I can only agree with the OP..
As playing the mage/wizard-class (whatever you want to call it) in various MMO’s I was fairly disappointed with the new elementalist. I’m using ‘new’ here because I also played GW1 where the ele still met my criteria. Not only did you have like a million different build setups and skills, you also were the high damage dealer ingame. As it should be!
The main thing i’m not getting is why an elementalist is almost inclined to use cantrips or knights/cleric gear stuffed with like dolyak runes. (I mean, i’m giving it the same gear as my warrior?? W T F … ) If not you’ll be getting onehits all the time while still not doing any significant damage in comparison to a warrior/thief/ranger… hell all the other classes!
I think the problem is that they tried to package the different playstyle capabilities an ele had in GW1 into one class with a select number of skills. It ended up being mediocre in everything, balanced if you will. This the primary reason why you can’t specialize in doing damage. The damage you gain can’t ever compare to the lack in survivability. To be fair you can’t really specialize in anything.
What are your options then? Give it armor with defensive stats and runes and use D/D as it has high mobility and high dps skills. (meaning you can run away while still doing some damage and surviving a few hits) And for slot skills: cantripsss.
Congratz, you have yourself a ’battle’mage. The only viable option for an elementalist.. Thats is unless you want to be hiding behind a rock doing dungeon runs, doing weak single target dps, waiting for your moment to shine when there are trash groups which you can FINALLY AoE-nuke. Oh yeah, and die every time you come too close.
Okay, I get your frustration but your example seems rather an exception to me. It’s not like your doorbell rings every 10 minutes, right? I would at least try to teleport to the nearest waypoint before letting my character deliberately die (+ as long as I’m in combat lots may happen before I leave my pc, to be honest…).
DrWho made a good point, I think I’ve seen that in other mmo’s as well. You could also add <AFK> behind your player name. An effect that could be triggered after, for example, 10 minutes of inactivity.
But to come back to your argument and actually solve your problem there’d have to be a ‘no resurrect’-effect + a hotkey to enable your AFK-mode. ’Cause having an indication of being away from keyboard is not enough to prevent childish players from still resurrecting you thus leaving you naked in the wild.
Just don’t go AFK in a combat zone, simple. Though I am in favor of adding a way to mark your absence. I’d suggest adding an AFK-status in guild menu and friends list. Anyway, this has no priority and your argument can only be blamed on yourself. Make sure you are in a safe-zone before leaving your character undefended
What I mean is that the chest rewards should scale to the difficulty of the jumping puzzle. The hardest ones might give several lodestones, a BL key and an exotic rune/sigil, the easier ones might give silver a some boosts or utility item.
Yeah, i’m in favor. + every JP should be a one-timer per character. So you won’t be able to farm, but still get a proportional reward for achieving this challenge of advanced reflex-skills! Especially the hard ones, like the skipping stones puzzle from Lost Shores, should reward something that actually makes it worth the effort. I mean, doing it 50+ times over for a green and some copper is not cool…
You just have the WoW-idea of mounts in mind and that is plain wrong. I think GW2 is good at being innovative, so my guess is that they have the capability to actually come up with a creative/original concept setting the terms of GW2-mounts. Something that could benefit the overall gameplay and still be true to their idea of what the game should be like, fitting the bigger picture. Rest assure that they will not add a dragon destroyer mount because it is some child’s wet dream… (I do sincerely hope so)
BUT if they aren’t able to come up with mounts that aren’t exact copies of the ones in WoW (and most of the other mmo’s for that matter) then they should not add them. ’Cause your point makes sense.
As I said before, don’t just look at it as a functional tool. It has value as an in-game interactive object to begin with. As a game developer it’s really all in your hands what adding a mountable texture model to the game will have as effect on the general gameplay… Mounts do not equal mounts, if you’re getting my point. It’s no empiric constant, it’s a virtual variable. What’s really useless are indeed mini-pets. They add nothing but their textures to the game. In my opinion mounts could be a whole different story.
I’d love to see mounts in the game. It might not be as needed, but it has more value than just functionality. It’s as Teofa Tsavo says: the game doesn’t “require” anything, implementing mounts can only expand the available content and add a new layer of fun… I see no quarrel in that. I just hope if there will be mounts that they’ll stick to the story and make them look realistic, you know, fitting the world of Tyria.
Yeah I totally agree on the fact that they should look realistic. I’m no fan of the cartoon-style of WoW. I’m trying to say that it’s hard to find a unique looking weapon/armor before level 80. It’s as if being that level is totally insignificant. Only at 80 you start caring about armor/weapons.
I agree that there are too many similar armor/weapon designs while leveling. I like the idea of my character being unique in comparison to others, making it YOUR char. But with all this similar looking gear, we’re all just walking copies.
You could state that the coloring system does give the char it’s unique look, but i’m no fan. Most standard colors are real wack and don’t make the armor look ‘realistic’ (if that’s even the right term to use in a virtual world filled with magic). I’m always looking for a genuine black color yet it happens to be a very rare color which goes for lots of $ on the trading post… sigh.
I played WoW several years ago and the variety of items was extremely large. And what I especially liked was the fact that while gaining levels your character began to look more epic. The first 20 levels you just looked plain crap to be honest. But hey that’s how a newbie should look right?
I now have the feeling that only level 80 exotic gear looks cool and all that comes before looks mediocre at best.
As for the weapons, I’ll give a quick example. My lvl 74 warrior alt has a lvl 70 rare axe that looks just the same as the standard axe you see throughout all the levels. I mean come on, it looks like a freaking wood-logger’s axe! Be creative, make some weap/armors with special effects, big spikes, oversized greatswords, fire dripping staves, the whole lot. And not only the lvl 80 exotics… (which can also tend to look rather boring in some cases)
Don’t lose the GW’s style and feeling, but expand it.
