Player plays the game. MetaKitten plays the DPS meter on the golem.
I hope people stop using the terms “casual” and “hard core” because they are over-simplifications of real people.
Everyone comes into the game as a new player. New players cannot expect to instantly level to 80 and take on L80 area mobs in PvE. There are a lot of things to learn. That is why the beginner areas are there.
The first time I leveled a character, I was terrible. I chose a terribly handicapped profession and stuck through it. Lots of dying and humiliation was involved. The second time, it was much easier and every subsequent time got better because I was learning the game’s mechanics and how to handle different mob types.
For me, the HoT expansion took just a bit of time learning how the new mobs behaved. It was scary difficult, at first, but now it is easy and I feel comfortable roaming solo.
That is why I believe there are no casuals. We all play the game at our own pace but our experience accumulates to give us insight and help us play better. Hard core gamers just spend more time during the day playing so they learn at an accelerated pace. They are not “genius” players. They simply take more time researching how to solve problems by reading the internet and dedicate more time trying to overcome challenges.
Calling yourself a casual is just as elitist as calling yourself a hard core player. There is only rate of learning and effort that separates players.
lol are some people just now finding out about this or something?
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for players to have the expectation that personal objectives such as HP/MP challenges be primarily solo content.
And what is the percentage of HP that can be soloed in HOT? Hit, it’s more than 60%. So how are they not primarily solo?
See people are not complaining that they are not primarily solo content, they are complaining that they are not entirely solo content. Key difference.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I hit a point where I would log in to a HOT map, run around for a bit and maybe do an event or 2 and log out. I was like what the heck is the point. Then I started going to the LFG tool, and joined a bunch of 50 man squads just doing the events and it really started clicking with me. I love open world content with tons of players, and HOT is absolutely perfect for that. Oh and the loot is awesome, I’m absolutely loving HOT when played with a large squad.
I didn’t take a ton of time looking over it but I can tell you right from the start a few suggestions.
Never run Lich form, there are SO many reflects out there that people are actually using now, you’ll end up downing yourself more often than not with Lich. I love it when Necros use Lich fighting my ele because they usually 2 shot themselves.
Durability runes aren’t too good for roaming, they’re pretty nice for larger group play, but not too effective for smaller play. I tend to go for Strength runes for classic necro or Scrapper runes for reaper personally.
Drop staff for roaming, go with Axe/Dagger and Dagger/focus. Staff is actually more of a condi weapon and is only really great for larger group play or if you’re condi. Dagger main hand is very strong and will help you burst down your enemies that want to stay on you melee. It also provides you an immobilize. It works really well with focus off hand because you can hit 4 to give them a bunch of vuln, then 3 to immobilize them, then you can just spam 1 on them and watch them fall.
Also, I generally prefer full zerk on necro and drop death magic for blood magic. Then you can also drop the 25% movement speed sigil and run the line that gives you 25% movement when you are wielding a dagger from blood magic.
I have my group play necro build on the page in my forum signature, I used it for roaming pretty often even. Only thing I change are the weapons I’m using (which are above.)
Wage inequality is not an issue in a world where the cost of living is literally zero.
Guild Master – The Papacy [POPE] (Gate of Madness)/Road Scholar for the Durmand Priory
Writer/Director – Quaggan Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2TGPmMPeQ
Writer/Director – Quaggan Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2TGPmMPeQ
The only problem with HoT expansion at launch was the rewards. They fixed that now though in the latest update. The content in HoT is really good though.
I hope they don’t remove vertical designed maps. It works very well and makes the maps feel more real and alive. Exciting way to adventure. A flat map would be very boring now after HoT.
(edited by Zoid.2568)
I would just like to say to the OP:
Thank you
for asking how to improve yourself, rather than complaining about an inability or lack of desire to complete content. That is a rare trait these days. I commend you.
NSPride <3
It certainly got me back into the HoT maps.
Thank you very much!
Completely agree, i put the game down cause HoT didnt suit my playstyle, but now I am really enjoying it.
Content Marketing Manager
Stronghold
Beginning with the first time that the channel points for the Mist Champions are available on both sides of the map, Mist Champions will now arrive with a +50% health and damage effect that stacks in intensity each subsequent time a Mist Champion is summoned (up to three stacks maximum, so 50%, 100%, and 150%), as well as a +20% movement-speed effect (which does not stack in intensity with each new summoning).
Spectator
Spectator-mode polish improves the viewing experience by removing clutter from the screen and creating consistency across machines:
- Titles are now hidden while in spectator mode.
- Guild tags are now hidden while in spectator mode.
- Clone and minion nameplates are now hidden while in spectator mode.
- Player nameplates have an increased size in spectator mode and will truncate when they’re too long.
- Party names and health bars scale up based on resolution.
- All player names show through walls in spectator mode.
- A handful of options are now forced in spectator mode:
- Free Camera: ON
- Camera Shake: OFF
- Disable Area of Effect Rings: ON
- Show Ally Names: ON
- Show Enemy Names: ON
- Show All NPC Names: ON
- Show Simple Condition Floaters: OFF
Quality of Life
There have been some long-standing quirks in PvP that have been cleaned up in a quality-of-life pass to create a more enjoyable experience:
- Removed loading screens when respawning.
- Ally names now show through walls at a low opacity.
- Players are no longer teleported after the spawn doors close when the countdown begins if they are already inside the base. A small effect plays when cooldowns are reset.
- Fixed a bug in Temple of the Silent Storm in which Meditation of Tranquility prevented capture points from changing color.
RAIDS
Raid Lobby
In order to streamline the raiding experience and help prevent overcrowding in Verdant Brink, we’ve added a raid lobby to the Lion’s Arch Aerodrome in Fort Marriner. Players can find the following inside the lobby:
- Raid portals to each of the current raid wings:
- Spirit Vale
- Salvation Pass
- Bank access
- Trading Post access
- A repair anvil
- A laurel vendor
- A basic magnetite vendor who sells boxes of ascended gear
- A portal to a newly developed Special Forces Training Arena instance for damage-per-second (DPS) training
Special Forces Training Arena
To help players learn more about their classes and the damage output they are capable of, we’ve built an instance that is accessible from the raid lobby in which players in a raid squad can make the following adjustments:
- Add or remove DPS training golems. These golems will report an individual player’s DPS for every 20% of health damaged, as well as report total damage done and the time since the player first attacked the golem.
- Add or remove boons and certain profession-specific effects on themselves.
- Add or remove any condition to a spawned DPS training golem.
- Reset their cooldowns.
Additionally, squad leaders will be able to make these adjustments: - Add or remove boons and certain profession-specific effects on their entire team at once.
- Reset the cooldowns of their entire team at once.
- Toggle on or off a pulsing damage field that inflicts 2% total damage per second to all players in the immediate area.
General Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that caused map streaming UI to incorrectly appear when players attempted to enter a raid instance while in the defeated state.
SCRIBING
Adjustments have been made to generally lower the cost of scribing and improve the process of leveling scribing. To achieve this, many scribing recipes have been simplified to reduce the need to make multiple tiers of materials or to reduce the number of materials needed, and some rare items have had their drop rates adjusted to increase supply. Assembly times have also been significantly reduced, and new sources of Resonating Slivers have been added. The following changes have been made:
- Adjusted the drop rate for Ascalonian Lumber Cores, Alpine Lumber Cores, Krytan Lumber Cores, Coastal Lumber Cores, and Arid Lumber Cores so that they drop more often.
- Modniir Battle Hymns are now a guaranteed drop when players have Uzolan’s Mechanical Orchestra collection.
- Resonating Slivers now drop from all dailies and have a chance to drop from ore resource nodes in the guild hall and in WvW.
- Guild missions now give more Resonating Slivers and 20 more silver.
- Adjusted all WvW schematics so that they only use Resonating Slivers instead of the higher tiers of resonating items (cores, lodestones, etc.).
- Adjusted all sandpaper to only require 10 piles of coarse sand to create.
- All ink sets no longer require the previous tier of ink sets to craft.
- All sheets of paper only require 1 pulp instead of 5 to create.
- All blotting powders only require slivers to create instead of the higher tiers of resonating items (cores, lodestones, etc.).
- All finishing kit costs have been reduced. It will now only require 1 vial of linseed oil and 1 sandpaper to create finishing kits.
- Several decorations require fewer materials to bring down their costs.
- Added new recipes:
- Globe of Whispers
- Boxes of scribing supplies that can only be crafted once:
- Box of Initiate Scribing Supplies
- Box of Apprentice Scribing Supplies
- Box of Journeyman Scribing Supplies
- Box of Adept Scribing Supplies
- Box of Master Scribing Supplies
- Added mast poles to the Guild Trader on the Scribe Materials tab.
- All basic decorations are available from Cullen as soon as the Guild Workshop is made.
- The decorations vendor in the Guild Market now sells all decorations for 24 silver instead of 50.
- All assembly times have been reduced to 30 seconds, with the exception of Super Adventure Box decorations.
- Resonance vendors have been removed.
- Guild missions no longer award resonance.
- Shards of Crystallized Resonance can now be sold to a vendor.
- The crafting level requirement to refine linseed oil has now dropped from 400 to 0.
Bug Fixes
- Players will now see the quantity of decorations they currently own in the recipe list in the Production tab in crafting stations.
- The Assembly Device nameplate is now displayed appropriately.
- The Bag of Educational Supplies tool tip now appropriately lists what it contains.
WvW—WORLD LINKING (Beta)
In order to achieve more balanced team sizes in World vs. World, most worlds will be linked in WvW with one other world, creating a combined world with a boosted population. Beginning at reset this Friday, this process won’t modify the original worlds or transfer any players. It simply unifies them together to play in WvW. Worlds that have been paired up will display with a plus sign to the right of the world’s name in the WvW panel. Players will also be able to roll the mouse over a world name to see which additional worlds are currently a part of that team.
Since we’re significantly shaking up existing team membership, we’ll be resetting matchmaking data. This means there’ll likely be a lot more variation in matchups for the next several weeks. It’s also worth noting that the new world groupings aren’t necessarily permanent. We have the option to link different worlds together as populations shift over time.
We’re releasing world linking as a beta feature and asking the WvW community to test it on the live servers.
WvW—REWARD TRACKS (Beta)
Reward tracks have been added to World vs. World. These are nearly identical to the reward tracks you find in PvP, except that some rewards have been adjusted to be geared toward WvW players. One of the tracks offers players a chance to earn the new WvW-exclusive Triumphant armor set! Also, once the reward tracks feature exits beta testing, the Gift of Battle legendary crafting component will no longer be available as a vendor purchase and will be earned via its own reward track.
Unlike PvP reward tracks, which are advanced at the end of a match, WvW reward tracks will be advanced at the end of each scoring tick. These happen at 15-minute intervals. The amount of reward-track progress at this time is determined by your participation level. As players do things to help their worlds succeed, they will increase their participation level and earn more reward-track progress at each scoring interval.
Lastly, it’s often brought up that some roles—like scouting and defending—are difficult to reward. It’s fairly common in organized groups to kick back some gold to your scouts and defenders at the end of the night. We’ve leveraged our squad system to solve this problem; for every five people in your squad, your commander will be able to assign one person to share squad participation. These players will no longer earn their own participation, but will instead earn participation based on the actions of the rest of the squad. This frees them up to man the defenses of an objective, seek out the enemy, or do any number of other tasks that are important but don’t see a ton of action, and they still earn a portion of the participation that the troops they are supporting earn.
WvW—PROVISIONS MASTER
This new ability line improves a player’s ability to gather loot and grants access to the wares of the Permanent Portable Provisioner.
- Provisions Master I: This allows players to purchase a Permanent Portable Provisioner from any WvW outfitter. This item allows players to purchase siege-weapon blueprints from anywhere in WvW.
- Provisions Master II: This allows players to purchase tricks and traps from the Permanent Portable Provisioner.
- Provisions Master III: This allows players to also purchase food and utility consumables from the Permanent Portable Provisioner.
- Provisions Master IV: This teaches players to automatically pick up loot from fallen foes.
- Provisions Master V: This increases the number of Badges of Honor players find when they loot fallen foes.
WvW—BORDERLANDS
- The Desert borderlands map layout has been updated with a large number of adjustments to improve navigation and create better spaces for fighting, especially around the three keeps.
- General
- Barricades have been removed entirely.
- Added hay bales in some locations to negate falling damage when players land on them.
- Fire Keep
- Reduced the number of fireball turrets in and around the keep.
- The lord room now has more of the lava covered and additional bridges leading into it.
- Widened many of the pathways outside the keep, leaving less lava exposed.
- Opened new routes leading to the keep.
- It is now easier to navigate around the outside of the keep due to the removal of some barriers.
- Half of the sand dunes above the keep have been removed.
- Moved some creatures, like the Veteran Sand Wurm, to compensate for this change.
- Air Keep
- Reduced the number of wind turrets in and around the keep.
- Changed many locations that were accessed via jump pads to be sloped terrain or staircases instead.
- Added additional staircases leading up to the lord room.
- Improved the layout of certain walls that were difficult to defend.
- Widened many of the bridges outside the keep.
- Opened new routes leading to the keep.
- It is now easier to navigate around the outside of the keep due to the removal of some barriers.
- The bamboo bridge area south of the keep has been simplified, and the terrain has been raised.
- Earth Keep
- Added additional staircases leading up to the lord room.
- Widened the canyons outside the keep.
- Removed many of the teleporters that were in the canyons.
WvW—SKILL BALANCE
The following changes were made largely to improve balance in WvW. These changes are also mirrored in their respective profession skills sections.
Stability
- Stability: The frequency at which stability can be removed by control effects has been increased from 0.05 seconds to 0.75 seconds. A brief effect will now play on the character when stability is removed via control.
- This change will ensure that there is at least a minimum duration of immunity to control, without being as binary (on or off with no middle ground) as it was when the boon stacked duration. While this change is primarily targeted toward WvW, it does also carry a positive note for the PvP and PvE game types as well. We’ll continue to monitor the effectiveness of this and address it where appropriate.
Player Walls and Hit Caps
Wall-type control effects are currently too effective in areas where there are a ton of targets, causing stagnant gameplay in large combat scenarios like WvW. With this update, we’ll be reducing the number of targets that a wall can affect so that things like stability and player numbers matter a bit more. As such, you’ll see multiple notes through the professions that introduce target caps.
Elementalist:
- Static Field: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to stun an enemy has been capped at 10.
- Unsteady Ground: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to knock back an enemy has been capped at 10. The duration of this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
Guardian:
- Ring of Warding: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to knock back an enemy has been capped at 10.
- Line of Warding: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to knock back an enemy has been capped at 10.
- Hunter’s Ward: This skill now creates barriers on enemies only if they are struck by the final attack. Barriers created by this skill now only stop enemies who have been marked (struck) by the final attack. The final attack damage has been increased by 33%. The ring duration has been reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. This skill’s cooldown has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds. Added a red ring for enemies so they can be identified as hostile.
- Test of Faith: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to strike an enemy has been capped at 10, after which the trap will disappear. The damage of this skill has been reduced by 7%.
Necromancer:
- Spectral Wall: The number of times this skill can attempt to inflict fear on an enemy has been capped at 10.
Damage Changes
These damage modifiers were reduced, as they applied too much spike damage to targets at range and didn’t allow for enough counterplay. We do want to keep ranged combat viable in WvW scenarios, but we don’t want it to be the best option in open-field combat. As with the other changes, we’ll continue to watch and make adjustments where it’s deemed necessary.
- True Shot: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 20%.
- Gun Flame: The physical damage of this primal burst has been reduced by 20%. Fixed an issue that allowed this burst to hit enemies twice. This burst no longer pierces but still delivers the area-of-effect attack. Fixed a bug that caused the tool tip to show a decrease in damage when the Burst Mastery trait was in use.
WvW—GENERAL
- Experience will no longer be awarded in WvW.
- Tomes of Knowledge have been added to the Chests of the Mists awarded for ranking up in WvW and exist in the new WvW reward tracks.
- Outfitter merchants now sell new 18-slot and 20-slot bags for a combination of badges and gold.
- Pillager’s Pack is a standard bag.
- Siegemaster’s Satchel is a bag that prioritizes consumables like siege weapon blueprints.
- Cultural armor vendors have been added to each map.
- These vendors sell discounted race-specific armor for a combination of badges and gold.
- Guild upgrade tactics have had their cooldowns increased from 5 minutes to 10 minutes.
- Emergency Waypoint and Airship Defense cooldowns have increased to 30 minutes.
- All other tactics have had their cooldowns increased to 20 minutes.
- The Objective Upgrades dialog now displays how long the objective has been owned by the current team.
- Proofs of Heroics have been converted into a currency and are no longer a soulbound item.
- World vs. World objectives display their upgrade tier on their map marker. They are displayed by 0 to 3 silver pips appearing on the icon.
- Fixed a bug that prevented players from interacting with any siege vendors who had ever been inflicted with fear.
- Keep waypoints have been changed to be part of the upgrade system rather than being automatically available to one team.
- Keep outfitters now spawn automatically to make room for the waypoint upgrade.
- Shield Generator skill recharge times have been increased slightly.
- Force Ball recharge has been increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
- Force Wall recharge has been increased from 12 seconds to 15 seconds.
- Force Dome recharge has been increased from 22 seconds to 25 seconds.
- Reduced the maximum health scaling on objective bosses by 40%.
- In World vs. World, all characters—not just players—will follow the same revival rules.
- Only 5 players can attempt to revive a character at a time.
- Characters must be out of combat in order to attempt to revive another character.
- Fixed a bug in which siege weapons that applied condition damage were scaling based on the player’s condition damage.
Eternal Battlegrounds
- Danelon Passage: Fixed a bug in which one of the dolyaks would sometimes gain the Protected Caravan effect when an enemy player was nearby rather than an allied player.
- Lowlands Keep: Fixed a bug that prevented players from interacting with the golem banker.
PROFESSION SKILLS
General
- A new option called Effect LOD has been added to the graphics options of the game. It limits the detail of allied players’ skill effects. This option has been turned on by default.
- When toggled on, skills from allies will play a visually reduced version of their default skill effect. Additionally, ally hit effects and certain ally cast effects will be disabled.
- When toggled off, skills from allies will play the default version of their skill effect. Allies’ cast effects as well as allies’ hit effects on foes will be visible.
- Each profession has had their default ground-target reticle interchanged with new profession-specific reticles.
- All combo fields in the game have been given a visual update to make them more distinct in combat.
- Dark Field: A black ring with floating shadows has been added.
- Ethereal Field: A magenta ring with floating, shattered fragments has been added.
- Fire Field: An orange ring with rising flames has been added.
- Ice Field: A light-blue ring with slow-moving ice has been added.
- Light Field: A golden ring with a hovering white fog has been added.
- Lightning Field: A purple ring with rising lightning bolts has been added.
- Poison Field: A green ring with slowly rising bubbles has been added.
- Smoke Field: A gray ring with rising smoke has been added.
- Water Field: A blue ring with cascading water has been added.
- The following skills and traits have had their Life Steal functionality standardized, fixing several exploits and bugs across the game:
- Dark Field Combo Finishers
- Projectile
- Whirl
- Necromancer
- Vampiric
- Revenant
- Enchanted Daggers
- Assassin’s Annihilation
- Focused Siphoning
- Thief
- Leeching Venoms
- Runes
- Rune of Vampirism
- Rune of Scavenging
- Sigils
- Sigil of Blood
- Sigil of Leeching
- Consumables
- All consumables that randomly steal life
- Dark Field Combo Finishers
- Rune of Vampirism: Life stealing now scales properly with power.
- Fixed improper life-stealing damage values for consumables, increasing damage by 10.
- Stability: The frequency at which stability can be removed by control effects has been increased from 0.05 seconds to 0.75 seconds. A brief effect will now play on the character when stability is removed via control.
- Quickness/Slow: The formula for animation-speed increases and decreases has been modified. Quickness is normalized to behave the same as before, while Slow has had its effectiveness reduced. However, due to the formula change, Slow will continue to have a negative impact while Quickness is in effect. The table below indicates how this change works.
| Skill Cast | With Old Quickness | With Old Slow | With Both Old | With New Quickness | With New Slow | With Both New |
| 10 seconds | 6.66 seconds | 20 seconds | 10 seconds | 6.66 seconds | 15 seconds | 11.66 seconds |
- This change allows for more fluidity, as the previous animation-speed formula caused slowing effects to be stronger than we desired. As an added benefit, we have not reduced the effectiveness of any trait that modifies attack speed, so these traits will see a boost in speed given.
Elementalist
We’re continuing to watch the elementalist and its tempest specialization, and we’ll look to make improvements in lesser-used areas. For this update, we’ll be looking at weapon skills that promote both scepter and dagger. Scepter changes include some modification to casting times and damage increases for both physical and condition damage. The dagger’s abilities have been adjusted to be both more frequently usable and pack a bigger punch for both main-hand and off-hand use.
- Glyph of Storms: This skill now has new icons for each attunement for better visibility.
- Glyph of Elemental Power: This skill now has new icons for each attunement for better visibility.
- Glyph of Elemental Harmony: This skill now has new icons for each attunement for better visibility.
- Glyph of Renewal: This skill now has new icons for each attunement for better visibility.
- Flamestrike: The cast point of this skill has been reduced by 0.2 seconds. The aftercast delay of this ability has been reduced by 0.38 seconds.
- Ice Shards: The damage applied by this skill has been increased by 33%.
- Shatterstone: The damage of this skill has been increased by 22%.
- Water Trident: The healing contribution per level of this skill has been increased by 27%.
- Arc Lightning: The damage of this skill at all levels has been increased by 33%.
- Rock Barrier—Hurl: This skill now applies 1 stack of bleeding for 8 seconds when striking an enemy.
- Dust Devil: The cast point of this skill has been reduced by 0.15 seconds. The aftercast delay of this ability has been reduced by 0.3 seconds.
- Lightning Touch: The damage of this skill has been increased by 66%.
- Churning Earth: The damage of this skill has been increased by 7%.
- Fire Grab: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 30 seconds.
- Frozen Burst: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
- Fireball: The effect of this skill has been returned to its previous state. The damage of this skill has been increased by 17%.
- Gust: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
- Windborne Speed: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
- Static Field: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to stun an enemy has been capped at 10.
- Unsteady Ground: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to knock back an enemy has been capped at 10. The duration of this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
- “Eye of the Storm!”: This skill can no longer be used to attempt to stun-break NPCs who aren’t already in combat.
Engineer
Our goal for this quarter has been to reduce a bit of the scrapper’s survivability while updating the base engineer with multiple weapon and utility quality-of-life changes. Some increases have been based around physical and condition damage increases for the pistol, to help its viability as a hybrid condition option. From the utilities side, we’ve made several adjustments to damage and recharge for underutilized skills. One of the bigger notes is that Slick Shoes are now only able to affect a target once per skill activation.
- Fixed a bug that prevented certain engineer kits from becoming hidden while gathering.
- Fragmentation Shot: The damage of this skill has been increased by 14%.
- Static Shot: Confusion duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. The number of confusion stacks has been increased from 2 to 3. The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
- Blowtorch: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
- Bomb Kit: Fixed a bug that caused the explosions of this skill to behave oddly and not occur where the bomb was originally laid.
- Toss Elixir C: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds.
- Toss Elixir R: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 100 seconds to 90 seconds.
- Toss Elixir S: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 45 seconds.
- Elixir U: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 45 seconds.
- Healing Turret: The casting time of this skill has been increased from 0.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds.
- Throw Mine: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds. The damage has been increased by 20%.
- Rocket Kick: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 17 seconds to 15 seconds. The damage has been increased by 33%.
- Launch Personal Battering Ram: The cripple duration from this tool-belt skill has been increased from 5 seconds to 6 seconds.
- Slick Shoes: This skill is now limited to knocking each enemy down once. The number of enemies that it can affect remains unchanged. The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
- Rocket Charge: This skill now executes two leaps instead of three. This skill now charges straight forward rather than angling slightly on the initial two leaps.
- Equalizing Blow: Increased the number of might and vulnerability stacks applied from 1 to 3.
- Sneak Gyro: This skill now has a 0.75-second casting time.
- Rapid Regeneration: The base healing of this trait has been reduced from 150 to 20 when under the influence of superspeed and from 25 to 5 when under the effects of swiftness. Level and healing values continue to scale the same for superspeed. Swiftness’s scaling with levels has been increased by 20%.
- Shredder Gyro: The damage caused by this skill has been increased by 600%. The duration has been reduced by 50%. Removed the initial strike.
Guardian
A large portion of the changes occurring for the guardian are aimed toward reducing the dragonhunter’s group controlling and killing capacity in WvW while toning down its ranged spike damage capability prevalent in other areas. With that being said, we want to keep the dragonhunter competitive and still dealing high damage, but we want the damage dealt a little less instantly than before. The guardian is also going to be receiving some of the same target caps on its wall abilities while seeing some cooldown reductions on its base virtues.
- Virtue of Justice: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds.
- Virtue of Resolve: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 45 seconds.
- Virtue of Courage: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 75 seconds to 60 seconds. This skill will no longer attempt to break stun for NPCs who aren’t already in combat.
- Ring of Warding: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to knock back an enemy has been capped at 10.
- Line of Warding: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to knock back an enemy has been capped at 10.
- “Save Yourselves!”: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 60 seconds to 50 seconds.
- “Hold the Line!”: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 35 seconds to 30 seconds.
- “Retreat!”: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.
- “Stand Your Ground!”: The duration of stability this skill applies has been increased from 5 seconds to 6 seconds.
- True Shot: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 20%.
- Deflecting Shot: The base damage of this skill has been increased by 17%.
- Symbol of Energy: The damage of this skill has been increased by 25%.
- Hunter’s Ward: This skill now creates barriers on enemies only if they are struck by the final attack. Barriers created by this skill now only stop enemies who have been marked (struck) by the final attack. The final attack damage has been increased by 33%. Ring duration has been reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds. Added a red ring for enemies so they can be identified as hostile.
- Test of Faith: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to strike an enemy has been capped at 10, after which the trap will disappear. The damage of this skill has been reduced by 7%.
Mesmer
This quarter, we’ll be looking a bit at the scepter and pushing it toward more hybrid capabilities. There have been several animation changes and recharge reductions, along with general damage increases. Additionally, due to the change made in how attack speed increases are calculated, Malicious Sorcery provides a higher attack speed bonus (though the tool-tip value will not change). The chronomancer has had a few changes, with well recharge reductions and improved access to personal alacrity.
- Feedback: Fixed an issue that prevented the combo ring for this skill from displaying.
- Ether Bolt: Reduced the aftercast delay by 0.16 seconds.
- Ether Blast: Reduced the aftercast delay by 0.28 seconds.
- Ether Clone: Reduced the aftercast delay by 0.45 seconds. This skill no longer fires a missile but is a direct attack instead.
- Counterspell: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. The damage from this skill has been increased by 50% when an attack is blocked. The attack activation time has been reduced by 0.2 seconds. The aftercast delay has been reduced by 0.24 seconds.
- Confusing Images: The damage output of this skill has been increased by 20%.
- Illusionary Riposte: Reduced the cooldown of this skill from 15 seconds to 12 seconds. The attack activation time has been reduced by 0.4 seconds. The aftercast delay has been reduced by 1 second.
- Restorative Mantras: This trait now displays a blue ring effect while channeling a mantra, indicating the trait’s effective area.
- Well of Action: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
- Well of Precognition: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 30 seconds.
- Well of Recall: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 35 seconds.
- Flow of Time: The alacrity applied by this trait has been increased from 0.75 seconds to 1 second per illusion shattered.
Necromancer
Necromancers have been reaping their way across the game, far and wide. It’s been a glorious sight. With that being said, there are a few areas that we feel need to be balanced, specifically chill application and survivability. In this update we’ll be reducing the overall duration of chill that the necromancer can output by reducing it from their base abilities. Players will also see a reduction in the uptime of Infusing Terror, though the functionality will remain the same. Baseline necromancers will be seeing some off-hand weapon updates as well as well recharge reductions.
- Well of Corruption has undergone an audio rework to make it sound like it is bursting from the ground, better matching its visual effects.
- All Bone Fiend projectile skills have undergone an audio rework to make them sound more like projectiles.
- Lich Form—Mark of Horror: Added a strike to the area when this mark is triggered by an enemy.
- Spectral Wall: The number of times this skill can be used to attempt to apply fear to an enemy has been capped at 10.
- Reaper’s Touch: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
- Spinal Shivers: Increased the damage when removing two and three boons by 25% and 40% respectively.
- Deathly Swarm: The missile velocity of this skill has been increased by 100%. The casting time of the projectile has increased by 0.2 seconds.
- Well of Power: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 40 seconds.
- Well of Darkness: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 50 seconds to 45 seconds.
- Well of Blood: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 35 seconds.
- Ritual of Life: The cooldown of this trait has been reduced from 40 seconds to 35 seconds.
- Infusing Terror: Reduced the active duration of this skill from 8 seconds to 5 seconds. The recharge time has been increased from 20 seconds to 25 seconds.
- Unholy Sanctuary: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to go on cooldown even when the necromancer has less than 10% life force.
- Soul Spiral: Reduced the number of whirl combos during the course of the skill from 11 to 6.
- Executioner’s Scythe: Reduced the freezing field duration from 6 seconds to 4 seconds.
- “Chilled to the Bone!”: The chill duration from this skill has been reduced from 6 seconds to 4 seconds.
- Chilling Nova: The chill duration from this trait has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
- Shivers of Dread: The chill duration from this trait has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds.
- Deathly Chill: This trait no longer causes chill to inflict damage but instead applies 8 seconds of bleeding each time you apply chill to an enemy.
Ranger
It’s been a long time in the making, but we’re pleased to announce that the main-hand sword autoattack no longer removes control from players and has an all-new animation. In addition to that, we’ve been going through and updating a few of the underused weapons available to the ranger. Short bow has received a physical damage upgrade as well as some improved secondary effects on various skills. Main-hand axes have had some animation and condition improvements while receiving some quality-of-life improvements when wielded in the off hand. “Search and Rescue!” has been great to see used, but it’s been observed to be a bit too strong at its current levels. We’ll be making this a more tactical choice by reducing its range to standard shout range and increasing its recharge time.
- Sublime Conversion: Fixed an issue that caused the combo ring for this skill to be visible to enemies.
- Viper’s Nest: Fixed an issue that caused the combo ring for this skill to display at an offset time.
- Kick (Sword Combo 2): This skill has been renamed Crippling Thrust. The animation of this skill has been modified, and the ranger will now be able to move while activating the skill.
- Leap (Sword Combo 3): This skill has been renamed Precision Swipe. The animation of this skill has been modified, and the ranger will now be able to move while activating the skill.
- Poison Volley: Increased the poison damage duration applied by this skill from 4 seconds to 5 seconds. The physical damage per strike has been increased by 150%.
- Quick Shot: The swiftness duration of this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 9 seconds. The damage has been increased by 20%. This effect is now only able to be triggered once per shot (it previously would trigger multiple times if the Light on Your Feet trait was in use).
- Crippling Shot: The cripple duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. Base damage has been increased by 100%. The pet bleeding duration has been increased from 6 seconds to 12 seconds.
- Concussion Shot: The stun and daze durations have been increased from 1 second to 2 seconds.
- Ricochet: Might duration applied by this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. Increased the cast point by 0.1 seconds. The aftercast delay has been reduced by 0.16 seconds.
- Winter’s Bite: The chill duration of this skill has been increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds and now also applies 3 stacks of bleeding for 5 seconds. The aftercast delay has been reduced by 0.32 seconds.
- Path of Scars: This skill is now ground targeted and can be cast at a shorter distance than the maximum.
- Whirling Defense: The active portion of this skill has had its speed increased by 50% and will now scale with quickness. The damage per strike has been increased by 100%.
- “Search and Rescue!”: The radius of this shout has been normalized and now affects a radius of 600, down from 1200. The recharge time of this skill has been increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds.
- Fortifying Bond: The fury duration applied to the ranger’s pet has been increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. The protection duration has been increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. The regeneration duration has been increased from 5 seconds to 6 seconds. The swiftness duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds. The quickness duration has been increased from 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds. The stability duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.
- “Protect Me!”: This skill will no longer attempt to break stun on NPCs who aren’t already in combat.
- Fixed a scaling and placement issue with the Celestial Avatar skill icon after the druid elite specialization is equipped.
- Vine Surge: Fixed a bug that allowed this skill to strike a target more than once.
Revenant
This quarter’s balance changes are focused on improving Ventari and the off-hand sword while slightly lowering the defensive capabilities of the Shiro legend. Legendary Assassin Stance is expected to be offensive and elusive but was too survivable overall.
- Protective Solace: Fixed an issue that prevented the combo ring for this skill from being visible.
- Riposting Shadows: The endurance gain of this ability has been reduced from 50 to 25.
- Precision Strike: Increased the recharge time of this skill from 4 seconds to 5 seconds. The range of this skill has been reduced from 600 to 450.
- Duelist’s Preparation—Shackling Wave: The immobilize duration has been increased from 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds. This skill is now available naturally during the course of Duelist’s Preparation. Blocking an attack will extend the availability of the skill beyond the blocking duration.
- Grasping Shadow: This skill now grants 6 seconds of fury to the revenant and 3 seconds of chill to an enemy when the attack hits.
- Enchanted Daggers: The healing from these daggers has been reduced by 5%.
- Project Tranquility: The cost of this skill has been reduced from 10 energy to 5 energy.
- Ventari’s Will: This skill is now instant. The recharge time of this skill has been increased from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.
- Natural Harmony: Reduced the delayed time to heal from 1.5 seconds to 1 second. Increased the healing power contribution of this skill by 33%.
- Energy Expulsion: This skill is now instant but has a 1-second delay for the explosion.
Thief
The thief has had numerous changes in the vein of quality-of-life upgrades. We’ve made improvements to help pistols play nicer with their hybrid nature while also improving the dagger and sword weapons. Survivability has been boosted a bit, with healing skills and traits working to provide more condition removal, vigor, and healing. Larcenous Strike and Bountiful Theft now remove additional boons, with Lead Attacks receiving a large rework that promotes spending initiative rather than holding it. We’ll continue to monitor the effectiveness of Lead Attacks and adjust it accordingly as needed.
- Vital Shot: Reduced the aftercast delay of this skill by 0.6 seconds.
- Body Shot: Reduced the aftercast delay of this skill by 0.16 seconds.
- Unload: This skill now grants 1 stack of might for 8 seconds when striking an enemy.
- Heartseeker: This skill is now able to be affected by quickness and slow.
- Weakening Charge: This skill is now able to be affected by quickness and slow.
- Dust Strike: This skill now applies 5 stacks of vulnerability per hit. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to strike more than once. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to blind for only 3 seconds instead of the full 5 seconds.
- Larcenous Strike: The number of boons stolen by this skill has been increased from 1 to 2. The initiative cost has been increased from 1 to 2.
- Withdraw: This skill now removes torment in addition to its other removals.
- Hide in Shadows: This skill now removes confusion in addition to its other removals. Increased the duration of regeneration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
- Skelk Venom: The base healing modifier for venom strikes has been increased by 40%. The healing contribution for both the initial heal and venom strikes has been increased by 50%.
- Expeditious Dodger: Increased the swiftness duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
- Pain Response: The internal cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 20 seconds to 16 seconds.
- Vigorous Recovery: Increased the vigor duration of this trait from 7 seconds to 10 seconds.
- Swindler’s Equilibrium: Damage while wielding a sword has been increased from 5% to 7%.
- Lead Attacks: This trait has been reworked and now grants 1% damage and condition damage per initiative spent for 15 seconds. This effect has a maximum of 15%.
- Bountiful Theft: The number of boons stolen has been increased from 2 to 3 in addition to applying vigor.
- Consume Plasma: This stolen ability now grants resistance for 2.5 seconds, but it will not apply quickness. Updated the skill facts.
- Throw Gunk: This skill is now ground targeted. Added the radius to this skill’s description. Added an allied combo-field effect and enemy ring effect to this skill.
Warrior
We’re generally happy with the offense and damage potential of the warrior, but survivability and durability in PvP have been observed to be lacking, even when defensive measures are taken. We’re looking to boost defense in areas where the warrior specializes in it. Stability-granting utilities have been refocused and reworked with the new stability cooldown specifically in mind, and the Defense line has gained significant increases. Within this line, Adrenal Health has been transformed from an adrenaline-holding minor trait into one that grants a much stronger healing effect when landing burst abilities.
- Dual Shot: The damage of this skill has been increased by 33%.
- Fan of Fire: Increased the burning duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. Physical damage has been increased by 10%.
- Smoldering Arrow: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
- Pin Down: The damage of this skill has been increased by 10%.
- Eviscerate: Updated this skill to not be affected by movement-impeding effects.
- Gun Flame: The physical damage of this skill has been reduced by 20%. Fixed an issue that allowed this skill to hit enemies twice. This skill no longer pierces but still delivers the area-of-effect attack. Fixed a bug that caused the tool tip to show a decrease in damage when the Burst Mastery trait was in use.
- Dolyak Signet: The cooldown of this signet has been reduced from 60 seconds to 40 seconds.
- Balanced Stance: This skill now periodically applies swiftness and two stacks of stability for 3 seconds every 3 seconds that the stance is active.
- Throw Bolas: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 20 seconds to 16 seconds.
- Kick: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 20 seconds to 12 seconds.
- Bull’s Charge: Increased the knockdown duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.
- Stomp: This skill is now ground targeted and will move the warrior from a distance of 450 to a target area. This skill now grants 1 stack of stability for 5 seconds per target struck in addition to its own initial stack of stability, which has been increased from 1 second to 5 seconds. The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
- Thick Skin: The health threshold of this trait has been decreased from 90% to 75%. The toughness this trait applies has been increased from a maximum of 120 to 180.
- Dogged March: The regeneration duration applied by this trait has been increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.
- Cull the Weak: Increased the health threshold for weakness application from 25% to 33%.
- Defy Pain: The threshold for activating Endure Pain has been increased from 25% health to 50% health.
- Quick Breathing: Increased the number of conditions removed on warhorn-skill use from 1 to 2.
- Burst Mastery: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from appropriately increasing damage.
- Adrenal Health: This trait has been reworked. For each level of adrenaline spent, the warrior will gain an instance of Adrenal Health that will heal over the course of 15 seconds. This effect stacks up to 3 times.
OTHER BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, AND POLISH
General
- Players can now specify a quantity when purchasing items from a vendor.
- Fixed several vendors in Central Tyria that started on the Sell tab instead of their respective Buy tabs.
- Changed all in-game references to the Magus Falls region to Heart of Maguuma to avoid confusion of conflicting labels for the area.
- Loading screens can now have helpful information and tips at the top of the screen.
- The Tail Stab skill used by the Veteran Mordrem Vinetooth and the Vinetooth incarnation of Faolain has been reworked so that the skill’s damage area matches its effect.
- Unlurk animations now play for arrowheads, bristleback hatchlings, and Mordrem grunts that require them.
- Squads can now be joined regardless of distance via left-clicking the commander marker on the map and selecting “Join Squad.”
- Fixed a bug in which adventure leaderboards had inconsistent daily and lifetime records. This fix also addressed an issue in which lifetime records cleared after the daily reset.
- Fixed a bug that caused Chocolate Omnomberry Cake to increase burning duration instead of chill duration.
- The Clean Refreshing Drink now has an indicator to show when it is active.
- Queensdale: Fixed a bug that prevented an event in the 1-5 zone from starting.
- Cursed Shore: Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented the meta-event text from displaying.
- Tequatl the Sunless: Fixed an issue that caused the jump pads to require the Glider Basics Mastery.
- Fixed a bug in which using the portal from Lion’s Arch to Lornar’s Pass would sometimes cause a player to reload back in Lion’s Arch.
- Fixed a bug preventing upgrade effects from being applied in certain transforms.
Personal Story
- “The Stone Sheath”: Fixed a bug in which you could complete the “Search the submerged ruins for dwarven relics” story step without receiving the next objective.
- “City of Hope”: The first trial is now manually activated and reset by interacting with the pedestal near the trial entrance instead of being based on proximity to the start. In the third trial, enemies and downed soldiers will not spawn until the entire party has been turned into rabbits.
- “Close the Eye”: Updated the skills on the Seneschal’s Keystaff.
- Added an NPC in Lion’s Arch, Soothsayer Jacinda, who will attempt to restore characters who have become stuck in chapter 7 after the “Forging the Pact” story step and who have no active quest as part of their personal storyline.
- “Hearts and Minds”: Fixed a bug in which the fight against the Blighted Pale Tree could break if she was damaged too swiftly after her final attack. In Extreme Mode, the number of control effects required to break Blighted Eir Stegalkin’s defiance bar has also been reduced.
Guild Halls
- Lumber Synthesizer 4 will now give the player Elder Wood Logs.
- Lumber Synthesizer 5 will now give the player Ancient Wood Logs.
- Guild Hall Swiftness +11%, +22%, and +33% will no longer inform users without the rank permission “Use Placeables” that they need the rank permission to gain the swiftness boons.
- “The Music of the Barren Heights” and “The Music of the Caverns” will remain selected when players leave and return to their guild halls if they were selected previously.
- Audio cues have been added to the Mission tab in the Guild panel.
- The tabs in the Guild Trader panel are now named.
- Guild Hall Swiftness +11%, +22%, and +33% will also be applied upon obtaining the upgrade and not require users to leave and reenter their guild hall to obtain the effect.
Items
- Superior Rune of the Herald: Fixed a bug that caused the 6-piece bonus to trigger at the start of the skill rather than when the skill completed.
- Transmutation Charge: Transmutation charges now have the Consume All option.
- Nuhoch Warbler: The warbler can no longer be used to overwrite other transformations.
- Prismatic Lodestone: Fixed a bug that caused this item to be consumable.
- Energy Crystal: Energy Crystals found in Metrica Province can now be traded.
- Order Backpacks: Fixed a bug that could block progress on the order backpack collections earned in the Heart of Thorns story. Work is still being done to unblock players who already encountered this bug.
- Amalgamated Gemstones: A new Mystic Forge recipe involving globs of ectoplasm has been added to obtain multiple amalgamated gemstones at one time. Additionally, mystic forging crystals (tier 5 gemstones) or orbs (tier 6 gemstones) now have a rare chance of giving an amalgamated gemstone.
- First-tier and second-tier precursor recipes will now only have the appropriate crafting discipline listed in the tool tip.
- Exalted core recipes will now only have the appropriate crafting discipline listed in the tool tip.
BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions
- A new set of Spectral weapon skins is available from Black Lion Weapons Specialists for 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket for a limited time.
- A new Sentinel Outfit is available in the Style category of the Gem Store for 700 gems.
- 5 additional Shared Inventory Slots may be purchased from the Upgrades category of the Gem Store for 700 gems each. Each account can have up to 10 purchased Shared Inventory Slots at this time. This limit is not affected by the Shared Inventory Slot provided with the Level-80 Boost.
Improvements
- The rewards within the Black Lion Chest have been refreshed.
- Instant Repair Canisters have been removed.
- Boxes o’ Fun have been removed.
- Mystery Tonics that aren’t endless have been removed.
- Increased the amount of Revive Orbs awarded to 2.
- Rare stand-alone miniatures have been removed and replaced with a new Black Lion Miniature Claim Ticket containing new miniatures to choose from.
- The current exclusive dye packs have been swapped out for Winter Chimes, the Toxic Dye Kit, the Metallurgic Dye Kit, Taimi’s Dye Kit, and the Mad King Dye Kit.
- All common individual combat boosters have been combined into a single Enchanted Combat Boost that allows players to choose their combat boost.
- Drop rates of Black Lion Claim Ticket Scraps have been slightly increased.
- The Endless Repair Canister item has been added as a very rare reward.
- Zodiac, Chaos, and Balthazar weapon skins have been added as very rare rewards.
- Added the ability to link items in chat.
- When switching categories, filters in common with the new category are no longer cleared if they’re also applicable to the new category. As an example, a filter for items with vitality is preserved when switching between armor and weapons.
- Filtering and search terms are now preserved separately for the buy, sell, and transaction sections.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that allowed accounts without glider access to purchase glider skins.
- Fixed a bug in which the inventory list wouldn’t resize correctly upon inventory updates.
- Fixed a bug that caused the inventory list to incorrectly display an error message stating the maximum number of results had been reached.
(edited by Mark Katzbach.9084)
This expansion is falling apart. [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781
As a long time MMO player, I’d like to remind you the most important thing in a RPG game is not the story, not the combat, not the social system, it’s the reward.
As a long time gamer, I’d like to fix that for you:
The most important thing is the entertainment value, which is a combination of reward, story, combat, social system, customization, progression, and more.
ANet made a number of mistakes, in terms of managing our expectations, using moderation when gating content & rewards, understanding that tedious achievements feel as ‘grindy’ as any gear treadmill, and leaving enough staff to work on the evolving world and fixing bugs.
However, they did deliver an expansion that has entertained lots of people for endless hours.
The problem to me is that they failed to sufficiently entertain the skeptical fraction of the community that was willing to cut them some slack. People understandably feel let down.
The good news is that Mike O’Brian seems to understand this and is willing to risk his and his franchise’s reputation to make things better. I don’t expect everyone to wait patiently for ANet to get it together. I do expect that in 3-6 months, we’ll see some interesting changes — I will wait til then to formulate my own opinion about whether the expansion is falling apart, since so far, I’m still having fun.
Of course, everyone’s mileage will vary.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I think a lot of people feel this way the very first moment they enter a dungeon since it’s incredibly difficult compared to open world PvE. Try 5 manning it, preferrably with someone who knows what he’s doing and you won’t have that many difficulties. If you decide to keep playing this game, some time in the future you’ll be amazed by topics like this because it is so easy for the experienced player.
Yea of course you can test it, but if you got lacking tooltips, why bring in tooltips in the first place?
Prince Rurik and Lady Althea. Anyone else see the incompatibilty here?
Agreed – not just the tooltips, but the traits too need specifics added to them. There are so many traits currently that say vague things like:
“lasts longer” ? how much longer?
“increases damage” ? by how much?
“burns foes” ? how long a burn?
“effects are improved” ? improved how and by what degree?
“…heals you” ? how large a heal? any internal cool down?
etc.
I’m sure most players go to the wiki to find out the specifics, but we shouldn’t be forced to do that. The details should be in the game.
It seems like with every new class I decide to play I have to spend hours of detective work searching forums/wikis/whatever just to find out variables that apply to a given skill, trait, consumable, sigil/rune because for whatever reason you guys thought “oh well kitten they don’t care about specifics”. And even then we don’t have answers.
Now I know some casual players don’t want to read a paragraph of info for a skill, but I know some games that have a UI option for “detailed” and “simple” tooltips. Something like this would be really awesome.
Going over the mesmers traits “Compounding Powder” and “Wastrel’s Punishment” just really ticked me off today. What does the 3% damage per illusion apply to? yourself only? illusions included? Shatter skills? And for Christs sakes what is “inactive”? Does this mean not currently using a skill? unable to act via stun/daze? rooted? ITS A MYSTERY I GUESS.
(edited by Zepidel.5349)
It’s actually quite interesting to note that Lion’s Arch, which used to almost always kick you into an overflow, has been suspiciously free of them lately. Almost as if all the people who used to be there doing fractals and dungeons were off somewhere else in the game.
I love the people who just have it in their head the guesting has nothing to do with it. IT DOES…PERIOD! Might not be THE reason. But it has never been a problem before guesting and the new patches. The new loot from chests or whatever, coupled with guesting is the reason.
Get over yourselves and think for a change
Guesting had been implemented for a month with no issues, while everything’s gone to hell within a week of the chest buff causing people to hit world bosses like a swarm of locusts every time they appear. Seems like the culprit is pretty obvious to me.
Overflow is just a symptom. The whole problem is caused chiefly by people abusing the predictable timers of bosses, using third party websites to calculate the next spawn time. Predictability + better loot = overcrowding => overflow. Whole crowds of people appear out of thin air and camp the spawn point right before the spawn window opens; and even if you are crafty enough to avoid the overflow, the fight is over so fast you may be lucky to get your participation registered at all.
I’d say, just randomize the spawning times and make them less often. Bosses should be a rare encounter anyway… something you stumble upon by random, not something you camp and gank bi-hourly. I remember when Behemoth was bugged on our server, appearing like twice a month or so… but when he finally appeared, it was THE event. Today, though? Just a generic loot piñata that appears once every two and half hours.
The reason for getting sent to overflow has very little to do with guesting.
Sure, guests make up a -small- part of the population problem, but the real issue at hand is that now everyone on a server are jumping into the same map at the same time because everyone wants to do world events now.
If this is really a problem for you, either guest in- or move to- a low population server.
Problem solved.
Actually the real problem, isn’t guesting at all, its that they fixed the loot on certain chests and only certain chests, the rest of the game’s loot tables are still horrible, so now everyone is trying to get some nice stuff which is over loading the servers….
It really does show how bad the loot is in this game, to force people to guest just to get some nice stuff..
Anet need to fix all the loot tables and areas then you’d see a decrease in the need to guest to world events..
Whenever I see people say “I’m glad, the game still needs lots of work and bug fixes” I sigh irl. I just can’t even handle comments like that, anymore lol….I feel like I’m playing a different game than those people. I mean, yeah sometimes there’s bugs but it’s not really anything big or noticeable on a regular basis…And I don’t think that has anything to do with why there’s no timetable for expansions, or why they’re doing what they are.
The entire rest of the game already caters to players in general. I don’t think anyone will argue against the fact that Open World PvE is largely accessible to the majority of players, and Open World PvE comprises the majority of the PvE in this game in terms of amount of content.
Anet ALREADY STATED that Explorable Mode dungeons were meant to challenge organized groups of 5 players. In fact, they’ve actually done the opposite with Story Mode dungeons and toned down the difficulty to make them accessible to most players. Thus, I don’t really see what the problem is.
But Dungeons are a major part of end-game play, they can’t wall them off to only hardcore players. Story Mode dungeons are actually harder and more time consuming in some cases than Exploration mode, but offer drastically lower rewards. If they want to have “hard mode” exploration dungeons in addition to the existing versions then that’s fine, so long as they don’t offer higher levels of reward, but the base experience should not be made excessively difficult.
Condition damage is “horrible for dungeons?” Really? Then I must be playing my conditions elementalist “wrong.” I also must not have been nearly as effective as I thought I was in a level 42 fractal run last night either.
Yes, but that’s ok. The important thing is that you’re having fun, even if you are dragging down the rest of the group. A Condition Ele isn’t nearly as badly hurt by condition capping as a Necro or Thief, but they certainly aren’t as good as a direct damage Ele, and if you end up grouped with any other Condition player then you end up nullifying each other, so that if you have a group in which each player is assumed to be bringing 100 “worth” out of a total 500 for the team, then even if two Condition characters would be 100 each on their own, they would combine to add up to only 130 or so instead of 200, because Condition capping and overlap means that most of their potential damage just isn’t counted.
I do run a Condition-based Thief in dungeons, but I certainly don’t consider myself a DPS character when doing so, I’m definitely a support type, and for that my lack of direct damage is not crippling, but I think it would be shameful if I tried to promote myself as being a damage dealer.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
The problem with most dungeons is the lack of proper mobility. This is what makes balancing them hard i guess. High mobility classes like thief, ranger and mesmer makes for a complete nightmare, as they suddenly “can’t move enough”.
Since a dungeon is basically a “cave of champs and veterans with elite skills”, you could simply go apply a “quick fix” by widening hallways a bit more, but creating some more challenging bottleneck along the way, to make it less easy to just rush through.
Lv 80 Guard, Ranger, Ele, Thief, warr, engi
Currently @ some T1 server in EU
Currently @ some T1 server in EU
Just remove the option to get another chest on each boss when guesting. One chest per boss per day, regardless of you guesting onto other servers. Problem solved.
This is the logical conclusion of ArenaNet’s “you should never not want to see another player” design approach. The events are too easy and don’t scale in difficulty enough with added players. You can fiddle with how guesting works as much as you want, but as long as free stuff is being given out on a schedule, a ton of people are going to show up.
Kintari | Rintaki | Rin Taki | Kian Tir | Zahinn | Lith <<< Blackgate >>>
So, uhm, what are the staff that are not part of the live team doing?
That’s kind of what I was thinking. Didn’t they say that they have a live team and a team that solely works on expansion content?
Not guesting it’s an overpopulation issue. Especially on servers like JQ,BG,Desolation etc anything near the top 3 tiers. On BG we have overflows on Maw(event noone guests too). It’s pretty easy to see, but seems people like blaming all there problems on everyone else……
Guesting is a nice feature and should remain.
The only real solution to this problem seems to be limiting these chest rewards to one per day per ACCOUNT and not character. A lot of people won’t like this, but this will remove the reason so many people are guesting.
And I am on one of the lowest population servers, Fergusen’s Crossing. I have been forced into overflow so much the last couple days it isn’t funny. And once I got put into overflow for Queensdale when the Shadow Behemeth wasn’t due for another hour. Really?! An hour early to an event on one of the lowest population servers and I still get overflow? There is definately a problem.
The only difference I can see is the timing of the events and that people get upset if they’ve arrived before the spawn window only to be knocked into overflow with a different timer. I’m sure it won’t be long before the timer websites add the overflows on to their count.
I think you’re right about the fractals and dungeons as well- Suddenly everyone is in the open world instead of 5 people to an instance because it’s max gold for min time and all the sparkles on the unique weapons takes a lot of rendering. I wouldn’t mind so much if people who wanted only the meta events actually helped with the tirgger events in the window. Like the behemoth- he won’t visit until he’s had his brew and watched his oakheart friend die, but people won’t start the events, they just stand there going “Has he spawned yet?” “have I missed him?” “Who’s altered the timer?” and tear chunks out of anyone that disagrees.
Meta events are meant to bring the community together, but at the moment, it really only brings them together in a mass of invisible bodies with not even a “Nice Job,” “Good fight,” in sight.
Edit- already answered