Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

Its been a long time since I last posted but wanted to get some thoughts and feedback here. I love theorycrafting and trying quirky/different builds, because I hate feeling stale in the way I play. I wanted to ask about thoughts for a fun/different build focused on chaos armor itself. Its a highly beneficial aura, giving mesmers boons and weakening foes. So I wanted to consider builds that could keep it up all the time to provide benefits, and constant weakness/cripple on enemies. So I was playing around with the idea of using a full set of Superior Runes of the Radiance to increase its duration and also make use of light aura for extended retaliation with our healing skill like well of eternity at the same time since with the rune and well you would be double-stacking its duration and this would give lots of retaliation and stacked vulnerability.

If combined with chaotic dampening, would potentially mean perma-protection on self with some boon duration buffs. I picture the two weapons being Staff + sword/x for phase retreat and swap to keep the armor always active(with its attendant protection buff). Since you have to be very active with re-applying the armor, I don’t consider it cheese(maybe many will?) but I mostly see it for pve. Also, I haven’t gotten to use light aura (well of eternity combo) with mesmer much and thought it would feel different to use something not normally seen on mesmer much either. Since it throws a lot of boons down, maybe have boon duration food and accessories to increase durations; I wish we had armor that gave concentration with damage buffs only and not defensive toughness as I dislike not having at least reliably good damage when I want it.

I love the idea of having underwater cities showing off Largos especially! Possibly having a few friendly NPC Krait like they did with the Dredge would give insight into the society of these characters and add depth to the game, although I think karka is pointless since they seem more like semi-sentient creatures than fully sentient ones. Hylek and Quaggan we know a lot about it, although I have no aversion to them. My preference though is absolutely Largos. That could be very cool!

Underwater trait’s is a great idea, and I would love to spec underwater although I worry that gets a bit complex for the average Jane Doe? Just curious.

Both speeding swim speed and out of water jumping are nice QoL improvements.

Also, what about a mastery for underwater combat?? Where it essentially unlocks new underwater weapons, gives access to special traits and aquabreathers possibly, and offers those quality of life improvements you mentioned!? I could see the mastery system doing what we want to make it a cool system, plus it incentivizes buying the expansion.

fellyn.5083:

Freedan.1769:

fellyn.5083:

Xstein.2187:

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

This. Anet can’t even keep up with balancing PvP, patching HoT content, improving WvW, and so forth. The last thing I want is for them to devote resources to underwater combat. I go in water to harvest nodes and to get from A to B, that’s it and that’s all it ever will be.

I’m more concerned with improving the 98% of the content that happens on dry land.

And yet they added a Revenant,

Revenant can use 1 under water weapon (pretty sure every other class gets 2) and 3 out of 5 legendary heroes don’t work under water.

So yeah…

Just so we’re clear that means 3/5ths of revenant skills don’t work under water. For most other classes they usually only have 2 or 3 skills that don’t work under water, total.

Now this doesn’t specifically mean anet isn’t going to make any more under water content in the future but it certainly is a big hint.

Lets not draw conclusions on this just yet. I appreciate people’s perceptions, but I think it would be very damaging to the game to just rip underwater combat out entirely. Remember, we have a Deep Sea Elder Dragon sitting beneath the ocean, and honestly it would be outright silly to picture him climbing up on land for our benefit and amusement, wouldn’t you all say? Or his minions to only be found on land? Seriously, one expansion we can foresee being about underwater combat, that was the whole point, and assisting Anet by providing feedback on ways to make it better is the purpose of posting here.

That said, I agree with other posters that it needs more skills, personally I see each class having a full set of skills for just playing around underwater, with maybe some modified class mechanics to account for underwater differences and feedback from the community. Honestly, I thought the API’s were a cool collaborative method for Anet getting idea’s like the method they used to generate RAID’s and I am surprised there has not been one created for underwater combat idea’s by the dev team but perhaps that would be giving away too much? An answer of the sort, ‘Yes we are going to address the shortcomings of underwater play’ would go far to address player concerns at this point.

Lastly, I think we should just make ALL the current different underwater weapon types available to all classes so we actually have choice with our underwater set. Actually no, I changed my mind!! Instead, lets just have our standard weapon sets with an underwater set of skills! That way, we don’t have to worry about underwater specific weapons, instead just use variations on the existing weapons skillsets that are aquatic themed! Sure, its a lot of balancing work, but it would go an enormous distance to making underwater combat viable. I could see this happening for a Bubbles campaign; what say you?

Did they ever really confirm that that creature was an under water elder dragon? Last talk I ever read on it was all speculation and no hard proof.

In any case, at the pace anet is going it’ll be 10-12 years or more before they ever have to worry about that what with all the other elder dragons and a 3 year gap between each one.

The Inquest confirmed that the 6th dragon was a water dragon because the dungeon has 6 zones, each based on the minions of an Elder Dragon. This zone is a water themed zone with a blue color; why would it be anything else? I believe there have been other official comments aluding to it, but the coil is all the proof most need to know its a water dragon. That is why its unofficial name across all players is Bubbles by the way. Read up about it, I think you will be convinced.

I wanted to keep the thread focused on improvements to underwater combat and ask others how they feel it can be improved. Anyone may of course comment; but I prefer troll comments be left out of a thread that is not hating on underwater combat as others have, but simply what we can do to improve it. Lets keep focused on positive suggestions; things that help a great game become greater. I for one look forward to seeing more amazing underwater scenes and moments!

Daniel Handler.4816:

Giver was three stat combo that gave either boon duration or condition duration.

With the addition of concentration and expertise the four stat combos that include boon duration and condion duration eclipse three stat combos of the stats. This makes no sense.

Did anet forget that Giver existed?

Essentially, yes, they did. Giver’s is currently the most disliked set, being holiday themed, has no offensive stats at all, and was from the beginning underpowered even for defense due to 1% boon duration being the most awful buff conceivable. No stat loss could compare to just 1% gain in boon duration. The point was to give boon duration more focus, but instead merely highlighted the fears the developers had of a too strong boon defender and was thus nerfed from the moment it saw day. I still regret trying to make a set and feeling rather dumb. If boon duration wasn’t capped at 100% anyways, and people could push for more duration beyond this using the Giver’s set, it might have had meaning, but never did.

fellyn.5083:

Xstein.2187:

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

This. Anet can’t even keep up with balancing PvP, patching HoT content, improving WvW, and so forth. The last thing I want is for them to devote resources to underwater combat. I go in water to harvest nodes and to get from A to B, that’s it and that’s all it ever will be.

I’m more concerned with improving the 98% of the content that happens on dry land.

And yet they added a Revenant,

Revenant can use 1 under water weapon (pretty sure every other class gets 2) and 3 out of 5 legendary heroes don’t work under water.

So yeah…

Just so we’re clear that means 3/5ths of revenant skills don’t work under water. For most other classes they usually only have 2 or 3 skills that don’t work under water, total.

Now this doesn’t specifically mean anet isn’t going to make any more under water content in the future but it certainly is a big hint.

Lets not draw conclusions on this just yet. I appreciate people’s perceptions, but I think it would be very damaging to the game to just rip underwater combat out entirely. Remember, we have a Deep Sea Elder Dragon sitting beneath the ocean, and honestly it would be outright silly to picture him climbing up on land for our benefit and amusement, wouldn’t you all say? Or his minions to only be found on land? Seriously, one expansion we can foresee being about underwater combat, that was the whole point, and assisting Anet by providing feedback on ways to make it better is the purpose of posting here.

That said, I agree with other posters that it needs more skills, personally I see each class having a full set of skills for just playing around underwater, with maybe some modified class mechanics to account for underwater differences and feedback from the community. Honestly, I thought the API’s were a cool collaborative method for Anet getting idea’s like the method they used to generate RAID’s and I am surprised there has not been one created for underwater combat idea’s by the dev team but perhaps that would be giving away too much? An answer of the sort, ‘Yes we are going to address the shortcomings of underwater play’ would go far to address player concerns at this point.

Lastly, I think we should just make ALL the current different underwater weapon types available to all classes so we actually have choice with our underwater set. Actually no, I changed my mind!! Instead, lets just have our standard weapon sets with an underwater set of skills! That way, we don’t have to worry about underwater specific weapons, instead just use variations on the existing weapons skillsets that are aquatic themed! Sure, its a lot of balancing work, but it would go an enormous distance to making underwater combat viable. I could see this happening for a Bubbles campaign; what say you?

fellyn.5083:

Kill.3458:

fellyn.5083:

My vision for underwater combat in GW2 is to remove it from the game. It’s annoying and I don’t like it.

Were trying to find solutions on how to make it better and you come in with this redundant statement? Underwater is probably the most unique thing about GW2 I’d hate to see it go because of lazy devs and impatient players

I offered the perfect solution to make it work. I’m (not) sorry that it doesn’t go along with what you have in mind for the thread.

As some else pointed out Anet considers it more or less dead too. The fact that gem store weapon skin sets haven’t come with under water weapons skins or that the revenant can only use one under water weapon where every other class can use two and more than half of the revenant skills don’t work under water gives weight to this theory.

It’s pointless to talk about how to making it better when Anet is abandoning it just like dungeons.

Dont lie on this thread. You have not offered any proof outside pure hype that UW combat is dead. A hiatus is not an official statement and until we get one there is plenty to discuss on the topic. Being fatalistic serves no purpose to anyone. If you wish to comment please keep it to the purpose of the thread about improvements and not griefing.

Edit: Lesson learned, never type a blog reply on an Android :P

I love the idea of Masteries for underwater combat! That would be a ton of fun, and I hope that could be implemented as a way to improve underwater as a whole. Lots of things that could be done through masteries to just make it fun. And two things:
1) I dont know what is meant by ‘nothing major’ to the base game. Nor does this have to mean underwater doesn’t get improved upon.
2) Until someone comes out and says ‘we are not going to do anything with underwater combat ever’ I refuse to accept that we can’t fix underwater combat! The potential is enormous, the possible gains thrilling. I also don’t get the water haters attitude at all; if the combat was revamped, why remove it? Because you don’t like it now? That’s the laziest thought process I can imagine; ArenaNet stepped outside the box with Guild Wars in general, and I believe innovation is the way to fix problems, not remove content.

@Snarftastic: I agree, the skills in underwater combat often don’t work like your class really, and many dont work at all. For me, its about A completely different ‘underwater set’ of skills that lets you use a different set of skills entirely, no land skills involved at all. Keep it true to the class, and people should find speccing Underwater to be a new experience.

@Iason – Thank you for the detailed feedback! While I am not against removing creatures from underwater and making it about exploration, I would feel this messes with our understanding of the Lore and not just the gameplay. I like the drive around in vehicles idea. I have a question for you though: was the reason the novelty of underwater combat wore off because it wasn’t fun? That is how I felt. When I get in the water, the reason I get back out is because I find the combat unintuitive and clunky/boring. If it was as fun or funner than being on land, I could see myself under the sea all the time. And nothing wrong with that is there? For me, its about the immersion, pun intended.

Albadaran.1283:

It’s a part of the game I hardly care about. I swimm to get from A to B, as fast as possible, not to combat. The only exceptions are mining spots surrounded by creatures. But they useually only slow me down, not even going into combat there lol! Sooo, I would say: underwater world has a nice look, but it’s a pretty useless feature…

Your all kind of missing the point. The purpose of this article is not to harp on about how bad underwater combat is. Its purpose is to discuss what it needs to be the awesome system we all know it could and should be! Nothing constructive comes from saying, ‘Yeah, I just skip that part’. The point is to ask ourselves, what is at lacking that makes it annoying, and what do we each think could be done to make it enjoyable? Let’s focus on idea generation. I am for me, aware of where they took water out of pvp play in general but it wasn’t always that way, and fun underwater combat could draw even more players into the game. Maybe pvp would be a good discussion? What would you think the changes should be to underwater combat to make it worthy to have pvp and wvw maps that incorporate underwater combat?

I think one of the biggest potential combat systems in Guild Wars 2 is the underwater combat. To be honest, we have huge sections of the game underwater and few people touch it because it feels too difficult to enjoy, lackluster, or clunky. So lets help the devs out by offering up our thoughts on how to fix it!

Personally, combat underwater is so different feeling to being in the air or on land. There is no flat plane, and unlike aerial movement which has its own feel and is always relative to the ground, being in the water is more true free motion than any other kind of movement. I feel like we are failing to get that sense of ‘being in the water’ that we so want to have. Mobs are mainly stationary, as are players, and in a real underwater scene, movement is constant, not static. I think there are ways to create this; I think for instance we could have Asura technology create underwater propulsion systems to allow a strong sense of freedom of movement so we can really move around freely. Mobs should utilize skills that physically move them around as well as damage, to give that sense of constant motion that is part of being underwater.

Another thought is more underwater weapons, more underwater-only utility skills. Our skills change to the ‘underwater set’ already when we hit the water; lets make a set thats for the waves only that takes advantage of being in the water. I personally think ALL our skills should be underwater-specific so that entering the sea is a totally different type of gameplay with a completely different set of skills. I think our characters should be ‘loose’ as well; i.e. we sort of drift in the water instead of stopping when we aren’t moving.

For area of effect fields like necro wells, I think they should be fairly large so that their radius isn’t wasted. I think they should have a visible line indicating their range too, so players can tell how effective they are underwater.

What are your thoughts about underwater combat? I personally hope the next installment is the underwater dragon (Bubbles) so that we can get that overhaul of combat in the water we have all longed for and dreamed of. There is amazing underwater scenery out there, and even more amazing scenery awaiting us, and having the next installment be the Water Dragon would allow future expansions to make heavy use of the revamped water combat system, so I hope this is next for all our sakes!

I am stoked about the Halloween event, confirmed coming up with HoT release! I also heard they are planning holiday decorations for Guild Halls at some point, so all good news I hope we get at least one very cool new Halloween item to shoot for this year, plus maybe a return of the battle with Mad King. It was epic year one, and it would be epic to see the old Madman Thorn make a visit!

Since I have come to accept that our class seems to be about off-hand diversity of weapons, I expect the same to happen in the next expansion. So for a new weapon type, I am calling the next one: Warhorn. There are still off-hand weapons, what the ‘theme’ of the weapon would be I am unsure. In my heart, I wish for pistol mainhand more than anything though.

I get that this combo is very powerful. Mesmer, like some other classes with their elites, are showing how sick they are in pvp. But there are two things to consider:
Are we so much more OP than every other elite class? I am not convinced we are, and if so, advocating for nerfs over a single weekend is a poor showing.

Has anyone sat down and gone 1v1 in practice with anyone targeting the CS drop? What I mean is, lets practice as players to look for and target the skills weak spot so we all know the quick counter to this skill. If someone drops it, hit it fast, preferably with an aoe skill. I am not convinced our weakness is being exploited by the player base, who have not had much chance to actually get used to it. These weekend events are kinda bad in my opinion, because a single weekend, or even 3 weekends does not give people time to get used to huge changes in classes. If l2play is for real, I don’t think a weekend is enough time to do it in….give people a beta week, maybe two, to get used to these changes. Its possible Chronomancer could be a weak class going forward once people get its mechanic….I am interested in people’s opinions on this skill in 1v1, 1vX and WvW combat. I think this is great for pve since it lets us dish out better burst damage in pve to stay competitive not even talking about the support aspects.

EDIT: I am going to advocate against limiting the number of activatable skills because I think this hurts us in dungeons/raids/pve content in general. This entire post feels knee-jerk to me for the reasons I mentioned above, and I would rather not see us get nerfed simply because we are a lousy dps sustain class and people scream murder whenever our burst damage(the only damage we have) gets buffed for a class that hasn’t much else going for it.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/welcome-to-guild-week/

I hope someone on October 1st shows off some holiday themed decorations hint hint at you Rubi!.

Has anyone seen any guild hall decorations yet? I was doing a lot of reading and thinking about them, and I noticed a key aspect of guild hall decorations is the ability to ‘upgrade’ a generic crafted guild hall item from a scribes list of craftable options, and make it into a much more advanced version. This potentially means Anet has an incredibly powerful holiday tool for Guild Halls!

The way I picture it is like this:

Anet is always looking for cool new events to do for the holiday events every year. One way to pull it off is to provide seasonal decorations that can be gathered while the season is ‘active’. For example, maybe you need a special ‘candy corn resonance’ item or something else named item from a Candy Corn elemental boss hidden at the end of a jumping puzzle(similar to the example they gave in their post). This would only be present and killable during the holidays, so players could go searching for these enemies/events and participate in them.

Once they have the item, they can take a generic crafted pool fountain and upgrade it to a Ghastly Fountain, a Halloween themed spooky fountain with green water, or ghosts hovering around it, with a new look and feel for the decoration. This would get players hyped to build up cool Guild Hall decorations that they can theme for the holiday season, and if they like it looking that way, they can of course keep it happening year round since they wouldn’t have to change the hall. The benefit of this is the crafting system won’t be touched at all, they just use a game mechanic already built to change items into new looks, its just a matter of designing the objects skin and including the upgrade component as a drop somewhere. Maybe especially cool decorations could be gem store items and the rest could be part of events players can get together and farm. Heck, they could be included as random rewards in chests at the end of Guild Missions during the holidays and the special event (i.e. Labyrinth) depending on whats funnest for the players to collect those decorations.

I really hope they have thought of this and plan to do something like this for the players! I also like it, because it rewards older guilds who get started early on gathering components so when the next years events come around they can gather more each year and each year their Halls get more spooky/wintersday/asian themed/whatever holiday.

I just hope the Halloween event has a tie-in with HoT. Since Mordremoth is the new foe, it would be nice to see some changes to Halloween, like fighting Mordrem in addition to the classic Halloween bad boys from years past. I personally dream of reliving the battle against Mad King Thorn…it would be epic to do it again. And one day I will beat the Clock Tower puzzle…one day….

Oi! I just had a thought! What if HoT has guild hall decorations that are Halloween themed, so people can give their Guild Halls that spooky feel? Even if it was pure gem store purchases to get bits and pieces for it, how dope would THAT be?? Then players could have competitions around the holidays to show off the spookiest halls! I would totally go trick or treating via invites just to see cool decked out halls if that was possible.

I agree with Fay in regards to the usability of portal. In general, I just feel the skill has no range indications at all for when its out of range. I don’t need to know where the portal drops me; even trolling with it is acceptable to a certain extent. What kills me is when I drop it out of range. I don’t get why the skill can’t simply be disabled out of range with a message indicator, because if the code is checking if its within X range(which we know it is) then just have a popup message like when an enemy is failed to be selected that says we can’t use it at that range. Ultimately we only need 1 real QoL improvement to portal, and that is how its out of range feature works. Fix that, and we have a skill with no real complaints. No one should complain about buffing portal this way either; its not an actual advantage we are asking for like the mesmer with 6 clones myth…..

FJSAMA.2867:

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

Timer buff will be nice ( also can be made a timer over the icon of portal exeunt skill on utility bar)
As for range indicator, wont be possible to shadow/grey the portal exeunt skill on our bar when it is to far away from the placed portal entrance the same way we dont get the “enter” message when we placed it out of range?

FJSAMA hit this one where it really needs it; when we can’t safely place the portal. I have a slightly different take on it; we have a lot of skills that state you can’t activate them without an enemy targeted etc. Obviously the code has some mechanism to determine when its too far from the origin point to drop a new portal.

Simple solution: add a case statement or if then statement to the code that says if the range is too great to drop the portal to popup a message to the player indicating they can’t activate the skill because they have gone too far. Its not the most awesome fix method for portal, but it is incredibly more intuitive than you drop it and it doesn’t work. And no, using another player as a benchmark for the starting point is not an acceptable solution so don’t mention bad solutions!!! I swear, some people think pvp with some dude just sitting there for 3 minutes at a time is actually a reliable method…

Another alternative option would be the moment you drop entre, it creates a purple ‘ping circle’ on the mini-map/compass map similar to how we set waypoints or ping objectives to teammates. This could then give a benchmark to the mesmer where its safe to drop exeunt. I would accept both as a solution, maybe even together as a semi-perfect fix.

hazenvirus.8154:

I wouldn’t be surprised if this got ignored, since it has been around since stat swapping got added to weapons. Rune/Sigil library is a good solution where runes/sigils you’ve used on a legendary get stored and can be equipped again at will.

Truth is unless you like the skin it will probably be much cheaper and more efficient to make multiple ascended sets and equip different sets of runes. And if you are planning to swap expensive runes frequently it will be so much cheaper that the legendary might as well just be a pricey skin.

Fingers crossed for the rune/sigil library, don’t count on it though.

Multiple ascended armor sets? That’s um….insane. No one aside from hardcore market flippers have that kind of gold to make sets with. Also, what are you basing cost on? Ascended is incredibly expensive by itself, especially light armor due to silk being so high demand, and frankly you have no idea how expensive the armor is. If its based on Raid farming as I suspect it will be, the only investment could be time in clearing Raid’s to get the pieces for all we know. Nothing is substantiated beyond we are getting them.

I agree on the difficulties related to rune/sigils. However I think it will end up being throw something generic on it for the leg up for most players.

My question is when do we get Legendary Rings? I want One Ring to rule them all…when I walk in the room with full particle effects from my weapon, full armor set, rings, backpack, and everything else, I want people to think a sunspot just entered the room.

Can we discuss a different aspect of Halloween than a pointless page-long argument over skins? This argument could apply to ANYTHING ingame and contributes nothing to this discussion no matter who is right.

What I would prefer to discuss is LA itself at the moment. Several people have commented that they need new look and feel for Halloween to accomodate a changed Lion’s Arch. Its an amazing city now(and even before) and I think it would be fabulous to see a decked out new LA in Halloween style. I don’t want to see the old LA come back for Halloween, because that feels like a solidly missed opportunity to do something REALLY COOL with the current LA. It just screams potential and I hope its not wasted.

Second, it would be nice to have a new activity. Personally, I am a big fan of Thorn making another return to the mortal realm, this time under the cover of Mordremoth’s assault on Tyria giving him more room to try again perhaps. Also, I think something different with Edrick needs to happen this year. His yearly tomb raider event is feeling overdone. Maybe a battle against father and son together trying to break free of the Mad Realm? I get HoT is priority 1 and I don’t want to detract from its awesomeness, but Halloween should never get the short stick in Guild Wars.

Please, can a dev(Gaile, Regina, anyone) confirm we are having Halloween this year??? As one who has loved the Halloween season in Guild Wars, I was in the trailer scene when all the players were running in a long line following Gaile around(yes, I would be the semi-naked monk running around, tattoo’s only armor). I was enthralled with Halloween’s first year in Guild Wars 2 when Mad King ripped out of the statue and the ensuing battle in his own mad realm to send him back again.

Please confirm for the players Halloween will be part of the HoT launch or at least the activities will be active, as that would be truly memorable to have both which I believe firmly is the intention here!

Lets drop this thread guys. Silv has been trolling mesmer for at least 2 years based on his posts. From quoting seeing mesmers spawn 5 illusions at a time, to complaining sword 2 is OP, to absolutely hating on MOA morph, and then claiming mesmers were a good source of fire(wut?) bleeds(ok….) and poison(wut?). On top of that when mesmers got nerfed a while back and were being replaced by necro’s with fear builds he was positively gleeful, even quoting Harry Potter here when everyone was seeing mesmer’s disappear from tpvp in favor of necro’s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of1bVlo_5Y4&hd=1
Need we say more? He rolls an spvp guardian and is hardly hurting right now with Guardians absurd ability to spread fire everywhere but hey, he advocated for nerfing MOA morph and got his wish.

I have no doubt Silv, that you would love to see Mesmer nerfed into the ground. Its not your main, and you want to gut chronomancer because he threatens Dragonhunter(pfft) and so you are proactively asking for nerfs when you know full well not all the specializations are released so we don’t know how the other classes may prove anti-mesmer already. I for one am still waiting for thief elite(head-shot mesmers skill set probably) so better to chill for now and let the whole L2P experience kick in before coming to the mesmer forums to rile us.

No replies here? Giving this a bump for a chance to get some feedback. I reviewed some posts from a month ago, and found this one here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Equipment-with-boon-duration-stats-incoming

From what I can see here, there is either going to be a baseline 15% boon duration with another 15 for those that choose the matching core specialization, or its going onto armor. My feeling is the former option seems more likely than an armor set because we only ever had 1 set, Giver’s, for boon duration, and the idea of making many new sets(while feasible) seems less likely than the alternative of just merging it in. I actually prefer armor sets with boon duration thrown in (assuming the sets give a decently high buff, nothing like the terribleness of Giver’s). This reminds me, if they go with doing away with boon duration, does this mean Giver’s would be retired as an armor set?

Ohoni.6057:

I am mixed on my feelings. Its a game, not a vital utility like power or gas, so its not like we can’t just “love without” and they can set the price how they please. What bothers me is players getting both games for the price of one. When I bought every expansion in GW1, they didn’t come with Prophecies bundled in now did they? They were just fine as stand-alone. When we bought EotN the only expansion, we didn’t get Prophecies either. So my question is, why do it this way? The only fair thing would be to have a check to see if the core game is installed and then offer something like 1000 gems as a compensation package for those who already own some part of what they are buying (which is more than fair) and then players can use this to get a character expansion, new bank tab, etc.

People who Pre-order Fallout 4 get Fallout 3 for free. People who already own Fallout 3 get nothing. It happens, deal.

Please provide a quote showing this, as I haven’t seen it. If the makers of another game do it, this isn’t proof that players appreciate that kind of marketing strategy. New players always will, older players will correctly feel they lost value on their game. If the 50 price tag is because you are buying both games(say 10 for core, 40 for expansion) then the game developers should sell an expansion only version for 40. Fair deal. Players make a community, so who are you pleasing as the developer? Yourself or the customer whose feedback you require?

I am mixed on my feelings. Its a game, not a vital utility like power or gas, so its not like we can’t just “love without” and they can set the price how they please. What bothers me is players getting both games for the price of one. When I bought every expansion in GW1, they didn’t come with Prophecies bundled in now did they? They were just fine as stand-alone. When we bought EotN the only expansion, we didn’t get Prophecies either. So my question is, why do it this way? The only fair thing would be to have a check to see if the core game is installed and then offer something like 1000 gems as a compensation package for those who already own some part of what they are buying (which is more than fair) and then players can use this to get a character expansion, new bank tab, etc.

I don’t see any posts on this topic so I wanted to ask this question before the changes hit as I think its very pertinent. Boon duration was tied in to Toughness generally in the stats line for classes. This gave a base value of 30% when maxed, and the rest could be made up with armor buffs, usually using Platinum Doubloons and jewelry. The problem now though, is we are losing that 30% with the upcoming stat changes which is a big deal. Supposedly it all goes into armor now. But how will classes make it up? Only one type of armor I know of ever had this buff and then at only 1%: Giver’s armor. So my proposal is for boon duration minded folks, is we buff that armor stats to 5% per piece so we have dedicated armor for boons, and celestial be given an additional 1% buff as the general do-it-all armor set. I would love to hear how this is going to be addressed by ArenaNet of course, so any comments here would be nice to set this question to rest. I also want to know how other players feel about boon duration buffs on armor, so I can see what the community thinks. I think it deserves more love, right along with +condition duration and I think understanding how others feel will clarify if players want it.

That is not fair Juba for people who invested into those stats or want to going forward! Boon duration is a legitimate minor stat; it deserves as much love as any other stat like power, and if you don’t like it you can stuff it. The concerns here are very real, and unless they remove these lines entirely they had better have their own armor buffs that are fair! Life is about diversity; a boon build shouldn’t get hate any more than power or condi should.

I was doing some research on Guild Halls, and wanted to consolidate what we know about them here. We know they are intended as a gathering place for guilds to perform guild missions,lounge around, and do content related to halls, which could change how they run in some way. Additionally, we know that guild events in spvp are another feature, and I am curious if this will also be started from the hall. Guild halls are going to be discovered as part of the journey into Maguuma jungle. Additionally, they will be instanced, so they could easily inherit the kind of add-ons we see in the home instance, and also much more as mentioned. Chris mentioned a great idea about a reward track for contributing to building the hall. So that should be considered on table.

Although not stated, convenience items seems to be mentioned alot, so I expect to see merchants, etc. Per CDI item 1, customization of the hall was a big priority, so for my part, I expect to see big diversity in halls. Per item 2, both small and large guilds will seemingly get to have halls, my bet is small cheap halls for small guilds and for large, exponentially larger and equally costly large/massive halls. Item 3, various activities, no comment on what those might be. Item 5 is town services, but there is some digression notable on this point. I am in agreement it affects cities.

Point 4 is special, as its about Raids. Seems to me, like specific number sets will be set for guild raiding, and beyond that I didn’t see a lot definitively stated. Others I would love to weigh in here.

I am sure I missed some points, so would like to hear thoughts out there as well.

Not that I don’t love hearing about new class changes which I do, from Mesmer to Necro, to everything coming up, but I would love to get some insight into the new Guild Halls. Are there any good pics? Many in the player community want to know how functional they will be(can we do gvg battles?) or if there will be any special attached content. How about variety? I for one would like to see a few scenes or screenshots of different Guild Halls, as I think that would generate some great excitement. I adored Guild Halls back in Guild Wars 1(I liked the Canthan themed halls) and seeing some news on Halls and what kind of features they might have would be great.

Some great replies from a lot of posters and thanks for the responses. I feel like I have learned a lot from listening and re-evaluating damage in particular. I haven’t picked a favorite answer quite yet, but I like what I have heard so far. It sounds like if I really want to maximize damage I should be getting Rampager’s or Rabid as an armor set and focus on my damage as much as possible. It seems like I get the most bang from Rampager’s, but I feel like I am vulnerable as a squishy, so is Rabid the best condition armor for the more defense conscious? Also I like the look of Carrion armor and wonder if its better to use that instead of Rabid? Just curious what the break-down is going to be now. I intend to actually try out all the builds mentioned here actually.

Dondagora.9645:

Nazer.7301:

rabid full, 4/4/0/0/6 power= condi damage, healing is crap. Rabid for crits=bleeds. toughness>vitality>healing. I prefer travelers in every game mode.

we could do some dueling to see what build ya want. Anyone for some MtD dueling?

I’m up for it~

I did want to see how mine would hold up against other MtD builds.

However, it would have to be in PvP, not WvW. This is responding to Freedan’s comment about not being able to afford gear, so to say that he was thinking about WvW.

No worries from me, I appreciate all comments that come with an honest opinion and a reason why you feel so. All I ask is any testing you post the results and thoughts that went into it so the rest of us(myself included) can benefit from it. I don’t mind a pvp opinion, as it shows the strength of the build. I have always been fascinated by builds that think out the box, so I tend to favor underdogs but I recognize that if you want maximum killing potential you have to dispense with the support aspects of a build for the more part.

I like your style Nazer! A duel with good build and armor setup against skilled mesmer’s would be a great way to end doubts as to what an effective build variant would be for MtD at least one on one for sure, especially if other classes were represented. Unfortunately for me, its difficult to get the resources to get the full armor and accessory set unless I am dang sure its what I want(to quote Barbossa: “That still leaves you sailing away on my ship with naught but a name and ‘its the one I need’”) Anyone up for Nazer’s challenge? This sounds like a job for the OMFG Mesmer guild…..

IGN: Finwe of Valinor
Role: Scholar
Server: Sorrow’s Furnace
Playstyle: PvE/WvW
Time: Evenings, weekends. Mountain Time

The input has been really great guys! However, I am still uncertain what should be considered optimal overall? The ones who favor 44006 feels to me like a strong emphasis on power builds. The purpose of MtD after all is to take the opponent down with condition damage specifically, either DPS style or spiking with Torment and Confusion. I have probably used Windwalker’s build the most, as I thought healing while spiking damage seemed like a nice combo. Realistically though, the armor for it isn’t out there, it needs an armor set like Apothecaries except emphasis on the Condition Damage and healing power as a secondary with Toughness. Perhaps the question is best answered by an armor set? What does everyone feel is the most effective armor/runes for maximizing MtD?

Since condition shatter became a thing, I don’t think its been decided what trait and armor setup optimizes the damage and/or support of this build. I would like to see some posts on what people consider closest to the “meta” version of this build, taking into account pvp,pve, and wvw play. I have seen examples like 44006 for instance, and 04406 and so on but I haven’t seen a strong preference yet.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You might want to post in (and read) the existing official thread, where some of your concerns have been addressed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Questions-on-Forum-Reorganization/first#post4600233

Good luck.

Thanks for the link, I have already posted there.

Hi Gaile,

I think this forum is great first of all, thank you for engaging in feedback with us! I have two things that I wanted to pass along:

First: I have read the comments about the search feature, and frankly, I think you should pass along to the team that its better to get a new system than to go without this feature. Topics that aren’t searchable are topics that die on the vine eventually. It would be far more useful to have this feature than implement changes without it as that is quite possibly the single most important improvement you can make.

Second, it would be nice to see a few new features for posting, like player polls so we can get opinion feedback from other players. I am all for changing the forum here and I think its great your getting feedback. For me though, nothing can be more important than avoiding duplication of threads and effort by having a good search tool.

For me the hardest was elementalist. I started with Mesmer, and found that in the early days of the game leveling was easier than it is now, a couple years ago the game was just easier to level with. The elementalist turned out to be challenging enough I deleted and did a Guardian, which was stupid easy, just stack up the armor and swing a greatsword at everything you run across. The engineer I started afterwards though is much squishier and I have to think more strategically. I find it more challenging than using my mesmer because mesmer has a ton of mobility with teleports and invisibility if you play right, which can make a difference on survival although I think the engineer has WAY better aoe damage. Actually, ALL classes have better aoe than mesmer. Thief felt middle of the road for me, I liked the invisibility giving me good survival though and capping skill points or other hard to take spots were often way too easy thanks to extended invisibility. Ranger feels easier to me, not as easy as a guardian but still not challenging as long as you let the pet take agro first and use your range well. I refuse to do warrior after creating a guardian, way too stupid easy. Necro I will get to one day.

In a recent update by Gaile Gray, it was stated the forums are going to be improved and re-organized. I have two personal requests in relation to this and I hope others will post here and second this:

First: Please don’t fail to fix the search tool! An enormous amount of posts and duplication would be eliminated with a decent forum search tool! This tool is both necessary and easily possible! As someone who has built his own search engine before, it is not so difficult to do, and certainly Anet is well capable of building one without spending much resource to do so, so please introduce a reliable search tool for these forums so we can reduce waste on topic space and keep things organized!

Second: More features for topic posting. I would like to see polls available to players so we can finally contribute polls to get numbers on what people are interested versus not interested in. For example, I would like to create a poll to identify the most favored new class for GW2 based on a list of classes, the most favored new weapon to be added to the game, and the most sought after feature, and it would be very easy to represent this in a post that uses polls to represent numbers.

I could list some other things, but in my own opinion, these two are the most important improvements we can make to the forums to make them readable and easy to follow. I do also recommend archiving all the posts prior to the update as we have so many old posts it would be more useful to start with a clean slate then leave thousands of topics lingering in a fresh new forum.

I actually liked Pixelpumpkin’s thought about whips for everbody. One way Anet could ease new weapons into the game is to pick a single new weapon type and give it with different skills to each class in the game, this way it feels fair and everyone has some understanding of how it works fairly immediately. It could be made a mob drop rather than crafted, or vice versa. I like the idea of whips because a mid-ranged weapon that is not melee or long range would feel interesting and out of the norm for what we are used to(which I approve of). So my number 1 pick is whip, followed by my number 2 spear.

I love these suggestions! Great thoughts, and the idea’s I would say have all been good too! Nice point wasted about NPC Marjorie being necro and wielding a sword(greatsword?) being a possible new weapon type for necro. I would be interested to see her skills highlighted at some point when wielding it. Hand weapons make a very interesting example of a new weapon type. I also think Spear, being a very iconic and effective weapon in ancient times deserves a mention with lots of potential for many classes, as is the morning star (something about the morning star just screams cool). I am also fascinated with the visual imagery of a wielded focus in the main hand, and wondering how the animation would be done?

Xenon.4537:

Main hand pistol for Mesmer, please. Make it a power or hybrid weapon that is useful for phantasm builds and doesn’t summon a clone on auto. Basically a ranged option for phantasms so I’m not forced to use a sword all the time.

I have dreamed of something like that since launch. Give it some heavy damage options with a damaging clone perhaps, and that way we can use off-hand weapons that are power weapons like off-hand sword/focus without feeling like our only option for power main-hand is sword. Would be great for keeping range against tough enemies.

Knighthonor.4061:

Staff for Ranger
2hander Axe for Guardian
2Hander Axe for Warrior
Sword for Necro
Hammer and Mace for Engineer
Torch for Elementalist

I like how iconic your choices are for these classes. Staff for Ranger would feel very different and yet feel iconic not to mention give the class something else to consider. I could see it being especially useful as a pet supportive weapon type possibly. Everyone can use a bigger axe for melee types of course The sword for necro would also be iconic and appropriate, and maybe give necro’s some more options with possibly power builds. Both picks for the engineer would be good, especially hammer as it might be nice to have a weapon that possibly can be used to give confusion or knockdowns for engi’s. Torch is an absolutely appropriate weapon type for an elementalist, so no argument from me, anything could go with that and be appropriate.

CMM.6712:

People keep trying to give my Engi a hammer that he doesn’t really want… he said he would rather have a bazooka, and no not a charzooka.

I think you could live with a charzooka if it was a new weapon type eh? Still, engi probably needs a new weapon addition more than any other class since your options are almost nill anyways. I think a sword engi sounds rather cool, since you could go with sword-guns that have attached barrels for instance, and maybe more mechanical type swords that have other effects like oiled blades that ignite on strike, etc.

Its been some time since people brought up and discussed new weapons. As mentioned here http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/07/18/guild-wars-2s-colin-johanson-outlines-big-plans-and-course-cor/ there is a discussion of all classes getting new weapons. I would like to know if this is still in the works, and is this a distant item like guild halls and housing, or something coming soon? The update on this was over a year ago, and for me, I am very wistfully wishing my favorite classes could get a new weapon type to play with, which would inject an enormous amount of interest into the game, not to mention throw the discussion boards for a loop looking at new build diversity which can only be a good thing. Me, I want mesmer’s to get main-hand pistol, its way overdue and most requested Mesmer weapon(with good reason, see the intro video’s for gw2 showing Mesmer’s dual-wielding), any other classes have wishes for a specific weapon type to be released for their class?

I appreciate the candor from both Swish and Arganthium regarding healing power in general. I was afraid that was the answer, so I will drop that for the moment. Sounds like its smarter for someone looking for damage and defense to maybe stick with soldiers armor for now. Your build is a solid one Arganthium, Swish I will look up the 6/4/0/4/0 mantra build set and see how it compares in terms of survival versus damage. Appreciate the replies from both of you

Thanks for the reply Arganthium! Some of the builds I want to know more about are mantra PvE builds that do good damage, and the buffs to IE as well. I have never been a big fan of the Sword/Sword / Sword/Focus style of builds per se because I feel like mesmer is at heart a mid-line class, not a melee one, so I never use more than one sword at a time and usually only for its defensive benefits. I like the greatsword but prefer a more robust defense, and thus I love the staff, except its slow projectile damage kills me inside a bit. Really, if they ever fixed the torch to be a good weapon as opposed to its horrifically low damage(I pray some dev notes that one day, there’s only a billion posts about it!) I would use a staff/scepter/torch build and go condie damage just to be different. I am reviewing your build now, and would like to know other build idea’s as well.

I have two questions, and I hope someone can answer. First, can someone link me to the PvE mantra builds that are currently “meta” right now?

Second, I like to use more balanced builds in most play that aren’t glass cannon/zerkers/sins setup all the time. I feel more at home knowing I can survive a long time than just duke nukem style. Are there any good builds that can deal damage while utilizing say, healing power, to maximize one’s heals while still being able to do significant damage on the field? I haven’t explored healing power much, and wanted to get thoughts. “It doesn’t work” is a realistic answer, but its not a fun one, so I would prefer experimental builds and let trial and error decide it for me afterwards. I love experimenting, so builds/armor/weapon sets are what I prefer to discuss.

I agree with what other posters have said about the signets in general. Xaylin, I agree about signet of ether, but I think it might be a hard sell to get a small constant heal without investment. I do think it would be cool if it synergized with Illusionary Persona to “count” the mesmer as a clone for purposes of the signet just like it does with shatter. Its a costly investment, but getting the heal up to a fourth level would be nice for those who sacrificed the energy to trait up to it.

I absolutely agree about Signet of Illusions being weird. Its like chopping off your hand to feed your feet; there’s just no synergy with how the active and passive work and that’s a bad sell for a signet. It needs a rework, no question from one who used it extensively.

SoI – being a glass cannon style class, I see no reason why running away quickly is a bad thing. Remember healbot blues? There’s a reason the monk complained about every class getting a speed buff but the squishy ultra targeted monk in the backline never got a speed buff for his class.

SoM – Okay, I have a beef with this. We already have a hard “cap” of 100% for boon duration already. Does doubling boon duration’s have that big of an impact? I would like to know, because it seems kind of silly to nerf boon duration as much as they have. I would at least like to know their rationale. That said, I think the passive of this skill would be better served in assisting in some other fashion. I fail to see how a blind is related to increasing the duration of boons and when a signet lacks synergy, it should simply get a rework until it looks like it makes some sense.