Guild Wars 2

What about Dual Shield? Tank style necro anyone? Mitigation and lifesteal skills with some support added in for spice. Pair that with minions somehow to make them actually effective instead of “oh… they died… too bad.” so it is actually a necromancer again instead of a Condi Vampire.

Perhaps a trait addition that says, “When wielding shield in both hands minions take half damage, half of which is also done to the necromancer.”

Along with the skills on the shields it could make for an interesting playstyle that would be reminiscent of the GW1 Necro because they had to damage themselves to keep their minions alive.

I also think there should be a penalty for world hopping. “Oh. My server is losing in WvW all the time… instead of trying to get more players or train better ones, I think I’ll convince my guild to go join a bigger server.” seems to be a common problem.

Perhaps, if you were prohibited from joining WvW for a short time after more than one server transfer within a short period of time, it would cut down on the no server loyalty thing. Not too long, but not too short. When transferring server more than once within a six month period, somewhere between two weeks and one month would probably be sufficient. It would make people consider if it is worth it to go without WvW to change servers.

Buffs and conditions limited to 5 targets in a WvW where you can run into groups of 30+ players is just insignificant. If you get hit with a bomb, grenade, napalm, or biological weapon with a radius of 1 mile… it doesn’t just NOT HIT YOU because there were 5 other people in the same radius. If you want it to hit a small number of people, make the TARGET RING or RADIUS smaller, don’t limit the number of targets.

One reason people group up in WvW is to try and get buffs to transfer to the majority of the group. Another reason is due to the 5 target limit on player AoE hits. If I’m in a 5 man group, the max number of individual hits we can cause if we all AoE is 25 individual hits. Now some of those may overlap onto the same target which makes that number go down. So figure 13 targets for an example. Now figure in that is one hit with a cooldown somewhere between 6 and 40 seconds on average before it can happen again… how long would that take to kill another group using group targeted skills? Sounds like single target…

5 vs. 5 even with AoE is one hit on each target per character. 5 vs. 10 is 0.5 targets hit, and so on down the line. Basically, if the opposing force has even 5 more players than yours, you lose a large percentage of your equality… just one five man group difference and bam, its decidedly unbalanced (again not counting siege).

What if there were some TRUE AoE and some LIMITED AoE? Say weapon skills like Mark of Blood were only 5 target max, but Epidemic would be as useful as the name sounds and could hit whoever was in range? (albeit with a change in cooldown or whatever to make it more fair) If there were only 5 targets, both skills have the same effect. But, the more targets, the more appealing the True AoE skill would become.

Then people would have to decide if it was a good time to use a bigger hitting skill or save it for later instead of face roll spamming everything on their bar in a big zerg. At that point, a Zerg wouldn’t be a profitable way to run things anymore because you’d never know if that 5 or 10 man group was packing big group busting skills or not.

“Oh, but then any small group could take whatever they wanted…” Not true. Those unrestricted AoE’s wouldn’t be more effective against a smaller group, only against a larger one. If you had even numbers the stakes would be even. If you have 10 and they have 5, the stakes would be slightly more even than they are now, but not horribly out of balance. If you had 30 and they had 15, the fight would still be almost as overwhelming as it is now unless you know how to split your groups up do minimize damage from AoE.

Tactics would actually come into play again instead of Strength in numbers, I have more so I win. This would make fights between a servers with disproportionate populations that play WvW somewhat more fair. Numbers would no longer guarantee domination of the map or a win. Smaller groups would again be able to hold a tower or keep with proper siege and skill.

On another topic, WvW is a joke in higher tiers. Gather a group of 30+ and roam around flipping everything just to have if flipped again by the opposing zerg in 5 minutes. No one digs in to defend because you can’t. A 10-man group has no defense against a large zerg EVEN IN A TOWER and that is what a tower is supposed to be for!

And I don’t mean elitest trained veteran WvW players… I mean new to moderate experience players, which makes up the majority of the playerbase. You don’t really need any experience in WvW to join a huge zerg and roll things. But to defend a keep from being flipped by that zerg you have to have patience, siege, practice, teamwork, experience, and lots of luck. Only to lose that keep immediately when your team logs off because you couldn’t stay awake anymore.

I’m not saying keeps should be impenetrable, but they should definitely be easier to defend by smaller forces, even in the face of not having supply camps. A Siege should be a siege… it shouldn’t take all of 5 minutes (10-15 on a fully fortified tower).

How about letting players DEPOSIT supply into a tower/keep supply depot as well as take? And by the same token, supply should be reset upon switching maps in WvW. Taking the waypoint should reset your supply to 5 unless it is already less than that. Want more? Walk it, there are camps near almost anywhere.

I have read that there will be a new “League” match-up system for WvW soon… if it is handled fairly, great. If not, things will only get worse..

Incoming long Rant on the State of the Game (longer than one post apparently):

One thing that really gets me is the lack of new SMALL GROUP pve content.

SAB is either solo or 5-man… but it becomes hilariously harder with more group members as if they were pointing you towards solo play with it… just like the Candidate Trials being easier solo.

Dungeons are a joke in their current state. Can’t do them at the level they were intended for because they are brokenly balanced around level 80 5-man groups in full exotics. If a dungeon was meant to take 30 minutes, it should take that long no matter what your level because of down leveling… but this is not always the case.

Part of this is player mentality though. Everyone wants to get the dungeon done as fast as possible because they just want the rewards. A majority of dungeons have large numbers of monsters you can skip instead of kill. What if there were extra rewards for clearing the entire dungeon instead of just speed running it?

Suggestion: have another mode called HARD for level 80’s and leave the story/explorable modes be balanced around the level the dungeon was intended for.

Another thing that really bakes my brain is how NEARLY EVERYTHING worth getting in this game REQUIRES FARMING of some form or another and then they ELIMINATE all the chances at doing just that!

You want people to make legendaries? Don’t make them so time consuming to make! Harder than other stuff, for sure. But the FARMING involved in making a legendary as it currently is seems counter intuitive to your attempt to remove farming from the game.

Most legendaries on the Trading Post are somewhere between 1500 and 2000 gold on average. Based on an average gem to gold exchange rate of 3.5 gold per 100 gems, that equates to about $535 roughly for the cheaper ones! How insane is that? And precursors drop so infrequently… I’ve decided that whent the game gives me a precursor, that is when I’ll start thinking about working towards a legendary. And why do you keep the materials limited to 250 per stack in the bank? Especially when some legendaries require multiple stacks of the same item?

Also, what good is crafting if you CAN’T SELL what you MAKE? Account bound craftable items are sometimes ok… if they are trivial or aesthetic only such as the personal portal device which has very little use, but a whole TIER of WEAPONS you can’t trade? MORE FARMING in a NO FARMING game… Doesn’t make sense.

Demented Sheep.1642:

Dragnier.6014:

Any content which could possibly be too hard for a majority of the player base to complete should NOT have any achievement points tied to it. A title/skin/mini or other item, sure… but not achievement points. Nor should it count for any meta achievement unless there are other choices to complete instead of it. (like how the Dragon Ball pvp achievements during dragon bash didn’t count for the meta)

It an achievement. You generally get achievements for achieving something.
There are many ways to get achievements points and some of them are repeatable so why dose it matter that there are a few you might not be able to get that others can? Achievements points don’t affect your ability in combat so it’s not going to unbalance anything.

Because that kind of elitist hardcore thing is what will drive more casual players away from the game.

Harder content is great for those interested in it. In this case, the main problem is that it is the last fight of an achievement chain and sort of a mini storyline. Many casual players may make it to her only to be baffled that they can’t beat her and finish the chain.

Being so close without being able to finish it will make some people very upset. IMHO it is better to avoid that in the first place. Make the basic fight somewhat easier to accomplish but have the mini or some other bigger reward on another achieve such as the one where you beat her after 8 crystals.

I mean, this is the basic fight without any extra hindrances chosen or anything special completed in the fight… why should it be that hard? If you want hardcore, there’s plenty of opportunity to make it harder for yourself there… just turn on Fragility or Squeamish.

Any content which could possibly be too hard for a majority of the player base to complete should NOT have any achievement points tied to it. A title/skin/mini or other item, sure… but not achievement points. Nor should it count for any meta achievement unless there are other choices to complete instead of it. (like how the Dragon Ball pvp achievements during dragon bash didn’t count for the meta)

The math seems off. I have now checked this talent and it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t even work as stated, so I think it’s broken.

Using two diff sets of gear to check how it changes my crit chance:

29% → 49%

51% → 71%

So it seems to currently be a flat 20% increase.

Here’s one of my Necro with here Shattered Dragon Wings.