewhere to go with the whole unkillable-movie-monster theme, and also to help it do the mass brawling ArenaNet is very heavily encouraging it to do. Otherwise, keep it up – this spec started great and has only gotten better.

BERSERKER: I think the Berserker’s in a pretty decent place right now, and headed in a good direction. The Rage skills were surprisingly fun, the spec fits well with the rest of Warrior without conflicting with it, and it just felt good to me. Natural, intuitive, and fun to play. Good job, team.

DAREDEVIL: I see where the team wanted to go with the Dodgedevil, and I like the intent, but it just didn’t gel with me. I think it may be as much a case of me needing more time with it as anything else, but it wasn’t an instant “yes, more please” for me like the Berserker and Reaper were, or the Chronomancer from last BWE. The staff is also garbage. Like no rly, have someone redo that completely. UGH, so bad…anyways. I feel like the Daredevil mixes poorly with the rest of the Thief – either you make a Daredevil OR you make a Thief. The playstyles of the one don’t mix well with the other. Suppose we’ll see next time.

Creatures
• How is the difficulty of the new hostile mobs, and are they fun and exciting?
Better than the base game, not as good as the dinosaurs. The monster Hylek, the Crushers and Floppers and stuff, were entertaining if fairly straightforward to work around. I liked those. The smaller Hylek…maybe it was just me – probably it was just me – but a number of their abilities seemed arbitrary and random, and their tells were difficult to spot. The ‘evades projectiles” especially had no rhyme or reason to it – just ate two-thirds of my ranged shots for no reason, unpredictably. They felt less like lethal new jungle threats and more like the newest * Alliance enemies. The baby wyverns were an interesting concept, but I found them super-easy to play around and not much more challenging than base Tyria enemies. The Mordrem Court seemed watered down, which was depressing. I SUPER wanted to use the new ‘Rise!’ on a pack of mini raptors and pretend I was running an underground [rooster]fighting ring, but I did not get to. Sadness.

World
• With the Opening of two new outposts, we are adding in a bunch of new events. Are they fun?
They’re borked is what they are. I encountered only a few of them, and one of them was Faren breaking the game by trying to be a swordsman. Never saw that one complete. Noble escorts are the same as any other escort, and the Pact tower defense – really, ArenaNet? :P – missions were good but also pretty harsh. I tried a few solo and just could not kill enough frogs fast enough. Which is cool in its own way, and those were easily the most fun I had with events in BWE2, but still.

• Do the new events bring you more into the world?
Not…really? Events keep screwing up and bugging, I’m not going to pass judgment on their immersion until they WORK.

• Are the new events challenging, meaningful, and interesting?
[i]Pact tower defense? Mostly yes, not really, and maybe. I have no idea what Pact towers do or why I should defend them, except that doing so let me kill a butt-ton of Hylek so hey that’s fun. I’m assuming they did something if I defended them successfully. Trying to manage dealing with the big suckers crushing the tower whilst avoiding all the little suckers being jerks around me was interesting, but not in an immersive, THIS-IS-TYRIA! way.

Mastery System
• How is the progression?
Feels about right so far. No complaints.

• How is it using the mastery abilities in the current area?
Gliding is sheer awesome. The bouncy mushrooms…less so. They feel very twitchy, the prompt area for using them feels too small. I feel like you should be able to bounce off them from the ground next to them – run up, hit Interact, bounce. I fell off more than one cliff trying to hit the bounceshroom sweet spots. Only other thing I unlocked was Itzel merchants, which I did not get to use. Jerks.

• Is the mastery system providing a meaningful area of progression?
I think so, yes. It’s an interesting concept, and a gripload better than +10 level cap.

• Do you care about experience and mastery points?
I surely do. I’m disappointed I didn’t make it to zoomshrooms during the beta, I was starting to edge fairly close.

• Does it provide a good framework to add more masteries in the future?
I don’t know – does it? Are you going to, or are you going to wait three more years then try a different system completely? Sass aside, yes, I believe so. This feels like a great place to add things for new zones – a Silverwastes mastery track, for example, would make perfect sense to me. Do it up.

• Do you want to learn as many masteries over time to overcome challenges later in the future?
Currently, yes. We’ll see how it works out in Live, and whether you guys keep your promise and stick to this as your progression model. I think it’s got a lot of promise. Let’s see where it goes, eh?

S’far as I knew, catching a Thief is supposed to be difficult. Was sort of one of the main selling points of the profession, really :p And honestly? There’s other ways to make someone’s life difficult. Would a sniper-spec Thief able to escape retaliation easily really be worse than catching up to a sniper-spec Warrior…who then presses his Rampage button and proceeds to use your face as a speedbag?

Now, I don’t PvP, so I can’t really understand the utter, soul-deep loathing every other profession feels for Thieves in PvP…but is that really any reason to deny the class the tools it needs to do well in the game in other modes?

@Kodama:

if the MH Pistol or P/P specs are supposed to be hybrid weapons, then ArenaNet needs to revise them anyways. Look at Warrior MH Sword as an example of functional hybrid weapons. You can run Sinister gear on MH Warrsword and actually get reasonable power damage from both the AA and from Final Thrust, while still having rather hefty Bleeds.

Thief MH Pistol? Even if you run straight-up Sinister, maximum Malice, the bleeds from Body Shot are ‘okay’ at best, and Unload is flabby and not great without crit/Ferocity investment. And frankly? I don’t feel that investing in Sinister gear and Bleed-enhancing runes (i.e. sacrificing a good two-thirds of your Power damage potential) should be a requirement for a weapon set that has one AND ONLY ONE source of damaging conditions. If they want to push ‘hybrid weapon!’ on P/P, then add something Malice-y to Unload.

Oh, and increase the attack speed significantly on Vital Shot and rebuild Body Shot into something actually worth spending initiative on.

Anyways.

@Ohoni: I’m not gonna lie, that sounds absolutely awful and I doubt I’d play it. Heh, of course, you’ve said the same about my SMG/tommygun spec notion, so we’re even! :P

That said: I see where you’re going, but it feels kind of like you’re doing the Reaper thing but without the Reaper’s payoff. The spec is supposed to be slow, hard to move in, and intentionally cripples your defenses, but it’s also a single-target spec with slow attacks. Unless those attacks hit like exploding volcanos, a Thief spec with 2+-second cast times on 1200-range single-target rifle skills that Reveal, Cripple, Weaken, and Slow the Thief is going to ensure that this Sniper spec is going to be extremely, extremely dead in a blazing hurry.

The Reaper can get away with being slow and immobile – to some extent – because it attacks entire counties with every swing, hitting everything in said counties for rampaging buttpiles of damage. Even then, my Reaper tests in the last BWE were…a struggle. I loved the spec to death, but its defenses were too weak to do the multi-target brawling they built it for – and that was with the Reaper’s GS skills being controlling, heavy-damage AoEs that didn’t compromise the character’s defenses.

There’s only so much extra protection 1200 range gives you. Heh…while I can certainly understand it when you tell me that what I want is a functional P/P set and not a Rifle redone into tommygun status, I hope you can understand when I tell you in turn that perhaps you should be working with the rest of us rifle-starved players in trying to get ArenaNet to make the Warrior’s rifle not also utter garbage. Because it sounds a good bit like what you’re looking for is that exact sort of deliberate, measured marksman style of play.

Which is cool, I desperately tried to make that work on my first GW2 character for a long time…but it’s not really Thiefy, eh?