Guild Wars 2

Spirit Weapons are pretty useless (and have been for a very long time). Slow, long cooldowns, and while aesthetically cool, they don’t really fit the theme of Guardians as a pet class (imo). So while running around getting map completion on my Guard, I was brainstorming ideas for how to make them better and see more use. My suggestion is as follows:

Rather than being a summon with an active skill, rework them to function similar to a Warrior’s/Thief’s Physical skills, by having the Guardian summon a weapon to perform a single attack. Examples:

Sword of Justice
Summon an arcane sword to damage and burn nearby foes
Cast: 1/4 sec
Damage: 350
Burn (2): 3 seconds
Vulnerability (5): 5 seconds
Radius: 180
Recharge: 20 seconds

(This is a straight up damage skill, same as the current active effect, with a small amount of burning added to compensate for the increased cooldown/loss of AA damage from the summoned sword)

Hammer of Wisdom
Summon an arcane hammer to damage and knockdown your foe
Cast: 1 sec
Damage: 200
Knockdown: 2 seconds
Range: 130
Recharge: 30 seconds

(I feel like Guardian lacks much hard CC outside of Hammer/Greatsword, which can be difficult and unwieldy to use, and Dragonhunter. This would provide a solid alternative keeping in line with the current skill, but more readily available on demand)

Shield of the Avenger
Summon an arcane shield to block attacks and reflect projectiles
Duration: 3 seconds
Breaks stun
Recharge: 45 seconds

(This one was a bit difficult to keep the theme of the original, given that the active effect applies Aegis, which we already have plenty of ways to apply, and the AA would be odd to work with animations and channel time. Changed it to be a bit more selfish in nature, but also giving it better synergy with traits like Amplified Wrath or Communal Defenses. Projectile reflect might possibly bit a bit too much, but wanted to give Guards some sort of mobile reflection, could be changed to just a straight up block)

Bow of Truth
Summon an arcane bow to barrage an area with arrows, healing and curing conditions with each strike
Cast: 3/4 sec
Healing: 500
Conditions removed: 2
Pulses: 3
Duration: 3 seconds
Number of targets: 5
Radius: 240
Range: 900
Recharge: 60 seconds

(Combines the condition cleanse of the bow AA with the healing of the active. Some more ranged support options for Guardian. Shorter duration compared to current active, with better healing and triple the cooldown)

Animation wise, on skill use the Guardians current weapon is replaced by the spirit weapon for the attack. Luckily, the current active effects of the Spirit Weapons already exist as weapon skills for other classes, so changing the animation would be rather simple (I would imagine)

Sword of Justice: Symbol of Wrath/Mind Stab
Hammer of Wisdom: Symbol of Protection/Backbreaker (could lead to some interesting uses of Foefire’s Power skin to confuse enemies between this skill and Symbol of Protection)
Shield of the Avenger: Shield of Absorption/Shield Stance
Bow of Truth: Hunter’s Ward/Barrage

Of course, with the loss of spirit weapon AAs, and two having non-damaging functions, their relative trait would need to be changed. I propose (along with a rename):

Zealous Spirit
Spirit Weapons apply boons to nearby allies. Reduces the recharge on Spirit Weapons

Sword of Justice: Might (5) (5 seconds)
Hammer of Wisdom: Stability (1) (3 seconds)
Shield of the Avenger: Retaliation (5 seconds)
Bow of Truth: Resistance (1 second)
Number of targets: 5
Radius: 180
Recharge reduced: 20%

Thoughts? Any and all feedback is appreciated. I would love to see Spirit Weapons get some use

Most of the issues stem from the large disparity between the efficiency of damage stats and the efficiency of defensive stats. If the difference between full defensive stats and full Berserker is getting downed in three hits instead of two while dealing much less damage, then we get the current meta of using active avoidance (dodges, Aegis, etc) and to kill the boss before those resources run out. The high risk/high reward factor of Zerker’s doesn’t come into play if you can just completely eliminate the risk.

The best way to solve this, in my opinion, is to make enemies hit for less damage, but more often. Keep the big, telegraphed attacks that require actively avoiding, but make basic damage come in a steady stream that becomes harder to avoid, increasing the value of Toughness/Vitality/Regen/etc. Make using Zerker gear an active choice according to your skills as a player.

While we’re at it, drop the HP of bosses as well, to speed up the time to kill for groups that choose to gear a little more defensively. I feel like a large part of the emergence of the current meta is that bosses take so kitten long to kill if even one player isn’t running full damage gear.

Basically, look towards PvP for how PvE should function. Players have less health than bosses, hit faster but for less. Hence why we see Celestial/Soldiers/etc as more popular than Zerker, because the defensive stats come into play more.

It seems such a strange change from GW1, where PvE was an extension of PvP (to the point where ANet took meta builds and gave them to PvE enemies in GW: Beyond), to GW2, where the two modes couldn’t be more different in how they function.

Hopefully the AI improvements they’ve mentioned will bring the two closer together, because at this point the whole “stack and blitz” for dungeons and AFKing open world content has become rather stale.

Roll back the current system, and use the Hint section to explain offhand weapons, Masterwork gear, gathering, weapon swapping, etc.

Return weapon skills to being unlocked through use, rather than levels. Having only a few skills to use at a time makes for incredibly boring gameplay, even for new players. In addition, the current system let’s new players equip a weapon they haven’t used before, but if they’re a high enough level it gives them the full range of skills, defeating the point of slowly opening up skills one by one to get used to them.

As for the Downed state, which is easily the most confusing part for new players, I remember back in the BWEs (and possibly even just after launch), all the intro bosses had an attack that instantly downed all players, and forced them to use the mobs that the bosses spawned to rally. Bring this back, with a quick tutorial beforehand to explain what’s going to happen and what to do.

Because really, as it stands at the moment, I feel like this new experience isn’t a very appealing one, for new players and veterans alike. The first 15-20 levels end up being incredibly boring, and fail to show off the depth of GW2’s combat, making it feel very much like every single other MMO out there.

They had a system similar to this is GW1 with the Zaishen missions, which offered rewards for killing a certain enemy, completing a certain mission, vanquishing (clearing a zone in Hard Mode) a particular area, and competing in a specific PvP format, which all changed on a daily basis, and rewarded tokens that could be used to buy various fun and useful things.

I have a feeling our current daily system was meant to replace that, but honestly, I wish they’d include both. While dailies are all well and good for rewarding specific tasks during normal play, bounties might encourage people to go to less explored parts of the world.

Daily dungeon, jumping puzzle, Champion slaying, specific event completion, and WvW objective capture would be good. Possibly rewarding some coin and laurels for each one, and updating the laurel vendors to offer some of the harder to come by items, like Lodestones

I like most of these changes, specifically the changes to Air, and Ice Spike.

What about adding a knockdown to Unsteady Ground, as well as applying cripple, though? Thematically it fits (if the ground is unsteady, wouldn’t it be likely to make one fall over if they run over it), it would add offensive and defensive capabilities, but the cripple would stop it being completed negated by Stability.

Gust definitely needs some love. I’m most in favour of changing it to a cone attack. As mentioned previoulys, having it work like Temporal Curtain would cause way too much trouble with people being able to stack Eruption and Ice Spike that basically becomes unavoidable.

Finally got it done on my Elementalist.

0/20/0/20/30
Scepter/Focus
Ether Renewal/Lightning Flash/Arcane Shield/Mist Form

Valkyrie’s armour and weapons, Cavalier’s trinkets

Took me a lot of attempts, and playing from Australia, a couple of niggling lag issues made it frustrating at times, but it feels good to finally get it done. It brought back memories of fighting Lady Vashj in WoW.

Major Runes of Perplexity: (1) Condition Damage (2) Confusion Duration (3) Condition Damage (4) Chance to cause Confusion on hit.

Sigil of Malice: Condition duration (5% for Major, 6% for Superior)

Major Runes of Perplexity: (1) Condition Damage (2) Confusion Duration (3) Condition Damage (4) Chance to cause Confusion on hit.

Sigil of Malice: Condition duration (5% for Major).

Not sure on the Superior bonuses yet.

Also, heal on weapon swap sigil? My Elementalist will love that.

I’d been wondering what I was going to do with an entire bank tab worth of Badges/dungeon tokens/Relics. Now I know! I just hope there’s no stack limit, or that would defeat the purpose.

Gilburt.9146:

I would love it if they added in something similar to vanquishing, however I would not like this to be done with instances because the open world would still be empty and devoid of other players. Right now the world is mostly an empty and barren place which is just depressing.

A vanquishing reward system should be added as a way to give players incentive to return to zones they have already completed. Vanquishing should be repeatable for any zone, but time-gated to prevent players from vanquishing the same area every day. This would encourage players to spread throughout the open world by rewarding players for experiencing a variety of content.

Players could earn progress towards vanquishing a zone by killing champions, completing a variety of events and group events, completing jumping puzzles, etc.) The completion of every event would not be required to vanquish. Each of the aforementioned activities would give progress towards vanquishing the zone. Group events, for example could be weighted to give more progress than regular events to make them more worth while.

After vanquishing a zone the player would receive a reward chest that could have rares/exotics, gold, karma, and perhaps even tokens that could be traded for unique weapons/armor. Vanquishing could also have it’s own achievements/titles.

Besides adding a vanquishing system I think event rewards should be increased to make events more worth doing. They could also be time-gated with diminishing returns to prevent grinding the same set of events from being the most profitable option.

This would work perfectly. If they added in tokens for vanquishing which players could spend on new weapon/armor skins and town clothes, and also gave a cash/karma reward, we’d see a lot more players out in the open world, rather than farming CoF 1/CoE/Fractals/Orr endlessly.

I think, though, making completion of every event required would be nice to have. There are a lot of events out there that people leveling/going for map completion never see because they mainly focus on going from one heart/vista/POI to the next. One of the things I really liked about GW1 vanquishing was that you often would end up in little out of the way areas that you wouldn’t have visited otherwise.

Optional extras: Daily/Monthly Vanquisher, and a Hard Mode, where you’re further downscaled to zone area level -3.

Dog.1472:

I had always used Elixer R for the revive and the break stun. It was actually the only break stun I used, and now it’s gone. I still badly want to use this for the revive, but this is still a huge problem for me.

I really want the break stun back.

I may end up ditching the skill now.

Same. If I feel that I need the revive for dungeons (which I often do), then I have to run with a useless skill.

They should have removed the stun break from Elixir U instead, in my opinion.

The difference between the GW1 and GW2 armours, in my eyes, is that the GW1 skins were all somewhat realistic. Prestige armors were distinctive enough that people could recognise them, without them being over the top with particle effects like we see in GW2.

I’d be happy if they introduced some of the older skins as options (preferably through crafting, but I would imagine they would just end up being gemstore purchases). Monk Elite Kurzick and Luxon specifically. They were my favourites.

I think a good way to handle the issue would be to make CC fully effective on a boss, but if they’re hit with more than one CC effect in a short period (1 or 2 seconds, maybe), then Defiant triggers and functions as it currently does.

Encourage people to use CC intelligently, but without spamming it. If a player or group has enough skill and co-ordination to lock down a boss for 10+ seconds, I say let them.

I’d suggest upgrading the Karka Shell first, and then transmuting the Capacitor skin across (although I don’t know why you’d want to; the Sclerite skin is a once only thing).

I have a feeling that due to the way that transmuting and naming works, you’d never be able to upgrade because the recipe calls for a Sclerite Karka Shell, but you wouldn’t actually have that item in your inventory.

Unless someone has proof otherwise, upgrading first seems like the safest option.

I’m assuming the group finder will be attached to a consumable item, and stashed inside Black Lion Chests?

X The Manimal.5293:

I agree that maybe having different paths for one dungeon might not be the best thing going for GW2 at the moment. The idea was cool seeing as you essentially have multiple dungeons in one but as stated by others most of the alternate paths are skipped due to rewards being the same by running the “easier” paths. Maybe ANet could consolidate all of the paths into one mega dungeon and increase/modify rewards?

This. They should enable all paths to be able to be completed without zoning out, and change the reward system so that the more events that the party completes, the more cash, tokens and better loot you get at the end of each path.

eg: Each event is worth X cash and Y tokens, collected from a chest at the end of the path. Complete one full path and get a guaranteed rare. Two paths, two rares. All three paths, and maybe two rares and an exotic (or just three rares with a better chance at exotics, if they so choose).

Encourage people to run all paths, and complete everything rather than just skipping past everything unnecessary for completion, and we might see more people running things other than CoF 1.

Obtaining the Giant Slayer achievement should be part of the Precursor acquisition process. If people want a Legendary, they should have to put in effort to obtain one.

I always found it strange that Rangers, masters of the wild, are so susceptible to conditions.

Maybe they could make Heal as One remove a condition or two as well as heal. Might make it a more attractive option as a heal skill.

I quite like Claws of the Desert (PvP Salient Dagger skin), which actually inspired me to make an Elonian themed Thief, and the Centurion’s Claw, but apart from that, the rest are pretty average. I guess the issue with daggers is that they’re too small to really add much detail to them.

They could easily reintroduce them and still have them soloable, provided each individual mob was less powerful than regular mobs.

I would love to have packs with a healer, high damage, or high control mob added in. It might make PvE less tedious and boring to actually have to think about what I’m killing.

spitfirejunky.1360:

Kilger.5490:

I like disease, goes with the necro theme better than acid. Instead of spreading to others (we have epidemic for that) I suggest the following.

It could be a progressive dot, starts small and gets more damage the longer it persists, and randomly spawns other 1 sec conditions (symptoms).

This is by far my favorite idea in the entire thread.

To elaborate, it should stack in duration, scale with condition damage, cause other conditions, and necromancers should have a trait that reduces the amount of time for conditions to spawn.

I don’t even play a full-on conditionmancer and I would find this very useful.

I like the idea of this. It could randomly apply crippled/poison/weakness each second, in addition to dealing damage. It’d also thematically be easy to extend to other classes (Ranger and Thief in particular, but Warrior and Mesmer might also make sense).

Although, I would like to see Necromancers get a trait that allows it to spread to nearby players when it ticks. Something about being that sneaky guy that comes around behind the WvW zerg, diseases a single player, and cackles madly as it subtly spreads throughout the zerg really appeals to me.

1) Less “You are the One” stuff. One of the things I really liked about the Prophecies and Factions storylines was that you weren’t the hero who single-handedly orchestrated the demise of the big bad villains; you were part of a group (Mhenlo, Cynn et al.; Master Togo and his students/adventurers from across the Unending Ocean) who worked together. It really kills the personal story for me knowing that every other player is going to be Commander of the Pact, Trahearne’s right-hand, Lightbringer/Warmaster/Magister, and everything else.

2) More racial based stories. If I play a Charr, I want to feel like a Charr, not a human in a costume. Same goes for the other races. The first 30 levels of the current story are the most enjoyable to me, as they all have their own distinct flavour. I’d like to see more.

3) More Destiny’s Edge. I dislike how the current DE story is confined mostly to dungeons. Considering that they are the first important NPC that every new player encounters, it’s rather disappointing that they disappear almost entirely from the personal story after a certain point.

4) More GW1 lore. Forgotten, Seers, Mursaat, Druids, Dwarves. All these races could help play a role in the story, either as villains, powerful allies, or a source of knowledge about the past.

Combining them, maybe we could see something like:

The Pact, in high spirits after defeating Zhaitan, set their sights on [insert next Dragon here], but the assault ends up a spectacular failure. As a result, the Orders resort to in-fighting and bickering once again. Trahearne, unable to contain the tension, steps down as leader of the Pact, and it subsequently disbands. Trahearne finds himself struggling with his failure, and seeks a way to come to terms with it.

The newly reunited Destiny’s Edge decide it is therefore up to them to confront the Elder Dragons. Each member issues a call to arms to the players, and requests their help in rallying noteworthy individuals of their race to the cause.

Meanwhile, each of the Orders is conducting their own research into alternative ways of defeating the Elder Dragons, or at least putting them back to sleep.

Ideally, I’d like to see three simultaneous personal stories (racial, Order, and Trahearne) which interweave with each other before coming together at the end. Whether they be like the original personal story, or more similar to the Flame and Frost instances, doesn’t bother me that much. Maybe a mixture of the two, with the racial story being in the traditional style, and the other two having each instance as a self-contained story arc.

5) More difficult encounters. I recently did the Flame and Frost instances, and they seemed more difficult than the usual content. I found the extra challenge quite refreshing, and it’s something I’d like to see more of in the future.

DiogoSilva.7089:

And because devs decided for the earth’s skills to be combo finishers instead of combo fields, let’s be creative here:
- Unsteady Ground would be a chained skill. If you activate it the second time, the ground would blow for a blast finisher and some damage (and launching foes to all directions? xD).

They could make it the functional opposite of Mesmer’s Temporal Curtain: Cripple when you pass through it, detonate it for an AoE knockback. Fun If Mesmers can pull me off keep walls, I want to be able to blast them off in return.

DreamOfACure.4382:

ArenaNet is not one to make knee-jerk changes.

They take their time and work out what they feel is the best course of action.

Except during beta, when they made wide, sweeping changes to several classes, often because of a few bugs elevating them to higher than normal power. Two of those were Necro and Ranger, and look where they are now.

I really want them to work on bringing weapons and traits up to par and properly functioning for all classes. That doesn’t mean buffing and nerfing, either. That means making sure all traits and skills are working as intended, and are equally viable options for particular specs/playstyles. At that point, they can see where class balance is, and adjust accordingly.

New content is nice, but every time I play my Necro and see how useless life siphoning and minons are, or when I play my Ranger and see how pitiful Longbow damage and Spirit support is, I realise I would have preferred it of all that time and effort spent on developing content was redirected to dealing with class issues instead.

One can only be patient for so long. And really, 5 months after release, I would have expected most of this to be dealt with by now, or at least being worked on. Although, judging by the state of Paragons in GW1, I could be waiting a long, long time.

There’s still parts of Orr that we can’t visit yet; I’d like to see them become accessible at some point, and involve cleansing the rest of Zhaitan’s corruption and removing the undead presence.

The current zones would be too hard to change, though. If you alter them permanently, then they’d have to alter the personal storyline for new players/alts. If you add phasing (like what World of Warcraft did), then you separate the playerbase in to two or more groups, and it causes issues with people grouping up.

Nayaru.4716:

Mystic forge in all the cities. <3 Dungeon Vendors. <3 One free cultural teleport stone (Like the hall of monuments one) that takes you back to the city of your race. <3 Do want! xD

These, and a shared chat channel between all cities is all that would be required, I think.

I get that they intended for Lion’s Arch to be the hub city, but it’s a shame to see other cities go completely to waste (especially when they have a much better and more convenient layout cough Rata Sum cough)

Most people ignore it because it’s easier to just kill the boss and avoid the attacks than it is to try and remove stacks of Defiant and use CC.

Defiant is a pretty bad mechanic. It promotes skill spamming and wasting CC abilities rather than skilled play. It really should function as an anti-spam ability, like if the boss is hit with a certain amount of CC skills within a short timeframe, then Defiant triggers. Something like that would encourage teamwork and co-ordination more so than the current function.

I think rather than giving them individual skills, they should be more like Warrior banners (sorry!), and have 4 shared skills, and 1 turret specific. ie:

1) Bash: Hit your foe with your turret
2) Slam: Hit your foe with your turret, causing Confusion (3 stack, 5 second duration). 10 second recharge.
3) Brutal Smack: Hit your foe with your turret, stunning them (1 second duration). 40 second recharge.

4) Turret specific skill
Rifle: Launch several shots at your foe, making them Bleed (5 stacks, 5 second duration). Range 900, Combo Finisher: Projectile, 15 second cooldown.
Flame: Set the nearby area on fire, burning foes (Burning: 2 seconds). Radius 300, Combo Field: Fire (3 seconds), 20 second recharge.
Net: Launch a series of immobilizing nets in a cone in front of you. (Immobilize: 1 second). 30 second recharge.
Rocket: Launch a short range rocket at your foe, knocking them back. Range 300, Knockback 300, 45 second recharge.
Thumper: Slam your turret into the ground and Knock down nearby foes (Knockdown: 1 second). Radius 130, Combo Finisher: Blast, 60 second recharge.
Healing: Heal nearby allies and cure one Condition. Healing ~1000, Radius 300, 30 second recharge.

5: Redeploy: Place your turret back on the ground.

Weapon swap with a turret equipped would stow the turret, functioning the same as the current picking up of turrets currently does. Make turrets only able to be picked up by the Engineer who placed them (to prevent chain stunning, etc.).

Don’t forget weapon recharge traits.

Look at Warrior:

Crack Shot — Rifle and harpoon gun shots pierce. Rifle and harpoon gun skills recharge 20% faster.
Merciless Hammer — Hammer damage is increased by 25% when a foe is disabled. Reduces cooldown of hammer skills by 20%.
Sundering Mace — Mace damage is increased by 10% when a foe is weakened. Reduces cooldown of mace skills by 20%.

… and Mesmer:

Cleansing Conflagration — Torch skills remove conditions. Reduces cooldowns of torch skills by 20%.
Duelist’s Discipline — Increases pistol attack range for you and your illusions. Reduces recharge of pistol skills by 20%.
Warden’s Feedback — Focus skills reflect projectiles. Reduces recharge of focus skills by 20%.

And then look at Guardian:

Focused Mastery — Focus skills recharge 20% faster.
Radiant Fire — Torch skills recharge 15% faster.

… and Necro:

Dagger Mastery — Dagger skills recharge 15% faster.
Staff Mastery — Staff skills recharge 20% faster.

I didn’t list all the traits, but every single one of the Warrior and Mesmer traits has an additional function on top of reducing cooldowns, while only some the traits for other classes do. I could understand if it was a Warrior-only thing (they are the masters of weapons, after all), but the other Soldier profession doesn’t get the same treatment, yet Mesmers do.

The massive disparity between class traits is one of the things that really annoys me. It makes classes feel unfinished, and yet instead of dealing with this, ArenaNet seem to simply prefer straight buffs/nerfs. I wonder how different the meta would be now if balancing traits and fixing bugs had’ve been the priority after launch.

I really fail to see how you can’t manage to find a group, even with gw2lfg. I live in Australia, and despite playing in off-peak hours for US and EU, I’ve still managed to find a group for, and completed, levels 2 to 7 in the last week.

Although the Fractals patch will be nice, it’s really not that difficult to find a group using just the slightest amount of effort.

1) Yes
2) Yes
3) Yes
4) No
5) Yes
6) Yes
7) Yes
8) Yes
9) Yes
10) No
11) No
12) No

Are you sure he wasn’t downleveled?

“It’s a bad day to buy wine…”
“… BUT IT’S A GREAT DAY TO DRINK IT!!!!!!!!!”

Every single time I run to the Trader.

Some that I don’t hear that often, but I wish I did, is all the harpy voice clips.

“Flock to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

I find them hilarious, for some reason.

I’ve been levelling a new character in the human zones, and I agree, lower populations do work out well in terms of being able to see the full scope of event chains. In the past, despite taking three characters through those zones, I’d never seen the Battle for Bettletun be anything but 100% “complete”, never seen the centaurs push past the bridge in the Battle of Fort Salma, etc. They end up being really interesting and fun events, and it’s a shame that the overpopulation of areas at launch meant that most people missed seeing them.

It may be a pain now to find groups for Story mode dungeons, or for group events, but the open-world experience has never been better.

On my 80 Elementalist, I’ve gotten maybe 2-3 dye drops in the last fortnight, doing high level content. I decided to make a Warrior a couple of days ago, and I’ve had about 20 dyes drop during my completion of two low level zones. Also made a new Thief to run around Ashford with friends, and had 3 dyes drop in the space of an hour.

I don’t want to don my tinfoil hat just yet (maybe I’ve just had a string of good luck lately), but it does seem like the chance of obtaining dyes is higher in low level zones.

I agree with this.

And to be completely honest, given how time-consuming jumping puzzles can be, and the respawn timer on the chests, I wouldn’t be opposed to having them drop a guaranteed level-scaled Rare item.

As much as I like getting new content, I’d rather they fix broken events and personal story instances, bugged or lackluster traits and class skills, and the typos and text errors that are everywhere first.

Personally, any enthusiasm for new content is instantly eliminated whenever I log in and see bugs that have existed since BWE1 and still haven’t been fixed.

Edge.4180:

BurnedToast.3781:

You’re right that direct damage is wasted too, but the most the can be wasted is 1 hit minus 1 damage (if the mob had one HP left). Condition damage can waste significantly more, especially in groups. How many times do you see a mob die with 10+ bleeds? that’s a considerable amount of damage lost.

Meanwhile, your ranger example makes my point perfectly. Your ranger loads mob #1 up with conditions and switched to mob #2, meanwhile a direct damage char doing the same (or more) dps would already have killed mob #1 since his damage is all frontloaded.

How is it better to have mob #1 still attacking you while you start on mob #2?

My longbow’s auto-attack (“Long Range Shot”, a direct damage attack) at maximum range (which yields maximum damage) does less damage than my shortbow’s auto-attack (“Crossfire”, condition bleed) over time. If anything it’s already killing mobs faster than my direct-damage alternative, not slower. I tear up with Crossfire, where as I struggle to stay awake with Long Range Shot, so I’m not experiencing the dilemma you’re painting.

For me, the only time it becomes an issue is when there are several people placing bleed stacks on the same mob. But there’s nothing wrong or wimpy about condition attacks when hunting alone or in a normal party.

That’s a Ranger specific issue relating to weapon balance, not a general Burst vs. Conditions issue. Shortbow does more damage than Longbow, even with Pow/Pre/Crit Dmg gear (or it did, last time I played my Ranger. It might not be the case now that they slowed down the animation speed). In any case, as previously stated, being able to load up conditions on a second mob while the first bleeds out is a moot point; in the same time, a burst spec would have killed Mob#1 and be halfway through Mob#2 by the time you applied those conditions.

I agree with everyone else that Conditions need looking at, at least in PvE. If you have 5 burst specs, everything is fine. If you have 5 condition specs, 2-4 of them will end up doing no damage.

I think the best solution is to let people stack damaging conditions in separate stacks for each player, but otherwise keep the current functionality. So if A and B both apply Burning for 5s, the target has two stacks of Burning ticking at the same time. If A then further applies 3s of Burning, their stack duration is increased, so that the enemy has two stacks of Burning for 5s, then one stack for a further 3s, and so on.

UI-wise, it’d be best if they displayed your stacks, and then the total number of stacks (including yours) on the target. Whether it would be better to have your stacks displayed with larger icons, or a different colour, or whatever else, would be up to ArenaNet to decide.

Overall, I really enjoy the condition playstyle, but it feels rather useless at the moment. It’s irritating that I feel forced to retrait if a group already contains other people running conditions.

I think they should halve the bonus (ie: 50% increase), double the duration, and have the negative effect persist after the Quickness buff has expired.

It really should be a choice between the added damage versus screwing yourself over if things go awry. At the moment, there’s no real thought to whether or not to use it; the answer is always going to be “yes!”.

Purely anecdotal evidence, but it seems like they have a higher drop chance from Veterans than from normal mobs.

I had the same problem you did, when trying for zone completion. Three hours later, after much grinding , I finally found the two keys I needed.
Then last night, I was levelling an alt there. 4 keys in 30 minutes. sigh

I really wish they had’ve gone with more racial stories, too. The first 30 levels are fun and full of racial flavour, but after that, it just becomes really repetitive, and as the OP stated, it doesn’t even feel like you’re playing a particular race; you just feel Human.

I think it’d be really interesting if each race had a (for the most part) separate story, and the stories for the various races intertwine and reference each other, before coming together at the end. We already see this a little bit, with various early NPCs making a shallow appearance towards the end of one’s personal story and with some of the racial Order stories (reclaiming Caladbolg, for example), but it’d be nice if it was a constant thing; it’d make it feel as if there are actually other people working to accomplish the same goals as you, instead of it being up to you to do everything (and Trahearne claiming credit).

Actually, in GW1, Necromancers had a lot of “Deal damage when the target does X” hexes. Giving us Confusion would make a lot more sense than burning, because there’s a precedent.

I do agree that we need one or the other, though. Condition builds, while certainly viable, feel a bit one-dimensional in that we rely solely on bleeds to do any damage.

They really need to rework minions to be like GW1 minions: Highly disposable, but able to be resummoned really easily. I can’t think of any other class (except possibly Illusion mesmers, but even then…) who can have their entire spec made useless by one AoE, and then unavailable for a further 20+ seconds.

I feel like they’ll probably go for a new race in each expansion, but possibly not new classes; adding new classes every time makes it a) hard to find an appropriate flavour for each new class that’s different from the existing classes, and b) harder to balance all the different classes.

I think you’re pretty spot on for the expansion areas we’re likely to see, though. I imagine it will be one for each Dragon, so:

a) Cantha, Tengu as a playable race.

b) Far Shiverpeaks, Kodan as a playable race

c) Crystal Desert and Elona. I’d like to see Palawa Joko’s undead horde become playable (but that’s just because they seem like the only thing that would remotely make sense to be playable, and because I like undead races). Otherwise, possibly Centaur (not likely; too many issues with armor modelling), or the remaining humans in Elona (boring).

d) Depths of Tyria, possibly Skritt becoming playable, or maybe Dwarves.

c) Expansion into the ocean somewhere, to take on Bubbles, the unnamed Elder Dragon. I’m assuming Largos will become playable in this case, but I’d really rather that they won’t be (aquatic fey vampire assassins; so cool!!!1!!1!!!!!).

I hope we’ll eventually get to see the rest of the areas again, too (eg: Maguuma Jungle, Ring of Fire, Woodland Cascades, the rest of the Southern Shiverpeaks [Dredge focused expansion, anyone?]). I’d especially like to see the area around the Isles of Janthir become accessible, because I have a sneaking suspicion that they’ll have something to do with the Mursaat, and possibly the Seers, as well.

I can’t believe the games been out such a short time, and I’m already thinking about and anticipating expansions.

I think this is an excellent idea. Not only would it alleviate the issue of needing a ridiculous amount of one specific material just to make a full set of armor, but should they decide to include more stat combinations in the future (which I hope they will), it’d make it that much easier to do so.

It’s definitely something I’d like to see, especially if they went the GW1 route, and let you display guild emblems on them. It’d also be good for sPvP/tPvP, in my opinion, because they could shift the team colours onto the cape (again, like in GW1), and therefore give some purpose to dyeing PvP armor without it being overridden.

Yay.

At the very least, if they choose to remain with Amulet/Jewels, I’d like to see both Vitality and Toughness options for each combination.

Although I did like the old login screen, I really don’t mind the new launcher, either (except when I get disconnected and booted back to the launcher, which is just annoying).

I agree about the loading screen, though. There needs to be some indication of loading progress other than the spinning circle. Whether it’s a loading bar, or a speed-painting-esque picture, or whatever else; anything that gives us information on loading progress (and whether it’s frozen), is much needed.

A good idea. I was imagining something like this too, when I first went through Orr.

At the moment, all the personal story quests, NPC dialogue, etc. mention how Orr is a constant struggle to gain and hold new ground, and some of the DEs reflect this as well, but in practice, as you mentioned, it doesn’t feel that way, given that players can simply zone into the next zone and completely ignore everything going on in previous zones. It would be good to feel like the players are actually making a push into the heart of Zhaitan’s territory.

Some problems, though:

- What would happen to players in a zone if it became locked? Would they be ported back to the previous zone? Would they be allowed to run around in an area inaccessible to everybody else? What would happen if someone logged out in a zone that was locked when they logged back in?

- Later on, when the population inevitably declines and shinier, newer content is released, accessing Arah would become difficult, if not impossible, for players, unless they organised a group of players to retake the entirety of Orr, which would also be difficult, not to mention time-consuming.

- As great as an idea like this is, it’d probably require a decent amount of manpower that ANet probably don’t have to spare at this point in time, unfortunately. And as stated above, a good deal of the playerbase are likely to complain about any changes made, just because they can.

It certainly would make Orr more interesting, though (I’m sick of Cursed Shore and it’s DEs already, and I’ve only spent about ~6 hours there). It’d probably help deal with the bot problem, too

I had to take several breaks when attempting Troll’s End, out of both frustration and motion sickness from the constant camera spasms.
They really need to fix this = \