Guild Wars 2

LinseyMurdock.4165:

• No Black Lion stuff. There is a combination of technical issues and a lack of desire for those to work that way.

Stupid question, but I’m guessing there’s also zero chance for these to be given their own section either in the inventory or in the hero panel? I know I sure as hell don’t want to actively use up an inventory slot on the myriad of BL stuff, but I’d be willing to use stuff like revive orbs and the like if it didn’t need to be in my inventory or a shared slot.

ShadowbaneX.6273:

As others have suggested let us brew our own booze. Add some karma recipes that we can buy, most of the items already exist, (alcohol aplenty, butter, apples, sugar, nutmeg, buttermilk, water, etc.) add some of the missing ones as karma items. It’ll be a good way to burn off karma if you want to keep it account bound or burn gold if it’s tradable.

No problem, it’ll be added as a 400 Scribe recipe. j/k

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Aveneo.2068:

Leaving the Festive Imbiber active is cool and everything (and thanks for the update), but the drinks that are required for the achievement will still be gone after the event so it kinda defeats the purpose… And no, the single box a day from the christmas tree in our home instance is not a viable method imo.

So unless you guys add some cooking recipes to a vendor so we could brew our own festive drinks and such or lower the requirement to something around 2500 it would be rather pointless to leave an achievement active that can’t be completed anyway (unless we fork over cash-for-gold on a finite TP supply).

Just my opinion on the matter. Sorry if it sounds a bit harsh.

You can craft the peppermint food which counts to the achievement, further the Star of Gratitude gives a chance of the wintersday gifts (albeit unreliably).

Last I checked, crafting one of the peppermint foods requires 25 of the candy canes themselves. So you’re better off just scarfing the candy canes themselves if you just want the achievement to progress. Although it’s better to craft if you’re going for the actual usefulness of the food itself, that plus the karma bonus is better from the food if you look just at # of minutes gained (30 minutes per 25 candy canes when converted to food versus 25 minutes if you consume the candy canes themselves. Although you can consume the candy canes individually just before you’re going to finish an event or such, so there’s another difference there).

Hi Gaile, thanks for this info, it’s a huge relief for me and anyone else trying to complete the Winter’s Presence shoulders. However, I do have a few questions that I would like to ask, and hope you have the answers to.

• Will the candy cane achievement be given similar treatment? It’s not required for the shoulders, but it’s still one that is on a similar progression scale as Festive Imbiber.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement progress the Wintersday meta after Jan 12? This is mainly a curiosity thing, am interested to know if the meta achieve will be locked after Jan 12 is over, even though anyone that really wants the meta won’t need it.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement’s progress carry to next Wintersday, similar to the Grawnk ones did from last year? Just another curiosity deal.

Hey John, I was wondering if anyone had proposed this particular idea.

Put the daily dungeon chests on a weekly reset like raid rewards will be, instead of nerfing the gold output directly. Alternatively could do both, but just not nerf the gold output as harshly.

This way players can still do the dungeons to get a decent amount of cash, but you don’t have people doing CoF1 once per day every single day. They either have to spread out and do other paths during that week, or be satisfied with what they got from the easier paths until the reset. Figure that would do enough to deincentivise doing dungeons all the time for income, since Fractals would still have daily rewards.

For the love of all that’s holy, please add a +25% move speed effect to one of the Minors in Dragonhunter. I’d really like to be able to remove Retreat from my bar while just running around the map. Otherwise I really like these changes, although I still find the Master Minor (Justice reaches max charge when you block) to be very underwhelming, so it’s a good candidate to add the +25% move speed to.

First off, please for the love of whatever you find holy let Auras stack in duration. I know you “fixed” Frost Aura recently, but Light Aura DOES stack duration, and there are various other powerful effects (Quickness and Alacrity, for example) which are allowed to stack duration freely. Tempest has very high potential for aura overlap, especially in group content.

As for Latent Stamina, I say that it should be made into “When you complete an Overload, grant Vigor in an AoE. Gain 10 Endurance when you grant Vigor to an ally.” This fills a similar niche as Unstable Conduit, but the solution was already pointed out by Alekt above. The Tempest traits are VERY lacklustre, and said lacklustre effects only activate while using Overloads. If a trait is going to be that specific, it should give a beefy benefit. So I propose merging Unstable Conduit and Speedy Conduit, with the final product occupying the Master Minor slot. You get Swiftness and an Aura at the start of an OL, overall a useful buff to OLs that gives them some form of defencive utility as well as offence.

Another trait that’s lacklustre is Hardy Conduit. Honestly this one can probably be merged with Earthen Proxy, with the result occupying EP’s Majour trait spot. So in the now empty GM Minor, you add the following. “After remaining in an attunement for 10 seconds, gain a buff based on the attunement. Fire = +10% damage, Air = +7% Crit rate, Water = +15% to outgoing healing, Earth = -10% damage taken.” This encourages not just the use of Overloads, but the Tempest playstyle itself, staying in an attunement longer than normal to gain greater power.

Finally, please add a -20% CD effect to Tempestuous Aria, Shock & Aftershock in particular really needs some way to mitigate the hefty CD, and the current incarnation of TA just feels kind of meh.

eleshazar.6902:

…
Changes that will make DH more appealing:
1) Option for ranged traps. DH using longbow means you don’t want to get close to someone, if the traps aren’t ranged then they really don’t get much use in PVP situations. In PvE where stacking is prevalent you don’t have that problem as much. Perhaps this could be worked into the trap cd reduction trait.

2) Working passive speed into a trait. Guards have been dying for this forever. We kind of have to keep “Retreat” on our bar for this (helps with Unscathed Contender, but we also bring it so we can get from point A to point. Freeing up our movement will allow us to not feel like we have to constantly have some sort swiftness on our bar.

3) Some form of condi cleanse either on LB or in trait form in DH. Condi meta is increasing, and DH builds lack much condi cleanse. Would be nice to have it in there somewhere.

Echoing all 3 of these. Unlike Thieves and (I assume) Rangers, Dragonhunters are using more magical Traps, so it could stand to reason that they could set them at range. Making this either baseline or added into the Trap trait would be a HUGE boon to their viability since the Traps and Longbow run rather counter to each other thematically.

Passive speed added to one of the minors (Perhaps the Master Minor?) would be a huge benefit, and make the trait feel a bit better since it’s currently kind of meh if you’re actively using Justice like the changes imply you should) would be a huge help. Guardians are slow as hell, and Chronomancers and Druids are both getting move speed boosts added to their Elite Specs as Minor traits, so why not DH?

Finally, I fully agree that Longbow or a trait needs some kind of condi cleanse. Could possibly add it to Symbol of Energy (Cleanse a condition from the user as well as on the first impact?) in place of the innate Burn (since there’s already a trait to make Symbols inflict Burn).

On a similar note, if no speed boost is added to the Master Minor in particular, that trait really needs a look. Currently it’s only usable if you’ve left Justice to sit and run passively, meanwhile there’s other traits that encourage active use of Justice. So I propose a buff to also add “If Justice is on CD, remove 8s the remaining recharge each time you block, otherwise Justice simply reaches maximum charge.” to the trait.

Inverse.2967:

In general I am no fan at all of enrage timers.

They don’t add any fun and take away the choice for less proficient or learning groups to trade off between quicker but more risky fight and a much prolonged but less risky fight by gearing lots more defensively.

I think enabling super defensive strategies would not take away from the difficulty.

Groups running those would have to fulfill all the boss mechanics over a much longer period of time and for many more times in a row than a more offensively set up group.

So that would still be fair but enable reasonable access to such fun mechanic heavy encounters for players that may be less proficient in offensive group stats application.

…

My suggested alternative to enrage timers is this:

Make the boss progress towards an enrage state by counting amounts of successful and unsuccessful player interaction with the encounter mechanic.

Whenver the group does not successfully meet encouter mechanic interactions (like blocking orbs, not standing in fire, not boon stripping, etc…) over a check time intervall, or the ratio of fails to successful interaction is bad, make the boss progress a bit towards enrage state.

That way the encounter will still have a hard enrage end, if the group ignores or just fails at the encounter’s mechanic, yet doesn’t put them on the dreadful damage race timer.

You can still do partial damage checks like burst/focus fire or sustained damage upkeep checks as part of a mechanic though. I just don’t see much fun in the overal you die then timer concept as it does not check for ppl actually playing the encounter but how well they again min/max DPS within in it.

Let’s just leave that min/max DPS game to the pro’s running for raid leaderboards.
Many other players will also have fun without it playing these cool mechanic oriented encounters, so just let them.

tldr

Please consider using enrage trigger by mechanic fail instead of enrage timers in the raid future.

Fully support this. Making instanced content into a DPS race is not the way to go. Have a boss enrage based on messing up the mechanics of the fight, not by some timer running out. Players are always less salty if they fail a fight due to messing up a mechanic as opposed to a timer saying, “lol, lern 2 zerk noob”.

Hey Roy, I like the idea of the new trait, but I’d do a minor tweak to it since it feels like it’d be better if the trait applies to all Dwarf Stance skills. Something like “At X% health, you automatically cast Rite of the Great Dwarf. In addition, for Y secs after using a Dwarf Stance skill, any ally affected takes -20% damage from conditions.” And have it apply a unique buff called Dwarven Hardiness or something. Basically a good way to not put all the focus on RotGD, and let the player feel like their other skills are also a great way to mitigate conditions in addition to Jalis’ general tankiness. And obviously the ally effect would only be on the road skill and RotGD, while the others would only affect you, but it would still be pretty strong.

Hey Robert, one thing I was curious about was Sundering Leap, mainly that it seems to be a bit strong when compared to another skill, namely On My Mark. SL is a Leap finisher, damage, 10 Vuln for 6s, 6s Cripple, gives you 5 Adrenaline, and has a 25s CD (with no CD trait, but that’s totally fine, Rage skills have low CD by default) and all that’s in a decent AoE. Meanwhile OMM is a Shout with a 30s base CD (24s traited) that puts 10 Vuln on one target at 1200 Range for 10s, and that’s it. Is this something that could potentially cause OMM to be buffed (More Vuln and/or AoE effect?), would SL get nerfed, or working as intended? Mainly figuring that there’s no reason I’d take OMM while SL was an option to put on my bar.

Okay, look, I get that the whole deal with Dragonhunter was to give justification for Braham picking up his mom’s bow and acting like a Ranger, but please don’t let what (probably) will happen to an NPC dictate gameplay mechanics. Traps suck, they suck hard, there is no way to make them work well simply because GW2 is a game all about mobility and active combat. Another reason they suck for Dragonhunter in particular is that it’s anathema to the whole long-ranged support that Longbow seems to be about. Hell, one of the GM Traits is focused on getting enemies the hell away from you while pew pewing them with arrows.

I know it’s impossible to change things before HoT release, but here’s my suggestion. Ditch traps, replace them with Wards. Wells and Symbols all basically do damage as well as a mix of debuffs for foes and buffs for allies. Wards do no damage, and instead focus purely on the effects.

These are all ground targeted, can be used from up to 900 range, 240 radius.

Healing: Ward Against Harm – Heals user for a bit, then lasts 5s, acts as Defiant Stance/Infuse Light for all allies in the area, but only heals = to 20% of damage that would be taken, also pulses 2s Regen per pulse.

Utilities: Ward against Malice – Lasts 5s, pulses 2s Resistance on allies in the field.

Ward Against Foes: Lasts 5s, pulse 1.5s Chill on foes in the field.

Elite: Ward Against Destruction: Lasts 10s, allies in the field are completely immune to any damage/conditions/etc from any negative effect that is AoE. Basically if the targets affected != 1, it doesn’t affect any ally in the field.

I’m sure someone could come up with 2 more utility Wards for the full set of 4, but that’s an example of how you could do long-range support with Dragonhunter. Traps aren’t going to work, I know that it hurts to admit it after this much development time, but they really, really suck. And worse than them sucking in general, they just don’t go with the Dragonhunter theme of long-range damage/support.

Robert Gee.9246:

• Sundering Leap: Now also inflicts cripple for 5 seconds on targets hit. Increased damage by 250%.

Okay… Why exactly would I ever take On My Mark (Which isn’t really used that much to begin with, since it’s single-target) over Sundering Leap again? This skill is blatantly far stronger at doing the same thing another skill does, It’s damage, AoE Vuln/Cripple, is a Leap Finisher, and gives you 5 Adrenaline by default. Meanwhile On My Mark inflicts the same stacks of Vuln (2s longer, whoo!) with kitten longer CD, and that’s it. I like the new Sundering Leap, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t seem like it should be objectively better than another skill when that other skill only does ONE thing to begin with.

Pretty good changes all around, I have a few concerns though.

• Please add -20% CD reduction to one of the two Shout traits. Simplest would be Tempestuous Aria, but I could also see it on Gale Song.
• Imbued Melodies isn’t needed. Ele itself got rid of all of the weapon-specific traits for a reason, please don’t make the same mistake with Tempest.
• Auras are still wonky with the Powerful Auras trait since they do not stack duration (Aside from Frost Aura and Light Aura), please allow them to stack.
• Latent Stamina is not a very good trait since it ONLY applies when attuning to Water, that and it also seems to be counter-intuitive to a Tempest’s design of staying in an Attunement for a while so it can Overload it. I’d propose to possibly have this trait activate whenever you activate an Overload effect, with the same ICD.
• For Earthen Proxy the best guess I’ve got is to make it so that all Protection applied to you (either by yourself or others) is also extended by either 33% base duration or 1 second (could potentially also just have it apply another stack of Prot for 1 sec, like how the Thief Grandmaster Trait in Critical Strikes works.

Regarding Shared Empowerment, I think you really should take another look at it, as it’s still not great with the Facets. It’s got a 1s ICD, which means it’s only usable really with the Stability skill on Jalis and Impossible Odds on Shiro. Main reason it is bad with the Facets is because while the ICD on SE is 1s, the Facets are on a 3s pulse timer, and I wager that it’s gone unnoticed that the pulse timer is SHARED between them. So even if I stagger turning my Facets on, they will all be pulsing on that same 3s timer, and SE will only be putting out 1 stack of Might every 3 secs. I feel this can’t have been intended, so would like to see if you can take a look into this and check if I’m mistaken or if it’s something that could potentially be changed, thank you.

Alright ANet, here’s how you fix this event, the base idea is sound, but some of the mechanics are just stupid. These tweaks are designed around making the map want to work together and giving players a sense of accomplishment.

• First off, add normal event rewards to the events, and drops/XP/etc back to the enemies, however leave drops from champion enemies disabled, reason for this is in the next part.
• Log the # of champs killed as part of the invasion events in the map, once the invasion is done, every player that participated in at least 1 event gets 1 champ bag per champ kill. You can even add in an extra bloom per champ kill and it’d likely be okay.
• Ditch the “you need to personally tag X events to get Y blooms” idea. Instead, track # of events completed mapwide, and at the :00 mark, give every player that participated in at least 1 event blooms based on the # of events the map cleared. 20 events in 30 minutes is reasonable if the whole map works together, which this will promote. Silverwastes shows that the map will gladly split apart and work as a team if the team effort is rewarded.
• Extend the event from just this weekend to 1-2 weeks, this gives enough time to implement these changes on Monday or so, and players get enough time to farm up what they want, and you don’t screw over players that have other commitments for this particular weekend.

Overall, I had a blast playing Revenant over the weekend. I didn’t mess around with Mallyx/Ventari or their trait lines, nor Jalis’ trait line, but I did run around a good bit with Devastation/Invocation/Herald as well as use Shiro/Jalis/Glint through the weekend. So here’s the only real complaint I have.

Shared Empowerment currently sucks. The trait gives you and allies within 600 range 1 stack of Might with 5s base duration (5.75s with the GM Minor) whenever you apply a boon. This trait also has a 1s ICD. Okay, seems decent, if you’re capping on that ICD by staggering 3 Facets then you’re going to be rocking an extra 5+ stacks of Might, seems cool, right? Wrong. For whatever reason, the Facets themselves are all on a shared 3s timer, this timer pops their boon pulses simultaneously, even if you stagger the activation of the Facets to be 1s apart.

Okay, so maybe this Herald trait isn’t meant to fully synergise with the Herald skills themselves (yes, I’ve had this argument said to me when I pointed this out), so maybe it’s meant to work with some other stuff! Right, let’s see where else you can get boons, and how long their CD is. First is the weapons. Hammer? Nope, no boons there, aside from Blast finishers. Staff? Again, nope, aside from a Blast on 4, and technically a trait that causes the healing orbs to give Regen/Swiftness, but you spawn 2 orbs at a time on an auto that takes over 2s to complete, so you’re not really doing great with those. Mace/Axe? Nope, no boons there. Sword/Sword? Ah, mainhand Sword gives Might when you hit, but the whole thing completes in less than a second, so you only get one proc from the trait, that’s no good then. Shield! Only Protection, on the 4, so that’s out.

Right, so weapons basically are worthless for activating the trait reasonably, what about the Legends themselves?

Shiro? Impossible Odds pulses Quickness every second, hooray! Finally something that can use the trait! So there’s one way to proc it reliably, it just has a 10 En upkeep cost, so you basically burn your En mega quick to do it. Shiro’s trait line gives Might when using a Shiro skill, so that’s something as well.

Okay then, Mallyx? There’s Pain Absorption which gives Resistance, and that trait that causes all Mallyx skills to give you Resistance, but that’s it, not really gonna proc the trait very often.

Jalis next, he’s got Retal when his heal cleanses conditions, and Inspiring Reinforcement to give pulsing Stability. IR is another skill that, while it’s up, can proc the trait off CD, so that’s good. Jalis’ trait line only has Stability (and potentially Retal) on Dodge, and gaining Might while you’re affected by Retal, with a 1s ICD. But as you can see, Retal isn’t really high on the uptime, so that’s not really helpful either.

Ventari, then! Nope, not a single boon to be seen on the base Ventari skills. The trait line has the already mentioned 3s of Regen/Swiftness on Staff’s healing orbs, but that’s not great uptime. The only other thing in Ventari’s trats is “Allies near the tablet gain Regneration.” Awesome, you get 2s of Regen with a… 3s ICD, okay, so again, def not reliable for actually proccing the trait.

The Invocation line has a few Fury effects, but either 10 or 20 sec ICDs make them also bad for this trait, the only trait that can work is Charged Mists, as it seems to have no ICD, but being able to reliably wait a bit to go back over 50% En and then JUST use enough En to go below the threshold seems like it’d be hell. That and Rolling Mists is in the same tier, and really, you’re gonna take Rolling Mists.

Finally we get to Glint, as mentioned before, the Facets all have a 3s pulse, but this pulse is on a shared timer. So this means even staggering the activation of your Facets is pointless, since they’ll all pulse their boons at the exact same time. And none of the traits in the Herald line are able to activate Shared Empowerment regularly either.

So all in all, it looks to me like whoever designed this trait THOUGHT you would be able to stagger the activation on your Facets so that you could keep activating Inspiring Shared Empowerment off cooldown. Sadly it seems that only Impossible Odds and Inspiring Reinforcement can do this, making this an absurdly niche trait, and I doubt the designers intended for Herald to be crap at utilizing one of its own traits.

The easiest solution, IMO, is to just remove the ICD of Shared Empowerment. Which will essentially mean that while running 3 Facets you’ll get 3 stacks of Might per active Facet every 3 seconds, and makes running more Facets a great way to use the trait to its fullest. It also means things such as F2 will give you a small burst of 5 stacks of Might. Overall, the trait seems sound, but it’s severely held back due to the way Facets work, and between putting each Facet on an individual timer, and just removing the ICD on Shared Empowerment? It seems to me that the latter is the far easier and more sensible option.

Main thing I figure they could do is bump Pistols up to 1k or even 1.2k range, and then give mainhand Pistol the same treatment Warrior Rifle got. Namely, remove the Bleed on the auto and cause it to instead give 1 Initiative if you hit a Vulnerable target. Gives it a bit of synergy with Body Shot, and gives a viable way to gather up Init and fuel Unload.

Guardian already has a skill where they set themselves on fire. I don’t think you’re going to convince Guard players that they should be taking damage while using that.

I saw an earlier topic asking if Rage skills would work with Peak Performance, and wasn’t surprised by the answer, but it did give me another thought. I know that any trait that activates when a Burst skill is used considers Primal Bursts to all be T3 Adrenaline Burst skills, but will a full Berserk Adrenaline bar be considered T3 Adrenaline for traits such as Peak Performance, or will they only be considered T1? Thanks!

I basically came here to point out that this trait was pretty bad. But yeah, if it’s put on any of the 4 base stats, it’d be far better. Glad to hear there’s talk of it being based on Prec instead of HealPow.

Short version? Give the Necro effects more AoE, make them less selfish. I don’t care if this is a design decision, it’s a pretty bad one when your game encourages working in groups. I’m going to attempt to explain how I’d fix the currently shown traits to make Necro more useful in PvE/WvW, as well as making them better in general. Now then, the specializations and what changes, if any, I’d propose.

Spite: This line is actually solid. No DS interactions, but it doesn’t really need it. It gives you lots of stuff that weakens foes as their health decreases, and has reasonably short CDs to ensure they’ll keep triggering as you go. About the only one I have an issue with is Signet Mastery, mainly because the active effect of Signet of the Locust won’t do jack for you if you’re struck while in DS. Signet of Spite’s active might be better, utterly cripple the enemy instead of trying to heal yourself. Would need a bigger CD, but still plenty useful. Only other change is I’d make Spiteful Spirit pulse while in DS, every 15s, instead of only on entering. It only benefits DS “flashing”, where you pop into DS to get effects and hop back out. If you can manage to stay in DS, then you should get the effects to keep triggering, IMO. This doesn’t hurt flashing, it just makes staying in DS if you can manage it equally viable.

Curses: This line focuses on conditions and crits, and is pretty solid, including a VERY difficult choice for GM trait. There are some spots where it could be improved, though. First off, Toxic Landing, giving myself 6s Weakness when I take fall damage is bad. The condition will slow you down after taking the damage, since you stay in combat until it’s cleared, and it could hinder your ability to attack well in WvW, especially since your Weakness would last longer than theirs. The other change would be to the Master Minor effect, Furious Demise. As with Spiteful Spirit, make it pulse, but in addition to that, make this an AoE to your allies. Cut the duration down to 3s instead of 5s, and make it pulse every 12s or whenever you enter DS. Suddenly a Necro brings 25% Fury uptime to the party, and is a huge help. And again, this means that staying in DS is rewarded just as much as flashing.

Death Magic: Focusing on minions and toughness, this line is also pretty solid. But as before, my issues are with the “this happens on entering DS” effects. Shrouded Removal, make it AoE, make it pulse every 10s or something similar, helps out the party and you can flash or stay in DS, both are equally useful. Beyond the Veil, again, make it AoE, change it to on entering DS and pulse every 15 or 18 secs. Prioritize players, but still lets it affect minions. Now a Necro is giving the party 1/5 or 1/6 Protection uptime, pretty useful. Same with Unholy Sanctuary, it’s a really small amount of healing for the Necro, but make it AoE for the party, now you’re keeping the party’s health topped up as well.

Blood Magic: A solid spec IMO, and the only one currently that gives some party support. Unholy Martyr is decent, although with it I would also make it so that Life Blast changes into Plague Blast, so that you can remove the conditions you gain while on land. For Deathly Invigoration, I don’t really know what could be done with it. My only real idea would be to just make it a more powerful version of the altered Unholy Sanctuary, but only affecting allies, still pulsing every 10-12 secs, but stronger since it’s not affecting you and is on a slower pulse.

Soul Reaping: The final spec, and the only one I really have no problems with. Only change I’d make is let Dhuumfire also affect Plague Blast, and have Foot in the Grave pulse its Stability every 15 secs or so, possibly letting it be AoE. It’s only one stack, so not too significant.

So yeah, those are my thoughts, generally make the Necro a better party unit, and change the DS traits to pulse while in DS in addition to activating when entering DS. I could be incredibly stupid on these though, so what are your thoughts?

Hey there Jon, glad to see you on the boards. A couple of suggestions I have for improving the trait system are as follows.

• Change the level unlocks to 15/40/65 for Adept/Master/Grandmaster.

I know you said that you moved these to aid new players in having more time to understand the system, but as others have stated, as they currently are levels 21-29, and 31-35 just feel like dead levels. You don’t really gain much as a character, you’ve gotten all your utility slots by 20, and the game can likely feel like more of the “run around and do stuff to gain levels” with no real experimentation or fun. Traits unlocking that early gives players the incentive to spend their 20s running around, seeing how the trait system works, and getting used to it. It also means that you can start having challenges in these ranges as well. You could have the Shadow Behemoth or a Kessex Hills boss be one of the trait challenges, for example.

• Make trait unlocks account-bound.

Not really much to say here. You know what’s worse than having to do map completion (which is getting changed, thankfully) or doing a non-timed boss like the Priest of Balthazar or the Dredge Commissar? Doing it again for every single one of your alts.

• Let players choose from multiple objectives for a trait unlock.

Pretty simple here too. Just have multiple possible objectives for a trait, and if a player completes any one of them, they get the trait unlocked. This means the WvWers don’t have to mess around in PvE if they don’t want to, and vice versa. Along with not requiring someone to go to a map they hate just for a trait.

• Map markers for trait challenges.

Either mark the map when using the “show me” option, or just enable the player to turn markers on for any traits available in the current map. It will immensely help players with knowing how and where to go to get a trait.

• Allow alternate currencies for purchasing traits.

Requiring gold and skill points to let a leveling character get a trait can be very bad, especially combined with my point above where you need to repeat this for every single character, and the fact that skill points are very valuable for a leveling character. Potentially you can allow a player to purchase the traits with laurels, or karma, or even badges of honour.

Those are my thoughts, you’ve already shown that you’re nixing map completion for traits, and also looking at various events like Priest of Balthazar, so I won’t comment on those, just that I’m glad you’re looking to see how it’s a problem and how to fix it. Hope this list helps in some way, thanks!

Order selection should be a purely story/RP based choice, having it affect WvW is a bad idea in so many ways.

Except that in order to get that one bag per minute, you’d have to do your best Fry impersonation during your interaction with Heal-o-Tron to keep the event running. SOMEONE’S got to give up that gold.

It’s not the skin that’s the subject here. It’s the feature of legendaries where one legendary is equal to having a weapon of that type in every stat spread at ascended power for every character. But you still need to swap sigils occasionally to get maximum effect from your new stat spread.

I agree, having a legendary “eat” a rune/sigil to add it to a list of available runes/sigils could also be a good alternative.

While I know it’s a decent ways off for me to get any kind of legendary item, a thought crossed my mind now that we can share them among characters, one that will be particularly problematic if/when we finally get legendary armour. Namely, the problem with runes/sigils and the fact legendaries can swap their stat spreads at will.

To clarify, I’ll point to the legendary sceptre, Meteorlogicus. For a Guardian, the sceptre is a pure damage weapon, so it’s great as a Berserker setup, where you can crank out as much damage as possible, and to this end you might use a Superior Sigil of Force or Night. However, using a sceptre on a Necromancer, you would want it to be Dire or Rabid, as for them a sceptre is a condition damage weapon. Swapping the stat spread is easy, however then the issue of your sigil comes into play. You might prefer a Superior Sigil of Malice or Bursting instead of the ones you’d use on a Guardian. This will run you quite a bit of gold just to swap the sigils, so suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a good prospect to share a legendary among characters unless its current sigils work for them, leaving it a more attractive option to not use your legendary, and just use an exotic sceptre for your Necro.

The issue will be even more pronounced if/when legendary armour comes out. Runes can get VERY expensive, and unless you’re only using full Zerker with Scholar/Strength runes, you will likely at some point want to swap the stats just to experiment with differing builds or just to have fun. Heck, you’d likely want to swap to Soldier/Knight/Dire for WvW purposes, but then you have to pay loads of gold just to swap out your rune set. Again, you could just get exotics of the appropriate stat spread, but that’s ignoring one of the coolest features introduced on legendary gear, the stat swapping.

About the only idea I’ve gotten to fix this is to just allow a right-click option on legendary items only to remove the sigil/rune currently in it. As far as the full freedom to swap them, I’d personally also suggest that changing the skin of a legendary item shouldn’t cost any transmutation charges as well (if I want to use cultural skins on my armour, for example). But that’s merely an aesthetic issue for way down the line. The main point of this post is to point out an issue that exists with legendary gear, and their design of being freely changeable to whatever the player wants them to be.

That’s all I have to say on the subject, so what do you guys think? Am I thinking too much about something that’s not really a problem?

To be fair, at least you don’t have it as bad as people wanting to craft cloth gear. Still pretty bad, but it could be worse.

First off, yes, this is an entirely selfish post, as I’m on Dragonbrand, and while we’re in Gold league, we’re one of the bottom fish, fighting with Mag over next to last place. However, while we’re apparently able to beat Silver and Bronze league players, we’re going to get less WvW benefits (the Artisan/Gathering boosts, for example) and due to the WvW Spring Tournament, we likely will be getting few points. I’m mainly posting this thread asking that those in the higher leagues gain a bit of bonus points both from Power of the Mists as well as gaining some higher points from the final rewards from the Spring Tournament. Ideally, I’d suggest that all Silver league servers start off at Tier 2 or 3 for their Power of the Mists bonuses (AKA +4 or +6 to Artisan, +2 or +3 to Energetic, etc) and Gold league servers start at Tier 4 or 5 for their bonuses. The points to go up to the next tier would still start at 927 to get your first Artisan upgrade, you basically just gain the tiers as a free bonus to reward you and your world for being in a higher league.

Like I said, this is probably a pretty selfish post, but I do feel it would give more advantage to being in a higher tier server instead of the dread that happens when you’re just barely at the top of silver and then jump up to gold and are suddenly getting stomped.

Regarding the whole “booting is there for players with expired or one-use passes” deal. With either scenario, isn’t that character basically unable to get back in once they leave? And I’m pretty sure you can’t play the entire game from within the Queen’s Terrace, the only thing you could maybe do is TP flipping, and crafting to empty collection so another character in the field would have more space to deposit into collection tab. Those are such minor things compared to the inconvenience that booting on load causes that I don’t see an issue with them.

Behellagh.1468:

The bank in DR is a free WP away and it drops you off just outside it.

It bugs me that making a convenience item account bound instead of soul bound isn’t enough for some players. That the minor inconvenience of parking your characters at or near a bank to allow you to swap these items is considered a deal breaker.

shakes head

Bold emphasis mine. The entire point of this 1000 gem item is solely to provide greater convenience to the player that purchases it. Account binding is nearly a requirement, as was shown with the gathering tools, because whether a player has one character or fifty, you want to give them value for their money spent. Any “minor inconveniences” such as being booted on load severely hamper whether players (or at least myself) consider a convenience item worth buying. I know that unless we get any info on if these issues are being fixed with the feature patch, or at least planned to, I won’t be purchasing the pass. If just the kick on load issue was fixed? It’d be an instant buy for me.

Yes, except that same logic can apply to the infinite gathering tools, and we know how that turned out. And I wager it was both greatly preferred by players and resulted in them selling more of the tools in general.

The main issues with the pass are twofold. First is the same issue with other account bound items, namely the infinite gathering tools and the Salvage-O-Matic, that being that you basically have to use a bank as a relay point for any characters when you want to swap the items. While a “bank bag” which had an account-wide inventory (AKA it acts as a tiny, 20-slot mobile bank and takes up a bag slot) would be preferable, it’s likely not something that’ll happen. The second issue is the fact that the Terrace boots you out of it upon logging in, even if you have the pass in your inventory.

The primary stopgap solution I see for right now, would be to just not have the Terrace boot players out on login. Don’t let them IN unless they have the pass, but if they have it, you can likely assume that they got in there legit. You still need to use the bank to hand the pass off to any alts, but at least you can use the bank in the Terrace, instead of having to walk to the one in DR, or wait through the loading screen. This item is all about convenience, so it should definitely be as convenient as possible for players to use.

I recognise that these issues may be getting fixed in the feature patch. But since the pass is only on sale for one day, it’s likely best to tell us NOW if what issues will be getting fixed, what won’t be fixed yet (but are planned to be) and what issues will not be worked on. If I were to be told that at the least it booting you out on login would be getting fixed? I would instantly buy the pass. But currently it doesn’t seem like 1k gems worth of convenience to me.

Hmm, one solution to this could be to simply change the skin of the armour, if it’s of a different race as the base, to the proper cultural tier of the new race. So if your Human Thief is using T3 Cultural on the Ascended armour, you can swap it to a Charr Engineer and the appearance will change to Charr T3 Cultural, and swap to Human T3 Cultural when equipped by a human. Likely not the best solution, but about the best idea I’ve got so far.

Have it also affect self healing, and have it cause Water fields to last 2 secs longer, THEN we might have something.

Another pair of ideas that randomly popped into my head. If one knight goes down, A) Increase the cap of players that can get the attunement buff to 75 for the remaining 2 knights, or 150 if there’s only one knight, and Allow players to use those platforms which teleport you to the Breachmaker, to teleport to one of the other two knights. This way players that kill their knight first can still help out, and waste minimal time as well.

My suggestions: When the Knights fall in, they need to have their event display up no matter where you are in the map. In addition, you need to put in an indicator of how many people are AT each of the Knights, either by an indicator of how many are actually in the area, or how many actually have the appropriate buff.

2 likely wouldn’t be needed if you simply charged people gems (or maybe charged transmutation crystals) to add non-gem store items to the wardrobe. People would hate the limited space in your base proposal, but if you give people slots to fill by giving spots for every skin in the game, like with minis, there’s gonna be people that will be eager to make full collections of various dungeon gear, living story items (potentially make these auto-added to the wardrobe like gem store skins are) and other such things.

For all those saying “They want to sell as many as possible so they make the most money!” that reasoning is flawed, and here’s why. The current single use setup for skins means that the only ones that are going to buy a gem store one are those that are really high level and REALLY like the skin (since it’s one-time use they’ll likely want it on an ascended armour set or something similar, since otherwise they’ll just need to spend more on transmutation crystals) or those that are low level and don’t understand how the skins work. And let me clarify, neither of those customers are going to be buying more than one of these skins, EVER. I’d love to hear from ANet for metrics on how many people actually buy more than one set of the same skin, because I guarantee you it’s abysmally low.

The thing is, most of the customers that are not buying gems would gladly buy them if gem items gave a better value for the money spent. If I could put any gem store skin into a skin archive from which I could pull infinite copies whenever I liked? I’d likely have bought up nearly every skin that’s been offered. Because that’s a good value for my money, and it makes me happy to support a game that does that good faith in the customer. If I could put Royal Terrace passes on all my characters at once after buying one in the gem store, I’d have snatched one up INSTANTLY. The gathering tool thing has been fixed somewhat, but there’s no reason there can’t be a similar library with it. Buy the tool, you can now pull infinite copies from a tool storage for all of your characters. They could even do it better with Transmutation Crystals, simply use these on an item to add them to the same skin archive that the gem store skins are automatically added to. These are just some of the options that they could do to make so many more happy customers that will gladly buy up the items that get offered on the gem store. The OP is absolutely correct, as is the poster above me, players need to see that there’s good value for their money spent.

Oh, and I also agree that dyes need to unlock for all characters on your account, otherwise I’m not touching any gem store dyes, ever.

The main point of the new tools, IMO, is for newer players that missed out on older tools, or those that actually like the new skin better. And that’s how it should be, IMO.

At least for me, the primary reason why I don’t like the added bonus of the Watchwork Pick is that it shows a desire to simply pander to player greed, instead of giving them good value for their money spent. Look at so many of the other items in the gem store: One time use armour/weapon skins, the Terrace/Airship passes only being usable on one character at a time (and apparently booting you out if you log into the locations, even with a pass in inventory), even the infinite tools were once soulbound and then upgraded at a later point to be account bound. The whole reason was to make the player feel like they got good value for their money.

If you didn’t get one of the prior mining picks, I don’t fault you one bit for buying the Watchwork one. However, these picks are a horrible buy for anyone that bought one of the prior picks, because it costs the exact same (Molten and Bone picks have most recently sold for 1000 gems, same as this) but has added functionality. I love this game, and want to see it become something great, but this item sets a bad precedent. Thankfully it looks like they didn’t make the latest gathering sickle have any kind of bonus, so it seems that they’ve learned that these added bonuses are not the way to go. IMO, the best way for them to start selling more stuff in the gem store is to give better value to a consumer for their money. The one-use skins and character bound stuff needs to stop. ANet needs to let the skins reside in a skin archive where the player can pull a copy as many times as they like. They need to have the same happen with the infinite tools (no needing to hand things off at a bank between characters) and the same with the Terrace/Airship passes. If they make more things in the gem store user friendly, I guarantee it’ll make the players far happier, and they will see far more items being bought up in the gem store.

One potential solution could be to have each event reward loot. Have like some small chest handed out to each player after each event that they clear, instead of or in addition to the enemies dropping loot themselves.

No CD on attunement swap and just put the CD on the traits that proc on attunement swap? Oh please let that be one of the changes.

Primarily because the Royal Pass is an item that interests me, although I didn’t want to get any of the time-limited versions, nor did I want the infinite use one due to the issue stated in this thread, since I have 8 total characters. I like the idea of the Terrace itself, and would like for the Pass to be a viable purchase and easy to use no matter how many or few characters you have on your account.

Sorry, derail wasn’t intended, just offering up alternate solutions. Am I right that it kicks you out even if the pass is in your character’s inventory on login, or is it only for characters that don’t have it directly in inventory?

Simple fix would be to have it in an archive like the Zenith weapon skins are, where you can get a copy for each of your characters. Hell, they could do this with other stuff too, how much would you love it if buying an infinite use tool or the salvage-o-matic meant you now had infinite copies to put on your characters, instead of having to swap them at the bank every time you logged in and out?

Well, I pretty much agree with the OP, but I’d like to clarify. I don’t mind difficult content, I LOVE it, in fact. But the problem with the Wurm, is that after you’ve gotten the thrill of that first kill and all your achievements, are the other rewards you get from repeating the content worth your time in ANY way at all? ANet needs to make the rewards from the content worth the time, effort, and co-ordination they are asking of their players in these events. If I’m just getting 10 greens and a couple rares, I expect that off of killing ONE wurm, not for killing all 3 and then killing the heads.

Mingus Dew.8620:

Karl McLain.5604:

Warrior:
Our changes for warrior focus on providing telegraphs to stronger skills and to reduce the passive benefit gained from Healing Signet.

• Healing Signet: Reduced the passive heal by 8%.
  • We’re looking for ways to incentivize using Healing Signet’s active without increasing overall sustain. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Here is my suggestion for how you could incentivize using Healing Signet’s active without increasing overall sustain…

Instead of having a passive that incentivizes not using the active. Change the passive to trigger a heal if the player uses their Burst skill. The player could then choose to lose short-term damage by utilizing their class mechanic to deliver some damage and passive heal, or use the active heal to provide a larger heal and maintain that heightened level of damage, but lose out on that potential sustained heal for a short time.

This would reduce the passive benefit gained from Healing Signet by requiring more active play to receive the heal and making a trade off between passive healing and damage. While incentivizing the use of Healing Signet’s active element by not requiring the player to make that trade off, but still making the player choose between burst healing or sustained healing.

Quaggan likes this idea. Very much. And I do too.

My 2 copper.

Necromancer
The Dhuumfire change is going to sway many Necros from actually using it, for one you’re lowering the duration to 3 secs instead of the 4 base it is now. Another issue is that you’re putting it on Life Blast, a very slow moving projectile which anyone can dodge, and which requires the condi Necro to get in the enemy’s face to be effective.

In short, the added requirements far outweigh the “benefits” you’ve labeled. It requires player to enter DS, which would require Lifeforce (good luck with that in PvP unless using Staff or the Lifeforce granting Signet!), is on a slow moving projectile, and the utility disabling bug with DS means that by the time you exit DS and are able to cast Epidemic the Burning will either be gone or close to it.

Elementalist
Armour of Earth going down to 75 secs is good, but it’s still far too high for being a self-target Stability/Protection and stunbreak. Look at Guardian’s Stand Your Ground, this is a Shout which grants Retal/Stability to the GROUP, and also stunbreaks for the user, this is a 30 sec CD skill. Then there’s Balanced Stance on Warriors, granting Stability/Swiftness, as well as stunbreak, and is 40 secs of CD. I get that you’re trying to “shave” the skills, but please admit that you went overboard on several aspects of the Ele, the high CD on things like Glyph of Storms, Arcane Shield, Armour of Earth, and EVERYTHING in their 4 and 5 slots (like Ride the Lightning, still a silly nerf that has not been implemented on anything like Ranger’s Swoop, or Warrior’s Rush, so either actually implement it on similar skills (Note: This is a Very Bad Idea) or revert the RtL nerf) that easily could be brought down by a lot.