Guild Wars 2

Yep, nothing has officially been said about limiting free transfers. One of the issues regarding free transfers is that if you have transferred you’re probably not receiving the world bonuses from your new home.

Casuals can’t really enjoy most of the game. I started another character recently and I could find nowhere near the amount of dynamic events I had with previous characters. The game is awefully boring without lots of players in the map.

Yep totally amazing. I really think this will sum up the general thinking: the game is very well designed and flawless, if you find it otherwise it’s your problem only. Please keep that in mind when buying another game from this software developer.

600 points! imagine the total bonuses by the end of the week. I’ll be there as soon as a spot opens up

FatHitman.5074:

Ambrosiaa.6054:

FatHitman.5074:

Kyiv.9621:

FatHitman.5074:

Wow such hate for BG

They have an influx of individuals that will give them a bad name. See above. Shame, seemed like the Blackgate community was decent and worked hard and now the bandwagon transfer train has ruined them. HoD v2.0

As a day 1 member of BG, I can tell you that we are actually really good at WvW. I really don’t see our alliance losing people do to bandwagons. Really we will just wait it out and grind for better gear and just wait for a better match-up. Now the people who are joining the server just because we are good will eventually find another server to go to.

So in all our WvW alliance are very skilled and organized. That is the main reason we are winning all the time. So don’t hate on BG just because people decide to play follow the leader. That is just life.

The main reason you STARTED winning all the time is because almost every single WvW guild from HoD and ET xfered to BG.

So you are telling me that since day 1? So they transferred on day 1? Seems off to me. We have been winning or coming in close second since day one.

Don’t worry, BG is only temporary. When it hits #1 another server with potential will be chosen to receive the transfers. Bringing servers up rank is a very good way to meet faces to roll.

Sarrs.4831:

I think we should probably wait until they disable free transfers before making a judgment.

We should also tell ANet to disable free transfers.

I really don’t think disabling free transfers is the answer to this. Players that jump servers because they want to be in the winning side are numerous enough to shift balance. Then they’re followed by those that while they can accept losses, being roflstomped so much is unbearable for them (including me as I am really considering abandoning my server as I get instantly ganked by thieves the moment I step out of my base and I do like WvWvW siege concept). So disabling free transfers would lock these players in the state their servers are at this moment and will most likely quit playing, thus worsening even more the situation.

It just happens faster in GW2 due to the permission to change “factions” or servers: population imbalance when it comes to PVP.

“If you can’t beat them, join them.”
In other MMOs faction based pvp tends to die people just create characters in the winning faction, it just happens slowly because on some it’s forbidden or have associated costs and then players usually have to start new characters from scratch.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Companies would rather allow faction or server switching because they rather not quickly lose a significant portion of the playerbase. So they need to satisfy most players’ desire of being in the winning side.
While an around 50/50 ratio would be enough to keep most players happy, this rate is currently unachieavable with the solutions implemented in MMOs.

I believe the challenge for the next generations of MMOs would be to design a system where PvP won’t be so severely affected by population imbalances.

GW2 has hit the spot regarding sPVP, where teams are formed regardless of “faction”. But WvWvW concept is flawed, and it’s not because of the lack of a third faction, a reason which is often pointed out as the cause of the failure of several MMOs plagued by population imbalance.

Thieves for sure… not counting the free hits till they get rendered they also get the ability to channel the finisher while stealthed when the opponent is downed.

If that’s the case the nerf will have nothing to do with grenades performance compared to other classes and only because there are lots of engineers using them. And while they do that I hope they don’t mess with pistols, bomb kit and elixir gun performance underwater because that’s what I use mostly and even in WvWvW I gave up on grenades after the cooldown “fix” to the blinding one.

I’ve run Elixir Gun for a while… Very good indeed, with lots of utility. The problem? Only a game breaking one… In WvWvW and specially DEs no loot for joo…

That’s why a lot of engineers get to use grenades.

But there are some decent options.

For the same grenade build I prefer to just equip a rifle, rifle turret, tool kit and grenade kit. I just stay in rifle, press 2 (nets the player), target under player, F4 (they will hit noobs 100% of the time), F3, F2 ,1 and it’s a guaranteed player kill if all attacks land while boosted by Static Discharge trait.

But now I’m tired of kit swapping, and the plethora of things you need to do for the class to perform barely acceptably with no margin for error to stay competitive, and I run dual pistols with elixirs 10/30/0/30/0 and it performs acceptably when farming Penitent Path, WvWvW or PVP.

Where is this myth about grenades being too powerful coming from?

Seriously. Underwater? Anything compared to harpoon underwater is overpowered.

The only decent number I see from using grenades is from the Toolbelt skill Grenade Barrage.

Grenades are good for tagging mobs in Orr, but mines/bombs are way better. I recently changed my spec to condition damage + pistol and haven’t seen any decrease in performance in that aspect. Just stay at max range for the explosive shots to work decently.

Well I just hope some other classes get “proper” fixes for their underwater performance by making harpoon gun the baseline standard.

Whirpool also got a decent nerf. Maybe other classes performance will also get tuned down, hunters are the first to come to my mind.

Zyrhan.3180:

I really do not understand the phantasm changes.

I haven’t done a ton of structured play on my Mesmer, but I wasn’t under the impression that the phantasm build was overpoweringly strong at this point. Even if it was, I sure as heck don’t see how a phantasm focused build would be overpowered in PvE.

So why in the world is the cooldown being increased?

In PvP, I’ll still have them up for the start of every fight, and shouldn’t have a major change in maintaining 2-3 phantasm uptime with pistol and greatsword. In champion fights of sufficient length, I’ll have the same ability to keep up a pair of phantasms and a cycling clone in many fights

Increasing the cooldown, to me, only seems to serve as a nerf to our general PvE ability against multiple normal mobs, and I don’t know how anyone could view mesmers as overpowered in that situation right now. Are we just not supposed to use phantasm traits unless we’re doing dungeons or PvP? Is that the intention? Because I’m going to keep my phantasm setup for general PvE usage, but it feels a lot like ANet doesn’t actually want me to play that way.

Exactly.

I really don’t get this as the deployment of phantasms in most PVP situations hasn’t changed at all. So Phantasm builds are basic the same specially in 1vs1 situations. Anyways you can kill noobs much faster using a shatter build.

But the changes significantly impact Mesmers in PVE which they are already very subpar (I haven’t leveled a necro or hunter or thief yet).

Voodoo Tina.4180:

Am I just unaware of how amazing other classes are?

You hit the spot.

No, mesmers can’t AoE not even close to fine. Or if you think that way other classes are super overpowered on that aspect. Because if a mesmer can AoE just fine in melee range against 3 mobs mostly classes can to it consistently to either many more or do it from range.

Invictus.1503:

So, I’m greatly enjoying my mesmer (rerolled into mesmer until they fix all the necro bugs) and thought I’d ask for opinions. I was curious as to what are peoples’ favorite phantasm and why (please give your reasons rather than just the phantasm’s name)

Are you really sure it was a wise decision to change bugs in one class to even more bugs on another class?

This entire thread is a great display of cluelessness. There’s really only one Phantasm that works well with Phantasm traits, the rest is only garbage due to bugs. This phantasm is the only one that allows perm regen and up to 100% protection uptime. It will prolly get “fixed” as well because some mesmers also think their dps is good because GS1 can reach 2500 dmg and the warlock can crit for 8k-12k. LOL they prolly have tried other classes and failed at doing proper dps with them.

About Phantasm traits there are even ones that are not compatible with others, that means taking both kittens the character.

Edit: BTW it has nothing to do with Phantasmal Haste.

Celestian.2689:

So you’re playing a class that is deemed one of the 2 best classes and you’re QQ-ing it’s not balanced. Go play ele, you’ll quit the game, not just the class :P

Maybe in “arenas” but not anywhere else. Because in RvR they are not so great. I would say probably one of the LEAST effective in RvR. I ended up dropping my 80 mesmer and switching to engineer because frankly the mesmer brings only a few gimmick utilities and no punch. In almost every case you are better off with another class.

Couldn’t agree more.

Honestly I love my Mesmer. But I can’t stand playing it outside of sPVP. I don’t want to kitten my server by bring it to WvWvW specially if I can get more fun and usefulness by bringing my engineer or my elementalist.

And for PVE I don’t even know how to start this. The class mechanic simply fails for most dynamic events, as the class lacks consistant and periodic AoE dmg to tag multiple mobs as waves of them come to the players. Phantasms doesn’t last after mob death so this source of damage is basically useless for many events. On long lasting encounters like bosses phantasms usually cannot stay alive very long to allow for a decent constant DPS. And condition damage is plagued by caps so that if there are a lot of players with condition damage only some of them will register their conditions.

So while Mesmers have skills that are situationally awesome in PVE, they fundamentally lack the bread and butter tools to perform acceptably on the general situations.

The nerf to the Warden (or “fix” if you prefer) reduced Mesmer ability to outstand in certain situations without any compensation for the poor performance in a more general scenario.

Report them. Let’s make the lives of those that hunts real threats a hell, so that real exploiters like teleporting hackers manage to get their way even longer.

There’s no timer on turrets. With the healing and toughness talents a turret can last for a very long time specially in lower level maps. Besides abilities can be set on auto use and that will replace a lost turret once off the cooldown.

RebelYell.7132:

Almost all the encounters, and most world champions to boot, are badly tuned, and if you ever speak up about it, players will scream “L2P” at you, because no one’s learned anything from D3 Inferno mode, or playing actual challenging games like Dark Souls.

Dark Souls now that was a good challenge. I struggled on the first area but then when I understood the game mechanics it became pure fun and I never liked Survival Horror games.

And I agree a lot of the encounters are very badly tuned. My first bad impression on the encounters came from the elemental boss in the Asure area. I was surrounded by players, turrets, clones, phantasms, pets, looking for a place to stay without anyone around me so I could move out of the attacks that could one shot. Most of the times there was no place to run to because multiple areas around me were also targeted.

While the L2P factor does play a significant role it becomes somewhat irrelevant because many times there’s simply no way to avoid death due to a horrible mechanic.

The level 80 zone does surely need some design attention.

When I was leveling a glass-cannon grenade engineer, exploring all of the maps, wearing only ravager equipment, it offered some challenge. But for a post leveling zone it fails imo.

The “challenge” was very satisfying when leveling on the other Orr maps.

On those 2 maps I was even considering respeccing to have some quickness and readying some condition removal skills to get rid of an occasional movement impairing effect and be able to explore more carelessly.

Glad I kept the glass cannon spec because sheer AoE damage is more effective in the last map since the ammount of CC inflicted by the mobs on that said map is just insane and then you need to stop to get rid of the pests anyways.

Now my engineer is at lvl 80 wearing only a single rare weapon and the rest of the “traveler’s” equipment of masterwork or fine quality, and having to stop every minute or so to get rid of 5+ mobs chasing me isn’t challenging, far from it. And it also doesn’t pose any difficulty for a fair share of players I’ve seen. It’s pure annoyance plain and simple.

On a side note the teleport fees need to be addressed ASAP. There’s a character level component on the amount that needs to be removed. When you’re in a lvl 1-15 zone you end up paying 1s+ per teleport while inside the zone with a character at level 80 and it costs just a few copper for a level 10 character. This is somewhat disencouraging for exploration of lower level maps as a level 80 character.