Guild Wars 2

In the final(?) mission for Heart of Thorns, “Hearts and Minds”, I was removed from the instance during the final boss fight.

I had just sealed the second rift while fighting Mord, and a warning popped up saying that a large attack was coming and that I needed to get in the air to avoid it. I hit an air jet and started gliding, and then I got caught in something (another updraft? part of an attack?) and it rocketed me straight up in the air until I hit a loading screen. After the screen, I found myself unceremoniously dumped back in the whirlpool area next to the mission start marker. I lost all of my progress in the mission, which wasn’t easy to solo as far as I had. I honestly don’t even know if I want to log back in now.

Astralporing.1957:

Cyvil.1605:

I thought the patch notes said that the change was supposed to lower cloth use by replacing some cloth with leather, did this not happen?

wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2015-10-23 -“To sync armor crafting with weapon crafting, and to help maintain the value of leather, masterwork, rare, and exotic inscriptions will now be crafted with patches made from leather and cloth.
To account for the added leather cost, the amount of cloth required to make an insignia is reduced.”

That quote is 100% true. For the “Masterwork, rare and exotic” inscriptions. For Ascended however it isn’t – here they have just plain upped the cost. With no reasoning given whatsoever.

Yep, to echo/expand:

Formerly, an Ascended Insignia was made with 3 Bolts of Damask.
Now, an Ascended Insignia is made with 3 Damask Patches.
1 Damask Patch = 1 Elonian Leather Square + 1 Bolt of Damask.

Basically, they added in an exorbitant leather requirement and didn’t reduce the (already way too high) cloth requirement at all.

The Damask Patch should be a combination of Damask and Elonian totaling no more than 4 individual pieces: 2×2, 2×1, 1×2, or 1×1.

Arnath.2319:

No one complained when they were unlocking their character from lvl 1-80. Why should elite specs be different?

I have yet to see a single logical reason why things should be changed. All i am seeing is a mob of angry spoiled children with a mob like mentality because everything isn’t handed to them for free within the first few days of launch… over a weekend… that the devs are working overtime to keep the servers stable, how selfish and impatience can you people be?

Go play the game, even the most casual of all casual players can easily unlock the full elite spec in as little as week, i’m a casual player and i have already unlocked everything, it is super mega easy, almost too easy!

It’s really not hard to see, and has already been explained in great detail numerous times:

• Leveling from 1-80 improves your character. As you “grow” you gain access to more traits, abilities, and options for how you want to play. This makes sense.
• Leveling an elite spec is a conundrum that conflicts with the pre-existing game. Elite specs, by their nature and stated design intent, aren’t “more powerful” than core specs, they’re just “different” and meant to be alternatives, not upgrades.
• Fully unlocking an elite spec requires an absurd amount of Hero Challenges. Even at 100% map completion for the core game, a player has to consume or “spoil” a large portion of HoT’s content just to fully unlock the spec. Characters without 100% map completion are looking at potentially consuming or “spoiling” all of HoT’s world content just to fully unlock the spec.
• Choosing to equip an elite spec before the line is nearly filled out means using an “incomplete” build. You are effectively “de-leveling” your character just to experience the content with the new playstyle. This does not make sense.
• The other option is to not slot your elite spec at all until you have at least one grandmaster trait unlocked (which is near the end of the line) and play through the bulk of HoT’s world content as an old, but fully-functional spec and then get the “alternative playstyle” as an end-of-game reward. Again, this does not make sense.

Playing an elite specialization currently requires “settling” and intentionally downgrading your character by using an incomplete trait and skill line, or waiting until you’ve cleared most of HoT’s world content and the elite is sufficiently unlocked so that its performance is on par with your old builds. It’s a choice players simply shouldn’t have to make. ESpecs, even if not “fully unlocked” should be functional out of the gate. The initial 60-point buy should give you at least all of your minor traits, and one adept, master, and grandmaster trait, so that your character is on roughly even footing with preexisting builds. Further unlocks should allow you more customization in the form of your other traits, and your utility, heal, and elite skills. The overall cost is absurdly high, as well, and should be reduced, but at the bare minimum 60 points needs to get you ‘competitive’ if not fully optimized for your particular build.

Moreover, all of the functionality of this Hero Challenge system was hidden from the players during 95% of the game’s pre-purchase period, and only sprung on us immediately before launch. Not only is the system a mess, the way it was obfuscated was also a mess. The time for discussion and debate was before HoT went live, not after it’s been live for X length of time even if X is “only” 3 days. It feels unfair to many players, and feels almost entirely untested.

Based on Colin’s comment that “the people currently grinding are enjoying the grind because if they’re doing it, they must be enjoying it” I think the grind is here to stay, won’t be changed, and HoT is never going to be the refreshing, fun new thing that I was super-excited for and will actually drive me away from the game after I burn out on the Hero Point grind on 1-2 characters. His post just feels so back-handed, even if it wasn’t his intent. It reads as if “Yeah, we know a lot of you are upset, but our metrics show people in-game, so we don’t care if you are upset. We’ll ‘talk’ about it in the future, but nothing’s going to change.”

Blizzard did this with their Warlords of Draenor expansion for World of Warcraft. There were complaints about arduous, time-gated, and boring game systems as well as complaints about cut or delayed content and alt-unfriendliness everywhere. But, the hype train was rolling, sub numbers were up for launch, and Blizzard ignored the complaints. Six months later, the game had lost nearly half of its subscribers, and player retention was at the worst point it had seen in literally a decade.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate everything; There are aspects of HoT that are great. The music is amazing. The environments are beautiful. Some of the elite specs I played during BWE were absolutely awesome, and really felt like evolutions of the ‘actiony’ playstyle of the game without necessarily being mathematically better than their core classes.

Problem is, it’s hard for me to enjoy any of the stuff I like about it, because I’m seeking out gated or group-required hero points, ignoring most of the overworld content, and occasionally chasing a zerg around EOTM (which is something I have no desire to do, I’m not a PVP-person) just to try to get to the point where I can enjoy Reaper without handicapping myself by using an incomplete build. I’ve sunk over 20 hours into my Reaper since HoT went live, and I still don’t have any master traits, let alone any grandmasters nor the elite shout I’ve been looking forward to. At my current rate of progress, it’s going to take me at least another 20 in-game hours, probably more as mastery gates more and more of the Hero Challenges I have left, to get to the point where I can play Reaper at the power level that I was formerly at on an old build before HoT even released. It’s not hard to see how stupid that is.

Has there been a developer comment on this anywhere, yet? I mean, obviously there isn’t one in this thread, but this was simply the first relevant result when I googled “GW2 ascended insignia”

It’s kind of lame when the patch notes didn’t even mention ascended crafting, but then the live game reveals that the cost of making ascended armor has skyrocketed due to undocumented changes.

RyuDragnier.9476:

mazut.4296:

At first I was baffled about the 400 points, but after I found out ever Skill challenge actually gives 10 points… All its fine

Only problem is getting to them and clearing them…I’m seeing too many group challenges. :/

Good news, just tonight I’ve run into two of them that are bugged. They’re each supposed to spawn a champion and 2 additional targets. The 2 additional targets don’t spawn, and killing just the champ doesn’t satisfy the challenge.

In the 25 hours following the release of expansion (so, 12:01am Pacific on the 23rd until 1:00am Pacific on the 24th) I had been logged into GW2 for at least 12 cumulative, non-consecutive hours.

Two of those hours were spent on my ‘former main’ — a Warrior — hanging out in Lion’s Arch. I (foolishly) stockpiled several hundred coin purses and seed pouches as well as dozens of rare and masterwork gear bags. I also had a couple dozen of each of the four flavors of boxes from daily Tequ kills. Nobody should ever do this. By Zeus’ beard was my inventory a trainwreck. This isn’t the fault of the game, though, this was me being a lazy hoarder. I’m just mentioning this as an admission I wasn’t grinding for the full amount of time.

Apart from the aforementioned 2 hours, and one round of Mad King Says, I have been in the jungle on my fledgling Reaper. It should be noted that I hate base Necromancer. Not because it’s underpowered (even though it kind of is) and not because it doesn’t have any group synergy (even though it doesn’t) but simply because it’s boring. My best loadout involves sending out the locusts (I like to say “NOT THE BEES!” every time I push warhorn 5 because it gives me something to do) and then mashing my 1 key. Dagger, Shroud, Lich, it doesn’t matter. Send out the bees, mash 1 — That’s what 3 years of gameplay evolution has led Necromancer to. Is it effective? Mostly. Is it fun? Never.

Here are some lowlights from my adventures into Reaper frustration, for any that are interested:

• I had 220 points going into the expansion. Prior to the announcement earlier this week, I figured I was “safe” to be able to unlock a good chunk, if not all, of Reaper. By the time I finished filling out all of the traits and skills for the core class (which is a stupid requirement since we can’t use all that stuff at the same time anyway) I had 57 points left. Not even quite enough for the Reaper unlock.
• I fumbled my way to the first Hero Point I came across in the Jungle. It required a bit of exploration, the mobs were a little dense and frustrating, but the experience wasn’t that bad. I found the thing (in the ruins south of the starting point) and pushed F and got my 10 points. I was disheartened by being forced to waste 163 points on junk that I wasn’t going to use for the core class, but things were looking up. I had Reaper ‘unlocked’ and getting that first challenge wasn’t miserable. I could do this.
• I equipped Reaper. I didn’t even get the shroud — that comes in another 15 points. Whatever, I equipped it, got the skin (which is slick, love that skin) and slapped it on my ascended sword. The greatsword is amazingly well designed. I can let theorycrafters pick apart the numbers all they want, but the feel of the thing is just fantastic. Each one of the 5 weapon skills has purpose, reasons to push or to not push, to burn immediately or wait for an opening, to create or abuse field synergy. As a Necromancer, this is an especially amazing feeling. Remember, all we’re used to is mashing 1. Getting 2-4 (and having 5 be something other than creating a persistent DoT) is a huge deal for us. Anet did solid on this. It’s just fun. Something on Necromancer is actually fun!
• I “find” a few more Hero Challenges and by “find” I mostly mean “Well, I see them on the map, but I can’t get to them because I don’t have the masteries necessary.” but I do get to a couple that I can reach and solo. One was a jumping thing that would have been easier with shroom bouncing, but I was able to clamber up the stepped wall. Another was a bunch of wasps followed by a Veteran fight that was easy enough to sidestep and whittle down. In the course of this, I unlock basic gliding.
• I get my Reaper Shroud unlock. I don’t know why the entirety of a minor trait simply unlocks the class mechanic that should be part of the initial Reaper investment, but whatever. Again, I have more buttons! The new shroud, like the Greatsword, offers a lot of flexibility and a good, responsive, fun toolkit. My days of mashing 1 are over!
• More and more of the Hero Challenges I encounter are either unreachable, unusable (because if I glide to the point I’m still not ‘worthy’) or are Champion fights, which park me squarely on my bum until enough people congregate to make the fight possible. This could be as little as a few seconds or as long as several dozen minutes depending on how out-of-the-way the Challenge is. If the points aren’t ludicrously out of the way, they’re in or behind thickets of several dozen enemies, hard to solo pull, and hard to run through or from.

After 10+ hours of playing in the Jungle, I have unlocked the following for Reaper: The elite specialization itself (which I had 95% of already, going into the Jungle), the first Minor Trait, the first skill, and the first adept trait. That’s it. I can hamstring myself by effectively not having any traits (Augury of Death doesn’t do much since I only have one shout to use, and it’s my heal, and Shroud Knight does nothing except grant me the class mechanic that I should have gotten at 60 points with the Greatsword) in one of my lines, or I can go back to the “full build” of Dagger/Borehorn and resume mashing 1 until my fingernail falls off but at least I’ll have 3 trait lines like a level 80 is supposed to and expected to have.

This ludicrous point grind is forcing me to choose between ‘fun’ and ‘function.’ Is there any possible, rational explanation as to why a formerly “max-level” character is forced to make this choice, other than to simply pad out content via grinding? I don’t want something for nothing, but is it too much to ask for the Elite Specs to be acceptable alternatives out of the gate rather than direct downgrades until several hundred hero points are spent getting a full trait line?

When going from level 1 to 80, it makes sense to slowly fill in new functions, mechanics, and perks. It makes sense — as you level a character, it gets more powerful. It doesn’t make sense that a level 80 is forced to reduce the power of his or her character in order to experience the so-called “horizontal progression.” There’s nothing horizontal about downgrading yourself and then having to scale a mountain to get back up to an “alternative, optional” playstyle.

It’s taken me over 10 hours to go from “totally hobbled” to “still totally hobbled” because my only trait affects skills I don’t have access to, and those skills (and the rest of the traits I’m ‘sacrificing’ by using an incomplete spec) are still several hundred arduous “Hero Points” away. It’s simply not fun. It isn’t fun to feel like I have to choose between being underpowered but liking my new playstyle, or going back to my former function but being bored to tears because core Necro is a one-dimensional snore-fest.

And all of this is on my main. I’m not even thinking about my alts at this point. I wanted to try a Staff/Pistol+Pistol Daredevil. Nope. I wanted to tome a Revenant to 80 and try Herald. Nope. Dragon Hunter? I wasn’t impressed with it during the BWE, but thought maybe I’d still try it. Nope. This feels like a complete about face and the total antithesis of what I thought GW2 was supposed to be about. I thought cosmetics and rare loot were supposed to be the hook, the timesink, the reason to grind. I didn’t think basic character functionality and a major selling point of the expansion were supposed to be awards handed out only after ‘beating’ most of the game. At this rate, you should make it so that people can’t use their Elite Specialization until after they’ve completed the raid, in addition to the Jungle.

Sorry for the wall-of-text. I just feel like when Gaile quotes out a powergamer that did “everything he wanted” (the phrasing tells me he got one grandmaster, didn’t get the other two, and didn’t get the elite skill, so even that guy wasn’t ‘done’) in 18 hours and is all “There, see, it’s doable if you don’t eat or sleep, and only use the bathroom at your desk, everything’s fine!” then it’s only fair to give a detailed account from the perspective of someone who is utterly frustrated by this expansion release, when I should be excited and enjoying it.

TL;DR: I’ve spent at least 10 hours in the Jungle within the first 25 hours of release. I still don’t have a mathematically viable elite spec. I’m not even remotely close. I still won’t be mathematically viable for dozens more in-game hours, given my current rate of progress and the way the rewards are staggered. I won’t be able to play 10 hours per day every day. Friday was an anomaly and a launch celebration for me. Today, for example, I haven’t had time to get in-game at all. I was crazy-exited for this expansion. I couldn’t wait for it to come out. Now I have to seriously consider if I want to log in.

Welp, I’m about ready to uninstall. I’m running around as a kitten trashheap reaper that doesn’t have a single trait unlocked, ignoring everything remotely exciting or engaging about the new content just to locate the general vicinity of hero challenges…. and 80% of the ones I’ve found so far I can’t actually reach because I don’t have the traversal masteries needed.

This is garbage. It’s as “anti-fun” as it can possibly be.

Vavume.8065:

Endlos.4852:

Vavume.8065:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

My biggest problem with it is this, why am I being forced to unlock core specializations that I never use in order to get to my Elite Spec?

You do not become a blackbelt in matrial arts without first obtaining the lower level belts, its basically the same theory.

This is a bad analogy, and doesn’t fit the rhetoric we were fed regarding “Elite” Specializations. Per the developers themselves, Elite Specs aren’t supposed to be direct upgrades.

Actually It’s a perfectly good analogy, Elite specs are something you have to work up to, just as you do with a black belt, you cannot skip stages, and you cannot skip traitlines, all must be completed first before unlocking the elite. I’m sorry if you are unable to see that, but it’s a fact.

Nope, it’s faulty logic; I spent 5 long paragraphs empirically destroying your analogy. If you’re going to quote out my first two sentences, then plug your ears and parrot “Nah, you’re wrong” without acknowledging anything else I wrote, then I’m sorry you are unable to see the facts. At least I now know to just skip over your posts in the future to save myself a bit of time when I’m keeping up with the thread.

Vavume.8065:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

My biggest problem with it is this, why am I being forced to unlock core specializations that I never use in order to get to my Elite Spec?

You do not become a blackbelt in matrial arts without first obtaining the lower level belts, its basically the same theory.

This is a bad analogy, and doesn’t fit the rhetoric we were fed regarding “Elite” Specializations. Per the developers themselves, Elite Specs aren’t supposed to be direct upgrades. They aren’t supposed to be required, and they aren’t supposed to make you more powerful than your base class. They’re supposed to be trade-offs that offer alternate playstyle and/or utility that the core class lacked. For most classes, this is accurate. About the only class getting a raw, direct upgrade is Necromancer -> Reaper, and that’s only because base Necromancer is, by most accounts, a trash heap.

The 5 existing core specs for each class aren’t lower level belts. The Elite Spec isn’t a black belt. You’re not supposed to be required to use it. It occupies one of the same 3 slots that any other trait line would occupy, and has the inherent trade-offs associated with it. By stated design intent, it’s an option for players to play their class in a new, unique way. It’s also a major selling point of the expansion pack. If it were a raw power upgrade, and was billed as such, then sure, it would make (some) sense to require “mastery” (see what I did there?) of your core class before you could unlock the “upgrade” but Elite Specs were never once pitched as an upgrade.

Basically, your analogy is perfectly fine in a parallel universe where Anet described Elite Specializations as direct upgrades, they didn’t occupy existing build mechanics (thus were ‘free’ and had no downsides to using them) and Anet expected/demanded everyone to use them. In this universe, the unlock structure says “upgrade, direct player progression, mandatory” while the actual mechanics say “optional, side-grade, but potentially really fun and refreshing new toy.”

The fun new-but-not-necessarily-more-powerful thing that people have been excited for for months has been walled up behind a grind that says Do X, Y number of times until your character improves in power by Z%. The input isn’t matching the output.

Back to Engineers (I use them as an example because it’s really obvious to people, even those that don’t play the class, that their lines are extremely different in terms of style and flavor) — At a conceptual level, a Scrapper’s Drones aren’t supposed to be better than Turrets or Elixirs. Drones are supposed to be new and different. Turrets don’t require the player to first master Elixirs, because they have nothing to do with each other. Likewise, Elixirs don’t require the player to first master Turrets. However, Drones, which are not supposed to be better and are not supposed to completely supplant Elixirs or Turrets for some inexplicable reason require the player to have mastered both Elixirs and Turrets. It’s faulty logic, and a transparent attempt at forcing a grind and content funnel.

Zaklex.6308:

To all of those that seem to be floored by this announcement…you just proved that the human race does not pay attention very well. I’ve known for a long time it would take HP to unlock the Elite Spec and you wouldn’t be able to get all of it right off the bat. What I refuse to do though is tell you where the information is at, find it for yourself…the only thing we didn’t know what the total number of HP needed, but I knew my ~200 existing on several character wasn’t going to be enough to unlock the entire Elite Spec!

Until Colin’s post yesterday, we had no idea that the elite spec would require us to 100% unlock the base class before letting us touch the new toys.

I expected a huge hero point investment. That’s why I saved 100-220 points on my level 80s in anticipation of elite specs. What I did not expect was that I’d have to dump literally hundreds of points into traits and skills that I will never use just to get the ability to start spending points on the fun new thing I paid for.

It doesn’t make any sense, and it doesn’t fit the pre-existing philosophy of the game. An engineer doesn’t have to learn elixirs before he or she can learn turrets, but for some reason has to learn both elixirs and turrets (as well as everything else) before being able to learn how to use drones?

These elite specs were touted by the development staff as “alternatives, not direct upgrades” and yet their pricing and unlock structure fits exactly what an “upgrade” would constitute: Completely max out your class, then you can experiment with the so-called side-grade/optional playstyle; The “optional playstyle” requires you to first invest hundreds of points into stuff that you literally cannot even use all at once in a single build. It simply doesn’t make sense.

It’s made even more frustrating the way that “old world” hero challenges are completely invalidated since they are only worth 1/10th of the Jungle hero challenges, effectively funneling everyone that wants an elite spec into the new zone and trivializing the value of the old world content.

Basically, every single way this is set up reeks of “traditional linear theme park MMO expansion” where “increased level cap from 80 to 90” is replaced with “grind hero points in the new zones” and I thought Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be the different, special snowflake, not a grindy content funnel into the new parts of the map.

You know what would be fun?

Not being required to sink more than 120 points into trait lines that I don’t want and will never use just to unlock the ‘privilege’ of spending another few hundred on stuff that I do want to use.

There’s no good reason or excuse to require the player to 100% unlock the base class before accessing the elite specialization. I can only equip 3 trait lines at a time, including the elite. Why in the kitten would I need to have fully unlocked 5 trait lines before I can slot the 6th? The only answer that can be given is “well, it extends the grind” and if that’s the only answer, then you need to rethink the design.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Unlocking your elite spec is a training line in your training panel that costs hero points. You do need to have trained all the existing training lines before you’re allowed to put hero points into your elite spec.

If you’ve got all the hero points in the existing game you’ll have enough to train about half the elite specialization training line on launch day. The rest you’ll need to earn in the jungle or via the new system Tyler outlined yesterday from WvW.

Uh, I don’t know how to politely phrase this, but you (as in, Anet as a collective whole) need to rethink this right now, so that you can implement something else before the HoT goes live.

I don’t think a single person playing your game wants to unlock every single skill and trait line for a profession before being able to use an “optional, non-replacement and non-required” specialization. That point requirement that you are suggesting, on top of picking up every unwanted skill and trait, for lack of a better or more tactful word, is completely asinine.

Elite Specs need to cost similar amounts of points as other lines, or elite specs need to not require you to have unlocked everything else. One or the other. Not both. That’s absurd. It’ll kill alts.

Gimmicky, minimal payoff

evilapprentice.6379:

The more I think about it, the more I wonder…who designed DD? How did it get approved?

Pretty sure it’s the same guy that did Dragon Hunter and Tempest.

No further comment should be necessary, but I’ll highlight the disparity:

Look at some of the specs that Robert Gee has worked on. Chronomancer came out of the gate amazing. Reaper hit BWE#1 with a decent foundation, some under-tuned math, and a few really bad mechanics. Both professions got extremely lengthy, detailed feedback responses from Gee that highlighted player concerns and adjustments in attempt to address them. BWE#2 comes and Chronomancer is still awesome, Reaper saw massive improvements not just in its numbers tuning but some of its mechanics and skill function were changed. Berserker felt unimpressive to me so far, because the new Zerk class skill seemed to be way too gimmicky just for the sake of being gimmicky with little-to-no tangible payoff, but I have full faith that Gee will take player concerns to heart and Zerk will improve for BWE#3 the same way Reaper improved for BWE#2.

Now look at DH and Tempest. The first responses after BWE#1 came later than Gee’s comments on his babies, were brief, and entirely missed the mark in many cases (“People seemed to like ______” when the overwhelming feedback was that ______ had no purpose and was actually detrimental to use) and proposed nothing more than some math adjustments even to skills that were obviously mechanically broken and almost no mention of trait fixes. Later responses conceded that other stuff needed work, too, but little of it would be done in time for BWE#2.

I like the concept of Daredevil, but, frankly and sadly, I don’t think nor expect we’ll see that concept fully realized within the game.

Wasn’t the first thread about this exact same thing enough?

Also, I love the look of the scythe, don’t change it.

I sincerely hope that they do not turn any of the current Reaper stuff into a GTAOE or skillshot. The game is already over-cluttered with that mechanic on too many other weapons and skills, and I actually appreciate that I can play Reaper without ever having to fish around for my mouse cursor and a range indicator in a PVE dogpile.

Bishop.7140:

Please stick to your original game design with no trinity.

Because every build in the game (save for an extremely small handful of super-niche specs) should only ever wear one stat combination out of the ~25 available for all PVE content in the game.

Mord.9237:

I’m curious about a P/P D/P build, just so sad to believe the loss of one trait can be the bane of an entire fun concept, and 1 of our 4 weapon sets..

That’s because the only thing P/P ever had going for it is that it was a fun concept. P/P wasn’t good with Ricochet, it was merely livable. P/P has stupidly low damage and is a massive initiative hog. But it was the longest-range option that the thief had, and it had some incidental splash AOE that helped make it a good “range tag” kit like Shortbow.

Now it just has stupidly low damage and is a massive initiative hog; It’s not that the removal of Ricochet killed a good weapon set, it’s that the removal of Ricochet made what was already thief’s worst weapon set even worse, because Dual Pistols weren’t ‘pure’ unless there was absolutely zero reason to ever use them. Anet logic.

Seabreeze.8437:

I spent some time over the weekend sketching up some storyboard concepts of what I feel skills 2, 3, 4, and 5 should look like, along with some notes about them. To anyone interested, please feel free to take a look at them and let me know what you think.

You have put at least 10 times more thought and effort into the staff animations than ArenaNet has.

Each of your mockups is leagues better than what we saw this weekend. If I were to nitpick, I don’t quite agree with you on vault; I do agree that it should be an actual vault, but I think the ‘helicopter spin’ would be just as ‘over-the-top’ as the fancy flippy stuff we have. I’d personally do the initial vault as you suggest, but simply finish the attack with a simple, downward vertical overhead swing that smacks the staff down flush with the ground upon landing. Actually, what I’m imagining for Vault’s impact is exactly what you suggested as the “corkscrew staff slam” for the Charge.

My quibbling aside, though, your suggestions are all fantastic and any of them are the Daredevil we deserve… and the one we need right now.

I like the scythe, I hope they don’t change it.

It’s a spectral weapon. It’s okay if it clips.

Zenith.7301:

Although I don’t know why we keep asking for more mitigation when our problem is not mitigation, but RECOVERY.

It’s a related, but separate issue. I’m not saying our heals are or aren’t in a good place. Honestly, I’m not even saying our mitigation is or isn’t in a good place.

All I’m saying is that we currently have a trait that gives us damage mitigation that is contingent upon the presence of a status effect that can’t be applied to ‘difficult’ or ‘important’ PVE targets and is hard to maintain on any other target unless we sacrifice our ‘correct’ rotation just to keep reasonable chill uptime. That is flawed design. It’s only a step above “Take 10% less damage from blind foes” and then logic would say “But, if the foe is blind, it doesn’t hit us anyway, this trait’s function is useless!”

Is giving us reliable 10% damage reduction going to magically fix everything and anything wrong with the class? Of course not. But, right now, the damage reduction on Cold Shoulder is near-worthless. It might as well not even exist.

I said it after Beta Weekend #1 and I’ll say it again:

The damage reduction from cold shoulder needs to be divorced from the chill requirement.

Chill is too hard to maintain on a target (and, currently, won’t even stick to important PVE targets like champs, bosses, or apparently anything with a “break bar”) for the extra survival that Reaper needs to be in melee with a Greatsword and a Shroud that is 100% close-quarters.

Having our specialization’s damage reduction tied to a fickle, finicky condition makes that damage reduction completely unreliable. Reaper isn’t even supposed to be using his auto-attack (easiest way to apply chill) against a sub-50% target.

My proposal remains “Receive 10% less damage from targets within range 300.” to keep that “Oh crap, the monster is on top of me!” feeling.

If people are still complaining that Reaper Shroud melts too fast, then that can be further baked into the trait: “Receive 10% less damage from targets within range 300. Damage reduction and range double (20%, range 600) when in Shroud.”

kash.9213:

Impact.2780:

Edit: Just did a quick check to be sure, and it turns out it’s the same travel distance as a normal dodge after all. This is surprising because both myself and a friend yesterday swore it was a longer distance, and it really affected the flow of our combat. He even stuck by that when he switched to duel me on another class. I wonder what it is that makes it feel like you’re going further, because I swear it messes up positioning. Perhaps it’s the cast time and or after cast? If so, great, please fix that and it’s two birds with one stone!

I know exactly what you’re talking about, I checked this thread again to see if anyone said anything about it. I’m assuming it’s the aftercast because on normal dodge I can position while staying within swing range of my target pretty consistently. With the new dodge animations, I found myself have to trot a step or two back or forward to get within swing range again and that I couldn’t position on any directional side of my target reliably.

To further echo (and maybe hopefully explain) this feeling is that the new dodges seem to have wonky interaction with body-blocking.

If I (normal) dodge roll forward when I’m standing directly in front of my target, I roll through the target and end up directly behind it.

If I (bounding leap) dodge forward when I’m standing directly in front of my target, I seem to hang up on some kind of bodyblocking interaction. I do not end up directly behind it, but rather shunt off slightly behind and slightly to one side or the other. It makes me feel like I over-extend, and it takes me a few extra milliseconds to recognize my new position and reorient myself accordingly. If the target reacts during this time (adjusting to my new position) this ‘disorientation period’ is even longer.

Is it too much to ask for a single, high damage initiative attack that doesn’t displace the thief and isn’t cumbersome to use?

On the movement front:

• Dagger 2 (Heartseeker) bounces you around on targets with large hitboxes
• Sword/Dagger throws you all over the place
• Dagger/Dagger bounces you up and over targets
• Dagger/Pistol 3 teleports you (triggering an animation hitch) even if you’re on top of the target
• Pistol/Dagger 3 teleports you away from the target

On the cumbersome front:

• Shortbow 2 uses ground-targeting and requires timing a second keystroke to maximize output, and cannot be spammed easily since you can’t have more than one arrow in the air at a time
• Sword/Pistol 3 roots you and locks your facing for a long time

Pistol/Pistol is the Thief’s only fluid, responsive weapon loadout that doesn’t forcefully displace you, except Pistol/Pistol effectively doesn’t exist due to how unbelievably terrible its damage is.

I thought the elite specializations were supposed to push professions in new or unusual directions. Staff is just more of the same:

• Staff 1 – Slow, cumbersome, feels like S/P3
• Staff 2 – More forced movement, terrible damage
• Staff 3 – More forced movement, presumably a setup for bounding back to the target, but the dodges are all stiff as well
• Staff 4 – Terrible damage
• Staff 5 – Great damage but more forced movement, even if you are already on top of your target, with awkward animation windup and after-effect locks.

Seriously, can thief please just get a single initiative-spammer that doesn’t forcibly and often-times needlessly relocate the thief and isn’t painful to use?

Completely lacking fluidity.

From a PVE perspective, I’m running Valk armor+weapon, and Zerker trinkets.

Spite, Soul Reaping, Reaper. Greatsword+Staff (only using the staff when I absolutely cannot melee)

Decimate Defenses coupled with Reaper’s insane ability to solo-stack vulnerability gives 50% crit chance, the Zerker trinkets give me another ~22%, and then if a party member happens to toss Fury my way, I’m operating at over 90% crit chance in or out of shroud. This lets me take Dhuumfire, which actually does decent damage even on a zero-condition-damage build just from might stacks and the rapid application from RS1.

If I were to swap out, say, the chest Valk piece for a ’Zerker chest (and possibly made the jump from Exotics to Ascended) that would probably sit me at or near an even 100% crit rate once vuln was fully stacked on the target.

I’m just sad that there are no Valk ascended trinkets…

Jasper Defthand.3018:

Belinda’s Greatsword and chainwhip sword.

These things. I want them. And the Grenth hood.

Gaile Gray.6029:

There are a few relatively minor visual issues with this outfit, QA stated this morning. They will be fixed as soon as possible.

Extremely minor gripe, because I love the outfit over-all, but is there any plan to look at the feet?

I know it’s incredibly nitpicky, but, at least on human male, the feet are incredibly tiny. They’re a bit short and extremely flat/thin. They’re a bit flat on norn males, too, but it isn’t quite as noticeable. I can toss some screenshots up later if anyone needs it, but the issue shouldn’t be too hard to spot. Just look at human/norn male feet wearing nearly any heavy armor graphic, then look at them with the Royal Guard outfit turned on.

I’ve got a really stupid question:

Why is trickery assumed to be included in nearly every Thief build ever? All I see it offering is some minimal boonshare on steal that can easily be covered by other classes, and 15% damage assuming you sit at Init cap.

Is there some great gimmick to it that I’m missing? I don’t use Trickery at all on my Thief, and had zero intention of including it in a DD build, but it seems so popular that I have to assume I’m doin’ it wrong.

(Talking from PVE perspective, for what that’s worth)

I love it, and will use it on my Guardian, Warrior, and probably my Revenant.

Too bad I still haven’t gotten mine yet.

Augh, someone’s gotten two of them and I still don’t have mine?!?

My salt is real. I love the look of that thing. I want it on my body. Now.

This might be a newbie-level question, but isn’t steal (base steal) kind of…. crap?

I’m really disappointed that it doesn’t appear to be getting replaced with anything more consistent. As it is, it seems like you have to load it up with traits just to make it worth pushing as anything other than a gap closer.

zapv.8051:

Endlos.4852:

The game’s PVE content should not be designed such that it is most-efficiently cleared with all participants wearing the exact same, purely offensive stat combination.

As opposed to what? Something that requires a perfect party comp like in other games? Maybe we will see something close to that with the supposed challenging content, but it would go completely against anet’s philosophy for general content. Currently you can do the overwhelming majority of content naked so that any build will work, this is very much intended. The reason berserker is best is because you take the most risk by having no armor, and aoe buffs effect direct damage better than condi.

If you don’t like this, why not just go play wow or something. They have forced roles, which seems to be what you want. People have been making your complaint for a long time now, and it has been explained many many times why anets decision is both justified and within their design of the game.

If Berserker is the only relevant gear in PVE by clearly being the best, then why are there other gear options? It’s bad, narrow game design, whether you want to spin it as anti-WoW or not. If every choice but one is incorrect, then there’s no point to having the other choices.

I’m not saying the game needs an enforced, dedicated Tank/Healer/(De)Buffer trinity system; I’m saying that the game is pretty horribly balanced when we have ~26 different item stat combinations but nearly every single build in the game should be using precisely one of them for nearly all PVE content.

There’s no “justifying” having 25 useless stat combinations show up as loot in PVE, and having only one blatantly ideal choice removes a lot of potential build variety not just in terms of gearing and playstyle but even in actual character skill setups and choices.

There’s no “justifiable” reason that Anet couldn’t develop interesting, engaging encounter mechanics that more heavily rewarded a balance of survival, direct damage, condition damage, hard-and-soft CC, and/or healing. There’s a huge gap between “LF1Tank” and simply suggesting players maybe, possibly invest in a few stats besides full Power, Precision, and Ferocity.

EDIT — And, to bring my rambling back on-topic, Necro really feels the brunt of this limited game design, because all of the tools that Necro has simply aren’t that useful in a game full of might-stacking Zerkers. As others have said, it’s not that Necro has nothing to offer, but rather what they offer doesn’t fit into the extremely narrow and one-dimensional PVE content. Hopefully, the “challenging group content” will fix this. Ideally, any encounter (re)designing will be retroactively applied to Tyria’s existing content, to foster and encourage more build variety than what we’re currently seeing. Will Necro still need some love and balance tuning? Of course. But the gap between the “required” classes and the “unwanted” will be a lot narrower than it is now.

ODB.6891:

MeveM.7913:

Im placing my hope on zerker builds being made impossible to run and lower the massive damage gap between classes.

You can’t help but love a mind set like this. Because my class sucks, lets make everyone else suck too…instead of fixing my class. No one else is allowed to have fun because I’m not having fun.

It’s not an entirely selfish argument, though. There are so many different gear, build, and stat combinations in the game and exactly one of them is preferred/demanded/required by nearly all PVE content in the game. That’s a problem with game design and isn’t a problem just with necromancer.

If you can’t might stack or help skip trash, your build has nothing to offer a dungeon group. The best you can hope for is to get a “hanger-on” generic DPS spot. Then even within that “eh, we’ll take this guy as our 5th” there’s a huge disparity between how much damage some classes can sustain versus others.

The game’s PVE content should not be designed such that it is most-efficiently cleared with all participants wearing the exact same, purely offensive stat combination.

I’m thinking either Swampblack or Caustic from the Deathly Dye Pack. Maaaaybe Toxin, but that might be a little too bright.

Kocoff.7582:

All of you switching chars cause Thief is getting Staff;
All of you who will stop playing because Thief is getting Staff;

GOOD RIDDANCE, I tell you. For it shows how questionable your loyalty to the profession was in the first place. You didn’t even see traits or weapon skills but act like you are agonizing in injustice and oozing of some imaginary unsatisfactory performance by Anet.

I’m tentatively excited for staff, depending on what they do with it. If it can differentiate itself from the glut of playstyles already offered in melee and be mathematically viable to make it an attractive option, then I’m on-board.

That being said, I don’t main thief, and a staff won’t suddenly make me main thief. I won’t main a profession that doesn’t have a good ranged option/backup available. Shortbow is decent but more used for the utility (dem teleports) than single-target throughput, and Pistol/Pistol is a joke.

Will staff be fun to screw around with and add to an already well-established close-range playstyle? Hopefully. Will it truly enhance the class or allow it to break into a new area or function like a rifle, or heck, even functional pistol/pistol could have? Incredibly doubtful.

Can pistols get ricochet back, please? Maybe some math/balance/initiative cost adjustments?

Pistol/Pistol was already pretty bad, then Anet went and made it worthless. A lot of the Rifle hopes were riding on the idea that thief may one day get good (or even decent) ranged option.

Warcry.1596:

Everytime I visit this forum people complain about something some other profession got being way better than Necromancer.

Why does it matter if Necros are in the meta or not? I survive better on my necro than most of my other professions. I don’t think necros are useless, or maybe I just don’t care about that stuff :|

There’s a lot to be said for stigma and public perception. I plan to main Reaper once HoT drops because I like the theme and feel of it, regardless of how good it actually is or isn’t. However, it will be immensely disappointing if Reaper/Necro is still in such bad shape that some groups refuse to take them to certain content because of their perceived (justly or not) lack of damage combined with their (objective) near-total lack of party utility or synergy. No fire field, no blast finisher, and no way to share might puts them in a really rough spot, and their innate durability (compared to some other classes) doesn’t mean anything in PVE when PVE is all about “Group does as much damage as it can, as fast as it can, nothing else matters.”

Personally, I think that the massive amount of long-duration Vuln that Reaper can stack should be counted as “party utility” but it seems to be disregarded because a lot of classes can stack smaller amounts of vuln and when you add them all up, it trivializes Reaper’s ability to solo-stack it like a madman. Moreover…

Might-stacking in general is too good, too important, and, frankly, unnecessarily overpowered. It creates a situation where any “serious” group needs a certain combination of classes to be considered fully effective. It mandates that your group has a Warrior, or a staff Ele+Blasts, or (soon) a Herald. That’s bad, narrow design for a game that supposedly doesn’t use the trinity system.

If might only stacked to a much-more-easily-achievable-by-most-classes-and-group-comps total of 10, and 10 stacks either provided the same benefit as 25 currently does, or the content was rebalanced to account for less mightspam, then the state of PVE class balance would be in a much better place.

Maybe it’ll be useful?

That would be the best change.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

From what they’ve released so far there’s no reason to switch from my current DPS or Phalanx build for PVE end game content (read: Fractals).

Yep, because only knowing one utility, the two weapon skills, and some vague details about the new class mechanic (and not knowing how it will apply to or change 5 of our 7 burst skills) and having no math or number tallies or traits at all is totally enough information to decide whether or not a spec is viable.

SMH

From what they’ve released so far, there’s no reason for me to change my Engineer, Thief, or Ranger builds, either.

Having the choice of using the “regular” burst skill or the new burst skill seems counter-intuitive to the design, in my opinion.

Once activated it cannot be cancelled and the player will continue going berserk for its duration. For this skill we wanted to emphasize the rage and loss of control that comes with the idea of being a Berserker.

I’m guessing that it replaces F1 entirely. Fill up (regular) bar, F1 to Zerk for X seconds, F1 flips to Primal Burst during Zerk. Being able to willingly ignore the Berserk functionality and play the spec as a normal warrior with a new trait line just doesn’t match up with the theme in the above quote.

Nilkemia.8507:

Greatsword too slow.

Traits are garbage.

Shroud best part.

Salt is real.

Big kitten sword.

Azoqu.8917:

Riranor.6315:

Azoqu.8917:

I have to ask you all, did anyone else notice that bow #1 would only bounce if the second target was behind the first? I found that really annoying having to change targets all the time in order to hit both. I don’t know if it was a bug I was getting or something else entirely.

“Fire an arrow which can bounce to the enemies behind your target. If an arrow hits a second target, all enemies struck are crippled.”

Thats the skill, not a bug.

I was hoping that was not the case, having to change targets constantly is going to be a pain in the kitten and will continue the theme of the Dragonhunter being super awkward to use. Though that might be the point of the Dragonhunter, to be completely unusable without jumping through hoops to get even the smallest bit of efficiency.

For what it’s worth, it’s an inverse of what the other projectile classes have to do: Penetrating rounds on Rifle and Bows are extremely awkward and unreliable if you are targeting the closest enemy, so instead you always want to try to target the enemy in the back of the pack to ensure that the shot will go straight and pass through everything between you and it.

I’m not saying it to defend DH, or the DH Bow, because I was unimpressed with it during the BWE as well, I’m just saying that many ranged weapons on most/all of the professions have this sort of uncomfortable behavior.

I don’t main Ele, and don’t intend to, so forgive my potential ignorance.

One of the things I didn’t really see mentioned anywhere was the way Fresh Air and Overload (mostly don’t) interact.

From my limited testing, it seemed that Fresh Air basically did nothing unless you swapped out of Air to something else. Is this intended? A lot of the issues with Overload’s long charge-up, lockout, and cooldown could be (partially, for one attunement) alleviated if Fresh Air could reset you even if you remained in air.

The way I expected it to work was like this:

• Enter Air attunement
• Air charges for 5s
• Overload available
• Cast overload
• Post-cast, Air attunement goes on lockdown
• You land a crit, Fresh Air procs, lockdown evaporates
• Air charges for 5s
• Overload available

TL;DR: I didn’t expect Fresh Air to immediately make the Overload available for use again, but I certainly didn’t expect it to do nothing if I remained in Air Attunement post-Overload.

Apolo.5942:

Robert Gee.9246:

The original intent here was to make GS feel like more of an AoE weapon while dagger felt like more of a single target weapon. We tuned the damage ratios accordingly so that greatsword would have higher dps vs 3 or more targets as we didn’t want to devalue dagger as a melee weapon.

This approach of stat ratio balancing is wrong and we have already seen it fail on other things. It does not promote build diversity it instead restricts it by making one option extremely more optimal in a given environment versus another one.

Examples:
Guardian Shouts vs Meditations.
Guardian Hammer vs Great sword.

This will end up with GS being viable in pve and NOWHERE else.

Stat ratios being dps healing or what ever have you have to be on par and the skills utility has to define gameplay and thus style choice.

Given Equal Singe target dps. Dagger offers Life force generation, sustain and soft CC. GS offers some cleave, gap closer/interrupt. What you choose depends on how you like to play. Not on the fact that Dagger will be better (through multipliers and stat ratios) everywhere but while cleaving pve mobs in a corner.

I guess it’s a good thing that the sentence right after your quote cut off went on to explain that the original implementation was inadequate and they’ve readjusted things accordingly, resulting in sizable buffs to greatsword damage output. Given the massive extent of the changes and the detail that Robert went into, I think we should be tentatively appreciative and wait until the next BWE to see how the Reaper is shaping up. It’s getting a lot of improvements in a lot of key areas.

I think hostility at this point is better reserved for Elementatlists/Tempests. Compare the notes that Reaper got with the notes that Tempest got (2 skills per element adjusted, no other changes nor explanation behind the lack of them) and our Elite is definitely in a better, more flexible/receptive-to-feedback position than theirs is right now.

Shadowmoon.7986:

“Soul Eater – Similarly to Augury, this trait is heavily influenced by the current power of greatsword. It sounds like it’s a little weak right now, but I’d like to see how the other changes to greatsword affect the weapon before modifying this one.”
With the increase in CD with gravedigger, the skill has gotten worse. The life steal is the same, attack speeds have not changed. But all of this is moot because decimate defenses will always outshine it.
Basically no one will take it because it is worse now, and there a smarter choice to take in the same slot.

The lifesteal portion isn’t great, but the cooldown reduction actually improved as an indirect result of the Gravedigger changes. GD being spammable on a <50% target means that you’re almost doubling the recharge bonus to other skills.

Now, whether that is “enough” (honestly, it probably isn’t) for the trait to be good or not remains to be seen. It’s definitely not “worse” — an extra 3 second cooldown on Gravedigger for using it when you aren’t supposed to be using it in exchange for it being straight-up mashable when your target is in the proper HP range is a massive net gain for Soul Eater. Blow 3-5 when the target is above 50%, then grind them down with GD spam while recharging your other attacks in preparation for the next fight.

Again, that alone may (probably?) won’t make Soul Eater earnestly compete with Decimate Defenses, but as Robert said in his post, it’s probably better to change a few things at a time and see how they play out before changing all the tangential things that interact with the first things you changed.

All of this looks amazing. Seriously, it seems to cover and/or touch upon almost everything that was said about Reaper handling from the first BWE. I’m really looking forward to the next testing period.

I’d still like to see the incoming damage reduction from cold shoulder moved to something less “fickle” than a chill requirement, but I’ll reserve judgement until I can see how Reaper plays with the proposed improvements to chill uptime.

Cold Shoulder – I think this is underperforming a little, I thought the old version of it was fine, especially considering we effectively only get two minors.

I mentioned this in another thread, and I think it’s been touched on in this one as well, but I think the damage reduction of Cold Shoulder needs divorced from the Chill requirement. It seems fairly widely agreed upon that:

• Chill is pretty difficult to maintain on a target, even if you are trying to build toward as much chill as possible (at the cost of a lot of superior damage options)
• Wearing cloth in melee with no access to passive resistance or avoidance is extremely painful, and Reaper Shroud gets ripped down too quickly

Reaper needs a little bit of extra survival in CQC and it needs to not be contingent on the application of a difficult-to-maintain condition.

What I would propose is something like “Take 10% less damage from enemies within range 300, damage reduction and range double (20%, range 600) when in Reaper Shroud.”

A “regular” necromancer, even a dagger one, can duck back, pop Shroud defensively, and sit at a semi-comfortable distance and spam 1. A Reaper feels like it wants to use its shroud more proactively, to get into the thick of things and start slicing, but the bar just gets burned down too quickly.

For what it’s worth, a lot of comments in that article are fairly accurate. Namely: The Greatsword doesn’t do enough damage to justify its long cast times and relative lack of stability. Exact same deal with the Shouts. And the reach/range on a lot of Greatsword and Reaper Shroud skills could be bumped up a bit.

However, and this is the problem with a ‘prominent’ website publishing an article to act as pointed feedback, that guy’s build sucks. His trait choices are bad and lacking in synergy. By his own (clueless and ill-guided) “suggestions” he demonstrates that he doesn’t even know how Decimate Defenses actually works, but he lists ideas of how to “fix” it, even if his ideas being implemented would actually severely reduce the effectiveness of the trait.

TenTon guy took a metabattle build for live and Dagger+WH/Staff, ripped out one of the trait lines, dropped Reaper in, presumably replaced one of the weapons with Greatsword, changed nothing else, and ignored a lot of synergy opportunities within Reaper and with other trait lines he kept. He appeared to go for a Power/Condi mix (given his obsession with chill and chill damage) which is usually a no-no, but even then didn’t connect all the proper dots to make a chill-focused build.

Yes, Reaper needs some love in the math department, and maybe a little bit in the mechanics department (GS and Shouts need to hit like trucks if they’re going to remain that slow, and/or need to have a lot of built-in stability) but I’ve seen that bloody TTH article linked in multiple threads here, and on Reddit, and it needs to stop. While he makes a lot of valid points, they’re a little undercut by the fact that he really doesn’t know what he’s doing, given his bad build and ability to babble about fixing a trait he doesn’t understand. If 95% of what you say is factual, but 5% is demonstrably flawed, people are only going to remember the 5% and use that to discredit the 95%, no matter how legitimate it may be.