Guild Wars 2

Dustfinger.9510:

i would advise looking at it from a perspective of our own mi,litary. what do the individuals do in their free time? Answer; anything they want and are interested in. Just like if you were born into a military family instead of capitolist/democratic/religious/oldschool/new age/etc. then factor in that not every member is a direct soldier in the cause.

I suppose I have some trouble seeing what exactly they’d be doing though. If you’re raised in a society that is so wholly focused on the military, to the exclusion of any forms of art, music, etc., then how would a charr, in their formative years, develop any sort of interest that isn’t directly related somehow to the functionality of the military? Given that pretty much all that a charr is exposed to from the time they’re born is war, war, and more war. Or training for battle. It’s not so much a matter of they can’t, but more why would they?

I suppose what I’m having a hard time seeing is what exactly a charr would do when they aren’t running around trying to bash something’s skull in. I mean, do charr even have hobbies that aren’t somehow related to creating new machines of war? Do charr even get leave, for that matter?

So lately, I’ve been debating heavily what to make my warrior. I’ve narrowed it down to between a charr and a norn, and I’ve been having a really hard time sort of deciding between them. Part of the problem in this regard is that I’m having a hard time coming up with an interesting concept for a charr character.

The difficulty in the concept is that the charr seem extremely one-dimensional in terms of any sorts of personalities that can develop within charr society. Everything is geared around the upkeep, training, and readiness of a giant armed force, and everything is done for the good of the state and the legions. They all eat, breathe, and sleep the military life.

So my question is this: Are there any examples of charr culture that go beyond this seemingly very simple and flat idea, or things that give them more dimension beyond ‘we like war, yes we do, we like war, how about you’?

I realize this may seem an oddly specific (and somewhat insignificant) bug, but on my norn female warrior, the weapon sound for drawing a greatsword is not playing whenever I draw or sheathe the weapon.

I tested it out by making a new norn female warrior, thinking it might be just that particular character, but it was happening with the new one as well. The sound plays on members of other races using a greatsword.

Thank you for your time.

Hm. I’d never actually paid any close attention to King Reza’s clothing. It’s a bit of an odd scheme though. Red and blue together. For the time being, I’m going with a sort of red/gold/black color scheme on my guardian’s armor (someone suggested using the colors the priesthood uses) and that will probably be the scheme until I see something more ‘official’ so to speak. A flag or an official bit of heraldry (current to GW2, as GW2 has changed around a few things here and there) would be excellent.

A rather curious lore question spawned from attempting to come up with a good color scheme for my character.

There seems to be a distinct lack of any sort of Orrian heraldry, banners, or anything of the like in the game. What sorts of colors may have been important to the Orrians? Maybe in their military, what sorts of colors would have been used? A flag of Orr, indicating the national colors?

I was wondering if A. Anyone had any ideas or information that might present this information, and B. What sorts of colors would you think the Orrians would have used a lot?

Yeah. These are the sorts of things I would think of before jumping to ‘these creatures are summoned from the Mists’. Some people just don’t want necromancers to be necromancers anymore, I guess. :P

A recent discussion has emerged within my guild recently about where exactly current necromancer minions come from.

So far, two camps have emerged. People who say that current minions are merely constructs summoned from the Mists, and that necromancer minions are functioning as they always have, just minus the corpses (because that mechanic was a pain).

Now, there are numerous in-lore examples (Both GW1 and GW2) that demonstrate that minions are in fact the twisted rotting remains of the recently deceased, born again to serve a necromancer’s purposes. Examples of the other side of this argument seem to be very few, with only one prominent note being portrayed.

The example many so far have cited is from Trahearne, during one of the story missions (none of them have been sure which) in which he explains that because his minions are summoned from the Mists, they are immune to Zhaitan’s influence.

Can someone please clear this issue up definitively? Thanks.

Pennry.9215:

Freya, I’m not exactly sure what world you’ve been living in. As previously pointed out, tech development moves dang fast in times of war. Just look at how fast/far the real world’s tech developed in wars past. Not only have they shown us all the early stages, but they’ve also setup up the groups to adapt just as “perfect” as they have. Think a moment: All three major groups in The Pact are comprised of all the races AND have their enter-bickering thrown in your face at every turn. They’ve been stealing and plotting against each other for so long. Now they get to actually say “hey kitten, do it this way!” As pointed out when you adapt and create the prism cannon (ie C&C, nice one Anet ). The only point I really see as just “thrown in” is the orb you get from the Krait to suddenly be able to stop the dead from rising again and again. The Marshal (we call him “Tree kitten”) could use some more back story if you’re not Sylvari, as he seems to just suddenly show up as a replacement for your original (and much cooler) Order guide.

I haven’t played every race nor every class and I may never get that far, so I’m sure there’s even more thrown out there for us to piece together. And that’s the best part about this game: We get to actually explore and discover, rather than get hand-held and told every little detail.

Now to see how many “kitten” edits I get!

I’m well aware that tech development moves fairly quickly in wartime. But do you realize that even fast tech development in wartime tends to take years? As an example, the Manhattan Project was begun in 1939. They didn’t have a workable bomb until 1946. That’s 7 years of development. For ONE weapon.

I have seen no dry docks for constructing these airships (especially not the one you see in Arah Story Mode) playing through the stories I’ve done so far. My first runthrough was a human ranger, with the Vigil. The orb that stops the undead from rising up again? Introduced to me in the mission it’s used. I had no idea where it came from or what exactly it was for. Airships? Right there in Fort Trinity, with no explanation as to how any of that stuff was built or developed. I don’t even know what this prism cannon that you’re talking about is. I’m guessing that’s in some other storyline than the one I did. And the defense ’it’s in there somewhere’ isn’t really a defense for it in this case. Branching paths are great and all, but when some stories leave just about everything out, they need to be rewritten.

From my playthrough, and from what I’ve seen in the zones, none of this technology appears in its early stages at all. No airships, no giant mega laser cannons. Heck, they don’t even bother showing some sort of tests to see if the combined tech works the way it should. Even if it is done quickly, it doesn’t go from ‘I think this will work’ to ‘Finished product’ with no development whatsoever.

In addition, the ‘initial bickering’ seems to stop pretty quickly. After the story mission where you sort of establish that Trahearne can get the job done, there is no more tension amongst the groups. They all play super nice nice with one another.

Another issue that many people don’t realize when it comes to introducing a new playable race is where to situate them. Even if the Dominion of Winds was opened up and allowed as a playable area for the Tengu capital city, where is their starter zone? Each race currently has their own starter and secondary zones before they begin intermingling with the rest of the races of Tyria and other regions.

As the Dominion of Winds sits A. Right next to Lion’s Arch and B. Right next to Caledon Forest, there’s no room at all for a starting zone of their own, and thus they would have to borrow someone else’s, which seems a touch unfair for a new race.

And while I don’t necessarily like the idea of Tengu being playable (for whatever reason the idea just doesn’t sit right with me) I think it would be fairly easy to come up with their renegade counterparts. The trope Honor Before Reason comes to mind almost immediately. Certain Tengu may feel that working with other races is a slight on their honor, and thus attempt to remove their honorless brethren (the playable). As a result, you’d probably end up with a very feudal warlord style setup in regards to who and what you fight.

I’m…not entirely sure what game you’ve been playing.

First off, airship development isn’t seen…anywhere in the game from what I’ve seen. Even if there are blueprints for the airships somewhere, they still need to be shown as working on a prototype somewhere. A dry dock. Something. None of that exists anywhere in game. Then suddenly the Pact has a fleet of the darn things.

The choppers in Orr bear little resemblance to the prototype that was being worked on in Fields of Ruin as well. The helicopter in FoR looks more similar to what we think of in terms of helicopter. The choppers in Orr resemble auto-gyros, which is a different form of aircraft altogether.

Freya, I am part of a role-play guild which was (in our stories and in our heads, haha) very much founded on the idea of inter-racial co-operation. That doesn’t mean it has to be about fighting the dragons. Sure, the Elder Dragons are a pretty big threat and if you build up a substantial force, contributing to the fight would be a good thing to do. But the world is more than a fight against the Elder Dragons – you’ll notice that a lot of people in Tyria just plain ignore them for the most part.

The main issue with this is that there’s very little else that would cause an organization like this to be founded. Granted, there are mercantile groups where this would be a good idea, as is the case with Lion’s Arch. But if you aren’t really interested in forming a mercantile guild, rather something more akin to a military group, fighting the dragons is about all you’ve got. XD

We see an early chopper prototype being work on by a charr in the Feilds of Ruin.

There’s a big difference between going from a concept (what is seen in Fields of Ruin, which doesn’t even fly very long) and having a full-on, reliably functioning armada of the things. The airship technology seems to emerge out of thin air. It wouldn’t be quite so irritating to me if there were special story missions/places within zones where these things are shown as being developed or built. The combination of the different technologies to form the new Pact tech seems almost flawless. They don’t suffer reliability issues, problems with different kinds of technology being merged, reverse engineering problems, etc.

In regards to roleplaying less important guilds/orders, I didn’t say I wanted the group to work with the Pact. This is the crux of the argument, really. In lore, why would anyone be joining smaller guilds to combat the Elder Dragons, or for that matter, why would they join any of the Orders anymore? They’d just go join the Pact because the Pact now has the wonderful proven record of ’we’ve killed Zhaitan’.

The creation of the Pact just seems to happen too perfectly to be believable. One moment it doesn’t exist, the next it does, and there aren’t any tensions between its members whatsoever. Everyone plays happy nice with one another and gets on with the business of fighting dragons.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

You say not to mix lore and mechanics, yet the reason why Rurik is a “nitwit” (and the reason why he’s disliked – same goes for Kormir, Togo, and Mhenlo in fact) is solely/primarily due to mechanics. :p

I hated him long before the irritations with his tendency to run off without the party. The person who does his VO just…irked me. His lines had a tendency to sound entirely too wishy-washy as well. Something about him just sets people off, I think, beyond the mechanics.

Kormir and Mhenlo also get the vote in my books as being crazy annoying right after Rurik, simply because of how they come across. Kormir is blinded. She then proceeds to do absolutely nothing up until Abaddon needs killin’. Mhenlo is just presented as this amazing wonderful faultless dude who just happens to have way too many adoring fangirls.

Togo though. Togo was awesome.

The Pact tech appears to come from nowhere. There is no evidence of its existence at all until you walk into Straits of Devastation, where suddenly it’s there, fully formed, and fully operational as intended. The airships are a particularly big gripe with me, as again, they appear from nowhere. I would have at least liked to have seen some sort of story-only area perhaps where this stuff is being developed/built. As it stands now, you go from ‘We have no tech’ to ‘We have the best tech ever made.’

The blue veiny light things are a mixture of sylvari and asura knowledge, I imagine. Basically, humans seemed to design everything, with stylistic elements of everything in it, the Charr provide the raw materials (seeing as how it’s all metal and gears), the asura provide the power to make it go, the sylvari do uh…things with the stuff, and the Norn are the indispensable muscle. I guess.

As to my second question, it’s not so much an issue of who’s anti-dragon or being a major order, but more along the lines of if the Pact exists, why would you (in character) go join some other organization that isn’t the Pact, especially when the Pact gets results?

As the title dictates, this thread will most likely involve many spoilers regarding the later part of the story in the game. This is your last warning, so if you don’t want stuff ruined for you, do not continue to read.

1. How well do you feel the development of the Pact and its technology were handled in-game?

2. As part of the roleplay world, do you believe this kills the opportunity for guilds who want to attempt to create multiracial orders akin to the current three?

Playing devil’s advocate here a little bit, but there is a problem with being able to have these titles.

Eventually, everyone has them (even if they choose not to use them) and you’re seeing everyone on the server calling themselves Warmaster or something of that nature.

The Vigil would fail miserably if it had that many officers. XD

There is already a function of the inventory that does just this. Under the inventory options (the little gear) there is an option to show/hide bags. This turns off the bars and compacts them all into the appearance of one giant bag.

After mucking around in image editing for a bit, I did manage to put together a simple mockup of the skills. Note these skills don’t have names or anything, but I wanted to get the overall visual aesthetic of the skills down. Feel free to tell me what you think.

Then feel free to suggest an alternative name for it. In this instance, I am using the term Seer to refer to someone who can see beyond what most people see, I.E. into the spirit realm, and who is actively able to influence or interact with that realm.

The race was referred to as such via their ability to do exactly that, or at least it can be heavily assumed that is the case.

The alternatives that I came up with simply didn’t sound quite as impressive is all. One example would be Mystic.

Animatus.6197:

you have obviously never played engineer, they have no signets… Its an ok class, but needs more description, a lot more of the class ideas that have been posted have had a lot of thought put into them, this looks more like you just had a random though and just threw it up on the forums for everyone to see

No, I haven’t touched on Engie except only briefly. My apologies for an incorrect assumption. Ele’s used to not have signets, but now they do, so I assumed that every profession had them now.

As to the notion of it being a random idea, this was actually fairly thought out ahead of time before I made the post. In addition, I do plan on adding more information as I generate it. My current goal is to make a mockup of the skills bar that this profession might use.

By my count at Least 5 Mineral Springs, Iron Mines of Muldune Ring of Fire and Abbadons Mouth and Hells Precipice

I forgot about a few of the others. So sue me. :P Still not quite enough I would think to maintain a genetically viable population.

Additional content so far:

Trait Lines

• Awareness — Traits in this line deal with the support skills, as being more aware of the current spirits available around you would enable you to do more with them to affect others than yourself.

• Presence — A Seer must seem commanding in order to gain the spirits’ aid. This trait line deals mainly with Haunting skills.

• Channeling — The ability to channel spiritual power through oneself, and function more as a medium for the rage of the spirits to course through. These traits deal mainly with personal power and damage abilities.

• Sacred Arts — Another support line, this one for the various party wide defenses and buffs. I.E. dealing with Talismanic skills and the like.

• Soul Cleansing — This trait line deals with the primary class mechanic for the Seer (which is yet to be determined).

Suggestions and feedback are always welcome of course, so feel free to give alternate desired names, or invent something to add to the profession!

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Really just seems too similar to Guardian.
Also you forgot to list Scepter in there.

I left the scepter out on purpose. It’s a caster class without needing a scepter, and I felt that made the class more unique.

As to the similarities to Guardian, I’m not really seeing those. Guardians are crusaders of justice. Law enforcement with magic, in essence. They are not mediums who communicate with the dead.

Could make it into a shapeshifter instead, transform into the various beasts of tyria :P

So…you want a druid. The Norn already shapeshift, and Rangers already have the nature magic thing covered.

Yes they were very few in number but whos to say they couldn’t repopulate?

Considering there were only two of them…I can’t see this happening. XD

Absolutely no discourse at all? =( For shame, Guild Wars 2 Forums!

Before I begin, I would like to express that I highly doubt anything like this would ever make it into the game. However, as historically MMO suggestion forums are awash in this type of thing, I always have a bit of fun coming up with ideas and seeing how the forum reacts to them. So, with that in mind, I look forward to interesting discussion regarding the following idea for a profession, the mystic Seer.

Class Concept — Once Zhaitan rose from the depths, and all communication was cut off from Cantha, there were many in Tyria who had followed the Ritualist traditions that they hard learned in their homeland. In a way, being removed from that environment seemed to encourage experimentation with the practice and to perform research on more effective methods of dealings with the spirit world.

250 years later, the philosophies of the Ritualist have been altered and embodied in a new calling: the Seer. After countless hours of training, the students of this new force found they could commune with the dead even whilst in the heaviest of armor. Gone too were the binding rituals of the past, instead opting to find ways to work with the spirit world, rather than bend it to the whim of an individual.

In learning this new practice, former ritualists gained abilities they dared not even dream of before, the power to call upon spirits to do far more than they had in the past, and for the ritualists themselves to gain immense spiritual powers.

Their magic is powerful, their spirits unyielding, their armor unbreakable.

This is the Seer.

Class Color — White, with yellow and black.

Armor Class — Heavy

Available Weapons — Hammer, Dual Mace, Staff, Focus, Pistol (Main Hand), Dual Daggers, Trident, Spear

Class Mechanic — Open to suggestions here. I was having a bit of a hard time coming up with something that felt unique.

Types of Class Skills —

• Hauntings — These are skills which cause conditions and debuffs on foes. By calling upon the spirit world to haunt the enemy, they cause them harm.

• Possessions — These are skills which cause buffs for the Seer. They encourage a spirit to possess them, thus granting them greater battle prowess.

• Signets — Seeing as how they all have signets this go around, makes sense for a Seer to have some as well.

• Insights — Support skills that utilize the spirits to grant power to everyone in the party.

• Talismans — Special emblems of power which grant various defenses to the party.

Feel free to discuss at your leisure, and I look forward to seeing all the ideas that may spring forth from the topic. Thank you all for reading.

The way the current dungeon system is functioning, they sure have a funny way of brute forcing attention away from a grind. I’m not saying that exotics should be easy to acquire from explorable modes. Or any sort of the high end gear (cultural and dungeon gear) that people actually want. But currently, there is a massive grind associated with these items that makes it so noone wants them anymore, because they have to run X dungeon too many times to make it interesting or fun to do so. The cultural armors are also prohibitively expensive.

My suggestion to ANet on that front is to reduce the token cost of the dungeon sets. I’m not saying make them available after doing only one run of explorable mode. But there is a happy medium where it doesn’t take 100 to achieve the same effect.

As to the limiting of player wealth and the ability to accrue that wealth, I will say that I have never seen something as asinine hard coded into a game as ANet’s anti-farm code. It was there in GW1, and was silly, and now it’s back in GW2, and it’s still silly. The market in MMO’s tends to take care of itself most of the time. I really wish ANet would learn this.

I don’t believe that MMO’s can ever truly get away from the grind. It’s just part of the nature of the beast at this point. But what I’m starting to get a wee bit upset about is the fact that it seems like ANet has put the grind in all the wrong places, and hopefully they’re going to do something to fix that at some point.

As stated in my posts, the game already has enough gold sinks, and from the look of things, not enough ways to reliably earn income. I’m not saying put in daily quests or some stupid nonsense into it, but I would think farming is the most earnest expression of people actually enjoying the game. They’re willing to spend countless hours doing trivial nonsense in their game, to try and earn enough cash to buy the precious shiny they’ve been eyeballing for the past ((insert length of time here)).

And yes, farming does create riches and glory. The whole point of the MMO is to make you feel like you’re progressing, like you’re advancing in a world where other people are advancing around you. Inhibiting that advancement is like saying ‘thanks for playing our game, but we really don’t want you playing our game’ and it just baffles me to no end.

As to the farming is bad line, I have never once fully grasped how exactly farming is bad. Botters and the like are a pain, and they do something to destabilize economies I suppose. But even if you had a crash of an in-game economy, wouldn’t it eventually simply fix itself? Not to mention there’s always the option of simply resetting the economy.

Bloodtau.4672:

The boulders and the adds that can mess up your party are more than enough to keep melee characters busy…

But dealing with adds (while an essential function in a lot of fights) doesn’t feel quite as glamorous or heroic as wailing away on the boss like the ranged members of your party are able to do with nigh impunity, does it?

Granted, this could be solved with a little shift in mindset about what’s more useful regarding boss encounters.

To Kogasa: I have never quite understood ANet’s almost obsessive need to eliminate farming within the game. It’s how most people within MMO’s generate their income, by farming up things to sell on the auction house/trading post, which usually gets used in crafting and is removed from the economy. This tends to keep the economy sort of self-correcting and stable for the most part. I spent a good hour farming up some T6 Fine Crafting Materials the other evening. And all I got for my trouble was about 75s, give or take. You make the rare things rare by reducing drop rates, not by limiting the amount we’re able to gather. If we want to spend countless hours doing boring repetitive work to get crafting materials and the like, let us, by gosh. We’re spending time and effort in YOUR game.

(Last leg, I promise.)

• 5. Greed Is Good, Greed Works — This is a special note I’m making regarding what I’ve been reading about the apparent anti-farming code implemented in the game, as well as the reduced amount of reward from the dungeons. Having worked a ranger to 80, from what I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable source of income once you have completed all the maps and the like, and while my character was usually able to afford most things, there are some things that still feel dear after all this time. Only having accrued around 24g total thus far, I’m wondering if the amount of money one earns via certain activities (dungeons, most notably) shouldn’t be buffed or given a small boost. Reading many of the topics on this forum, many see some of the explorable modes with some disdain simply because it feels like they’re spending hours on content for not much reward, and the repairs are especially harmful to their pockets, with no apparent means of recuperating that money. For those of us who don’t have the time or the patience to play the market, this becomes something of an issue when there are many many gold sinks present within the game. Waypoint travel, while inexpensive at maximum level, becomes more expensive when you must factor in the cost of purchasing salvage kits, gathering tools, and repairing your gear. Even more so once re-traiting, cultural armor sets, and the like enter the playing field. So, a number of things can be done about this. The amount of money earned can be given a small boost, a happy medium where you are able to afford things without feeling like you’re spending a fortune on gear repairs and the like, or the cost of these items can be reduced to allow players to feel like they are actually accruing wealth over time, rather than feeling like it’s all being spent on repairs, etc. For many, grinding is the only means to acquire this wealth, either via dungeons or simply going around and slaying mobs for an hour or so. Grinding out wealth is something that is acceptable, in my view, and imposing limits on just how much wealth players are able to accrue in any given sitting seems again to go against the intended design goals of this very well put together game.

I look forward to the positive discussion this topic might bring about, and that we can find ways to improve what is already a very well constructed product. To those of you who have read all the way to the end of this long and exhaustive post, you have my thanks for your time and energy, and hope that you enjoyed the read.

(Apologies for the double post, but the original was too long for one entry, apparently)

• 3. Safety Dance — Currently, the boss encounters seem to be the sort of thing that groups, even the well put together ones, survive via the skin of their teeth (at least in my experience, I can’t speak to the very skillful players) rather than any form of strategy for dealing with boss mechanics. The boss decides who to attack seemingly at random, and if you happen to be particularly unlucky, you go down and there’s little you can do about it. This goes with the previous two points well, as it alleviates the problems associated with those points. Introducing mechanics that function reliably and in an interesting way can be a very fun way to spice up boss fights, especially when said boss fights boil down to long drawn out affairs because the boss has a massive pool of health, and the group figures out his damage patterns and suddenly the group’s spending about 5-10 minutes simply trying to down something that ceases to be fun. More strategy could be easily implemented via some reworking of how the boss mechanic ‘Unshakeable’ functions, as an example. This mechanic makes bosses immune to crowd control for a set number of crowd control skills used on the boss. Even if you happen to have a profession along that’s very good at control, only some of their control abilities are being put to use, as the boss is immune to them half the time. This further reduces the amount of strategic use of skills against boss encounters.

• 4. That Grinding Sensation — Grind is endemic to MMO’s. It’s simply part of the nature of the beast. From what I’ve been reading and hearing in-game however, despite ArenaNet’s best attempts (for which I applaud them) this game still has quite a bit of grind in its gears. The best example comes in the form of how many times you must run an explorable mode simply to get what amounts to a cosmetic option. Yes, we as MMO players will do just about anything to get our shinies, but this whole exercise can be made somewhat less painful by reducing the number of tokens required to get the dungeon gear items. I admire that ANet is trying to make the more epic loot feel more epic by making it harder to acquire. However, making it harder to acquire also indicates more grind to achieve that result, and this seems to fly in the face of the game’s stated design goals. In fact, the entire Explorable Mode experience (from what I can tell) seems to go against what Guild Wars 2 was designed for. In essence (to borrow a euphemism), ‘Bring the Player, Not the Class’. A well orchestrated group, regardless of what skills, traits, weapons, etc. they choose to bring to the fight should be able to down this content, rather than what occurred quite heavily in the original Guild Wars (I.E. only certain professions being desirable because they brought a skill that was more useful in certain encounters than another profession). Again, I refer to my above point regarding more strategy in encounters, as opposed to what each profession does specifically. There should be a way for all groups (played well and organized, of course) to overcome challenging content without having to resort to pulling out their cookie cutters.

First of all, I would very much like to say that I have been enjoying my time within Guild Wars 2. There are things that I have come to love and be somewhat annoyed with, but that only enhances the charm of the game in my eyes. What I am going to be doing below is putting together a short little bullet list of items that I feel could be done to improve the dungeon experience a bit, as well as some comments that are related to dungeons that I would appreciate being addressed.

• 1. Something Isn’t Right Here — When I say difficulty tweaking, I am by no means saying that the challenge of the dungeons should be reduced or nerfed. The difficulty is a refreshing change from other MMO’s currently out there at the moment. However, while reading through these forums, I have noticed that there’s a bit of a trend. Many of the people feel that the encounters are either too difficult, too random, or lacking in some form of mechanics that makes the boss encounters fun. For instance, I have seen that the developers have stated in this forum that the difficult dungeons are indeed designed for highly coordinated and highly skilled groups of players, who are utilizing their skills to the fullest to complete the content. But I am afraid to say that I can pay attention to some of these bosses all day and not see any of their ‘tells’ due to the sheer number of particles on the screen at any given moment. Some other means of advertising what they are planning on doing next and some time to react appropriately would be a nice thing to be implemented in some future update. This particular issue resonates closely with my next point.

• 2. But What If I Want To Swing My Sword? — A trend that I’ve noticed with many of the boss encounters within many of the dungeons is that they seem designed for ranged professions more often than the melee ones. Of special mention is the Iron Forgeman encounter within Sorrow’s Embrace. There is literally nothing at all during the course of that fight for the melee to do, except dealing with adds, and they’re not particularly difficult to handle anyway. The fight is made even more frustrating if say the melee class forgot to bring a ranged weapon with them, and/or they are unfamiliar with the encounter and forget to swap out weapons beforehand to prepare. What makes many of these fights especially frustrating for melee classes is that they are consumed in what I mentioned in point #1, being that there are a veritable sea of particle effects going off all at once, and the melee have a much harder time seeing the ‘tells’ of the bosses, not to mention a much reduced reaction time. As mentioned above, having some sort of alternate means of indicating what bosses are about to do and somewhat more time to react. This makes the melee feel more involved with the encounter and allows them to feel like they’re contributing in a way that the class feels designed for.