Guild Wars 2

I main Ele and Thief and I used my boost on a new Warrior.

The Warrior is meta in all PvE content, and the new spec will be meta in PvP.

Guild Wars 2’s next expansion is confirmed:

Irradiated Wastelands of Boston.

OK, so we all know GW2 isn’t built with the trinity in mind and that all characters have to be able to deal damage, support and heal, etc.

But my question is, and especially considering the upcoming expansion and elite specs, what exactly is the point of having 9 professions with 2 elite specs each if they all do the same thing?

Traditionally, as an example, your mage would be a ranged AoE, your rogue/thief would be a single target DPS, and your warrior would be a tank and PBAoE. Assuming all three have to heal and support themselves, that pretty much covers the range of possible interactions you’d have in a game world like GW2.

It seems an odd thing to have a fully ascended Guardian JUST for doling out Stability in WvW, or a Mesmer as a Portal-bot.

Don’t get me wrong, I like variation and choice, but it seems that the design of GW2 is an illusion of choice, due to every profession essentially needing to do the same thing, just with a different aesthetic and color palette.

I main an Elementalist, and think it’s rather odd that the new Weaver as an example is described as a “melee bruiser” when a D/x spec has been doing that since launch. I would very much prefer a balance pass over each profession that allows me to pick a sub-role within each profession, example:

Core Ele – high mobility and toughness bunker
Tempest – Power damage glass cannon at any range (typical mage)
Weaver – Condition damage PBAoE spec that relies on active evasion/barrier

I wonder if ANet is going to give us any definition or clarification on the Weaver.

Power or Condi? If it’s a “melee bruiser” the spec is going to need a LOT more self-defense, mobility and damage. And how will they refine the sword to make it better than dagger in close combat?

lLobo.7960:

No. It’s a trade-off.

You’ll have to change your rotations to be able to play it well.
You will need to keep that defensive attunements always in your rotation to be able to use the defense quick.

If you are in earth/fire and want fire/earth you just tap fire again…

This makes no sense.

Defensive skills are there for when you need, you know DEFENSE.

Keeping them in your rotation means you’ll have a 75% chance of not being able to access them when you need them.

At its core, the Ele is designed as a reactive class, hence why its ONLY defense is healing along with a smattering of skills like Obsidian Flesh. It has none of the defenses like Shroud, Stealth, Illusions or anything else. And, the Ele’s mobility and healing coefficients have been horrendously nerfed over the last several years.

So please, stop posting the same ridiculous argument in every thread on the board.

I hope I’m not reiterating a solution someone else may have thought of in a different thread, and I apologize if so.

But I had a thought today, and it seems to fix the issues most have with the new spec.

1. Fixing attunements. The GCD on attunements is onerous given the class design and intent. My solution is not to eliminate the GCD entirely, but only on the attunement you’ve most recently switched to. Ex: you’re in Air/Water, you notice a big attack coming, and you need Obsidian Flesh immediately. You switch to Earth, putting the other three attunements on GCD, but have the option to immediately (as in can double-tap) attune to Earth again to access your #4 and #5 skills. This way, the important defensive skills can always be accessed as normal with just one extra keystroke.

2. Pursuant to the above, Unravel is no longer needed in its current state. I propose that this stance instead becomes a pulsing AoE condi AND boon strip for anyone caught in the pulses (both ally and enemy). Think of it as the Weaver unraveling all local enchantments and hexes in an area around himself, sort of like a mobile anti-magic field. The Weaver has to weigh the value of stripping conditions against also ridding himself and allies of boons. Since that’s a hefty drawback, maybe also make it a stunbreak.

I have a feeling that the above two fixes would sit well for the majority of the playerbase.

The rest of the issues seem to mostly be number tweaking, such as damage on sword, the amount of barrier granted by skills and traits and the range on both the sword itself (130 vs. 300-600 on dagger as an example) and gap closers like Flame Uprising. Assuming ANet actually wants the Weaver to be a “melee bruiser” as they’ve put it, then I think the numbered fixes above will perfectly suit their vision of the class without making it overpowered.

voidvector.2780:

Kaleban.9834:

voidvector.2780:

Anet please keep the 4 seconds cooldown on attunement. I want to play Weaver like it was meant to be played.

Please ignore all those who argues for reducing of GCD. They only have 1 day of experience & are just n00bs. Internal testers who probably played the class for over a year should be proper master on this.

You do understand that open Betas like this are usually designed to garner feedback from a much larger sample size right?

If they’ve got 20 people doing playtesting, even if they played for a year that amount of data would be dwarfed by an open beta and the playerbase, especially when you consider that hardcore GW2 players oftentimes trounce the developers in PvP content.

Stop trolling the various feedback thread and let the adults deal with the issues.

You do understand there are people like me who have different opinion than you, right?

I have no interesting in trolling. I am just sick of the fact that half of the topics on the forum for my main is about something that is by design.

You do understand that if 99% of the players disagree with something you like, then the problem is likely you and not them? While that may be argumentum ad populem, it is not fallacious since the point of a game is to satisfy the vast majority, not a vocal minority.

You are aware that ANet ROUTINELY changes design of the game, often from player feedback?

It makes zero sense to want your main class to be hamstrung. This isn’t a subjective opinion by the way, one can look at the design and the numbers and come to an objective conclusion.

The attacks are slow, barrier is weak, and the mechanic is clunky. If you need proof you only need to look at the Fresh Air trait, that was a design change by ANet that sought to work around attunement cooldowns, which coincidentally happens to be what everyone and their dogs are complaining about.

The fact that you respond in every thread saying the rest of us are n00bs and are clueless is the very definition of trolling.

voidvector.2780:

Anet please keep the 4 seconds cooldown on attunement. I want to play Weaver like it was meant to be played.

Please ignore all those who argues for reducing of GCD. They only have 1 day of experience & are just n00bs. Internal testers who probably played the class for over a year should be proper master on this.

You do understand that open Betas like this are usually designed to garner feedback from a much larger sample size right?

If they’ve got 20 people doing playtesting, even if they played for a year that amount of data would be dwarfed by an open beta and the playerbase, especially when you consider that hardcore GW2 players oftentimes trounce the developers in PvP content.

Stop trolling the various feedback thread and let the adults deal with the issues.

I’d recommend removing the GCD on attunements, and have the last attunement you attuned to be the one that receives a base 4 sec cooldown.

That way you can chain attunements one to the next as is the concept, but to keep it a smooth rotation you have to keep switching to a different attunement. This might actually encourage tactical play and planning ahead, especially when it comes to 4 and 5 defensive skills.

Alternatively, change a Grandmaster trait in each elemental line to be like Fresh Air (Renewing Earth, Incandescent Fire, Vitalizing Water) so that any Elementalist build could access from one to three (no Arcane) instant attunement recharges. Their trigger mechanic could also be something other than a critical hit, Water’s could be cleansing a condition and Earth’s could be applying Protection.

In an ideal world ANet would stop faffing about and simply remove the GCD on attunements entirely, especially considering that the Ele is one of the squishiest professions whose mobility and healing potential has been significantly nerfed since its inception.

Remove cooldowns on Attunement Swap.

That is all.

If ANet really wanted the Ele to be a condi spec, they’d add more damaging conditions or traits that allow conditions to cause damage.

More skills in Earth would add Bleeding, Water skills could cause damage with Chilled, and more skills in Fire would add Burning. Air could solely be CC, I know being hit by lightning bolts would certainly cause nearly all of the CC conditions barring Taunt and Fear.

It would be nice if the Core Ele specializing in Fire/Earth/Water would be unparalleled at causing condi damage as noted above, and subbing in Air would give you all the CC you needed.

ANet may want to re-visit their design methodology, giving each Elite spec/base spec a defined role. Tempest could be re-worked to be primarily support, base Ele would be our condi spec, and the new Weaver would be power. Honestly, every profession needs some delineation like this, otherwise the only choice in specs will always be whatever the newest one released is, since every spec HAS to be able to do everything, and the newest stuff generally includes the best and flashiest toys.

Just something I was thinking of while watching my DD auto-attack.

We have the chain whip sword skin.

How cool would it be if we had a staff skin that was a nunchaku or three section staff?

Not sure how the animations would match up, but I thought it would look pretty cool.

Perhaps that can be an addition once the eventual Cantha expansion rolls out?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Kaleban.9834:

Simple question, given the karma cost of UM tools or the gem cost of the Permanent tools.

Will the expansion have a new map currency like Unbound Magic that will be required for everything, or will ANet stick to UM keeping the current tools relevant?

The UM tools are always going to be relevant, because there’s always stuff you can buy with UM.

Based on past statements, my guess is that PoF will have a set of map-specific currencies and LS4 will have a single one (like UM) plus individual harvestable mats that act as currency, i.e parallel to what we’ve seen this last year.

Would just be nice to know if we’re going to get Infinite Tools that collect Balthazar Bucks or something like that which will be required for all the new uber loots. Not sure if I want to splurge on a set of UM tools or wait it out.

Simple question, given the karma cost of UM tools or the gem cost of the Permanent tools.

Will the expansion have a new map currency like Unbound Magic that will be required for everything, or will ANet stick to UM keeping the current tools relevant?

Based on the name, thematic concept and artwork, I think it’s pretty clear what Anet intends to do.

The charge skills are Flash Enchantments. One thing that might help Ele survivability would be a Toughness buff depending on how many charges are active, similar to the GW1 Dervish.

Attunements are changing to a “woven” combination, and likely means we can only switch between two pre-determined combos of Air/Water and Earth/Fire. Number of skills would increase if we can mix and match (i.e. Air/Fire, Earth/Water, etc.) but would open up many more tactical options.

The skill 3 is a “combo skill” based on off-hand ONLY when Sword main-hand is used. Since Sword can only be equipped with the new spec, and given the above, that would likely only mean 4 new 1-2 static skills, with the glut of design coming from the #3 combo skill and Weaver options for the other weapons.

One way to avoid a massive influx of new skills would be to simply add effects to existing skills. This would mean paring down weapon options. Staff would only have ten skills instead of 20, so effects from the different attunements would need to be combined. This means of course that Anet would have to select which skills on each weapon carry over to the new spec’s system.

Example1:

Fireball would add a Weaken effect (thanks to Earth), while Static Field would Regenerate and cure conditions on allies (thanks to Water). Stoning and Healing Rain wouldn’t be options while Weaver was the chosen spec.

Example2:

Stoning would add a Burning effect (thanks to Fire), while Healing Rain would stun foes crossing it (thanks to Air), and Static Field and Fireball would be unavailable.

Given the reduction in Attunements and overall skills, it’s likely either skills will be buffed on each weapon while in Weaver spec, or weapon swap will be enabled.

Well, to be fair, there ARE those veteran ice elemental mobs usually sitting near the bounce mushrooms (and in a couple of patrols) that seem to aggro and be able to shoot a long chill time ice projectile from MUCH farther than any other enemy I’ve ever seen.

The number of times in Bitterfrost that I don’t even see them coming because they’re behind me and assumed way out of aggro range is beyond counting.

And there was that update that rectified enemies shooting at gliding players with something along the lines of 10k range or whatever.

I think there is a kernel of validity to the OP’s concern. The majority of the playerbase has likely been in the Zerk meta for a long time, and all of a sudden these new areas completely flip the paradigm. I’m not saying that players shouldn’t adjust, but ANet could do better at transitioning areas, especially when you consider the cost of entire new sets of gear for the majority of players.

The 9 months thing is an example of always overestimate your timetable so if you come in under it you look good. Stick one person on armor sets, and that means ANet is saying it takes 1440 man-hours of coding and design.

Assume the base coding is done (obviously) then you really only need to worry about design, so only 720 man-hours to think up something, draw it out and input it into the game.

As sorudo points out, nearly all the armor sets are simply one model that is scaled to fit different sized characters (i.e. morphing and stretching). Anet clearly doesn’t have to make a different armor set for each permutation of the height and weight sliders, so it’s highly unlikely that to put it on a Nord, Human or Sylvari requires any effort, and the Asura simply get different boots.

I always enjoy these threads.

Elementalist – Dervish
Utility Skills – Insights
Mechanic – Attunements function as elemental modifiers to a static skill bar

Weapon – Dual Wielding Torches!

Concept: The Dervish is a close range PBAoE fighter, in a similar theme to the old E/A Starburster from GW1. They use their Attunements to add specific effects to their weapon skills, rather than switching to a whole new bar.

Example:

Fire Attunement adds a 360 radius AoE (some burst, some fields) to each skill including the auto-attack.

Water Attunement would add self healing on each skill, along with a couple of fields.

Air Attunement would cause each skill to acquire a movement effect, including leaps, teleports and dashes.

Earth Attunement would add Protection and Absorbs to each skill of varying durations or effectiveness.

This way, ANet would only have to develop five weapon skills, and balance the relative power of the Attunement effects, instead of 20 new individual skills.

The utility Insights would be relatively short CD defensive skills mainly. All (or most) would be chain skills, similar in concept to Mantras but faster to charge. They would function very similarly to the old Dervish’s Flash Enchantments, with a minor passive effect and a much stronger activation effect.

As for the weapons, I had this image of the Elementalist doing a lot of spinning/dancing style of combat, with the fires becoming blades, whips, etc.

Most of the gameplay is fairly repetitive over the long term.

Factor in things like buying bag slots and time taken to get through LS and other content and the idea of running more than one main can be difficult, and I understand totally the need to find a single profession.

My advice may ring close to some of the others above, pick what’s fun. That can be gameplay itself, thematic elements (i.e. does he like hulk smash type fighting, nimble dodgers or the subtle deadliness of magic, etc.), direct damage vs. damage over time (DoT) conditions, or even power game meta.

So have your buddy decide what type of fun he likes, then pick a character that’s appropriate. For my part, I started way back when the game first came out on an Elementalist, and have mained that character ever since. I leveled up a few alts including a Guardian and Mesmer for the party/guild needs at hand, but I always go back to my Ele for myself. It has the perfect combination of fun and fast gameplay, awesome theme (master of the elements) and is usually at the top of the metagame in every mode, although I didn’t consider that when I first picked it.

Similar to the Elementalist would be the Engineer, what with kit swapping. The Engy is more condition (DoT) and crowd control (CC) focused, and to keep up the optimal rotations requires very good manual dexterity.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Firelysm.8190:

I did quit GW2 in december, because Anet didn’t deliver nearly 50% of promised content on the expansion release. I ran out of content after 2 months. I’m wondering how far is anet from releasing Legendary armor?!

Any news on that?

What content are you counting that ANet missed out on 50%? From the wiki, here are the promised features:

• Heart of Maguuma: added (and updated 19 April). Four new maps, multiple levels, new metas.
• HoT story: added
• Mastery system: added new HoT masteries and several core ones.
• New prof: revenant — added and, erm, relevant.
• Stronghold for PvP: added.
• WvW: Desert BL: added (since restored to Alpine BL, by popular demand).
• WvW: Shield generator and reworked abilities: added.
• WvW: World ability: added
• Guild Halls: two added
• Raids: as announced, adding wings in waves.
• Fractals: new system, new masteries added as promised.
• Adventures: added
• Map bonus rewards: added
• Ascended gear: now salvageable
• Legendary gear:
  • New backpacks: added
  • New armor: not in game yet
  • New legendaries: 4 of 16 promised added; work cancelled (at least for now) on the other 11.
  • Legendary collections for generation 1 precursors: added
• Commander & squad updates: added.
• Action camera: added.

I can’t say whether anyone in particular will enjoy the changes. I’m just pointing out that nearly all of the content advertised has been added (the big exception being legendary gear).

LOL I’m sorry but are you serious?

Most of that “content” is grind with a pretty veneer. The action camera? There was a mod for it like years ago. The changes and tweaks to interfaces and skills is not “content” they’re simply alterations to existing content.

The new maps qualify, as does the Revenant. That’s about it. So in actuality, only about 30% of HoT was actual content, the rest just changes to already existing systems or things like Guild Halls which should have been present at launch for a game called GUILD WARS.

You want to know why so many players don’t use or can’t figure CC out?

Because it’s called CC. Crowd Control. Which most logical, reasoning people who don’t spend all their time gaming would take to mean controlling crowds, such as blowing back boss ADDS, or controlling the field of battle such that crowds of enemies don’t interfere during a burn phase or somesuch.

Using Crowd Control to break a “breakbar” on a single boss enemy makes no rational sense. GW2’s interface and instructions do not do an adequate job of explaining to players what enemies do, what affects them, etc. And it’s been this way since launch, with ANet’s idea of a minimal interface and excessive battle pyrotechnics from all professions.

A more concise description could read: “Use Status Control Effects to stun Enemy and take more damage.” Skill tool tips in game could actually say what effect they’d have on a Breakbar if any, or those skills could have a differently colored background or would highlight an enemy translucent blue if it affects the breakbar, etc.

If you’re going to have a minimal interface and no tutorial, along with a frantic combat system where one hit KOs occur frequently, you can’t expect players to Alt-Tab to search the Wiki for the encounter they’re currently in. It’s poor game design to have to consult a reference manual, unless you’re playing flight sims.

Ask yourself what would be more difficult to fight in hand to hand combat, a shambling zombie or a tyrannosaur?

If you can run Fractals you’ll get Ascended gear boxes. It’s RNG, but it seems the higher difficulties reward them more often.

I would suggest not running Dagger offhand unless you’re running/roaming. The offense and utility of Warhorn seems better in my experience, and Focus is MUCH better for defense.

I run Fire/Air/Tempest most of the time, utilizing Fresh Air and cycling through overloads does pretty good damage. If you spec as the “auramancer” you’re pretty tough to kill and do great damage with plenty of boon application. If you find yourself getting downed too often, swap Air for Earth and take Elemental Shielding, and combined with Hardy Conduit from the Tempest line you’ll have good access to Protection that will reduce incoming damage by 40%!

However, in HoT, the name of the game is to kill the enemy before it kills you and many mobs hit hard enough that you will not survive battles of attrition.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

In lieu of developing new SAB worlds, how about creating a set of SAB armor?

It could be Ascended, come in Blue, Green and Yellow, maybe with different auras than the current Kaiser weapons.

Visually, it could appear like the Holtzman shields from Dune, and would show your town clothes through the holographic distortion.

Will we ever see its ilk again?

Or packages of other gathering tools?

Here’s a question:

Why remove anything from the Gem Store?

Is there a byte limit or something? If there’s no limit to how many items could be displayed, then there’s no real logical reason to make things “limited offers.” UNLESS of course there’s some marketing guy in the back that thinks its a way to scam more people out of gems/money by giving in-game items artificial rarity.

Sort of like how diamonds are actually quite plentiful, but DeBeers’ controls 85% of the world’s supply.

Daharahj.1325:

You can’t look at these skills in a vacuum, Eles have access to 4 weapons worth of skills, so naturally they’re going to be much weaker than their weapon counterpart.

Yes, yes you can.

Eles have double the skills, but usually require two to three skills in combo to pull off the effects of one skill on other professions. Combined with low armor, low health and no in-built defenses, this leaves the Ele at a serious disadvantage.

I mean, every guide out there on how to beat an Ele boils down to:

“hit Ele until he goes into then out of Water, then hit with CC and condi”

When you look at skills like Ancestral Grace (on a medium armor class with a pet) or skills like Blurred Frenzy (on a class with minions, invis and evades and distortion) then you begin to see the lack of options an Ele has.

The ONLY real defensive option Eles have is the fact that opposing players have to see through all the skill F/X to be able to determine what the Ele is doing. But when the meta FOTM is tons of CC and condi-bombing, its difficult being a profession that has low to no access to Stability, combined with requiring double to triple skill activations for similar results to other professions. When you throw on ridiculous skill cooldowns on heavily nerfed skills, behind a profession mechanic that includes separate cooldowns and is very visual, well, yeah you can do straight up comparisons.

And the state of many skills, between RtL, Fire Shield, and all of Scepter is pretty lacking.

Tiny Tove.3589:

10,000 drinks. Anet think we are bots, we might as well be bots.

You want white pixels falling around your virtual avatar, then you’re going to spend 40 to 80 hours grinding for it.

Because MMOs are jobs, not games.

Dersce.8072:

I know Zerker was the meta for everything, not sure if HoT changed that. I know Fractals are a lot easier, haven’t touched Dungeons in a while.

Any tips from those with experience?

Well, ANet recently reduced the Toughness of enemies post lvl 50 Fractals, so Sinister and Condition sets aren’t as needed IIRC.

Zerker will likely always be meta for strictly Power builds, with Viper being meta for everything else. In terms of raw stat Viper’s four attributes exceeds a regular three attribute piece, and the two primaries of Power and Condi are hardly different from the main stat on a three attribute, something like 15%. But when you consider that you’re getting two good main stats, that far outpaces the performance of Zerker, if and only if your profession/build utilizes both types of damage about equally.

But that’s the rub, as most trait lines across the professions, and indeed skill sets are usually one or the other, not both.

I look at Viper as sort of an all offense version of Celestial. It will likely be meta for most of PvE (barring raids and any need for tanking) and some mid and backline WvW, in both cases where passive defenses are not an issue. It allows traditional Condi builds some oomph when damaging condition immune targets like WvW structures (catapults, etc.) as well as allowing a Burning focused Guardian or Elementalist enough straight damage when facing a burn immune foe such as Molten Effigies.

The only downside is the acquisition, and those darn jeweled patches. Thank goodness there IS a mystic forge conversion recipe active now.

I would say that going forward, the three best armor sets to shoot for on a main are going to be Viper for most PvE, Trailblazer as a Condi tank set (assuming your profession can build for it), and Minstrel as a full support set. The healing power coupled with boon duration on Minstrel looks particularly good for Guardians, Eles, Druid Rangers and Revs. Of course, getting a full Maklain’s set just for raid content may be overkill and premature, but the other two sets look good to me.

I suppose dye-kits, re-skinned minis, and Raider’s Supply packages are what I should have expected for the season of giving.

Will the Celestial stat set ever get updated to also add Concentration and Expertise?

I know its still out of favor for most professions and game modes, but figured since its supposed to be the jack-of-all-trades state set that it should include these attributes.

Not sure how much it would add to the viability or attraction of the Celestial set, but it might make it more viable.

I’m not sure if its worth it.

I mean, the difference in offensive stats between Sinister and Viper isn’t much if at all really. Viper has slightly less Condi, but slightly more Power, which may be good for hybrid damage builds, and for an Ele build that expects to encounter condition resistant enemies or structures.

The debate reminds me of when Celestial was first released. Taking just straight up numbers, Celestial far out-performed every other stat set, assuming equal or nearly so weighting of stats like Healing Power when put up against Power or Precision. And Viper does have more raw stat (for example 376 points on a Viper Ascended Chest vs. 343 on a Sinister Ascended Chest), so it does kind of fit that mold, plus its all offensive based stats, making it less likely to fall into the trap that Celestial does, especially in PvE.

So the question then becomes, what mode is it for, and how valuable is the Expertise trade off when considering the lost Precision? For a build that incorporates certain Sigils like Torment, Geomancy or Doom, the extra duration on non-burn conditions may be worth it. Which of course pushes Viper as a PvP stat set, but which may be quite dangerous to use as an Elementalist.

I would say stick with Sinister until the more experienced and knowledgeable theorycrafters have had a run at Viper. I like the idea of a balanced offense between Condi and Power, but I’m not sure the loss in Precision nor the idea of branching out of burn would be worth it, especially in PvE.

Of course, the 1337est of the 1337 are bona fide and lifelong “Crabgrabbers”!!

PH34R

Baccart.8105:

3 years community was screaming “We want challanges, we want new goals” and when we finally get it, we whine of how unfair it is.

The community was and is screaming for new content, better class balance, updates to PvP and WvW, and you know, ACTUAL gameplay stuff.

What we are actually getting is more and more outfits, and timegated achievements that are the epitome of grind.

Winter’s Presence Achievement Track is NOT what the community has been asking for. To think that’s the case, you’d pretty much have to be completely unaware of the state of the game and the community at large.

Serophous.9085:

Exactly, its a game. You don’t need the cosmetic items at all as it won’t affect your gameplay one bit. All armors could be removed and you just allocate your stats instead and the gameplay would remain the same.

Yes, you’re right. And conversely, EVERYONE having access to the same cosmetic items won’t affect anyone’s gameplay.

I guess I’m just one of those people who doesn’t understand certain peoples’ need to exclude others for the sake of their own perceived value. Someone having the Batwings shoulder while I don’t doesn’t bother me, just like not having the GWAMM title doesn’t bother me. BUT if everyone had it, it still wouldn’t bother me. Others’ enjoyment one way or another doesn’t really affect me, insofar as they don’t ragequit a dungeon or something which would affect my ability to enjoy the content, but that’s again, gameplay related.

But when did “need” enter the lexicon of gamers to determine what is or isn’t fun? Is it enjoyable for some people to run around LA with their Batwings or Twilights or what have you in a sad attempt at showing off how much time they’ve sunk into the game? To me, that’s kind of sad, and its a poor game if that exclusivity is designed in.

To be fair, Legendary items aren’t timegated to a two or four week festival. Items that come from an event that is supposed to celebrate good will towards your fellow sentient creatures probably shouldn’t have a design that makes them just another bragging item based on exclusivity. Would be like going to a Goodwill or homeless shelter and showing off the fat stacks of cash in the back of your BMW, and then driving off laughing at everyone else’s misfortune.

Its a game.

Cosmetic stuff could be handed out like confetti at a parade, and it wouldn’t alter the game world or experience one iota.

Anyone who argues about economies, exclusivity, the difficulty of acquisition, etc., etc. is missing the point, and comes across as kind of… well you know. Anyone who thinks the Batwings, or the falling snow should only be available to those able to sink all their time into the game is missing the point of games entirely, and views said games, and grindy MMOs in general as jobs.

You can tell who these people are. They spam “N00B” in chat, talk about how elite they are, their skills at speedclears and such.

The game should cater to EVERYONE. Every cosmetic rewards that isn’t gemstore could be mailed to every single player en masse and it wouldn’t affect gameplay one bit. Certain peoples’ kittens would shrink a bit, but that’s their problem.

The worst part about Wintersday is just how much it makes me realize the lack of empathy among gamers. Sure, its not all, but its enough to be depressing.

I’d say Asura for Necro, as you already have two Asuras in the Medium and Heavy armor ranges.

Asura have some of the better, if not best animations, and most of their audibles (i.e. spoken lines when using skills) are also some of the best, especially when it comes to minion skills.

Plus the idea of a pint size agent of death is just plain funny.

I re-rolled my Ele from male Sylvari to male Human for the simple fact that I couldn’t stand the male Sylvari’s faux British whine every time I changed Attunements. I main that Ele, so I could be biased, but as it stands right now the Ele is pretty balanced in most areas of the game, has both tanky and glass-cannon builds across a couple different weapon sets, and is quite mobile, although not as fast as the Medium armor professions (and Warrior). The Ele also has great condi clear, which is a must IMHO in the end game areas.

But the gameplay of rapid switching on the Ele is similar to the Engy in several respects, I would say that unless that’s the ONLY style of gameplay you like to instead branch out. A Necromancer from a gameplay perspective would be quite different.

Now, as for end game builds, all three of the mentioned profs (Engy, Necro and Rev) all can really dish out the pain in Condition builds, and are slightly less optimal when focusing on pure Power. However, straight damage builds of all three do exist, and Herlads and Reapers can do very well in high end PvE with Power builds, although I believe that Condi Engineers are still the meta for that class.

Will ANet be releasing any of the old stuff in the Gem Store possibly?

Things like Bunny Ears, or the Gadgeteer’s Gathering Package, maybe sales on Cooper or Silver Salvage O Matics?

Even though we’d be paying gems for useful and good stuff, just them being available would be nice for returning and new players alike, especially since the release of HoT.

Purecura.1795:

Hiya Fellow Tempest and Elementalist,

Im new to Tempest and I love the heck out of it. I kill mobs so fast in PvE and ive never encountered anything like it in Gw2. Glass cannon tempest truly stays true to the typical hard hitting mages of fantasy. Only thing is…. I’m super squishy, and not just a little bit. With 12k health… I literally will die from 2-3 hits in PvE. In raids, it’s a bit worse.

My question is, is this normal? Iam in full berserkers gear, with 2 armor peices that are Assassins and one assassin trinket. I have scholar runes and I use a berserker staff. While I have never seen any other class in gw2 kill groups of mobs so fast, and take down bosses health so quickly, I have also never experienced dying so quickly in gw2.

I mained a Druid for a bit ( changing main to tempest now), and prior to that I mained a Mesmer for 3 years. Now that I’m a Tempest main, I just can’t help but be more careful with not being hit versus when I played Druid and Mesmer. So once again is this normal to have such low health? To be easily killed in a few hits, In exchange for huge DPS? I have no issues at all if this is the case… I just want to make sure this is normal, and I’m hoping I’m not missing anything.

Thanks,
-Purecura

Well, there may be no squishier build than glass cannon Staff. You have few real defenses with a DPS build, and likely your utilities are damage oriented as well.

My recommendation is to familiarize yourself with our other weapons. Staff is decent for WvW and some PvE, but terrible everywhere else. Consider also that ANet is designing much more mobile encounters, so the field DPS of a Staff Ele is going to take a big hit.

I personally prefer Dagger over every main hand weapon we have. Its fast, does decent damage, and has quite a bit of utility, from Burning Speed to Shocking Aura. Offhand, its still a good weapon, but some of the skills like Churning Earth are seldom if ever used.

While Focus is a mixed bag, it does offer most of our weapon based defense and some utility. Magnetic Wave and Obsidian Flesh are awesome, as is Swirling Winds. Warhorn is ok-ish, what with the long lasting Fire Field of Wildfire, and I do like the more melee centric CC of skills like Cyclone and Tidal Surge.

Basically, you’re going to want to use D/F for all content. It gets you in melee so you benefit more from teammates’ effects (and they yours), is a more dynamic weapon set, and works in nearly all gaming modes barring MAYBE WvW roaming. For utilities, I’ve become really fond of all the shouts, especially Aftershock for the reflects and blast finisher. And then of course there’s Flash Freeze’s Frost Aura.

But the key really in my opinion for Tempest is to play to the strengths of Auras, and pair it with Earth. You can run full Zerk all day, because you’ll have access to 40% Protection with Elemental Shielding, and your defensive skills on Focus will recharge faster with Geomancer’s Training, as well as shortening movement impairing conditions. With nearly all your offensive skills being within the 360 range, you’ll also benefit from Geomancer’s Defense, and when you add Diamond Skin to the mix you’re very resilient.

So basically, go Tempest and Earth, and then select your other traitline based on your task at hand. Air is good for more boons on Auras, not to mention Fresh Air resetting the cooldown on Air Overload when it procs. Water is great for PvP, increasing sustain and support. Fire of course brings in more damage, as well as extending fire field timers, and is really good for a Sinister (or Viper) burn build. Arcane isn’t as necessary with Tempest, although there is some synergy between traits like Latent Stamina and Renewing Stamina.

kuritsutian.2987:

Kaleban.9834:

No one is playing an Auramancer for the Might proc on Fire Aura.

I am

I SAID NO ONE!!!

Honestly though, it is a fun build, and can be quite effective in PvP as well, just not with Zerk there.

In PvE though, running Earth and Diamond Skin along with the 40% Protection is so nice for all the hard hitting mobs in HoT. Whether Air or Water, you have great sustain, usually stay above the 90% threshold keeping DS active, and can still dish out a lot of damage with easy access to Might and Fury. All the Aura procs also grant Swiftness (with Air) so you don’t necessarily have to sit in Air while running around.

Plus, with all the Shouts, you’re LOUD LIKE LEONIDAS!

BunjiKugashira.9754:

I would bet that most of that damage comes from overloads and weapon skills while the aura’s effects are close to never proced. Because if you take a hit as a full zerker ele you’re dead and if you don’t take a hit then the aura’s effects can’t proc.

No one is playing an Auramancer for the Might proc on Fire Aura.

The benefit comes from the massive number of boons, 40% Protection with extended duration, and frequent uptime of Shocking and Magnetic Auras.

Throw on a 10% DR Frost Aura and you’ve got reliable access to 50% DR.

You can then run Zerk gear+trinkets and put out considerable damage with an Air/Earth/Tempest build with quite good defense.

Let’s design a game where the interface is minimal, and the player has to rely on what’s going on on-screen to figure out the state of the character and the game environment. That way, the player will be more involved and immersed.

In an attempt to capitalize on lol-sportz, let’s destroy all the visual feedback on screen to reduce “clutter.” Oh and while we’re at it, lets NOT re-design the user interface to make up for the loss of visual cues.

Nothing says “m04r ch4113ng3” and “1337 sk1llz” like making sure all players have no way to know what is actually occurring in game.

I take it there are no plans to reduce the crafting cost to 1 Candy Corn then is there? Otherwise its pointless to craft or use.

Not a big deal, but seems odd given the component costs.

When I activate the consumable, instead of three AoE skills, I only get one in the first position. And even though its an AoE circle, its “targets effected” says “1”.

When it is used, even hitting multiple ambients, only one gets converted.

I don’t know if this is a stealth nerf or bug.

ffletcher.3468:

I see no need for a level 500 chef because all the new recipes since dry top ( ithink) have been account bound and the food produced has been account bound. What’s the point? I only have 8 alts and they can only eat so much. I do not understand this decision by Anet. Would the economy collapse if we could sell some food? Is there some inherent difference between cactus fruit salad and mango pie that makes one marketable and the other not? I just don’t get it.

I think it boils down to ANet being more concerned with all the new whiz bang stuff they can sell in the Gemstore than fixing/re-vamping old content.

We have Ascended everything, in fact trinkets were the first Ascended items you could get, yet Jeweler is still stuck at 400.

So with the Chef discipline, I think it would be nice to see Ascended food items that were infinite use. Heck, ANet could even make a Legendary Food, name it “Manna of the Mists” and it could allow you to use it an infinite number of times with selectable benefits!

And as I pointed out above, this would free up ingredients to be used on Trays for group buffing, encouraging more group play from the outset. Imagine doing world events and instead of one solitary rich guy putting down a Tray, there were ten or more that everyone could use. Which of course would also be a boon for the smaller guilds who wanted to entice memebership.

Like I said, just a thought.

Redenaz.8631:

This suggestion reminds me of the Portal Scrolls they introduced at Halloween. They sounded awesome until I did the math and realized it was significantly cheaper (and more flexible) to just bite the bullet and waypoint everywhere on the slightest whim than to make a scroll for it.

I had a similar experience with Batwing Brew. Even before the price skyrocketed, it would still be thousands of times cheaper just to carry around a stack of single-use brews (.0006g/each) than to pay 100g for an endless one, and I LOVE endless tonics.

What I’m saying is, they could do infinite-use food, but it would likely cost an arm and a leg. You’d probably get more use out of it than, say, Batwing Brew, because you’d always be using it, but that means more demand, and making more items (other foods) obsolete.

Well, my thinking was along the lines of making more use of group buffs, i.e. Trays.

For example, the ever popular Omnomberry Bars. If you could make one infinite use one for solo use, then every other Omnom after that could go towards making long duration Trays that groups could use more often.

In a sense, it would encourage more grouping up and usage of consumables that otherwise people hoard for themselves. As I said, just a thought.

Idea for Chef:

Craft “Everlasting” versions of food items at 500.

Basically an Ascended consumable, could for example make an Everlasting Omnomberry Bar, that never runs out, and is sellable on the TP.

Trays would still get consumed, and have double the duration, so excess gathered ingredients would still find solid use in world events, dungeons, raids, etc.

Just a couple things.

If you’re looking to carry bad PUGs or other groups, playing a glass cannon is not really the best call. You need to be able to establish and maintain aggro, so a ranged Assassin/Zerk Ele is not going to cut it.

What I would suggest is looking into Condition setups. There are several sets available that allow very high Condi (using Burn in Fire) output, while also ramping up Toughness, Vitality and/or Healing Power. Since Condition builds aren’t reliant on crits, you can spec into other aspects, maintain high DPS and still be resilient enough to not go down like a wet noodle.

I’ve gone through the various metas, even had full Celestial when it still had magic find on it lol. From what I’ve seen, and apart from “structures” in various game modes, a Burning Condi Ele is likely the BEST mix of DPS and survivability hands down.

In fact, looking at some of the new four attribute sets, it seems to me that for absolute best DPS from both direct damage and Condi, Viper’s may end up being the new meta. It does sacrifice Ferocity, but basically has the best of both worlds from Power and Condition setups, allowing full utilization of both types, while still making use of all “on crit” abilities.

Trailblazer’s is also an interesting choice, and something I’ve been thinking of for Raids. It also allows for high Condi output, while really ramping up your survivability.

Lastly, you’ll likely want to switch to (and practice with) Dagger/Focus and Dagger/Warhorn. The first is excellent for “aggressive tanking” with all the solo survivability tools, while the Warhorn offhand makes for some good party support. In almost ANY game mode short of WvW backline, the Dagger primary is going to be the superior offensive weapon.

I’ve found that the best way to play Tempest in HoT and high level Fractals (no Raid experience yet) is to run Tempest and Earth, using Dagger MH and either Focus or Warhorn.

Focus will give much better defensive utility, and is great for soloing, while Warhorn is a bit more supporty and group oriented.

Earth gives you easy access to Protection via Elemental Shielding, and Tempest makes it 40% reduced damage. Combine that with boon duration and Imbued Melodies, and you’re very tanky regardless of gear spec. Play as an Auramancer basically.

Kit out in Sinister gear, stick in Fire, switching to Air for Shocking Aura, and cycle your Shout utilities to keep boons up. I’m still in Zerk gear myself but may make the switch to Condi in the near future.