Guild Wars 2

To me this is an even greater oversight than how they delivered the game without a decent LFG tool. Guilds are the lifeblood of WvW and overall long term player retention.

These improvements are sorely needed to make running a guild fun and not an overwhelming chore that it is now.

Fixing the guild systems would result in more happy faces and would not take an army of artists, modelers and level designers to do. A few command line tools would be more than welcome and really how much design does it take to rework or add to the current guild options window?

Arenanet has stated a vision and a long term goal for sPVP. They want it to be an popular e-sport and bring media attention and prestige to the company and the game, hence devs and marketing staff working overtime on many fronts in that area.

WvW, according to Arenanet is done, baked, finished. There is no grand long term plan or goal for WvW beyond polishing what exists. A few tweaks here, a few cosmetic changes there and maybe in the long term a new map or map revision is all I am aware of.

If anything I will bet there is internal resentment at the company that such a large percentage of the player base ignores much of their sPVP and PVE flufftent while spending most of their time in WvW.

This is the opposite of what WvW needs at the moment.

The most glaring problem with WvW is about half the worlds have low participation while the structure of the game rewards population.

This new change simply rewards the world with the largest population and which can keep all of their map slots filled, 24/7.

People who think this sounds like a good idea have never played, week after week against worlds 6 or more tiers above them, or played on a world that cannot keep it’s map slots full.

Where is the dialog? We get these faceless procalmations. We don’t even know who is responsible for this decision. Is it one person, two, a committee?

Games that have test servers populated with players, not devs or paid testers, avoid this kind of top down Dilbert style management stupid design changes.

This is one of the worst design decisions I have seen in a long time.

I get the impression that who ever is making the decisions about WvW, has never ever spent any time trying to play on world in the lower half of the tier ladder when they are matched with a world 6 or more tiers higher.

I want to thank Devon for responding to at least some of our WvW concerns and most importantly verifying a key player suspicion, that Arenanet places a very low priority on WvW and they have committed minimal resources to it.

WvW is where I spend most of my time online. I do along with many other WvWers buy gems on a regular basis, and as such do provide a significant revenue stream. I don’t buy the argument that the WvW neglect is do to a lack of revenue.

I was hoping to get a response that showed that Arenanet has a substantial vision for WvW that includes a long term plan to significantly improve and expand this game mode.

Instead we are getting company feedback that verifies what we have suspected; WvW is getting the short end of the stick in terms of development resources and there really is not a long term plan to significantly improve/expand this part of the game.

What puzzles me the most is the discrepancy between my experience, which is that WvW participation is high and far outshines sPVP or PVE dungeons. With the last 6 months of temporary content influxes to everything except WvW, Areanet seems to be doing everything they can to entice players out of WvW.

It is as if WvW was only added in the first place as a requirement put forth by marketing, and once that checkbox is filled, that is the end of the story. It as though Arenanet has consciously set out to discourage WvW participation by only putting significant rewards and priority development effort into PVE.

Given the official response so far to this thread, things do not look promising for WvW in the long term. There are several upcoming MMO launches in coming year(s) and I will be very interested in the large scale PvP modes they will offer as Arenanet’s WvW effort seems to have ground to a halt and is limping along with a skeleton development crew.

This is just too rich, people who have cleaned up making 100’s of gold, now concerned that the rest of us will also cash in.

Sounds too much like, hey I got mine, quick turn it off so I can enjoy a significant advantage over those who missed out (on vacation, sick etc.) for the last week or so.

My guess is everything will revert to the same old gray, nothing is worth farming landscape once the celebration is over.

Anet hates rangers. The class exists so they can claim to have multiple classes.

Let 4 warriors and a mesmer steamroll COF, “working as intended” says Anet.
Let 4-5 rangers do COF and take longer than 4 warriors and a mesmer, and Anet lets the ranger nerfs fly.

Do I really need to remind people of the absolute HORROR expressed by Anet devs anytime the class is even mentioned and the total state of panic if some one suggests that a team of rangers for anything.

Anet has a mental picture that Rangers are a background role, that those who play it do so just to be close to cuddly pets and that is the bottom line only reward they should expect from the class.

It’s a simple fact that every single MMO ever made, NEVER allows a pet class to be n par with you simple direct damage type classes.

It’s a niche class and a niche activity like role playing. It’s tacked on in that regards and forget about ever getting balanced to be on the same tier as the direct damage classes.

All SOTG proves is that Anet cares about pvp balance while reinforcing the converse which is they think PVE is perfectly balanced and no unfairness exists there.

I am completely disgusted with Anet’s antipathy towards the Ranger class.
You can see it every time Anet opens their mouths, the simply regret ever putting the class in and if you watch any interviews with devs any time Rangers are brought up their faces get frowns, they take defensive body postures, and the get all fidgety until the topic is changed and they then regain their best foot forward body language.

I applaud the difficulty of the actual encounter, but, the participation logistics are so much the opposite of what this game has striven for since day one.

Having to wait long periods, and then failing due to the catch 22 where the number required just happens to be very close to the number that triggers overflows and then the overflows are somewhat random.

I am a casual player, I did not have 6 hours a day to play map and overflow roulette.
This past week I could spend no more than 2 hours a day for three days due to real life commitments. I tried often in that time, but always got sent to overflow and every single one of them failed mainly due to the disorganization and lack of numbers there.

It’s especially nagging to me because I have not really cared for much of the Living Story content, but have waited patiently for Anet to make good on their promises of challenging content. Unfortunately many casual player like myself were shut out of this new content not because of our playing skills, but because of the logistical failures of how the event is staged adding unintended hurdles.

Unfortunately it appears, based on Arenanet’s silence so far on this fiasco, they are hoping that somehow players will self organize Beat Teq guilds where the main challenge is the logistical one of how to game the overflow situation using the quasi-legal taxi method and not the actual game play.

I think the OP is right, that while some players who were lucky to get past the logistical hurdles still enjoyed the event and will continue being available to do it, that is not the pattern we have seen with other big event type things. If all that is offered as reward is the intrinsic fun and a few one time achievements, most players will just move on in the Achievement Point race to the next 2 week content installment. They might love to do the actual fight again, but not the pre-fight game of musical overflows.

The ball is Arenanet’s court.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Just wondering, what is used in dungeons, beside the all-might shortbow? I usually take one type of sword. GS for tanking/defense or S/T for damage. The defense is quite good in high level fractals especially dredge.

Rangers, you were meant to kill trash mobs only, is what this patch says, loud and clear.

Yes, a melee weapon is the way to go when you are one a squishy class, NOT.
The gimick evasion and defense bits tacked on to a few GS ranger skills only work against single trash mobs. Forget about trying to melee the groups of trash mobs you encounter in dungeons. Evasion both for ranger skills and pet skills does not work/scale against anything greater than a trash mob.

First we got a massive GW nerf, now they give back a very minor amount of damage. It just shows a conscious effort to keep the class at the end of the line. Max damage, oh thats for Ele’s and Warriors and even Guardians.

The Zepher/ShortBow attack was about the only Ranger alpha that was of any significant use against anything greater than a trash mob and that has been sent to the trash bin.

This patch should have been named the Ranger RIP-off. (rest in peace).

Are pets, the defining and mandatory part of the class EVER going to get fixed?

Fixed you say in wonderment, why there is nothing wrong with pets, they are working as intended say the spokespersons.

Simple are pets broken test: Engage a boss, summon a ranged pet, watch ranged pet start to use ranged attacks at a somewhat safe distance from the melee boss, then watch as the same pet’s broken AI decides it is a better idea to run directly up to the boss and try to face tank it (and quickly die.) Or a more positive test: post a video of any pet, providing any meaningful contribution to a boss or champion encounter that will convince other classes rangers are desirable in dungeons.

Rangers have nothing as a class to contribute to group play.

I think is is disrespectful and antagonistic to refuse to acknowledge customer input. Sit in a room with another person and never directly respond to them when they talk to you, and you will very quickly alienate the other person and turn them hostile to you.

Another way to distance yourself from any other social entity is to hide your identity and responsibilities. Decisions come down and customers have no idea what person or persons at your company is responsible for them. The contributes to stacking the deck against yourselves in terms of building a trusting relationship with customers.

The lenghts some of your company proclamations go to obfuscate who the decision makers are related to specific issues that are controversial with players is astounding. Almost everything is attributed to a global “We” as if every employee there was involved in reaching a consensus based decision.

You have built a very closed and insulated social unit that purposefully avoids communication based on facts, and specializes in one way communication based on spin.

As Sacrx pointed out in his longer than needed rant, Arenanet sees WvW as nothing more than a funnel for casuals to somehow get sold on going into spvp which is the only thing that is a priority there.

These changes in WvW are designed to decrease WvW participation with the misguided idea that spvp will become the only choice left to players wanting something else other than PVE.

The ‘league’ is simply fancy PR spin of what already exists and a justification for even worse matchups, that and it’s a really lame excuse for not working on any WvW balance or other issues.

Instead of trying to find a solution to the problem players agree is the biggest drawback to WvW, that of lousy match ups, this BL thing pours gasoline on a burning house by rewarding steamrolling. It is clear that if a side has the resources to smother the map, they need a performance buff like a hole in the head.

It is laughable that any devs think that small groups will be able to make a difference in this proposed scenario. They obviously have never played a solid week on a bottom tier world against a world 8 to 12 tiers above them.

This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

I say no to the league and the buff, and yes to moving WvW up in status from tepid introduction for casuals to pvp with the intent of funneling them into spvp, to an end in itself that deserves more resources than it gets now.

Just want to add my voice that if I wanted to play mini-games, jumping games, and gamble, I would go either to Club Penguin, Facebook or a real Casisno.

So far we have not seen any substantial real new PVE content. I don’t consider Southsun or the whole jumping puzzle zone as substantial, that’s flufftent pure and simple. Southsun is a tiny island. You can explore it in minutes.

When the Living Story first started, it looked like old areas would get some love and new content, but instead we just got temporary instances. Meanwhile the other two areas of the game Spvp and WvW are languishing, with nothing but very small technical tweaks and addtions, but nothing I would consider substantial.

Here we are coming up on a year, and the game clearly has become a kind of 8th grade playground with silly mini-games, jumping puzzles and which just happens to include gambling, while the MMO part is more of a backdrop and themed GUI than the actual content. So many places are completely deserted now like Orr, and most of the mid level zones with the exception of the clockwork world chest events repeating like tired animated shop displays.

I am glad WvW has not been infected with all this kiddy fluff. I just wish some actual new areas were added or at least the existing ones make a little less samey.

Lastly ‘look to the skys’ I hope does not refer to another 2 minute cut scene or marginal fireworks show.

Deamhan.9538:

1k in half a year? I’m sorry but no game is worth that much money. Let’s say I bought a game for 100 (deluxe edition) with a monthly sub of 15 per month. That 280 in a year. It’s no wonder that companies are switching to this horrid micro transaction game shop because people like you are shoveling the dough into them.

Your living a sheltered life if you think 1K US in 6 months is unusual.

I don’t think GW2 is really any different from most MMOs today. The real cash cow is the carney grade gambling on mystery boxes for chances to get tickets to collect until you have enough to buy whatever is this months fotm shiny. That is where the action is and where most of the developer time is spent.

Like it or not, MMOs in general are seeing player numbers trending down, and the bean counters in charge have done the math and given the orders to make as much cash as possible before the last gambling addicted customer goes broke or leaves.

Integrity and customer service went out the window a few years ago. What do you expect from a company run mostly by Generation X and Millennials?

Anet is reading this persons post and laughing all the way to the bank, what a sucker! He thinks we care about users! About the only thin Anet will do in response is to turn up the screws on dividing the player base, by letting a select few get really good drops just long enough so they will flood the forums with posts about how easy it is to make gold in this game.

Its not worth stressing about. Run your 5 or six world bosses each day, farm Southsun while it lasts, (Sharks next to crab toss is a really good bet, especially for strong underwater classes like Rangers and Engineers.)

The pattern is clear, they steer rewards to an an area that is either a starter area or is an up-leveling area, so new players get the benefit of seeing a false picture that the world is well populated, and they make gold, and levels for a month. so it is not until after they get hooked do they find out that most of the mid-game zones are empty.

Just go with the flow, Anet’s not going to change except for the worse, i.e. more egregious gambling and ways to minimize player income in order to encourage gem sales. You either put up with it, or you leave as apparently most of the potential market is doing.

Please consider adding a player settings option to toggle talking to NPC’s during combat to either on or off.

The single most annoying aspect of playing GW2 for me is while in PVE combat, if I attempt to grab loot from foes I have downed, if an NPC is present, a NPC dialog box pops up obliterating the view of the still in progress combat. Instead of defending myself or allies, I have to pause and desperately try and click on the tiny close dialog box X, and hope my character or an ally does not die during the process.

Better yet, just set NPCS’s to not respond with a dialog if the player is in combat.

The often suggested solution to this is to spam the action key however, often you need to move slightly and retrieve more loot, so once again your combat view gets blocked by another NPC dialog.

I mean, doesn’t this annoy the developers as well as players?

GW2 combat is based on damage avoidance, not damage mitigation.

Unfortunately for whatever reason, the current pet combat design is built around damage mitigation.

This works OK with most average PVE trash mobs. The pet can absorb damage long enough for the combined damage of pet and ranger to take down the trash mob.

This breaks down in dungeons or even large dynamic events with multiple foes and veteran or better foes. Pets have no chance face tanking in those situations regardless of how often you want to piddle around with recall/attack. Pet transit time is wasted time (run up to the boss, run back etc.)

The proposed solution of adding a player controlled pet dodge is not likely to succeed.
Dynamic events and many dungeon fights make it almost impossible to see ones pet to even know if they are about to get clobbered, factor in the already glacial responsiveness of pet commands and this approach just does appear feasible.

The combat design of damage avoidance dictates a solution should give pets a method to avoid damage.

One simple AI behavior that would help is for ranged pets to maintain maximum range between themselves and foes. It’s sad to watch a ranged pet run up to melee distance of a champion before starting their ranged attack. It’s just as sad to watch a ranged pet run into pack of foes just to be in melee range of their target before starting their ranged attack.

Is this easy to fix via AI? I don’t know but it seems that many in game mobs seem to have it already, (pirates, outlaws, risen etc. ) they stay at range and some even use knock backs to maintain it.

The second AI behavior is attack avoidance. Again some in game mobs already exhibit this behavior. Some mobs will run out of your AOE attacks and not simply stand on one place and try to face tank.

There needs to be some pet AI that senses red circles of doom and other attack tells, and gives the pet a reasonable ability to dodge out of or avoid these threats. This could be a sliding scale sort of skill that the ranger can set. 0 – attack at all costs and never dodge, to 100 – dodge as much as possible, and only attack when safe.

I suspect these represent more AI programming time than what the organization is willing to commit, so instead we hear these magic number proposals to just give them the same AR as the ranger, or jack up a few of their stats in dungeons. These are the quick and dirty kludges of desperation. If magic numbers are the only solution feasible then perhaps giving pets an evades stat would be useful. Turn up the evades stat turns down the attack stat etc. as the situation merits.

I just hope all of this energy and discussion does not end up being hot air.

The very first time I read about how WvW was supposed to work (and at the time, transfers were free for months,) it was obvious, what was going to happen was that the most competitive players would naturally head for the top servers. It could take years for that initial imbalance surge to get evened out.

It just insanity to run any sports league where the players are free to transfer teams at any time, regardless of cost to the player. The cosmetic rewards for 1st and second are immaterial and not why players transfer. Players are not transferring to the top tiers for a chance for a cheesy finisher. They are transferring to be on a world that consistently fields a full team.

They are tired of playing on teams with short rosters and being consistently outnumbered.

Imagine If major league sports teams were set up like this and matches were allowed to proceed even it one team only fielded one person.

Its no fun for the ‘winning’ team to play against a partial team. And those who experience playing on partial team are going to be highly motivated to play something else or cough up the dough to transfer to a team that can field a full team.

I think transfers either need to be free or totally prevented. Other wise it is truly pay to win or pay to not lose situation.

I think Power of the Mists needs to be awarded only to those who actually participate in WvW and perhaps be made more attractive, with things like more ‘luck’ points dropping in WvW.

It’s a very hard sell at this point to convince new PVE players on a low tier world to enter WvW.

The whole group of Condition duration bonuses are borked.

The reason they are borked is that condition damage is calculated on whole seconds, not fractions, and these sigils add fractions of a second duration with the net result being no increase of condition duration.

Sigil of Agony When you apply bleed it lasts 5% / 7% / 10% longer.

There is no bleed in the game with 10 seconds or longer duration, so adding 10% via these sigils does nothing, since the game throws out the fractions unless you have other buffs running that add up to a whole additional second(s).

Simply change it to adding whole seconds as in:

Sigil of Agony When you apply bleed it lasts 1 second, 3 seconds, 6 seconds longer.

The actual number of seconds is open to debate, and adjustment.

That or just delete this whole range of sigils and replace them with some that actually produce a measurable benefit.

Thanks to Arenanet’s game design wisdom, with this matchup, (the most lopsided in the entire NA side of things this week) our 18 place world gets to meet a 10th place world.

Now I can really get good at respawning and fine tuning my knowledge of the most stealthy routes across the WvW maps.

At last a truly target rich experience!

This is really going to motivate all of our reluctant PVE folks to lend a hand!

Best learning moment from last night: While lying dead after our group of 25 got wiped by a CD group 5x our size, one of our members counted at least 25 guardians in the CD group.

Unfortunately they ran off before we could get a good count of the Necro and warrior contingents, but hey, we have a whole week ahead for more in-depth census taking while prone.

This is a huge step that essentially says dungeons are not for casuals. So casuals will leave, the people left, the elite, with Voip and can play 24/7, will stay and crow about how pro they are. Anet will pat themselves on the back for ‘fixing’ dungeons by simply making them too hard for casuals to venture forth, so casuals won’t be around to QQ about it.

I think it is really really rich that the developer who designed the system such that waypoint rushing was possible, has the gaul to riducule players who simply took advantage of poor design. It is becoming obvious that the games coders have always really despised the ‘fun’ casual friendly ideas put forth in the manifesto, and they have had a bad case of elitism envy of a certain much more successful MMO’s that are built around elite raiding.

So one more of many to come bricks in the wall to keep casuals out and prevent them from sullying the game experience of the elite.

You can see it already in this thread, the elite bragging about how ‘easy’ the dungeons are and they never wipe, and how everyone just needs to learn to play or go away.

I am dreading the next patch.

I don’t trust these kinds of things.

Anyone who has ever created and run public surveys/polls, knows how easy it is to get the results you want by creative wording of questions, deciding which questions to ask, and even stacking the order of multiple choice response choices.

I think what would improve player trust in the company is knowing who there is responsible for each decision on issues of interest to players, plus regular feedback that addresses player concerns and explains the basis for controversial decisions that is fact based, and not spin. For a company that claims to have massive data collection tools in place, they should publicize more of this data instead of keeping it hidden.

Mr Carver wants WvW to be just like war, with all the misery, evil and corruption it brings. Big countries opportunistically smashing smaller ones, making WvW just like that seems to be his gig.

Enjoy playing the role of Poland in WWII or pay Mr Carver and friends for the privilege of marching with the stomper hordes.

Still pretty disgusted with the latest “Well we just could not figure out how to fix dungeons so warriors and mesmers wouldn’t speed run them so fast, so we axed quickness across the board, too bad it ruined your only viable burst build rangers, don’t forget we will be buffing your class real soon now” episode, but…

About the only pew pew Rangers have now that still rocks is piercing arrows. It takes a little work, but anytime you can cross a group of foes up and cross their T, you can see some pretty nice damage numbers popping up in unison. Bottle necks and narrow passageways are your friend.

Or when you see those Dredge/Flame Legion portals that pop up every now and then, get to the side just before the next wave pops, and then maneuver so you are always firing down a line of them.

Note to Anet: if you really want me to leave the Ranger forums, nerf piercing arrows and I will mothball my ranger and go back to playing my faceroll guardian or my faceroll warrior.

Less and less GW2 in general for me.

Anet seems intent on trodding the same pvp path Funcom did with Anarchy Online.

The game had multiple modes of pvp including open world duels, group arena pvp, open world binary global faction pvp, Tower Wars (a form of open world territory control) and huge faction vs faction battles over exclusive access to raid style dungeons.

Tower wars was hugely popular and the arena pvp was not.

Funcom gradually developed an obsession with arena pvp, and started trying everything it could to force players into it. They eventually made arena pvp the most practical way to get some of the best gear in the game, which meant if you really liked Tower Wars or raids, put in time in arena pvp was the fastest way to gear up for Tower Wars.

I think Bloodlust is just the beginning of Anet’s efforts to move WvW players into spvp.
I won’t be surprised if they continue adding more spvp like features to WvW and start changing rewards so that spvp becomes the most efficient path to being competitive in WvW.

If Arenanet continues down this kind of path, I am moving on to other games.

jcbroe.4329:

The game dug its own grave the moment it was released and devs decided that instead of fixing bugs and issues people had, they would release new content instead.

Bingo!

I think you have hit upon the perfect explanation for the outright hostility shown by Anet towards any players who criticize portions of the game or bring up bugs and inquire when they will be addressed.

Everybody at Anet believed a few over ambitious marketing spreadsheets that were distributed internally prior to launch that GW2 was going to the the next WOW killer and they all would soon be bringing making mega bucks, and all the devs would be rock stars. Well, for what ever reason that never happened. GW2 did about the same as the star wars mmo and a few other recent releases, less than a handful of millions sold treading water, and most recently desperately lowering the retail price.

People there are in a state of denial, and it helps to reinforce that state by ignoring bugs and player calls for balance from the weakest classes. Fixing those kinds of things is messy, hard, and involves making mistakes and answering to the player base about them. Who would not rather work on pristine new dynamic events and instances, better to maintain the rockstar facade than dealing with fixing mistakes.

Rangers and their pets are one of the more egregious mistakes in the game, and the long they go unfixed, the less likely the long term viability of this game is.

DevonCarver.5370:

If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

I wonder if Mr. Carver has EVER used his dev privileges to jump in as HOD world player and face IOJ for a week and seriously thinks that is fun.

That response is like saying if you don’t want the chance to stand in front of a speeding bus and test your skill against it, he does not know what to say.

What is the most frustrating thing is all of Arenanets head in the sand attitude towards any situation where they clearly have made bad design decisions and cling to them. The current basic WvW system has some serious basic design flaws that no amount of tweaking will ever improve. Some things in WvW need to be rethought and changed from the ground up.

Criticize the design and balance of Rangers in regards to dungeons, and immediately the ‘blame the victim’ effect comes out.

“Ranger’s don’t suck, you do”

I have played pet classes in several MMOs simply because I like pet classes.

Here are some simple universal truths about pet classes:

1. Devs will NEVER allow pet classes to be on par DPS wise with direct damage classes. In RNDnets case pets have sub par combat AI, ranged pets position themselves within melee/cleave range of foes, and AOEs totally counter them.

2. Devs will ALWAYS nerf a pet class if it becomes very successful in PVP. Just what RNDnet is doing now, except past nerfs all carried over to PVE. To my knowledge all Ranger nerfs handed out in the past to balance PVP were also applied to PVE and to date none of those nerfs have ever been removed in PVE. Nerfs only to PVP seem to be the exception, not the rule. They won’t stop until tournament rosters are devoid of Rangers. Look at the most current tournaments to see a trend of fewer Rangers than there used to be.

RNDnet will never even admit there is a problem with ranger’s being dungeon benchwarmers. They have officially stated several times the official party line which is all classes are viable in PVE and hence dungeons.

I completely disagree, with their assessment, I reject blaming the victim.

I still have fun playing my Ranger despite all the douchbaggery aimed our way, be it the intentional acts of idiots or the benign neglect of RNDnet.

Wow, just wow.

I almost given up hope of anything ever getting past the bean counters that seem to be in charge there who insist that anything new have a positive impact on gem sales or at least do not adversely effect them.

This stuff has been taking more and more inventory space, and this seeming small act renews my hopes this game actually has people in charge who are not completely consumed with how much gems they can sell.

A huge thanks.

It makes no sense why guardian has this particular trait, why is Guardian over other classes more likely to get hit with burning or for that matter why have any skill for any class that does this? It just makes no sense.

The obvious explanation is this was originally intended to proc when torch skill 4 was used, but some pvp balancing weener had a fit before release and demanded that it be nerfed. There was not time to create a new trait, so they just nerfed this one into oblivion.

Prysin.8542:

1) Rune of the Ranger – Critbuild. I advice you to use bears, since those last long enough for that last bonus to be worth it.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Ranger

Unfortunately for new Rangers the Superior Rune of the Ranger is a tad expensive, requiring around 12 gold currently to buy all six. While you are saving up for this, I recommend either the Rune of the Thief or the Rune of Rata Sum.

Both give the same +165 precision stat.

Thief gives a 10% damage increase when flanking that stacks with the Hunter’s tactics trait. The net result is when you flank you do 20% more damage.

Rata Sum spawns a radiation field 50% of the time when hit. This field will rapidly deplete the health of foes that enter it, so it is most useful for those times when a ranged ranger gets rushed by a swarm of foes in a tight space. The downside is the proc does have a long cool down, and evekitten0% one can not count on it every time it is needed, but, it is nice to have while you are saving up for the Ranger set.

In a game where movement is fast and key, the longbow, even with zephyr before it was nerfed, was marginally effect, mainly to the fact that 90% of the time the so called OP arrow barrage would fall on empty space.

With faster signet cool downs, it was zephyr short bow that was a threat and represented the classes only burst skill in a game defined by burst skills.

With the nerf zephyr short bow is just one more meh substandard skill.

It is very immersion breaking when my character spends 15 minutes to a half an hour rescuing some outpost that has been over-run, killing and driving off the hostile mobs, reviving the NPCs, and single-handedly putting the outpost back on the map, only to get killed while valiantly turning back another attack only to see all the NPCS casually walk right over your body on the way to reviving one of their buddies. They already have the animations and basic code, you would think they would want to show some appreciation to the players who save their necks so often.

Please consider adding this, it would make playing in the mostly vacant zones so much more bearable.

Why do some people think the tallest Norn have a disadvantage in jumping puzzles?

The only thing I can think of is that your size, and the lack of a first person view, results in your view being obscured of any narrow, small ledge/area in a jumping puzzle, and those annoying camera problems you get in tight spaces.

But is that just me, is there someone out there who excels at jumping puzzles with a max size Norn?

In thinking it over, it seems as though most jumping puzzles were designed with Asura or small Humans as the target user. It’s not fair as I just don’t see anything significant that gives tall characters an advantage elsewhere in the game.

I personally don’t care for jumping puzzels, so when I rolled a Norn, it did not matter to me as at that point, jumping puzzles were optional.

Now that jumping puzzles are starting to be required to complete content like the Mad King instance, I am having second thoughts.

Combined with extra height causing problems with the camera in tight areas like tunnels and staircases, height seems to be a disadvantage. It’s bad game design, to allow players to size a character such that it does not work in parts of the game.

Arenanet really can’t help itself when it comes to ripping things directly from Perfect World Inc that other asian cash shop grinder.

- dungeons that get harder on repeat, check
- legendaries, even the name, check
- cash shop holiday consumables, like valentines flowers, check
- make over consumables, check

Unfortunately, Anet has not been able to duplicate the smooth up to 200+ players in one screen pvp battles without braindead culling issues.

It would be fun if Arenanet would share a heat map or two of a popular dungeon, WvW map, sPVP map or even one of the meta-event chain areas like north east Hirathi Hinterlands with red dots to represent player deaths.

When other games do this, it is always interesting to look at them and go, “yea, I now that spot is dangerous” or “I would have never guessed that spot gets players killed.”

I’m sure the devs must have the GIS like tools that produce this kind of thing, it would be cool to see.

Difficulty levels, New Players and Community Attitudes

The Personal Story instances are a focus where all the issues connected with difficulty levels and how new inexperienced players perceive the game come together.

On one hand Anet has tried to make PE’s a challenge for what they think are the average player. Unfortunately I think they have completely overestimated today’s average new player and the efficiency of the social feedback loops that in the past have nurtured new players to get through major game challenges.

The days of when a frustrated new player was offered tips and suggestions on how to beat an instance are gone. There seem to be far fewer players taking the time to put together instance specific guides. Now the frustrated new player is met with derision and insults like ‘learn to play’ or the condescending "WTF, I had no problem with it, I breezed through.’ Anet practices benign neglect as they stand silently by while these types of bloodbaths occur daily in these forums.

This same situation can be seen throughout the game, from Personal Stories to Dungeons to Dynamic Events.

A positive solution is to work at reinforcing positive feedback and education for new players as close to the time of failure as possible. If the game notes that player X has failed a Personal Story 3 times in a row, perhaps the game should provide a hints and feedback on what the person is doing wrong until the person is successful.

Division of the player base between elites and the inexperienced is harmful to the vitality of any game. Look at any game which has chosen one over the other and you usually see overall failure.

Another positive solution is for Anet and the community to return to the mindset of accepting frustrated newbies and gently providing positive tips and strategies. This means engaging the frustrated players constructively, in a give and take to help the new player find out what they are doing wrong and giving helpful information. This community needs to move away from elitism and back towards engaging and educating new players.