Guild Wars 2

timecookie.8570:

Do good players represent a large enough part of the player-base to hope more challenging content? I think not.

No, that’s what I’m afraid of, thus I’m asking this question.

I don’t understand why people are talking about weapons, when that’s not the point of the thread, but since I’m not getting any valid answer I might as well join :P

Let’s start with comparing the mace and Gs

GS #1; hits 3 target in an arc, deals same amount of damage as mace, Gives Might, which you can already have 25stack of, so it’s not needed.

Mace #1; hits 3 target in an arc, deals same amount of damage as Gs, Heals
(Does the same thing + heals) “therefore better”.

Gs Light field, Gives retaliation to mates. Well damage is rarely a problem in dungeons, and retaliation only deal a small amount of damage.

Mace Light Field, Gives Regen to mate, damage might rarely be a problem, but people are taking a lot of hits in dungeons, “therefore better”

Gs Blind, Sure it blinds in a Aoe, do you really need it for Mobs? And it’s “useless” against bosses, since of it long cast time, and the duration is only 10% against bosses.

Mace Block, Blocks 1 attack for the whole team (presuming your standing close) less useful than a blind against mobs, but it’s really useful against bosses with a instagib attack, also the attack has no cast time, so as long as you have reflexes, you can block any attack when it’s of CD(well almost) It also gives protection to your team, if you don’t block any attack.

Gs whirl; nothing bad about this attack, it’s a finisher and deals decent damage, still guardians are suboptimal as damage dealers.

Shields protection; Gives protection to my whole team, 33% less damage taken, that’s Huge, and why would it be hard to hit all your allies with it? I run in first, turn around, use it, turn back to the enemy.

Gs Pull: This is what’s useful with the greatswords, it’s a really good attack, against mobs, not bosses though. But that’s it.

Mace “ward”: I must say puching back mobs is less useful than pulling them in (in most situations) However, you can knock down a boss using his “Ulti” and you can always use it to heal your allies.

A mentioned, sure the gs can deal decent damage, but Guardian are suboptimal damage dealers.

As an example, let’s say you’re in an … apocalypse, your a trained doctor, and you team up with a soldier and a professional swordsman.
You find; a medkit, a gun and a sword.
you can give the soldier the medkit, he will be able to use it, give the gun to the swordsman, he’ll be able to shoot with it, and you can take the sword, you’ll be able to chop with is. But that would be suboptimal.

About renewed focus/tome.

Sure renewed focus locks you in place for three seconds making you invulnerable and renews you virtues (Yea another heal and block)

With tome of courage, you get a Ranged Heal, that heals like 1,8k per seconds (more if you got loads of healingpower) a bouncing Blinds, a Regeneration + Protection spell for your allies. A AOE Daze, and a heal that literally heals your whole group to max health. How is 1 heal and 1 block better?

“if they are so easy then maybe he should be running a more optimized build? aka damage spec?

The excuse may be ‘well my team is bad so therefore I need to keep them up."

No I’m in no way saying my team is bad, my group is just as good as me.
However, If I kittenage with my guardian, well still only get a small amount of extra damage (which will be nullified, since my team will have to dodge, and probably go down from time to time)
If I go full support, my team can just tank and spank, while I keep them up. (Ofc some attacks still need to be dodged.)

“The bow is ok, but I would much rather use Hold the line.”
Why not both?

Trollhammer.7439:

@Komuflage.2307
You are applying an unfair difficulty standard. If a dungeon is meant for sub-80 players, then they are right to complain about it.

Again, you misunderstand, I’m not talking about people lower than lvl 80, I’m talking about the average player I meet in pugs.

There are lvl 80 players who can’t dodge kholers hook, who then complain about it being to hard.
There are lvl 80 players who think the bomb event in CM path 2 is to hard, because they can’t figure out a good strategy, and instead of trying to observe the encounter etc, they just try a few times then complain.

Another example of this (Not dungeon related though) is the clock tower during the Halloween event. Apparently only a small amount of players actually made it. Most people just seemed to jump at random platforms, instead of trying to learn the map, and come up with a “tactic” of how to jump.

Now the creator of the clocktower apologised, and said he would not create such difficult content for such events. (Halloween, Christmas etc)
First of, isn’t the point of a difficult jumping puzzle with an achievement, that only the “best” ones will make it. If it’s balanced so that everyone can make it, it’s not much of an achievement right?
Now we got a new jumping puzzle for Christmas, this was significantly easier, it was ridiculous.

Just to make this clear though, again, I’m not requesting that they’ll balance their jumping puzzles/dungeons for the minority who made it. I’m asking that; instead of balance all the content for the casual players, give us “hard core” players some content as well?

IamDuddits.1692:

Adding challenging content would require them to weigh control and support as heavily as damage currently is. 4 Warrior 1 Mesmer in runs is just too good because you really don’t need support or control to overcome the mechanics.

They could still keep the philosophy that a trinity doesn’t exist for the simple fact that every class is capable of bringing damage, support and control to the table in one form or another, assuming the player is willing to respec for given fights. That’s a big assumption though.

They could very well have fights that would require Interrupt or Wipe mechanics or something that would require your team to stack on an AoE regeneration to heal through unavoidable AoE damage because of how readily available AoE buffs are.

The reason why 4W +1M is so powerful is just as you say, they don’t need anything else because it’s so easy.

I don’t see why everyone should respec before any encounter just because they added more challenging content.

As it’s right now, there’s a lack of meaningful mechanics.
As it’s right now, you can just out DPS and out tank most bosses.

If they instead added mechanics were you actually need a bit of everything (to some extend) then this whole 4W +1M would be over.

Add a boss that deals a high damage pulse aoe every other second, so you wouldn’t be able to dodge them all without things like vigor. Now all warriors can’t come with a Greatsword, it would be needed to have a warhorn.

A boss that heals himself a lot, so you need poison upkeep.

In general, just add meaningful mechanics. As of right now, Vigor, Poison upkeep, profession combos etc aren’t needed, you can easily beat any encounter without any of that. At least something so I need to stay focused.

Using the Cof path2 as an example again, before I needed to stay kind of focused while defending magg, now I just spam 1 for 3 min till I win

Trollhammer.7439:

swiftpaw.6397:

no offence bro, but you are a really bad guardian – Trollhammer.
Now while he’s said some rather questionable things about mace and great sword, there’s no need to say that.

I don’t see the difference. If the guy tries to teach people how to play specific profession while displaying some pretty silly ideas about that profession, then he is bad at it. It doesn’t mean he is a bad person, just a bad player. One can get offended at it all they want, frankly I don’t give a kitten.

Again, I’m not trying to teach anyone anything.

People are really misunderstanding the whole point of my first post. Is it that it’s so long, no one reads it through, get stuck on that part and then just comment? :I

Simply my point is: Most people who play dungeons in GW do it in pugs, often players in this pug uses builds that ain’t that good, and they don use good strategies. They pretty much just run into an encounter, just trying to kill everything, wipes, respawn, run into the encounter again, again just trying to kill everything wipes, rince and repeat.
Until they finally tried 5 times, then they go to the forums and complain.

Take the torches in Cof path 3 as an example, if you simply kill 2 mobs at each torch, then split up, that means every1 only have 1 mob to kill – they kill it – type in chat “R” – the leader types “Press” – every press the torch, and they’re done. That’s how easy it was before.

Every time I tried it in a pug. People just tried to kill their 3 mobs al by them self, and even though that’s not especially hard for most professions/players, there was all ways 1 or 2 players who didn’t manage. So people tried over and over. Until enough people complained, and now that room has been nerfed.

The same thing goes for the event outside Baelfire in path 2, were you were suppose to kill a bunch of veterans, while magg set a bomb.

Most people in pugs just tried to kite these instead of killing them. (If you search the forum you’ll see that a lot of people just couldn’t kill them, even if they tried)
Now that encounter is nerfed to.

As mentioned, there is pretty much 2 camps; 1 is the “casual pugs” who think the current difficulty is to high, and the other one is the “organised groups” who think the current difficulty is to low.

It’s not possible to balance the dungeons so they fit everyone with just 1 difficulty, therefore I’m requesting another difficulty to be implemented or some new content focused on those player who think the current dungeons are to easy.

That’s what I wanted to know with this post, not trying to learn people things.

Again, it’s hard to express yourself in written, since it’s easy to sound like a kitten.

Pinch.4273:

Komuflage.2307:

haviz.1340:

25 stacks of might are almost double damage when you have base power. Do you have 916 power?

Hehe, no. But that’s not how the damage model in GW2 works.

Gw2s formula for damage is (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

This mean that if you’ve have 1k power you’ll maybe deal 500damage to a specific mob, but if you’ve 2k power (double) you maybe deal 1800damage.

See it as diminishing return, but it’s vice versa.

Also, at lvl 80, 25stacks of might is 875 power, not 916 ^^

Nice “math”. You managed to list the proper formula and didn’t even take the time to prove your own conclusions wrong.

Here, I’ll do it for you:
Assume 1000 dmg weapon, 1 skill coefficient, 2000 target armor.
1000 power: 1000 * 1000 * 1 / 2000 = 500
2000 power: 1000 * 2000 * 1 / 2000 = 1000

You double your power, you do double damage.
The only time getting 25 stacks of might gets close to doubling your damage is if you have base power, like haviz said.

On-topic: Hard content will come eventually. Maybe.

I didn’t take the time to do the math :P

Although you’re absolutely right. What’s so weird though is that I just tried this on my warrior just to check.

Without no might I deal in average in 1 Auto attack combo: Damage / Crit damage
970 / 2215
970 / 2215
1270 / 2885

With 25stack of might:
1345 / 3360
1345 / 3360
1650 / 4241

So for my warrior I deal pretty much exact 50% more damage. (Obviously this is not double, I’ll guess for with my guardian I deal like 75-80% more since I’ve lower power on that one)

But still, this means that if I stack 25stack might to my team, they deal like 50 – 80 % more damage, which is a lot. So I still say, therefore I rather keep my team alive, than deal a little bit more damage myself.

haviz.1340:

25 stacks of might are almost double damage when you have base power. Do you have 916 power?

Hehe, no. But that’s not how the damage model in GW2 works.

Gw2s formula for damage is (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

This mean that if you’ve have 1k power you’ll maybe deal 500damage to a specific mob, but if you’ve 2k power (double) you maybe deal 1800damage.

See it as diminishing return, but it’s vice versa.

To explain this in a easier way, you can look at it as: Damage = Attack – Defence (This formula is ofc wrong, but it’s the same idea, but simpler, thus it’s easier to explain)

If you would have 2000 Attack rating, and hit a target with 1000 Armor, you would deal 2000 – 1000 = 1000 damage. However if you would have 3000 Attack rating, and hit the same target you would deal 3000 – 1000 = 2000.
Double the damage, but only 50% more Attack rating.

Stradlater.2436:

Regarding the GS player you mentioned, his playstyle sounds a lot like mine, minus some of his abilities and behavior/attitude. Let me say a few words-

I could understand that GS and some of those abilities aren’t optimal. I used to raid on WoW pretty solid and strived to maintain the optimal build/stat builds and shot rotations(I played a hunter in Burning Crusade). That was fun, to an extent, because I played pretty seriously and I wanted to be the best. However, my attitude has changed as I’ve grown a little older and gained a difference perspective about gaming in general, and how I viewed them.

What was once something I put a lot of time into being the best at, I now use as a source of entertainment. I have no ambitions of being the best Guardian ever, rather, I want to enjoy myself. I stick with a GS because I spend more time by myself questing than in a dungeon, so I gather groups up and AoE them down which I find to be fun. I take support type abilities in dungeons to attempt to be helpful, since I am in a group. I’m working with MY character to contribute to the group. I feel as though if I play a game to enjoy myself, and desire to do dungeons because I enjoy those too, but force myself to do something I don’t find enjoyable, then I defeat my purpose of playing.

I understand that these thoughts may not apply to who you’re talking about, but I wanted to at least defend why some people don’t use an optimal build. I am with you 100% though using the most optimal strategies.

However, my argument actually in a way supports what you’re saying, in that dungeons should probably have two separate difficulties. One for a guy like me, and one for a a guy like you. Not to say, though, that the optimal build for your character specifically isn’t something you personally enjoy. It’s my understanding that guardians are more of a support/tank type class or whatever, whereas I enjoy their potential as a damage dealer. I do plan, however, to maximize my personal playstyle to give the most I can in a dungeon.

I didn’t mean for this to be argumentative, just maybe insightful to the thought process of your fellow gamer.

Glad to see someone actually understanding what I’m trying to say

I fully understand that some people chose a build they think is fun, instead of what’s optimal.
A lot of the people I used to play with did this. And I don’t mind that.

But personally, what I find fun in Rpgs like this one, is taking my gameplay as high as I can.
I like to spend time trying out different builds, respecing just because 1 trait wasn’t the optimal one. I like to take the time to observe an encounter, finding patterns in a boss movement and attacks. Looking at his animation to learn his attacks, basically knowing what he’ll do before he does is. I love spending 2 min after a failed encounter, discussing what we did wrong and what we should do in order to complete it.

It’s a Huge felling of satisfaction when you’ve learned a specific encounter good enough to pretty much “do it in my sleep”, and then looking back at what I learned.

The problem I find, is that I only felt this way 2 times in GW2, the first time we beat Kholer, and the first time we downed Giganticus. More or less the rest have been a cakewalk, there has been some difficult encounters, but most things you beat in the second or third try. And once you made it the first time, you knew what to do the next time you went the same dungeon, thus completely removing the challenge.

The thing is that it’s difficult to say “I find myself better than the majority of people in this game” without sounding like an kitten hole and offending everyone, especially in written.

Also, if you say “Please nerf Giganticus because I find him to hard” thus affecting Every1 just because you can’t beat it, then it’s accepted.

But if you ask, “Keep the instances as they are, but make some challenging content as well” then you’re a kitten.

Stego.3148:

wow horrible knowledge on guardian class imo,

Greatsword is about as good cleave damage as guardian dps can get even unspecced. Nice utility and greatsword #5 will make the entire group do vastly more damage.

Sword / Torch is debatable to be guardian’s top single target damage build.

Combining this with GS makes a lot of potential to swap between cleave pulls and #5 suck along with more blinds, and bigger single target damage and group might. If a range weapon isn’t needed. Theoretically there are more optimal set ups but it’s far from horrible, GS’s #5 especially has far more value then can be calculated by math depending on the situation.

Mace / shield is alright too though. Honestly don’t see how you can really dissect a guardian by the weapons they are using. I don’t see a weapon combo that a guardian couldn’t benefit from situationally. I don’t see any of the weapons aguardian has access too being one they would never use. IMO guardian should carry every weapon they can use.

A lot of style points also + group condition removal.

Healing Breeze is far from bad in a lot of situations also.

The utility choices do sound sketchy though.

As mentioned the GS 5# is very good, (In some specific situations, but at a boss for instance, it’s not useful at all compared to other weapons) but that’s all the GS is good at. Sure it can deal more damage than a mace, but guardians are still suboptimal as damage dealers.
The blind is also good, but aigis is often better, GS blind also has a long casting time, Mace aigis is insta.

Sure you can give might to you allies, but I can (with a little help) already stack 25stacks of might for 20-30 seconds. So the “Extra” might from a gs would not be useful, since 25stacks is the maximum amount. And since you calling me horrible, I defend myself with the following “Probably you don’t know how to stack 25stacks of might so easy” (We just do it before an encounter, we deal pretty much double damage over the next 20-30 seconds)

Having Extra heals, “Aigis”, Protection and other support ability, will be more useful in most situations, that way you can “tank” and heal your zerkerz so they’ll have enough health, so they don’t need to worry and can just spam out dps, and with the xtra might, most bosses can be killed within a minute, so why would I need dps, when my zerkerz allready kill everything in a matter of seconds, I just need to keep them alive, since they’re so squishy. (Thus, support spells are in general more optimal for a guardian)

@Indigo, yes I’m very aware of that, that’s why I’m asking for a “hard mode”

Shiren.9532:

This is why I think the “challenge” debate and the “game is too easy” crowd are not good for the game.

It’s easy for me to drive my car across the city and hop into a boat and sail to the nearby island. It’s much harder to cover the same distance in the form of a triathlon. Just because you can use tools to trivialise something doesn’t mean you are more skilled or superior in any way, in fact you are creating your own problem of having no challenge. You’re not more skilled than a triathlon competitor just because you can travel the same distance faster using superior tools, you’re just using superior tools (although I disagree mace/shield is superior to greatsword – the pull alone makes the greatsword more valuable).

You equip yourself with the most optimal builds, you exploit every flaw in the AI (I’m a ranger main and a GW1 veteran, I know how stupid the AI is – exploiting line of sight alone is terrible to see being used again) and you build cookie cutter team builds and you think the game should be balanced around that? Why should the game be balanced around a handful of classes and builds and cut out any class or build which doesn’t fulfil that criteria? You might enjoy exploiting every advantage the game gives you and limiting yourself to the absolute minim variety and tools but I enjoy playing a variety of classes, play styles and builds. A lot of people out there play rangers, necromancers, engineers and elementalists, should ArenaNet design content that caters to the tools a handful of classes have (portal, reflect, stealth, highest base DPS) simply because the people who use these tricks find them to be OP and trivialise encounters that would be otherwise challenging for people without them (swamp fractal and portal, CoF p1 boulders and portal, dredge fractal and stealth, harpy fractal and mesmer or guardian plethora of reflects and blocks, almost every dungeon path and OHKO type skills that are blocked by aegis etc)?

Your example of the Cliffside fractal is a flaw in design imo. I personally don’t like it when dungeons favour knowledge, tricks and exploits over skilled play. Realising you can essentially cheat an encounter by preventing a lot of the challenge provided by it by choosing not to do something which would be most players first instinct is pretty lame. I honestly doubt the encounter was intended to work that way – I suspect it’s just an oversight that slipped through and it only favours those in the know. Doing it doesn’t show you to be a superior player, you just know more ways to cheapen content.

It’s funny you complain about nerfs to make things easier while at the same time you criticise people for not knowing and using an exploit which negates intended challenge from dungeon design.

I think you need to read the wall again, I’m no way criticising people who don’t know as much as me, or are at a lower skill level.

Where did I say I only “accept” specific professions and build combos.
Where did I say I exploit everything that I can?

I don’t mind people who don’t know as much, who don’t use the optimal strategies/builds.
If I would I would flame 90% of the people I played with while in pugs.

As mentioned the group I played in was quite big, and we had people playing every class. So no, I’m not a “Only 4 zerker + mesm, cof1” farmer.

I’m not exploiting either, but I do use what I would say optimal builds and strategies for each encounter.

As an example: when we’re up against project alpha, (path2) we stand in a circle around him, tank the flame Aoe, and wait around 1,5 seconds from that he uses his Ice aoe, until we dodge, and we don’t doge out of the ice aoe, we’re just in the dodge animation when the aoe trigers. This way, we’ll all stay in range, so he wont use his Dragon Tooths, and we don’t take any damage from the Ice aoe. This is not a exploit, it’s knowledge in the encounter.
Knowing that he only uses Dragon Tooth if you’re at range.
Knowing that you can still be inside the Ice Aoes when it activates.

Again, all I’m asking for is to get some info in whatever we’ll get some challenging content that fit our skill level.
I’m not saying however, “tune all the instances so they fit us, kitten all the naabs rage rage!”

Sovta.4719:

So you want players to use build/skills that can actually get them to finish the dungeon? Elitist!

Yes I’m a Elitist, but no I don’t care if pug people use suboptimal builds or strategies, what I’m saying is that all those people complaining on the forums about dungeons being to hard, find the dungeons hard due to their suboptimal builds and strategies.

As of right now the dungeons are tuned for these people, leaving us who know strategies, who can come up with optimal builds, who play organised etc, without any content that fit our skill levels.

So what I’m asking for is not “all noobs should l2p rage rage!”, rather, I want to know if there is any plans to introduce challenging dungeons, or if they will stick with these simple casual friendly ones.

Dub.1273:

Just solo/duo dungeons, thats the most challenge you can get.

Sure, already done that, but most encounter don’t really get harder, they just take longer time, also why shouldn’t I be able to enjoy dungeons with 4 of my friends, just because we’re a little better than the average GW2 player?

Just throw in a hard mode, give mobs and bosses a little bit better damage, and a few extra mechanics, so I actually need to think, and I’m fine.

As an example, the event outside of Baelfire in path 2, Before, we had to think, and focus to some extend.
now I just stand still and spam 1 for 3 min until I win.

As another example, I got really excited when I read about the change to prevent corpse running, just to find out it didn’t matter cus you never whiped anyway. :I

More encounters like Giganticus please, at least you need to stay somewhat focused on him.

I know, that is all I ask for, at least gives us back hard mode. Almost every1 I played with before have stopped playing (we’re 6 left, of the original 30) and I just got back after a 1,5 month break.

I’ve created like 2 other threads over the past half year, asking for a similar thing, but I always fail to get Anets attention (Tried Short and Direct, Aggressive and now a Wall of text)

Also as I mentioned people are using suboptimal build.
Using the guardian as an example once again, I’ve literally Never seen a guardian using their 2 most Over Powered skills: Bow of Truth > Command (This heals like 400hp per second in a huge AOE) and Tome of courage. (This heals Every1 in a huge aoe at Range for like 1,2k-1,9k depending on healing attribute, And has a spell that fully restores EVERY player within a Huger Range) I’ve never seen it, still it’s the best spell a guardian have.

People use the incredible bad Greatsword. (instead of the “op” mace +shield/focus combo)

Gs and Mace deals pretty much the same damage with auto attacks.

Gs: gives 1 might to self every third attack
Mace: heals self + allies every third attack

Gs: fires projectiles in random directions, deals decent damage and is a whirl finisher.
Mace: places a Symbol which deals decent damage to all enemys, Heals allies, and is a light field.

Gs: Leap at the target and cause blind in aoe, it does have quite a long cast time, so even if your skilled it can be tricky to hit in the right moment.
Mace: Creates a big shield around yourself and nearby allies, blocking the next attack.
With insta cast time, it’s extremely easy to use in the right moment. (It also gives Protection if no attack is blocked)

Gs: Places a symbol which deals decent damage to all enemys, gives retaliation to allies, and is a light field. (It’s a good spell, but often in dungeons pugs can deal good damage without retaliation, however they often need health)
Shield: Sends a wave in front of you, deals decent damage, gives protection to all allies in range.

Gs fifth spell: Here is were the greatsword is actually useful. You throw a blade at 5 enemies around you, and you can after that pull them to you. This can drastically shorten down a fight against normal mobs. (although a lot of mobs have stability, in which this is useless)
Shield: Creates a Dome around you pushing back all mobs for 4 seconds (This gives team mates a lot of time to revive a downed team mate)

In conclusion and after my experience, the Mace shield/focus combo is just so much better in dungeons, a guardian is as best with a support build and with this combo that part really shines.

Another thing I see, is that guardians ain’t using the active effect of “Virtue of justice” instead they use the passive effect. With some simple math we can see that the active effect is better in a dungeon.

Passive effect, cause Burning for 1 second each Fifth attack. (let’s say it deals 100damage/sec and you can attack once per second)

This means that in 30 seconds, you’ll cause burning 6 times. (6 seconds times 100 damage = 600damage)

If you use the passive effect, you’ll cause a 5 second burn on you next attack (This applies to allies as well)

It has a 30 seconds CD as default. So you can use it once in the same time as u can use the passive 6 times.

Since it applies to you plus your 4 allies, that means the total burning time is 5 times 5 = 25 second = 2500 damage.

Just this should be reason enough to use it’s active effect instead, still no1 does. And then we have to take into account that you can trait it: Gives 3 stacks of might to all allies, Reduce cooldown etc.

I know this is a big wall of text, but hopefully someone reads it trough and can give a good answer.

So the conclusion is that almost all pugs use suboptimal builds and strategies, complain on the forums, and anet nerfs the dungeon to fit their “skill lvl”.

And we who are skilled players are left with easy dungeons with no challenges.

As it is of right now I’m not very interested in playing due to this, but I still hope that sometime we’ll get a good challenge. (although my hope is fading once I noticed what you did to the vets in the last part of cof path 2 (As it’s now it’s lame, 1 vet spawning every 1 second and is crippled)

So my question is, will we ever get something like Hard mode or the like, something were we skilled players actually Need to play organised and use strategies? Instead of just Tank’n Spank every encounter as it’s now.
Or should I accept the game is for the casual crowd and look for something else?

I decided to pug a bit to see what people actually were doing, and why they had such a hard time I also didn’t talk any about how we should do the different encounters..

Here’s what I found out. First of, the majority of pugs use very suboptimal builds. Here’s a guardian I played fractals with.

A guardians, using:
a sword and torch / greatsword.
Healing Breeze.
Save yourself.
Signet of judgement.
Smite Condition
Hounds of balthazar,
and using the passive effect of Virtue of justice.

He also complained about Cliffside Fractal, he thought breaking the last to seals was to hard. (Note that the team used a very bad strategy, no one in the group knew “the” optimal strategy on how you should it)

What the group did was to simply kill the first 2 mobs on the North seal, Attacked the seal with the Hammer, then Every1 rushed to the South side, doing the same thing.

Due to this, around 6 mobs spawn at the North side (respawning as one is killed) and healing the the seal while every1 was at the south side.

This took a large amount of time, people were struggling from dying.

What I would call “the optimal strategy” is to kill 1 mob at the North side, attack the seal, then 4 players run to the south side, and 1 stay at the north.

This way there will only be 1 mob at the north side, and he wont heal the seal.

The other 4 players now on the south side, kill 1 mob, then attack the seal.

After that they kill the second mob at the south side, and the player with the hammer runs to the north side, attacking the seal, while the remaining 3 players attack 2mob down to low health, then start clearing the rest.

now when the player with the hammer come back, they can simply kill one of the low health mob, attack the south seal, kill the second low health mob, and 1 player runs back to the north side attacking the seal.

This is a much Faster, and less risky strategy. (No pug I played it even tried something similar)

I’ve seen a lot of similar things in other dungeons, the event outside of baelfire in Cof path2 being a prime example, people tried to just run around and corpse running until the gate was blown.

Not once in a pug group have I’ve seen people actually killing the vets. (which was very easy if you just Call targets)

Hello, I’ve been playing Guildwars2 since the beta (Taken 2 major brakes due to boringness) and I just got back again.

Pretty much all I’ve been doing since release is playing dungeons, dungeons is what I love about MMOs, but in order for it to be fun, it need to be challenging.

Here’s the thing, except from the first few times I tried AC explo at lvl 35, and the first few times I tried Arah explo, I never really thought any of the dungeons being challenging. (Worth noting is that I don’t often play in pugs) I’ve played with pretty much the same people (we’ve been a total of like 30people playing dungeons together) and everyone else more or less agree on this.

Over the past few months I’ve seen so many people complaining about dungeons and want nerfs.
They think CM is to hard.
AC is to hard.
Giganticus need nerf.
Project Alpha being hard.
They can’t light 5 torches in Cof path 3.
They can’t beat the vet mobs outside Baelfire in Cof path 2.
They thought flaming effigy was to hard .
Kholer being to hard etc.

More or less all of these has been nerfed because most people cant figure out what to do.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Great job – When you got trapped in that bubble near the end, I thought he may have had you – good on you for keeping your cool and showing well rounded player skills. You did great dodging and positioning, and your use of death shroud was (to me) very well done.
I don’t play a necro so I can’t say for certain if anything seemed broken, but to me it looked legit, and it was a fine exhibition of skill. Fantastic!

Now when you’ve seen that there actually are skilled players in GW2, can we please have some challenging content? You know, content when you have to be organized, dodge properly, use combo fields and the like? It would be fun if I at least once thought “We have to use this combo field” rather than “Let’s just stack 25might to everyone so we can bach through the instance faster”

runeblade.7514:

Komuflage.2307:

Sure I can agree that it’s sometimes annoying when some1 use the 2:rd skill. However, just learn how to deal with each skill and you’ll be fine.
Guardian push back: Dodge it. (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move)
Warriors Knock down; Dodge it. (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move)
Mesmer TP/Clone: You can still easily see which is the right one, and which is the clone.
Necro Fear: Condition removal (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move)
Thief Teleport: Just keep hitting him as normal (He will teleport eventually) , then just run over to him and keep mashing, continue to do this when he’ll go invis afterwards (Since he still take damage)
Engineer Grapple: Well if you’re in cqc, then just dodge, (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move) if you’re at range, be happy, he just pulled you to him.
Ranger Daze: Dodge (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move)
Elementalist mist form: kitten spell, specially since they got back to “full downed health” so unless you manage to kill them before they use it, all damage u made won’t matter.

So in conclusion. Use stability it’s “op”, kitten elementalist that spell is absurd.

• I shouldn’t have to waste a 40 second cooldown or more stability just to stomp a foe that is inevitably going to die.
• I shouldn’t have to waste stability on every single straggler that is going to get themselves killed.
• I shouldn’t have to meet 30 guardians in 30 times but get knocked back every single time because they can annoy me.
• I should be using stability to take down key targets in the heat of battle.

Nothing you said is going to make combat any fun or engaging.

• Guardian knocking you back because they can is not fun or engaging.
• Guardians knocking you back from a stomp and was able to get back up is fun and engaging.

You do know that if you press V, your character will dodge right? and if you dodge, you won’t get knocked down, pushed back.

So Guardian knocking you back from a stomp and was able to get back up is fun?
But what about:
Guardian knocking you back from a capture point, thus increasing the time it’ll take for your team to get the point is boring?
Or Guardian knocking you back so you won’t have enough seconds to bach down a gate is not fun?

I understand it can be annoying from time to time, but why not try to learn how to counter it, instead of trying to get it nerfed?

It’s just like so many people in gw who runs suboptimal builds, using suboptimal tactics, and then complain on the forums because they can’t light 5 torches, or they can’t kill the mobs outside baelfire in Cof path 2, or complaining about Kholer because they can’t dodge his hook attack or use aigis against it, or side step, or reflect etc.

It’s like when you see guardians in dungeons, using a sword and torch / greatsword, Healing Breeze, Renewed focus/hounds of balthazar, and using the passive effect of Virtue of justice, and then complaining. “Well Anet told us we could play whatever build we want”

Well ofc you can, but if you use such a suboptimal build, you’ve to expect a harder time. (It’s not the dungeon being unbalanced, it’s your fault)

“You” being the General player.

Sure I can agree that it’s sometimes annoying when some1 use the 2:rd skill. However, just learn how to deal with each skill and you’ll be fine.
Guardian push back: Dodge it. (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move)
Warriors Knock down; Dodge it. (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move)
Mesmer TP/Clone: You can still easily see which is the right one, and which is the clone.
Necro Fear: Condition removal (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move)
Thief Teleport: Just keep hitting him as normal (He will teleport eventually) , then just run over to him and keep mashing, continue to do this when he’ll go invis afterwards (Since he still take damage)
Engineer Grapple: Well if you’re in cqc, then just dodge, (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move) if you’re at range, be happy, he just pulled you to him.
Ranger Daze: Dodge (Stability is best though, you can still use finishing move)
Elementalist mist form: kitten spell, specially since they got back to “full downed health” so unless you manage to kill them before they use it, all damage u made won’t matter.

So in conclusion. Use stability it’s “op”, kitten elementalist that spell is absurd.

Em why wouldn’t you be able to solo project alpha in CoE? o_O

Don’t make a new thread, asking for people to a instance…

It should stay the same, as it’s right now, you can either do a short patch/day and receive 60tokens, this is perfect for casual players, while hc players can get all 180 in 1 day, and due to the fact path 2 and three is longer/harder, they will earn less Gems/Hour than a casual player, which will balance things out. IF you would get a bonus for going the longer paths, then hc players who does all 3/day would be much further in front than the casual players.
Think of it as a “gold sink” to prevent the hc players from getting to far ahead.

Wartna.8671:

So you’re asking that encounters will be adjusted to your playstyle instead of you adjusting your playstyle to the encounter? I think you misunderstood GW2. You can switch weapons/skills/traits easily anytime you want for a reason…… maybe you won’t have the ultimate setup for the encounter that way, but hey, you can’t have everything the easy way.

The problem is that people want it as easy as possible, so they don’t have to learn anything.
CoF P1 last Boss – Nerfed. (Learn how to dps, keep poison up?)

CoF P2 Last room before boss – NERFED. (Learn that you could actually kill all the mobs as long as you focus, and attack then in a good order)

CoF P3 Torches – Nerfed. (You could actually kill 2 mobs at each torch, Then you could spread out and every1 could deal with the 1 mob left, without a problem)

But instead people run in > fail > try it again without changing tactic > fail > once more, fail, complain at the forum > Nerf.

I stopped playing because I got bored of just running the same instances over and over. Then I heard that they patched so you couldn’t respawn until the group was out of combat, sounds awesome in theory, but since it’s so rare that someone dies in our group, it didn’t make a noticeable difference.
So I took another brake. Tried it again 3 days ago, went into CoF P1, then CoF P2, just to find they changed the last room, so instead of loads of vet mobs.
There now is loads of normal mob, and 1 CRIPPLED vet spawning every once in a while.

The fight changed from being a fight u need to somewhat focus on, to a fight where I just ran in a circle spamming 1.

“Explorable dungeons are for coordinated groups” Biggest bullkitten I’ve ever heard. They’re constantly nerfing the dungeons so they fit the pugs who can’t even learn how to dodge properly. (People are actually complaining on Subject Alpha… All you have to do is get in melee range, spam your abilitys, w8 1-2 seconds after he use his ice AOEs, then press V. Rince and repeat. Nothing hard about that At all. It just takes 2-3 tries before you get it)

Today’s “Gamers” Try something once, fail because no tactic whatsoever is being used, complain like a child on the forums, cry some more, w8 for the developers to nerf, play trough the completely nerfed “challenge” without any challenge at all.

This whole topic is just ridiculous, people are actually complaining that they can fail if they just spam a attack.

Take the extra second to position urself so u wont fall of a ledge, problem solved.
People are getting dumber and dumber by each day.

Auesis.7301:

Komuflage.2307:

Why the hell are u playing a D/D Thief in dungeons? they don’t have cleave on Auto attacks, it’s pointless, (except on some bosses) you’re crippling your character and your slaking for the team.

D/D opens up condition builds (AoE with Death Blossom) with Caltrops etc., and the autoattack can apply consistent poison and weakness on single-boss encounters eg. slowing the Effigy’s healing in CoF 1. You also have much higher spike DPS on a single target, which again is very useful on bosses.

HURR DURR MOAR CLEAVE, BERSREKERS ONLI.

Like I said, it’s only useful on some bosses, and the topic here is that he falls of bridges etc with his D/D, there is no bosses in CoF Explo, that’s on a bridge/Ledge

IF anet force me to play that piece of kitten dungeon again, I’m leaving for good.

Ok screw my last post, I just got back to the game after about 3weeks of not playing, went in to CoF path 2 just to see you completely nerfed the room before the final boss.

Loads of normal mobs with an occasional Veteran mob that’s constantly crippled? WTF?

Now this is just another mindless encounter were all I do is spam 1 for 3 min until I win. kitten you Anet.

Why the hell are u playing a D/D Thief in dungeons? they don’t have cleave on Auto attacks, it’s pointless, (except on some bosses) you’re crippling your character and your slaking for the team.

Comalies.6295:

They wont add in any “hard mode” because the amount of people who claim the dungeons are easy is so small,its not an issue.
They would however,add “harder” dungeons. Hence where fractals came in. And there will be alot more later…there is places on the map not open yet..soo just wait.

I can’t wait half a year before we get challenging dungeons, I’ll have stopped playing by then.

Erebus.7568:

doubt you know what tank and spank means -.- i have yet to see the tank in this game which can actually tank&spank any of the bosses, a high amount of movability is needed…
if you mean stuff like running around pulling leavers and kitten, no ty….

a big problem with the ease of dungeon is exploiters which should be perma banned.

when that is said a difficulty choice would be nice on each dungeon, i dont think harder difficulty should gain any significant reward increase due to the nature of the game reward system, but a bit more would be ok

Imo, tank’n spank means standing still infront of the boss just spaming.

That’s pretty much what my group does on every boss in the game, Lupicus not counted.

I know the following will sound like elitism, but I really don’t understund how people can struggle so much with the dungeons, the only dungeons I’ve found hard in this game was; AC first time we did kholer with our lvl 35s.
First time we went up against Lupicus.

There are some nice mechanics in some fights, but they are not necessary, and it will go faster to just skip them.

My best example of this is the last boss in AC Path2. First time we was there we thought the cannons was a necessity, and we had 3 “supports” manning the cannon, 1 “tank” attacking the boss, and our glass cannons killing the adds. This was so fun, it felt like a really well designed fight and still the best I’ve had in GW2.

However we soon found out it was much faster to just stand in a circle around the boss just spaming, and dodging occasionally when he dug up from the ground.

Then we have the searing effigy in CoF path1 He was great fun the first weeks after release, when we had a dedicated posion upkeep player, 1 tank next to the boss, 1 support helping the tank and 2 glass cannons just killing of the crystals, we later found out that just mass DPSing was the easiest way to go, and then he got nerfed to the pathetic boss he is now.

The thing is I really like this game, and I want to keep playing, but the lack of challenge is really getting me bored.

Smog.4058:

I stopped playing because I hate typing 3 letters 50 times to do anything

LFG
LFM

If only there was a way to queue for dungeons and once available go do it without wasting time sitting in a city Typing

Then why don’t you join a guild?
I’ve been in a guild since release and I’ve no problems getting people in for dungeons

I know there is a lot of people who struggles with dungeons, and think they are to hard. So there is no point in arguing about that in this thread as well.

However, there are quite a few of us who think the dungeons are way to easy, there is almost no strategy and as long as you just Dps and Heal, you can just tank’n spank any encounter.

I’ve played since release, and Dungeons have all ways been what I enjoy most in MMOs, but It’s starting to get boring to just tank’n spank all the dungeons over and over.

I read that you will be revamping the dungeons in the coming updates, and from what I’ve read a lot of the dungeons will be even easier than they are now.

This is a big concern for me and my guild.

So my question is, is there any chance that we will get GW1s Hard Mode back?

This could even be simply done by just increasing the damage and heatlh on most mobs and bosses, and adding a few mechanics. Like bosses that actually do a lot of healing so poison upkeep becomes useful (Release version of Searing Effigy if someone remembers)

Or bosses that use one shot ability’s more often than you got endurance to dodge (CoE Path 3 Project alpha) So a Vigor becomes useful (Getting bored of just spamming My hundred blade all the time, want to use my warhorn)

As I said, as dungeons are tuned atm all you need is High dps and a bit of healing, and dungeons becomes a cake walk.

I’ve seen a few post were people complain that 4W 1M is the best combo, and even thou this is more or less true, this is not just because Warrior are OP, but because the dungeons are tuned in a way that makes everything except DPS useless.

There is no use for poison upkeep, no use in stun-locking, no need to use any support spells, except a lil bit of healing, and Might ability’s (Which just increase DPS even more)

randomfightfan.4091:

Fractal and Ascended mean the same thing because EVERYBODY knows that the only way to get Ascended items is from fractals ala fractals=ascended. Now with that being said, it is a very MINOR tidbit in this topic and I don’t even know why it was addressed. The whole point of this thread was to express my concern about the crafting professions becoming increasingly useless for anything but choice exotics and creating legendary pieces.

Before I could get the skin I wanted and craft a weapon with the stats I wanted and use the token to get the skin and stats I wanted onto the same weapon. With all this ascended gear being introduced, that strat will become pointless since I will no longer have any reason to use the weapon smithing weapon for the stats because those stats won’t be the optimal stats/not the ones I want on my weapon.

At the very least, ANET should introduce new armor, weapon, and jewellery recipies to allow the player to create ascended items. If they REALLY want people to still do fractals, they can make the recipe similar to the other dungeon recipies (only the ascended recipes would be easier to obtain) whereas you use the dungeon tokens over t6 mats to create the item. Since the current dungeon recipes don’t allow for the player to chose the stats they want, the recipe should still include a small amount of t6 mats to allow for choice in stats desired.

This whole ascended items thing is messing up the game, like you said, Crafting will be pointless till they fix ascended recipes, doing normal dungeons will be worthless since they only yield Exotic wep/armor (and if they upgrade those to ascended, then what’s the point of ascended anyway)
Karma armor will be useless (unless they make them ascended aswell, but then again, what’s the point?)
The whole Exotic tier for weps and armor will be useless (Much like Rare are now) and you’ll only get them to salvage it for ectos.

They already have 2 useless tiers of 80 armor (not counting White) so why make a third one?`Makes no sense.

Shun.9475:

I’ve been avoiding dungeons since release because forming groups is freaking rediculous. I don’t want to play with guilds and I don’t want to work with other players. Dungeons are too hard to solo, so why havn’t they just scaled the spawn in dungeons so that soloing is possible. I feel left out…

You can already solo a lot of the dungeons will take you longer, but much possible.

Other than that, don’t you understand that if dungeons could be soloed, people wouldn’t play them in groups (Easier solo, since no coordination is required)

Lord Aargadon.4135:

Hmmm.. after thinking about it, I realized that the temple debuffs in Orr and Agony are all conditions, if this grants immunity to them, then sure its OP, if not and you are relying on this instead of other condi removers…. you’re doing it wrong.

I never said I rely on this instead of other condition removers, and to everyone who commented “pre 25% condtitions will still apply”
Combine this trait With Elexir C or Antidote, and all pre 25% conditions will be cleansed.
Now you’re at up to 7k hp and conditions can’t do anything to you.

Jzaku.9765:

Olba.5376:

I’ll be honest: before talking about fixing Discipline, you should talk about how to make the rarely-used Burst Skills, mainly Arcing Slice, more attractive in comparison to stuff like Skull Crack, Flurry, Kill Shot and Eviscerate.

Really even those “attractive” options are debatable because of the +12% damage trait with full adrenaline.

The whole adrenaline system needs a lookover imo. It’s a lot flatter and flavour-less compared to all of the other class mechanics.

The warrior is supposed to be the most noob friendly class, the adrenaline bar is simple to understand, therefore it fits.

TheMerc.4850:

Komuflage.2307:

o_O -45% condition Duration, do you realise how freaking strong that is?

And what are you talking about? We got some of the best condition removals in the game.

Signet of Stamina – Removes every single condition you have.
Shake it Off – Removes a whole stack on conditions on you and allies, brakes stun and you can have it as a trait.
Mending – Removes two whole stacks of condition
Restorative Strength – removes Cripple, Chill, immobilize And Weakness when using a healing skill
Charge – removes Cripple, immobilize and Chill
Quick Breathing – warhorn skills convert 1 condition into a boon
Rune of soldier – All of our shouts removes a whole stack of conditions.

That’s all fine and dandy in pve where everything works and zergvszerg but if you’re trying to be successful in tpvp mending and maybe signet of stamina are the only viable choices there (I’d still probably take balanced stance instead, though I’ve had fun running stamina for spvp lately, going to try it out for sure), anything else won’t fit in with warrior burst meta.

You do know that shouts work good in sPvP right? and each shout removes 1 whole stack of Conditions, combine that with mending, Restorative healing and Signet of stamina, and you have 4 condition removers. If someone expect to have more, they should really learn about balance.

o_O -45% condition Duration, do you realise how freaking strong that is?

And what are you talking about? We got some of the best condition removals in the game.

Signet of Stamina – Removes every single condition you have.
Shake it Off – Removes a whole stack on conditions on you and allies, brakes stun and you can have it as a trait.
Mending – Removes two whole stacks of condition
Restorative Strength – removes Cripple, Chill, immobilize And Weakness when using a healing skill
Charge – removes Cripple, immobilize and Chill
Quick Breathing – warhorn skills convert 1 condition into a boon
Rune of soldier – All of our shouts removes a whole stack of conditions.

Dunno what class you’ve been playing, but my warrior is more than capable of removing tons of conditions, also we start with most health in game, so we got a big pool to soak up all that condition damage.

Ok, we all know that in the history of mmos, there always been some classes that’s been really strong, some spells that’s been op etc. But I never seen something like this.

The engineer got a trait that makes your character totally immune to all types of conditions. When you fall below 25% health this kicks in, and it have no duration or CD (So if u get below 25% hp, heal up, and fall below it again, you’ll still be totally immune)

Now I don’t understand who can even think something like this will be balanced o_O, to all engineers out there, try this trait out in pvp, it’s literally impossible for any condition specced character to kill you, if you know what you’re doing.

ANet, I love what you’ve done to engineers in the recent patch, we got so freaking many good traits it’s hard to choose, but this one, this one is the most overpowered trait I’ve ever seen.

Yea but they already told us this will be fixed, so there is no reason to ask about it here

Hello, just wondering why you “reskin” the pact weapons?

They looked really awesome before, now they look like toys.
Take the Greatsword for instance, before it looked really sharp, now it look like a plastic toy.

Also this is quite upsetting since I bought a few pact weapon, that now look like toys…

At least let us choose if we want to keep the old skin or not, since this is not fair at all to anyone with a pact weapon.

New Pact greatsword
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Pact_Avenger.jpg

Old Pact greatsword
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Pactavenger2.jpg

minekaoru.4095:

hey, sometimes you got wife/baby aggro. it’s not related to age. One of the pug members’ baby woke up yesterday when we’re inside TA and he needed to leave.

I don’t understand why that would be a reason to leave.
From my own experience I play in a group of 5 where 2 of us have small children, if there is any problem (They wake up, they start to scream etc) we just take a brake and let them handle their children, and once that’s done we continue playing, in a 4-5H playing season we maybe have to w8 20-30 minutes and personally, I don’t see that as a problem.

There are 5 torches, every torch is guarded by 3 mobs, you can all go in a big group and kill 2 mobs from each one.

Now everyone spread out, one person next to each torch, the “leader” write Go in the chat, when people see this. They’ll kill their 1 mob. When you’ve killed your mob your write Rdy in chat, when four people written Rdy in chat the “leader” knows that every1 is ready, now he writes Go again, when people see that they lit the torch.

There, it’s easy, people just need to use their heads.

Cof has been buffed, and the Effigy boss seem to be back to his former self ^^

Wana thank Anet for making some of the content at least a bit more difficult, so Ty ANet.

Going to try some other dungeons today as well, hopefully most of them got buffed ^^

Looking forward to the new dungeon today as well

And once again TY anet for listening, even if you didn’t buff it because of this specific topic

Sure that’s true, would be nice if they made some HC Dungeons, created to test the skills of coordinated groups (Hopefully this new dungeon coming out is something like this, even thou I kind of doubt it)
Well guess I’ve to wait and see.

Definitely agree with you grunblatt, the problem is that gamers today are so used to get everything handed to them, without the requirement to think for them self, that when they actually are forced to think, they rather spend 10 min writing a topic about it, than actually try to learn how to do it.

Let’s take Dark souls for an example, it’s claimed to be so incredibly difficult, while in reality it’s quite easy.

I’ve spent some time watching gameplay from dark souls because I wanted to know why “everyone” found it so hard.

And it just took one video or two to figure it all out: People Act before they think, even if they should do the opposite. And it’s not that they Act first and think after that’s the real problem, the problem is that they act – fail – act – fail.
They don’t take the time to consider how they could’ve done that encounter differently, they just try go in and spam the attack button again, until they get staggered and die.

If people just take the time to consider a tactic for a encounter, think of what they did wrong and how they could do it better, we would see much less whine from people who just want things handed to them.

Khunvyel.3972:

No. The one in this forum with the simple collection of voices was closed due to infractions. I have no idea where these infractions would be if you read through them:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Remove-higher-stats-for-Ascended-gear/page/6#post718079

It was a really legit topic. Not a discussion, it was a survey.

Yes, that was the First thread, and as I said that one was locked, since it became a petition/survey, however, someone recreated a similar topic, giving the same solution to the problem, this thread had like 5 answer last time I saw it, and none of these was /singed, they where all legit answer and arguments to the discussion, however that thread is completely gone now, Now locked, not Merged, Simply gone/Deleted.

Awesome.6120:

They are all being merged because people feel like special snowflakes who need to post their own threads on the same topic.

Well first of, that topic was actually different, the creator (which I do not remember the name of) has a really legit idea of how to make “everyone” happy.

Also if a thread is merged, you’ll get a message stating so. (If you’ve been participating in that thread.)

So a few hours ago, someone made a topic about how to fix ascended gear, this tread got loads of /Signed, thus making it a petition topic, and the tread was locked.

After that, someone else made a new topic about the same thing with the same solution.
Ascended should have same stats as exotic, Casuals would not be forced to get the next tier to “keep up” with the rest, and Hardcore players would still have the feeling of progression due to infusion slots that would only be usable in these dungeons.

This person made it clear he didn’t want this to become a petition thread, and it did not become that either. Now however, that thread is gone, it’s not in the Suggestions section, I’ve got no message stating it’s been merged with another topic, and I can’t find it if I check “Posts by Komuflage”

So I wonder, why would ANet delete this thread without saying anything to us participating in this thread?

To further add, I’m going to add the text from the old thread. Or at least one valid post.

“Adding a gear grind to a game with NO SUB FEE. What’s the point? Whether I get my gear over the next 6 months, or whether I get it playing 24 hours a day the next week – Anet gets the same amount of money from me. Which is none, aside from what I buy in the gem store.

Where is the horizontal progress that should be paying the bills? Where’s the new gem store skins? Non-event minis? Weapon skins? New townclothes? New cosmetic slots? Housing? All stuff we would have to drop real money on for gems, and would do so gladly because LOOKING COOL was the real grind of the game?

And if we weren’t dropping real money – we’d be grinding gold in-game to buy gems, which has the EXACT same effect as adding a gear grind (making us spend more time in-game) but without the penalty of breaking the Ma
nifesto and making their core subscribers feel betrayed.

This is illogical and crazy. Hardcore grinders are never going to be the target audience for this game because it has NO SUB FEE. Spending more time in-game without spending money does Anet no good. The people they NEED are the cosmetics-kittens who would be spending money like gangbusters for housing, townclothes and the like.

For a game with this business model, vertical progression makes absolutely no sense as a development direction.

New costume sets FLEW out of COH’s cash shop. LOTRO’s cash shop is largely horses, cloaks and dresses – people will pay out the nose to LOOK cooler than other people. And yet NO more armor skins have been added to the store since launch, and the offerings were extremely skimpy to begin with. Anet cannot possibly be thinking that people are going to drop $100 a month just to play the Black Lion Key lottery, can they?"