Guild Wars 2

@OP That depends on whether or not it has…

I can almost guarantee you the Guardian will get a longbow or shortbow. Guardians have been requesting a long-range 2H weapon for a very long time.

Also… it is my understanding that the point of specializations this that you have to choose what specialization you want. Otherwise it isn’t a specialization, it’s just an upgrade. So you should expect there will be 2-3 specializations to choose from per class.

For Guardian I can imagine that Monk or Cleric will probably be one of them. I can see “Blackguard” being one as well. I can also see a Paladin or Templar or something.

The release pattern for the finale of Living Story: Season One’s went like this:

• 6 weeks off to prepare for 4 updates.
• 4 updates occurring every two weeks for an 8 week period.
• One “filler” update with some story but not much gameplay.
• 4 weeks off to prepare for a “feature only” patch.

Together these updates lasted 16 weeks or 4 months. Obviously ArenaNet is taking some time off to ensure their updates are of a higher quality.
My observation is this: if ArenaNet releases 1 story arch and a batch of updated features every 4 months, how is that different from a standard MMO release schedule where one new patch releases every 4 months (except that GW2’s patches come in pieces and GW2 doesn’t have expansions)?

I’m just curious what other people’s opinions are about this. Does anyone else think this will be the new release schedule? /discuss

The release pattern for the finale of Living Story: Season One’s went like this:

• 6 weeks off to prepare for 4 updates.
• 4 updates occurring every two weeks for an 8 week period.
• One “filler” update with some story but not much gameplay.
• 4 weeks off to prepare for a “feature only” patch.

Together these updates lasted 16 weeks or 4 months. Obviously ArenaNet is taking some time off to ensure their updates are of a higher quality.
My observation is this: if ArenaNet releases 1 story arch and a batch of updated features every 4 months, how is that different from a standard MMO release schedule where one new patch releases every 4 months (except that GW2’s patches come in pieces and GW2 doesn’t have expansions)?

I’m just curious what other people’s opinions are about this. Does anyone else think this will be the new release schedule? /discuss

Nothing new about that. ArenaNet has always been all about the hype train; even since before the game launched.

I rarely visit these forums anymore but I logged in just to say +1

Pie Flavor.1647:

town clothing only

I hope not.

In other words… ArenaNet still writes like ArenaNet.

I also felt the relationship was forced; like the writers didn’t have anything else to make the story interesting. I thought their relationship was more intriguing when it wasn’t clear whether or not they were lovers.

phys.7689:

expansions take a long time, its pretty unlikely they could have one this year when they haven’t even conceptualized one yet

Is that why other MMO companies release expansions every year?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Personally I think a CDI on the BLT would be good to do at some point.

Chris

I second this notion.

I only care about one relationship in game —my enemies and their relationship with my fist.

What brings me down about GW2?

When I log into the game and don’t feel motivated to play because, whatever I do, I know I will end up as playing boring, repetitive content because that is the fastest way to earn rewards.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

A number of members of the CDI have mentioned hard locks on word counts so I wanted to address this.

We will not be putting a hard lock on word counts. Instead I will request that posts are as concise where appropriate and suggest a template for addition of new ideas and proposals.

Chris

What about being more precise when choosing a topic so the thread doesn’t reach 30 pages in 2 days?

Conski Deshan.2057:

I feel it would be really useful to have the team members the CDI effects actually post too. You do a great job at replying, but I feel that they could bring insight, maybe explain why an idea is unfeasable, explain a technical limitation we might not otherwise account for. Don’t be afraid to go technical.

The CDI I got the most value from was the Living Story one, because Chris (or someone) took a tough stand and explained in-depth why Arena Net is sticking with a bi-weekly patch schedule.
The CDI I got the least value from was Horizontal Progression because most devs posts just quoted a poster and said “I like this idea.” They didn’t go in depth or explain why.
I thought the whole reason for the Collaborative Development Initiative was for developers to learn what players want, and for players to learn why developers make the decisions they do and I’d like to see more posts of that nature.

Now if only two weapons of the same type no longer shared cooldowns. I would love to dual-wield two 2H-Swords on my Guardian with 4 stacking sigils. Har, har, har :{P

Nike.2631:

The Host-Dev could do a lot to expand our education and elevate the entire discussion with just a little effort right at the outset through a good Primer.

This would help tremendously. One thing I complained about in the last CDI was that the overhead post did not include a definition of Horizontal and Vertical progression. Even when I made a comment about this it still wasn’t added and people kept asking what the difference was.
It would also benefit the discussion to lock the title-post to the top of each page. That way it could be edited to include questions developers ask in the middle of the thread.

Yes, please. This has been brought up many times.

Morrigan.2809:

1)I like this a lot- we can start with a broad topic like Horizontal Development was and as soon as it becomes more focused split it into separate CDI threads.

How will a poster know when a topic they want to participate in is coming up? They wont unless they participate in a 30+ page topic conglomeration.

The issues with thread length mostly have to do with organization and this proposal makes the CDI process more unorganized.

Suggestion: Why not have a CDI topic poll every 3 months and tally up which topics get the most requested. Do them in order from most requested to least requested and at the end of 4 months have another poll for more subjects. If topics ever eventually dry up than you can reduce the frequency of CDI’s.
You might want to reduce the frequency anyways so no-one gets burned out.

Nike.2631:

The longest responses already circumvent the size limits of the boards by multiple posting. Now you might engage in more active moderation by simply deleting anything past the first post-in-a-series as a way of encouraging brevity, but I think the issue ultimately is the threads are open too long. The problem is more the accumulated volume rather than any one poster’s enthusiasm, and as the CDIs get more established you have to expect more people will participate and they will grow in length even faster than they do now. *Total length is the barrier to involvement.

On that note. It would help if CDI’s began on a certain date and ended on a certain date. People would know when the CDI ends, hop in to post their feedback, and come back only if they wanted to read others’ thoughts or participate in discussion.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

As a note. The two topics were separate and discussed as separate entities.

Chris

Yes, but even after they were split in half they were still too broad. The more gameplay systems a CDI touches upon the more there is for posters to brainstorm on and post about. Horizontal and Vertical progression both cover most of the game.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

1: We need to keep thread and post sizes more manageable. Should we put a limit on the word length of posts?

Pick narrower topics. “Horizontal vs. Vertical Progression” is almost as broad as you can get. When you pick broad topics like this it eats up developer time and poster time just trying to catch up with the thread and it discourages posters from posting.
You’re also getting feedback from a narrower group of people who have the time to read the posts and get caught up, and who also post actively (hence making the thread longer and contributing to the problem).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

1: More Focused Topics! (Done!)

I would argue this wasn’t accomplished the Horizontal/Vertical progression threads. You changed the community chosen subject —Ascended Gear-- to progression in general.

The devs never said they were going to make all builds balanced. What they said was “We’re already doing some things to address Berserker dominance in PvE. Stay tuned!”

For all we know “Adressing Berserker dominance” might have been referring to Living Story content. One dev said recently that the Tower of Nightmares already addressed DPS-dominance in a little way by making the Toxin unavoidable damage.

A lot of people had expectations based on over-speculation. For all we know the they might have been referring to Living Story content when they said this.

Ferocity converts critical-hit damage into a flat stat like power instead of a percent. For example:

Suppose a piece of gear gives you 120 power, 90 precision, and 5% crit damage. It will now give you 120 power, 90 precision, and 90 ferocity instead.

My understanding for why they did this is so that critical-hit damage can have diminishing returns. Diminishing returns means the higher a stat is the less beneficial it is to add more of it. For example:

Suppose every 10 points of precision gives you +1% chance to critical-hit. If precision has diminishing returns after 40% that means once you reach 40% you need more than 10 precision to gain +1% chance to critical-hit.

Does ferocity deal critical-hit damage as a % of your base damage? Or is it a flat damage bonus?

i.e. if personA has 200 power and 1000 ferocity, and personB has 1000 power and 1000 ferocity will they both do the same amount of bonus damage on a critical-hit? or will personB do more because his base damage is higher?

^^ At first I thought it meant double two-handed weapons no longer shared cooldowns. Then I realized it only effected sigils, hahaha. I thought 20/25/0/0/25 double Greatsword was going to be a thing, haha.

foofad.5162:

Basically the one saving grace is that they are affected by boons and healing.

Yeah, a spirit weapon-mace build wouldn’t be bad for open world PvE or maybe leveling.
What would that look like trait-wise though? Hmm…

EDIT: Guys, I discovered the new meta: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApdrEhgTBpIyKwSrHAsf+rqQ8uUkwHC-jgyAYLI0WApGBkIAl8kGziCpF3ioxqWwUlER1ejioVDA-e

spoj.9672:

I hate how the CDI threads shift to those peoples opinions who have the time to post essay after essay. The current thread had some really good ideas and then it got filtered to be talking about stuff that most people dont really care about. The vocal regular posters managed to steer the discussion towards what they wanted.

I suspect thats what will happen with the fractal thread as well.

Bring up this point the “process evolution” CDI. The devs need to stick to narrower subjects so the thread doesn’t end up 10 pages long in 2 days. “Character progression” is about as broad as you can get. Even the devs have a hard time keeping up with the thread.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Critical damage changes

http://youtu.be/Pw2sex1mJNI?t=5s

Josh Davis.6015:

Citizens,

This Friday at 2PM PST (22:00 GMT) we’ll be hosting another episode of Ready Up. I’ll be joined by Game Designers Jon Peters, Jon Sharp, Karl McLain, and Roy Cronacher.

In this episode we’ll be talking about a few of the things the Skills and Balance team is working on for the next balance update, including:

• Runes and sigil rework
• Critical damage changes
• New stat combinations for PvP (amulets)
• High-level overview of planned balance changes

You can catch the livestream at www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

We will have to wait until Friday to see if there are any more changes. Right now it looks like their only fix is adjusting critical-hit damage (probably making it lower). It’s possible they just wanted to reduce the discrepancy between Berserker builds and other builds.

Something important to understand about the meta is that it didn’t end up this way because some people decided what was best and everyone else hopped on the bandwagon. It’s the “meta” because people are looking for what is best for overcoming the game’s mechanics. Berserker builds are the best because the DPS increase far exceeds the loss in eHP and they still bring all the support.
Players finding out what works best is healthy for the game because it lets the devs look at it and say “Hey. That’s what players have found is most effective. Is that the way we wanted the game to be played? If it’s not, how can we fix it?”

Players like Brazil have done a fantastic job over the past year finding out what is effective and what is not. We’re now at a state where all classes except Necromancer have at least one build that is considered “meta” and does high DPS while contributing great support to the team. The devs can now look at that and say “How can we make it so even more classes have effective builds?”

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Finnway.2183:

It’s not how the game was advertised. We were told “any class can play any role” and right now that is ludicrous because DPS builds are far superior to anything else.

100% wrong. You are misquoting and misremembering. The promise was “no trinity, no dedicated roles, all classes will provide dps, healing, support, cc”

This does not mean “anything goes all classes can fulfill any role.” It means there are no roles and all characters are expected to DPS (zerker meta: check), Support (zerker meta: check), CC (zerker meta: check), and heal (zerker meta: check).

What you, and the other zerkernerfers want is a trinity system where any class can fulfill any of the trinity roles but that is not the game that Anet promise and not the game Anet delivered.

I consider this post of mine to have effectively put this debate to bed. Mods can feel free to sticky my post and close the thread.

Right now every class in PvE specs for DPS and support and the only valid stat combo is Berserkers.

That’s not the system I expected based on advertisements* and it’s not the way I believe ArenaNet intended it. The game is skill based and hence Berserker will always be the most effective combo, but I do not think they intended running Berserker to be as easy as it is now courtesy of stacking. This ultimately kills build diversity because there is currently a low skill-cap needed to run Berserker so that any average Joe can use it instead of only the top 15% of players.

I’m not asking them to kill Berserkers. I run Berserkers. I understand it is the most effective stat combo and the builds you and your co-members of DnT put out are fantastic. But the low-skill cap needed to use it right now will ultimately kill the PvE side game.

*sources: http://youtu.be/aDyKPXjA9eU?t=1m7s

Because it’s a video game and the writing isn’t supposed to make sense.

Bright.9160:

I honestly don’t understand what you people are asking for.

Thanks for the generalization. I didn’t know I was schizophrenic.

Bright.9160:

If you guessed “those filthy META elitists”, you guessed wrong. If you guessed “the people crying for a change”, you guessed right.

Why do you assume anyone who wants build diversity automatically thinks people who use DPS builds are elitist? I admitted DPS builds are superior in my post… I personally run DPS builds.

Bright.9160:

What you’re asking is that a healing specced player will be equally effective in PvE as a damage specced player, and you don’t seem to realize how ludicrous this demand is.

But, for example, if they punished stacking condition and CC builds might be more viable valid.

Bright.9160:

If they change encounters to make it more difficult for people to run full zerker (something I welcome), they’ll just make content more difficult for bads, who will come to the forums and cry a river about how the new content is too hard.

Sounds good to me.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Finnway.2183:

haviz.1340:

Everything is viable thus “any class can play any role”.

Everything is not viable in the sense that DPS far out-performs other builds in open-world PvE, Dungeons, and Fractals.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/viable

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/optimal

Everything is viable. Damage gear is optimal.

Point taken.

oZii.2864:

Finnway.2183:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Still waiting to hear what the “problem” is. In a good player’s hands, pve dps builds are objectively superior.

SO WHAT? Please explain why and how this is a “problem” that requires “fixing.”

It’s not how the game was advertised. We were told “any class can play any role” and right now that is ludicrous because DPS builds are far superior to anything else.

Right now people are tired of face-rolling through content to farm gold. The fact that DPS builds are the only viable ones is part of that equation. If I had three viable builds on my Guardian each with different stats I might be inclined to earn different armor sets and unlock cosmetics for them.

The way the game works right now do you think combat is better or worse than other MMORPG’s you have played? (I don’t mean recently; I mean any game since the dawn of time)

The game was like that at launch and even a few months into it but people learned the encounters learned the AI’s patterns so they could speed up the runs faster and faster. That doesn’t have anything to do with builds or armor that is just evolution. People basically learned2play. The fix is better AI and enemies gear doesn’t have to be changed if people want the challenge. What is likely to happen is enrage timer type of stuff happening putting arbitrary barriers on already existing enemies so that people are “forced” to bring other gear or classes. Now the only “forcing” is self inflicted it isn’t Anet’s fault players kick other players for not running meta builds. The players adapted became better and thus this is a unintended consequence of the current AI programming in dungeons.

But the important thing is that players are able to play like that because the game is designed that way. The game vastly favors DPS builds because of flaws in design that have not been worked out.

haviz.1340:

Everything is viable thus “any class can play any role”.

But not all roles are equal because DPS far out-performs other builds in open-world PvE, Dungeons, and Fractals.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Still waiting to hear what the “problem” is. In a good player’s hands, pve dps builds are objectively superior.

SO WHAT? Please explain why and how this is a “problem” that requires “fixing.”

It’s not how the game was advertised. We were told “any class can play any role” and right now that is ludicrous because DPS builds are far superior to anything else.

Right now people are tired of face-rolling through content to farm gold. The fact that DPS builds are the only optimal ones is part of that equation. If I had three viable builds on my Guardian each with different stats I might be inclined to earn different armor sets and unlock cosmetics for them.

The way the game works right now do you think combat is better or worse than other MMORPG’s you have played? I’m not implying there is a right answer I’m asking for your perspective on this.

ArchonWing.9480:

As for Nemesis, since I used to play necromancer, I came across his guides and never really agreed with them but at least he had his reasons besides really strange ones revolving avoiding Curses 5.

I think Nemesis designs builds in a void that theoretically would fulfill a role in most MMORPG’s. The problem is they don’t fill a role in GW2.

@Naustiation,
Imo Brutaly is an experienced WvW Guardian. This is his build guide: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-30-pts-in-valor-gameplay-Hammer/page/12#post3423681
He should be able to answer your questions.

The reason Altruistic Healing is considered bad in PvE is because it does not contribute to your party’s over all effectiveness in any way, and there are better things you can get with the 30 trait points. In WvW and in PvP it is still a viable trait.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and it would be very difficult for an inexperienced player to top the knowledge that’s been assembled over the past year by some of the top players. Benefit from their experience and learn to play the game well… then you can deviate and make your own educated playstyle decisions.

Are you unfamiliar with RPG archetypes? The Guardian is the “Paladin” Archetype aka the traditional heavy-armor/magic-user hyrbid.

They differ from the Warrior in that they mainly fight to uphold truth and justic, whereas a Warrior could be a common mercenary. They also differ in that they fight using the “foefire” which is the magic used by the last king of Ascalon to turn his subjects into ghosts when they were defeated by the Charr.

Whereas the Warrior is something of a “Weapons specialist,” the Guardian is more like a “chivalrous Knight” riding around the country side inspiring others to do good.

Yeah, I probably should have expanded on that post a little more. By meta I mean the all inclusive 5-6 builds the Guardian has. My beef with this is that all of these go 10 in Zeal, 15 in Radiance and at least 10 in Virtues (usually 20), and even though I try different ones of these builds it all feels arbitrary because it’s essentially the same.

I wish that when I hopped in a PUG and played with another Guardian that our builds and playstyle were more different from each other than “I use a Sword. He uses a Hammer.” As it stands the only real difference between two Guardians is when one of them is using a bad build.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Wow dude my builds are way better than my meta crap i fite u irl and we see who still talking kitten after

I’m happy to decide this matter once and for all with you on the streets of Detroit.

My body is ready for you.

What’re you going to do —beat me with maths? Good luck with that, Guang…

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Isn’t that the idea of a meta build :>?

A meta can include more than one play-style. For the Guardian at least the only real difference in playstyle right now is whether you use Sword/Focus, a Greatsword, or a Hammer. It would be nice if every viable build didn’t go 20 in Virtues and 15 in Radiance, and you didn’t always have two reflects on your bar. Get the picture?
I’m not asking them to kill the current meta build or nerf it to hell. I just wish the game encompassed more play-styles like they promised in their manifesto. But it doesn’t, and I think that’s intentional because they want PvP to be the ultimate end-game, and PvE and WvW to be the “training wheels” for PvP.

Obal,
If I mainly PUG, should I switch out some of my Berserker gear for Assassin’s to get my crit-chance up? And if so, which pieces should I switch out? (exotic gear, btw) Thanks.

^^ And it’s worth mentioning that Guanglai Kangyi’s builds are good —just not as effective as the meta. His Guardian PUG build is probably better than Nemesis’ because it provides protection and might for the party and it’s just as easy to use: I am a build link

SrebX: if you’re looking for a Berserker build that’s easy to use Guanglai’s Hammer guide is a good place to start: I am a guide link

@Nike.
I was referring to builds rather than classes. No matter what build I try I always go back to the meta because it is more effective.

BeoErgon.9107:

And as Nemesis said, I don’t really think that the devs intended it to end like this.

I’m not so sure about that. A while ago I came to the conclusions that (A) The Devs intended DPS to be king in PvE (B) They intended PvE to be easy © The devs intended WvW to be PvE end-game because it transitions players from PvE into PvP and they wanted PvP to be an E-Sport (we all know how that went… *rolls eyes)

I agree with all Nemesis’ points too though. I don’t think stacking was intended, and the way the game is currently designed kills diversity.

Nemesis.8593:

PS: If it were up to some of you, the game would go into the ground in less then 1 month.

Some might say the game IS going into the ground.

Hate – Grind
Love – Event System (but not the reward structure)

btw, 37 posts begin with Hate first and only 10 begin with Love. What does that say?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Who is this Nemesis guy anyway?

He’s pretty well known on the Necromancer forums I believe. His Necro guide.

He’s been a GW2 youtuber for about a year now (recently had his anniversary). He has about 10,000 subscribers and mainly does hardcore stuff; like PvP and Fractals. He likes to thoerycraft and has done builds videos on Necro (his main), Mesmer, and now the Guardian.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

But I specifically didn’t come here to gloat or claim Mesmer were a “better class” than Guardian in any form. I wanted to compare the data for each classes supportive abilities (I made this thread in every class) to separate fact from fiction. I learned a lot from this little project too, especially in regards to Engineers.

So when/where are you going to post the results of your project so we all can benefit from your time invested? Or are you just going to horde all this knowledge to yourself? (don’t do that; your head will get fat)

I wondered when he was going to make another video. I hope he hops in this thread. He usually puts up a pretty good argument for his builds, and I’d like to see why he thinks this is better than the meta.

EDIT: Here is a link to the build if anyone is too lazy to watch: 30/30/5/5/0

He says he likes Signets because of the CC, but they can be swapped for support utilities.

If you’re playing in a group with fury you can swap to Unscathed Contender and Scholar Runes.