Guild Wars 2

Give us a way of upgrading the DPS we’ve given up to our pets, to ascended level
Reasoning: No other profession is forced to give up some of their DPS to their profession mechanic, allowing them to have full ascended damage. Perhaps we could have a way training our pets from Juveniles to Adults and when doing so add some player selected attributes to the pet. Perhaps use a pet trainer NPC to allow us to return to them and change our attribute selection.

Give Pets 0.75s Invulnerability when player dodges.
Reasoning: This is the simplest Pet Dodge action to implement, and could be added by re-using the existing ‘companions defence’ tech, and without requiring new pet animations.

Improve auto-attacks to ensure that they actually hit
Reasoning: The pet should be a source of low (but persistent) DPS. This is worthless if pet attacks miss most of the time.

Remove 2 attack skills from each pet, leaving just auto-attack and special attack
Reasoning: Pets are often nerfed because players complain about being killed by an NPC. By reducing AI skills down to a single auto-attack, then the only times players get killed by pets will be when a player uses F2. This also opens up the UI space of the two removed skill slots (and the animations assigned to those skills) to be re-purposed.

Merge F1 and F3 into a single positional command toggle.
Reasoning: You would never use both together, and therefore having them as separate profession mechanics is just a waste of an F slot.

Move the passive/aggressive toggle to F3.
Reasoning: This is our most useful “mouse-click” pet control, and by making it one of the primary pet mechanics passive mode can be improved to give a more interesting and player controlled mechanic.

Prevent pets from attacking at all in passive mode
Reasoning: ‘Avoid Combat’ should do what it says. When in this mode a pet should avoid combat regardless of whether or not it (or the player) is being attacked.

Prevent pets from triggering traps when in passive mode
Reasoning: There are certain parts of the game where regardless of how carefully a player (or party) avoids the red circles indicating a trap, the pet walks straight through, triggering the trap and killing the player. This was especially annoying at the start of the original aetherblade dungeon in LS1. The player should have a way of ensuring that the pet will not kill them.

Prevent pets from being damaged by AoE effects while in passive mode
Reasoning: If a pet cannot attack at all in passive mode, then it should gain some form of defensive ability in return. Pets could still be damaged by targeted attacks, but would be safe from untargeted attacks.

Use the two skills removed in earlier suggestion as passive mode skills
Reasoning: If a pet cannot attack in passive mode, then the attack skills it has access to are irrelevant. Instead, the other two slots could be assigned to a passive-mode ‘auto-attack’ which pulses a minor AoE boon, and a passive-mode F2 skill which grants a better boon under player control. This also places all 4 pet skills under player control the two “auto-attacks” controlled by switching the pet between passive and aggressive, the other two controlled by F2.

You only get Fury on weapon swap in you trait into Skirmishing, and you only get Fury on pet swap once every 30 seconds, and only if you’ve traited into Clarion Bond.

IMO it wouldn’t actually ‘kill’ Remorseless at all, so saying it doesn’t work isn’t really accurate, it would work just fine.

There would still be plenty of reason to trait Remorseless for the other Trait-based sources of Fury (e.g. Wilderness Knowledge, Two-Handed Training) which are more accessible sources of Fury anyway.

That said, I hadn’t considered those traits, which would make it a slightly superflous upgrade.

LughLongArm.5460:

You can do it also with murrelow, the field duration is longer, and because he’s not a range pet, its easyer to land the field on a good position.

The other good thing about the murellow is that the poison field is located at the pet, which means that you can slot Beastly Warden and taunt nearby foes into the pulsing poison field.

Each pulse also counts as an attack, so if you’ve got enough nearby foes Murellow F2 with taunt can generate a lot of might with “Strength of the Pack!”.

Downside to Murellow is that it’s a bear, and therefore has a significantly lower condition damage attribute than the devourers and spiders.

LoYF

I’d much rather have piercing arrows than random bounces. We already have a weapon that randomly bounces, I don’t think all showrtbow arrows should. Plus, piercing arrows promotes the positional play that shortbow is targetted towards.

Swapping the proc from dodge to evade would actually make it harder to proc the LoYF effect. Evade only procs things when you succeed in evading something, unlike dodge which triggers regardless. So yes there would be scenarios where the trait procs off of evasive skills, but in turn it will no longer proc from a sacrifised dodge.

IMO it would be better if the trait was primarily updated so that the LoYF effect stacks duration. That way a double dodge produces an effect that lasts twice as long, rather than the second casting overwriting the first, something that I find particularly irritating about the trait.

Durational stacking would also open up the effect to having two different procs, one from a dodge the other from an evade.

e.g.

Dodge – 4s of LoYF
Evade – 1s of LoYF (per attack evaded)

Opening Strike

Instead of merging Alpha Training into OS (As suggested in the linked threrad), I think that OS and Alpha training should be slightly improved in line with what they currently do.

e.g.

Opening Strike – Cause Vulnerability with your first strike when entering combat, or swapping weapons (dodge too??).

Alpha Training – Regain Opening Strike when swapping pets (and also on F2??). Pets also have Opening Strike

I’ve suggested this before, but IMO the best fix for spirits would be to convert the ‘active’ into an on-cast effect. That way they’d work like GW1 spirits and go onto cool-down while they are still active (rather than after they die). 20 seconds (or so) after summoning the spirit, you could then summon a new one and if you’ve moved on, your spirit would essentially ‘move’ too.

I’d like to see the infinite gathering tools converted into a single set of unlimited gathering tool items and a gathering tool skin

e.g.

Unlimited Harvesting Sickle
Unlimited Mining Pick
Unlimited Logging Axe

Fused Molten Sickle Skin
Tireless Harvesting Minion Skin
.. and so on

They could then sell the Unlimited tools in the Gem Store for one price, and the skins for another.

Sounds like you’d probably enjoy the new Stronghold map
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stronghold

You have multiple day boon durations on all 8 of your characters?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Kaz.5430:

You also can’t complete all of the core mastery points without playing through the personal story multiple times, picking each race, and picking each of the three orders.

You can only receive a total of 8 Mastery Points from the Personal Story; one for each level arc, (1 for L10, 1 for L20, 1 for L30, etc.). Thus, one need only play through the Personal Story once.

You sure about that? According to the achievements page on the Wiki, there are 3 different personal story step achievements for each race, 3 that are order specific, and 4 that are generic.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hero_%28achievements%29#Crime_and_Punishment

Sir Mad.1092:

Yep.

Complaining is fine. Making suggestions to fix something that’s bothering you is great. But please, make sure you actually play the game before you start complaining about something.

I wasn’t complaining, I couldn’t care less about the fact mastery points cannot “all” be acquired on the same character Was simply pointing out, because if the OP is going to complain about mastery points that require more than one character, they might as well cover all the bases rather than just some of them.

You also can’t complete all of the core mastery points without playing through the personal story multiple times, picking each race, and picking each of the three orders.

If the moderators wish to merge this thread into the big one about top 5 priorities, even though it’s not actually answering the question that thread asks, then that’s up to them.

Btw, I edited the OP with a slightly modified straw poll link

There’s a straw poll with the question “Do you want Alpine Borderlands back?”, but all three of the options in my poll bring back the Alpine borderlands. There’s a big difference between wanting “just” alpine, alpine on occasion, and alpine as an option with other options too.

I was just wondering which option most of you would prefer.

1. Scrap Desert, and revert all three borderlands to Alpine.
2. Cycle between Alpine borderland and Desert Borderlands every week or two.
3. Have three different borderland maps instead of three identical maps e.g. 1x Desert, 1x Alpine and 1x EotM (temporarily until a third borderland can be created).

[edit] Made a straw poll, with a slightly modified selection of options
http://strawpoll.me/7114546

Ranger : Alchemist (or Shaman/Scout)

The alchemist is the master of using natural herbs and plants, to create potions and preparations, and introduces preparations as a GW2 utility type. In addition to preparation utilities, the alchemist gains access to a potion belt for creating combo fields, and a weapon with access to three combo finishers.

Preparations return the missing skill type from GW1 to the GW2 Ranger, and the potion belt provides access to an Engineer-like kit functionality, but with potions rather than Elixirs.

The primary aim of this elite spec is to showcase the GW2 combo field mechanic with a class that can truly master it.

Main Hand : Dagger

- (1) Includes Whirl Finisher [3rd in sequence], 900 Range
- (2) Includes Leap Finisher, 900 Range
- (3) Includes Blast Finisher, 900 Range

Utilities : Preparations.

- Using a preparation creates a boon that adds a preparation effect to outgoing attacks.
- Prior to application, a preparation must be mixed, resulting in a delay before activation.
- Only one preparation can be in place at a time, however the alchemist can combine two preparations to create a different one during the mixing phase.
- If a new preparation is mixed while an existing preparation is fully in effect, the existing preparation will be overwritten once the new preparation has finished mixing.

Preparation Stages.

- (1) Mixing XXXXX : Status effect lasts for 1s and will convert to a preparation boon when it expires. If a second preparation utility is cast during this stage, the two will combine to create a different preparation.
- (2) Prepared XXXXX : Boon will last for 20s, effecting outgoing weapon attacks. On cast, boon will also reset contents of Potion Belt.

F5 : Potion Belt.

- Pressing F5 will swap out the utility half of the skill bar with a potion belt.
- Pressing F5 again will revert back to the original utility skill bar, remembering the contents of the potion belt.
- The potion belt contains 4 potions that are dropped at the player location (trait allows for ground targeting).
- Potions create a combo field depending on the potion thrown.
- Each potion on the belt can only be thrown once, and once all 4 have been used the F5 skill will go on cool-down until a new set of potions has been mixed.
- The 5th potion belt skill can be used to re-mix the potions on the belt, causing the belt on cool down early (i.e. before all potions have been used).
- By default, the alchemist will have a specific selection of potions available, however, if potions are mixed when a preparation is active, a different selection of 4 potions (reflecting the preparation) will be added to the belt.

Utility Skills

Preparation of Fire (utility skill)
- Creates 1s of Mixing Fire (effect)
- Followed by 20s of Prepared Flames (effect) if not combined

Preparation of Water (utility skill)
- Creates 1s of Mixing Water (effect)
- Followed by 20s of Prepared Water (effect) if not combined

Preparation of Darkness (utility skill)
- Creates 1s of Mixing Darkness (effect)
- Followed by 20s of Prepared Darkness (effect) if not combined

Preparation of Light (utility skill)
- Creates 1s of Mixing Light (effect)
- Followed by 20s of Prepared Light (effect) if not combined

Mixing Chart

- Fire
- Water
- Light
- Dark
- Fire + Light = Lightening
- Fire + Dark = Smoke
- Fire + Water = Poison
- Water + Dark = Ice
- Water + Light = Rainbow [new!]
- Light + Dark = Ethereal

Mixing Fire (effect)
- converts to Prepared Flames if not combined
- combined with Mixing Water, converts to Prepared Poison
- combined with Mixing Darkness, converts to Prepared Smoke
- combined with Mixing Light, converts to Prepared Lightening

Mixing Water (effect)
- converts to Prepared Water if not combined
- combined with Mixing Fire, converts to Prepared Poison
- combined with Mixing Darkness, converts to Prepared Ice
- combined with Mixing Light, converts to Prepared Rainbow [new!]

Mixing Darkness (effect)
- converts to Prepared Darkness if not combined
- combined with Mixing Water, converts to Prepared Ice
- combined with Mixing Fire, converts to Prepared Smoke
- combined with Mixing Light, converts to Prepared Ethereal

Mixing Light (effect)
- converts to Prepared Light if not combined
- combined with Mixing Water, converts to Prepared Rainbow [new!]
- combined with Mixing Fire, converts to Prepared Lightening
- combined with Mixing Darkness, converts to Prepared Ethereal

No Preparation, F5 Potion Belt contains:

- 1x Potion of Fire (creates Fire Field)
- 1x Potion of Water (creates Water Field)
- 1x Potion of Darkness (creates Dark Field)
- 1x Potion of Light (created Light Field)

Preparation Effects

Prepared Flames (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks inflict burning
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Fire (creates Fire Field)

Prepared Water (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks heal in AoE around target
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Water (creates Water Field)

Prepared Darkness (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks inflict blindness
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Darkness (creates Dark Field)

Prepared Light (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks grant retaliation
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Light (creates Light Field)

Prepared Poison (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks inflict poison & vulnerability
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Poison (creates Poison Field)

Prepared Smoke (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks grant stealth
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Smoke (creates Smoke Field)

Prepared Lightening (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks grant AoE swiftness around target
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Lightening (creates Lightening Field)

Prepared Ice (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks grant Frost Aura
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Ice (creates Ice Field)

Prepared Ethereal (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks inflict Confusion
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Ethereal (creates Ethereal Field)

Prepared Rainbow (effect)
- For the next 20s, attacks inflict Torment
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Rainbow (creates Rainbow Field)

Rainbow Field

- New field with a different effect for each finisher type.
- Projectile – Torment [condition]
- Leap – Resistance [boon]
- Whirl – Taunt [cc]
- Blast – AoE Rejuvenation [healing]

Healing Preparation & Potions

- Doesn’t Mix
- For the next 20s, attacks grant regeneration (the guardian boon)
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4x Potions of Healing
- Healing potions give instant health (rather than regen)
- Healing potions work like Elixirs, can be drunk or thrown

Elite Preparation & Potions

- Doesn’t Mix
- For the next 20s, attacks steal a boon
- F5 Potion Belt contains 4 different potions that can be drunk or thrown for allies.
- 1x Potion of Fury
- 1x Potion of Protection
- 1x Potion of Invulnerability
- 1x Potion of Stealth

There’s a simple reason why the advanced Logistics Mastery doesn’t work in WvW, and it has nothing to do with it being too hard to code, or ANet not being bothered.

Mastery Tracks are a PvE system, equivalent to WvW Ability Tracks. Therefore PvE Masteries don’t work in WvW, for the exact same reason that WvW Abilities don’t work in PvE.

If Gliding and Autoloot (and any other future PvE Mastery that might be useful in WvW) are to be introduced to WvW, they would have to come via a new WvW Ability line.

I don’t know if it’s ‘dead’ but it’s certainly not up there with other guilds post HoT, no Guild Hall for example. There are still 96 members, of whom 90% have been online in the last week.

Out of interest, why create a new Ranger guild rather than promote the existing one?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Favorable-Winds-Wind-Ranger-Guild/first

That said, I’ve got an open slot so I guess I can be in both

When you download an executable file using a browser you get two choices, you can either save the file to your computer or run the file instantly. In firefox the prompt tells you that you’re opening the file, and offers save as an alternative.

If you “run” the file, then GW2 will be downloaded to the same location as the file, which (as you did not specify a save location) is in a temporary folder on your computer, and will be deleted when you reboot and the temporary folder is cleared.

You need to click “save”, pick a non temporay location on your computer (e.g. C:\GuildWars2\), and download the exe to that folder. Then go to the folder where you downloaded the installer and double-click the exe to install the game in that location.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it slightly amusing (and a little hypocritical) that some people are complaining about new Gem Store content “after” having spent $100 on the xpac?

You do recall that $50 of the $100 was for gem store stuff, rather than the xpac itself right?

The xpac itself cost $50.

The first $20 of your other $50 was for a gemstore game upgrade worth 2400 gems ($30), everything in that upgrade was most likely created by the Gem Store team.

The remaining $30 of that $50 fee was for 4000 gems (worth $50), which could have purchased both the appearance packs released since HoT came out, without needing to spend a dime.

You’re actually complaining that they are providing you with stuff to buy with the 4000 gems, that you paid extra to get.

Everything sold in the Gem Store AFAIK, has been created by a dedicated Gem Store development team, they are not stealing content developed for other parts of the game, they are releasing the content that they have created specifically for the store.

It’s quite strange being PM’ed to respond to a thread, especially as I’m not particularly active in the WvW forum. I also find it a little odd to see requests for ‘rewards’ for coming up with the idea. IMO, having my idea implemented would be reward enough for me.

I’ll respond as requested, but not to support the idea, which quite frankly I’m not too keen on. There are much better ideas floating around to fix WvW, IMO.

I’ll be honest though and say that I’ve not read the rest of the thread, some of my points may have already been made, others may have been altered or modified.

1. The NA and EU regions are split because they are in different data-centres. You can’t magically merge them together. They cannot play on the same maps, without needing to store all of the information for every character in both data-centres, and to be constantly replicating data between them. That constant replication between EU and US of all character data in real time, would be incredibly expensive and lead to bugs caused by replication errors.

2. I would rather fight ‘against’ players in my time-zone, that with them. However I know that large numbers prefer to be in an overpowered zerg. This would just lead to scenarios where players pick 3 time-zones that are going to have lower resistance, in order to get easy captures.

3. If my server owns all the borderlands, why do we still need 3 of them. IMO 2 borderlands (one alpine, the other Desert) would make more sense.

4. Picking which servers to fight will just lead to issues of certain ‘unliked’ servers being ganged up on. Might be fun for the bullies, but wont be fun for the players on those servers.

5. How are globes supposed to ‘ally’ with other globes if players are restricted to the number of globes they can attack in a week? If my globe has 2 allies, and I’m limited to fighting on 3 fronts, then all I can do is defend my own globe and my allies. No offensive play at all. Or I can attack and not defend my allies. What if I have 3 allies? What if my allies are not under attack during the time I play? This whole idea doesn’t make any real sense.

6. Low ranked worlds (or worlds with low populations) are protected and allowed to survive? Huh? I thought one of the points was to close low population realms? Why ‘protect’ worlds that need to be closed? Also, what If I’m on a low pop world and like defending, how can I defend if my world is protected?

7. 5 globes for NA, 4 globes for Africa, 3 for Australia, but just 1 for Asia?? Where are getting you population figures from. You can’t divide the player population up neatly be Time-zone. Some time-zones have a much bigger player-base than others. African globes will be almost empty and the NA globes will be overfilled.

8. This turns WvW into attacker vs defender, a two way battle, rather than a three-way. Three way battles are better for computer games because they lead to more interesting outcomes (look up the rule of threes). Plus all the maps are designed for three way combat.

So, back during Season 2 we learned that each Elder Dragon has 2 spheres of influence rather than just one.

Shadow was added to Zaitan, and Mind was added to Mordremoth, and we’ve speculated about the other Dragons.

People have queried both of these additions, Shadow not seemingly an obvious choice for a Zaitan strength, and Mind not seemingly all that important for Mordremoth, especially if that’s how it’s killed.

Yes Modremoth can influence Sylvari via their mind, but they are it’s minions, so that’s not exactly unique. It would be far more of a ‘mind’ dragon if it was taking over and talking to non-Sylvari via the mind.

What if the second sphere is actually the way to defeat the Dragon instead of a second strength, and the Priory just misunderstood.

I know, it’s easy to see how Mind could be the weakness of Mordremoth, but how then was Shadow the weakness of Zaitan?

Well, it depends on whether it was important to create or remove Zaitan’s shadow to weaken him. However, there is one thing that does both, bright light shone from a fixed source. Shine a light on a shadow and it weakens the shadow, shine a light on an object and it creates a shadow.

We kill Zaitan using the “MEGA-LIT” cannon, now if that doesn’t sound like a really bright light, I don’t know what would.

Tragic Positive.9356:

@anduriell

The problem is that even if mobile – they’d still be unreliable because of CC and damage. Having them move around doesn’t solve a single problem.

I kept repeating the idea that Spirits should have their Actives and Spawns swapped.
~ You call out a spirit to perform an ability and keep providing passive benefits for 25 seconds (30 sec CD).

Give this a thought and you’ll realize how many problems it would solve. And I haven’t touched a single idea of mobility but solved the problem you tried to solve with mobility.

I made a suggestion along these lines a while ago.

If the active was removed from being a skill that can be cast while the spirit lives, and turned into an on-cast effect, then spirits would be far more usable IMO. They would essentially return to being GW1 spirits.

The active skill is half the problem with spirits (rather than an improvement over the old design) because it prevents the spirit going on recharge until death.

You’d cast a spirit, get the active effect on cast and also get the passive effect during the spirits life time. You’d keep the ability to get the active on-demand, but most importantly, spirits would go on cooldown instantly after being cast.

If spirits continued to live for 60 seconds, and the cooldowns remained at 20 seconds, then you could summon (and therefore ‘move’) a spirit three times over the course of the current lifetime, and get three casts of the active.

I assume that the old GW1 rule of having and old spirit destroyed by a new one (to prevent spirit spam) would be in place so there would be no overlapping coverage (shame because it would be great for Natures Vengeance), but you’d still get the best parts of mobile and immobile spirits at the same time.

It wouldn’t be as useful to have a recharge that’s longer than the lifespan, simply because then you lose the ‘mobile’ effect that comes with being able to resummon a spirit that’s already in use. Unless of course you reduce the duration even further. I suppose having a lifetime of 15s with a cooldown of 20s (traited to 16s) might work.

Swagger.1459:

We have been complaining about the bleed restriction for years… Fist things first is get rid of bad mechanics, not keep them in. There, I helped you instead.

I disagree that the flanking effects on shortbow are bad mechanics, I personally think that they are what makes the shortbow interesting, and should be expanded to include a flanking mechanic on every skill. Doing that would actually give the shortbow an identity. I also think that our old +10% damage when flanking trait should be rolled into the shortbow.

Personally I think that if flanking effects and a +10% damage boost were added, the skills wouldn’t need to be overhauled all that much, with a couple of possible tweak improvements like giving the crippling shot bleed to the player, and making poison volley into a PBT AoE rather than a cone AoE.

e.g.

Crossfire
- 1s bleed added when not flanking. +10% damage when flanking
Normal: Dmg:134, 1s bleed, 20% projectile
Flanking: Dmg:150, 3s bleed, 20% projectile

Poison Volley
- Converted from Cone AoE to PBT AoE. Poison field and +10% damage when flanking
Normal: Dmg:170, Targets:5, AoE Radius:120, 4s poison
Flanking: Dmg:190, Targets:5, AoE Radius:120, 4s poison, 2s poison field

Quick Shot
- +10% damage and 2s quickness when flanking
Normal: Dmg:118, 2s swiftness, 0.5s evade, projectile finisher
Flanking: Dmg:130, 2s swiftness, 0.5s evade, projectile finisher, 2s quickness

Crippling Shot
- bleeding moved from pet to player (1 stack normal, 3 stacks flanking). +10% damage and +3s torment when flanking
Normal: Dmg:118, 3s crippled, 1 stack 6s bleed, projectile finisher
Flanking: Dmg:130, 3s crippled, 3s torment, 3 stacks 6s bleed, projectile finisher

Concussion Shot
- 3s confusion and +10% damage when flanking
Normal: Dmg:118, 1s daze, 1s stun, projectile finisher
Flanking: Dmg:130, 1s daze, 1s stun, 3 stacks 3s confusion, projectile finisher

IMO, there should be a Story Mode, but it should be about experiencing the story, not about getting rewards, nor about experiencing the full mechanics of the raid. It also should not come out until the release ‘after’ the final wing for the raid is released.

Story Mode should work like story instances in the Personal Story, no drops during the instance, and a one-time reward issued via the story mode gui pop-up on the first completion of each boss. Boss fights would be balanced for a single player, and would therefore not include an easy method of learning the core fight mechanics of the Raid.

As it’s released after the raid is complete, you’d get a story journal chapter for the entire raid at once (all wings), and each episode would be for a different boss fight. There might be a handful of achievements that could provide additional rewards for a subsequent play though, but no challenge motes, and the best reward possible would be an ascended trinket for completing the achievement meta.

It would be released and branded as Living Story : Spirit Vale, rather than an Easy mode “Raid”, meaning that you couldn’t say you’ve completed the raid, because you wouldn’t have done, you’ve just experienced the Spirit Vale instances of the Living Story.

The real shame (for DnT), is that had the opportunity to be heroes, and didn’t even see it.

They could have been the guild to show everyone that the raids were possible with practise, and been the ones to prevent masses of “Raids are impossible, nerf them” threads ensuring that raids remain un-nerfed.

Now, they’ve probably succeeded in reducing the nerf-it threads (or at least prevented a nerf occurring), but they wont be remembered for it.

If those tweets had used #monthofpractise and #itcanbedone instead of #first we’d be having a whole different conversation in this thread.

Those shrine-like things in your screenshot are used just prior to the defend part of the meta. If you can read the encryptions you go through them to a little sub-game and can earn one of a limited number of enchanted armors

If players are hanging around in the Racial cities near to the bank, tradepost, crafting stations, why would they start to hang around in player decorated empty buildings instead? Your whole argument centres around players ‘not’ hanging around in the empty guildhalls, but doesn’t actually do anything to change that fact.

Unless you put crafting nodes, banks etc in to every single empty building in each city, all that your idea would achieve is to have a load of empty buildings in the cities that have been decorated by some of the players instead of a couple of guild hall instances that have been decorated by players.

All that really gets achieved is a reduced scope for the possibilities of what can go into a guild hall, and what a guild can work towards, simply because there is not the dedicated space to do very much.

Interesting how many people dislike TD. I actually consider it to be my favourite map out of the 4 added with the expansion. Yes it’s hard to navigate at first, but that doesn’t last once you understand how the map works, it’s actually pretty logical TBH.

If you want to unfog the map quickly head down to the lowest level and swim around under the water for a bit. There’s limited enemies down there, most of which have decent experience because they hardly ever get killed, and unlike Verdant Brink, the fog clears on all levels.

If you want to navigate the map quickly, then grab the second tier of the Nuhoch line “Nuhoch Wallows”. These things teleport you around the map like the Skritt tunnels in The Silverwastes.

IMO, this would have gone a whole lot smoother if they’d done the F2P thing first. That way they could have sold HoT as an upgrade, without bothering to mention getting core for free in the price, because core would have already been free and mentioning it would have been superfluous.

It’s hard to get the reference once you’ve achieved the mastery, because it’s only on unachieved masteries that you get any indication that it’s required for an unlock.

In order to progress through, you will need Tier 1 in everything, Gliding, Itzel, Exalted and Nuhoch, and will also need Tier 2 with Gliding.

Getting Tier 2 in Nuhoch is also very useful, although not actually “required”.

I’ve been working on a conceptual overhaul of the pet mechanic that uses bit and pieces from ideas that we’ve posted on here, and other bits of my own design. My plan is to produce a fully fleshed out concept to present to Anet, rather than just bit’s and pieces of an idea scattered throughout these forums.

I know that a lot of Rangers want 100% micromanagement control of the pets, but this overhaul is designed to increase our control and the usefulness of pets in general, without raising the skill ceiling to over the top levels. I’ve also limited the mechanic to 4 main function skills F1-F4, just like other profession mechanics.

I would like for you guys to help me think of minor modifications to the basic system (if you have any that would work in context), but mostly to help think of familial passive effects and pet specific passive skills. I’ve done some suggestions for the canine family, for context but want to flesh this idea out with suggestions for every pet available to us, preferably using feedback from players other than just myself.

Another area in which suggestions and ideas would be helpful, is in deciding what happens to certain utility skills when the pet is in the passive mode (and therefore cannot be used to attack).

Read on to know more.

Positioning

• The F1 key toggles between two modes for repositioning the pet; `Go to Target` and `Come to Me`. These options have no cool-down and no activation time, other than the physical time that it takes the pet to travel from the current location to either the target, or the player.
• Pet skill commands (i.e. F2 commands) are queued if the pet has been issued a positioning command, and will be actioned on arrival.
• Holding down the F1 key brings up a `Go There` ground targeting reticule.
• F1 key does nothing if pet is stowed.

Special Skill

• The F2 key triggers the special skill of the pet.
• Each pet has two unique special skills, an offensive skill and a support skill.
• The skill that is triggered when pressing F2 will depend on the current stance setting of the pet, and the location where the skill is triggered will depend on the positional toggle.
• If the current active pet is dead, then F2 will cause the player to start reviving the pet. Pet revival is a channel skill and will be interrupted by the player attempting to use other skills at the same time.
• F2 key does nothing if pet is stowed.

Stance Setting

• The F3 key triggers the pet to switch between an aggressive dps stance, and a passive support stance.
• After changing stances, F3 goes on cooldown for 10 seconds (or so), preventing the ability to exploit passive mode.
• F3 key changes toggle as normal if pet is stowed.

Pet Swap

• The F4 key triggers the pet swap functionality much like it currently does.
• Holding down the F4 key will stow the pet.
• F4 unstows pets if pressed again when pet is stowed.

Aggressive DPS Stance

• The Aggressive stance is very similar to how pets currently function, the only exception being that pets who currently have a support skill on F2 (e.g Fern Hound) will get a new attack skill to replace it.
• In addition to the offensive F2 skill, while in the aggressive stance, the pet has access to the 3 familial attack skills which it will use on enemy targets (or the closest foe if no target is selected).
• In attack mode the pet can be directly targeted by enemy players and NPC’s.
• If pet is stowed in this stance, pet will un-stow and attack the source of any damage to player.

Passive Support Stance

• The passive support stance turns the pet into a cross between a signet and a spirit/gyro.
• While in the passive stance the pet can no longer be directly targeted by enemy players or NPC’s, although it remains vulnerable to the conditions that it had prior to switching modes, new conditions transferred to it by traits/signets, or other conditions that it receives via AoE and cleave.
• In support mode, the pet loses access to the familial attack skills, and instead emits an AoE familial support effect. Support effect applies to 5 targets, but will always include the Ranger regardless of how far away they are from the pet.
• Pets with support skills on F2 (e.g. Brown Bear) will have those skills available when using F2 in this stance.
• Pets with aggressive F2 skills will gain a new support skill.
• If pet is stowed in this stance, pet will do nothing if player takes damage.
• Also, while stowed, familial passive effects from the pet will only apply to the player.

Pet Management UI

• The Pet UI is extended, and now lists the Familial and Pet specific Passive skills under the active skills.
• In addition, functionality is extended to allow player greater control over the skills available to the pet.
• Clicking on one of the skill images will open a dropdown menu that allows the player to change the special for the pet, and also disable skills and prevent the pet from using them at all.
• See attached image

Canine Family
[Aggressive DPS Skills] Bite, Crippling Leap, Brutal Charge
[Passive Support Pulsing Buff] +Boon Duration – 3s AoE pulsed to 4 targets (plus player) every 3s

- Alpine Wolf
[Aggressive DPS F2] AoE Chill
[Passive Support F2] AoE Frost Armor

- Fern Hound
[Aggressive DPS F2] Unblockable additional DPS on pets next flanking attack
[Passive Support F2] AoE Regeneration

- Hyena
[Aggressive DPS F2] Summon Hyena Ally
[Passive Support F2] For each friendly within 1200 radius (including pets, turrets, summons etc), gain 1 stack of might

- Krytan Drakehound
[Aggressive DPS F2] AoE Immob
[Passive Support F2] AoE Immob removal

- Wolf
[Aggressive DPS F2] AoE Fear
[Passive Support F2] AoE Stun Breaker

Didn’t see this thread, but suggested something similar in the other one.

In order to have a smokescale family, there would need to be a 3rd familial skill added to the two varieties of smokescale. Based on the skills available to the smokescale mob, Shadowstep would make an obvious choice for the 3rd family skill. Alternatively, if they were to be rebranded the Smoke Skale, then regeneration would make the most sense.

e.g.
- Rename the pet to XXX Smokescale (where XXX is a sub type)
- Restore Smoke Cloud to F2
- Remove Smoke Assault skill and replace it with Shadow Step
- Add some damage or cc to the pulses of the Smoke Cloud
- XXX Smokescale now has Bite, Takedown, Shadow Step and Smoke Cloud
- Add a new YYY Smokescale family pet (where YYY is a sub type)
- Put Smoke Assault on F2
- YYY Smokescale has Bite, Takedown, Shadow Step and Smoke Assault

My 2 cents.

- Rename the pet to XXX Smokescale (where XXX is a sub type)
- Restore Smoke Cloud to F2
- Remove Smoke Assault skill and replace it with Shadow Step
- Add some damage or cc to the pulses of the Smoke Cloud
- XXX Smokescale now has Bite, Takedown, Shadow Step and Smoke Cloud
- Add a new YYY Smokescale family pet (where YYY is a sub type)
- Put Smoke Assault on F2
- YYY Smokescale has Bite, Takedown, Shadow Step and Smoke Assault

Not that I disagree with the fact that liquid WxP was better than boosters, but why did you guys keep so much WxP in the bank, rather than using it to level up your rank when you got them?

Pretty sure that XP you earn after completing a mastery goes towards the next mastery in the same line as the current one that’s being trained.

I noticed a bar was full rather than almost full (thought the bar was longer than it was), and have a quarter of the next mastery trained that I didn’t plan on training (at least not yet). I also have a tiny bit trained of another mastery (that i didn’t plan on doing yet).

Both of those I’m pretty sure were trained (even though not selected) instead of wasting XP.

The core game has not been available to purchase since June 16th and the release of the pre-purchase edition of HoT, at least not officially.

If he purchased between Jan 23rd and Jun 16th, then he could have got a refund and pre-purchased HoT instead. He might find that if he purchased the game from ANet directly during this period of time, that they still might give him a refund on his core purchase if he buys HoT (they might not though, he should contact customer support to find out).

If he purchased it before Jan 23rd, then it wasn’t exactly ‘recent’, but he ought to have received the Heroic Edition items and the Royal Guard Outfit, which people who purchase the game now don’t get

Not sure what you mean by nightmare, but there are a couple of option settings that were introduced at the same time as action camera.

Lock Ground Target at Maximum Skill Range — The ground target marker will reposition itself to be at maximum skill range when placed out of range.
Snap Ground Target to Current Target — The ground target marker will reposition itself to your current target’s position so long as it is within range.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Options

Get this mastery and you can cross the HoT maps very quickly, regardless of the waypoint situation.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nuhoch_Wallows

In PvE, a commander tag basically means “here is the zerg” and all it really needs to do is attract additional people when they look at the map. If mentor tags are doing the same thing of attracting the zerg rather than attracting newbies, then they are failing.

Biomes are essentially different floors within a map rather than seperate maps. But they do have thier own name in brackets under the map name.

Verdant Brink has 3 Biomes.

The primary surface floor (landfall biome) where all the waypoints are located. There are several chasms which you can fall into so this biome does not fill the entire map with ‘walkable’ space, although as you have gliding, the majority of the floor is ‘playable’ space.

The underground floor (abyss biome) is found at the bottom of the chasms. It contains a surface of moving roots which kill you on contact, and seems to have little actual ‘ground’ to play on. There are a load of updrafts down here though, so gliding through the abyss is an option, and I’ve seen bosses wondering around on the roots during the night phase so I’m guessing there is a way to survive down there.

The upper level floor (canopy biome) is a series of islands of land (tops of trees) where there are a series of boss battles during the night phase. This biome can only be accessed at night.

Auric Basin ‘sort of’ has 3 Biomes (I think)

Once again there is the primary surface floor (Jungle Floor Biome). Pretty much everything takes place on this part of the map.

The Underground floor (Exalted Trials Biome) is an area that is largely used for a stroy instance.

The upper level floor (Jungle Treetop) has a different name on the map, but I’ve not yet found a way up there.

Tangled Depths has 4 biomes.

The upper level (jungle floor biome) is where you enter the map. The floor covers the majority of the map, but you cannot easily navigate around due to mountains trees etc the black the path. The majority of waypoints and safe-ish zones are on this level.

The surface level (undergrowth biome) is an under ground area that connects some of the jungle floor areas to each other, and also connects down into the hive tunnels.

The underground level (hive tunnels biome) is the main route to travel between the various parts of the map and the location of 4 ‘lanes’ that are used in the meta.

The depths level (flooded tunnels biome) is the deepest area, and is another way of moving around the map, and connects most of the northern parts of the map. There are only a few ways in and out, and you need to use a special ‘light’ to make it through the piranas. Not a lot happens down here, but it’ll probably be a good place to farm experience simply because the mobs provide bonus experience having survived longer.

Basically, to travel around the map you’ll go Jungle Floor → Undergrowth → Jungle Floor to get between some places, and Jungle Floor → Undergrowth → Hive Tunnels → Undergrowth → Jungle Floor to get to others.

Dragon’s Stand is basically a world boss map, with a long meta even chain that leads to the final fight. It doesn’t use biomes.

I don’t see why not. Every activation code is likely to be unique and stored in a database somewhere along with the account type. ‘When’ it gets activated should be irrelevant.

It’s a bit like if you were to buy an old (but un-used) retail copy of the core game now, you’d not get HoT thrown in for free just because the core game is no longer available, you’d get what you purchased.

Pre-purchase versions of the core game were being sold for months after release, and they were advertised as including pre-purchase bonuses.

Tom, if you’d held off on buying HoT before getting season 2, you’d have still been ‘wasting’ XP, any XP you earned after level 80 would not have done anything.

A lot of us have been ‘wasting XP’ for the last few months, because when they last changed the levelling process, they took away the skill point on level-up, leaving no reward for filling the xp bar post level 80.

Does it matter?? Not really.

Yes, you could level up your core masteries quicker if you skipped ahead to unlock the system prior to finishing s2. But you don’t really ‘need’ to.

I purchased HoT from DLGamer.

They send you a confirmation email that tells you to log into your DLGamer account and go to ‘My Products’. When you do that, you will find a serial number, and also a step by step guide telling you how to apply it to your GW2 account.

I know that you mention having 100% map completion, but as you’ve not played the living story, I guess that it’s possible that you’ve not visited Dry Top or The Silverwastes, two additional maps that were released as a part of the Living Story, and don’t count towards map completion.

Dry Top is accessed from the Southwest corner of Brisban Wildlands (Tangle Root), The Silverwastes is accessed from the west of Brisban Wildlands (Vandals Claim).

The storyline for HoT begins in The Silverwastes.

[edit] Never mind, looks like you posted while I was typing.

12 am PST is 8pm on Friday 23rd for people in Tonga, 7pm for New Zealand.

That means that releasing between 12am and 3:59am PST is the only possible window to guarantee a release on the 23rd for those countries.

Alaska, Hawaii and Samoa get lucky with a release on the 22nd.

To get ‘everyone’ a 23rd release day they would have needed to go live at 3am PDT, not very fair for ANet employees.

Bear in mind that they recently changed the downloader to let you log in after the minimum requirements to play were downloaded. Chances are that a large portion of the ‘required’ stuff is already downloaded for the BWE’s, along with a large chunk of the first map. There will no doubt be another chunk of ‘required’ download, but I suspect the majority can be streamed in the background after logging in.

400 Hero points is for everything including the 2 profession specific reward skins. For all we know, the reward skins could be the last few parts of training the spec, and could cost 200 hero points. We simply don’t know how many hero points are required for all of the traits and utilities yet.

Your characters will still be ‘locked’ to playing with people on the EU servers though. Buying HoT from a US retailer won’t change that. You’d need to purchase a transfer to a new home world to play with peeps on the NA servers.

It’s probably not as simple as “just move the effected NPCs” otherwise they would have done it years ago. People have been asking for this content to be reinstated for years (along with the mad kings dungeon).

They would have to move 3 NPC’s (maybe more) not 1, because there were three tied to spots in the old LA map. Just because the ghost near the now non-existent lion statue and the ghost under water could still work theoretically, the actual spots that they show up in don’t exist any more outside of a few storyline instances. The current map probably has a different reference value to the old one from a code point of view. The Kessex map might also have a difference reference to the one it had too.

They would also need to rewrite, translate and record the text for the ghost in the sewers, and hook up new versions of the various suspicious locations scattered about LA (and maybe Kessex) where we got trick or treat bags from the candy-powered matter meter.

There is also the fact that from a coding point of view the ‘triggers’ for the events are tied to phase 1 and phase 2 of the original Halloween storyline, which means that new triggers would need to be coded.

While it’s probably not a huge amount of work compared to some things, it would require several different types of programmer to implement the different changes required. To do it, they’d need to be pulled off HoT.

Most of the players who are K-Training in EotM rather than playing WvW won’t start playing WvW if the EotM rewards get nerfed. They will just return to next most rewarding K-Train in PvE.

IMO, it would probably make more sense at this point to call EotM was it is, rather than try to change it into what it was originally imagined to be.

I’d personally just remove all WxP and Badges from EotM and leave the normal XP, Karma, drops etc as they are. Maybe make an EotM specific currency and reward system.