Increasing the radius of the majority of buffs and heals sounds like such a small thing, to simply allow you play your class the way you personally prefer, but it will end up having far-reachinging consequences.
All of the healing skills and buffs will require a big reblace if they are changed to allow you to just spam them while standing in the middle of a fight, all of the boons will need a looking into if you now do not even have to care about positioning.
The only way to fight the Boon META is to use cleave, wells, hit the backlines, etc.
Those changes would require a great increase of the cleave and AoE in the game counter the new ability to spread all over the place while still receiving full heals and boons.
There are already two ways to run raid bosses, one is melee but more dangerous and the other one is ranged but much slower. This change would require an increase to all of the boss AoE and fields you have to avoid as well as the boss cleave.
Making it a complete pain in the ass for anyone wanting to stay in melee range while also supporting the “headless chicken” playstyle rather than anything that is coordinated.
The game is not balanced around backliners having stacked buffs and heals. The only incentive to even go melee in this game, something that is missing in a lot of other games, are is the melee boon support and the healing. I agree that they went a bit overboard with it over the years but these changes would turn it upside down.
As someone who still frequently runs dungeons and considers them to be amongst the best content in the game: No, just no.
Too many of us still run dungeons, too much work went into the existing dungeons to completely remove them. Not to mention the lore tied to them.
All they need is a small reward overwork and some more dalies to get people to be excited again. Basically, give them the Fractals treatment.
Quite honestly, if they wanted to introduce any type of instanced three-man content, along the lines of instanced event chaines, they would have done so or might still do so. This could be an additional mode to allow them to reuse some of the assets or an entirely new thing next to dungeons but there is little need to completely replace them. Unless it was another silly attempt to make people move on to the new content like they did when they cut down dungeon rewards to make us move to Fractals and raids.
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Everyone has their own and rather loose definition of the word balance.
People complained about conditions being far ahead in terms of raid DPS (apart from tempest), so now we have dragonhunters and daredevils completely outclassing everything else in terms of universal builds.. Meaning that they have both insane opening bursts as well as great sustained DPS over a long fight. No condition build can have both.
Also, where does that 10k Power Warrior DPS number come from? I see numbers around 17-18k frequently in the actual raids and not against the golem like the 34k from the benchmark.
Deadeye – a new build that can DPS and stack might? Yes.
Deadeye – a replacement for a condiPS or even condiDPS? No.
I was comparing to a berserker/damage war, not a condi war. not everyone likes condi war, Myself included.
The longbow is the ranged condi weapon for warrior. It’s not designed to be used as a power weapon. The rifle is the ranged power weapon, which was recently reworked but had some of its damage nerfed because of gimmicky burst damage in PvP.
Ham/Bow – Power used to be meta for a long time in pvp way before hot.
A different time, a different balance.
That was before burning stacks were introduced and before gear such as Celestial or Soldier was removed. Most people were just as surprised about how well that build ended up working.
In fact, longbow has been a hybrid weapon for the longest time and it was that part that made it work so well in that environment. Allowing different kinds of pressure with conditions and okeyish physical which simply no longer works in the current meta now that these few conditions it applies do nothing against the blown up elite specs with passive removals, passive regeneration, etc. and thus removing most of the usefulness outside of straight up condition builds.
Given all of that, both weapons are fine right now. They have their places, neither requires a big damage buff and especially not one that would allow riffle warrior to rival the gimmicky deadeye.
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Let’s be honest for one moment: Nobody would request ridiculous amounts of LI if people wouldn’t lie about their experience. And nobody would even consider requesting api keys, if the same kind of people wouldn’t demonstrate on a regular basis that they spend more time learning to manipulate chatcodes than thinking about their character’s role or reading some boss guide to know at least the basic mechanics.
Yes they would.
There are commanders who set up groups and demand 100+ LI and KP just so that they can get carried by a bunch of people who know the fight, while they themselves have 0-6 LI.
But I guess that falls under “people lying about their experience”
… I dunno… it just irks me more than anything to see that nobody ever questions the commander.
Yes, it would fall under “people lying” just like with anyone else.
Reminds me of when I used to ask the party leader to show me their own gear back when most made you link your gear in dungeons. Was always good for a laugh.
This seems to be much less of an issue with raids, though.
Most commanders are at least able to lead the squad towards a few boss kills given the right players. Even if the quality of commander may vary about as much as the quality of those trying to join the squad.
Going to talk about PvE only since that is what you asked about:
Hard to be certain of anything right now but it does not look like the druid will be replaced anytime soon. You will still have to bring them for the buffs and have them run condition or healing gear depending on what you need.
Besides, never understood where the idea about the lack of raw healing compared to a Healing Tempest or a Ventari comes from. People even did some testing on reddit where they put these three against eachother. It ended up showing that the druid is not behind in either burst healing nor sustained healing.
Might possibily be the requirement to time the Celestial Avatar healing burst depending on the boss and having to do the proper healing burst with water blast finishers and Glyth of Rejuvenation outside of the form which makes it seem like they have little healing outside of CA.
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The API keys are a good compromise. They allow us to share information we intend to share through sites such as gw2efficiency. It is completely legitimate to ask for someones page, even if doing so in pugs seems a little silly.
People simply made too many experiences with those who do not see anything wrong in outright lying to you. They decided that they do not want to waste any more of their own and also other people’s time with such players.
They tell you what they are looking for. You ask them to join after making sure you fit in. They check out your page to confirm the truthfulness about what you told them.
Seems simple enough, that is unless you are trying to join a squad or guild you have no business being in.
Don’t get me wrong, I find it commendable how much people seem to care about protecting other players from mallicious or mean behaviour nowadays. It is certainly a big improvement over how games used to be.
However, it is interesting to see that this only goes one direction with most of them. Unlike the casuals and raiding newbies, the other group is just supposed to take that type of disrespectful behaviour. They need to have all of the tools they might use to protect themselves with taken away from them.
Go for Monk runes with Minstrel gear if you intend to min-max your outgoing healing as much as possible. Transference and Water sigils on the weapons. You’ll be popping 500 Hp/sec regeneration at perma or close to duration. This beats any other regeneration focused runes. Not to mentioned the much better healing overall.
You’ll be sitting at around 1537 (including infusions) healing power and 73% increased boon duration. This will allow you to use Bountiful Maintenance Oil for a wooping 16% outgoing healing increase on top of everything ProtoMarcus already mentioned.
That new oil allows you to outheal someone in Magi gear even at 1747 healing power since the oil will provide them with only +11% (5% less than in Minstrel) outgoing healing. They will also lose a full 40% increased boon duration which is going to lower their regeneration uptime by quite a bit. Maintenance Oil is the better option for a Magi for that much needed boon duration but lowers the healing even further.
Magi is only the better options for when you do not want to have too much toughness for obvious reasons. But even then, I’d advise you to stick to Monk runes.
Just to clarify, there is a certain sweet spot between the two sets if we want to go that far into detail. You can replace a couple of Minstrel armor pieces with Magi to gain around 2% more healing but will sacrafice 5% boon duration from what I tried.
They could slowly add certain features to the Special Training Area, eventually including the encoutners with various settings to pick from.
Just don’t expect this to please those who keep complaining. Compromises such as this one have been suggested before. Any potential practice or easy mode was shouted down as soon as the person mentioned the part about lowering or even completely removing the rewards. The majority simply wants easy mode raids with the legendary armor at it’s end.
In short, there is little need to add a training mode for those who have no intention to actually do any training to begin with.
Depends on your definition of the word viable. If you are looking for a build that could replace a druid as the healer while the party remains to be just as effective as before, then no. There is no such choice currently.
As of now, any of the following variations will be more effective than replacing any of those with another healer or by adding any other healer on top of them. Some are already overkill as it is.
Minstrel Druid + Minstrel Chrono
Magi Druid + Berserker Chrono
Minstrel Druid + Berserker Chrono
Viper Druid + Minstrel Chrono
Viper Druid + Berserker Chrono
However, if you are talking about clearing the raids quickly and doing just fine without having to push the best efficiency and min-maxing possible then you have a lot of different options. I’d probably add the old support guardian as a possible option then.
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I am surprised they haven’t done anything about it yet. They could have at least turned off the party merging feature while this is happening.
Had this happen to a friend and I on the weekend. Someone went through the trouble to stalk our Aether Path LFG for about an hour to keep us from playing since we didn’t take him along. We were looking for level 80s and that was the only requirement we set. Was actually interesting to see that dedication.
Seems to have become the favorite way to punish those who dare to exclude anyone from their party by setting LFG requirements.
What can I say, I’m an honest guy, unlike the people that try to pass it off that they just want the challenge or whatever… really everyone in these discussions knew that its always been and only ever will be about the loot... nothing else maters.
Maybe now we can dispense with the facade that there is any other motive, and make the loot accessible so we can all stop talking about the raid.
If you’re after the loot, you should probably just chestfarm Silverwastes. It’s never only the loot.
So you would be fine if players could get Legendary Armor from doing a Chest Farm in Silverwastes, Didn’t think so… Its always only about the loot
…
…
Nice strawman. And still incorrect. Obviously, if you remove the loot at all, pretty soon everyone will stop playing the content in question. Not because everyone only cares about the rewards. There are those who do, of course. They’ll leave immediately, which will make it harder for the remaining players to find teammates. Which will make some of them leave, making it even harder for those who don’t. Until you end up with something like dungeons, where you can find the occasional group but it’s mostly dead.
…
Now this is much closer to the truth about loot than anything else I have seen thus far.
It matters more to some and matters less to others. But it keeps a lot of those who mostly care about loot interested in said content and makes them put in the effort needed.
They might be there for the loot but they still pull their own weight even if they are not the core of the community. This keeps the playerbase big and healthy. With a good influx of interested fresh blood besides.
It is actually the third group, the ones who care about loot but do not want to put in the effort needed, who keep complaining constantly. Those who will tell you there is nothing to instanced content but the loot and the game would be better off without those instances. Because if they can not or will not earn those rewards, why should anyone else be able to?
Here I go again on my own
Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
An’ I’ve made up my mind, I ain’t wasting no more time
Here I go again on my own
Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone
’Cause I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams
Sorry, I just couldn’t stop myself. Doubt they will ever do this at this point unless they changed their philosophy on what a warrior should be in this game.
This question always leads to an interesting read. But not because of the topic itself, rather the wide spread of responses you get.
You could bring up psychology and philosophy, stereotypes and aesthetics. You could bring up justifications to play a female characters or those against playing one. You could talk about sexuality and gender identification. You could bring up homosexuality or the lack thereof as a reason to only play female characters or to never play one.
What does all of that mean? Very little in the end. Pretty much nothing more than that everyone is different, has a different personality, different reasons, different tastes and enjoys different things.
Judging someone by the characters they play makes about as much sense as judging someone by their favorite colors or choice of morning cereal.
Most homosexuals in the game do not make a big deal out of it. They play the game like anyone else. Some made bad experiences with being more open about themselves, some did not. Nothing unique to ones sexual preference.
Besides, many of those LGBT friendly guilds, like a big part of the actual movement, are filled with people who join up to seek attention. Those who feel the need show off how understanding and open they are any chance they get.
Decent chronomancers and druids by a wide margin.
Basically, the two builds people think they should play because good players such as themselves need to carry everyone else.
There are very few reason to run Spellbreaker in PvE unless you are going by your personal preference over the effectiveness of a build.
I like that you are trying to look at different factors here. But people have considered the them all and more. They ended up realizing that any build they can come up with would be very lacking. It would be even weaker than any possible base warrior builds.
You could run STR/ARM/DIS, STR/ARM/TAC or even STR/TAC/DIS. All of these lines provide you with better modifiers than Spellbreaker while Berserker remains the best option if burst is what you are looking for.
The greatsword is a far superior PvE weapon while the axe remains the better swapping weapon. Both of which have their individual damage modifiers such as Forceful Greatsword and Axe Mastery on top of already being more powerful.
The choice of base traits along the Spellbreaker line as well as the choice of runes means very little since all of that applies equally to any other build and does not give a spellbreaker any advantage. One could even argue that Strength and Scholar will still be the better offensive choice depending on the situation.
I can see some uses such as solo fighting a strong champion. The block from counter would be quite useful as well as the ability to remove boons in some niche scenarios. But you’d most likely still stick to the greatsword and only use the dagger to remove boons, if at all.
Having said all of that and even if a spellbreaker had better damage than a power berserker or power warrior, it would still mean very little. The current state of balance pushed the condition berserker and condition PS into such powerful spots that nothing else comes even close.
They finally decided to dig into the gold mine they have been sitting on all this time. Can’t blame them for it even if I am not any fan of RNG boxes.
Sucks if you wanted to be special by wearing an expensive skin, I guess. Good for those who missed these items in the past or the chance to use them as a long-term investment.
I run the most expensive food and utilities myself while also donating materials to the guild scribes to cook up food for half the guild members and I do not have any trouble breaking even in WvW.
In any case, look at it as a free commander tag that comes with the legendary item. You do not get to keep anything you have to grind for other legendary items such the materials and feel beyond silly dumping countless amounts into the toilet. With the sole reason to keep the TP material prices stable.
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All we need are options, much more options. Skimpy or not, fully clothed or not so fully clothed, shiny or simple looking, silly fantasy or realism, etc. Applied to both sexes.
And this, my friends, is why we can not have nice things.
I agree 100%, this game was really nice, till they put in something as out of place as raids into it.
Indeed. Would have deleted the game right there and then myself if I hadn’t already done so when I realized the game had PvP features.
Kind of weird to compare the weapons without looking at the bigger picture in any way. But since you brought up build viability:
The future cRanger 2.0 will be the Soulbeast. Mark my words.
We might even see a melee ranger for raids with dagger/torch + dagger/dagger.
Utilizing the new condition damage heavy auto attack and the ability to keep resetting both Bon Fire and the new Double Arc skill on dagger with that versatility monster of a trait that is Quick Draw.
Now combine this this with the ability to fuse with a Deadly type pet for an extra +200 condition damge +100 precision and Primal Cry for even more bleeds and you have one strong condition build.So which traitline are you giving up?
Think about it:
You grab Soulbeast and BM as basic cuz every ranger kinda need this, especially SB.
You need Wilderness Survival for your condition build to work.
You need Skirmishing for your condition build to work.
You need Nature Magic to share boons with your pet.So tell me, if you grab Soulbeast, how do you let your condition build to even function?
Ranger traitline is spreading all over the place, and Soulbeast provide nothing good and requires you to grab the core ranger traitline to even function.I’m not speculating anything, I test Soulbeast and all other Espec during the beta.
The only build that can function as Soulbeast is the currently bugged Maul power build because it takes less trait-line to function as power ranger.
You can grab BM, SB, Skirmishing for maximum damage.
But power ranger already have the lowest dps of almost all power spec, and dropping pet as Soulbeast hurt the dps even more. If you don’t become Soulbeast you lose bonus damage from Maul and beastform has a 10 sec CD so you can’t just merge when you use Maul and cancel merge when your Maul on CD.You were able to test a fully min-maxed condition soulbeast against the golem or in the actual raid environment? If so then I might be wrong about it.
I was strictly talking about a condition soulbeast to replace the current condition ranger. Not talking about replacing druids or about any other game mode. That would be a whole other discussion.My point is do you think the Soulbeast can replace Skirmishing or WS when it comes to condition spec?
Can Soulbeast reach the current Condition spec 30k dps benchmark?
Which traitline are you going to sacrifice in order to grab Soulbeast?
Is it even worth it? Would the dps really be higher?
So you did not have a chance to try a min-maxed build like the rest of us then. Meaning both of our opinions are just assumptions in the end.
There are quite a few reason why I think this is an improvement over the base condition ranger.
I’d replace Beastmastery with Soulbeast. Beastmastery is already the weakest link as far as condition rangers are concerned. Honed Axes will no longer be as useful if we swap over to mainhand dagger. It will be completely useless if we continue to use shortbow as our second weapon set next to dagger/torch.
Any potential pet damage traits will be inconsequential assuming we are in Viper gear and also spend the majority of our time in the beast form for that +200 condition damage +100 precision passive effect from “Deadly” pet such as the Lynx.
The build would work around replacing the mainhand axe with a more powerful condition based weapon – the dagger. It would also include the passive condition damage from staying in beast form.
Both Beastmastery as well as Soulbeast have pretty kittenty condition damage traits, we can agree on that one. But Oppressive Superiority is at least something compared to anything in Beastmastery if you aren’t using axes. We might be able to replace Krait runes with the old Nightmare/Trapper mix or go for a sigil of malice on the weapons thanks to that extra 10% condition duration from the trait.
Ambidexterity as well as Poison Master have better synergy with mainhand dagger on top of that and would also profit from the old Nightmare/Trapper runes over Krait.
There are also the usuable F1-F2-F3 beast mode abilities coming from pets such as Bristleback. Most of which provide additional condition damage based attacks.
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Kind of weird to compare the weapons without looking at the bigger picture in any way. But since you brought up build viability:
The future cRanger 2.0 will be the Soulbeast. Mark my words.
We might even see a melee ranger for raids with dagger/torch + dagger/dagger.
Utilizing the new condition damage heavy auto attack and the ability to keep resetting both Bon Fire and the new Double Arc skill on dagger with that versatility monster of a trait that is Quick Draw.
Now combine this this with the ability to fuse with a Deadly type pet for an extra +200 condition damge +100 precision and Primal Cry for even more bleeds and you have one strong condition build.So which traitline are you giving up?
Think about it:
You grab Soulbeast and BM as basic cuz every ranger kinda need this, especially SB.
You need Wilderness Survival for your condition build to work.
You need Skirmishing for your condition build to work.
You need Nature Magic to share boons with your pet.So tell me, if you grab Soulbeast, how do you let your condition build to even function?
Ranger traitline is spreading all over the place, and Soulbeast provide nothing good and requires you to grab the core ranger traitline to even function.I’m not speculating anything, I test Soulbeast and all other Espec during the beta.
The only build that can function as Soulbeast is the currently bugged Maul power build because it takes less trait-line to function as power ranger.
You can grab BM, SB, Skirmishing for maximum damage.
But power ranger already have the lowest dps of almost all power spec, and dropping pet as Soulbeast hurt the dps even more. If you don’t become Soulbeast you lose bonus damage from Maul and beastform has a 10 sec CD so you can’t just merge when you use Maul and cancel merge when your Maul on CD.
You were able to test a fully min-maxed condition soulbeast against the golem or in the actual raid environment? If so then I might be wrong about it.
I was strictly talking about a condition soulbeast to replace the current condition ranger. Not talking about replacing druids or about any other game mode. That would be a whole other discussion.
With this kind of attitude against prospective raid players, you will not get any.
It’s the raid mechanics that is at fault here. With the current mechanics, there is no enabling possible that happens within the game and provides fun. I acknowledge that for some players it is fun to fail one or two dozen times before finally killing a boss one time, failing again the next dozen tries. And repeat that for every raid boss. The players that have fun with that are probably already into the raids and tell everyone “l2p”.
But I am not one of these players who see fun in failed attempts. I want to succeed something, not fail something. Because of that, I stopped trying to get into raids. I succeeded with vg, gorse and escort so far, resulting in 46 LI, so don’t say I didn’t try. I didn’t complain at length, I simply took action and stopped it weeks ago.
You also fail to see that for the current state of the raids, you must have 10 players for trainings, and that you must spend about half of your time waiting for the group to fill or get ready. For every 10 minutes of boss fight, you wait 10 minutes for the group to fill and get ready. Not counting the time required being part of organized training runs with a fixed team. This is not efficient use of my precious play time. It’s a waste of my free time.
You are playing the wrong game if you are looking for an automated LFR tool that will give you full teams instantly and encounters so easy that first timers can clear them without ever needing to communicate or be part of the raiding community. Those who want to do group content without having to do group content.
Such a system is not needed in this game. The game does not require you to clear raids as the only or even best way to gear up. Far from it. They are simply a small addition to a huge and content heavy game.
Raids require some effort on your part. They were designed for those who give a kitten about challenging group content and playing as a team. Those who have been asking challenging group content for a long time.
And besides, neither ArenaNet looking for player interest nor the community looking for potential new blood seem to have any trouble with it.
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And this, my friends, is why we can not have nice things.
Kind of weird to compare the weapons without looking at the bigger picture in any way. But since you brought up build viability:
The future cRanger 2.0 will be the Soulbeast. Mark my words.
We might even see a melee ranger for raids with dagger/torch + dagger/dagger.
Utilizing the new condition damage heavy auto attack and the ability to keep resetting both Bon Fire and the new Double Arc skill on dagger with that versatility monster of a trait that is Quick Draw.
Now combine this this with the ability to fuse with a Deadly type pet for an extra +200 condition damge +100 precision and Primal Cry for even more bleeds and you have one strong condition build.
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Mostly by offering a bonus incentive or buff for allowing new raiders into the group.
I see what you want to achieve, but this is the wrong way. I don’t want to get carried through a raid. This is humiliating and not fun.
I want to enable myself or be enabled by the game to be the equal of my party members. Neither is possible at this time.
Enabling myself means research and study of guides and videos, which is not fun, because it is not playing Guild Wars 2. Find training groups and practicing with them is also not fun, because it mostly consists of waiting for the group filling up and see the loading screen after a futile attempt. This has zero entertainment value.
Being enabled by the game is completely nonexistant.
You want to be equal to the task of raiding by simply playing the game and without the need to study anything outside of the game but you also refuse to play the game if that would require you to practice anything in the game.
So are you asking for raids to be made so easy that you can do them first try without any effort by anyone in the group?
People are free to have their own opinions but this sounds the most boring of all of the options to me.
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I remember reading a developer statement at some point. Something along the lines of healthbars not fitting the minimalistic UI style they are aiming for.
Sounds pretty outdated nowadays with dedicated healers and their need to place a big number of ground targeted healing skills.
Either way, following options would be nice if we are ever going to see proper health bars outside non-compliant 3rd party tools. The latter two seem even more unlikely considering how we are yet to see proper customization options for any part of the UI.
Disabled
Enabled for:
– Party
– Squad
– Allies closest to you
% Transperancy
Size
The game looked very different during the early days. They simply seem to have given in at some point and went for the fan service people expected to see. Like them or hate them, they are certainly here to stay now with the gliding system.
Also, don’t forget:
Wings = Money
A lot different Wings = A lot of Money
A lot of palette swapped wings = A lot of easy Money
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The engine is pretty outdated, indeed. Like people already mentioned, a modified version of the GW1 engine which was already outdated five years ago when the game got released.
Considering all of this, the optimization isn’t actually terrible. It could be better of course. Much better even.
Let’s see whether PoF ends up being a big success or not. This might make the move to a new engine seem worth the effort and investment. All though, it will most likely take a few more years until they consider it given the amount of money it would cost.
Other players are your tutorial, your teachers and your friends if they want to be.
The key word is IF, you can’t force them to be.
Obviously.
If it is so obvious then what’s the point of complaining that new players can’t find raid groups? It’s every player’s personal choice who to take in their runs and it’s perfectly understandable to take only players with experience. Therefore arguments like this don’t have a purpose.
Anything along the lines of allowing those who already cleared the instance to gain some extra kills if they bring multiple newbies along would be nice.
How do you define a “newbie”?
Someone new to the raids would be my definition of a newbie. Should have said “raid newbie” to make it clear, I suppose. Anyone missing a certain amount of boss kills.
You can always join CM Title groups saying that you know all mechanics and that if you fail they are free to kick you. That’s what I did before I had finished 100 CM.
…Any decent group will be willing to take someone who speaks up, but if you’re slacking don’t expect to stay around for long. As an elitiest jerk myself, the thing that annoys me the most is liars, semi-decent players who are willing to listen and improve I can stand, but liars are the worst. Once had a guy for VG say he was in all zerker gear, and once we pulled he instantly got kicked from the group because VG decided to chase him around instead of the minstrels chrono.
What I’m trying to get at is that joining experienced groups is totally fine so long as you are honest with them. If you are expecting a free ride, and you lied at the start, even without a DPS meter you will be found out and instantly kicked…
Could not have said it better myself.
This is exactly the thing a lot of the players do not understand. They try to lie their way into a group and then open a post on the forums about how the community is a bunch of elitist jerks if they are found out and removed from the group.
People tend to treat you the way you treat them. Be honest with them and be charming. Many will give you a chance if asked for it. I sometimes wonder why the process of talking to others seems to be such an issue. Almost as if the automated LFG systems have robbed players of the ability to talk to eachother.
Mostly by offering a bonus incentive or buff for allowing new raiders into the group.
Here we go again. All though, I have to admit that this is the first time I that I remember seeing a proposal which might please both sides of the argument. Coming from someone asking for an easier way to get into raids or for an easy mode to be implemented no less. Of course, it still has to be stated like a demand.
Anything along the lines of allowing those who already cleared the instance to gain some extra kills if they bring multiple newbies along would be nice. Basically, giving us a reason to do reruns other than just being nice to people.
I fully aware of how people might “abuse” such a system by running multiple new accounts or anything similar to that. Still, could be worth it. Those guys already clear the raids multiple times on multiple accounts in any case. It might still help some of those new raiders who refuse to use any tools provided and constantly mentioned by us.
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I am not really against the idea to throw us into different situations and thus make us pick up different builds depending on what is needed.
However, we are still missing build templates. People mentioned to tedium that is swapping builds constantly and I fully agree.
Allowing us to change ascended stats more freely will not solve this. No offense, but the only people who think legendary armor with it’s stat swapping allows you to swap builds on the fly are those who do not own the armors themselves.
Swapping ascended pieces is much less tedious and still a pain in the backside.
We can agree to disagree on the part about ascended armor being hard to acquire. Since that seems to be the main reason why you are proposing the easy swapping rather than the need to do it for Fractals themselves.
Another issue is how these changes will affect different groups of players differently.
Those who are able to do Fractals easily now will always be able to do so no matter the balance or instabilities. They are also the ones with a multitude of geared builds and professions. Ready to swap if needed.
Others who are already having trouble with certain mechanics will be way worse off.
They will be required to gear up further, to practice different builds, to practice a new profession even. They might no longer be able to clear some of the levels the way they used to. They might not understand that this might make them better players, or more likely they will not care and instead ask to have back their easy rewards.
Not a part of a that group myself but I know quite a few who are. They would prefer instabilities to be removed all together let alone have new ones being implemented.
Compare the power warrior to a power guardian.
The guardian is able to grab a ridiculous amount of power based damage modifiers while those continue to be lacking on warrior. But you need that amount of damage modifying traits to keep up with condition specs nowadays. Let alone the problem with the gutted synergy between Berserker (primal bursts) and Berserker’s Power. Their names are actually quite ironic.
Now compare power to condition on warrior.
Arms and Berserker are two of the best condition damage based trait lines in the entire game. Especially after the recent buff to Arms. The fact that we can grab Tactics for the support while still providing top level DPS says a lot.
We hoped Spellbreaker would have a single trait per trait level dedicated to power damage. To make it a power based alternative to the Berserker as well as for the dagger auto to be on par with other strong auto attacks. Neither happened. The entire traitline is build around dealing with different situations and enemies in PvP instead.
There is indeed very little reason to bring a power warrior over a condition warrior outside of burst situations like in dungeons. But then even that burst had to take a few nerfs recently.
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Druid is not getting replaced because of religious belief “he’s the best” without looking at the bigger picture. If we put emotions aside and focus on numbers the answer might be much less druid friendly then one thinks.
But for now that is a “might” as we have yet to get the finalized specs with known new runesets, gear stat sets and access to all of that in PvE. So for now i’ll hold my horses on further discussion.
Kind of silly to blame this on a religious belief with so many accurate numbers given in this thread. Numbers which make the druid look much better than any alternative.
Interestingly enough, I actually think that it is the other way around. People are getting their hopes up to be able to play their favorite class in a certain role now. While they do not understand all of the reasons and benefits from having a certain META build.
But yes, we can agree to disagree on this one.
The scourge might indeed turn out to be able to DPS like a cberserker and heal like a druid. Unlikely to have both at the same time, but who knows.
Lol such animosity over my post.. I’m just stating the fact that such programs are abused and this is in fact undeniably real. I just don’t like seeing people, specially the newbies who try really hard to get ostracized for one reason or another, specially over the blown up egos of people who think they’re better than other people. ^^ I remember a time when GW2 was so much friendlier and such things though not unheard of are quite minimal.
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Is it actually considered anomosity now to state the other side of any argument or to simply disagree with any opinion?
All I see is people mentioning the fact that players have been using the lack of gear/DPS checking options to disrespect any LFG group requirements for a long time. Slowing down everyone else at best and causing failures and therefor wasting the time of four others at worst. As well as how they have been using the meters as a tools to gain accurate information needed for improvement.
In short, they brought up the positive sides of 3rd party programs. Something you are quite quick to ignore, it seems.
To the OP, have you ever tried to form your own party? Welcome everyone willing to join, no matter their level of experience. You will have to keep trying for a couple of hours of course. All of us had to figure out the bosses on the first evening. Some spend half of the night on it.
Anyone willing to get into raids or CM fractals is able to do so. Most simply do not want to go through any initial trial and learning phases. They want to start in a great group, get all of the easy rewards without carrying their own weight. It would indeed be hard to find others willing to accept a player with this mindset unless they happen to be friends or guildies willing to carry you.
People made a conscious decision to sacrafice additional potential personal damage on druids as well as chronomancers to gain all of the offensive tools these builds provide them with. Let’s take a look at the druid:
Some rough calculations
Spotter (+150 Precision per person, on 5)
Glyth of Empowerment (about a 3% increase overall, power damage on 5)
Frost Spirit (about 5.625% overall, power damage on 5)
Grace of the Land (around 6% per druid, on 10 players, max 10% power condi damage)
Sun Spirit (between 200-700 DPS depending on condion damage, per person on 5 based)
All of that comes with the option to switch between healing and condition damage gear. Which turns into an extra 8-12k personal DPS increase from the druid if less healing is needed.
I want to have more options and some new flavors myself, don’t get me wrong.
There simply are no real options to replace the three supports. PoF will not change that. You can bring up a thing or two the new elites will be able to do now. You might even be able to come up with a composition that works well enough without a druid or a chronomancer.
Nobody said you can absolutely not go without one of them. You are already able to do so right now. PoF will give you even more options to pick from if you intend to run without one of the META supports for whatever reason. We can agree on that part.
However, we are not talking about compositions and support roles which might work well enough to allow us to kill some bosses here. We are talking about build efficiency. There simply will not be any more efficient options to replace the current supports. They will continue to be irreplaceable as far as support efficiency is concerned.
I like short names, I don’t like using special letters as replacements, I don’t like giving characters lastnames. Having sad that, I am still against this idea.
This is just a business decision in the end. There would be a possibility for others to get confused or even scammed by a person taking over the names of a well known player. Let alone all of the complaining from those returning to the game just to notice that their most favorite names were taken they’d have to deal with.
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mounts = money
gem store skins = money
gem store mount skins = money*money = money²
It is not like preordering an upcoming and therefor unknown game if you have played it for five years already and intend to keep playing. New content and goodies are coming. Don’t really see why I need a special reason to buy an expansion to a game I enjoy.
I quite like the new one. Was actually a bit of a challenge to figure out the CM for the first time. All though, they certainly reused a lot of raid mechanics.
In any case, it is just a matter of practice and experience again. We are already at the point where you can get competent pugs if you care to look for them. Let alone those on your friend list if you know a lot of raiders and frequent Fractal runners.
Don’t really see where all of the hate is coming from. There are still plenty of easy Fractals out there if this one isn’t for you.
1. Karma potions
2. Mystic Clovers
3. Transmutation Charges
4. Hero Challenge unlocks like in WvW
5. Acc Bound t6 food
6. New minis
7. Fun bundle items (like, recently we got some for cats in home instance, it would be cool to get more fun bundles like deployable jump pad etc)
8. new rewards such as gliders, mail carriers, outfits, armor, weapon skins, mount skins
1. Good idea, also wish dungeons still gave karma like they did a million years ago
2. Sure, why not
3. Yes, these are basically thrown at you in WvW (got close to 500 now after only a few months of returning to WvW), so why not hand a few to the PvE only players
4. YES, pretty much the same as the one above since not everyone enjoys Open World HoT even if it only takes like two hours
5. Would be nice to be able to acquire the account bound utilities this way
6. 7. 8. Sure, couldn’t hurt
Would be nice if they gave instanced group content the same treatment they gave to WvW. Basically, a much wider range of rewards from dungeons, fractals and raids to allow players to stay in the content they enjoy rather having to spend a lot of hours on Open World maps we might dislike.
The fact that I never had to step outside of dungeons and PvP when I started playing was one of the best parts of this game. You did not kitten yourself by not going through grinding content you disliked.
I just want a little bit of this convenience to return to us.
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The best place to look for a training guild is on the forums or on reddit if you do not know anyone taking part in such runs.
I have led my own training guild for while. We organized those weekly runs over Discord or Enjin. Rarely posted any LFG messages or advertised it ingame. Was never hard to fill our ranks with either newbies or veterans willing to help. The word was spread over the forums and by our veterans who ended up inviting quite a few of their friends.
Had to put these runs on hold due to personal time restrictions in the end. Most had already graduaded towards their own statics by that point, however.
There are a lot of guilds such as this one. Some former members of my training guild ended up leading their own and so on.
Don’t judge the community by those you meet on the LFG. Most real raiders dedicated themselves to a static long ago. While LFG ends up being a place mostly for those only interested in legendary armor and not raiding itself. There some exceptions to that rule of course but they are rare.
Who can blame them for downplaying the addition of further raids with quite a few players on a literal crusade to fight anything having to do with raids in this game. Always ready to voice their opinion about how raids destroyed the game and will someday end all life on the planet.
On a serious note, the majority of raiders will already be forced to buy the expansion for the new elite specs alone. ArenaNet seems to focus on the shiny new things like mounts. They also never said there won’t be new raids to begin with.
Once had people making fun of the commander and newer players in WvW in a similar fashion. Pretending they are new just like the guys on your discord and also making fun of the “tryhard” nerds who tried their best to make calls and win the fights.
This phenomenon is not new to the game and certainly didn’t start with the raids. Those guys are holes in the lower backside, simple as that. Some people seem to get enjoyment out of griefing others.
Removing any exclusionary content will not fix this problem. People will always find a place or method to act this way. The only way to remove any possibility to meet players like those is to go and only play singleplayer games, sadly.
Don’t take it to heart and keep up your good work.
The only change that seems plausible is a swap of the DPS specs. We can not accurately predict the exact numbers yet but Soulbeast, Firebrand and Renegade might be likely condition DPS options.
In any case, neither the condion META nor the need to bring the big three (Chronomancer, Berserker, Druid) will change.
Anyone picking up the work will not be stupid enough to openly give away their game account name if they intended to keep breaking the ToS.
Besides, it is up to ArenaNet in the end. They could have gone ahead and ban everyone who has or is currently using the non compliant version. They most likely considered it and decided the loss of revenue a ban of hundreds if not thousands of players is not worth it. That might change of course.
I was actually talking about the ToS compliant version and whether someone might keep up the good work there. It was a tool made by a community member fully aware of our needs and wishes. There are also features that make us ask ourselves why we do not see them as actual game options, let alone have them being illegal.
Just one example are the floating bars. He saw the need for floating health bars many of the healers have been asking for while the game developers did not. We still couldn’t use it in the end of course, as it ended up in the non compliant version.
However, it is a good example of why people doubt to see damage meters done well if they will ever be added to the game.