Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I’m not a particularly great coder and couldn’t make this happen, but I just wanted to bring it up to see if it seems feasible.

As described here, the mumble link API contains the following information, which may be able to uniquely identify a map instance:

// uniquely identifies a map instance for mumble
struct MumbleContext {
byte serverAddress²⁸; // contains sockaddr_in or sockaddr_in6
unsigned mapId;
unsigned mapType;
unsigned shardId;
unsigned instance;
unsigned buildId;
};

Topic of discussion: Would it be possible to have a program extract this information to be used for the purposes of things like node tracking?

I’m thinking:

1) App gets mumble link data to identify map instance
2) Communicates with some central server, loads node info, map, etc
3) User can tab to the app when they’re at the location of a node, and upload information about that node (could be as simple as selecting the node type from a list, with the app reading the location of the character to place it)
4) Other users in that map instance running the app can then see that node on the map displayed within the app

Obviously this would need systems for determining if a map instance has been reset; the build value could be used to purge data every time a new build has been released, but aside from that I don’t know if an instance’s nodes would be randomised if it’s got the same identifying values as one that previously existed and was destroyed due to not having any players in it – that could be a problem if it’s the case.

However, would it have any potential as a system for node tracking? Does the events api provide enough information (i.e. which map instances are running specific events) that you could use it for event tracking?

korelg.7862:

I’m all up for a musical weapon set

GS = a Keyboard (those that look like guitars)
Scepter = one of those sticks you use when directing an orchestra
Focus = Tambourine
Mace = Drumsticks maybe?
Axe = Banjo
Hammer = Bass

any other ideas?

Staff = Microphone+Stand
Shield = …Cymbals? A Gong?

Probably just those two, LA is the only map that’s been touched in a while.

The game system up until the feature patch has not been tracking what skins you’ve owned, which is why you need the skin in your possession, or an item transmuted directly over the skin’s stats, to get the skin in your wardrobe – the game otherwise has no evidence of you owning that item.

While it’s feasible for ANet to have written a script to evaluate which achievement-related skins we should unlock, they haven’t mentioned doing anything of the sort.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

How about bringing Defiant to players as a build option?

For example:

Global pvp rule, players gain 1 stack of defiant when cc’d.

Sigil of Defiance: Gain one stack of Defiant when you swap weapons (x cooldown)

Rune of Defiance: +toughness, +(benefit when stunned, e.g. fury and/or retaliation), gain n stacks of Defiant when you break out of stun (x cooldown)

Now, I have no idea how well those ideas are balanced, but it’d help players build against cc-heavy playstyles like decap and pistolwhip. As far as I can tell, all the tools to make it work exist in the game code, unless defiant has some clause which makes it disappear if a character doesn’t have unshakeable.

Possible suggestion:

Change the colour of the border of the health bar to something that has high contrast against the colour inside it. With the regular dark red of health bars, a very pale green would still be visible to most colour-blind players. Alternately, add a pattern to the bar itself, like stripes, again in a high contrast colour or shade. Oh, also, the regular red health bars – my eyes struggle with those against the black background. Would prefer a more defined edge on them in general. Even just a white bar at the end of the actual health.

Even most red-green colour-blind people can at least tell there’s two very different colours in the attached image, even if they couldn’t tell you the name of them. At least, I hope they’re red and green. The RGB values say they are…

It’s something I really like about the markers that have been used in Living Story recently (though I’d prefer if they turned to blue at the borders so there’s less potential environments they’d blend into), and I wish there was an option to make all enemy AoE markers use them.

If it’s actually Ulukk’s Hunger you’re missing, you can trigger the map discovery for it simply by walking into the ice wall that covers the entrance. No need to do a personal story mission there.

Was partied with a guildmate, neither of us got loot from 3 knights in a row. There were also a handful of complaints in map chat.

I’m getting this problem as well. Major delay on skill activation, etc. One of the symptoms is the game finally playing out all of my actions that I attempted once it actually starts responding, which can take up to a minute to even begin.

What hasn’t fixed the issue: Restarting my router, Restarting the game client, Restarting my PC

As a quick test, I used /ip to get the server (206-127-157-146-plaync.com [206.127.157.146]) and then used tracert to check where the connection error happens. The timeout was consistently happening after 206-127-157-102.plaync.com [206.127.157.102]

This suggests to me if anything the problems are at the game servers, which makes me feel more surprised it’s only happening to specific users.

Ohoni.6057:

Anet does really need to clean up after themselves though, things like the Marionette power cores should be vendorable for cash (not a ton, just enough that you feel they were worth something) as soon as their original purpose is done so you can get rid of them without Destroying them.

The marionette power cores used to open the door WERE vendorable… for 2c each. Key fragments weren’t, though.

Achievements – Check
Selfless Potion – Check
Thoughtless Potion – 65/250 heirlooms
Mats for 3 ascended backpieces – Check, and I’ve already destroyed about 6 stacks of blades
Several thousand belongings to get several thousand sprockets – In progress (real target is over 9000 to make Zealot sets for my guard and ele, and then maybe another 4800 for trinkets… this is horribly unrealistic but it gives me a sense of purpose)

I’ve nearly finished everything that’s a realistic goal; I’ll have the Thoughtless Potion by Thursday at the latest, and then it’s just hoping for awesome drops from the 1200 civilians bag (would love a medium armor monocle for my Engi)

Aurora Glade was working fine in the next cycle and beyond.

For the record, the broken cycle was the cycle starting at 1:05 AM GMT.

Miasma doesn’t reset; citizen counter visibly resets but Group Effort IV popped up at 240 rescued (but with no reward bag given)

This is on Aurora Glade main.

And you can’t sell them on the TP, they’re account-bound.

All they’re good for is opening. Best of luck.

They have a high damage threshold to count towards event credit. I’ve done it, but you pretty much have to be there while all 5 are still alive.

It just strikes me as odd that the Zealot stat spread isn’t available on these while Celestial and Sentinel are (both being event-restricted stat spreads on some gear types); currently there aren’t any Zealot-statted backpieces.

The only part of a weapon’s damage range that matters is the variance – axes have a greater maximum and lower minimum damage than daggers, but the same average, for example. This leads to the DPS in practice for an axe being much more variable, where within a given combat it’s possible to be lucky and hit consistently high, unlucky and hit consistently low, or just average luck and hit the middle. Meanwhile a dagger has a much tighter range and good luck or bad luck with damage rolls doesn’t have as much of an impact.

The difference between the average damage of 1H and 2H weapons is already compensated for, in the damage co-efficients for each skill. Or rather, that difference simply doesn’t matter. As has been stated, most professions perform best with !H weapons, in spite of the 1H weapons having a lower average base damage.

Following the sigil change, there will still be one major benefit to 1H weapons – you get more flexibility in that you choose 1-3 skills and 4-5 skills separately, and you can choose different stat spreads for each hand.

Evalia.7103:

Umut.5471:

Npcs always have better profession abilities. For example trahearne is a powerful necro too, in a story mission he gathers power and spawns 5-10 flesh golems at once.

that necro also has guardian, mesmer, etc.. skills. Just saying.

The guardian and mesmer skills are granted by Caladbolg; it’s a bundle item. When a Sylvari PC gets to wield it in the 20-30 arc, they get the same skills regardless of profession as well.

Edit: On topic, the mesmer in Modus Sceleris can use a special black hole vortex skill which isn’t available to players. I kinda hope we can get that someday. The other named Modus Sceleris members tend to use unique skills too…

My ranger, Fiina, my engineer, Tybbi and my elementalist, Fizz.

The Faerous Krewe – consisting of 8 members of varying professions and backgrounds – was established to study “cuteness” and, ultimately, the ability to manipulate bookahs by appealing to their standards rather than our own.

While all of our members may indeed be “cute”, other asura should note that it is in fact a carefully planned and elaborate ruse. There is much to be gained from such enamoured bookahs – free labour, materials, and general lack of belief that we could be doing anything “wrong”.

Her face is a heavily slider-modified version of one of the total makeover exclusive faces (seriously, it’s this face ); I was able to reproduce it on my necromancer. I forgot to make a screenshot when I was experimenting… didn’t save the look, and have since used the kit to finish my engineer’s appearance.

And I mean HEAVILY slider modified. It took me half an hour to get close to it.

Going from Berserker exotic to Rabid ascended is pretty much a nerf to your damage output. Either make a condition build, or use it for the skin, but don’t use the stats in a ’zerker setup.

Toughness is simply applied as a multiplier of final damage * (1/toughness); damage at 0 toughness would = infinity, which never happens because everything in the world has at least 1 toughness. Doubling your toughness reduces damage by 50%, then you ave to double it again to reduce it by a further 25%.

If you want to think of it simply, protection multiplies your effective toughness by 1.5

100000 damage / 1000 toughness = 100.0 damage
100000 damage / 1500 toughness = 66.666… damage (-33%)

Toughness is not applied to damage from conditions, fall damage or retaliation. Some mobs also have attacks which appear to deal fixed damage.

Heck, 2 ore, a sprocket and a gemstone. That single swing was the best possible swing.

Khisanth.2948:

Dingle.2743:

The only type of ore that can grant more than one ore per swing is iron ore, and it’s an inherent balancing mechanic because iron ore is tied to two crafting tiers instead of one. If you can mine gemstones with the new pick – and on the same swing as a sprocket – then iron ore is the only one that needs to be tested.

And I doubt the sprocket replaces the chance of getting 2 iron ore with one swing if it replaces nothing on any other ore type.

Platinum is used for Platinum and Darksteel so that is pretty much the same situation.

Platinum and Darksteel are the same tier (t5). Iron and Steel are t2/t3 respectively.

The only type of ore that can grant more than one ore per swing is iron ore, and it’s an inherent balancing mechanic because iron ore is tied to two crafting tiers instead of one. If you can mine gemstones with the new pick – and on the same swing as a sprocket – then iron ore is the only one that needs to be tested.

And I doubt the sprocket replaces the chance of getting 2 iron ore with one swing if it replaces nothing on any other ore type.

I like the minor texture changes to the armor, but don’t feel it’s worth the gems over regular Feathered armor. The flames are somewhat of a hindrance to it – they easily clash with certain colour schemes that make it impossible to use how I wanted.

If the flames themselves could be dyed, I’d buy it. Dyeable particle effects would really make it worth gems… though I’d much prefer a system where we can buy particle effects and apply them to armor ourselves, rather than ArenaNet adding them to specific sets (have somebody go through the armor in the game and add particle generators to each piece that spawn particles based on a gemstore item slotted? I don’t know if that’s feasible, but it’d be awesome). As it is, it’s just slightly off with my ele’s usual colours: http://imgur.com/sLE3hLR

I haven’t bought it, and it’d take what I mentioned to have me consider it for more than around 400 gems.

Playing at Marionette after the update, my average frame rate dropped from around 15 FPS (before this update) to 5FPS (following this update)

All settings at their lowest possible value, running the game in windowed fullscreen.

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 CPU Q 740 @ 1.73GHz (8 CPUs), ~1.7GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Card name: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series
Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0×68E0)
Display Memory: 2776 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1017 MB
Shared Memory: 1758 MB
Drivers up to date.

The code fragments which drop from enemies and the reward chest at the end of the Marionette fight are used to open chests in a certain location you’ll find if you follow the living story’s directions for a while.

The first chest I opened contained 3 greens, 1 rare, an aetherized scrap, some more code fragments for another of the chests, and an item related to the current piece of living story. If they’re all like that you can expect to get around a 30-50s payout each time you can afford to open one of the chests. Maybe there’s something unique they can drop which I don’t know about as well, like another chance at the Zealot’s recipes?

Support rebalance proposal:

New stat: Support Power (potentially renamed Healing Power)

Stat role: Increase the value of boons granted by the character

Balance target:
Full Support Power build + self boons = current ‘zerker w/o boons;
Current ’zerker + support power boons > current ’zerker + base boons
Slightly less damage, but covering the loss via increasing everybody else’s, such that any party benefits from having at least one character running support gear.

Also, potentially add unique boons per profession so stacking supports of different professions works, or make new boons which stack per caster. Essentially, provide a use for multiple supports.

There’s recently been a short discussion thread on reddit on the topic of subclasses within GW2; I was asked to cross-post one of my responses here. To save time adjusting the character count and formatting, I’m just going to link it:

My thoughts on the role of a subclass system within GW2

Nike.2631:

Making with the Sharp Knives
-snip-

You’re making a lot of assumptions of what the implementation would be like, based on other games you’ve already played.

They can be done well, and they can promote diversity. In GW2’s case, I’d look at them as altering the way a class plays, while still having multiple viable builds. Each subclass would be a sidegrade to the core class – each upside comes with a new downside, each new skill/trait replaces an old one, etc.

So, if for example, there existed an elementalist subclass called the “Purist”. The Purist gains Weapon Swap and the class trait line reduces skill cooldowns for weapon skills, bringing them in line with other professions. However, the Purist loses the ability to change attunements in combat.

This subclass instantly has 4 builds (Fire, Water, Air, Earth) which would be variants of builds we already see on a regular basis. The purist’s builds would not be strictly better than regular elementalist builds – it loses the flexibility of multiple attunements and the beneficial attunement swap traits in exchange for a greater focus in a single role. In some cases it will be better, and in some cases it will be worse.

On the other side of the spectrum, perhaps the other Elementalist subclass would be the “Arcanist”. The Arcanist gets a 5th attunement (Arcane) focusing on combo finishers, and more fields on dagger, scepter and focus, but loses the Arcane utility skills and has a longer attunement recharge base. There would still be multiple ways to build it, but the increased time between returning to an attunement may cause some players to take preference to the core Elementalist, while others would embrace the potential versatility of better combo field and finisher access.

Of course, one of the versions of the elementalist may be superior at a certain build type, but an optimal build always exists even within the core classes we have right now; there’s no reason to claim that a new subclass being optimal at a certain role is a problem, as one build will always be optimal for that role regardless.

I believe the core of implementing a subclass system in GW2 would have to be ensuring that every trait line retains a sense of purpose in every subclass, and that each subclass should be capable of multiple roles in the same way each core class is now. In essence, subclasses should present the same roles we have available, each with a new playstyle to it.

XinsaX.1238:

Mostly WvW and PvE.
I don’t understand a few things like…
For example the traits, Arcana up to 10 and Blasting Staff has influence on other tree skills? Does that affect Fire Skills as well as it affects Arcane Skills?

Staff skills are skills in the 1-5 (weapon skills) slots, while using a staff. There are a few that Blasting Staff doesn’t affect in those, as not all staff skills have an area of effect. Blasting Staff does not affect any skills in the healing, utility or elite slots.

In general, traits that say they affect a specific weapon’s skills only apply to the skills equipping that weapon gives you. Also of note on elementalists, the “Alacrity” traits (20% reduced cooldown for skills of a single element) only apply to the 1-5 slots for the matching attunement. Those 4 traits don’t affect the remaining skill slots. But the “gain x bonus when attuned to y element” traits do affect all skills where relevant.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

I’d like to ask/add that for all forms of Ascended gear, there should be an acquisition method that does not in any way rely on RNG – that is, a method for which players can see a definitive maximum amount of effort.

This is currently present for Rings (Pristine Fractal Relics or Laurels), Back Items (Relics are earned consistently, skill points are earned consistently, and at least the Vial of Mist Essence is extremely likely to drop before the player can afford enough relics to ascend the capacitor anyways), Amulets (Laurels) and Accessories (Guild Commendations), but not really for anything else, as armor and weapons require RNG components.

There needs to be some method of getting weapons/armor for which you can see exactly how much content it will require. Perhaps RNG can be used to give the process a chance to be faster, while retaining a baseline progression rate even if the player is unlucky – for example, if one of the materials required only drops from champions, but you always get at least 1, with a chance of getting 2 or 3 instead. So the player knows they’ll need to kill a maximum of, say, 50 champions, but it’s possible they’ll need less.

Current forced RNG on Weapon/Armor progression:
- Globs of Dark Matter
- Globs of Ectoplasm, T6 fine materials, Crystalline Dust (If not bought from TP)
- Cloth and Leather (Bows/Armor, if not bought from TP)
- All other materials can be earnt at a minimum rate in some game content

I don’t mind timegating, so long as multiple characters don’t share the same timegate – that being the case, I’d like to see an acquisition method for ascended armor/weapons where the timegate is locked to the character attempting to get the gear. I’ve already proposed something along the lines of using a consumable to begin a quest to ascend an item – perhaps each item’s progress on that quest has timegates, but those timegates are character-specific.

Finally, on costs – there should be a longer method that’s relatively cheap for the player. Casual players can’t afford to keep up with the costs of ascended weapons and armor with the amount of playtime they have. Again, Rings, Back Items, Amulets and Accessories handle this well, and everything else is done pretty badly.

If it’s possible to rework the crafting system, perhaps it would’ve been better to timegate the process of levelling a craft, but make the process of actually crafting ascended gear at 500 relatively cheap and fast. For example, a consumable craftable once per day which increases the maximum level of the craft by x points, with different versions needed at 425/450/475 (this way a character could potentially level the craft by crafting this consumable and selling it when they don’t need it). This could have value on the TP in the same way T7 materials do now – valuable when released and dies off once people have reached the point they want to get to.

And after that, make the actual ascended gear itself quick to make. Maybe it could even be added now – have the player level their crafts from 500 to 600 over time, and at 600 they simply get cheaper recipes for ascended gear.

New item concept:
[Ascension Crystal]
Consumable, account-bound, ascended quality.
Begins the process of ascension, allowing a piece of equipment to reach its true potential. Double-click to apply this item to any piece of exotic equipment.

Acquisition:

• Crafting at rank 500. Vision Crystal + x Dark Matter. Each crafting profession crafts vision crystals that work only for equipment types that profession can craft.
• Laurels. Less than the cost of an amulet.
• Dungeon tokens. Around 400-500.
• Badges of Honor. Around 300.
• Guild commendations vendor. 6 commendations.
• Pristine Fractal Relics, 5
• The intention of the price is to be lower than regular ascended items from that source, as after usage the player still needs to do more work.

Mechanics:
Apply it to an item using a similar interface to transmutation. After it’s applied to the item, that item’s tooltip expands to include a progress bar, and a list of tasks which contribute to it. When the bar is filled out, the item becomes ascended quality. Rings, Amulets and Accessories become “Unidentified Ascended Ring/Amulet/Accessory” and when being equipped ask the player which of the ascended trinkets with that stat spread it should become. Back Items ask the player which infusion slot they want at the next time they’re equipped. Both of these pop a notification similar to the “You have equipped an item with no stats” when equipping items that allow you to choose stat spreads.

The process of ascending the item itself is different for each item. Several tasks are semi-randomly assigned, and doing any of these tasks with the item equipped fills out the progress bar slightly; like a heart, the player can choose to ignore certain tasks. These tasks should always include at the minimum something that can be done in WvW and something that can be done in Open World content, and may be further flavoured based on the item type, stat spread or skin of the item (have a tag system assigned to the skins in the database and use that to fill the random table for the choice).

For example, a weapon may task the player to kill champion/legendary mobs, a cleric equip might ask the player to heal other players, a Norn cultural armor piece may ask the player to complete events in the Shiverpeaks. The potential list could include anything that might appear in the daily/monthly; the WvW list could include any tasks from the season meta achievement.

The exact value of each task can vary; “Kill mobs” would be worth less than “Kill veteran or higher mobs” would be worth less than “Kill champion or higher mobs”, etc. It’s also ok if this is somewhat grindy, as long as the player is given a variety of options. The timegate here should not be a hard gate, but rather that it will take a certain amount of effort to ascend the item.

End result:

• New process of ascension. Time-intensive instead of resource-intensive.
• Gives a variety of tasks, but doesn’t force the player to commit a minimum amount of effort to any given task.
• Requires Exotic as a baseline, ensuring that ascended is directly in the gap between Exotic and Legendary.
• Does not obsolete previous gear, as it is the previous gear. Allows players to keep their skins without transmutation.
• Does not give the player a new skin; current ascended skins remain rewards for reaching ascended using those methods.
• Does not heavily consume resources that are used to make legendary weapons.
• Requires the player to actually play using the character they’re ascending.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

As was said before, and to clarify, putting ascended items as loot (like tequatl, …) is not a solution to make them more accessible. The drop rate is so low that you can’t expect to get your weapon that way (not even counting that you’re not choosing the stats you want, like with fractals chests).

So the only way to get ascended stuff at the moment is with crafting, which needs a ton of materials, not all available everywhere. That’s the accessibility of those materials which you should make easier, as it’s the only sure way to get your weapons. All the other chests possibilities are bonuses if you’re real lucky, not something you can count on.

Hi Estriella,

Please do try to keep up to date with the thread. I have mentioned a number of times that we are currently looking at drop rate balancing.

Thanks,

Chris

Don’t “balance the drop rate”, make unique rewards something we can earn consistently.

Like, for Tequatl, add an infinite achievement track which progresses one point for each bonus chest opened (no weighting, the first chest is the hardest to reach anyways). Every [n] points, it gives the player an achievement chest giving them a choice of a Sunless weapon or one of the minis.

There. Players can see how much effort it’ll take them to get the drops they want. They won’t simply give up on content because of RNG. Loot that’s unique to specific events should always have a non-RNG option – nobody really considers the acquisition method for Molten Jetpacks or Monocles fair either.

tl;dr – Vertical progression currently too expensive for something that a character may need to repeat. It should either be cheaper, only be necessary once, or even unlock for all characters.

Personal feelings on vertical progression:

Ascended crafting is far too expensive for what it is. I’d be willing to pay that kind of price for a skin, and there are a lot of ascended skins I like, but the stats and infusion part should be cheaper. Biggest offender price-wise is the crafting requirements of Damask. Within 2 hours of farming humanoid enemies in Fields of Ruin with a level 35 character (essentially the closest thing to a dedicated cloth farm), I was unable to earn either enough wool or cotton scraps for a single day’s crafting – never mind that this got me no linen or silk. Silk is needed in absurd amounts as well. Unlike the requirements of Wood and Metal, a single player cannot reasonably expect to earn the materials needed daily for cloth (or leather, but leather’s not needed daily as the use of it is restricted by Damask anyways) through gameplay alone – they must resort to the trading post to keep up.

When it comes to fractals, ascended gear is both build-locking and character-locking. There are a number of fractals that can only be reasonably completed with agony resist, and as such require the player to use a character which is using armor tuned to a specific build with agony resistance added. The player cannot player other characters or even other build archetypes on the same character, without first investing in enough ascended gear to survive agony for that new character/build.

Unfortunately, a full set of armor can take over a month to create; trinkets average about 2 weeks per slot, weapons can take anywhere from 5 to 9 days each and a character could need as many as 4. The timegate alone is incredibly restrictive on build variety within fractals.

The current infusion system is also fairly unfriendly. Disregarding that infusions are tied to ascended gear, that agony infusions cannot be removed freely or used as part of an upgrade is restrictive to the progression of agony resistance; additionally, the extremely expensive versatile stat infusions further restrict what a character can do with the gear they’re on.

Instead, what I’d like to see:

• Ascend the character, not the gear
• When first equipping an ascended item, that slot on the character ascends.
• Ascended slots have a 5% increase to stats granted by gear in that slot.
• Ascended gear is equal to Exotic gear; the primary benefit is equipping it ascends the character’s equipment slot, which increases stats by 5% and thus makes the ascended stat tier.
• Ascending a slot grants the character an infusion slot. Equipping an (Infused) item grants one Agony infusion slot in addition.
• Rings and Accessories only grant the infusion slot on the item, and ascend only one of the Ring/Accessory slots based on the item (defensive ascends left slot and unlocks a defensive infusion slot, offensive ascends right slot and grants an offensive infusion slot).
• Backpiece slots merge into an Offensive/Defensive slot upon equipping a backpiece with a different slot type to the original.
• Amulet slots merge Offensive/Defensive in the same way, but Utility is separate (Utility slot should not affect combat stats).
• Utility slot no longer holds omni infusions.
• New infusion slots are a separate equipment page. Slots are in the same position as the regular equipment slots, but with underwater gear and weapon swap slots removed.
• Versatile and Agony infusions can be freely swapped out of slots as if they’re regular equipment, while regular infusions are destroyed. Add a crafting recipe to make WvW infusions Versatile.
• As an alternative method to those that don’t want ascended skins, add craftable consumables to the relevant professions which ascend equipment slots.
• Example: Hands Ascension Crystal: Consume to ascend the hand armor equipment slot, granting a +5% stats bonus to all equipped hand armor and granting your character a defensive infusion slot. One use only.
• Crafting costs should involve the account-bound ascended materials such as dragonite, empyreal stars, bloodstone, augur stones and dark matter, but perhaps not T7 cloth/leather/metal/wood.
• Potentially this cost could include an item purchasable with Pristine Fractal Relics, Laurels or Badges of Honor.
• Potential for a more expensive version which ascends the slot for all characters on the account.

Core concept: Vertical Progression to ascended tier should only be necessary once at current prices.

The problem with this trait:

When it works, it’s overpowered.

When it doesn’t work, it’s completely useless.

They explicitly stated it during the livestream on Friday and several threads talking about the new healing skill(s) began mentioning the change to arcane wave as well.

Quick test in Heart of the Mists:

Does not stack intensity, does not stack duration. Refreshes to 15 sec when you cast another Arcane spell during the buff.

One, with one gear set… and if I want to play any other builds in high-level fractals, it’ll never happen. Unless ascended armor has no infusion slots.

I’m only making the set because I prepared all the materials it should need in advance. After the inevitable price spike tomorrow, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to afford another set for months.

The heal per second average over a minute doesn’t come close to what elementalists, guardians or engineers can theoretically provide, unless every single charge of the venom has a 1.0 co-efficient on healing power.

Not to mention there’s a lot of problems with the huge cooldown, limited AoE range, potential for the heal to fail entirely, healing being delayed based on the ally’s attack speed, relying on no less than 4 traits to make it effective for group support (and 3 traits minimum to make it effective for yourself)

I wanted to believe it’d have potential to make thief a decent healer, but it just doesn’t come close enough to the current healing setups for Ele, Engi and Guard.

…Glyph of Elemental Harmony has a base cooldown of 25 seconds. 20 seconds with the trait is the correct reduced value.

MyCondolences.8172:

Maesk.8753:

frans.8092:

Viking Jorun.5413:

So, something to note from the livestream is that it has a 4k individual heal PLUS 4 stacks of skelk venom which have a 650 base heal, giving you well over HiS’s heal with support opportunity.

It’s not what the tooltip says.

But it’s what the devs showed us on the stream, so….

http://dulfy.net/2013/12/06/gw2-pvp-developer-livestream-notes/

4.3k initial heal x 4 charges of shelk venom which heal for 685 each.
Untraited its nothing special. Traited it could be amazing for venom share builds assuming you dont miss and lose charges.

edit: Traited:
2 stacks of might on each party member
5k heal to each party member + 4k on self
36sec cooldown
1750dmg from each party member(not sure how it scales with power)

Lifesteal damage scales as base damage + (power x some multiplier), like conditions and healing. Wiki says the power ratio for this is 0.033, so 3.3% of power is added to the final damage. I’d assume that this doesn’t include the base 914 power, which is included in the 350 base damage. Lifesteal can’t crit, also like conditions. So ultimately even 3000 power only increases the damage per hit by about 69.

What I don’t know is whether it uses the thief’s power or the affected character’s power. The wiki page for Leeching Venoms says it uses the thief’s healing power, but not which character’s power it uses…

Strictly worse than Healing Signet at 0 healing power, and even the healing it does give is conditional. Scaling… currently unknown. Just like Healing Signet, has a weakness to burst and poison.

I doubt it’ll be OP. Decent, yes, but not OP. It may end up finding its way into builds looking more to abuse the active rather than the passive.

Zantmar.5406:

base heal is around 1.8-2k
stance is instant
traited stance is 3.75 seconds
the skill convert all damage (condition and direct) into health
does not negate agony/falling

using endure pain and this skill at same time is bad idea

i dig this skill i dunno about the rest of ye, its warrior’s first skill that deals with both condition and damage at the same time, i can see all sorts of use for this

also, the zerkier you are the better, a very nice skill for high end dungeons such as Arah/Coe where you take damages that would instant kill you but you would be healed full for it

also watch hotw1 butcher and AC Koher spin you to full health

another counter play could be that protection would kitten this skill

using frenzy would make your heal more powerful and vuln stacks might actually help you out

It’s not instant cast.

The reward, which for my part represented about 20 hours of gameplay, was quite frankly terrible in comparison to just about anything else I could have done – and indeed, on several occasions I turned down friends asking me to do dungeons or fractals with them because “if I leave WvW now I’ll have to queue for over an hour to get back in, and I want to finish the meta”.

Little did I know it would’ve been far more profitable for me to just abandon WvW whenever anybody asked me to do PvE content with them.

Actually, that’s the biggest issue:

The rewards weren’t communicated in advance. Players didn’t even have a chance to tell ANet that they wouldn’t be worth the effort.

Staff eles will love it.

Cast in a water field it’ll get the extra 1.2k blast finisher, bringing the base heal on par with Glyph before considering if it hits somebody for the extra ~700 heal per target hit; meanwhile it still has potential to be used for Might (and possibly Fury), swiftness and frost armor depending on the ele’s needs.

Nah, it’s instant cast, so if it somehow misses it’s the elementalist being a bad player, and even then it should have a base heal for the 20% extra effectiveness per target to increase. As an additional benefit of being instant cast, it cannot be interrupted, and can be used even while cc’d.

As an Arcane skill, it’s also got quite a few traits that can support it (10% crit damage buff for 15 seconds, restore endurance, cause condition based on attunement, cause vulnerability and cooldown reducton), and as a damaging instant cast spell it’s got a place both in burst damage, and situations where healing isn’t necessary to begin with – using it will always increase damage output because it’s instant.

As a blast finisher, it’s also got a ton of potential utility, especially for Staff users, who can use it to give themselves Swiftness, Might (and possibly Fury), Frost Armour or increase it’s heal as they need, and in group scenarios there’s the rest of the combo fields to consider as well.

It’s got such a broad potential I won’t be surprised if the healing value is fairly low, but it will almost definitely be used in spite of that.

Moonrabbit.1543:

I have some reservations about this ability. I saw a group of tooltips for the new healing skills posted on a website, and while the healing amounts for most were in the 3000+ range, the base heal for this skill was listed as ~300, which would imply one has to hit at least 10 mobs in order to obtain a “typical” heal (assuming there is no cap).

The listed number was damage dealt, healing value was not on the tooltip at all.