Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

I’ll start:

I love books. But I never read the slipcover or the back of the book. Why? Because usually it says too bloomin’ much! I don’t want to read something like, “Ingrid takes a vacation in Crete and meets a mysterious stranger who isn’t all he seems to be, which she discovers when checking the lining of his suitcase and finding four passports in four different names all containing (insert imagined gasp here) her new lover’s photograph! What will Ingrid do? What will she do?”

My perspective here is the exact opposite Gaile. I’m a voracious reader and have been since early childhood. But if I’m in a library or bookstore and pick up a book and notice that it has no summery on the slipcover, I put it back on the shelf. If the author doesn’t feel confident enough to give me some information about whats in their book, I’m not interested.

Furthermore, covers usually tell you virtually nothing about whats in the book. I want to know what the book’s about before I get it. I don’t want to pick up a book with a tank battle on the cover, expecting a war novel, and find myself reading a romance.

Implement SPvP style reward tracks for Dungeons, especially Fractals and Aetherpath. Makes getting stuff like Fractal weapons less frustrating and less reliant on RNG.

Implement the same system for the current series of World Bosses. Do a balance pass on each and bump them up in difficulty. Alternatively, just implement it for Teq and Triple Worm for now, then gradually phase the others in.

Use metrics to see which dungeon paths are almost never run, and bump their rewards up. People don’t run them because they’re getting the same reward as an easier path, but with much more time and effort.

Yesterday I was doing the burning corpses event in southern Cursed Shore http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burn_the_scattered_Pact_corpses_to_honor_the_fallen when I found a strange drop from one of the risen maggots that spawn during the event. It was a “Shell of Secrets”; an account bound item that I could double click on to choose a reward. It gave me the option of three rares with different stat combinations, but these were level 51 rares.

I wondered whether this was intentional, as it seemed very odd that a level 51 account bound item would drop in a level 80 zone. Then I wondered if it might have been Personal Story loot that was accidentally dropping in a real world zone. Has anyone else encountered one of these?

Note that I said

Elemental Surge: Your glyph spells now cast all their effects, regardless of attunement.

Inscription would not be affected by this change. Casting a glyph in Fire Attunement would only give Might, not Might, Regen, Swiftness and Protection. There’s precedent for GM traits not interacting with lower tier traits too; just look at Stone Heart and Lingering Elements.

In short, if your objection to this change is that you could spam boons too easily, the change would be fairly minor from what you can currently do; the only additional boons being cast would be from Glyph of Elemental Harmony.

It would also be worth pointing out that running 5 Glyphs would reduce you to one stun break (Glyph of Elemental Power) and remove all your cantrips, with all the utility and survivability that comes from them. Your defensive abilities would be severely curtailed. Furthermore, grabbing Inscription in Air requires 4 points, and with 6 invested in Arcane, you can at most stick 4 in water, which leaves out Cleansing Water, so your Condition removal is going to suffer too (and you wouldn’t be slotting Ether Renewal either). And you lose Evasive Arcana too. That’s a lot to give up. In fact, I was honestly expecting people to say that the trait (and glyphs) would still be too weak, not too strong.

Elemental Surge. I’m not sure people even know about its existence (it’s a Grandmaster Arcane trait). Suffice to say it’s probably not being used very much. It’s fairly weak all things considered; when you consider that you could instead take the amazing Evasive Arcana, its downright insultingly bad.

There’s another set of skills that I feel are lacking: glyphs. Anet seems to want us to get them to use them more, but they still feel clunky and limited in comparison to cantrips.

Perhaps there’s a duel solution.

Elemental Surge: Your glyph spells now cast all their effects, regardless of attunement.

With this change, Elemental Surge firstly becomes much more viable, taking a worthy place alongside Evasive Arcana as a true GM trait. Glyphs also become a far more interesting option; they’re still limited by long recharge times, but with this trait, when you cast them, you’re going to have an effect!

Glyph of Storms would now create 10 seconds of area denial; Burning, Chill, Vulnerability, Bleeding and Blindness!

Glyph of Elementals summons a virtual army to assist you. But how would this function with the new command utility on their skills? Simple: when you’re in Fire Attunement, you can command the Fire Elemental, Air Attunement, Air Elemental, and so on.

Glyph of Renewal could potentially turn the tides in a big event like Tequatal, WvW or holding a point in PvP. With a potential 6 revives on the one skill, this one could be devastating if used correctly.

Glyph of Elemental Power gives all your attunements an extra bit of conditional oomph. With all spells having a 25% chance to inflict Burning, Chilled, Weakness or Cripple (each with a 5 second internal cooldown of course) you’re virtually guaranteed to be keeping your opponents cleansing like mad.

Finally, Glyph of Elemental Harmony gains some serious boon potential with each cast granting 3 stacks of might, 10 seconds of regen and swiftness, and 3 seconds of protection. And let’s not forget that all of those get an extra 30% duration thanks to 30 points in Arcane.

Let me know what you folks think!

Would certainly allow for some interesting build diversity. I think the biggest issue though is that this still wouldn’t make them good enough (and it would be a nightmare to code I imagine). Currently they’re just limited use bundles which already exist in the game.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Apokriphos.7042:

What are your thoughts on current Class Balance in Dungeons, sPvp, and 5 man roaming WvW?

Are there any plans to make classes that lack group utility useful in these game modes? Perhaps more frequent balancing, as in GW1?

Hey Apokripho (cool name btw)!

@balance in different game types: Class balance for those 3 game types differs, based on class and the game type, obviously.

-snip-

-Chap

Firstly, thankyou very much for taking the time to come into this thread and communicate with us. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we really appreciate it.

Class balance for those 3 game types differs, based on class and the game type, obviously.

For instance, in WvW, swiftness is a very important tool, while being less crucial in Dungeons (if you’re in fights a lot of the time). What we usually talk about in balance discussions is how some class specs will be stronger in one game type than they are in others, and that’s ok.

My concern with class balance is that only one game mode seems to be considered when balance changes are made: SPvP. I understand that maintaining balance in SPvP is important, but when it’s the only thing being considered, players like myself (who never engage in SPvP) feel a bit left out, stuck with the same old builds whilst the SPvPers get to try out new, exciting builds. It’s a telling point that the PvE meta is still Zerker after all this time.

So if you have a ton of damage in a spec, you probably won’t have as many ways to dole out tons of CC as well. If a spec does have that, we try to bring down one of those aspects of the spec. For instance, the new Ranger specs we’re seeing dish out a TON of damage at range, but they are relatively squishy if you get right on them (compared to say, a defensive Guardian’s ability to tank damage), and they have no way to really deal with enemy boons effectively.

And this really highlights where I feel the issue is. Your comments here are perfectly valid: but only in SPvP. A spec that deals a ton of damage but has little to no CC has, from a PvE perspective, no downside, as CC isn’t used, due to defiance and the content simply not needing it. Boon stripping; again, this is exclusively a PvP balancing issue; PvE content has no need for boon stripping.

It feels like the balance developers are terrified of making sweeping, exciting changes that affect all game modes because of their impact on SPvP. I can’t help feeling that as I try to figure out what elite skill is still worthwhile on my Elementalist that the reason Tornado is so lackluster is because if you buffed it too much, it would break SPvP. I can’t help thinking that your mindset on Fiery Greatsword is “Hey, we buffed its mobility so it’s still a great choice!” when mobility for us in Dungeons or Fractals is pointless, and buffing its damage would make it too much of an “I WIN” button in SPvP.

We, the PvE players, really do want encounters that utilize CC, mobility, boon stripping, healing, and all the other things that the SPvP community gets to play around with. We WANT that support-control-damage trinity in PvE content, just like the SPvP players currently have. We’re tired of the same old specs, the same old abilities, the same old meta, and the same old mechanics. Please, balance for all of us. Everyone likes new toys when a patch comes around, but for PvE players, it feels like a long time since we got something new to entertain us.

The image was datamined back in January. Anet said that it was not for the NA version.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1utx8p/data_mining_vip_membership/

Martin Kerstein:

We just wanted to respond to the image that has been data-mined from the Edge of the Mists testing branch.

This is a testing branch. We conduct internal experiments for various territories on our testing branches. This particular experiment is not being tested for the West.

As always, keep in mind that we test a lot more than we ship, so data-mining is no guarantee of anything. If we have announcements to make about future content, we’ll make them through the usual official channels.

Snowmoon.1758:

From the sudden influx of red posts with even Colin himself replying, its obvious that anet is finally aware of the massive displeasure for this feature pack.

From what i can see, they seem to be indicating that all the kittenification
brought by the NPE is due to unforeseen bugs, and the actual experience
isnt what we are supposed to be encountering. (eg: You shouldn’t faceroll
everything by dancing lol! good vid btw)

Whether its really bugs or their realisation that no one like their feature designs,
and they are using “bugs” as an excuse to salvage the issue, I say give them a
couple of days to sort things out. Lets see how it goes.

To anet: Whether it is really bugs or not, the QC for this feature patch
is pretty much non existent. Hope we can look forward to a less clusterkitten
experience in the future.

Not a single comment from Anet on the official forums has expressed any kind of displeasure about the changes. On the contrary; Anet has staunchly defended the changes when they’ve made any comments at all.

John Smith: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/page/13#post4393326

I would say that Economics was not the driving force behind many of these changes, but I still think they’re good changes.

Colin Johanson: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Wait-You-can-t-DODGE/first#post4392591

His comments there (which I believe you’re referencing) refer exclusively to bugs and “unintended functionality” with the new leveling system. There isn’t a single mention okittennowledgement that people might not like the system.

Chris Whiteside: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Communicating-with-you/page/24#post4391022

Yes absolutely I am proud of this team. I am sorry that you don’t agree.

This group of ladies and gentlemen has put out amazing content at an amazing rate.

And no i am not talking any PR I am a developer.

So to be clear, yes i am proud of this team, i am proud of our work, i am proud of how we support each other, i am proud of how much we care for the game and the community. You can twist that statement as much as you like but that is my stance.

Again, defending the changes. Absolutely nothing about people not liking the changes.

In fact, the only comments from Anet that acknowledge that people are angry come from Reddit’s /r/guildwars2, where one of Anet’s artists posted a few comments.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2g003k/ladies_and_gentlemen_of_tyria_i_think_its_high/ckehiq9

Someone has to show players that we are reading the complains.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2g003k/ladies_and_gentlemen_of_tyria_i_think_its_high/ckef1xz

We are listen.

In my humble personal opinion, the risk of old players not liking the system was known. But I am in the art department, so I would let someone from design explain the details better.

That is the sum total of Anet’s acknowledgement that people might be annoyed with the patch: an artist commenting their personal opinions on a non-official forum. Sorry, but the overwhelming message I’m getting isn’t “We hear you, give us some time to fix it” it’s “This is the new system. Deal with it.”

zenleto.6179:

Star Wars is Star Wars and has some of the most die hard fans around so I’m not surprised by that figure. As a universe it just craps on nearly anything else.

Die hard fans didn’t stop SWTOR from completely tanking before giving up and going Free To Play. What enables SWTOR to generate so much money from a smaller player base is their cash shop model, which is far more intrusive than what we have.

There’s a lot of QOL stuff that’s locked behind a paywall. Action bars, the amount of money you can store in your bank, the ability to run; these and many others require you to pay for them to unlock, or just pay the subscription. Honestly, it’s a bloody brilliant way of getting players to sub; DDO followed much the same model (although they put a lot of content behind paywalls) and they completely turned their game around.

Plus, SWTOR’s cash shop has a lot of pretty awesome stuff in it that the Black Lion Company doesn’t really come close to. When a player can run through GW2 from start to finish and not even know the cash shop is there, it’s not really surprising that revenue streams are low.

Arenanet’s balance team seem to look exclusively at SPvP when making their balance changes. Given that there’s now no underwater combat in SPvP, there’s no balance changes made for it.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Just a question here because I am curious. The idea of the Living World is that there is a storyline that you take part in, that you are involved in events that shape Tyria in permanent ways—how would you all convey the sense of progression and change without also making changes to the landscape? I see a couple of comments regarding creating things, not simply destroying. Do you all have any other ideas?

I’d like to see more fundamental changes to zones. Lion’s Arch was a great example of this; it really looks like the aftermath of a warzone. However places like Kessex Hills….not so much. If it wasn’t for a handful of new dynamic events scattered around, I’d honestly have no concept that anything even changed.

I played for the first 5 or so months then quit just as Living Story started, and came back for Scarlet’s final assault on Lion’s Arch. What struck me the most when I came back was how little things had changed. The really big thing I’d expected to see changed was actually Orr. The Personal Story ended with the beginning of Orr being cleansed and the death of Zhaitan. So I figured the Living Story would carry on from that. I pictured the green tendrils Trahearne had coaxed into being spreading from the Source of Orr like a carpet, consuming the corrupted landscape and transforming it into a verdant paradise. I imagined Tyria suddenly struggling to deal with political issues; who owned this new land; the Pact suddenly finding themselves as makeshift peacekeepers as desperate refugees or warlike races flooded into the new Orr, eager to build new homes. Centaurs running through reborn jungles, Ogres taming gorillas, skritt plundering ancient Orrian settlements, indignant human aristocrats besieging Trahearne’s office with claims of distant relations to Orrian nobility.

That’s what I thought a more dynamic world would be, one which carried on the story from the Personal Story and caused vast, sweeping changes to zones, rather like what happened to Ascalon in GW1. I think that’s what fueled a great deal of excitement during the Living Story Season 2, when a preview cinematic showed Rytlock apparently freeing the Ghosts of Ascalon. Reddit and the forums exploded with frantic speculation. Players were genuinely excited about the idea that Arenanet might remove the ghosts of Ascalon, revamping much of the Charr zones as a consequence. But then nothing happened. Perhaps that will change in the remainder of the season. But I think the reaction shows that I’m not the only player who would like to see changes like that.

Destruction, then creation.

Noyz.6430:

dat trait + glyph of storms(fire) = <3

It still has a 5 second ICD. It’s a buff sure, but it’s not major.

Windsagio.1340:

oop didn’t read closely enough, see Darya beat me.

1shotting pure DPSers isn’t a “QOL” change, it’s core balance. Player perceptions of balance are skewed already, let’s not make it worse by making the intended disadvantages of pure zerkers not exist.

I have said over and over again that it is not the damage of the mob that is the issue. The damage of the mob is completely fine. There’s nothing wrong with Champion mobs having high damage moves that can one shot a player. No-where in my post on Corrupters, or anywhere else for that matter, did I advocate for the damage on these abilities being reduced.

What I am advocating for is for ground targeted circles to be added to these attacks so show when they are about to occur. Every Champion mob in Dry Top with large scale damaging AOE attacks uses exactly that mechanic, and it would be a QOL change to place that on other champions in the game.

Please stop trying to turn this into a gear stat argument. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with gear. The GW2 combat system is fundamentally based around avoiding clearly shown attacks. That’s true for every facet of the game, from SPvP to Dungeons to Open World.

Dayra.7405:

I find it adequate that these mobs 1-hit everyone in zerker clothing without any warning.

My exo soldier warrior survives even 2 hits of them.

You’ve chosen max damage at high risk. The risk hits you from time to time.

Firstly, this post was not intended to discuss the relative difficulty of the mobs. I threw in the bit about the giant because he has no real issues, but could use a buff.

Secondly, the posts’ intention was to draw attention to some QOL changes that would make fighting these champions a less frustrating experience by clearly showing their attacks, which is a foundation of the GW2 combat system. This would also serve to help instruct players in reading mob attacks and knowing when to dodge, a fundamental part of the combat system.

Thirdly, there’s nothing wrong with a mob hitting hard. I made that very clear in my post. You must however give the player some feedback on why they died. As I pointed out, the Risen Corrupter currently gives players no feedback, but simply kills them. This is not just the full zerker types you mention. I run a full ascended Celestial build with 30 points in water on my Elementalist, and as I said, I’m downed before my character actually stands up. Without a tell as to when a mob will use such a damaging move, players become frustrated because they feel they have no way of avoiding such attacks in future. This was a major issue in Grenth after the Megaservers came out, where players would walk into Grenth in progress and simply fall over dead. Not even the combat log told them why this happened (they got 25 stacks of corruption almost instantly thanks to Megaserver scaling, and 25 used to kill you). Anet has since fixed that thankfully, and as I said, some minor quality of life improvements would go a long way to making fighting Orrian champions a less frustrating and more instructive experience.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Champion Risen Giant

I’m of two minds with regard to your comments on this one. Most of my fights with this mob were in very small groups, and the grubs — which generate most of the encounter’s damage — are an issue. In a zerg, such as with mega-server, the grubs don’t last long enough to matter due to AoE proliferation. I’m not opposed to similar mechanics to the Nageling Giant, but frankly player numbers like I see in mega-server CS would trivialize that fight, also.

I’ll add my wish that Anet consider the suggestions in this thread.

Giving the Risen Giants parity with regular ones wouldn’t stop a zerg demolishing them; you’re completely correct there. However it would make a fight with them far more dynamic and, I believe more importantly, it helps instruct players in the GW2 combat system. Living Giants are a great example of GW2 combat mechanics and if you don’t dodge their attacks, you spend most of the fight on your back. That’s annoying, so you try and learn when to time your dodges. And even though its level 80, it’s never too late to remind players of when to dodge.

It’s also a simple change for Anet that would increase the difficulty of the mob. Simple changes have more chances of getting through.

Ideally, I’d love to see sweeping changes to end-game champions that made them scale properly with zergs, just like the Risen Wraith currently does, and rewards increasing the more players join in. Currently events reward more players showing up with more mob spawns and Champions showing up. Single champions should be no different, provided the challenge also scales. The more players show up, the more abilities a champion mob should get. That’s really a discussion for another thread though, and unlike the changes I’ve proposed in here, these are complex changes that would require a great deal of programming and work.

Danikat.8537:

It happens on all games forums. People who are happy spend most of their time playing, people who aren’t happy come to the forum to complain.

There were similar complaints before the last feature pack, and in between when we only got Living Story releases there were complaints that Anet had abandoned or forgotten about PvP and WvW and there were never any updates for either.

As for me personally I’m very happy with the game. I still play pretty much every day. If that wasn’t the case I wouldn’t be here because I would have moved on to something new.

Wait a minute. If you’re happy with the game, why are you on the forums? By your own words, the only people coming to the forums are people who want to complain. People thrilled with the game like yourself are too busy playing the game. Furthermore, if players don’t like the game, as you say, they leave. Why would they come here to complain?

That’s the fallacy with the age-old argument of “Only complainers go to forums”. If it were true, then ALL you’d see would be complaints. In fact, there’s plenty of comments made by players defending Arenanet, both here and on Reddit. Yes, there’s more negative comments around right now, which points towards the community being annoyed at the most recent update.

Look at the forums when changes come out that the community likes. There’s heaps more positive comments. The forums may only represent a fraction of the community, but much like a political poll, they’re a good gauge of how the community is thinking. Because I have to say, conversations I’ve been having with people in-game are reflecting the mood on the forum: a lot of people are annoyed and disappointed.

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

Astral also has a very valid point – as it stands now, you can craft many L70+ rares now (with no ectos) and potentially salvage them for ectos.

It’s worth pointing out that those rares you can craft without ectos require 15 T5 crafting mats each. Those go for around 3 silver on the current market, making them cost around 45 silver just in mats. The rate for ectos dropping from salvaging rares is around 0.875 for Master kits and 1.25 for Black Lion kits, making the economic tradeoff slightly worse than just buying the ecto in the first place (given that BLKs either cost gems or are a rare daily reward, and thus can’t be relied upon to be always available).

On the topic, it would decrease the price of ectos in the market because there’d be more potential items producing them. That’s going to raise supply. I can see where the OP is coming from, but this change would have pretty major effects on the economy, since ectos are one of the most heavily traded items in the game.

Sorean.5379:

The problem is because making the mob’s attack easier to see will not solve anything,because usually they are covered in skill particles

As I pointed out, the solution in most cases has nothing to do with making the attack animation itself more obvious, but with adding filled in ground circles to the attacks to make them more visible, just like in Dry Top.

Champion Risen Wraiths

These mobs show up during the battle to take Jorfasts if enough players are around (and thanks to Megaservers, there usually are), and during Grenth. Their most feared attack is a large AOE life-drain that seems to have no limit on the number of players it affects.

I consider Champion Wraiths to be one of the best designed PvE mobs in the game. The animation when the Wraith uses its life drain attack is very obvious, as it rises up off the ground into the air. This makes it visible even through spell effects, and players also see red orbs being sucked out of them. Players can either try to stop the damage through brute force, by hitting the Wraith with enough interrupts to burn through its Defiant stacks, or they can move out of the affected area.

I don’t personally think the Wraith needs any adjustments; they’re a mob that rewards smart play and punishes poor play. Continuing to wail on it while its life draining will just get you killed, whilst organized interrupts or moving outside its AOE will defeat it. About the only time I’ve seen an issue come up is when two of them spawned at Jorfasts and wiped the entire zerg because there weren’t enough interrupts to burn through both stacks of defiant. But the zerg could have been better organized.

Eye of Zhaitan

Encountered during the Gates of Arah, the Royal Tombs and in the King’s Passage in Malchor’s Leap, Eyes of Zhaitan are quite potent foes with powerful attacks. Like the Wraith, I don’t see them as having any particular issues; they’re very difficult to solo, and their attacks are fairly obvious.

Those are my thoughts. I’ve probably missed a few mobs here and there, but I’m sure others will fill that in. Once again I must stress that this is not about making mobs easy; it’s about communicating to players the information needed to avoid their attacks. This helps make better players of us all and reduces frustration caused by attacks that seem to have no counter.

Champion Risen Broodmother

Typically encountered near the R&D outpost. The issues it faces with its line attack are pretty much identical to the Risen Knight, and can be solved in the same way,. It does have a cone breath attack that hits fairly hard that could use a filled in AOE indicator.

Champion Risen Giant

Players usually see these mobs near Meddler’s Summit, during the event to take the Gates of Arah, and over near the Rally waypoint in Straits of Devastation. They have an AOE stomp, summon grubs and a roar attack which I still cannot figure out what it actually does.

There’s no issue with the giant’s attacks not being viable; given the size of the model, even with a whole zerg pounding away its attacks are very obvious. The issue here is that the Champion is way too easy. Living giants, like the one that terrorizes Nageling, are quite challenging to fight, so its puzzling that their Risen counterparts are such pushovers. Living giants have an AOE Fear, a very powerful single-target ranged attack with knockdown and a three-stage single target shockwave attack with knockdown. They’re one of the best designed mobs for GW2 combat, as all their attacks can be dodged and have clear indications that they are about to occur.

Just giving Risen Giants parity with their living counterparts would solve the issues and make them truly challenging. And as a side note, how about making them count towards Giant Slayer at the same time?

Champion Risen Gorilla

These guys only seem to show up during Jorfast (either when attacking or defending). They have a very powerful AOE stomp ability and can cause a great deal of damage quite quickly with ranged knockdowns and a powerful leap. Currently none of these attacks have AOE circles at all. Adding coloured in circles to these attacks would be a fine and simple change.

Champion (and Veteran) Risen Subjugators)

I’ve included Veteran Subjugators in here because of one event: the attack on the Temple of Balthazar. Currently this is the hardest Temple event in the game by far, and it all comes down to one mob: the Veteran Subjugator. Savvy commanders will instruct their players to move to the locations where these mobs spawn and keep them CCed as much as possible, because the AOE fields they lay down are absolutely deadly to the NPCs that must be escorted to the Temple.

The issue here is that if one of those fields is lain down, the Pact’s finest warriors stand around in it and very quickly expire, causing the event to fail. This is particularly frustrating given that players must then tediously push another of the Invasion events all the way to the Rally base before trying again.

There’s nothing wrong with an event being challenging. There is though an issue with an event being challenging for the wrong reasons. Players shouldn’t have to stare at NPCs and scream in frustration as they refuse to move out of the death circles killing them. Making the NPCs revivable would solve the issue, but make completing the event a cake-walk. This one doesn’t really have a simple solution; the event itself needs to be looked at and re-evaluated. Keep the challenge, just don’t eliminate player agency.

Champion Risen Megalodon

Usually encountered in southern Cursed Shore. It has an extremely powerful bite attack that usually downs players in one shot. The Megalodon’s main issue stems from its model. It’s simply a regular size Risen Shark made enormous, but its hitbox remains the same size as it originally was. This makes reading its attacks impossible; one moment its swimming in your direction, the next you’re swimming to the surface to revive. Players end up just dodging madly if the thing swims in their direction at all.

The solution here is a harder one, and I don’t know if it is possible. Certainly some kind of clearer indication of its attacks would be beneficial. If the model’kittenbox could fit its mesh, this might help (and would certainly help with the wonky animations that go off when its affected by CC). However this could well be not a simple fix, so I’m open to suggestions. As a side note, all shark mobs in general seem to suffer from very little indication that they are about to attack.

Champion Risen Tactition/Rotbeard/Champion Gladiator

There’s a couple of mobs across Orr that use this template for their attacks. Their biggest attack is spawning purple crystals that do massive AOE damage. These activate very shortly after an AOE circle goes down.

The only real issue that comes up is that the circles are too hard to see when there’s lots of players and spell effects in the area, as there commonly are, especially with Rotbeard. The solution is again simple: colour the red circles in, just like at the Mark II Golem world boss or the Inquest Light Bridge event in Dry Top. The crystals spawning very quickly after the AOE circles goes down isn’t an issue in my opinion; the mechanic rewards fast reflexes and can be overcome.

Champion Risen Knight

These gargoyle looking mobs show up during the attack on the Gates of Arah, and one of them wanders around in Malchor’s Leap in the south-west. No-one much bothers to kill that one, for good reason: he’s pretty kitten lethal and his block/reflect/evade abilities make him take a lot longer to kill. The mob’s most lethal attack is a line of AOE circles that hit quite hard, and if the mob runs into terrain and stops moving, they all stack in one spot, much like the FGS 4 skill.

One big issue here is that the actual damage radius of the AOE circles is bigger than the circles themselves. This leaves players who think they’ve moved out of the way non-plussed, wondering why they’re taking damage when they’re not inside the red circles. On top of that the mob’s animation for laying down the circles (rearing up then swooping down) is hard to see through player animations.

The solution is twofold: firstly, when using the line swoop attack, have the filled in line AOE marker used by the Colocal Queen in Dry Top. Secondly, widen the line so that it shows the actual area affected by the attack. This won’t address the issue with the mob taking a long time to kill, which could be addressed by adding more rewards to it, but that’s a topic for another thread.

With Guild Wars 2 celebrating its 2nd anniversary, I feel that it is high time that some quality of life improvements were made to Orr, and in particular, the Champion mobs found within the zones. Orr, especially Cursed Shore, is a location where a great many players spend a great deal of time, and are the natural “end game” zones that traditional MMO players naturally gravitate towards. Therefore, QOL improvements here will go a long way to helping retain players who hit the levelcap and begin running Orrian events.

My intention is to present an overview of the main Champion mobs in Orr, the issues I feel they have, and the possible solutions. In most cases the solutions are simple and exist in the game already.

A disclaimer before I begin: I am not writing this to complain about mobs being too hard. Some content, especially Champion mobs, should be challenging. However it must be challenging in the correct way. Guild Wars 2 combat is build around being able to see what the enemy is preparing to do and trying to avoid it. Large scale attacks that can one-shot players must be clearly visible, or players die without having any idea what killed them. This leaves players frustrated, as they feel there is no way for them to prevent their death occurring the next time they encounter this foe.

Champion Risen Corrupter

We’ll start with the worst. These mobs spawn during the Penitent Defense phase and Jorfast. They have an AOE pull and a point-blank AOE attack that they use in conjunction. The damage on the PBAOE is extremely high, enough to down and then defeat a player before they can react. I have been pulled to a Corrupter countless times and hammered the dodge key, and found myself in a downed state before my character stood and was able to dodge. Shortly after, I would be defeated.

What makes this an issue is not that a mob has a powerful AOE attack, but that it’s impossible to see when a Corrupter is about to use its pull attack. Due to the relatively small size of the mob, attack effects from players obscure any animation on the part of the Corrupter. They may have an indicator, but I’ve never seen it, with flames and explosions all but hiding the mob’s model.

This makes fighting Corrupters extremely frustrating, as evidenced by comments from players lying dead in a pile of other dead players, which tend to be along the lines of “wtf”, “what happened?” or “how am I supposed to counter THAT?”. Again: the issue is that players feel they have no way of stopping themselves from dying, and that’s what needs to change.

The solution thankfully is fairly easy. Some time ago Arena-net introduced ground telegraphs for mobs: large, red coloured areas that signal when a mob is about to use a powerful AOE attack. These were employed extensively in Dry Top and they would be perfect for solving the issue with Corrupters. Add a coloured circle to the AOE pull attack, so players can see when its going to occur, and the issue is solved.

Champion Risen Abomination

This mob is usually encountered at the end of the Plinx chain in Cursed Shore. Just like regular Abominations, it has large charge up attacks that hit very hard, enough to down most players in one hit in conjunction with its stacking damage buff. The only issue with this mob is that the range and radius of its attacks are far larger and wider than players would reasonably think. This is a similar issue to Asura in SPVP where players can be hit by animations that they think they’re far enough away from, because the animation isn’t touching their character model. The Abomination seems to hit in a 180 degree arc in front of it, which is far larger than the cone effect a player would expect from a large club hitting the ground.

The solution is simple once again: a coloured semi-circle, similar to the one used by Nochtli in Dry top. Apart from that, the mob has no issues, and provides a good level of challenge.

METAShift.2913:

No, really, the FGS nerf whine is way too much atm. In PvE, I don’t see how anyone could argue that FGS trivialized nearly every fight ever, so I believe it’s justified. For pvp/wvw, how often were people rushing other players down next to a wall? Is that a thing that happens right now that I’m unaware of? Is there some PvP meta where teams used fiery rush next to the altar wall in temple of the silent storm? What’s going on?

For normal usage, in PvP FGS was used mostly as mobility, and it could arguably be said to be buffed in that regard as you now have a high damage attack opener rush. And for PvE, a lot of other classes have bad elites – look at thief and engi for example.

FGS doesn’t trivialize PvE encounters; the design of the PvE content does that. The hardest PvE encounters like Mai Trin or Grawl Shaman aren’t difficult because you can’t use FGS exploits against them; they’re hard because you can’t stack on them. FGS merely made content that was already easy go by faster. All this change will do is make dungeon runs take a bit longer.

I’m fine with the change happening by the way. It wasn’t the way the skill was supposed to work and I’m ok with that. What Anet seem to have missed though is that, much like Tornado, the only thing that made these skills worth slotting was those very unintended effects they just removed.

For PvP/WvW, sure, FGS gives you some nice mobility. That almost seems to be an unintended side-effect though. When you summon a giant flaming greatsword you’d usually expect to use it to fight. But its best use is letting you run away. If that isn’t an indication that the skill needs improvements, I’m not sure what would be.

Finally, the argument that other classes have terrible elites, so its ok for us to have terrible elites, doesn’t really add up. Other classes having bad skills doesn’t excuse us having bad skills anymore than it excuses them having bad skills. Those skills should be improved just like ours should be. And for the record, Engis have a fantastic elite in Supply Drop.

Pain.7638:

So for you fiery greatsword shouldn’t be modified? Because in pve i want to play a game called Guild Wars 2 and not a game called Guild Walls 2.

First of all Fiery greatsword was not nerfed actually fiery greatsword will be way more powerfull in pvp unless you fight in the wall in pvp lol then yeah its a nerf… that modification was needed for pve because it was overpower in dungeons it was just stupid… it takes 0 skill to kill the kitten and the boss’s.

Fiery Greatsword being nerfed into uselessness in PvE won’t change one single thing about stacking. Bosses will take slightly longer to die. They won’t be more challenging, they’ll just take a bit longer to die. That’s it. Nothing is being done to address the symptoms of why FGS #4 was so good: namely, that stacking is simply the best way to do most of the dungeon content on offer.

It astonishes me that people are actually acting as if this change is going to make dungeons challenging. Nothing about this change makes them the slightest bit more challenging.

A way for me to run Signet of Running Faster AND free up a utility slot? In a heartbeat. Our elites were useless at release, and they’re going back to being useless now.

Ohoni.6057:

We know that you have a policy to not talk about things until they’re ready to launch, but that policy is toxic, and it needs to go.

Your whole post is excellent Ohoni, but it’s this part that needs to be hammered home. Until that policy changes, all this talk is essentially meaningless.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

ipan.4356:

2 years is a long time for an MMO not to release anything.

I think you are mistaken. We have released content and features in the last two years on a fairly regular basis. Just because the content and/or features were things that you personally did not particularly care for doesn’t mean we didn’t release anything.

Please don’t trivialize the efforts of our design and development staff down to “nothing” because you didn’t like it. It’s fine to comment that you didn’t care for what was released, but don’t pretend like we’ve done nothing here for the past two years.

If I may Mark, I’d like to share my own experience of returning to the game after quitting around January 2013. I came back during the final battle against Scarlet in Lion’s Arch.

One of the first things I started to do when I got back into the game was to check to see what had changed. Now whilst I’ll freely admit that by no means nothing had changed, I was struck by how little had changed. There were no new zones in the game for starters. That quite surprised me, especially when we got Southsun so close to release. I tried to find new dungeons, but was told there were only a handful of new fractals. The same events were running in the same zones across the world, with only a handful of Toxic Alliance events the biggest addition I could see.

Disturbingly, events in Orr like “See the Pact Survivors Safely to Meddler’s Summit”, “Help Crusader Angaria signal reinforcements for the assault on Arah” and the whole Melandru meta event were still broken, failing to start or complete. That the biggest and most populated end-game zone still had broken events quite shocked me.

Players did tell me that there had been some great new content added in the past. Many seemed very happy about fighting the Marionettes in Lornar’s Pass. I found a few weird probes scattered around the world, but they didn’t do anything. Everything just seemed more or less the same. It was cool to fight in the ruins of Lion’s Arch, but I had no way of really knowing what was going on, like why the Dredge and Flame Legion had decided to team up, and who this Scarlet character was.

So when you say that your team has released content and features on a regular basis for the past two years, I believe you. It’s just that I can’t see it, or experience it. Someone coming back to the game after a long break, as I did, could be easily forgiven for looking through the game they had returned to and concluding that Arenanet had done very little with it.

A lot of people are saying they want new dungeons, that what they don’t want to see is just revamps of old dungeons. But you need to be realistic. That just isn’t going to happen, not anywhere in the near future at any rate.

An entirely new dungeon would be a huge investment on Arenanet’s part at this point. Their focus for quite some time now has been on taking existing game assets and revitalizing and revamping them. That’s what you should expect for any development of dungeons.

Someone might say “But they’ve added new Fractals!” The reason they’re more open to new Fractals is that they’re shorter, they don’t require the art team to create 3 new armour sets (and instead existing Fractal loot tables can just be used) and they can incorporate them into Living Story. Multi-path, 5 man dungeons do not fit into that.

So let’s concentrate on what we can get done. Revamping the existing dungeon content is what Arenanet is open to (as evidenced by this thread) so let’s try and get that happening. CDIs are opening up again, so we should focus on getting dungeons into that discussion, and let the developers know which encounters and paths need changes, and how to improve reward systems.

Chris Cleary.8017:

A fix is currently being prepared for this issue.

While the behavior (design) of this event was acceptable in the past, changes in the game over time have created an environment around this event that has become increasingly toxic (for the community) due to unintended use/change of mechanics.

Players should not feel that they are in the wrong for completing an event (or event chain), and that is what is happening with this event. The respawn timer for this event will be significantly increased.

While I fully agree with this response, there are other events that need looking at for the exact reasons you’ve cited: that players should never feel they are in the wrong for completing an event. In particular, the Temple Defense events cause precisely this attitude to surface. Players are frequently flamed and attacked for completing the defense of Orrian temples and Arah, for the cited reason that allowing the event to fail, and then retaking the temple, is far more profitable.

One possible solution would be to make the Temple Defense events just as rewarding as taking them. Instead of single champions like the Corrupted Quaggan that retakes Lyssa, have vast amounts of mobs spawn, as Zhaitan’s minions try to retake their temples by overwhelming the defenders with sheer numbers. Another, far more simple, solution would be to just remove the defense events altogether.

Wanze.8410:

Galen.9042:

I know you can’t comment on the gem store or I’d also ask why the Upgrade Extractor is so unattractively priced.

The upgrade extractor is intended for infusions, not sigils/runes.

Then why isn’t there another, cheaper option to remove sigils/runes from karma/WvWvW gear?

I do have a question. And it has nothing to do with the pieces of armour clogging up my bank with their delicious Strength Runes trapped inside them.

What is the reason for making WvWvW and Karma gear unsalvagable? I presume that it is for economic reasons; you don’t what people using karma and badges to make money. But surely the amount of money that could be generated by such methods would be quite insignificant? Furthermore, if this was a concern, why not have such gear drop karma or badges when salvaged, as opposed to leather/ore/cloth?

I know you can’t comment on the gem store or I’d also ask why the Upgrade Extractor is so unattractively priced.

citypigeon.6358:

What if the said leader is ourself?

Although Trahearne is leader of the pact, we are second-in-command. And while it was Trahearne’s doing that Orr is cleansed, it was our efforts that killed Zhaitan. In that sense, we are more of a direct threat to the dragons than Trahearne.

While Trahearne or Jennah might be involved, I doubt either of them will die, otherwise that will make the living story conflict with newer players or those have yet to do their personal story.

We’re not the commander anymore. Entanglement has a line of dialogue where the player character states that we were a commander in the Pact a while back, but that we haven’t commanded in ages.

As for it conflicting with the personal story, Anet have stated that the assumption with Living Story 2 is that you have finished your personal story. All the events within it are set after that. Given that Trahearne is never actually present in the game world (he only ever shows up in cutscenes, unlike the racial leaders who can be found in their respective capitals) he could be killed off fairly easily, and any momentary confusion about this state of affairs for new players can be explained by pointing out that Living Story follows on from the Personal Story.

lordkrall.7241:

They did add a new map in November 2012, and everyone seems to hate it. So maybe they will make sure to spend much more time on the next map added, instead of adding it for the sake of adding?

People hated Southsun because it was (and still is) considerably harder than Cursed Shore but with no better rewards. In fact, given the absence of large, mob-heavy events and chest-reward events like Temples, Southsun is significantly worse for rewards than Orr. Nowdays Southsun is used occasionally to farm for T6 materials, karka shells, and whenever the Karka Queen is up.

Anet did seem to learn from Southsun though, in particular that harder content has to be more rewarding to get players involved.

Snowmoon.1758:

Puddingskins.8412:

In the new video with Tara Strong in it, she refers to voice acting scarlet “as a teenager.”

Did I miss something in the LS where we got to hear her talking at that point, or was this a hint at some flashback or something that we’re gonna see in Season 2?

Haha!! I KNEW IT!
Season 2 will feature MORE SCARLET!! Season 2 story is actually the prelude of Season 1. More Scarlet! More Scarlet!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!! oh and TRAHEARNE TOO!!
MUAHAHAHAHA!!

Sigh….facepalm

Arenanet is proud to finally unveil the Living Story Season 2! When the ruined remains of the Breechmaker were explored by intrepid adventurers, one notable thing was found to be missing: the body of Scarlet Briar. The truth behind her disappearance will be explosively revealed when Fort Trinity itself suddenly finds itself besieged by dragon minions….but not those of Zhaitan!

At the centre of this storm lies a story not of hatred, but love. For in her final moments, as the Breechmaker plunged towards the very ground that it had sought to sunder, Scarlet saw a face appear before her. A Sylvari, like herself. When Scarlet awoke, her body had been coaxed back to life by the finest medical staff in the Pact, and standing by her side was the architect of her salvation: Marshal Trahearne. Long had he watched Scarlet from afar, but his quest to cleanse Orr did not permit him to reach out and intervene to stop her assault upon Tyria. Scarlet’s defeat gave him the opportunity he had longed for, and using Asuran derived Pact technology, the Marshal was able to save the wayward Sylvari. But now a far greater challenge awaited him: could he break the Dragon’s hold and win the heart of his desired?

Can the love of a Marshal prove greater than the hold of a Dragon? Will the defenses of Fort Trinity hold against the forces of two Dragons? Discover for yourself the breathtaking story of the two most iconic characters in Guild Wars 2 in the thrilling commencement of the Living Story Season 2!

I am actually perfectly aware that specific recipes are available for runes and sigils. That wasn’t the point I was raising. My point was that currently minor and major sigils and runes are fairly worthless, and that intuitively, it would make sense if 4 of one tier and type upgraded to the next tier and type.

I’d like to see our offhand skills improve. Currently the best offhand by far is focus, with two great abilities. Ray of Judgement offers allied condition removal/regen, blind and vulnerability (if traited), Shield of Wrath gives 3 blocks and a blast finisher. Solid all round.

Shield and torch by comparison just feel weak. Torch in particular; Zealot’s Flame is just a Burning condition applier that can be done more efficiently through Virtue of Justice. Cleansing Flame offers some decent condition removal, but is kitten by having a long channel time, mediocre damage and not having it affect the player. The one good side of torch skills is low cooldown.

Shield feels bizarre as it’s the only shield with, well, no blocks. Instead we get a wave protection applier and a ranged attack absorb shield with a punitive cooldown for what you get. Shield I feel should be our support and defensive focused offhand. I’ve been trying to think up some ways to get it to that recently actually.

Shield of Judgement: Now allies Aegis in addition to Protection

Shield of Absorption: Now casts Symbol of Judgement inside the circle

Mind you, I come at this from a PvE perspective, not a SPvP one, which is the only one the devs seem to care about.

Currently, most minor and major runes are worthless. Players obviously aren’t going to pay much for upgrades useful only in leveling. Now we can of course dump random runes into the Mystic Forge to get a chance of a higher level rune. But it’s completely random. It shouldn’t be.

For example, logically, 4 Minor Runes of Balthazar should transmute into 1 Major Rune of Balthazar. 4 Major Runes of Balthazar should transmute into 1 Superior Rune of Balthazar. 4 Minor Sigils of Bloodlust transmute into 1 Major Sigil of Bloodlust and…you get the idea.

A system like this would be much more intuitive and familiar to new players. It would create demand for lower end runes and sigils.

Just an idea.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Cloth needs to have a gathering function, similar to ore and wood. It’s really that simple. Since most cloth sources come from either an animal or plant, it wouldn’t be too unrealistic to use the sickle as it’s gathering tool.

Edit: (Had to grab this from my other post a few months back)

Examples:

Jute – Is made from a vegetable fiber. Add some plant nodes to the world, which can be harvested with the existing scythes, which give us jute scraps when harvested.

Wool – Comes from various animals. Technically ‘wool’ is from sheep, but goats and rabbits would suffice too. This might require an additional harvesting tool (sheers), although the scythe might work, but sheep and rabbits exist in the game already. Maybe make some of them into harvest-able ‘nodes’ and let us sheer some wool scraps from them.

Cotton – Also a plant. Would work similarly to jute.

Linen – Again, also a plant. Comes from the flax plant, so again could work like jute.

Silk – Comes from insect cocoons, typically the best known comes from a moth, but fro game purposes there are any number of furflies, and such which could potentially offer ‘cocoons’ for collecting.

Gossamer – The definition of this is ‘a spider’s web’ or ‘a very light, delicate material,’ so let us harvest it from certain spider’s webs.

Interestingly there already exist “farms” in the world where cooking ingredients are clustered. It would be a very simple matter to incorporate similar ones for all the above suggestions. Make a small enclosure for sheep/goats for wool, and as for Silk, Silkworms are fed on the leaves of mulberry trees. Just use the existing skins for blueberry/raspberry bushes and label them Mulberry Bushes. Slap down a Veteran mob to guard them and presto.

One idea I had regarding this in fact was to make more use of each player’s home instance. We can already get nodes in there, so how about a farm? Have say, 4 base fields, and to get seeds you harvest plants in the game world. We plant crops, harvest them later., anything from jute and cotton to truffles and omnomnomberries. Have an enclosure where you can raise livestock: chickens for eggs and poultry meat, cows for leather and meat, sheep for wool. Capture the critters in the game world and take them home to breed and fatten up. All the assets already exist in the game and there’s plenty of dead space in every home instance where this could be incorporated. And to really sweeten the deal for Anet, gem store possibilities! Fertilizers that make crops ripen faster, unlimited use tools for taming livestock in the wild, farmer outfit, additional crop fields.

Yes it’s probably a bit Farmville but hey, we already farm in the game.

Arewn.2368:

No thanks to heroes/henchmen. I don’t think I want encounters that are bad enough that NPCs can handle them (a la GW1).
They (heroes/hench) could have a place, but if we’re talking about end game that is in any way supposed to be challenging for a group, then no.

I’d pay gems to have Ezoola follow me around, making rhyming comments.

I’m not sure why anyone is thinking that this shift means no more large scale boss fights like Marionette. Such content would fit perfectly into the world boss schedule implemented alongside Megaservers. There are also blank spaces in the current boss schedule that are yet to be filled. Seems to me like those were put there to accommodate Season 2 Living Story major bosses.

Personally, speaking as someone who missed just about all of Season 1, I think this move is excellent. Looks like Arenanet learned a lot from Season 1 and its implementation. Really looking forwards to Season 2 now.

I believe the point the OP is making is not that Engineers can’t deal with Thieves; they most certainly can, with the right build of course. It’s that there should be Stealth-countering abilities in the game, and currently, there are none. The Engineer’s Utility Goggles just happen to be the skill for which it makes the most sense to have them reveal Stealth. Engineers, just like everyone else, have no way to prevent a Thief or Mesmer from just exiting a fight whenever they feel like it.

squallaus.8321:

You will find that wipes like these are because those people are not attuned to their toons well enough yet and is in need to further experimenting with different builds.

It’s not that people don’t know how to play their classes. It’s that many players simply haven’t encountered these mechanics before.

The Champion Risen Wraiths are a prime example of this. We had two spawn at the same time at Jorfast yesterday. Wiped the entire zerg, and there would have been a good 30+ people there. A commander told everyone to spam interrupts when they start their drain life attack, and when we rallied we managed to take them down, admittedly by pulling them apart.

People aren’t used to a mob with Defiance needing interrupts. They also aren’t used to a very damaging attack that isn’t a red circle, but rather gradual yet constant damage. Many players go down against these mobs not having the faintest idea what killed them, because it’s not that obvious.

It doesn’t help that some of the Orr champs also have difficult to read attacks. The Champ Megalodon is a prime example. Animation wise, possibly because he’s so huge, it’s difficult to tell when he’s using his “Yeah you can just die now” attack, and it’s over so quickly you need to know it’s coming. Captain Rotbeard also has his kitten circles of death that require you to have quite good reflexes to get away. The Risen Gladiator has them too. Mind you, they’re only major issues when he casts them in the same place in quick succession, because that defeats any players caught in them.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Fixed for you

---

I think the main problem with the open-world events is the fact that the events don’t really accommodate larger groups as it scales up in terms of the mechanics of the fight.

Look at the Shatterer: No matter how many people arrive, mechanics such as the healing crystals and imprisoning players doesn’t really scale up, meaning the majority of players can ignore the mechanics of the fight without the success being really affected.

Now, if each of these boss fight had its own scaling formula that caused the scaling to make the fight equally challenging on all levels (and not simple ‘more adds and more health’), you’d find less of a problem, because the mechanics couldn’t be ignored by 50% of the players there.

So taking the Shatterer as an example again:

• For every 5 players, an additional healing crystal spawns in a random place in the area of the event.
• For every 10 players, the Shatterer will also do an AoE imprisonment aimed at the largest congregation of players.

Whilst I can see where you’re coming from with this idea, what we most certainly don’t need is more events that make players hostile towards other players.

To take the Shatterer example, consider the prerequisite event where you have to collect siege weapons. I frequently see players abused on the new Megaserver system when more than one or two people go to do this event. Why? Because it quickly scales up to require a much larger number of siege weapons, and players want the event to go quickly.

Your idea would foster exactly the same kind of negative mindset. Players would abuse other players for showing up and making the fight harder. Griefers would show up purposely to make the fight harder, same as they do now at Lyssa.

Ulmir.5094:

Having to craft another set of ascended gear (yay celestial pre-patch) is frustrating and expensive. Should be in a pretty decent place once that is done though.

What would you replace it with, out of curiosity? I’m collecting mats for my first set of ascended gear and I’m curious as to what would be best. I was going for celestial but now I’m not so sure.

Draknar.5748:

Or if you got more loot for failed events, that would be a reward for failing.

Just to play Devil’s advocate here, but you DO get more loot for failed events sometimes. Defending the Temples or Gates of Arah rewards far less loot than letting these events fail and then doing the meta-chains again. People on my server have been abused for trying to defend these locations for that very reason.

I’ve been toying with an idea in my mind regarding conjured weapons. What if they functioned as weapon swaps?

Switch weapons in Air attunement, and you get a Lightning Hammer. Switch weapons in Earth, get Earth Shield, and so on. Fiery Greatsword would over-ride that and use the same summoning mechanic we use now. Switching attunements whilst in your “conjured weapon set” would switch you to the appropriate weapon, not take you back to your regular attunement abilities.

This would (obviously) give us many more options (40 skills!) though with the weapon swap cooldown, you’d still be somewhat limited. It would undoubtedly open up more potential builds and give greater potential for high level play. It would also make conjured weapons, especially the less used ones, much more desirable.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Nothing in this game should be hard period.

People who really want hard content are playing other games. Hard content in this game is deserted.

Old Arah, old Orr, too difficult, got nerfed.
Tequatl and wurms, both dead events on many many servers.
New dungeon path inTA? Noone goes there anymore.

People just don’t want difficult content. My guess is, that they are avoiding it because the rewards are so, wait for it, non-existent.

Doesn’t matter, hard content in GW2 is a waste of DEV time.

It’s not that people don’t want difficult content. It’s that there’s no point doing it if the rewards aren’t substantially better than just doing other, easier content. Putting in the right kind of rewards would cause players to flock to the harder content, and put the time into learning and completing it.

Harder content like Balthazar or Lyssa currently gets done because people just run out of world bosses to do. No-one does Teq or Wurm because there’s still enough other, easier, world bosses in the world to keep people going, and the other world bosses provide more or less equivalent rewards, even more so when time and chance of success is considered.

Hard content should mean hard rewards. Maybe the scavenging precursor stuff could involve this. I think people would be far more likely to run Teq if, by doing him, they could noticeably advance building their precursor.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

I know right? I got the game about a month after it came out, and gems were like 50 silver/100 gems.
I really should have invested back then, could have made myself quite the profit.

Oh, if I had the foresight, I would have filled my bank with iron ore back when there was a colossal glut on the market. I could scarcely believe how much it was going for on the AH when I was looking to craft some of the new ascended stuff.

On topic, I found a might stacking Scepter-Dagger build that I’m really enjoying, with LH thrown in for some situational DPS. Kind of surprised that Scepter DPS is still so terrible though.

Fair enough, sounds like the meta’s changed. Figured it probably would have in over a year.

Fortunately my 1575 gems I had lying around in my account have skyrocketed in value, so I’ll just re-equip myself with some DPS gear. Thanks for the feedback.