Guild Wars 2

PopeUrban.2578:

This whole argument is based around this idea that you’re going to PUG raids like dungeons.

They flat out said on twitch that PUGs will most likely not be a thing for raids due to the high level of mechanical difficulty requiring your raid group to actually build around one another.

Will people eventually come up with a “Raid PUG Meta”? Of course they will. It’ll likely be whatever party composition makes the “world first clear” video.

If just picking the PUG meta builds was enough to pull off a raid, it’s not a very well designed raid. The whole idea is that everyone in your group really has to be on the ball. Raids are usually not PUG content for this reason. More than one or two randoms in a raid group in most games throws off your timing or performance enough that it’s not worth the failure risk.

Make no mistake that this content isn’t designed around PUGs. It’s designed to encourage people to develop regular raiding groups that learn the content and develop strategies together, and practice them until they get it down.

I’m thinking less about raids and more about current dungeons/fractals. I’m mostly worried that when you see a druid in dungeon/fractal party, first thought people will have is ‘oh crap, it’s going to be slow clear’.. and if they see two, they’ll figure they may as well give up and find a better group.

Raids may be designed for guilds, but if they allow pugs too, then they have to be eventually toned down so pugs -can- do them, or there will be a huge kitten storm on the forums. Fractals are easier for people to understand because they progress naturally and higher tiers are gated behind your progress. Raids would also have to have that kind of mechanic for people to accept their difficulty/impossibility (for pugs).

Basically if you are allowed to try it, then you expect you should have a reasonable chance to finish it. GW2 is designed to hold your hand like that, and it would be very difficult to change that now. The simplest way for raids would probably be to allow people to queue a particular raid only after they’ve finished it at least once in a pre-made group. That way when they queue in PUG, they have an idea what they’re getting into. Otherwise a single first-timer will probably drag down a group of vets, and no one will be happy about that.

Once raids settle down so they are PUG-viable, they’ll have same issues as dungeons/fractals, only more pronounced – because if they are more difficult, then unbalance in a group is more likely to lead into failure, instead of just slowing down the clear.

Leo G.4501:

Yeah, because you can’t swap your utility skills or specializations in an instance…

During combat you can’t. During dungeon run, it’s almost never plausible. You can swap a couple utitility skills, but that’s not going to do a whole lot.

Leo G.4501:

Explain how a build isn’t a hybrid unless you completely ignore that you can take 2 other spec lines and you have the option swap in whatever utilities you want, use whatever gear types you want or what weapon skills you want to use.

Elite specs seem to me similar in concept to revenant, in that they’re made into complete ‘package’. Staff skills, glyphs, and elite spec line have a very clear theme – and in my opinion more singleminded than other elite specs. There’s a reason why they say it’s druid, not ranger. If you take on all of it, it fully defines your output, the only exception being the other weapon(set) you swap into, and your pet.

DPS and healing are two different focuses. ‘Not hybrid’ means tuning your stats and remaining traits to support playing the ‘druid way’ – e.g. being efficient with staff and glyphs. Being hybrid means giving up some of your healing potential to support DPS on your other weapon. And possibly swapping a couple of glyphs to other skills.

With celestial gear you might find some middle-ground. But the question is, how much use do you get from elite spec then, and would you be better served simply forgetting it and building a pure ranger spec. Unless you focus on being highly efficient healer, is there any point to it?

Leo G.4501:

And the spec line does have traits that do more than heal. There is soft and hard CC in the tree. Are you intentionally ignoring that?

And the staff autoattack can ‘DPS’. Are you serious? If you are talking in PvP context though, then that may be different – but my focus is in PvE. Whether druid is useful spec for PvP, I’ll leave that debate for someone who is more qualified to comment on it.

Leo G.4501:

You should preface your argument with PvP, WvW or PvE. Obviously you’re talking from a PvE point of view and I’d agree with you about most content not needed a lot of healing but that still doesn’t invalidate the other portions of the game that may benefit from a specific specialization.

However, I can’t agree with you because your speculation is far too close-minded. You’ve obviously jumped on the “It’s a healer ONLY” bandwagon and forewent any other possible combinations of skills resulting in new approaches for the Ranger. I mean, you do realize much of the complaints about Ranger in groups was their lack of group support, yes? Not only does the spec offer a good amount of possible healing but also the amount of CC (dazes and immobilize) can offer lots of added benefit for your group and your pet.

True – yes, I’m speaking purely from PvE side. Yes, anything can benefit from more healing, but I don’t believe it’s a net gain to focus on it – because GW2 balance just isn’t designed for it. I can keep up constant regen to party without druid spec, and throw in water field plus finisher in time of need – and I don’t need to give up a trait line and utility slots for it. I simply don’t believe that more than that is warranted at the cost it brings along.

Yes, I believe the druid spec is ‘healer only’. I did say you have option of making a hybrid, I do fully recognize that possibility. But the point is I believe the cost is too high for making a ‘hybrid’ when you can get ‘enough’ healing without the sacrifice. I can’t see the point to taking druid spec unless you capitalize on it, and that I feel is worthless to do.

Leo G.4501:

Posters like yourself, I can almost certainly read exactly your viewpoint like an open book: The Ranger didn’t get a perma-stow pet or non-pet spec option thus it already was a strike-out for you. It’d be a lot easier if you help the entire forum out if you just admit this first and cease all this “omg healz, DOOM” nonsense.

No, on that count you are entirely wrong. I picked ranger main -because- it’s the only true pet class in my opinion. Petless ranger would not be a ranger and I’d have no interest playing it. I’d rather pick a bow warrior. Being able to stow a pet during combat would be useful yes – but it would be a mixed blessing because then you’d be -expected- to do it frequently, and you’d be playing with one hand tied behind your back. FYI, I’ve always kept the pet-focused traitline in my builds.

One nice option for druid might have been a few ‘non-combat’ support type pets though – while by no means the only possibility, it would have given a different kind of gameplay option – a unique take to support mechanism if you will.

Also, just to clear this up: I have nothing against trinity system per se. FFXIV for example has a balance that’s fully centered around tank/heal/DPS, and it works very well – I’ve had great fun there. And it so happens I usually play as a healer in dungeons – and once you get a bit further in levels it’s in no way boring or simple. I wouldn’t really have minded if GW2 was based around similar system – but it isn’t. It largely revolves around stack-stack-stack deps-deps-deps stack-stack-stack deps-deps-deps, as it is. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but I’m saying bringing a fully healing-focused elite spec into the mix isn’t going to make it better.

Nothing in what I read in this thread, disputed the OP in a way I would find plausible – based on what I read on druid spec. It seems clear that everything about druid elite is about healing. Staff skills, glyphs, profession mechanic, even specialisations – it’s all geared on healing. Weapon swap isn’t going to swap your specialisations, or your utility skills, or your profession mechanic.

Yes, you have an option to do ‘hybrid’ of some kind, by simply not using the glyphs. But then what’s the point of the elite spec? You have a full spec tree dedicated for healing, which will be basically wasted unless that’s what you focus on.

The way I see it this leads back to OP. Nothing in the current game content requires that much healing. And if that much healing isn’t needed then it’s not wanted in groups either – because it means one group member is contributing next to nothing to DPS. Taking in a druid to the group means that -everyone else- will have to alter their build and approach, and that’s not going to happen. Not to mention you can clear almost anything with a group that maximizes DPS anyway (and sometimes that’s not just possible, but pretty much required).. in which case giving up a DPS ‘slot’ for healer is simply a straight out loss.

Even -if- some of the new content required more healing power, that would still make it useless elite in more than 99% of scenarios. And having your elite spec dedicated to some almost non-existent content like that doesn’t sound very tempting.

On top of that, in all honestly the elite sounded boring. Ranger already feels like too simplistic profession, and I was kind of hoping this elite would bring something more complex on table, but it doesn’t sound like that’s going to happen.

There might be one slight saving grace in this. Part of ranger’s damage comes from the pet, and going to druid spec shouldn’t affect that overly much. So even if your own DPS goes to toilet, it doesn’t affect you quite as absolutely as it might another profession.

Currently about half the revenant energy regen comes from constant in-combat recovery, and the other half from legend swapping (assuming you spend everything, then swap to 50% every 10 seconds). This encourages a playstyle where you need to constantly swap back and forth between legends to get full benefit from the class.

This doesn’t make much sense to me, when legends are clearly intended to work on different playstyles and scenarios. For example it would rarely make sense to swap between mallyx and ventari every 10 seconds – yet failing to do so will make you miss up to half your potential energy. This consequently pushes people to select legends that work in similar combat situation, instead of seeking versatility.

I’d suggest increasing the baseline energy regeneration, and reducing the energy gained from legend swapping – up to possibly eliminating the gain from swap entirely. This would make it more viable to actually pick -different- legends, and use them to adjust to changing tactical situation (e.g. dps vs party support).

Possibly something like, increasing the normal recovery from 5/s to 7-8/s, and maybe making one of the invocation traits give between 10 and 20 energy on legend swap.

DarckKnight.7519:

So why can’t the Revenant do awesome dps with staff or hammer, while running ANY legend?

hammer is more for CC than scaling dmg, staff is fast but its healing oriented, at the moment, mace+axe deals better damage because it is condition damage oriented, maxe+ace + demon stance + its traits (that one of 3% damage increase per condition you have is op on dps) and you will deal a lot of dmg as a rampager.

now every single weapon needs to be dps focused??? wow i want to see you killing with just a warhorn.

Not every legend needs to do great DPS, this much is obvious – because legends represent combat roles, and you can swap them in mid-combat. However whether revenant needs to be able to do decent DPS with every weapon will depend largely on if they get a weapon swap to go along with legend swap. Ideally, I think so that weapon swap is tied with legend swap.

In general, the classes in GW2 are set up so that every class needs to be able to carry their part of DPS. Otherwise they’ll just be dragging the team down. If you can’t swap away from support staff into DPS weapon, then the support staff really isn’t a viable option. Once the revenant becomes part of the regular game, you can bet your kitten a pure staff revenant is going to be kicked out of dungeon parties.

Low DPS weapon may be good as a second option, but not as the only one.

DieFinn.3594:

Hm, the revenant has hammer for 1200 range. Another range weapon with 900 range would be nice, but another 1200 range weapon? I do not think we will get another. Guard as an example has only one 1200 range option, too.

So far all classes have at least two ranged options, and aside from thief at least one of them has 1200 or more range. I think warrior is the only exception, with both longbow and rifle having 1200 range.. but then it’s also the only class to have only 2-h ranged weapons.

I’m expecting revenant to get at least one single-handed ranged weapon with 900-range. However if they want to keep it with one weapon set per legend, with elite spec getting only one weapon even if it’s offhand.. then it might get a bit ugly.

Shiro would almost certainly be melee DPS focused then (sword-sword would make a lot of sense since that’s what Shiro was visually in GW1, even if they were treated technically as daggers). Elite is currently presumed to be Glint with offhand shield. That might really leave hammer as the only ranged option, which wouldn’t be very good.. especially if legends are tied closely to weapons, which would basically make jalis/hammer the only ranged option.

Cardica.1853:

Proposals:

I think for every Legend while the weapons should have the same base damage and animation, but the additional effects (healing/condi/boons).

For example, when you use Mallyx, the weapons do condition damage, whilst when you use Ventari, the conditions in the attack change to healing/protection.

The same for traits, for example if a trait gives +10 Power when playing as Mallyx/Shiro, it should give +10 healing power when playing Ventari, or +10 toughness when playing Jallis. I wouldn’t do this for all traits, but have the selectable (square) traits each have a per-legend bonus. The balance wouldn’t be that simple I know, but it would make the legends way more useful in the game.

This may be a big ask, I don’t know, my programming knowledge is limited, but I think this would really make the revenant something special and interesting to play, rather than just being able to faceroll like you can with a few professions, especially in PvE.

As for the weakness, I think just a few (simple?) buffs here and there should be able to get it up to scratch with the other classes, but I appreciate it will take a while to get that right, and I don’t really mind if that’s after release, I mean, hell we’re still getting tweaks to all the other classes on the fly.

It’s not very simple issue. Simply giving the weapons a base effect, and some additional trait to tie them to legends would probably not be enough. To choose a legend, is to choose a playstyle. No other class has that kind of hard, definitive choice.

If you want to build a condi thief, you do it by pieces through gear, specialisations, utility skills – and yes, weapon selection. If you want to swap into spike damage or support, you change everything. You don’t keep the same gear, same specialisation picks, same weapons – and just try to swap your utility skills.. and boom, condi thief became spike thief.

That’s the kind of effect revenant is trying to achieve, and it just goes against the basic mechanics of the whole game. The suggestion of trying to add switching effects to weapons and traits, it’s not going to help. Those ‘effects’ won’t equal playstyle. Traits for example do a lot more than just add a flat bonus to condi damage versus healing power. To make them interesting, they have to go deeper and alter the way the class itself behaves, to customize it to specific playstyle, or overall build goal.

Without having a closer look at the class (no pay, no beta), my guess would be the revenant probably tries to achieve this by close ties between legends and traitlines. Make each traitline specific to one legend, while having little effect to others. Try to build the whole customizing into single traitline instead of three. Then make the final one (invocation) so generic it can give some overall bonus and utility to the class – like the stun break that keeps popping up.

This might not be the ideal solution, but it’s probably closest, within reason. The ‘perfect’ solution would probably be to build every legend into complete – if simple – ‘class’ within itself, full with skills, traits, weapons and gear.. and let two of them be defined active at time. That however would be unreasonable amount of work for a single class.

Right now it seems the class is attempting to do this within the confines of the game mechanics. It splits the available traitlines between the ‘subclasses’, it splits the weapon types between them, and splits the skills between them. You can’t really split the armor and jewelry in the current system though (the best you can do is celestial gear) – and for the life of me I can’t wrap my mind around why the weapon sets were not ‘split’ between the ‘subclasses’ – but instead only one being made available.

To a point every class has similar kind of split built in. Some trait lines and options, some weapon types, some skills cater to different play styles. When making a build, you are picking the ones that best suit what you have in mind. The revenant tries to essentially cram two builds worth of those options into one set, and switch the ‘build’ by just switching the utility skills between two premade sets.

khornemuse.5930:

i repost my debrief hre in the BIG discussion

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Hi people,
I played Rev 5 hours in WvW to try all specs in all scales of combat.
LIke a lot of people here i’m a pvp player.

General feelings (TL DR)
- low dps, condi or direct damage
- Classy but slow attacks
- Underwhelming movement. No access to speed (except Jalis Road + Mace 3 for perma speed). No jump, dashes or blink (except staff five)
- Uber Strong and Uber Weak Class system : Elite spam/ utility spam can be super strong in roaming/zerg : 10 sec of Great Dwarf (Broken Skill). On the other hand, the fact that ALL SKILLS use energy is weak.
-No versatility : 1 one weapon. 1 legend for 1 use only. U want heal ? Ventari and staff mandatory. If Engies and Ele have no swap, they have way more skills. Weapons needs more versatily (for example the mace for the guard can be Zerk OR Cleric due to high base dmg, and healing). Force you to camp one legend cause it’s the better for you build.
-Lack of active defense : all 8 classes have a ’red button" to ignore damages instantly. The only thing for the rev is the Rite with 2 secs of cast. Rev can be bursted down very easily (i duelled with a Mace/SH // GS and that was cake). Examples : elixir S, shelter, endure pain ,signet of stone, mistform, arcane shield, distortion, blurred frenzy etc…

Legends :
Dwarf : the stongest IMO for zerk and team roaming. Gives great skills like le Rite of great dwarf for 10 secs or the “road”.
Heal : great heal, 3 dispells. Retaliation can combo.
Taunt : very good, but too high cost for the duration of it. Need fastest missile speed.
Road : good in zerg and roam for secure stomps, weakness, and the only way to get speed.
Hammers : have only a dps use but dmg are too low. Needs more effects. Might on hit ? Or 1 sec prot per hit to fill with the tank role
Elite : Super strong as i said. Tooltip is not clear. 66% reduction on test. Spammable.

Ventari. Good for healing, too hard and boring to use.
Heal : change the way to use it. Make it like the ex Guardian’s healing tome 1 (heal on template)
Dispell : good
Bubble : too tiny.
9 : nothing to say
Elite : great.

Mallyx strongest one in damage but, not enough. Great utiity and healing
Elite : strong amount of healing. Good one.
Jump : too random to create combos with others skills or allies.
Corruption : strong. Spammable. Best way to dps with condi build.
Condi vacuum : weird. The goal of mallyx is to reflect condis. But here, you take the condis but you can’t transfer it to foes due to the resistance boon. Great utility but no dps use. Or the Rev needs dps.
Elite : source of damage. One condi per 3 secs is not enough.

WEAPONS : as i said the weapons needs more versatility. Each one needs a dash/jump/blink or crowd control.

Staff : best one even if the dps is low. Classy,
AA : dps is low, healing bubbles are random. Attack speed is nice;
2 : underwhelming. AA is better
3 : super classy. Super low damages. Not a lot of utility. Needs to stack vulnerabilty on each it like necros" axe 2.
4 : strong heal and dispell. Very nice.
5 : the only dash we got. Good damages, control. Nice one.

Hammer : Sloooow. AA needs rework. Needs something to the keep the foes away from you, to maximise dps with hammer 2
AA : slow, low dps. Needs more damage or more speed. I suggest to add a 33% chance of cripple on it.
2 : good dps at maxe range (4K in full zerk). But it’s hard to keep this maximum range. Needs more damage at point blank.
3 : super sloooow. It has to be a real blink to give the rev some movement.
4 : Nice one.
5 : slow but good damages (3k zerker) and nice control. But need an immo to land it.

Mace/axe. : best set for me. If the dmg were higher on 4 and 3, it’ll make a good versatile set.
AA : good for condi build. Long poison duration.
2 : too long cast time, for 2 stacks of burning on stationnary target.
3 : an blast combo. Perma speed with jalis road. Damages are… bad. Tootip needs to explain how to trigger the next two blasts.
4 : nice skill. Good raw dmgs, with a blink and chill.
5 : nice one. Need more range for the grap.

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Disclaimer: these are opinions, not ‘proven facts’.

Revenant will need both weapon swap as well as the ability to select utility skills.

Weapon swap:

Tthere’s the whole thing about weapons matching legends, and general versatility.. but also one important point:

Every character should always be able to swap into ranged mode.

That’s the general rule. There are situations where you just have to go ranged. There’s exceptions, when you know exactly where you are going and how things will turn out. But if you add any uncertainty, then you have to be prepared for ranged combat.

Currently the only single-set classes (engi and elementalist) are essentially ranged-only (or it might be more accurate to say their weapons are capable of both ranged and close-range combat – but their auto-attack has range). Engineer, even with elite melee hammer, can swap into ranged by using a kit.

For revenant, in any situation where you are not certain that you won’t need to fight from range, you’ll be locked out of picking most of your weapons. I’m guessing one of the as of yet unrevealed weapons is going to be one-handed ranged weapon with 900’ attack range, since that’s how most other classes are set up (with a few exceptions like warrior who has no 1-h ranged, and guardian who kind of swaps the 1-h and 2-h ranged roles). And my guess would be that this 1-h ranged weapon will be condition-based to give mallyx (the other dps legend) a ranged option.

Skill selection:

This goes to the versatility camp. There’s just too many varying situations where it’s almost mandatory to bring certain kind of utility. Condi removal. Stun break. Invulnerability. Evasion. Mobility / gap closer. Block / reflection. Every situation where you need some particular kind of utility, to be forced to pick your whole skill set based on that one need, is just way too limiting.

It’s ok for revenant to have a smaller pool to draw skill from for each legend, but it’s not ok to have no versatility at all in your selections.

When a class was announced to have the ability to have two sets of utility skills, I was expecting a class that had higher versatility than the others. It turns out to be the exact opposite.

What I was hoping, was essentially a class that would have two separate ‘whole builds’, with ability to switch between those depending on situation. But the whole point of that versatility is lost if you can’t actually create those builds.

Thoughts:

Personally I might go as far as giving an option to have two whole sets of gear, including armor, because otherwise in many/most cases the only real option for revenant is celestial gear. Having two different playstyles usually just requires different stat balance, celestial is the only one that can sort of cater to anything.

Having all gear slots ‘swap’ along with legend swap would give a lot of options. Probably so that if any particular slot is empty on one legend, it’ll default to item used by the other. This wouldn’t make the class any more powerful in a given situation – just more versatile, and actually able to take advantage of the ‘dual nature’ of the legends.

Combine that with ability to select utilities from limited pool for each legend, and you’d have something very interesting and unique. You could even visually tailor your gear to an appearance that represents each of the legends when you swap between them.

Tools: (with some assumptions of the coming)

Legends:

• Jalis – tank
• Ventari – support
• Mallyx – condi dps
• Shiro(?) – direct dps(?)
• Glint(?) – elite / special

Weapons:

• Hammer – tank/durability
• Dagger(?)/Dagger(?) – ranged direct dps(?)
• Scepter(?)/Focus(?) – ranged condition(?)
• Sword(?)/Sword(?) – melee direct dps(?)
• Mace/Axe – melee condition
• Staff – support/heal oriented
• Shield(?) – special (leaves room for scepter/sword/mace/dagger for versatility)

Pistols / rifles would feel too ‘modern’ for the mists/legends motif.

If you look at the line-up like this, the basic idea is there. You can pick two legends to represent two playstyles, and there’s weapon(set) for all mainline playstyles. You could pick f.ex. Shiro with sword/sword for mele dps or dagger/dagger for ranged. Mallyx with scepter/focus for ranged condition, mace/axe for melee. And so forth.

It would also make sense why the dps currently doesn’t come from anything outside possibly from mallyx with mace/axe (since those would be the only dps options available at the moment).

But you’d still need the weapon swap (at minimum) to cater for two legends and their distinct playstyles. Gear swap would add true freedom to switch styles without locking you to celestial set. And overall more work is needed fine tuning the options to get them to work fluidly, and in a balanced way.

Oberon Vex.1389:

Ventari feedback

Ventari’s base amounts are too high. In full zerker gear, the tablet passing through you heals for 800, meaning a net gain of 400 health/second without building any healing power. If you do go for healing power, you get a net gain of 550 hp/s, and this isn’t including any ‘on-heal’ effects from runes/traits. This is too much healing to the group/second without building for a support role. I suggest lowering the base amount and perhaps upping the healing power ratio to compensate so that it is still a decent group utility skill — if you build for support. Another possible fix would be to leave the current effect but increase the cd on the Ventari heal to 5-8s which would put it more inline with the passive healing abilities of other classes and cut down on the next problem:

adept trait blinding truths. every time you move your tablet (every 2s) 5 enemies are blinded for 5s. leading to a huge amount of damage mitigation.This trait either needs an internal cooldown (suggested at 5-10s ICD) or to be moved to the grandmaster slot.

About 5000 / 10 seconds, 10,000 / 20 seconds. I don’t know if that really breaks anything. You’re assuming there that people actually stay where you can use your tablet on them constantly and effectively. Guardian can go pretty high with healing power too if you really focus on it, although I don’t have any exact numbers. With ranger, without any particular healing power focus, I can throw out 2k per 10 seconds from healing spring and about another 2k per 10 seconds from constant regeneration, so about 8,000 / 20 seconds. And ventari – unlike my ranger – is fully support oriented. So I don’t see a big problem there.

As for the blind, it sounds effective, but thief can be pretty efficient blind machine too if you go that route (e.g. sword/pistol). The duration itself isn’t much of an issue since it ends on the next attack, but 2 second cooldown sounds pretty strong. Can’t say much more without actually trying it out on practical situation.

Lightsbane.9012:

running across a couple of Revenant players in eternal battlegrounds. Is this intentional? I understand that WvW is anything but balanced but, come on.

It’s probalby one of the best ways to test the balance of the new class. If there’s a way to exploit it, people in WvW will find it. If there are balance issues, you will hear it. You can’t really test the PvP balance of the class without actually throwing it into PvP, and not just with a couple people in controlled environment. You need people to tets out all sorts of builds and combinations, against everything else.

The worst that could happen is it’ll mess up WvW a bit for a couple days. Big deal. All servers have revenants – if it’s really totally OP, the worst case it’s going to be a revenant weekend in WvW. And right now the more common opinion seems to be that it’s totally underwhelming. Heck, if it messes up WvW, that’s actually good news – it would mean the class might actually have a future.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I greatly dislike the idea that revenant needs a weapon swap. It already has its own version of “weapon swap” (legend swap), and adding another in, linked to a different button, would be terrible to play with. For example, if the profession was balanced around two sources of skill swapping, chances are, players would have to press 2 buttons every time they would want to swap their weapon or their legend, so that by switching to one, they could complement it with the other. Having to press buttons 2 times to switch their entire playstyle while other professions do it with 1 would make the revenant incredibly annoying, clumsy and unfun to play with. I’m already annoyed by that with ventari’s tablet.

The profession has its own share of problems, but most – if not all of them – can be fixed by giving it a customisable set of utility skills. Lack of ranged synergy to go with the hammer? Lack of synergy between some legends? Lack of some important tools for different situations? All anet has to do is to design a few extra utility skills that fill the gap holes, and those issues will be fixed.

But I’ll only write a more in-depth post after I have the chance to try it out.

When weapon skills are closely synergized with legend skills, there’s only two reasonable ways I can see to fixing it.

• Change the weapon skills so they will not closely synergize with any particular legend or
• Swap weapon skills when you swap legends

The first option is not going to happen. The second would be possible in at least two ways:

• Let (at least some) weapon skills actually change based on currently active legend (similar to how some elementalist skills change when you swap attunement)
• Give revenant second weapon set, and possibly make the weapon set tied to legend slot, so each legend has a dedicated weapon set.

The second option would also help with the issue that elite spec and (we assume) the accompanying legend will also have a weapon designed to work in synergy with them – and with single weapon set if you plan to use the weapon designed to work with the elite spec, you have extremely limited options for weapons. Either exactly one if the weapon is 2h, or option to swap between available single hand weapons if elite is 1h – for example a shield.

Engineer and elementalist can somewhat mitigate the problem – elementalist with elemental attunements, and engineer with kits. For revenant it’s the opposite – they are already crippled by having one weapon set for two legends, and the elite will only make that limitation worse.

For elementalist and engineer the design choice to go with single weapon set was likely because they have other viable ways to alter their weapon skill set. For revenant the choice was probably made by them having the ability to swap their utility skills on the fly instead, but that just doesn’t work the same way. Weapon skills are the main combat mechanic, utility skills support them.

Elite specialization gives you the access to new weapon, so yes.

The weapon is only usable if you pick the elite specialization, and it would probably make little sense to do that unless you also make use of the extra skills from the spec. So it’s really not about the weapon, it’s about the whole elite spec package. Whether that affects my ‘main’, I’m still in the ‘wait and see’ with it. I’ll wait for more info before I even decide if I’ll buy the new version or not.

NapTooN.6283:

Genesis.8572:

NapTooN.6283:

skowcia.8257:

Sagat.3285:

They won’t let it suck.

They just did. A class without stunbreaks wont survive in pvp long. Even necromancers are in better state when it comes to stunbreaks+damage mitigation via shroud, rev doesnt have even that.

So you are fine with the Necro using his Class Mechanic to break a Stun but if the Rev is the exact same, it is a “NoNo”? Wow, just Wow.

Even if the Necro does not trait for DS stunbreak, they have access to stunbreaks through a fair number of their utilities: Spectral Armor, Spectral Walk, Plague Signet, Well of Power, and the Flesh Wurm’s Necrotic Traversal.

What stunbreak options does a Revenant who does not trait for it have?

Only 1 right now and that might be a bit clunky and costly to use BUT still a Stunbreak on ZERO cooldown. Rite of the Great Dwarf is a Stunbreaker. “All” you have to do is spend 40 Energy and cancel the Animation so you are not rooted for ~3 seconds. The good Thing is that it has no CD, the downside is that it costs 40 Energy.

So in PvP sense this would mean it’s a fact that revenant will run with invocation spec, and jalis plus one other legend (most likely shiro). And essentially the combat will always happen using Jalis – the first time you need stunbreak, if you are not in jalis, you’ll be forced to swap to jalis.. and if you are, you’ll cludge it with starting a skill and then canceling it. How exactly you cancel it, and how much time/resources that will cost you, I don’t know.

skowcia.8257:

40 energy? I see, you dindt played in last beta. Cost is 50 energy now and you cant cancel it by weapon stow or interrupting it with another key. You have to dodge to break the animation.

I guess that answered it. I didn’t think they’d leave a skill that you could easily abuse against it’s intended use (e.g. 3 second self-stun).

Rym.1469:

I wouldn’t say it’s aimed at new players. Resource management is pretty big barrier of entry.

And I simply don’t believd that Revenant won’t get some choice in utilities for each legend. There will be, I tell you.

Big barrier? Like mana, stamina, endurance, combo points, energy, and whatever else practically every other MMO game would call the resource that pretty much every single class there uses? GW2 is a huge exception in that only thief – and now revenant – has that kind of class mechanic.

If anything, if you’ve played any other MMO in the past, it might be a ‘barrier’ to get into thinking that there is no generic expendable resource, but rather it’s all based on cooldowns.

As for utility skills.. here’s link to interview I mentioned earlier:
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=35785&storypage=3
It’s dated at “Mar 3rd, 2015 at 8:00 AM by MattstaNinja”
and titled as “Guild Wars 2: Pre-PAX Interview”
A quote from the page:

Our final question for Peters involved the Revenant’s heal, utility and elite skills. Channeling legends will change these skills, but each legend in the demo only had the specific five skills with no additional skill options. Peters said that for now this is how it works, but that he can’t rule anything out. He explained that it depends on playing it more and getting a feel for the class now that they have a couple of legends in a really good place. When you start to play more, you can get a sense of whether it needs more customization there or not. Peters said that it is their responsibility now to really dive in and play it to see if enough customization is there or not, and to address it either way.

Peters commented that there is a lot of merit to both; having no customization has allowed them to create a lot of synergy between the skills, something that they wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. So if they do go in and change it, they need to be careful as Peters said that the synergy currently feels really good. On the other hand, having options helps make you feel more in control of your character and its customization. This is another area where they will be looking at player feedback to help determine which course of action they take.

So yes, plans can change, but so far they haven’t. I don’t think it’ll happen easily, because they’d have to more or less redesign the whole class.

• Obviously skills would have to be redesigned and new ones added, also whether all skills are unique to legends, or whether some can be used in multiple/all legends (e.g. how skills now work depending on if you are on land or in water)
• Weapon skills might have to be touched too to work with new, more generic skills
• Specializations would need a pass to work together with new skill sets
• Class mechanic would need to be reevaluated to decide if legend swapping needs to be adjusted somehow

Some things might not need to be changed much, others might have to be redone from scratch.. but the whole thing would have to get another pass either way, and it would need rebalancing.

Granted, anet hasn’t been afraid in the past to scrap a design and start over, but usually that’s prior to announcing details – let only putting something into playtest.

Sometimes it’s change for good, sometimes for worse. I would have liked the original sylvari better for example, but in case of revenant I’d like more freedom with skills.

It might be a class more directed to new players. One weapon set, lack of complicated skill selection, specializations are fairly closely tied to legends and legends have ‘easy to understand’ playstyles behind them.

For example, you want condi damage and support, you pick mallyx and ventari. You pick the specializations tied to those legends, and invocation (I think) as your third specialization. You pick weapon based on whichever legend you plan to use more (staff if ventari, mace/axe if mallyx). And you’re pretty much set to go. For weapons and gear, just pick celestial for everything.

No complicated choices. Very streamlined.

Boring too, from my perspective, but then I’ve been around since launch. Of course if this is the case, then it’s a bit silly – since for new players every class is new, it’s the ‘veteran’ players that are more in need of a fresh class.. and for that I’d rather see it more complex than existing classes, instead of simplistic, ‘streamlined experience’.

That may be a selfish way of thinking though, since it can be argued that new players could also benefit from a class that’s easy to start with.

warbignime.4610:

Dude, we are still in beta and only got about half of the skills. It’s way too early for judgement.

“Dude”, I don’t think you fully understand the revenant mechanics. Revenant doesn’t have utility skills, healing skills or elite skills the same way other classes do. Revenant has legends, that’s it. Each legend comes with hard coded set of 5 skills (one healing, 3 utility, 1 elite), which you cannot swap (except by swapping the legend itself).

‘About half of the skills’ is all you’ll get. There was an interview earlier (I linked it in some of my earlier posts on another revenant topic), where anet noted that they planned the revenant this way to have better chance to create synergy between skills – that this is how it works now, but they understand there’s also merit to being more in control of your skill selections, and that they’ll monitor player feedback on the class, and decide then if there’s reason to adjust the way the class works.

Pifil.5193:

I’m sure they’re aware of that need though, hopefully we’ll see something to address it in this upcoming beta.

They are not ‘aware of that need’ as such, because this is how they purposefully designed the class. They’re aware that some people would likely want more flexibility, so there’s that.. but apparently they’ll wait for feedback from actual play test (such as this upcoming weekend), to decide whether something needs to change.

Of course one problem is that the people who are the most against the revenant’s current iteration, are the people less likely to prepurchase the expansion (myself included), and thus aren’t part of the test to give feedback. So, eh.

As for the tomes, because of the automatic level scaling to the area, I don’t think they’ll ‘ruin’ anything if you already played at least one character up to 80. You’ll be above the ‘normal’ power level of the area, but not so much that everything around you dies if you sneeze the wrong way.

And on the plus side you’ll have all the abilities of the new class available for learning right away. You already learned the basic mechanics (weapon skills, utility skills, healing skill, elite skill, dodging, traits/specializations system etc), so you don’t get too large chunk of stuff at once even if you step straight away into 80.

SirDrygan.1823:

What is NPE?……

New Player Experience

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

I would have to disagree that difficult content will always be easy after you figure out how to deal with the mechanics. A example of this would be Wildstar. If you do the vet dungeons with the appropriate gear (not to strong or weak) you can still die even after learning everything. The content only becomes easy mode if you out gear it or have a amazing group.

This is certainly not my experience. Everything is easy, once you know how.
I youtubed some videos on Wildstar veteran dungeons (not having played the game) and the mechanics aren’t that far off from GW2 (basically don’t stand in fire, dodge this, kite that type stuff) all of which can easily be learned and mastered through rote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hILCb0H1s8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSAGK-tXmkA

This ones present simple challenges: avoid lazers, don’t stand in circles, interrupt, and tank and spank. Nothing that I’d imagine wouldn’t become easier with enough practice. The difficulty here seems to come primarily from how hard the boss hits and the amount of damage done by the lazers. These (debatably) would be artificial difficulty what you seemingly seem to be arguing against.

This article presents two types of difficulty
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596
In the case of GW2 design difficulty would be somewhat scaled back from the articles example of Dark Souls. Primarily the difficulty would appear in the design of encounters, so the mechanics involved. But as seen in the Wildstar examples this takes the form of rote-mechanics. Jump over enough lazers and eventually jumping over lazers won’t be difficult at all. But onces you’ve mastered jumping over lazers, then allowing players to add more lazer or faster moving lazers means that they now have a slightly different challenge that would require learning, more or less, from the start again.

I think this whole argument is pointless. ANYTHING, if it’s reasonably possible, and not based on pure random, becomes trivial once you practice enough.

Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELROG7uppps

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, you can think of it this way: Your $50 dollars pays for all those forthcoming patches, just as whatever you paid for the core game covered every patch since launch.

When was (or is it now) GW2 complete?

This, pretty much. Look at it this way:

GW2 has had regular updates for years now. It has included things like new areas (southsun, DT, SW), new game modes (fractals, SAB), tons of new skins, various QoL improvements (original wallet for example). There’s also stuff that was expected ever since launch (guild halls for example), and things that many players had waited for a long time (new class). If you take the content apart, there isn’t much that’s different what’s been going on already. Rolling HoT in as part of the base game just kind of emphasizes the point.

Some of the new content was actually already released – like specializations, and skill balance changes. Or WvW masteries, which seem like the early version of wider masteries. The rest of the features will come out when they are ready. What would be the point of holding them back longer than necessary – denying the features that are already ready for live, just so you could roll a bigger bundle at once later on.

The day ‘when HoT is ready’ is arbitrary at best – HoT itself is basically just a title change for GW2, along with announcement of a lot of stuff they’ve been working on, but mostly haven’t released yet. The only difference is that they dropped a milestone, announced that full range of new features is available only for games purchased ‘after this date’, and gave old players a chance to re-purchase the game to get that full access. In a way the whole HoT and prepurchase thing is mostly just smoke and mirrors.

Depending on how you look at it, most – or all – MMO ‘expansions’ are like that. They’re just major content updates that keep the game fresh and up to date, and were rolled together into bundle to monetarize it and call it ‘expansion’. The only difference is how you define the pricing model – and how much of the content you bundle together, and how often.

In this case releasing HoT ‘incomplete’ is a good thing, because it just means you get access to part of the content sooner – rather than getting it all at once, but at later time.

Seera.5916:

As long as five players who are friends and want to play together and all want to do the same role have the chance to complete the content without changing to a different role, then I don’t care how they change it up. Be it they all want to play DPS or they all want to play Support or Control or whatever.

I don’t want to have to wait for someone in a particular build to show up in order to be able to do content.

Some people really enjoy soloing content. Add hard roles to the game and you destroy their fun. Because they can no longer do it alone. They have to bring others.

There is a limit to this. Five dedicated healer builds for example, that sacrifice essentially all of their DPS and defense to be as efficient at healing as possible.

Five characters with build like that should not be able to deal with all content. If you make all the content such that any and all builds – and combinations of builds – can drudge through it, you will sacrifice far too much.

If you take it to extreme, you’d have to give up all time based combat challenges, all ‘hold the line’ type challenges, and a lot of other mechanics. Taken to the wider scale, most – if not all – of the current world boss fights that are even a little challenging, would be impossible.

No.

/15 chars~~~~~~

Frostfang.5109:

1:st – Regarding the pet panel. The order in wich they are placed feels very random… I have to search for a pet every single time when I want to change to a different one even though I have played ranger since release day.

• It would be nice if pets were sorted in types (where all, for example drakes, could be found in about the same place), like Drakes, hounds, felines, birds, bears etc…

2:nd – The neverending re-naming!

• It would be nice if every pet could save their name – or at least every slot.

3:rd – the portraits. The marsh drake is still not displaying the correct portrait. Instead of showing a Marsh drake, it shows a scaled drake. The River drake had the same problem earlier but that got sorted. I wonder why u didn’t fix the marsh drake at the same time. This has ben like this since release.

• Plz give every pet their correct portrait (only marsh drake left to fix).

1: I’ve had this same trouble when I try to look for a more ‘exotic’ pet. Most of the time I just swap between a handful of pets and I’ve more or less learned their spots, but more consistent ordering of pets on the list would certainly be very welcome.

2: This. Yes, please. What good is being able to name your pets, if the name is lost whenever you swap to different type. It gets so darn tedious to rename that I’ve gotten to point of just not caring anymore, and letting them stay as juveniles most of the time. If I name my black moa ‘Cordelia’, then Cordelia it is, and thus it should stay.

3: This one hasn’t bothered me really, I hadn’t even noticed. But then I hardly ever use drakes anyway. But certainly it would make sense to have it fixed.

meeflak.9714:

I’d like to add something .. the option to keep the pet stowed in combat … Please a net, please

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, sometimes it would be useful. On the other hand, ranger and pet are a pair. If it were possible to keep pets stowed during combat, a lot of groups would start requiring you to do it in dungeons/fractals. And that would kind of defeat the purpose of being a pet class – not to mention drop our DPS even more.

Maybe, maybe, it would make sense to give rangers some options for ‘non-attack pets’. E.g. for example some kind of spirit pets that give a boon to party – similar to the spirit utility skills – but don’t take active part in combat. But even so we might run into similar problems in groups. Sometimes more choices means less.

I haven’t tested this excessively, but I’ve had my pet fighting a mob, and others just walking past and ignoring the combat entirely. I think as long as the pet doesn’t actually attack something, it doesn’t pull much aggro, if any. So keeping your pet on passive should be fine enough. Though, the pet does attack random targets when you use ‘guard’ skill.. in my opinion even with that skill it should still follow the ‘passive’ setting. If you set pet passive, it should NOT. ATTACK. EVER. unless you use the F1 command to specifically order it. Not even with ‘guard’ skill.

That skill is now (after it was made instant like most other shouts) useful for giving the pet protection, and traited also for swiftness and regen boons. However it can make a total mess of things sometimes with the pet rushing off to attack random targets when you use it just to keep swiftness running while traveling. At those times I’d like to be able to set the pet passive, and not have it attack random things.

Vayne.8563:

I suspect we’ll see something happening with fractals in the expansion because there’s a fractal mastery coming. No point in doing that if there’s nothing coming for fractals.

It’s possible. I think the question is, how many players are doing fractals actively. Since the masteries are kind of general framework, it probably won’t be very difficult to add a path for fractals, and throw in some abilities like agony resistance, and the like. It won’t tie a lot of resources to do, and will give something for fractal runners to gnaw on.

To actually create more fractal dungeons, and generally make the fractals a less niche part of the game is another matter. It would be a lot more work, and personally I don’t expect it to happen.

I think the discussion on this thread is kind of highlighting some problems involved with this. The class system on GW2 just doesn’t work very well in dungeons, or group content in general. “Everyone can do everything” works fine for solo content, basically all classes in GW2 are solo classes. It sort of works in large scale world content too, where in most cases you can just throw enough people into encounter to hammer it down without any highly specialized roles.

It’s the middle range where it sort of breaks. The system is mostly built to let everyone just sort of do their own thing, but there’s little in GW2 class system to support actual group dynamics. Fire field + blast finishers is more or less the height of it.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

IndigoSundown.5419:

What stops you from playing as you want now?

Actually, the issue is far more complicated than that. Whether we should have hard roles or not isn’t just a matter of player preference, but a business decision. People like having hard roles, and they like having their playstyle reinforced by the game’s design. So, the question is if the game can be more interesting, entertaining, and appealing to the public at large if there were hard roles.

It isn’t a stupid thought. Since beta, one of the biggest legitimate complaints about GW2 is that the PVE combat is samey. From an outside perspective, watching everyone in the team do the exact same stack and smack routine with every encounter ever is both unpleasant to look at and unappealing in general. Hard roles appear to be dynamic and unique, with each player’s singular contribution being noticeable.

From the diversity standpoint no one “loses out” if tanking and healing become requirements. DPS preference players still get to DPS, but now the other two legs get to do their thing, too. The problem is that players who build bulky or healy, or heck even conditiony face not gratitude, but ire from their teammates. Telling these minority preference players to just go and hang out with each other is like telling racial minorities to do the same thing to avoid racism. It isn’t a fix, at all. The hate is still there, you’re just trying to hide yourself away from it.

While it is a community problem, it is also a design problem. So, facing the unreasonable wrath of selfish teenagers on the internet, the only reasonable solution would be to modify the game in such a way that the stat combinations that Anet put into the game are useful in that game.

Personally I think the solution to this problem is just to make the game harder, but in specific ways to encourage more than just corner pulling and bursting. You’ll still get full zerk groups, but hopefully the skill of the average player would mean that running a bunch of unaffiliated full zerkers is no longer completely superior to 4 zerks + 1 zealot.

Well the whole design is apparently leaning away from group content to – on one hand solo, and on other hand ‘world events’. Dungeons are relic of the past, and fractals don’t seem to get a huge amount of attention either. So I don’t know if this is really even very relevant to the game as it is right now.

Seera.5916:

Paprikaspice.8462:

Seera.5916:

No to required roles. I do not want to have to wait for a player who has a specific build and is skilled in their role in order to play the game.

I want to be able to group with my friends and we all play the characters and builds we want to play. Not have to worry about finding the content in the game that does require our gear set up or having to have someone play a character or change build to something they’re not wanting to play.

you can change builds at any time. all you would potentially need is 1 more set of gear. and i honestly see no way around the current dungeons which are faceroll at worst and moderately difficult with randos at best which allows for any team comp to clear. if you dont require roles, theres not much you can do to make bosses interesting.

You did not get what I said. I’m fully aware that I can change builds when I want to.

And that’s the thing. I should only have to change my build when I WANT to.

If content my friends and I want to play requires Builds X, Y, and Z to be able to be done with no exceptions and none of us have Build Y, I do not want to be forced to have to wait to find someone with Build Y who knows what they are doing or have to have someone switch into Build Y to do the content.

And having to carry another set of gear around should not be a consequence of making the game more diverse in builds.

Without commenting on the rest of the related issues… the problem is that if you can clear the content with any build, or any combination of builds, the result is that the only viable build in group content is the one that dishes out the most damage – because that’s the build that clears it the -fastest-, and thus gives you the best profit. And unless you are running that kind of build, you are not welcome to most groups. So essentially it’s not “play whatever build you like”, it’s “play the build that’s generally agreed to be the best” or “fast run exp only 10k ping gear”

Kite.2510:

As much as I hate to admit it.
As much as it looks like a lot of work.
As much as I have managed to overcome it.
As much as A-net improved their story-telling in their more recent content.

As they say.. “fixed it for you”. When expressing opinions, don’t get too inclusive. Some people might agree with you, others might not.

I don’t have any big problems with the story. Some of the arcs are better, some of them are worse. I find many of the asura story pieces quite amusing and fitting, and have enjoyed much of the charr side. I’m not particularily interested in human story, but that has likely a lot to do with the fact that I just generally don’t like playing humans. Sylvari on the other hand was quite interesting – and I’m glad of that, them being my favorite race.

And the norn? I like the style the story is written in. It’s kind of like.. I’m never quite sure how to take them. They have this peculiar mix of being naive, stubborn, irritating, but at the same time also kind of friendly, excitable and enjoying the life, living it to the fullest.

Overall, I think the storylines are fine. I recall they said somewhere they tried to make different races approach it differently, to cater for different preferences of people, e.g. ‘something for everyone’ – but I might remember this wrong. Could they be improved? Certainly. There’s always something you can improve. Would it be worth it? I think not. Anet has limited resources, and I feel there’s more important and useful places to put them, than rewriting the personal story. For starters, they could fix ogre wars.

As for the hard mode, they’ve said pretty clearly in an interview (which was linked somewhere else on HoT forums, I think the thread about dungeon improvements) that they’re not planning on doing hard mode (it was regarding dungeons, but I don’t see it being any different for personal story instances either).

IP: 206.127.146.62

01-JUL-2015; 10:00 UTC

New month, new locked-up instance. This time couldn’t see the NPCs anywhere, but after spending over half an hour on the map I had to conclude it’s locked up as usual.

Would be nice if this could be actually fixed one of these days, so the Sam required for achievement wouldn’t be locked behind a broken event.

TheSwede.9512:

Kitsune.1902:

TheSwede.9512:

People -already- whine about how Rangers Pew-pewing at 1500 range is “OP and unbalanced”, just imagine what a Thief popping in and out of Stealth every 3s at that range would do. At close range, it has the added risk of them having to be on top of you to backstab, you can counter with AoE’s and CC around your character. However, by each Unit that the Thief gains in Range, the Radius at which they can play around grows substantially. Just increasing the Range by 100 results in a 3.14*100^2 larger area for the Thief to hide in and to avoid counter-play. That’s 31 400 times bigger than before, imagine what’d happen of the “Backstab” radius increased from 130 to 1500 or even just 900 range.

Your math is completely flawed there, and the situations wouldn’t be quite that bad. For example if you made every 1200 range attack for thief to have a long activation time and self-root, it would change things a lot. Of course it would then feel pretty pointless for thief play style. But either way there’s plenty of ways it could be balanced.

The change from 900’ pistol to 1200’ rifle wouldn’t be quite so dramatic. You have to become visible in order to attack.. and you’ll remain visible for a while. The question is how long does it take for you between times you can consistently vanish, and how much head start you get to escape to random direction. The area isn’t really so important there, important is the 300’ longer attack distance itself (to counter, you have to be able to reach the thief from 300’ longer distance, before they vanish again and move too far for you to estimate where they went).

Sticking to the idea that Rifle gets a Burst, Backstab-esque Stealth Skill with 1200-1500.

The difference is bigger than you think, especially with burst type skill sets. The Pistols are a Condi Weapon first and foremost (used with Dagger Off-hand) and It’s Stealth Attack is a Multi-Hit attack and not Single Hit. They don’t deal in burst Damage in the same vein as Dagger does, which is the similarity I’m trying to push through here.

A direct damage fight and a Condi fight takes different amounts of time. Against a Pistol Thief, who lacks significant Burst, tenacity will eventually run him down once his Stealth skills come to a halt, not to mention the way the Stealth move is designed as a Multi-hit attack makes it all the easier to avoid the brunt of it even if the first and second hits home. The same can’t be said for a Burst Thief.

Now, imagine of the Urgency of closing the distance wasn’t there. Suddenly, the Thief has a much great Area to move about, an Area that is -impossible- to cover with AoE’s as a single Player, because they don’t Have to retreat, they can move sidesways and even beyond you, if they wish. Against a Melee Thief, you know that he will Always come up in Melee Range, that’s the Counter-tactics vs Thieves’ absolute stealth: Awareness. That awareness becomes Null when the Thief No longer needs to be in that required spot. The window for a Backstab is relatively small becuase of how the Thief must Position themselves. As the Radius increases, so does the Arc Length from which they can hit the desired Point (Back or sides).

Now, as a disclaimer, I don’t believe that a 1200 Range weapon couldn’t work for Thief. But a 1200 Range weapon as a Burst weapon with Single-Strike High Damage would not. If the theoretical Rifle was instead used as a Set-up weapon with Vulnerability stacking on its Stealth move, focused on weakening a target before moving in for the Kill, then it’d prolly work. Or if its Stealth attack was divided among several shots much like the Pistol or a Ranger’s Rapid fire. But in either case, I doubt that’d satisfy the people who want the Rifle for their Thief so they can be Snipers.

PS: I did mess up one part of the math, I concede. The Area wouldn’t be 31 400 Times as big, it’d just be 31 400 Units Bigger. It was 2am, my math is horrible then.

A spike damage with 1 skill would be excessive from 1200 range, let only 1500 – yes, that much I agree with. But I don’t really see a point to expect the most unbalanced and OP possibility. If it turned out to be rifle, I imagine they’d make it something more reasonable.

As for the math, 31,400 units bigger only holds if you start from zero. Adding 100’ at range 900’ for example would increase area from 2,543,400 → 3,140,000 or 596,600 increase. But I still think the area itself is not as relevant as the distance.. you know the point from which the thief attacked, and so when the thief vanishes, you know the exact point from which they start. The question is how fast you can attack to that point (or near it).

lordkrall.7241:

FlyShy.9613:

So I would get a useless item. Thats a load of bull.

No, you would get a character slot.
If you add the code to an existing account, you are simply not given the Core game access but rather a character slot instead. (*

.*) Terms and conditions may apply
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/

Didn’t you know we already have playable dragons? (No, not my character so can’t take credit for it).

TheSwede.9512:

People -already- whine about how Rangers Pew-pewing at 1500 range is “OP and unbalanced”, just imagine what a Thief popping in and out of Stealth every 3s at that range would do. At close range, it has the added risk of them having to be on top of you to backstab, you can counter with AoE’s and CC around your character. However, by each Unit that the Thief gains in Range, the Radius at which they can play around grows substantially. Just increasing the Range by 100 results in a 3.14*100^2 larger area for the Thief to hide in and to avoid counter-play. That’s 31 400 times bigger than before, imagine what’d happen of the “Backstab” radius increased from 130 to 1500 or even just 900 range.

Your math is completely flawed there, and the situations wouldn’t be quite that bad. For example if you made every 1200 range attack for thief to have a long activation time and self-root, it would change things a lot. Of course it would then feel pretty pointless for thief play style. But either way there’s plenty of ways it could be balanced.

The change from 900’ pistol to 1200’ rifle wouldn’t be quite so dramatic. You have to become visible in order to attack.. and you’ll remain visible for a while. The question is how long does it take for you between times you can consistently vanish, and how much head start you get to escape to random direction. The area isn’t really so important there, important is the 300’ longer attack distance itself (to counter, you have to be able to reach the thief from 300’ longer distance, before they vanish again and move too far for you to estimate where they went).

Bo staff is a pretty classic weapon for martial arts, and that kind of combat style would in my opinion fit thief class quite well. Different from current blade-and-pistol styles, certainly. But fitting nonetheless. It could be more defensive and control oriented than current weapons.

Juclesia Elcritian.8410:

No Mordy fight in an xpac about Mordy is a deal breaker for me. I was not planning on pre-purchasing, but now I won’t even purchase on release until the Living World progresses to the point where he dies I guess. I don’t want a fragmented experience. I want to do it at my own pace whenever I feel like it.

And speaking of pace, if it’s gonna be 3 years to take down 1 dragon, we’ve got another ~12-15 years of GW2 just surrounding dragons to go. And given how quickly ANET abandoned GW1, it doesn’t look like GW2 will cover ALL of the Elder Dragons before it’s time to make GW3.

Well if you wait for a few months after release, you’ll probably get it on discount.. or if you wait until the next expansion, you’ll get it as a free sider – so I guess it’s a win-win.

Elite specs are supposed to bring NEW playstyles on the table. Anyone who thinks the elite should do the same old stuff without bringing any changes, is going to be almost guaranteed to get disappointed. Like Diovid pointed out – if you want to keep doing the same old stuff, nothing’s keeping you from it. The elite specs are aimed for people who want to explore some new aspects of the class. There’s a reason why they basically give a new class name. Think of them like advanced class from other games. I’m pretty sure druid isn’t going to feel the same as ranger.. but I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s done and what it offers.

Roundabout.1752:

Considering the first Beta test had about the same hours and wasn’t on a weekend I have no idea why anyone would consider it deceptive to schedule the second stress test the exact same way. People had to spend time in SW to farm for a Portal, frankly that’s just not a big deal and asking for a Beta weekend, a whole weekend, to “make up” for missing a stress test that at best would have given you 6 hours in a very limited area under very controlled conditions is asking for a bit much. Good luck who knows maybe Anet will but I would understand if people who’ve actually paid to be in the Beta testing weren’t happy with that decision at all.

I don’t feel like anet has any sort of ‘obligation’ to do it, I simply think it would be nice if they did. What comes to people who ‘paid for it’, every single version of HoT has the beta access included as soon as you buy it – so it’s not like anyone is paying a single cent of extra to get the access. Even if someone decided to buy the HoT sooner rather than later in order to get into the beta, it’s not like they actually suffered a loss over it – and they still get access to all of the betas, instead of just (possibly) one of them. So, I don’t really see any loss there, or a reason for anyone to complain.

kitsune.3741:

its definitely a possibility but if we assume everything in the data mining is specialization weapons then theirs that second staff that doesn’t look druid like and the weapon that is druid like is a torch which because they announced on stage that it was going to be staff feel like that would cause a bit of a backlash if they changed that

I swear, I stopped to stare at that for a while, and went “Wait.. I didn’t write that!”

adormtil.1605:

http://mmos.com/editorials/most-profitable-mmos-mmorpgs
This is the list of the most profitable MMO there are and I will ask you this if any is gonna wanna watch it. What do most of those games have in common?

They suck?

Subjective of course, but they are all games I have zero interest in.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Rikimaru.7890:

But let’s just get to the point. From what I heard the same thing will happen every time an expansion comes out. I assume there will be 4 more – 1 for each dragon. So does that mean players that played from the start will have to pay 300 – 600$ for the whole content, while those that start then only 50 – 100$?

Welcome to every game with a box price ever.

pickpocket.2071:

Be more worried about the amount of content than the price it comes at, old rather pay $100+ n see some real content put in

What are we getting altogether then in terms of content?

Ricky.4706 posted a link to pretty good summary in another thread:

Ricky.4706:

I just discovered this review that made the expansion a little more interesting, and seems to give more insight than what I’ve seen elsewhere -

https://youtu.be/GFgCkK_ikJg

IP 206.127.159.105

28-JUN-2015; 19:00 UTC
29-JUN-2015; 20:00 UTC – stuck 25 hours
30-JUN-2015; 08:00 UTC – stuck 37 hours
30-JUN-2015; 21:00 UTC – new instance *.113
So today Fields of Ruin was daily event map. Lots of traffic, lots of instances popping up. I saw at least 3 maps being bugged and stuck along the way. After dust settled, this is the (stuck) instance we were left with. Slashclaw stuck inside Kraal, and event chain – as usual – locked up, since around 19:00 UTC (although I’m writing this about 7 hours later since I wasn’t sure which one of the maps would be left around).

morrolan.9608:

Kitsune.1902:

webtoehobbit.4201:

It kinda makes me lose hope in this community that so many of you are ok with idea of not killing Mordremoth, or at least concluding the Mordremoth story arch in HoT…. :’-(

I’m ok with a good story. Good story doesn’t necessarily mean swift demise of the next elder dragon. It can involve it, or it can be about something else. On the other hand straight up continuing to fight against Mordy could very well be a boring story and leave me disappointed. Didn’t they say something about ‘The Journey Is The Goal’?

We’re paying a lot for hot, there needs to be a payoff.

Certainly. I’m just saying that the ‘payoff’ I’m expecting doesn’t have to be directly related to burying an elder dragon. I think it’s a likely development somewhere along the way prior to next expansion (whenever such will come), just it’s not some kind of ‘kill Mordy or pitchforks’ issue to me. I’m a lot more concerned by many other things that hold much more importance to my decision regarding whether to get the expansion or not (which I still haven’t decided).

webtoehobbit.4201:

It kinda makes me lose hope in this community that so many of you are ok with idea of not killing Mordremoth, or at least concluding the Mordremoth story arch in HoT…. :’-(

I’m ok with a good story. Good story doesn’t necessarily mean swift demise of the next elder dragon. It can involve it, or it can be about something else. On the other hand straight up continuing to fight against Mordy could very well be a boring story and leave me disappointed. Didn’t they say something about ‘The Journey Is The Goal’?

morrolan.9608:

Given the number of elder dragons it doesn’t make sense to not fight mordy in hot. Also the LW was a lead up to HOT if it doesn’t provide a conclusion then structurally it won’t make sense as well as there undoubtedly being a negative reaction from players.

Well technically LW2 was lead-up to Mordy slaughtering the pact. It would make as much sense that the HoT would be about protecting the egg, finding a way to hatch it, to somehow manage to grow up the dragon, and then eventually have it’s help in fighting the rest of the elder dragons – including Mordy. You remember how Glint was helping the original DE, right?

This is all with the optimistic assumption that we’ll have a chance against Mordy to begin with. It might also be about living in the shadow of the elder dragons as they wake up one by one, and trying to survive day by day.

In other words, we can speculate and make guesses, sure. But we can’t really know for sure how the story will go and which paths it’ll take. So it’s a bit difficult to judge what makes sense and what doesn’t. Personally I’d be disappointed if everything went predictably without surprises. Whether it makes sense to put down Mordy during the HoT (and by that I mean, ‘during the time between launch of HoT and launch of the next expansion’), will depend on a lot of things.

I think saying there won’t be fight against Mordy in HoT would refer to the situation at release – e.g. don’t expect to run through jungle content to the zone where the boss fight is to stack and zerk Mordy 3 times a day.

It’s two slots, I think this should be obvious (assuming you prepurchase, and not preorder). They did say it may take a while before the ‘veteran slot’ is given, since they need to set up the process, but said they’ll do it as soon as possible.

Conski Deshan.2057:

I would rather hope we get to kill Mordremoth in the HOT expansion. Actually I’d like him to be killed and the set-up for going after Krak to be the premise for LW3.
As it stands the following story threads still have to be done for GW2
Primordious
Bubbles
Krak
Jormag
Dragon aftermath (magic gone wild)
Cantha
Cantha aftermath
Elona (overthrowing the undead)
Elona aftermath
Return of the Gods/ Hunting for the gods

That’s a good 10 years of story and that’s only the ones they have setups for, there could be many more scarlets as well coming out of nowhere. So they need to pick up the pace in terms of the dragon story.

• GW3: The Magic Gone Wild (2018)
• GW4: Return To Cantha (2024)
• GW5: The Liberation Of Elona (2029)
• GW6: The Old Gods (2035)
  

webtoehobbit.4201:

Living World is supposed to span the gap between expansions, that is pretty much what the devs have said, did ANY of Living World Season’s 1 or 2 have to do with Zhaitan? No. It was all a lead up to the reveal of Mordremoth and the main conflict that we will be facing in the expansion.

Obviously there wasn’t anything to do with Zhaitan Because Zhaitan was dead already? That doesn’t really prove a thing. Is this all even relevant? What does it matter if the fight against Mordremoth is part of LW3 or not? It doesn’t have to be the only content in LW3. Or if it were, it could simply flow into LW4 that could deal with the aftermath. Expansion has content. LW has content. If anything, I think it would be mistake to tie Mordremoth too closely into HoT areas themself, because what would then happen after Mordy is killed? Would you rework every area to reflect that? Rather it would make more sense to put the story in somehow outside the areas themself.. e.g. LW, and make the areas so that they will only reflect minions, that could still remain there even after the dragon is put down.

zombyturtle.5980:

OP here is how you can improve dungeons for yourself:

Open LFG
Create New LFG
In description write : casual run , all welcome, full clear, no stacking

If anyone joins and tries to speedrun or skip just kick them. No need to feel bad since they couldnt even be bothered to read your LFG.

The problem is it’s more likely you’ll get 3-4 people who didn’t bother to read, and they’ll kick -you- for being a slowpoke

Fenom.9457:

Randulf.7614:

Fenom.9457:

Randulf.7614:

Did they def confirm LW season 3? I know the last comment was they weren’t sure how they’d approach seasons again, but that was some time ago and I haven’t kept up beyond that announcement.

Speculation would leave me to expect any LW content to be post Xmas or early spring. They’d want a grace period for HoT to bed in and time for ppl to finish it. Plus we have Halloween and then Wintersday. That’s a lot going on for more content to then appear on top.

I think that depends on when HoT comes out. It currently seems to be around July 31st?…

That’s to do with a refund grace period for the pre-purchase. Whilst I’d welcome such an early release date, I’d b surprised if it was much before end of Aug/early September based on where they are with releasing info and no sign of a beta weekend yet.

They said you can get a refund before the END of the pre-sale. So unless it’s going away from the shop, the only other way for a pre sale to end is to become a regular sale, meaning release.

I’m not sure what you are trying to say here. Are you talking about something different from the community address at https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pre-purchase-community-address/ ?

Fenom.9457:

rapthorne.7345:

HoT is supposed to introduce Living Story Season 3, so I’d assume we won’t be taking down Morderemoth with any HoT personal story, but as the final episode of the HoT living story

But if it’s part of the expansion, it’s not LW, it’s the expansion.. LW eps are the releases between xpacs. Maybe I don’t understand exactly what you mean?…

The LW continues into HoT areas. To my undrestanding without HoT you will not have access to new LW episodes either. Thus further LW can be seen as part of HoT expansion.

Well, all pricing-related spin aside, HoT is the new GW2 game. If you don’t have it, you’ll be locked out of much/most(?) of the new content.. although you can still keep playing the old game, and get the updates that affect the game globally (e.g. skill rebalances, gem-store products). I’d assume most of the new equipment skins, events (except maybe old seasonal events like wintersday, mad king etc), living world, possible new areas etc. will be locked behind HoT. Hard to say about possible new fractals – they might be part of the base game, although I wouldn’t be sure. It’s entirely possible they would be ‘HoT fractals’, although that would be detrimental to the game in some ways. But it’s obvious (and fair) that most of the development resources will be directed to people who paid for the continuity.