Guild Wars 2

I wouldn’t worry if you don’t have access to these maps. They’re fun to play, but mostly they’re just there to keep us busy between expansions. I wouldn’t say they’re essential. Gear wise they do provide easy access to farming ascended trinkets but I guess the next season will probably continue that trend anyway with new maps.

If you feel you need something to keep you busy the next two weeks, I’d say just buy the chapter giving access to Bloodstone Fen – the ring and back piece there offer easily changeable stats.

Very thoughtful and interesting critique, Reborn. I think it’s the best summary of observations I’ve seen on the new elite yet.

I especially agree on your criticisms of just the “feel” of what beast mode is like now. Though I love the flexibility and complexity that the new elite adds, I think it doesn’t sell the powerful fantasy of merging with the pet. If some or all of the new dagger attacks had the effects and beastly themes of greatsword and sword, for example, they would FEEL more powerful than they currently do.

Galmac.4680:

The game runs now quite smooth, not good, but ok for me on my old iMac. But when I pan the minimap or the normal map, the performance goes down to some underground level with 2 to 5 fps.
That keyboard issue seems to be fine, but let’s wait some more days.

Yeah, this is precisely the issue I have. It’s insanely slow with the maps. Otherwise still no crashes or keyboard bug, thankfully.

Oddly, texture overlays on the ground (decals?) no longer flicker white, nownthey flicker kinda blue/pink which is odd.

So far so good. I do feel like suddenly the performance while viewing the map has gone down pretty drastically. Suddenly it’s very choppy scrolling around it. Otherwise, no crashes and no keyboard bug yet.

Please stop with the corgi thing.

I don’t think large necessarily means barren, for Anet. The demo map certainly seems large and pretty dense. Also Crystal Oasis had a lot more verticality than I first thought. Second time I explored it, I noticed how many high cliffs and things looked like they could actually be traversed.

Sartharina.3542:

Hawken.7932:

I imagine it’s both to let you know what mode you’re in (I even have trouble remembering with that huge effect!) and for PvP for enemies to know as well.

Then they need to change it to something that’s not a complete eyesore that murders all attempts at fashionwars even when you do keep to the class’s theme, (Such as by wielding the legendary (Gold,Black, And Red) Chuka & Champawat.

Sure, I understand and don’t disagree. I would have preferred that it was much more subtle myself, though I can also understand from a design perspective why it’s not.

I imagine it’s both to let you know what mode you’re in (I even have trouble remembering with that huge effect!) and for PvP for enemies to know as well.

It’s weird though. I can see why they didn’t do it – the mounts don’t really exist in the world outside of your character, so if you’re sitting there on your mount with your name over your head, where would the mount’s name go?

I can understand why you want it. Part of me wishes the mounts were independent of the character also (like they work in Black Desert, for example), but they are also cool this way because the flow of going on and off will be much faster.

I also have experienced that, and have seen others mention it. They seem to have issues with small collision height differences.

Another bug which I ran into on the stress test last night, was at some point, everyone around me who was riding a raptor mount lost their mount animations, so that the mounts were just sort of flying through the air without any running anim.

Oh man, I so much thought that the keyboard bug might be gone… I went a full week without it happening, until today. I’m not sure if I did anything different – the only thing I had differently was turning off ambient occlusion.

Overall though, it’s running a lot better. Kudos to whoever is working on it!

Looking on Dulfy at upcoming medium armor, it doesn’t look too promising. Buttcapes and buttgowns!

I really don’t understand it. Still some of my favorite armor comes from the starter areas of the game, then it all goes wrong so quickly with long flowing trench coats and such.

I think HoT is the best content in the game really. The maps have interesting and challenging exploration, great level design, interesting immersive atmosphere, a good balance of small events and cascading events, culminating in great meta events. Yes, the combat is challenging, but challenging content is necessary to sustain a PvE population that doesn’t necessarily have time to devote to raiding, but still wants to experience the thrill that group content can provide.

After playing 10+ years of MMOs, I find it some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen produced, and given that every time I play in those zones they’re absolutely full of people, I’m obviously not alone in that feeling. So, yeah, more of that please. :-)

FrizzFreston.5290:

Plus it’s the start of a new expansion. Instead of coming from HoT and LS3 alot of players come from just core and the start may intentionally be easier and easing people into the experience where it gets harder later on. Something that was heavily criticized for HoT. So i think it’s intentionally on the easier side.

This was precisely my thought.

Siwo Sowa.6982:

Soulbeast

Now when we enter beastmode we see pet turn into a green ball and shadowstep to us. Maybe we could have second special key which would make us shadowstep to pet so we could make either our pet shadowstep to player or player shadowstep to pet. CD would be shared of course. That would make positioning of your pet important so you could engage if you are merging with melee pet (especially new cheetah) and disengage by merging with pet behind you.
Thoughts?

That would make an awesome top level trait!

Dante.1763:

i mean…yes and no, a decent amount of the population finds the HoT areas to be to hard. Im actually with Fog in that im thinking they will be like the LS3 maps. I would love to see some stuff on the level of HoT though.

I guess what I mean is, from my point of view, the HoT metas are, relative to other MMOs, very successful. I play them daily and they are full of people always. So that would indicate to me they’ll likely be looking to repeat that success. I haven’t seen any talk from Anet which would indicate otherwise.

Obviously the LS3 metas were of a lighter variety because it takes a lot of work to pull off the big ones.

FogLeg.9354:

I expect PoF to be much like LS3. And quite a lot more like core Tyria when compared to HoT. Which for me is good thing and only reason to even consider buying it since I dislike pretty much everything in HoT, including those timed map-wide meta events.

What would lead you to expect this? I don’t expect it at all. They pretty well have to make the difficulty on par with HoT (which I love), otherwise they’re really not going to maintain their level 80 population.

HoT for me is the best content in the game. I play all over, in most game modes, but there’s nothing better than going back into HoT maps to experience the great synergy of playing around other people in interesting fights. I’d say if PoF isn’t on about the same level (which I’d guess it’s probably going to be) then many will leave the game. We certainly don’t neeed any more faceroll content – there’s a whole core world of that to play in.

I’d have to agree that core maps do need a very slight bump., but I think it’s more about the downscaling. I played at launch, and all the hype around the game was this: endgame was not necessary because core Tyria would always be challenging. You would always be able to go back and play the maps, downscaled to your level and meet the appropriate challenge!

Downscaled from 80 in any map in Tyria, even with blue and greens (I’ve tried this) is simply too easy. It just needs the downscaling formula to be tweaked, imho. Sure, I would also like, as some above suggested, some more variety in difficulty (harder patrols etc.) but the scaling is the main issue.

I wish they would go further, and go back into old maps once the mounts are in and find a story explanation for why half of the waypoints in the world have now malfunctioned. The whole waypoint system I always felt a little immersion breaking from the beginning.
I’m sorry, OP, but I REALLY hope that now there are mounts in the game that they slowly start to phase out fast travel.

I really enjoyed Soulbeast during the demo, particularly the variety in gameplay styles that it provides, and especially the potential to run power builds in the future.

On the other hand, I don’t agree with some posts here that pet swap should be available in Beast Mode. That seems both confusing in terms of the “fantasy” of what’s happening to the character (ie. it makes no sense. You swapped with your pet.. and then what… you’re turning into your other pet while you’re already merged with the first? Wut?) but also from a gameplay perspective. I quite liked the way Druid supplemented the core ranger, without replacing it, and in the same way, Soulbeast plays great as an addition to core gameplay.

With two pets equipped, it gives you access (potentially) to two additional sets of skills to draw on an addition to your core skills, giving you an on-demand boost to dps, support, or tankiness, and I think that’s great. Swapping directly between two of these sets while in beastmode seems like it would be overpowered and would de-emphasize the core skills, which I think is a mistake for the class.

Maybe my only criticism was that (as others have stated) the green melded effect is a bit much at times. I wish that you, the player, could see some indication in those effects of what pet family you had going at the moment, though not necessarily expose that to others (to hide it from PvP opponents, etc).

Otherwise, the elite plays very well. Will be interesting to try it out in the PvE world.

psizone.8437:

Hawken.7932:

So far, my experience with Soulbeast was very good, in most cases. I’m very bothered though with this suggestion that we NEED to have pet swapping in beast mode. It feels to me, after reading through all of these threads, like the vocal complaints of the “petless ranger” crowd, who just can’t seem to get out of the mindset that BM was not designed to be camped.

Gonna just copy/paste what I wrote in your thread about this.

It seems more like a group wants to be able to swap whilst in Beastmode and people like you are being irked by the thought of giving people that choice.
Letting people swap whilst in Beastmode doesn’t take away your gameplay style, it just adds more options in.
Really, who cares if someone camps Beastmode? People are going to do that regardless if Anet add the swap in or not. Adding it in just gives Soulbeast more of an appeal for other people.

Hawken.7932:

can’t seem to get out of the mindset that BM was not designed to be camped.

For this quote specifically, you’re misunderstanding what they said.

They said, “I’m hoping to see players realising it’s not JUST ‘ok I’m just gonna camp Beastmode’…”, meaning they want to see people go in and out but it’s okay to camp it as well. Never did they say they never want people to just camp it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhBf1Q6gTnY

At around 1:10:56 if you want to hear the quote.

I’m sorry, I missed your reply if you posted it in another thread.

It’s not that I’m misinterpreting anything Anet themselves said, I’m simply observing how the elite has been presented to us. I do take issue people immediately demanding that the spec me something that it’s not, yes. Particularly after a couple days of testing (or within hours, in some cases). Time will tell how viable it is.

For my own part, I believe that swapping in beastmode is so obviously going to be too overpowered. Playing from the point of view of a core ranger, who can – when needed – invoke a boost to dps, tankiness, or healing, I think it’s fine, because you are basically limited to that particular boost for a period of time. On the other hand, being able to flip, within beast mode, back and forth between dps and tankiness, or tankiness and healing would be overpowered. From a balance point of view, this seems so blatantly obvious, it’s exhausting that people complaining about this can’t see it immediately. That is why the timer is there, when swapping out of beast mode.

So far, my experience with Soulbeast was very good, in most cases. I’m very bothered though with this suggestion that we NEED to have pet swapping in beast mode. It feels to me, after reading through all of these threads, like the vocal complaints of the “petless ranger” crowd, who just can’t seem to get out of the mindset that BM was not designed to be camped.

After playing many hours, the elite seems very solid, but seems to be best played as if BM is there to augment core ranger, not replace it. Playing core ranger skills, then swapping into one of your two equipped pets (ie. becoming more tanky when needed, unleashing a burst of dps, or becoming a buffer/hearler for a period) is what the new elite is all about. It’s very powerful and versatile.

I agree in some ways that the actual “command” to swap pets could perhaps be available in beast mode. As some have pointed out, that might be an interesting tweak to the existing design, if by initiating the swap, it broke you out of BM and swapped pets, all in one motion. The only really awkward part of swapping at the moment is that it’s basically two keystrokes for one action, which isn’t ideal.

Otherwise, a serious kudos to the designers behind the new elite, I really love it so far and I’m excited to play it on release.

Great post, Shadelang. I’m starting to think of Soulbeast in a similar way. Like that it is there to further augment a build, and it’s very poweful and versatile for that. I find now I’m playing half and half, in and out of beast mode, and it’s pretty cool that way. Plus having two pets with very different specializations allows you to carry both a support and dps augmentation for different situations.

borya.2964:

jcbroe.4329:

Just to address what I think of the pet swap, I just think it should be available, but when you press it, it pulls you out of Beastmode AND swaps to the other pet, if the petless Ranger thing really is such a problem right now.

Just my 2c, the removal of the cooldown needs to happen regardless. The swap being available in that format would just be icing on the cake that makes game play that much smoother for me.

This is a very good idea actually. I mean, it would be perfect.

Hmm, pretty smart. Might be confusing from a UI point of view, but a better solution gameplay wise.

Lickage.7318:

Before I could even log in myself there was so much negativity arround the soulbeast. I was almost to scared to play because I got my self so hyped up for the spec. But man I love this spec. Being able to switch in and out beastmode to combo with your pet is amazing.

Dagger/Axe + Greatsword feels good and as pets I’m using the pig and smokescale.

new utility skills + elite skill are boring and feel like extra signets…

Yes, I agree about the utilities. They’re fine, closer to the sharing boon style of glyphs really, but that kind of straight “buff” utility isn’t my favorite. Still, I love the kind of gameplay where if just the right moment arrives, you can pop everything and do that massive burst if required. Also considering their group buffing synergy with Leader of the Pack, they have potential for group play anyway.

I’m also loving Dagger/Axe + Greatsword, it’s pretty wild to play with those combinations effectively.

Judge za.7601:

Enjoying it so far, bit confused with daggers real purpose. Quite strong in PvP but don’t really know since everybody is testing new builds. Play-style is far more enjoyable than druid. Jacaranda and Rock Gazelle seem like winners.

Oh and +smokescale!

People… don’t just write “me too” posts about the keyboard bug. Scroll back in this thread to the last dev post, follow the instructions about launching the game with terminal and help them debug it.

I guess in the context of normal group fights, there are always a lot of fields on the ground, and as I see it, we now have more options to finish, which is cool.

Seems to me though there are a few bugs existing. As I recall, there was a smoke field I can lay down with my pet which couldn’t be finished when I swapped into best mode. The effect was still there, but couldn’t make use of it.

My observation has been that it’s QQ right out of the gate.

I guess it’s no surprise to see the wall of complaints on a new spec release. In so many years of playing mmos I’ve come to get used to that. Things always seem to follow the pattern of:

1. Sky is falling, worst class ever!
2. Okay, okay, maybe there’s some potential. Hmmm.
3. Oh crap it’s awesome! Oh no we’re going to get nerfed!

Or some variation of that.

My views on soulbeast, as things seem now, is that I’m VERY excited by all of the variation that the pets bring to the mix. So far now, across many hours of testing, I’ve found some very viable condi setups and a few potential power ones as well (though very burst reliant, which I don’t mind). Needs more testing in real world PvE scenarios as well, but I’m very hopeful now that the initial confusion has passed.

As many have posted, I think it’s a legitimate criticism that the beast mode effects could use some tweaks. It’s a little too visually blinding to have over my character all the time and more specifically, I wish there was some hint in the effect of what pet family I have melded with at any given time. I feel this would be a good visual reinforcement when I’m switching back and forth.

I don’t mind swapping in and out, as seems to irk so many of the “petless ranger” crowd. I actually feel this is just a mindset adjustment after having played for so many years with a pet. Considering how powerfully bursty some of the setups can be, the play style of playing with your pet out, and then invoking beast mode to execute an insane blast of damage at just the right moment seems cool and viable. Alternatively, some setups favor the other way around, focusing on playing in Beast Mode and popping out to switch pets and gain access to another set of abilities entirely.

Anyway, props to the devs for daring to make such a complex and interesting elite. There is, as I said, a lot of the usual vocal angry voices, but also a lot of love and positivity out there as well.

I don’t know what the policy on cross-linking is here, but this thread on the sub-Reddit has some constructive and interesting findings:

https://reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6uj44t/soulbeast_what_is_strong_what_have_you_discovered/

Adenin.5973:

Miellyn.6847:

How many times does it need to be repeated? You are not supposed to stay permanent in beastmode.
It is not a petless ranger. Get over it.

Look this is what you’re saying:
-Beastmode is a complete dmg loss, unless you use an F skill in it.
This means: NEVER go into beastmode, unless you want to immediately use an F skill.
This means: 90% of the time, play vanilla core Ranger, with an additional annoying mechanic that makes the pet AI now even more clueless and useless when spawned/despawned .

Imo that is just bad game design.

This is absolutely incorrect. It makes me think that you haven’t even tried playing it. The damage – particularly burst damage – in beastmode is completely INSANE. It so good in fact that I just don’t see how it can last too long without getting nerfed.

sunrun.4521:

One positive data point: I haven’t experienced a single crash in the past few days. That’s a huge turn-around from my experience previously!

Same here. Stability overall seems improved lately.

There’s a main thread in this forum for Mac client feedback. This is a known issue, as a lot of people have reported it and they have responded.

Definitely feels like there is something a bit wrong with the ambient occlusion (it’s a screenspace effect I guess?). This is without and without. The character has quite a lot of fringing around it, like a large gap, and all of it seems way too dark.

Xstein.2187:

64 bit screen shot

So, definitely pretty strange, Xstein. This is a shot of my game with the 64 bit client. Some pretty odd resolution bug going on with yours. Are you also running on a 13 inch retina out of curiosity?

Edit: oh, as Druitt above says, that might fix your issue.

Abbelsap.3042:

Hawken.7932:

Abbelsap.3042:

I’d really like a smaller UI before even considering using the 64bit client, the current smallest option still takes over more than half of my screen. Even the chatbox doesn’t fit in the lower left corner, because everything is abnormally huge!

I’ve seen this posted before, but what scale setting do you have in OSX System Preferences —> Display ?

As far as I can tell I’m using the standard retina settings; 13,3-inch (2560 × 1600). Do you have any advice? ^^

Okay. I have the larger retina laptop, and the interface is squashed in like that if I have things set to “default for this display”. So you have it set to “Scaled” and then the resolution selected?

Interesting though, these days I play with it hooked up to an external monitor, also running at 2560 × 1600, and the UI is fine, not squashed in. In that case, I have OSX System Preferences, Display, set to “Default for this Display”

Abbelsap.3042:

I’d really like a smaller UI before even considering using the 64bit client, the current smallest option still takes over more than half of my screen. Even the chatbox doesn’t fit in the lower left corner, because everything is abnormally huge!

I’ve seen this posted before, but what scale setting do you have in OSX System Preferences —> Display ?

Abbelsap.3042:

The game is literally unplayable when the UI takes half of your screen, so please fix this first before making the 32bit client unavailable.

If I’d known this before preordering the next expansion, i had never preordered. Same with the gemstore items…

I’d like a full refund if you’re taking this route.

Hmm, what scaling settings to you have in OSX System Preferences —> Display ?

I’ve been noticing that sometimes, I get like an overlay on the screen, which is very faint. It looks to me like the ambient occlusion of the scene doesn’t update sometimes and the last frame of it (is it a screen space effect?) is left hanging over everything. In the attached screenshot you can see the effect if you look closely. The lines of the steps above the character are offset a little to the right, and the bush far above the character, it looks like the AO is hovering over the ground. Of course it’s easier to see in motion, but…

Mostly fantastic, thanks for the efforts!

I have a few bugs:

- sometimes the keyboard stops working while I’m playing. I can still manually click on all buttons in the game, but no key entry until I restart the client.
- flickering white patches on the ground, especially in HoT maps, for example (transparent overlays on the ground?)
- often seems like enemies only get the red targeted circle about half of the time.
- same “chugging” performance on rotating the camera to look around, especially when I first come into a new area.
- I’m maybe an edge case, as I’m using an eGPU with a MacBook Pro and a GTX 1080, but I guess my type of setup will become more common.

Generally awesome to have a native client though.

Me too, I’m always overflowing with them

As other have said, definitely try swapping in more survival stat gear. That really made a difference for me in the start. It is a big difficulty jump up from vanilla gw2, but you’ll learn to love it once you get the hang of some of the new monster mechanics.

Aryan Arlande.6184:

I didn’t buy HOT, because i stay strictly away from toxic environments – real life is toxic enough.

So i wouldn’t play it for free either.

Now i’m waiting for the next Xpac and hope, it will meet my needs better.

More fun, less yelling

What are you even talking about?

The HoT are absolutely great. They are, in many ways, the realisation of all of Anet’s earlier work on zone-wide meta events, taken to a whole new level.

It’s not a question of whether we should get this much loot or not that’s the problem. It’s cool we get lots of loot, that’s fine. It’s the implementation of the kind of loot we get, that’s the problem. The thing that feels broken is that, for example, we complete the meta event in one of the HoT maps, then go around looting 20+ chests, get a ton of gear that’s intended to be salvaged. What this does is just create a total mess of runes and sigils in our bags which have to be vendored, sold, or whatever. It’s fine the first 20’times you do such an event, but after the 50th time it gets pretty stale.

There’s no reason why they couldn’t just instead of giving us 20 pieces of gear, give us a salvage item which would output almost the same amount of materials. Getting 20 pieces of gear just feels immersion breaking and silly.

Obtena.7952:

There is a link between Anet making money and the way looting works. They aren’t going to make it easy for you to sell your inventory junk anytime soon.

This is the thing, of course. We now have showers of loot all the time because it constantly fills our bags and encourages us to buy inventory slots with gems. Plain and simple.

Coming back to the game after a 2 year absence, this is the thing that I find jarring about the state of the game. It has been such a positive experience otherwise, but the loot situation just feels broken.

If you pick up HoT, then I highly recommend a staff daredevil thief for pve.
Likely you’ll feel insanely squishy at first, and the whole rolling all over the place thing takes getting used to, but once you get a handle on it, it all just clicks and you’ll be having a ton of fun.

I really just think of it as another time gate. Little bit annoying, but just like everything else in gw2, if you’re patient, it comes. If you hurry, you pay through the nose.

Clumsy.6257:

Hawken.7932:

Clumsy.6257:

Hawken.7932:

Fletch.3572:

Auesis.7301:

Thief is very punishing for error, but rewarding when encounters are played correctly.

This is kind of the entire point of peoples meh on thieves.
I’m almost exhausted after doing a run on my thief compared to some other classes I have.

I think that’s true, Fletch. It’s the both the best and most difficult thing about the class — it’s not an easy-mode profession that’s for sure. It’s also due to the fact that a lot of people go “full berserker” and then cry when their glass cannon build goes down on the first big hit.

thats player error, not build or armor problems, its very easy to survive in full zerker with a glass build if you know where the dodge button is

That’s much like saying gear doesn’t make a difference, which I would categorically reject — obviously gear does make a difference, and spec’ing for more survivability is obviously going to help people live longer than if they spec full berzerker.

apparently you misunderstood, theres no point to bring any defensive stats because 90% of damage in this game can be avoided and those stats are wasted
now as for using defensive gear to survive, why? thief brings 2 things to the party, lots of stealth and extreme damage (were #2 only because ele has fgs), so why would you sacrifice close to 66% (random ballpark here but its fairly close if you consider 100% crit chance and crit damage) of your damage, now since your dps is now below a zerker necro why would people want you in the party?

I don’t think that I misunderstand at all, I just disagree.

It depends on what you use for mobility and avoidance. In PvE, I don’t trait into Acrobatics at all, for example, so I opt instead to go heavier into damage lines and counterbalance that by taking some survivability through gear. I’m not saying people shouldn’t trait into Acrobatics as a rule, I just don’t personally because in PvE I find it more enjoyable to go other routes.

I find the wholesale “full zerker” statement that people shout around to be a little ignorant, to be honest, because you can use the stats on gear to balance out the choices that you make in your traits. I agree though that for the thief at the moment, power/crit is the way to go as conditions are so broken in PvE boss fights, making it essentially a useless setup (unfortunately).

Clumsy.6257:

Hawken.7932:

Fletch.3572:

Auesis.7301:

Thief is very punishing for error, but rewarding when encounters are played correctly.

This is kind of the entire point of peoples meh on thieves.
I’m almost exhausted after doing a run on my thief compared to some other classes I have.

I think that’s true, Fletch. It’s the both the best and most difficult thing about the class — it’s not an easy-mode profession that’s for sure. It’s also due to the fact that a lot of people go “full berserker” and then cry when their glass cannon build goes down on the first big hit.

thats player error, not build or armor problems, its very easy to survive in full zerker with a glass build if you know where the dodge button is

That’s much like saying gear doesn’t make a difference, which I would categorically reject — obviously gear does make a difference, and spec’ing for more survivability is obviously going to help people live longer than if they spec full berzerker.