Guild Wars 2

That’s a shame. I recall Minion Master waiting for some buffs, and I was really hoping for a life-drain build to take off after some patching.

I haven’t played GW2 in about 9 months (since the weekend release of the fractal dungeons), and I was wondering how the Necro has been doing since then? I originally started one way back when I started playing the game, but decided to shelf it until ANet got its stuff together and fixed all the bugs and worthless skills/talents.

I glanced at some of the threads, but I didn’t see any real info on how different builds are fairing in the grand scheme of things.

So, thoughts?

I started to play less when I heard about the ascended gear a few days before the patch went live. Regardless, I was leveling one of my alts, so decided to stick around for a bit longer and see how the patch turned out (despite my reservations, and the frustration that came with knowing Anet was turning their back on their own design philosophy).

Then I played the first day of the event on November 16th, spent 45 minutes watching my ranger auto-attack things in slow motion, found out the new dungeon portal was broken, and haven’t logged back in since.

The combination of Anet’s latest content patch and their complete lack of proper playtesting for their event told me all I need to know about their “new direction.”

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Greyfeld.7104:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Are people seriously complaining that others are doing things on an increased difficulty level? …and wanting players who are experienced on their teams?

No, people are complaining that Anet built a new set of content that actually encourages this behavior.

The general idea behind Anet’s design philosophy before this patch has been to encourage teamwork and helping out your fellow player. Yet, for some reason, they decided that creating a dungeon that fractures the playerbase (this was part of the complaints revolving around the Ascended gear, and this is something that I knew would happen, but nobody wanted to listen) was a good idea, despite the fact that it flies in the face of what this game was meant to be, from day one.

“The general idea behind Anet’s design philosophy before this patch has been to encourage teamwork and helping out your fellow player. "

Never happened ever. Not once since beta 2 or 3… No one ever parties up with you unless you nag over and over in map chat especially in the three maps of Orr (took me forever to get help to finish the first two maps and I’m waiting for this new event to die down to even have a chance to get help on the final one and Arah dungeon story). Guilds don’t even do it either. They treat you like kitten and tell you to play a new easier class (guardian/warrior lol) or L2P solo. For dungeons, its required, for maps? No so much.

Encouraging teamwork and helping out your fellow player isn’t the same thing as creating formal groups.

Lutheran.9687:

What struck me is the lack of items you can get off karma vendors. Would have loved to see some unique armor skins for the map that you can get via exotic armor sold by some karma vendors.

Seems like a missed chance to create a Karka-shell heavy armor set, a Karka-shell shield, and maybe a couple weapons made out of coral or something. Or, hell, those same items, but as craft-only skins that require the new “crafting materials” that you can gather in Southsun Cove.

But I can’t say I’m really all that surprised. Anet seems determined to avoid creating new and unique armor/weapon skins. You’d think that, with the focus on aesthetic horizontal progression, they would put a lot of effort in expanding players’ aesthetic choices in-game. But nope, we get a handful of limited-time skins during a holiday event, and a bunch of “new” gear that uses skins that can already be found for cheaper in other areas of the game.

There are plenty of threads about this patch and the new gear, with various ad hominem attacks being thrown around. However, I’d just like to point out one fact:

Gear is not progression. Gear is not content. Gear is a gating system.

Think about it, really. If you have to acquire a certain baseline of stats (via new gear) to be able to complete a dungeon, you’re simply taking part in an elaborate gating system that’s designed to slow down progression and stretch the life of new content. Completing the actual content is progression.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

To call Guild Wars 2, as an entirety, broken, on the basis of one bugged content release, when most of the content was fine anyway? That seems a mite unfair to me. Maybe we simply disagree on that.

Yeah, because there aren’t still a plethora of broken events, most classes aren’t still sitting on dozens of traits and skills that do something other than what they say they do or just blatantly don’t work at all, we aren’t still looking at bugged and unworking personal story missions…

Oh wait, that’s all happening.

Nevermind that every time I turn around, Anet is releasing a patch to fix something, which just ends up breaking something else.

You may be happy getting crapped on, but some of us have standards.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Oh, don’t act so entitled. There were bugs that stopped some of the events being playable, and huge lag problems, but also a really enjoyable dungeon and a new map that, unless you’re travelling in groups of 200, is perfectly functional, beautiful & fun.

Heaven forbid that I, as a paying customer, expect the company providing the product and service to release a product that isn’t half broken. How incredibly selfish and entitled of me!

Yeah, no. Anet’s already got 3 strikes against them this week. 1) Turning their back on their own design philosophy. 2) Breaking promises for class fixes and balancing. 3) An unplayably broken event.

I’m pretty much done with this game, at this point in time.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

I can only assume you’ve never played a Bethesda game, because compared with this, they get away with murder.

Nope, because I don’t play broken games. Just because another game is more broken doesn’t make this acceptable. Broken is broken, and I won’t fund a company that makes a habit of putting out broken products.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Are people seriously complaining that others are doing things on an increased difficulty level? …and wanting players who are experienced on their teams?

No, people are complaining that Anet built a new set of content that actually encourages this behavior.

The general idea behind Anet’s design philosophy before this patch has been to encourage teamwork and helping out your fellow player. Yet, for some reason, they decided that creating a dungeon that fractures the playerbase (this was part of the complaints revolving around the Ascended gear, and this is something that I knew would happen, but nobody wanted to listen) was a good idea, despite the fact that it flies in the face of what this game was meant to be, from day one.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

It wasn’t an expansion, it was a free content update.

When I’m given something for free, I usually don’t reply, “should I be impressed?”

When somebody hands me a sack of crap as a present, I’m usually not overly enthusiastic about it.

Munki.9452:

Greyfeld.7104:

Berethos.4526:

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

If you’d taken the time to read how FotM worked, you’d know that your assumption is just blatantly untrue. At a certain point, you’re going to be absolutely required to be kitted in Ascended gear with X rank infusions in order to keep progressing deeper into the dungeon.

I promise you, no more than a month after release, you’re going to be seeing a lot of, “LFM FotM, full infusion only” or some variance of that.

I have issues believing this will happen en masse. Considering how the only dungeons I see spammed in chat is usually the path of least resistance (AC explorables, CoF path 1 & 2, etc.) and the harder Dungeons / Paths (Arah expl, Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1 post buff, etc) are all but ignored. I really have a tough time believing pugs are going to be lining up by the boat load to do content that is supposedly even more difficult than the hard stuff they don’t bother to run already.

All dungeons are currently completable in full blues, so calling for full exotics is generally not necessary. Currently, there are no gating mechanics in the game once you hit level 80.

Ascension gear, however, is a gating mechanic. Higher tier fractals will require a certain level of Infusion to withstand the Agony condition. This, by its very nature, will require players to look for people who are “properly geared.”

Berethos.4526:

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

If you’d taken the time to read how FotM worked, you’d know that your assumption is just blatantly untrue. At a certain point, you’re going to be absolutely required to be kitted in Ascended gear with X rank infusions in order to keep progressing deeper into the dungeon.

I promise you, no more than a month after release, you’re going to be seeing a lot of, “LFM FotM, full infusion only” or some variance of that.

I agree that games need meaningful progression and new content to avoid stagnation.

However, new gear with higher numbers is neither. It’s an arbitrary gating system to extend the life of the actual new content.

bojangles.6912:

Nurse.1085:

You know there are….other 15 – 25 zones you can go to……right?

…

Right?

They shouldn’t have to switch zones just to level.

He doesn’t have to. There are no bugs or glitches which prevent him from leveling in that zone. However, if for some reason he doesn’t enjoy the zone, he has the option of going to other zones to level instead. He can always come back and clear his personal story later if he wants.

Warlord.9074:

xiv.7136:

A lot of people who were scared to try sPVP are now trying it out.

That’s a good thing.

How is one scared of a game? This tread disgusts me a little, knowing that there are players that are this bad out there. Seriously whats going to happen in real life do u get scared of driving a car too? Seems a lot more dangerous than a game.

I, for one, hate driving. I get anxious about getting behind the wheel of a car, and I’ve put off getting a driver’s license for years because of it.

Similarly, the very idea of a pvp competitive environment can be intimidating, especially for somebody who’s never been involved in one before. And in general, pvp gamers aren’t all that incredibly friendly and inviting to begin with, which only makes it worse.

But thank you for making sweeping generalizations about people, and making light of their issues. Afterall, if everybody doesn’t think and act exactly like you, there must be a problem with them.

Sirge.8934:

I know I wouldn’t want to do PR on this. This community makes me sad. It’s been nearly a week now of constant hate and RAEGEEGE!!!11oneoe1 at Anet on these forums.
And how can they reply? Anything they say will be broken down, needlepicked, turned against them, and then saved to file to use as evidence against them 5 months down the line. So its better for them to say nothing at all.

Yes, there are parts of this patch that aren’t needed (looking at you, Ascended). And there are parts of the profession mods that don’t make sense either (I was not aware that Warrior was the class in need of the most help).
But its not like these guys are sitting in their office, stroking their chinbeards, and muttering quietly to one another, “How do we best screw over those gamers so that we get the most cash?”
I agree with OP. They need a chance. Show me an MMO that doesn’t have a rocky start.

Screwing everybody due to incompetence isn’t any better than screwing them on purpose.

I don’t think you understand how development teams work.

Large teams are led by one person. That person hands specific jobs down the pipeline to the rest of the team, so that each programmer is working on a separate job. There is no accidental overlap, where you come through and fix something that somebody else already fixed.

There comes a point where a team doesn’t need to be any larger, because there can only be so many people fumbling around with the code at one time. But I’m like 99.99999% sure that the team cap for Arenanet isn’t… two.

Wendigo.7931:

Greyfeld.7104:

Way to misunderstand the patch notes.

These are additional daily achievements that are pvp-only, in addition to the regular pve-centric achievements. They do not effect your pve gameplay whatsoever.

They award achievement points. (did you see the word “completionist” above?) That’s why I play. So no, they do effect my gameplay. Way to read.

You mean achievement points that don’t actually do anything and serve zero purpose?

And don’t give me that “completionist” crap. Daily and monthly achievements always reset, so there is no way to actually permanently complete them.

If you’re so incredibly OCD that you can’t get over the fact that there is something added purely for pvp, because you don’t like pvp, then that’s your hangup, and absolutely a point that Arenanet should ignore.

Way to misunderstand the patch notes.

These are additional daily achievements that are pvp-only, in addition to the regular pve-centric achievements. They do not effect your pve gameplay whatsoever.

ummm… where are the patch notes? The only thing I see on the front page is something about pvp patch changes.

I’m surprised that so few people seem to care about making aesthetics easier to chase in a game largely centered around chasing aesthetics.

Thosekittenmain.6328:

Greyfeld.7104:

Actually, at no point in that block of text does it say that. Just because you interpreted their PR garbage in that way doesn’t mean that’s what they actually said.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Things like this make it much more likely that Ascended is indeed the final tier, using the infusions to account for the variability in new challenges in end-game content.

You and I read that statement in two very different ways.

Putting that aside, my point was simply refuting that Anet ever actually made the statement that there would be no gear beyond this first Ascended set. The poster in question said that they actually made that statement, when the quote he posted quite obviously never did so.

Vasham.2408:

rikuharada.3152:

Vasham.2408:

It was in that “Thoughts on Ascended Gear” megathread. Lemme dig it up…

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/135lrk/arenanet_about_ascended_armor/

Reddit thread on the second announcement. Now for the quote:

“Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.
Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.”

All I get out from that article is them saying they will not be adding a new tier every 3 months. That is no way of a confirm that they will not be adding more new tier in the future. All it is saying is within that specific time frame after ascended is out, there will not be another tier introduce >.>

Now you’re just raising the goalpost. You wanted the info that states it’s not a gear treadmill. I post it, you respond with, “But it wasn’t worded this particular way.”

It says it right there in black and white. THERE WILL BE NO NEW TIERS OF ASCENDED GEAR.

Actually, at no point in that block of text does it say that. Just because you interpreted their PR garbage in that way doesn’t mean that’s what they actually said.

Grunblatt.4608:

just some things that i would like to point out:
-There are people (like me ) that disagree with bookah.
The transmutationsystem could use some work, but overall it is good in my oppinion. Also there is nothing wrong with the need to obtain different exotic armorsets for different looks. This is the progression in GW2 – you obtain new cool looking itemsets over time.

“Of course u could get exotics with proper stats and transmute every single set however you want and then switch between them. But that is ridiculous…”

I don’t see why this is ridiculous – you pay 2 or 3 gold at most for a new set of stats of your unique weapon/armorskin (while you pay 500 gold for some non-legendary weaponskins). Nobody told you to transmute several unique skins to one piece.

This depends entirely on how many stat sets you carry, and how many skin sets you have. One character with a regular set of gear and a MF farming set would essentially need to buy two sets of exotic gear for each skin set they want to carry on them, plus two sets of the same skin (to make sure they can wear the skin they want, no matter what stats they need to equip). Putting aside the gold cost for this sort of thing, it also chews up bag space like crazy.

It just makes more sense to have skin sets bound to a character, rather than forcing the player to carry around multiple sets of gear just to switch their looks outside of town.

Tarn.1374:

Galphar.3901:

I’d like to see them implement a skins system like DCUO has. You obtain the skin and it is saved as a “style”. You can then switch to that style at your leisure. There would be ‘styles’ for each armor piece. Would be nice if you could obtain “style” sets like you can get full armor sets.

That sounds like a great idea too. A collectible ‘skin’ section would be very handy. In fact I just might like this one better than the Lord of the Rings idea, as it would be nicer on our limited storage capacity.

This is essentially what my Wardrobe idea is, in a nutshell.

Smelly Bookah.6957:

The whole transmutation system in my humble opinion should be redesigned. It’s pure failure so far as it even punishes you for transmuting gear. You jsut waste your money on it. You transmute your armor but then get bored with the look. What do you do then? Transmute it again? And then when u get bored u do the same thing? And completely waste cosmetic gear you have collected? Not much sense of achievment in it.
Of course u could get exotics with proper stats and transmute every single set however you want and then switch between them. But that is ridiculous…

In my opinion they could copy Lord of the Rings online outfitting system, with this exception that you would need transmutation stones in order to use certain armor as a cosmetic.

I’m not sure how LOTRO does their gear sets, as I’ve never played the game. But the idea behind this wardrobe suggestion is threefold:

1. Clears up bag space.
2. Gives players an easy way to (p)review their skins, instead of having to manually check each piece of armor.
3. Eliminates the need to farm up multiple sets of exotics just to remain in fighting shape when switching skins.

I really feel that Anet should work on making skin acquisition, storing and usage more accessible to the players, since that’s what GW2’s “end game” is really all about.

As Guild Wars 2 grows and more armor and weapon skins are introduced to the game, the sheer number of aesthetic equipment sets is going to outweigh even the most avid collector’s ability to store them. Bag and bank space is finite, and using it to store armor skins is counterproductive and a hindrance to collectors, crafters and farmers alike.

So, I would like to suggest that Anet create a wardrobe function.

Basically, this would be a UI feature that would allow players to save skins that they’ve attained at one point or another, then customize those skins into multiple “skin sets” and save them in the wardrobe, so the players can switch between them easily and at any time.

Not only would this create an ease of use and storage for multiple armor skin, but it would grant Anet another monetization method, in the form of selling wardrobe slots. Granting players 2-3 slots to begin with, then selling additional slots in the gem store would make the function useful to everybody, while still allowing Anet to encourage gem sales in a way that adheres with their cash shop and gear acquisition design philosophies.

It would also help if it were linked directly to the armor preview screen that is currently in the game, so that players can view their skin sets easily without having to individually right-click and view each individual piece that’s already saved into their wardrobe.

LeoXearo.3641:

It sounds like people don’t want to play an MMO.

MMOs need to have ways to continually advance your characters, that’s what sets them apart from other online pvp games or single player RPGs with online co-ops.

GW1 was not an MMO, GW2 should not be like GW1.

And as everybody knows, gear treadmills are the only viable way to continue character progression at max level. There isn’t story, or collectibles, or unlocks, or anything silly like that.

As far as this news is concerned, I’m very “meh.” I’m not raging over it, but I’m not excited over it either. I’m just tired. I wish a developer would grow a pair of balls and do something different from everybody else in the industry. Just once. Just for the hell of it.

alcopaul.2156:

Next time when you make a guild, make new ranks and don’t use “Officers” and “Members” so you’ll have a significant space between the leader and the rest.

One of my favorite guilds I was in, back when I played WoW, didn’t have guild ranks. It was just “Guild Leader,” and “Member.” Everything was voted on democratically, everybody was expected to chip in to police the chat, and there were no ranks to aspire to in order to squash the chance of people squabbling over rank.

KeikoTerada.1963:

In GW1, I avoided PvP because it seemed to be a cesspool, created to keep the unpleasant people away from the rest of us. The amount of hostility from your own team-mates was shocking. The above posts lead me to think it’s the same in GW2, and do nothing to encourage me to even try it.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the case for pvp in any online game. WoW, League of Legends, Grand Chase, Guild Wars, Call of Duty… anywhere you can find competitive, online pvp, you’ll find a cesspool of elitist pricks who seem to find more joy in trashing other people than actually playing the game.

Which is sad, because I actually enjoy the competitiveness that comes with pvp. I just don’t like the pricks. I also don’t like the sort of person dealing with those pricks turns me into.

mouse.1689:

Necromancer is a very strong class as well. It just happens to be amazing at team support and point control in tPvP and not so good at 1v1 and sPvP. The problem is they can’t really buff the latter without making it insanely OP in the former.

All of the classes have at least 60 or more bugs that need fixing. Necro, Ele, and Engi all have strong roles in competitive tPvP. Of all the classes being discussed, Ranger is by far the worst off. It’s virtually absent from competitive play.

Ranger is pretty much absent from everything but solo PvE, but this is due to poor design, not bugs. As a player with a level 80 ranger in a mix of rares and exotics, I can honestly say that the wide majority of my traits at least work (I don’t know if there are any cases of tooltips not matching the exact functionality of the traits, as I don’t pay that much attention to the fine print). At least, the ones that I’ve been using. I’ve never traited into spirits, so I don’t know if that line works properly or not. But at the end of the day, most of their broken functionality has to do with badly designed traits and features, not necessarily broken ones.

Which, I believe, is also why they pushed the Ranger patch back once before, because they’re working on more than just fixing bugs for the class.

That said, nearly every once of the Necromancers’ traits are either broken or near-useless, on top of really only having a single viable build for competitive… well, anything.

Elementalists, on the other hand, at the very least have multiple workable builds. There may be bugs and glitches, but they don’t stop the class from actually functioning as a whole. There are problems, like having only a single elite skill that’s worth using… but those issues are mirrored in other classes as well (necros only have one decent elite, which can’t even be used underwater… thieves have a slew of crappy elite skills and, again, have no good elite skills for underwater combat).

My point, really, is that Elementalists need to realize that they’re not top priority right now. Yes, they have problems. But so does everybody else. Anet is working as hard and as fast as they can, and not being first in line doesn’t mean that Anet is ignoring your issues, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that the sky is falling.

nbikz.2708:

Greyfeld.7104:

morrolan.9608:

Greyfeld.7104:

morrolan.9608:

Given the reported fixes to ranger and engys next patch it looks like Eles are at the bottom of their list of priorities.

Do any of the devs play an Ele?

Do you play anything other than an Ele?

As it stands, Necromancers, Rangers and Engineers are in the worst state of things (between bugged/broken traits and class features). Elementalists may have a handful of issues, but there are higher priorities right now.

I play both ranger and engineer as well, IMHO Ele is as much of a priority as those 2.

There’s nothing to be said for people who are biased toward their own preferences.

Yeah, it’s not like there are over 40 somehow bugged skills and about 20 traits.

Gee, that sounds just like Necromancer. Except for the part where Elementalists still manage to be a strong class despite the bugs. Sucks for everybody else, I guess.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

Is it the keeping score part? The fact that it has a beginning and an end? That there’s “no point” if you’re going to lose?

What would make you WvW more? How can Anet make WvW more desirable? It’s supposed to be casual friendly, and it appears that WvW participation is dropping with each week.

I would play WvW more if they restructured the map in such a way to encourage smaller team play.

As it stands, you basically run around in a huge zerg pack, spam AOES, dodge the bigger red circles, and dog-pile the enemies who are a little too slow it getting back behind their group line. There are no player-versus-player tactics involved, there is no real skill involved. It’s all about who has the most bodies to pile up. This just isn’t fun.

The only “small group” activities on the field are boring. Escort the Dolyak, clear out the centaurs, kill the krait, etc etc. The most fun I ever had in WvW was when I was soloing the krait in the central lake to finish the quaggan event, and somebody from one of the other servers saw we were going to win the event, and came to stop me. That 1v1 underwater battle expanded into 2v2, then 3v3. In the end, there were about ten of us fighting each other and the krait at the same time, trying to win the event, while keeping our enemies from doing so at the same time.

If there were more events that could be done with small groups, and they actually made an impact on the map, we’d see a lot more small-group skirmishes, instead of just three giant zergs running across the map, trying to dog-pile each other to death.

Awesome.6120:

You don’t need a fancy keyboard in order to not click skills. The most important thing is binding the skills to keys you can reach comfortably. Everyone likes different things, I personally use Q E R for 7 8 9, shift Q for heal and 6 for elite. A and D were rebound to strafe since I turn with the mouse (and so should you).

This is close to my setup. I go Q for heals, ERT for my utility skills, and Z for my elite skill. I remapped the F1-F4 keys to Shift+1/2/3/4 because I’ve never been able to train my brain to comfortably hit the F-keys without losing my finger placement on the keyboard. It’s one of the few times I wished I had a gaming mouse, just for the sake of simplicity.

Anyway, the other classes have been covered, but for Necromancer, you’re best off running with the staff as your primary weapon, because you can heal your minions mid-combat by dropping your 2 skill on top of the enemy they’re fighting (you can also use it on critters when you’re out of combat to top off your minions). Well of Blood is pretty much a must as your heal skill as well. Your minions will get tougher as you get up to around level 30 (and you’ll also have your flesh golem to play with).

But honestly, if you’re struggling with juggling multiple bars of skills at one time, I would suggest skipping the casters altogether and picking up a Guardian. They’re really easy to pick up and play, and don’t require nearly as much bar-hopping and skill micromanagement for beginner play.

I have problems with my cursor during fast and furious combat, as well. I wasn’t sure if I just lost track of it, or if it disappeared, or what the deal was.

I’d also like to say that anything to help with seeing what’s lootable would be helpful. Even if it meant holding CTRL to get some sort of looting outline, it would be nice.

mulch.2586:

Greyfeld.7104:

SNeg.8649:

Latinkuro.9420:

fixing game breaking bugs take priority [. .]

In a game where the endgame mostly consists of collecting nice-looking gear, clipping issues ARE game breaking.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

When all classes have traits that actually work, and class functionality is equal across all classes, and events stop breaking every few hours, then you can complain about graphical anomalies being “game breaking.”

You think the animators and artists work on the mechanical stuff, too?
If so, I think we have an idea why there’s so many bugs yet.

I think that I’m not going to pretend to know how Arenanet runs their business, since I’ve never worked in the video game industry, or done any programming before.

I also think that I wasn’t making any assertion other than the fact that it’s silly to try to berate Arenanet for having higher priorities than perfecting graphical anomalies, when there are parts of the game that are still blatantly broken.

In addition, I think that I prefer when people take my statements at face value, instead of trying to put words in my mouth.

SNeg.8649:

Latinkuro.9420:

fixing game breaking bugs take priority [. .]

In a game where the endgame mostly consists of collecting nice-looking gear, clipping issues ARE game breaking.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

When all classes have traits that actually work, and class functionality is equal across all classes, and events stop breaking every few hours, then you can complain about graphical anomalies being “game breaking.”

morrolan.9608:

Greyfeld.7104:

morrolan.9608:

Given the reported fixes to ranger and engys next patch it looks like Eles are at the bottom of their list of priorities.

Do any of the devs play an Ele?

Do you play anything other than an Ele?

As it stands, Necromancers, Rangers and Engineers are in the worst state of things (between bugged/broken traits and class features). Elementalists may have a handful of issues, but there are higher priorities right now.

I play both ranger and engineer as well, IMHO Ele is as much of a priority as those 2.

There’s nothing to be said for people who are biased toward their own preferences.

If you’re going to dump points into Air for the speed boosts, you’re going to have to sacrifice a bit of defense or offense for it. If you want to go strong offense, you’ll probably want to go Fire/Arcane. Your last 10 points can go into water or earth for a bit of survivability, or you can drop them into air for your speed boosts.

This build focuses mostly on direct and burning damage:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#5|0|1119|627|3975|3986|4480|30|1664|1655|915|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|10|1673|0|0|30|1627|1630|1890|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

TheWarKeeper.5374:

turrets can be swapped for another skill and still be viable with them, ranger pets have more control than glyph of elemental has and it can be used to your advantage.

Having no viable elementalist elite skill in a dungeon fight is what this thread topic is about, by no means ive ever said glyph of elemental is a bad skill, im saying i have simply no replacement for the so called elite slot skill in dungeon fights.

Im not here to complain that my glyph is useless because of poor ai, im here to complain i have no viable replacement for it.

If you feel like you are having the same issue but with another class please make a thread about it in its respective class thread.

My comment was in regard to your specific statement, which was specifically about the uselessness of the elemental, and that statement alone. There’s no need to backpedal.

Jabberwock.9014:

Yeah, some armors really annoy me. I assume you’re talking about apprentice skirt when you mention gradient. I’ve found I can only dye it white or black otherwise it looks like trash.

Exactly right. I actually thought the apprentice skirt was really cute, but the gradient made it look ugly as hell. If I could control the color of the gradient, it’d be perfect (I could have it blend into a color I want, or just choose the same color so that it effectively looks like one solid color).

blackgoat.5172:

Kalagon.3120:

So all lodestones drop from either a dungeon in about 4-5 clears you will get 1 or a 00000.1% from a certain elemental mob in the wild. Making farming these for crafting impossible. A-net NC soft failed with Aion in north america because they made the mistake in thinking we like to grind farm like the asian market. We dont mind the farming to a reasonable extent your current Drop% on most end game items is way way to high. Legendary precursors, Lodestones, BLChest. These issues need to be addressed.

Your system is pushing people to Gold buying sites because o these low drop %

My wife recently crafted “Corrupted Avenger” (GS) for her mesmer. We farmed the Corrupted Loadstones ourselves in Frostgorge, took us about a week to get 30 Farming 2-3 hours a night with MF gear and boosts. Not really bad IMO, I don’t want everything in the game to be super easy.

That sounds incredibly boring, and a horrible way to “earn” a legendary weapon.

Personally, I’d prefer legendary weapons be tied to doing various actions in the game (much like daily and monthly achievements), but on a grand scale. Having to collect specific high-level materials from specific areas, buying more materials with badges through WvW, maybe picking up a craft-specific item, then running through certain explorable dungeon to craft them all together into one part of the legendary weapon. (Just as an example)

Currently, you can basically just buy a legendary if you have enough gold. That’s not epic or amazing in the slightest. It doesn’t say that your character went on an epic journey, or accomplished an epic task or feat, or even completed a near-impossible dungeon. All it says about your character is that you had enough spare cash laying around, or had enough spare time to grind trash mobs for several hours a day.

Course, I don’t think Anet is going to make a change like this, any more than I think they’re ever going to make a new generation version of Darkness Falls, so I suppose it’s a moot point.

This is why there was always only one single GM slot for guilds in other MMOs, to avoid situations like this. The fact that there doesn’t seem to be any way to make a change to the officer lineup is ridiculous, and should be rectified.

TheWarKeeper.5374:

ThiBash.5634:

To be honest, I really don’t get the bashing that Glyph of Elementals is getting lately. I mean, it’s basically 4 skills you can choose from instead of just one, the elementals’ dps is higher than our own auto attacks. Each elemental comes with its own AoE boon buff (might, swiftness, regeneration or protection respectively). Best of all, it can be traited to the point where it has one of lowest cooldowns of all elite skills.

What more do you want from a skill? Instant kill a target and make you coffee at the same time?

nonlinear

the only thing I would do to improve the elemental is add some kind of passive to it so that it has some use when you aren’t using it. IMO if you don’t pop your elemental every time it is off CD then it is a worthless slot.

Then don’t forget to use it. Seriously.

its getting bashed because more and more eles are now playing dungeonsand are facing all the time 1hit kill mobs, also ill suggest you this: plz go fight alpha with any of your “4 skills” and let me know if it did any dmg ok? andbtw 4 skills mean u can activate 4 skills at once.

This is a problem with all pets/minions, not just the elemental. Ranger pets get 1-shot in dungeons all the time (and are often left dead, because they have a bad habit of accidentally triggering traps, mid-fight), Necro minions die if you sneeze on them, Engineer turrets may as well be made of paper mache…

Having your elite skill reduced to a 1-shot wonder is frustrating, but understand that this is a game-wide problem, not something that specifically targets Elementalists. If you want to see changes, you should ask for changes for everybody.

morrolan.9608:

Given the reported fixes to ranger and engys next patch it looks like Eles are at the bottom of their list of priorities.

Do any of the devs play an Ele?

Do you play anything other than an Ele?

As it stands, Necromancers, Rangers and Engineers are in the worst state of things (between bugged/broken traits and class features). Elementalists may have a handful of issues, but there are higher priorities right now.

Aberrant.6749:

Here is an example of how much a dye can vary on armor… this is all the same color…

Looks about right.

I don’t know the reasoning Anet decided to do armor this way (easier to code, maybe?), but it’s definitely unintuitive.

Rfreak.6591:

@Greyfeld.7104

I think that dyes are meant to be collected, while you want to use one dye, you’re bound to be disappointed, I mean, you HAVE to experiment with those, best method is buying a few dyes from a colour range and then try’em out, also they are pretty cheap, you sound like you just wasted a lot of money on one of the expensive dyes… that sounds more like gambling, try the others first, maybe you’ll think you made a bad choice on the colour anyway, also it’s not that expensive dyes like abyss are “better” ‘coz of the money you spent on’em, they are simply rare, they won’t look better than other dyes.

Materials on armor have to stay, it’s not that the light reflects the same way on a leather hat as an obsidian heavy helmet, materials are better than just “colours”, also they make the looks feel more…realistic.

Actually, I’ve never spent more than a silver for any dye I’ve ever bought from the TP. But I know that a lot of people have spent a bit of money for specific dyes, then found out that it doesn’t look the same on their armor as it does on the dye preview.

And I don’t know about you (and I can’t speak for anybody else), but I don’t personally zoom in close enough to get a texture view of my character’s armor. I’d much rather just have the colors show up as they’re supposed to, instead of having a color show up as several different shades, depending on what armor it’s slapped on.

Cassius.8945:

I can tell some of you have never bought a bucket of paint before. They all have flashy names, and all look different of various surfaces.

Lovely. But this is a video game, not real life.

Zenyatoo.4059:

it would be hilariously strong.

The fact is tough/vit are the only “tank” stats. But power, precision and crit damage are the “damage” stats. For most characters. As no armor set has all 5 stats on it, you cant possibly be full tank and full damage at the same time.

The problem is for certain classes, such as the necromancer, or even specific elementalist builds, condition damage is ALL their damage.

condition damage/vitality/toughness would give them both full tank, and full damage stats. Which would mean that there would be no incentive or reason to run literally anything else.

You mean just like how any other class can already take power/vit/toughness and call it a day, if they want to?

Not to mention the breadth of condition removal that runs rampant in pvp.

“Letting players actually get the stats they want for their characters would make certain classes overpowered,” means that they did a horrible job creating the classes. Arbitrarily making a class take sub-par gear for their build isn’t the proper way to balance the game.

Drake Brimstone.3706:

Greyfeld.7104:

Maybe this is just somebody who has no experience in programming talking, but it seems to me that making the color different across different armor types would take just as much coding as making it the same across different armors. Afterall, they have to code in all the colors a line at a time, don’t they?

And even if this isn’t the case (as I said, no programming experience, so I’m just assuming), it’s something that I feel Anet should consider looking at in the future, when they start looking into quality-of-life adjustments.

Considering the main theme of this game is “aesthetics over power,” it seems to me that it be important to make it as easy as possible for players to get the look they want.

The devs would not be coding the appearence of a color on a piece of armor. Instead, each dye has a set color code. ( 255,255,255 is black I think, or is it white… I forget it has been a while.)

The color is then passed to the rendering engine wich applies the color to the texture which can then modifiy the actual appearence of the color depending on the material the texture is emulating. (Leather, Metal, Cloth)

So, the only way to get what you seem to be asking for is to stop using material based textures which I personaly don’t want to see them do.

That actually makes a lot of sense, though it has the unfortunate side-effect that I mentioned in my original post.

At the very least, I wish they would adjust how the gradients work. I don’t mind having them on armor, but I’d like to be able to choose both colors for the gradient, instead of having the second color pre-chosen based on the dye I’m using.