Guild Wars 2

Coming from LotRO myself, the first thing you’ll need to learn here is to move more while in combat. And as said many times, the “tanking” system here is quite different, if not completely absent. Also, you need to understand that playing PvE is much different than PvP, just life most other games out there. So when considering build ideas, make sure you check which section of the game they’re designed for.

Others can give much better advice on the Guardian profession ( I haven’t played it a lot, ) but I can talk a little about making damage sponge and support Warriors. Someone already mentioned a “banner warrior” and that’s how I play my main. Banners ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Banner ) here work much like Captain banners in LotRO: plant them and they give off a beneficial aura ( though doing so doesn’t penalize your own stats like LotRO. ) Properly traited, your banners cooldown faster, have bigger AoE, and provide health regen too. That same trait line also helps with group condition removal and buffing, so you become a kittenet to your party. Using Knight’s, Sentinel’s, or Soldier’s gear will increase your armor and life while still boosting your damage output a little. Taking this route will reduce your own potential DPS, but you help everyone else do their job better so I call that a good trade. The downside is that your buffs only get fully realized in a group, so your solo survivability isn’t what it could be.

Some people will complain that the warrior is the easy mode to play, and that’s just fine. Some times you want to play basic, some times you want to play tricky. Both have their parts. And don’t feel like you have to conform to some prescribed stat matrix. Most builds can do very well so long as you put some thought into it and play it accordingly.

I use the Turtle Beach PX22. Good mic and I really like the inline control ( separate volume knobs for system audio, chat audio, and voice monitor, ) treble and bass knobs, and mic mute levels. It’ll connect over a single 3.5mm jack and USB so it should work on your laptop. You can also detach the headphones from the amp and use them on their own ( it’s a 4-pole 3.5mm jack, ) say for a phone or tablet if you really wanted.

They don’t have virtual 7.1 as you would like, but they only run $60 USD ( about €50. ) I got them because they’re about as universal as it gets ( I use them for my PC, PS3, and mobile devices every now and then. )

LimitBreaker.4165:

you’d have to buy the dye and use it after the patch for it to be account wide im pretty sure :L

Nope – https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/45889307-Dyes

What happens with dyes that I have unlocked on multiple characters?
Upon logging in with a character, the game will check to see whether each specific dye on that character’s profile has been unlocked. If the dye already has been unlocked because a different character previously unlocked that specific dye on your account, the game will determine each instance where this took place and then will send you an in-game mail with an unidentified dye for each dye that was duplicated on your account. This means if four characters have Violet Dye, one will convert into an account-wide Violet Due and any other character that had Violet Dye will be sent an unidentified dye via in-game mail once that character is logged into the game.

In short, every dye you have unlocked across every character you actively had will be added to your account unlocked list and available for each character to use. Any duplicate unlocks will give you a mail with some un-ID dyes.

A few questions:

Regarding the “free” dye that comes if I have the same dye unlocked on multiple chars: is there any guarantee that it will be of similar value to the duplicated one? I mean if someone has Abyss unlocked on two characters, and the replacement dye is only a Pink Ice or Butterscotch, I think they’d be a little ticked. At the very least these replacement dyes should be of the same rarity.

And I too think it’s a mistake to completely kill un-ID dye loot drops. Why not reduce drops by 50%? Yes, with dyes being account bound, overall demand will drop a little, but not completely. What in-game rewards will offer dye? Personal story? Dungeons? Fractals? Remember, if we don’t have a reliable source of acquiring dye, we don’t have anything that to feed to the Mystic Toilet. ( I suppose this is one way of making people spend more time cooking. )

Lastly, are you ever going to let us mix dyes like we could in GW1? THAT would be something to get excited over. Mix some dyes, then make that shade account bound.

First, thank you for a direct, rational reply. I honestly appreciate it.

Xaylin.1860:

While you are right that not every skill needs a hard counter you got to expect people discussing a counter when you bring it into the discussion . The healing power of Healing Signet is a lot stronger than that of other heals and the fact that it can’t be interrupted is an issue although many people deny that.

I’ve never once said the regen isn’t problematic in PvP. And if you read my first post, you’ll also see I already said simply dropping the regen 8% doesn’t address the interrupt issue so it won’t fix much of anything.

Xaylin.1860:

And as you said yourself: Only Engineers, Rangers and Thieves have the potential to keep up Poison that constantly. That’s 3 out of 8 classes. It only applies to specific weapon sets or utilities. And even if those classes can achieve a high Poison up time in certain builds and reapply it quite frequently the Warriors can also remove it very frequently making an +50% uptime difficult. Poison does help against but does not counter the Signet.

I didn’t mean to say poison is a hard, absolute counter to the Signet. If that’s how it came off, I’ll correct myself. I meant it to mean that all other things being equal, poison does a good job of negating signet when you also figure in normal damage from other attacks and other conditions. As you say, those three classes need specific focus on poison to keep it up. But isn’t it also true that it takes a fairly specific build of Warrior to continually purge the condition?

Xaylin.1860:

‘Poison counters Healing Signet’ is constantly mentioned for justifying the over the top HPS and functionality of the Healing Signetalthough it is far from being true. I do think that the active needs a buff but I really doubt that the 8% nerf to the passive is a sufficient solution.

Again, I’m not defending the Signet as is in PvP. I’ve never done so. And I’ve also said that dropping the regen by 8% will not address much of anything.

Thank you for taking that entire post, fixating on one thing, and completely ignoring the rest.

Stogzlol.4795:

There is a level of skill to use your heal properly in situations that warrior doesn’t have. The only skill to Healing Signet is using your mobility skills to make a run for it when the situation starts to get too hot.

You’re neglecting the fact using the Signet means you’re foregoing more robust healing skills that can do more than just regen, such as refill adrenaline, purge conditions, or act as a damage inverter. It does affect the rest of your gameplay. You’re also implying that healing skills in other professions are inherently more difficult to pull off correctly. Do you have quantifiable evidence that this is the case? You want to claim one or the other is better. I simply say they’re differing methods with each offering its own list of pros and cons.

Stogzlol.4795:

Poisons are not a counter to HS. GS/LB 20/0/20/0/30 (includes cleansing ire), H/LB 0/20/20/0/30 (includes cleaning ire), S/S/LB 0/25/20/10/15, builds will vary more for condi warrior (includes cleansing ire). I don’t know if you’re catching on here, but all primary warrior builds are running cleaning ire for condi clear. Not to include utilities such as Signet of Stamina (total condi clear), Berserker Stance (8 second condi immune), Shake it off! (removes 1 condi, low cool down, can trait for more), how about running lysaa runes with Signet of Rage to include Tactics VI making it a 48 second CD for another total condi removal. These are all common among most or all warrior builds. Warriors should be the last class to complain about conditions and they are not at all a con for warriors.

Congratulations, you’ve shown that Cleansing Ire is a good response to condition application. And? Did I complain that Warriors had poor condition removal? Did I not already agree the regen was problematic in PvP? Did I not explicitly state that I played almost exclusively PvE and was offering my opinions from that specific viewpoint?

Stogzlol.4795:

Bottom line, I’m tired of bad warriors insulting the community and for some reason thinking warriors are hard.

Three things here. One, you’re assuming, or at least inferring, that I am a “bad warrior.” Two, you’re saying I’m insulting the community. Three, you’re saying I’m claimed playing Warrior is hard. In regards to the first, that may be your opinion, but the second and third are blatantly false as I did neither of those things.

Altogether that’s a wonderful double standard you have there. You insult other players, call them bad, and that’s fine, dandy. But the second they retaliate suddenly their behavior is unacceptable? Nice . . .

Manuhell.2759:

Except that poison would need a constant uptime to reduce the passive healing of the signet, compared to any other healing skill. Any other healing skill gets its heal dropped by even a second of poison, as long as it is applied just before the activation.

Um, you’re saying it’s easier to time a 1 sec poison skill juuust before someone activates a heal skill than it is to hit a Warrior with any one of 5 – 10 sec poison skills and have the regen for those seconds almost nullified? Yeah, poison affects all heal skills, but the one-shots can also be fired off around poison durations. The regen is constant, so you can’t wait to kick it off right when the poison is gone. You’re acting like you have to have a permanent hard counter for everything, and that’s not necessary. With the number of direct poison skills and combo fields available to Rangers, Thieves, and Engineers, it’s not terribly difficult to nullify the regen long enough to either kill them or make them retreat.

Manuhell.2759:

And it isn’t like warriors can’t easily remove that poison with cleansing ire…

And it isn’t like you can’t just reapply it afterwards… Seriously, what’s the point of saying that? It’s like Magic:TG players complaining about a creature because it “still dies to Doom Blade.”

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Being another condition clear is also the wrong thing to add to Healing Signet’s active. All that does is guarantee Mending never sees play at all. Warriors already have some of the best condition cleansing in the game (despite that supposedly being a weakness of them).

Fair point on that. You could drop it a single condition removal, or keep it at two and remove the burst heal. Mending clears three, which in most cases is a complete purge.

Equipment Elements ( crit damage, sigils, and runes. )
I don’t mind these changes provided they are handled well. The change in sigils I’m actually excited for. However the other two are tricky.

My biggest complaint with crit multipliers right now is when my characters get scaled down in level and their crit damage goes from 50% to 2% bonus while my crit chance stays the same. I’m not saying percentages have to stay the same for all levels ( though that would be nice, ) but such drastic changes hurt some character builds in the lower level dungeons where we can’t count as much on our burst damage. If Ferocity solves the scaling problems, I can work with it. Just remember some players spent a lot of time, effort, and money in getting berserker and assassin gear, and they’d be very upset if the gear becomes worthless. Also, when you samy damage output is lowered by 10%, do you mean crit damage is lowered, or all damage averaged out will be lowered?

As for Runes, I really want to know details on these changes. I don’t care for blanket statements saying you’re reworking them, I want to see numbers ( or ballpark figures, ) and I think a lot of other players do too. Again, like crit damage, some people put a lot of money into runes and would rather not see them fall apart.

Dodging, Endurance, and Vigor
You’ve mentioned that you’re reducing dodging across the board and I think that’s a mistake of thinking “one size fits all.” I think classes ought to have different scales of dodging ability based on their play style. Warriors and Guardians are meant to soak damage more than avoid it. Rangers, Thieves, and Mesmers are supposed to be mobile skirmishers and misdirection fighters so they should be able to dodge more often. Engineers and Necros are somewhere in between. Ele can be a difficult one to classify because they could be a dodger, or they could rely on their magic to prevent the damage. I think each class should have an endurance regen rates specific to the class. Then adjust armor and damage absorption to match. Those classes that are mobile should be more difficult to hit, but when they are it should hurt them substantially.

As for class changes:

Elementalist
I like these, but I still don’t think people will bother with Armor of Earth. Protection, stability, and stun break every 75 seconds is not terribly desirable. Cut the CD to 60 or increase the duration to 15 and we might have something here. Otherwise I’m perfectly content with my Arcane 20 Elemental Attunement that gives me protection every ~15 seconds.

I know some people have been asking for the Sandstorm to be a whirl finisher, but I think that Glyph of Storms should have combo potential for all four attunements:

• Firestorm – Fire field or projectile finisher
• Ice Storm – Ice field or projectile finisher
• Lightning Storm – Lightning field or blast finisher
• Sandstorm – Smoke field or whirl finisher.

Mesmer
I’ve no problem with Critical Infusion. You’re getting vigor half the time instead of all the time.

If you want people to use the Healing Signet active, you have to make the active use appealing. Right now you’re just making the passive less attractive, and the two things are not the same ( not saying you can’t do both to it. ) I’m doing the following math based on my own warrior ( 0/30/10/30/0 traits, Knight’s armor, Wurm runes, assassin trinkets, ) so the exact numbers aren’t universal. Also, I’m mainly a PvE player ( some WvW, no PvP. )

If you want to drop the passive regen, fine, but that still doesn’t give me reason to use the active ( Hmm, 20 seconds of no regen, so instead of losing 4600 net healing over that time, I only lose 4000? ) Healing Surge does 10k healing every 30 s, but we’re freaking out about Healing Signet doing 12K in that time just because it can’t be interrupted? Even the proposed changes will only drop the Signet to 11K in that time period, and it still can’t be interrupted, so what is that supposed to solve?

Healing Signet already has a decent counter: Poison. Poison applied by an 800 Condition Damage player drops the Signet to 265 healing while doing 164 damage. That 100 healing every second is minuscule compared to normal incoming damage ( not to mention other conditions like bleeding and especially burning. ) In these situations there’s absolutely NO incentive to trigger the signet for a paltry 3.2K heal ( 2.1K if under poison. )

If you want warriors to use the signet, put something on the active that’s useful in situations where you need burst healing.

• Have it remove two conditions in addition to the burst heal. Mending removes three and heals, Signet of Stamina removes all, so removing two conditions isn’t too much. Alternately, have it remove up to three conditions and burst heal dependent on the conditions removed, say 1K for each condition.
• Have it grant vigor for 5 – 10 seconds. If we’re losing our regen, then give us some extra dodging while we’re getting out of a tough spot. Vigor doesn’t stack with other endurance regen effects and you’re looking at revamping endurance and dodging here anyway, so it’s not like this can be abused for perma-dodging.
• Give it a stun break, perhaps in addition to the Vigor above. If you’re worried about abuse here, increase the cool down to 30 seconds.

Any of those changes, with or without the regen nerf, make it more attractive to actually use the Signet. But it seems like this is mainly a PvP problem, so why apply the “fix” to PvE as well? I agree, getting 400 hp / second makes it difficult for other players to win one-on-one. But in PvE, particularly big events, dungeons, and the like, even with the signet, a regen banner, Knight’s armor, and Wurm runes ( 2800 armor, 23K HP, ) I can still go down pretty fast because you’ve got legendaries and or hordes of swarmers pecking you to death. Same can happen in in the larger, crazier WvW battles where dodging all the layered AoE effects and condition fields is nigh impossible. If the problem is PvP/WvW Warriors that can soak up too much damage while dishing out it back out, then split the skill. Cut the WvW regen by 10% and the PvP by 20% if you want. But I’ve not seen the regen making me invulnerable in PvE, so I don’t think that’s the problem ( though I would like to see some different benefits on the active Signet other than a near meaningless burst heal. )

Now, for a bit of a rant, to all the people complaining about “set-it-and-forget-it” signets requiring “no skill,” get over yourselves. Just because someone doesn’t want to hit the 6 key every 20 seconds doesn’t mean they’re idiot players with no skill. You can teach a monkey to punch buttons and go through attack progressions, but that doesn’t make it “skill.” Skill is in the mind, not the fingers. Skill is seeing events and situations and being able to react and respond to it. Picking signets for their passive use means you’re limiting yourself in the number of skills you’re going to use, meaning you have to focus more on the few remaining skill slots you have. And in the case of Warriors, the Deep Strike trait rewards you for not activating signets. Really, this whole argument boils down to, “They’re not playing the game the way that I think it should be played, therefore they’re either cheap or a worse player than I am.” Grow up.

I’ve hit this bug hard in the last few days. If you’re in a downed state and you finish off an enemy, you’re NOT getting revived. Some of the harder fights and more challenging events means you may get knocked down once or twice and get back up. With this bug, it’s getting really frustrating.