Guild Wars 2

OanSur.4590:

I think my biggest dream is something like:
Grandmaster trait:
“Wrathful Inquisition”
All your symbols are now fire fields

BOOM! dps boost, condi boost, no more hate for hammer guardians on dungeons

Hah! I have to admit, that’d be freaking spectacular; I even like the name you came up with!

creepmatic.9435:

I want to also add my tought’s on Zeal line. I feel like the symbol minor traits and Zealot’s speed are holding our class back as a whole when it comes to a real power build, which the guardian doesn’t currently have one, especially when it comes to our Zeal GM traits, there is nothing build defining there atm.

I was thinking about this a little bit earlier, and I think that the Zeal line could do with the same sort of polish that was applied to Necro’s Death Magic line.

Just like how all our Zeal minors are focused on Symbols, Death Magic had minors that were completely focused on minions, making it… less than desirable for anyone who wasn’t a minion master.
When they went over the Death Magic line they took these Minors and merged them (either together, or with other already existing traits), then made them Majors. The line was then given new minors that were more useful to a wider variety of builds.

I think it would help immensely if Guardian’s Zeal line got the same treatment. I mean the premier weapon set ups for power guard (not the only, but one of the most promenent) is GS/Sword+Focus. GS has a symbol, but untraited it has a mere 4 second duration and a hefty 20 second duration (traited that becomes 6 and 16 respectively, which is better, but still not enough to classify GS as a “Symbol focused weapon.”) And Sword+ any off hand (also scepter+any off hand) lacks any symbols at all.

Just as Necros spent a couple of years pointing out the glaring flaw in one of their major defensive traitlines, I think it’s fair to argue that it’s both frustrating and limiting that one of Guardian’s major offensive traitlines caters only to a specific, rather niche build (and this is coming from someone who, as I said in the OP runs Hammer/Mace as my favorite set up).

So basically, take these Minors and turn them into Majors, then replace the now vacant Minor slots with traits that influence Power oriented builds in a more general way.
This way, just like Necros who want to Minionmancer still have the option to spec for Minions, Guardians who want to spec for Symbols can continue to do so without “ruining” the entire traitline for everyone else xD

As a little tangent I think that, while they’re no where near the level of disorganization that Spirit Weapons face, Symbol Traits could use a little bit of consolidation/reworking/repositioning as well.
This post is already a little lengthy, so I won’t get into that too much here— if people are interested in discussing QoL improvements for Symbol builds maybe we can do that a little later ;P

However I will say that Zealot’s Speed is a monumentally lackluster trait, even as an Adept Minor. Symbol of Retaliation at 50% health? Really? At least make it a Symbol of Protection or Regeneration, something that might actually help turn the tide in a fight.
But honestly, I just sorta think it’s lackluster overall and needs to be merged with another trait or just outright scrapped so something else can take its place.

TL/DR: Change Zeal’s minor traits from being Symbol exclusive into something that can be used by a wider variety of offensive Guardians.

Seraki.2753:

Just a suggestion … There is a button to represent the guild. Did they do that? If you dont its almost like your not in the guild.

Not sure if you’re trolling or genuinely trying to be helpful, but posting something like this here is a little well…. yeah…

Anyway, numerous posters above have stated explicitly that they have tried de/re repping (meaning they know how to rep in the first place) and that it didn’t work.

They have also stated that they have attempted things well above and beyond simply hitting the Rep button to try and find a work around for this issue.

None of the posters in this thread are idiots and/or ignorant of the mechanics behind guilds. This is a bug. Guild Chat. Is. Not. Working.

If it works for you, great. But don’t come in here just ot be a prick to people facing an issue that legitimately impacts their gameplay experience.

And if you genuinely thought you were being helpful I apologize for snapping at you, but, well… the first step in curing “Foot in Mouth” disease is to make sure you’re aware of what the people around you are actually talking about.

Shanks.2907:

Though, I do think it would be best if the new zeal grandmaster focused somehow on physical damage, as right now there’s a spirit weapon trait and two condition traits. There’s no reason to invest into a power line without any traits dealing with power.

I agree with you there. While Zeal is technically a Power/Condi line (condition duration), but its Grandmasters are way too focused on Condi/Hybrid builds. It definitely needs a Grandmaster trait that caters to Power focused builds.

This is another tangent, but honestly I’d like to see those Spirit Weapon traits not only consolidated, but actually moved down to the Virtues line, and have some of those Virtue traits shifted into other, thematically appropriate trait lines.

It’d be cool to be able to both boost our virtues without having to go fully into a single line, and be able to spec to improve a certain virtue based on the desired goal of our build. This would not be unprecedented, as many classes have traits throughout all their lines that affect their class mechanics in different ways (I’m thinking about professions like Ranger, Necro, Mesmers… Thieves have different lines that affect either/and/or Stealing or Stealth, etc…)

The first two Minors in Radiance are a great example of this: they completely change the functionality of Virtue of Justice and synergize great with mobile, offensive oriented builds.
You can see they attempted to do something similar with Virtue of Courage in Valor but the functionality and cooldowns of those minors just makes it kinda “meh.” Aegis when hit below 50% hp once every 90 seconds? Virtue of Courage recharges when you rally? Decent I guess, but overall “meh.”

DavyMcB.1603:

Thanks for the input everyone. Gotta stick to shelter, it seems.

Haha! Sorry, it wasn’t my intention to deter anyone from anything, I was more just analyzing the skill with what information I had at my disposal xD

If you want to run Litany of Wrath, you totally can; as a poster above me stated, you’ll have some successes and you’ll have some failures, but that’s true of anything that you run. Just be aware that the trade you’ve made is a significant and reliable defense for a somewhat less reliable means of maintaining a more aggressive offense.

Also, anyone who notices that you’re using it will have a significant advantage over you: while Medi guard comes with stun breaks and condi clear, there’s still a limit to how much CC, soft or hard, that we can mitigate in a given time period. If you fight the same players over and over again you will get kited around.

I think the only stipulation that I would maintain is that if you want to run Litany, you absolutely have to spec Meditations. It is very much the combination of the Cool Down Reduction, and the additional healing from Monk’s Focus (the fury is also super neat and will help make that big burst bigger when it really counts, but isn’t as necessary as the former two traits) that make Litany of Wrath useable.

Shanks.2907:

Also, I’ve been thinking about a trait to replace Kindled Zeal with. What are you guys’ thoughts on a +20% damage on foes under 50% hp? I think it would give the zeal line a reason to invest into it.

“/sigh.” I’m gunna be honest: I know Percentile Damage Modifiers are one of the most important aspects of a DPS build, but I (personally, as a singular individual) think that they way they’re currently implemented is unhealthy for the game. Especially given how passive and easy most of them are to upkeep (I’d go so far to argue that the only ones I respect are the ones like Scholar Runes or our own Unscathed Contender trait. The one’s that really reward and require active gameplay).

But this is a thread for dreams! So sidestepping my “downer-dan” attitude: yes, a 20% damage on foes under 50% hp damage modifier would be a powerful trait (just like it is on Necro or Thief). Probably to the extent that 6/5/x/x/x would become the new “mandatory meta” (because percentile modifiers are multiplicative, that trait spread— with our new theoretical Zeal grandmaster— would give a 45% dps increase— 59.7% on our symbols. And that’s before you factor in other modifiers like Sigil of Force, Scholars/Flame Legion/Strength Runes, etc…)

Basically it’d be a huge damage increase for Guardians, but wouldn’t really impact our utility or versatility. After all, we’d still have 3 points to spec into either Superior Aria or Master of Consecrations, which are basically two of our strongest Utility types. The only thing we’d really lose with that spread is Absolute Resolution.

Haha! Sorry, I think a small typo in my post lead to a misunderstanding: I don’t wanna get rid of Shield’s Knockback/Projectile Absorption dome. I actually meant that the “detonation” aspect should be removed, and replaced with a channeled heal/buff.

While I genuinely don’t like the knockback, I know a lot of players have found their uses for it, so I would never dream of taking that away from them xD

(gunna edit my post to get rid of that confusing typo).

As an exremely personal, largely irrelevant aside, I almost feel like they pitched this skill to the wrong crowd:

For an “all in” dps build like a Meditation build, the blocks from Shelter are extraordinarily valuable (although in truth they’re fantastic for everyone).

If the numbers were shifted around a little though (a different % damage dealt vs buff duration ratio), it could theoretically find a home on Bulky Guardian builds as an additional source of of healing over time. Stacked with the many other regenerative effects we have, a Bulky guardian might not even miss shelter.

But that’s a 100% completely different conversation.

Litany of Wrath is one of those skills I think is really, really cool conceptually, and I really want it to be good and use it, but it’s just not quite “there enough” to justify it under most circumstances…

I get what they were going for— sort of an offensive alternative to Shelter— but it lacks the utility to really be competitive: as others above have mentioned you either have to

1. hold your bust back in reserve in case you need the healing later which is totally at cross purposes with a DPS build,
2. pop it early in the fight to keep your health high and hope you either kill your opponent in your initial burst, or that you don’t need any “burst” healing later in the fight, and finally
3. as a class we lack the ability to consistently stick to our opponents, which means we have to hope that they decide to go “all in” against as at the same time we decide to pop Litany (and hope that they don’t use any blocks, blinds, or hard CC of any kind).

I also feel like it’s classification as a Meditation is both a blessing and a curse. It’s really cool to have it be affected by that whole line of traits, but that means that Anet also has to balance the skill assuming you have those traits.

The base healing on Litany of Wrath is abysmal, and it scales terribly with Healing Power, so you virtually have to run it with Monk’s Focus, otherwise you effectively have no healing skill

• Assuming 0 Healing Power, if you take Litany of Wrath and Monk’s Focus together, you’ll heal a total of 3.6k health on activation, which still doesn’t compare to Shelter, which sits at 4.5k. This means that in order to “break even” you’d need to deal at least 3.6 damage over it’s 6 second duration just to break even: and that’s if you completely ignore the utility of Shelter’s block (and while the block is not impervious, it’s significantly reliable).

Without those traits the numbers look even worse, it shares the same base cool down as Shelter, but with a base 1.6k healing and a mere 25% scaling with Healing Power. There’s not really any combination of Healing Power or damage done during the buff’s duration that can allow it to “compete” with any of our alternative heals (untraited that is).

This makes Litany of Wrath an extremely niche skill (which imo is a total bummer), and while it’s good in it’s niche, it’s not the best either.

I was thinking about the shield earlier today and I think it would be cool if:

1. Skill #4 (Shield of Judgement) had it’s protection swapped for Aegis (and preferably turn it into an AoE around the user instead of a cone), and
2. Skill #5 (Shield of Absorption) was changed to function more like Empowering might on the staff— have it throw up its knockback and absorption dome as usual, yaddadaa, but instead of a “sit there or detonate” mechanic, have it pulse out an AoE heal once for each second channeled, then if you get through the whole channel uninterrupted have it apply Protection to everyone in range (Set it up sort of as an inversion of Empowering Might which gives you stacks of Might per tick, then a big heal at the end).
   This would turn skill #5 into sort of a “soft reset;” enemy disruption with the Knockback/Projectile Absorption, healing for some recovery, and finally protection to set-up for a push, counter push, mob pull, whatever. And you still have that whole risk/reward thing that Anet is nuts over, because with the current rooted aspect of the skill, you’d have to properly judge wether it’s safe/possible to get the full effect off or wether you have to cancel it (either because you just need a quick knockback, or because the enemy decides to focus you before you can get the full effect off).

I think a change along these lines would make Shield viable for everyone, while still mainting it’s “original vision” as a support based weapon. Heck, an extra application of Aegis alone would make it a really attractive weapon to a lot of people xD

Edited for typos.

SHJordan.5841:

Here a temp fix that worked for me, all thx goes for Dragonbrand Heroes gm Nickolas:
Step 1: Press Y
Step 2: Click on the green square
Step 3: Click on Invisible
Step 4: Click on the gray square
Step 5: Click on Online
Step 6: try /g hello there!

Hope it helps you guyz!

Thanks for trying to help out! But I’m pretty sure a couple of people have mentioned that this isn’t working for this issue.

Other things that don’t work:

• complety closing the client and logging back in,
• standing down and then re repping the guild,
• quitting the guild and then rejoining it,
• repping a different guild (either another broken one, or one that still works) and then re- repping the broken guild,
• doing all of the above but on a different character each time.

Thus far I have neither heard of, nor found any client side “work arounds” to this issue.
But again, it’s clear your suggestion was given with all the best intentions, so thank you very much ^.^

Xdmatt.3958:

PvE is broken. Horribly, utterly broken. It has been broken on the day of release and it will always be broken.

It is broken in GW2, it is broken in WoW, it is broken in RIFT and it is broken in every MMO that has been made and will ever be made….

cut short for space, but great points throughout entire post

I find this post to be immensely thoughtful, and immensely thought provoking.

If one goes back through the Living Story Archives, you can see this phenomena play out repeatedly: around the release of just about every Season 2 Chapter, you’ll also see a number of threads exclaiming that the bosses are two hard, and you’ll see a number of people coming in and telling them “Well, it was easy for me.”
(In fact, if one looks through my own posting history you’ll see that when participating in these threads I repeatedly argued that the LS bosses were setup they way they were on purpose to force players to pay attention to, and learn how to deal with, “more complex” boss mechanics— which is essentially just a more tactful way of saying “L2P n00b!”).

I think the problem we have, as a community, is that this conversation has been going on so long that we’re not really hearing each other anymore.

These days, anytime someone uses the phrase “Build Diversity,” which, unless I’m mistaken, was brought into circulation by Anet itself when they were talking about… it was either when they were adding in hard bosses (redoing Teq, The Marionette Event, and Triple Trouble), or when they were implementing the new Ferocity stat (which I believe was meant to be a dps nerf, yes?)…

Anyway! I got off track: anytime someone begins a discussion about expanding build variety, people invested in the meta automatically hear it as “Bring back the trinity!” And, if we’re being completely honest, the archives show that there have been posts “suggesting” or “demanding” a return of the trinity, so this reaction of their’s is not entirely unfair.

Likewise, people who want to explore different options are so used to being screamed at, that anytime someone explains and or defends the reason for the current meta, it comes across as dismissive, elitist, or as a personal attack because— again if you look through the archives— that type of experience has happened repeatedly.
Why, I remember there was nearly a full year where, if you suggested anything other than GS/Sword+Focus on the Guardian Sub-Forum you’d get neck stomped by a whole army, rebuking you (to put it nicely) for “leading new players astray”— even if the OP started a thread specifically asking for a build that used different weapons, or different stats (thank kitten someone crunched the numbers on all the Guard weapons and “revealed” that most of them weren’t all that bad after all…).

Sentiments like that also “trickle down” and are misinterpreted by the community at large to the point where the general populace mistakes “Optimal” for Viable" and begins to react negatively to anything non-meta (when the reality is that very few players are actually playing at the levels where it makes a difference (i.e. they’re not popping slayer potions, or using slayer sigils, they’re not popping food, they’re not using the "optimal rotations etc.. etc…).
The number of times I’ve had to sit in a dungeon on teamspeak with my own guildies and listen to them mock Necros again and again (when I’m sitting right there in the party, on my necro) is simply ludicrous. Yes, according to the meta Necros aren’t great in parties, but the truth is Power Necros bring more than sufficient DPS, and most parties aren’t might stacking anyway (or other boons, etc..), so their lack of party support is largely a moot point (again, in the general public.)

The point is that I think this subject has become so toxic that it’s become impossible for people to genuinely discuss it: one half feels like the other is trying to rob them of an experience they 1) have worked hard to perfect and 2) genuinely find fun, while the other side feels like they are A) being locked out of the gameplay experience and B ) being personally made fun of.

In reality, I think we all need to take a step back, do our deep breathing exercises, and just let Arena Net do it’s thing for a while. Despite the fact that we have no idea when it’ll arrive, HoT is on the way, and they’ve stated that it’s going to bring “Challenging Content,” and changes to all the classes. What this means, what this looks like, what this changes? Nobody but Anet knows. And they’re gunna do what they want to do regardless of how much any of us scream about anything.

Their game, their vision, their rules. So maybe let’s just all play nice for a little while, yeah?

maha.7902:

conditions seem to be getting addressed in HoT, the meta being broken is simply a matter of perception. to people who want their zero damage builds to be not-terrible it’s broken, for people who enjoy playing glass cannons and surviving via active defense it’s fine.

This is probably my favorite post on this subject ever.

Haha, there are a lot of neat ideas in here!

Someone up above mentioned a Sigil that applied burning, and I’ve always secretly wanted one of those two :o

I’ve also sort of wanted more utility oriented Sigils in general: things that can proc some of the defensive boons (Regen, Protection, maybe stability), or some that increased the durations of specific boons— heck, it’d be super neat to have a Boon equivelent to Giver’s Weapons (Giver’s weapons give 10% or 20% condition duration depending on wether the weapon is one or two handed). I’d love more alternatives to increasing boon duration (right now all general Boon duration runes are on healing power sets; certain offensive runes offer high duration increases to Offensive Boons, and there are a couple Toughness Runesets that offer Protection duration, but that’s about it).

Also, as a melee oriented player who basically weapon swaps on cool down, I’d like to see a few more “On Swap,” weapon sigils make it into the game (Gain [insert Boon here] for [3-5] seconds on weapon swap, _[insert stat here] is increased by “x” amount for [3-5] seconds on weapon swap. Deal x% more damage for [3-5] seconds on weapon swap).

I’m just spit ballin’ random ideas here, but you get what I’m going for.

maha.7902:

It’s unfortunate that the “ZERK IS GREAT” mentality borders on religious fanaticism.

And on the other side of things, the extreme obsession people have with “changing the meta” (as in, to make the builds they like good) borders on religious fanaticism too, so why make a statement like that when it applies to both parties?

You are of course, correct. There are extremists on both sides and quite often attempts at conversations on the subject are drowned out by these polarized Zealots. It is a good reminder that you pointed this out.

Difference is, people who follow the meta don’t incessantly post threads about it all the time whereas people on the other side are constantly ranting about it to the dismay of literally everyone who has to read the forum.

Perhaps because it’s an issue that is important to them, and just as, over the past three years— we saw post after post of people wishing for some sort of feedback/solution to the “condition problem,” (some) people would enjoy hearing and/or seeing something from Arena Net that clarifies their stance and/or activities regarding this subject.

Heaven forbid people come to the forums to discuss what’s important to them. Oh! And I also forgot the part in the EULA where it’s stated that all player’s must read every single post, wether their interested in seeing it’s content or not.

or maybe, people here forget that PvP and WvW exist where a whole ton of stat combinations are used. the game doesn’t revolve entirely around PvE and people need to realise this.

Given that the OP began this discussion by talking about fractals and that I stated specifically that the Zerker stat was optimal in PvE, I assumed it was relatively clear that we were discussing this subject from a PvE standpoint. But then I suppose it is significantly easier to point at the other game modes and say “see, everything is just fine,” and pretend that those game types somehow impact PvE than it is to actually talk to people. ^.^

Aidan Savage.2078:

It’s unfortunate that the “ZERK IS GREAT” mentality borders on religious fanaticism.

I’ve been thinking this a lot myself recently. In “the old days” we still had the zerker meta, but people were willing to talk about it, “troubleshoot” various and creative ways other stat combos might be brought up to par (not DPS wise, but desirability wise. Not that anyone seriously thought Anet was going to implement their think-tanks, but still).

But more and more these days I’m noticing a very vocal faction that genuinely believes that Zerker armor is “The One True Gearset.” They argue (quite aggressively) that Arena Net intended for everyone to eventually end up in Zerker gear, that all other stat combos were purposefully made to be subpar compared to Zerker, and— perhaps most terrifying— that any attempts to make options/choice/diversity even a little more varied will somehow “destroy” the game irrevocably, regardless of what approach one might take (wether it’s character-side centric, or AI/Encounter design centric).

To acknowledge that builds which employ Zerker gear are the most “optimal” in the current PvE environment is one thing, but I find the fervid belief that Arena Net would create (and continue to create) all kinds of Stat Combos, Traits, and Utilities that are intentionally meant to serve no function (because they are non-zerk, or do not synergize with the zerk stat spread) genuinely bizarre.

I just posted in another thread about this issue, but I am going to bump this one as well, because this is a genuinely game breaking issues: I am completely unable to participate with new communities, and has already “robbed” me of many opportunities to potentially make new relationships within the game’s community.

I reiterate (from my other post, and from my in game bug reports) that due to the monumental impact of this bug, some form of response (or preferably a resolution) would be immensely appreciated.

Please and thank you.

As threads were merged, this post has been edited to eliminate redundancy.

Things have been a bit of a bummer around here lately, so I thought it might be fun to put together a “What Would You Give Guardians If You Were In Charge” thread.

No rules really, just think of things that would make you happy to have and/or change for your Guardian and make a wish list!

I’ll go first ;P

1. Get rid of the redundant Kindled Zeal trait and replace it with “Symbolic Liberation:” your symbols are no longer light fields.
   Yup! I want a trait that does nothing but take away something from the class: Hammer/Mace is one of my favorite set ups to play, but I always get super bummed out because those darn light fields get in the way during dungeons, raids, fractals, whatever. I’d love to be “free” to use those weapons whenever I wanted ;P

1. With some of the new technology they’ve been showcasing, I think it’d be great opportunity to overhaul a lot of the problems with Spirit Weapons. Now that Anet can make skills that move with the player, I think this would be fantastic for spirit weapons, especially Shield of the Avenger: keep it’s “pulsing” quality, but have it stick by the guardian for a (now) reliable alternative to wall of reflecion.
   Bow of Truth wouldn’t really need any changes because it’s command skill has a long range anyway, and having it stick near you would help keep it alive, and maybe actually see it use those healing arrows its supposed to shoot.
   Not sure what to do with the Hammer or the Sword though…

1. For my last one, I’m gunna stick with more Spirit Weapon changes. If I could, I would totally get rid of Wrathful Spirits (a big dps loss for Sword and Hammer, but it doesn’t really affect Bow or Shield at all) and replace it with a trait that did something along the lines of “50% of the damage taken by your Spirit Weapon is transfered to you.” This would basically double the health of the Spirit Weapons, but it comes at a cost to the user: especially if the weapons were changed to stay close to the caster: if you get caught in an AoE, you’re taking 1) your own damage and 2) half the damage of any spirits you have up. Imagine if you had all three out at once!

Okay, those are mine. Remember, these are just for fun! They don’t have to be good ideas, or perfectly balanced ideas or anything like that, so there’s no need to hold back (and no reason to be overly critical)!

Have at it my fellow Guardians! ^.^

Someone above linked a PvP Hammer build, but I just thought I’d point out that there’s also a PvE Hammer build that’s used in high level fractals. I believe the variations are:

• 5/5/0/4/0
• 3/5/0/4/2
• and 5/3/0/4/2

You’ll notice they’re all very similar, and it basically comes down to wether or not you need the Master of Consecrations trait at that particular moment, as well as which of a set of three traits you (as an indicidual) happen to value most: Radiant Power for a reliable 10% damage modifier on all weapons, or Zealous Blade + Symbolic Power for a 5% bonus on your Greatsword and a 10% bonus to your symbols.

This is a build that’s a damage build (even more so if you run Hammer/GS rather than just camping Hammer, but that defeats the purpose just a little) who’s goal is to support the party by providing 100% up time on Protection (so a constant -33% damage).

It should be noted that this build is, again, predominantly designed to help clear trash in high level fractals where the enemies can actually lay on the hurt, as opposed to regular PvE scenarios where players make all enemies (even most bosses) look like laughing stocks.

Anecdotally, I’ve found that I can pretty much get away with using this build in most PuGs, or in groups that rely on Phalanx Strength Warriors rather than Elementalist fire field blast combos.
When you encounter organized groups though, people will get a little sour because unfortunately the Hammer also creates a “permanent” light field, which can frustrate people who are attempting to make use of (much) better field combos (basically Fire + Blast or Water + Blast).

The Hammer Synergizes well with both the Greatsword and the Mace/x; GS because it’s basically our best burst weapon, Mace because mace’s dps is only a bit behind sword and it synergizes extremely well with the same traits you’re taking for your hammer anyway.

First off, Leo G, you’re a breath of fresh air. Someone who actually reads what I write and processes it, rather than immediately jumping to conclusions about what I do or don’t want to do to the game? Is this, like, an early April Fool’s joke or something? xD

As for the rest of this thread… yeah, this is pretty much what I expected when I saw this thread pop up this morning.
/sigh.

I’ll exit this conversation by stating that I did not suggest any alterations to the game in any way shape or form. I merely made some observations and then posed a question. A rhetorical question mind you, the entire point of which is to get people to… you know, think.

But please, by all means continue to jump to conclusions, make assumptions, and generally take “being obtuse,” to olympian levels of artistry.

I on the other hand will depart and go play one of the 8 different fully ascended Berzerker equipped proffessions that I’ve spent the past nine hundred and forty eight days playing (so much for the “people who complain about diversity are only the people who don’t play meta builds” theory, huh?)

Hurray…..

Your role is defined primarily by variables you can change “on the fly” which IMO makes it far more fun. What is good about having to bring along multiple sets of armor to fill different roles on the same character?

Your gears primary function in this game is simply the sliding scale of offense and defense. Of course it has a bit more complexity to it than a linear scale but still that’s basically what it is. And it performs it’s function perfectly.

Your role comes mainly from trait/weapon/utility skills and with a lesser degree sigil/runes.

• Note:(not quoting to single poster out, just a good example of an argument many individuals in this thread are making)

This is true.

However those arguing that “Gear Choice” and “Build Choice” or “Role” are entirely separate things quite conveniently side-step a very large point, and what I think is the crux of the discontent with “PvE Versatility” (to quote the thread title).

As things currently stand, only those who wear DPS based Gear/Runes/Sigils get to change their role “on the fly.”

As has been pointed out many times, the “core” of Support in GW2 comes from Utilities like Wall of Reflection, Feedback, or Frost Spirit, and from traits like Phalanx Strength, Spotter, or Pure of Voice.

If a player geared for DPS switches out Traits, Utilities, or Weapons to be more supportive, they can do so with only a minor drop in DPS (sorry for another Guardian example, but if I recall a perma-protection Hammer Build is only about a 10% dps drop from the conventional GS/Sword set-up).

If a player wearing just about any other stat set up switches out their Support Utilities, Weapons, or Traits to more Damage oriented ones, they’ll technically see an increase in damage, but in reality they’re now just running around with comparably inadequate damage and a bunch of stats that aren’t being used.

The freedom to change “on the fly” is one of the best parts of Guild Wars 2 and should absolutely be preserved, but right now that freedom is one sided: “DPS” can “Support,” but “Support” cannot “DPS.”

Edited to Add: I’ve seen many people on the “pro-zerker meta” side of the argument accuse those who desire more a Supportive playstyles as greedy and “wanting it all.” But I think it’s entirely fair to turn that question (well, it’s usually an accusation, but I’m turning it into a question) on its head: why should DPS geared players get to “have it all?”
Right now all the strongest Support in the game (Reflects, Absorbs, Cleanses, Blinds, Blocks, etc…) require basically no stat investment at all. So yes, in this system DPS hungry players get to have their cake and eat it too. Why should this be so?

Defensively the picture is very similar. As far as defensive modifiers go, Potions of Slaying provide a damage reduction equal to their offensive bonus, Guardians have the Signet of Judgement, and there are a handful of Traits that either decrease damage or trigger defensive effects when certain conditions are met (take a certain percentage of your total Hit Points in one hit, negatively impact your enemies if you get hit with a Crowd Control effect, take less damage/deal a large attack if your health drops below a certain threshold, etc…). Finally there are several Rune Sets that have a chance to trigger condi clears, healing, or boons upon being hit, and or, most notably gain a boon, effect, or offensive ability when your health drops below a certain threshold (Rune of the Forgeman is probably my favorite in this category: Protection and AoE bruning when hit beneath 20% Health).

But you can see a vast distinction between the offensive options and defensive options: 1) There are far more Damage Increasing Modifiers than there are Damage Decreasing Modifiers, and 2) Damage Percentile Modifiers are generally up a signifcant amount of the time, whereas Defensive Traits only kick in when you’re health is beneath a certain threshold (a few are 90%, but the vast majority come into play when you’re at 25% or lower making them… less than useful a majority of the time). 3) Last but not least, Percentile Damage Modifiers kick in as soon as their conditions are met, whereas the Defensive Abilities from Traits and Runes tend to have (very long) Internal Cool Downs attached to them.

In a nutshell, it is far easier and far more effective to collect/stack damage bonuses than it is to try and stack either Healing or Defensive bonuses.

Finally, factor in the that the game is currently designed around bursts of massive spike damage (that don’t give two kittens about how much Toughness you have), while most Healing Traits and Utilities (barring the #6 Healing Skills) are based around gradual regeneration (which more often than not is woefully ineffective at keeping up with an enemy’s attack rotations).

This makes it easy to see how we end up in a situation where player’s who build for damage can easily Support as well as anyone who builds for Support, but player’s who build for Support cannot hope to keep up with those who build for damage, and it’s obvious why the meta is shaped the way it is.

Kicking myself for getting dragged into another one of these threads, but one thing that I think is worth pointing out is the large discrepancy in… “build feedback loops,” I guess is the best term for it.

It’s been pointed out many times that the Berserker’s (or it’s praternal twin Assassin’s) gear is a “perfect stat combo:” The high power makes you hit harder, the precision makes you crit more often, and the power and ferocity makes those frequent crits monumental.

But another important part of the equation (that gets discussed with less frequency) is the multitude of easily accessible Damage Percentile Modifiers. Every class has access to a notable collection of Damage Modifier Traits (that trigger under varying circumstances), as well a number of different Percentile Sigils (Force, Slaying, Night), utility consumables (Slaying Potions), and a variety of different Runes based on desired level of reliability vs reward (Strength, Flame Legion, Scholar, etc…).

Add in the fact that these multipliers are Multiplicative rather than Additive and you can see how quickly things begin to spiral: on a Guardian for example, I can easily get an additional 49.5% increase to my DPS without even really trying: (7 trait points: 2 in Zeal for Fiery Wrath, 5 in radiance for Powerful Blades and Radiant Power, a Sigil of Force, Runes of the Flame Legion). You’ll note here that I’m not using any consumables, nor am I using any of the more persnickety Runes or Sigils (no Night Sigils, No Slaying Sigils, no Runes of the Scholar), and I still have another 7 trait points (out of the 14 total you get), that I can use to either grab more Percentile Modifiers (like Zealous Blade for 5% on my greatsword for weapon swaps) or on support traits like Master of Consecrations and Superior Aria.
* For those who are curious, if we swap Flame Legion for Scholars, and include a Sigil of Night/Slaying and a Potion of Slaying, that increase becomes a whopping 86% increase (77% if I’m on my Greatsword instead of my Sword)— and again, this is from Modifiers alone. This isn’t even touching the damage difference between Berserkers Stats and other Stat combinations. *

If you compare all this to Healing Percentile Modifiers: there’s only a single trait (Acquatic Benevolence, which is accessible only to elementalists), a single Sigil (which, by the way is a “stack on kill” sigil much like bloodlust, which means one must perform the same “perfect active defenses” of a zerker, or they lose the bonus), a single Rune set (Rune of the Monk), and a single consumable (those Rice Balls from the Lunar New Year Event). To the best of our knowledge, _these Modifiers (unlike damage modifiers) are Additive, rather than Multiplicative, so if you combine all these you get an increase of 57.5% for Elementalists and 32.5% for all other classes. But keep in mind that these modifiers affect outgoing heals only.

Add on to that the fact that, despite some outliers, the majority of Traits and Utilities Scale terribly with the Healing Power stat (and the HP stat doesn’t synergize with any other stats anywhere near to the extent that Power, Precision, and Ferocity do) and suddenly there’s a very large “Why bother?” factor.

OH!

I always thought it would be a great cash grab/quality of life option for Arena Net to sell “Account Wide Bags.” You buy a bag, equip the bag on a character, and then any item that’s placed in that bag appears on all your characters.

Of course the money making part comes from the fact that any character you’d want to have access to this bag would need their own “Account Wide Bag,” meaning the more alts you want to invest in, the more bags you’d have to buy.

Don’t know if it’s actually a good idea or not, but it’s always been on of those ideas that I thought would be neat. “/shrug”

When it comes to the wallet, I’m fine with drawing the line at “if it can be used to purchase something, it belongs in the wallet.”

But I do agree that it would be awesome to have a way to equip Toys and Tonics the way we currently equip Finishers or Outfits. Maybe even a “Utility Item Slot” for stuff like the Candy Corn Gobbler or the Home Portal Stone.’

But of course these are all suggestions that have been made before. Still, happy to keep amplifying the call until we get some progress on this front ;P

I don’t really have a lot to say about “fair vs unfair,” or “outcome vs opporunity,” but I… I guess I just wanted to vent out my own little anecdote:

I have two friends. All three of us have been playing since launch day. Between the two of them they have received a total of eleven precursor drops. Eleven.
Meanwhile I, playing the same amount of time, doing the same content— often even doing that content with them, have received not a single one.

Now to be fair, and to round out the story, I spent about three moths grinding gold (through various means) until I had 2.1k gold in my pocket. Doing a quick browse through gw2spidy, one sees that that is easily enough gold in hand to buy any precursor I wanted— hell, I could have bought several, including two dusks. There were even a handful of legendaries I could have purchased directly. (For those of you who are curious, I made a conscious choice not to buy any precursors. Spent the money on stuff I valued more).

So I guess the question becomes: “Why should a few lucky players be allowed to accumulate as much wealth in a single evening as (an unmeasured population of) unlucky players spend weeks working to get?”
And that’s not hyperbole; one of my friends literally got three precursor drops over the course of a five dungeon run (one of them being dusk).

I for one think it’s disappointing (note: disappointing, not unfair) that our Virtual Fantasy World economy has to mirror our real world one, in which the best way to acquire wealth is to be born into it.
(Just for clarity, the above is a metaphorical comparison of the luck of a 100% unbiased RNG drop rate system to the “luck” of being born the child of a business mogul or AAA celebrity or what have you.)

Edited to add: And yeah, it’s cool we’ll be able to obtain a precursor with some degree of certainty now, but I’m still a bit bothered that some players get to be wealthy for no reason (those who are consistently rewarded with high end drops), while others have to be poor (or perhaps “lower middle class” is a better comparison) for no reason.
I’d sort of really like the magic find system to be reworked (again) somehow: find some way to make it actually relevant in more parts of the game, while of course keeping in mind that it’s important not to create an unbreachable disparity between New and Veteran players.

This topic has been popping up a lot since Silverwastes released (well, it’s been popping up forever “/rolleyes,” but it’s been particularly frequent the past few months), and funnily enough I was just thinking about why I dislike it so much when the dead refuse to waypoint last night:

Corpse Clutter.

Some of these Open World boss fights are easy, others are hard, most of them are timed. In a hectic fight where one is 1) watching boss mechanics, 2) dodging attacks, 3) trying to dps before the timer runs down and 4) watching out for players who need assistance it suddenly, and surprisingly easily, becomes difficult to tell the downed from the dead.

And even if you can manage to pick them out (use your #4 skill y’all, seeing a character yell “help me” and start to glow blue is a huge attention grabber, lol), sooooo many times I’ve been in a situation where a downed person is surrounded by a group of kitten kittened corpses and I end up rezzing a dead person when I wanted to save the downed person. Then low and behold, the next round of attacks come in and I have to dodge away before I can correct the mistake.

And while you can inform the game specifically who you want to rez by targetting the player, in a fast paced, AoE based fight like Tequatl or The Mangler (if your reflect team is failing) by the time you’ve 1) visually identified someone as downed vs dead, 2) clicked on them— which can be a lot harder than it sounds when there are five to six dead people surrounding them, 3) gotten to that downed player and 4) begun rezzing them, low and behold the next round of AoEs or adds or whatever is bearing down on you and you either have to dodge away or die alongside them if you’re too slow to react.

I don’t care about the scaling argument (which has been done to death, and we’ve even had red posts weigh in on it), I don’t care about the “a person rezzing isn’t doing dps,” or the “you’re putting people who rez at risk.” A player or group of players who choose to rez a dead player made that choice. They’re adults, they’re fellow players, and I fully respect their choice to play the way they want. I hope they survive and everything works out, but they chose to stop and rez. Totally their business.

What I very much do care about though is that you’re bloated corpse is getting other people killed. Again not the people who stop to rez you they made their choice and I could care less how it turns out, but the people who had the horrible misfortune of getting/being downed next to your stubborn corpse (and let’s be honest, very rarely is it one person refusing to waypoint, it’s either “everything is okay and people are alive”, or it’s a “20 car pile up” with everyone standing around to watch the wreckage).

Your body is in the way. Your body is in the way, and it gets other people who could have been saved killed.

That’s what bothers me.

Heya! Logged in just to let you know I’ve been experiencing the same problem. Done everything on my end I can think of to fix it, but so far it’s a no go: GW2 just doesn’t want me to play today .

Which…. is actually a giant bummer because I only need one more kill to be done with my Triple Trouble meta-achievement, but these connectivity issues prevented me from participating in today’s raid… /quietlydissatisfied.

My primary argument is that Build Diversity is currently hampered by the fact there are numerous abilities that are simply outclassed— as another example Guardians have a wide number of abilities to deal with projectiles: Wall of Reflection, Shield of the Avenger, Sanctuary, and Shield of Absorption

• Wall of Reflection is considered one of the Guardian’s main staples, to the point where they are almost always expected to be both traited for, and carrying this utility at all times.
• Shield of the Avenger is a skill that is extraordinarily useful in encounters where long term projectile defense is necessary (see: “niche usage”), particularly because it’s long duration allows for a fruitful WoR -> SotA -> WoR cycle. However it’s long cooldown, awkwardly placed traits, and fragility of the Shield (just for those unfamiliar with the skill Shield of the Avenger is a spirit weapon) prevents it from being an equal choice to the vastly more reliable Wall of Reflection.
• Because of its knockback component, Shield of Absorption sees some usage in the competitive modes of Guild Wars 2 (WvW, EotM, and PvP), however even after it’s recent buff, the fact that it’s a weapon skill (and thus takes up a slot) puts it in stiff competition the Guardian’s Focus skills, which provide superior defense in the form of a bouncing attack that inflicts Blind, and a skill that is a blast finisher and blocks up to three attacks (or deals significant damage if you have remaining charges when the duration runs out). When you factor in that 1) the knockback distance is short and only occurs on activation (hope you knocked your opponent off a cliff, otherwise they’re just going to be right on top of you again), 2) the skill roots you in place, leaving you quite vulnerable to follow up attacks, and 3) the duration of the skill’s projectile absorption is currently bugged (too short), even Torch is currently a preffered choice over Shield, meaning Shield of Absorption is the niche of the niche.
• And finally Sanctuary is basically considered garbage by a significant portion of the Guardian Community. On paper this sounds like a powerful skill— it provides healing, projectile absorption and prevents foes from entering its area. However this skill’s functionality is absolutely shredded by several significant flaws: 1) It’s duration is a scant 8 seconds when traited with a cooldown of 96 seconds when traited, makes this skill an immensely shallow payout that leaves you vulnerable for long periods of time. 2) While the skill is meant for defense, the radius is so small that it has been noted multiple times that opponents can reach you with AoEs, meaing your “Sanctuary” becomes a “I will sit here peacefully while you unload on me.” And finally 3) It is countered by stability and/or defiance, which means there is a significant likelyhood in any game type that the enemy you’re trying to protect yourself from is simply going to walk up and hit you anyway.

And just so you do not have to take my word for it, here are two threads in which the relative functionality of these skills is discussed: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Why-Wall-of-Reflection-is-your-friend-1 and https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Sanctuary-I-want-to-love-it-but. Again, please note the age of these threads as an illustration of how slowly balance passes have been made throughout the history of the game.

The words “optimal” and “viable” or “useable” have been thrown around this thread. Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood you, but it seems that your argument is, “if I can do something with it, then this skill is okay, therefore build diversity is okay.”
My argument is, in essence, “Build diversity will remain stagnant so long as we are being asked to choose between better and passable.”

So there you have it. I have apologized to you for having a differing opinion, I have responded to your desire for examples with multiple ones from two different proffessions (and I even chose two that are at opposite ends of the “how much does this class need help” spectrum), and I have included links for you so you can follow up on them for yourself.

With all that complete I will now take me leave. I hope that this puts an end to any potentially escalating personal attacks, and that all the participants in this thread can enjoy a healthy debate regardless of wether or not they posses differing opinions.

This is one of those discussion threads that has popped up ad nauseam throughout the 2+ years that this game has been out, and I can see it’s now slowly spiraling into the same flame war that these threads always do, so I’m going to be bowing out now.

I simply wanted to take a moment to apologize that my comments seem to have caused so much distress. I simply happen to hold the belief that if people are going to (continue the year long) debate “build diversity and Profession Balance,” that there should be some responsibility to have knowledge of those Professions, what issues they face, and the struggles their communities have been debating/dealing with since… well, the very beginning (all of which is available in the archives, and all of which can, as I said, be found with just a cursory skimming of the Proffession Forums).

And I linked the strawman fallacy at you because you quoted me specifically, then said, “none of my skills are useless” (paraphrasing), implying I said there are useless skills and abilities which (regardless of what I may or may not think) I never said. I’m sure you can sympathize how one does not like having words placed in one’s mouth.

Here is an interesting post that includes an interesting back and forth between the Necromancer community and the Developers: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Necromancer/page/8#post3164512. Several other “back and forths” also occur in that thread, and make for interesting examples if you find yourself so inclined to skim the thread.

I picked this post because it illustrates both 1) a trait that is excessively niche, and 2) how far back debates about literal vs practical “use” of abilities actually reaches.

Mirta.5029:

Krestfallen.8025:

I apologize for being that guy, but you can easily answer this question yourself by briefly skimming the first couple pages of basically any Proffession forum.

Every Proffession has a list of Traits, Weapon Skills, and Utilities they’ve voiced grievances about since day one.

These complaints are voiced so frequently and for so long that they can, and should, be considered common knowledge. I don’ t think it’s necessary to try and distract from the argument with unneccesary handwaving.

I looked at the character I’m on right now and I can see how all of the traits are useful. Perhaps they’re not the meta, doesn’t mean that they’re not useful.

You will note that I did not employ the world “useless” (or any variation thereof) anywhere in my post. Rather I said specifically, “voiced grievances about.”

You and I are in agreement on the fundamental premise that anything which can be used does in fact have a use. However there is a distinction between something which has a use and something which has a practical use: The more “niche” an ability (weapon skill, utility, or trait) is, or if the sacrifice to obtain it is greater than the benefit of being able to use it, the less impact it has on build diversity.

Irregardless, if you are going to quote me then I humbly request that you address things I’ve actually said, rather than things you wish I had said: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Mirta.5029:

Distaste.4801:

GW2 is built in a way that things that could add to build diversity are either broken or underpowered. ArenaNet has refused in 2.5 years to fix them.

examples of that would be nice. Which traits, skills and/ or trait lines on which characters?

I apologize for being that guy, but you can easily answer this question yourself by briefly skimming the first couple pages of basically any Proffession forum.

Every Proffession has a list of Traits, Weapon Skills, and Utilities they’ve voiced grievances about since day one.

These complaints are voiced so frequently and for so long that they can, and should, be considered common knowledge. I don’ t think it’s necessary to try and distract from the argument with unneccesary handwaving.

Lorgus.6148:

Healing power is useless because it should be useless: anet stated many times that they don’t want parties to be unable to complete content due to lack of healer

I’m neither agreeing or disagreeing with your opinion/perspective on Healing/Healing Power, nor will I blindly pontificate on precisley what Arena Net’s vision of how healing should or shouldn’t function within Guild Wars 2 is or isn’t.

However if we allow your presumption that healing power is intended to be (completely) useless, then it should simply be removed from the game. After all, what is the purpose of a purposeless stat?

But given that the stat does exist, and will likely continue to exist (after all, Arena Net continues to release more Stat Combos that include it), I would then argue that the stat should perform its presumed function: improving abilities that heal.

Sidestep for a moment the oft discussed “Zerker > All therefore defensive stats shouldn’t exist at all” arguments we see everyday (as we’ve seen time and time again such arguments require entire threads for themselves, lol). The reason Healing Power is currently “useless” is because there are so many Weapon Skills, Utilities, and Traits that scale so poorly with the stat that the difference between 0 Healing Power and 1000+ Healing is almost completely negligible. It’s absolutely staggering.

If the stat is going to continue to exist in game (an assumption I feel safe making), then I would argue that Arena Net needs to do a sweep of all these skills and seriously consider adjusting the base healing values, scaling values, cool downs, and durations of these abilities to find a new balance: players who invest their time and resources into the Healing Power stat (wether we believe they should be or not) should, quite reasonably, expect their healing Skills, Utilities, and Traits to be better than those who don’t.
As things currently stand, they very much do not in the majority of cases.

As one last, final note, it is my individual, personal opinion that the core of GW2 is strong enough that such adjustments could be made without making “Healers” a necessity.

penelopehannibal.8947:

I’m always advising map chat of the content guide whenever I’m in. Responses I often get are similar to “It’s not pointing me to anything but hearts or vistas”

Oooh! Totally good call on pointing that out: I only hang out on characters that have map completion these days, so I forget that there’s no “Events only, no map completion” option. Thanks so much for reminding me!

But still, I think we can all agree that it’s better if as many players as possible are made aware of all the tools that are at their disposal ^.^

My argument is admittedly subjective, but I stand by it: a grind is a grind only if the player finds the required activity tedious and/or unfulfilling.

In the history of all MMOs, and basically every RPG as well, there has been no game that did not rely on grinding. It basically defines the genre.

Now we could sit here and squabble all day about the finer details of an document/video/interview that was released almost three years ago at this point, or we could deal with what’s in front of us.

Not all content is going to appeal to every player. And I get it: sometimes items you really, really want are gated behind content you don’t like, the game is now two+ years old with relatively little content added (I know that’s another point we could debate all day, but since a significant amount of content generated was subsequently ripped out of the game [LS Season 1] I’m just gunna go ahead and give this one to those who are disatisfied) and we’re all bored. Bored and just a little impatient for something new.

But there is no amount of complaing, suggestions, constructive criticism, or forum stalking any of us can engage in to change the reality of what’s in front of us. And that reality is you get to choose what content you particpate in. Don’t like Silverwastes? Don’t go there! Don’t like fractals? Don’t run them! Don’t like dungeons, meta bosses, etc.. etc… etc…

As consumers that’s really the only venue that’s open to us. Find the content we like and play that. And you know what, Anet may not have delivered the “grind free utopia” a lot of people were hoping for, but they were good about creating a game where most forms of content produce relatively equal rewards based on time invested.

So play what you enjoy and avoid what you want. It’s your free time. Don’t use it to make yourself suffer!

Teach a dog to fish and yadda, yadda, yadda, lol.

Anyways, as we all know there was a change to the Dailies System a while back, and one of the Dailies that comes up fairly frequently is “Complete four events in [insert zone here].”
Every day that this comes up, I usually just go about my business. Never really takes me more than ten minutes or anything; in out, boom, done. But while I’m doing my daily I’m watching map chat, and people are constantly calling out “Events?” And I see other players being great about it: they ping waypoints, or activate their commanders tags, and just generally lend each other a hand.

And it’s super nice to see, but today while I was doing Field of Ruin Event Completion,
I suddenly got curious, and I asked in map chat “I’m not trying to be snide or anything, but I’m genuinely curious: how many people here actually use the Content Finder?”

The response was basically a massive chorus of “The what now?” So I told them where it was in the menu, and which setting to use to see events, and how it would point you towards the nearest event, and how it actually had a rather extraordinary range. The response I got was basically what could on be described as an explosion of gratitude.

When I originally came on to the forums to talk about this, I was planning on doing a whole “PSA:Content Finder” thing, but then I realized that the people who are least likely to know about the Content Finder are the same people that are least likely to visit the forums.

So instead I’m here asking my fellow experienced and knowledgeable forumites to spread the word. Tagging up and linking waypoints and stuff, all that is really great, and keep that up too. But every once in a while just ask around, “Do y’all know about the Content Finder?” It’s super surprising how many people don’t, and I think we could make a lot of people’s playtime a bit more enjoyable if we helped inform people about this feature.

TL/DR: Every once in a while check in with map chat and tell people about the Content Finder and how easy it can make it to find events. There are a lot of people who will really benefit from what amounts to just a few moments of instruction.

Like others have said, this comes up all the time, but I’m bored so…

I think it’d be cool if all the Dragons got a rework (shatterer is a joke and Claw is Just tedious). Put em somewhere on the higher end scale.
But I also think it’s unfair to pull too many meta boss events away from the more casual crowd (or people who just wanna relax and unwind for a little bit).
I’d much rather see them focus on making new ones rather than tearing through all the old ones.
But that’s just me /shrug.

yanipheonu.5798:

And dunno, it’s an MMO. You fight things, do events, get loot, rinse and repeat. Part of the experience really, even in the least grindy MMOs.

This right here. I’ve been thinking about all this “Boss Gimmick/Boring” and other threads judging content, and really it always comes down to how much the player enjoys the activity in question.

I spend hours in Silverwastes, like, four to six hours a day. I need a break sometimes, but I genuinely enjoy the pacing, and the time invested to reward ratio. To me, it’s fun.
Other people find doing the same events boring and repetitive because they don’t like meso they go grind fractals from level 1-50. But it’s not a grind to them because they like it.

I’ve said it somewhere else and I’ll say it again an MMO is designed for a massive and diverse audience. Not every piece of content is for every player. Find what you like and do that. Anything else is pointless.

So I tried guesting to Tarnished Coast to see if I had a positive experience: I had my first “non-screaming at each other, actually successful Vinewrath” since Sunday, which was nice.

But I had to leave my map because after Vinewrath the Shovel Train took over, and it was a bummer fighting and holding forts by myself.
So the server community might be impacting my experience, but because of the way Silverwastes is built I’m still going to be stuck with the randomization factor of LFG Map Hopping :\

And yeah, I don’t have to Map Hop, but I’ve been around the block enough times to know how quickly one can expect the “Pact Assault Progress” Bar to fill up, and… yeah. If you can’t trust an Event Map to stay an Event Map, your just up a creek without a paddle T-T

Anyway, I’m glad everyone else is still finding good maps and having fun and getting loot. I’m gunna keep trying. Hopefully things turn around soon.

It’s a combination of the both the above. But just to put a little perspecitve on it, every Ascended Armor piece requires one insgnia, but every insignia requires 3 bolts of damask. So every character, regardless of Weight Class, requires a minimum of 18 bolts of damask.

However individual recipes for armor pieces have their own Damask requirements, so it’s even more than that in practice ( 25 Bolts for heavy armor, 24 Bolts for Medium Armor, and a whopping 36 Bolts for Light armor).

The combination of universal demand (assuming players are crafting ascended) and the lack of cloth based harvesting nodes means that Cloth and Cloth items will (almost) always be the most valuable of (none rare) crafting materials.

Edited to add: I only take the time to point out the heavy Damask requirements, because leather is also only salvagable (no leather nodes), but is dirt cheap at all tiers. This illustrates the significantly higher need/demand for cloth (and Bolts of Damask) than for leather.

Bristingr.5034:

I should do more Silverwastes when I have time to play, haha…

I remember trying to invite you to a map Krest, when we were struggling to succeed. It was the first time doing it in over a month, but I figured it was just due to people have gotten all that they needed from the map and are tired of doing it, so it’s causing problems.

Haha! Yeah, that was just last night (or maybe two nights ago) right? I remember getting in and helping the fight get started, but that was my fourth omfgwhatthehellishappeningrightnow!? Silverwastes of the evening. I admit (and I think I whispered you at the time), after I saw Beekeper fail twice (or was it three times) in a row my heart couldn’t take another (and I hate to use this term) epic fail Vinewrath attempt. I totally bailed, lol.

In fact, I really hate to say it, cause I totally think this is part of the problem and not the solution, but I think I’m just gunna have to start bailing on maps that fail Beekeeper. I’ve seen maps bounce back from things like that in the past, but it’s just become too much of a “tell tale sign” now. And if I’m wasting hours and hours on maps that…. there is genuinely no way to describe how ridiculous these events are going…. while other successful maps exist…

Well I just can’t make that level of self sacrifice anymore (especially since I used to be one of the people who would push a map from 0% to win).

It sucks, and I think less of myself because of it, but that’s what it comes down to. I’m joining the ranks of the “Map Hoppers” and “Bail on Failers.” I’ve explained this fight too many times to too many people who just yell too many explitives back at me to carry the weight of these…. (sigh, there really is no other way to say it), fail maps anymore.

Now if y’all will excuse me, I’m gunna go for a walk and “pass a lake, skip a few rocks, and have some black guy thinking time.”

This whole thing has just made me way to sad….

edited to add: And I know (from past experiences in other threads about communal performance at public events) that a lot of you are going to come in, not read what I wrote fully, and tell me that it’s my responsibility (or the responsibility of people like me) to teach everyone how to do these events. But

1. again it’s impossible to express just how awful the runs I’ve been stuck in have gone, or how aggressive everyone gets at the merest hint of an instruction, a piece of advice, or a scrap of constructive criticism and
2. I’ve spent months (since the launch of Silverwastes) explaining these fights to people (fights that I, and many people like me learned the hard way, by leaping headfirst on day one. Well before any explanations, knowledge or guides even existed). It’s just too much to put on any one group of people anymore.
3. Especially when I get verbally abused for trying to help. And I use smileys and emojis and the friendliest language I can think of when explaining things, or after an event fails to keep morale up, when explaining what’s about to happen, or explaining what went wrong so people can take away a lesson from a loss. But no matter how nice or kind or patient you try to be, if you open your mouth in map chat, you’re instantly demonized (most popular insult is “gluteus maximus head piece” for some reason). I simply cannot, and will not, do it anymore.

And again, it makes me said that I feel like it’s come to this: that I feel I have to abandon my fellow players and behave in “vulture-esque” behavior, but I just can’t waste hours of my time not having fun while failing events and getting yelled at by… I’ll be generous and say, “players as equally frustrated as I am.”

Healix.5819:

I don’t recall very many fails over the past few weeks either. I’ve even had an undermanned instance succeed with 1 carrier remaining.

Yeah, like I said I’ve farmed it every week since it was released (three times a day twice a day, so six attempts a day) and they were all succesful. That’s why I was so utterly shocked when we were getting destroyed so badly— both by the champs and in lane! >.<

But again, glad to hear more reports of wins. I’ll just have to hope I start finding the same maps as all y’alls xD

Blude.6812:

Last 3 days— 3 attempts—-3 wins—lots of loot! One was this morning—off hrs for me. I found it easy likely because there was a great group of players on. Got a body part in as well, and that was after a successful TEQ too.

Alright. Well I’m somewhat relieved to hear it’s just been some bad luck on my part. I was afraid the map was trashed. I tried twice this morning though with the type of results I posted about…. Anyway, glad you got some wins! I hate you (not really, lol)

edited to add: Probably about nine Breach/VW attempts over the course of sunday-tuesday, all of them the type of fiasco I experienced. Just in case anyone was interested in any further “anecdata.”

1) I know this is a super sensitive topic and liable to draw flame and
2)I know there have been threads about “common sense” and “who should be responisble for teaching/learning,” but those have been floating around since SW was first released; this is something different entirely.

I’ve basically been farming Vinewrath since it was released (I farmed the Breach too, but not as diligently). I know this is only anecdotal, but for about two weeks I had/saw a 50% success rate on the Breach, but a 100% success rate on Vinewrath. Not just success, but roflstomping: killing every champ on the first try, losing only 0-2 siege carriers. We’re talking walk in the park, total shut outs.

But about two or three days ago the map just absolutely crashed. We’re not just failing VW, we’re failing it hard. Multiple Beekeeper fails in a row, Mangler thrashing people left and right. I’ve only seen us get to Darkwing once in the past three or four days.
And it’s not just about “the early crowd vs the late-night/weekend crowd,” cause I farmed two sessions a day, once in the morning/early afternoon, and again later during primetime. I admit prime time was always a bit rougher, but we still won.

But it’s like… it’s like someone tried to do that magic trick where you rip the sheets out from under a pile of dishes, except they completely messed up and everything got smashed at once: I literally logged in one evening and now I haven’t seen a successful Silverwastes since.

I know there are a lot of factors that could be considered (everyone got their Lumi and left, people got bored and left, Shovel Maps vs Event Maps etc… etc…), but usually that’s a slow tapering off. Not the kind of crash and burn I’m seeing here.

Is anyone else experiencing this kind of thing? Or am I just really, really, really unlucky when choosing maps? Also, what the heck happened? My mind is genuinely and truly boggled.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I think as a commander you have to expect to give instructions regardless of whether you’ve done the event 1 time or 100 times. That’s why you pay the big bucks for the pretty taco.

On this I agree entirely. If you’re tagged up as a Commander it specifically means that you want to lead the Zerg; which also means informing the Zerg.

But the expectations we have of Commanders, and the expectations we have of players as a whole shouldn’t necessarily be the same. I mean, even virtual commanders fighting a virtual war need to tag down and take a break sometimes ;P

Deamhan.9538:

I think the better question is, how do you define a ‘day’?

Most people spend, what, ~3hours per day…

None of those activities will get you that much gold in just 3 hours.

Accurate.
Also accurate? Larger quantities of time invested = larger quantities of rewards received. That’s been true of every MMO ever (and a lot of single player games too). Anet has made great strides in the “play how you want,” “all content is rewarding” department, but that fundamental truth is unchanged (even if you buy gems, that’s just substituting “work time” ours for “leisure time” hours. That money comes from somewhere, after all).

One of the people on my friends list has gold in the thousands (several thousand), but he runs every dungeon every day, some of them in the evening after reset, some of them in the morning/afternoon of the next day. Often times he literally runs from reset to reset (with just a couple hours for a nap).
Am I angry because I don’t have as much gold as he does? Nope. Because he puts in exponentially more time than I do, thus deserves exponentially more rewards than I.

Also, I usually spend about three hours on average doing my SW farm (Breach/VW, not shovel train), and I average anywhere from 16-21 gold (depending on if I get any good drops from my champ bags)— and for the record, that’s two or three Breach/VWs (I don’t map hop), with the Breach almost always failing and VW almost always succeeding. During the seventeen minute “Time Out” I either Champ Train or hit the Labyrinth (depending on where the majority of players congregate after the event).

This morning I spent exactly 2 hours and 33 minutes in Silverwastes (known because I popped a pair of primers right when I started, and that was how far their duration had fallen). And in that time I squeezed in two Breaches (a success and a failure), and two Vinewraths (two successes, one of them was super sketchy though, lol).

After salvaging and/or selling all the loot and materials I recieved, I earned a total of 21 gold and 37 silver— mind you, that’s after expenses like my daily 300 silk, thermocatalytics, and various waypoint costs. But for now let’s just keep it simple and stick to 21g, 37s.

Let’s round down because I’m lazy and call it 20 gold in 2.5 hours. 300 divided by 20 is 15, so we need fifteen 2.5 hour sessions to get our commander tag. In order to figure out how many hours that is, we take our 15 sessions and multiply it by 2.5, which comes out to 37.5 hours. Let’s round again (this time up: I always round in the direction which favors the arguments of those with the opposite viewpoint of mine) to a nice 38 hours.
So doing only Breach/Vinewrath Silverwastes farming, it will take you 38 hours to earn a commander tag. If we allow your average of three hours per day, then 38 divided by 3 comes out to 12.6 repeated— again let us round up. That’s basically 13 days. Let’s go a step further and call it 2 weeks. Two weeks to get your commander tag doing nothing but but Silverwastes farming, if that’s what you want to do.

Given that 1) Commanders are intended to be experienced players capable of successfully leading groups of less experienced players and 2) Commander Tags are (debatably) a “prestige” items like Ascended gear— something that is nice to have, but unneccesary/useless in a significant amount of content, two weeks seems like a rather fair time requirement.

BUT it’s worth noting that 1) I farm inefficiently: I don’t map hop, which severely decreases my time invested to loot received ratio (people jump map shards for a reason), and 2) this includes no other sources of loot, like materials from my home instance, or mats bought and then sold with laurels, which you get automatically just for logging in, and 3) is, once again the amount I’m left with after I’ve bought expensive materials like silk and thermos. Therefore that two weeks could very likely be reduced by quite a large margin.

TL/DR: There’s no way around it, we as fellow players in the same, shared community, we have to work together.
Players who do know what to do need to be prepared to share that information (either voluntarily or upon request), while players who don’t know what to do need to step up and admit that they don’t know. Two way street guys and gals. Two way street.

I couldn’t resist poking my head in here.

I don’t think players should necessarily have to go to third party websites and study the mechanics of an encounter, and I do think knowledgable players should be prepared to inform players that are newer/less experienced.

But I also think that the onus of education should be on those that lack the knowledge, rather than those that posses it— I think I said it to someone earlier today, but just like a newbie can’t be expected to know the mechanics, a “veteran player” can’t be expected to know what you don’t know.

For example, everytime I farm Silverwastes, when I see that the Breach is coming up, I yell out in map chat, “It’s time to start thinking about getting ready for the Breach. Head to the fort that has the boss you want/need, or that you’re familiar with. If you don’t know what to do, be sure to ask your fellow fort defenders for help.” (added emphasis for rhetorical purposes).

Similarly, during the three minute “Ready Up” period we get between the Breach and Vinewrath I again say in map chat, “Let’s make sure we’re spread out evenly throughout the lanes. If you’re not familiar with the mechanics of your lane’s boss ask your fellow lane defenders for help before we get started.” (again, rhetorical emphasis).

Finally, when I see that our lane has/is about to open, I give a brief overview of what our lane is about to be facing: “Okay guys, keeping reflects on the Mangler whenever it’s spinning is key, but don’t forget that we also have to kill pustules asap too. Finally, when the boss runs away, follow it, then stand in the white cone that appears behind it.” (Obviously I’m talking Mid Lane here. Also, the emphasis in this one isn’t rhetorical. I really do emphasize those words, usually by surrounding them with asterisks.)
I do all this every time.

1) Given the short amount of time and the intensity of fighting, I feel like that sort of breakdown is more than fair: if you have a reflect, you now know you’re going to have to use it, if you see an object called a “Pustule” you know you need to kill it, and if you see everyone suddenly start running to one spot in the room you know you should probably follow them. You may not know why you’re doing those things, but you know they’re things that need to do be done.

2) You’ll also note that I tend to direct players to ask each other, but there’s nothing stopping someone who’s new whispering me and saying “I’m here, but I don’t know what to do.” Have had it happen. Even party up with them sometimes so we can stick together.

Everyone has a 1) a heads up before the events begin, 2) an awareness that this is a good time to explain and/or ask for an explanation, and 3) there are specific mechanics coming that everyone is going to be expected to be at least a little prepared for.
I think that’s more than fair.

/Rant
Just as a quick, personal tangent, nothing— nothing “grinds my gears” more than when an event fails and then afterwards people start saying “We were new. We didn’t know what to do.”
I get it, putting yourself out there is scary, especially in the public channel of an MMO, where people aren’t always… at their best (or to a group of strangers at the beginning of a dungeon who may or may not yell at/kick you). But come on! If you don’t know what you’re about to be doing, don’t wait til after to say it. When you do that, you’re basically going into the event expecting to be carried. This is just my own, personal opinion, but I genuinely believe that that’s asinine.
/EndRant

Iyeru.5240:

What is SW Farming by the way? Also what if I hate PVP? I’ve never done a fractal before either, and have no craftings above 100… I also don’t have any guildmates who will do dungeons really, and don’t like voice chat or bigger guilds anyway.

What do I do then? This isn’t a troll or sarcastic post either, this is a GENUINE question / post.

Quickest thing first, SW stands for Silverwastes. Silverwastes farming refers to either repeatedly doing the Breach/Vinewrath Meta-events (with many hopping from map shard to map shard in order to get at these specific events as quickly as they can), OR Silverwastes farming can refer to “Shovel Trains,” in which players who posses moderate to large numbers of Shovels and Lost Bandit Keys gather together and roam the map digging up a large number of Bandit Chests.

As far as the rest of your post goes:
I’m usually on the side of making things easier to acquire— I think inflating numbers to get players to grind (so they spend more time in game) is lazy design (admittedly a somewhat necessary evil in MMOs, but lazy nevertheless). And I’m genuinely sympathetic to the frustrations of those who “were late to the party:” I know for certain that I would never buy a tag at it’s current price, and I’m a player who consistently has more gold than “average.”

BUT what your post essentially boils down too is: “I don’t like most of the content in this game” and “I don’t like making friends in a game that’s very genre classification contains both the words online and multiplayer.”

Now, again, I’m sympathetic: I’ve been struggling to find a guild the past couple months myself, but I hate pugging so dungeons are currently barred to me. I also (like you) hate PvP, and after a two to three hundred hours in fractals (I have every single Fractal achievement, including 500/500 in Fractal Frequenter) I now find them insufferable.

First I’m going to make the obvious point that I was clearly building towards: if you choose not to participate in the content that’s available to you, how can you then also expect to posses the rewards that content provides?

Now to be a bit more helpful:

Even with a genuine distaste for such a broad portion of the game’s content, there are still numerous ways to make money solo (or rather, as an individual. You’ll be part of a zerg for most part).

1. You now know two different ways to farm Silverwastes.
2. It’s been a while since I’ve been out there, but Dry Top is a (slightly less efficient) alternative: even if you can’t do the clay pot thing (cause of your low crafts), you can get Zephyrite Lockpicks and open chests there (similar to SW Shovel farming, except the Dry Top chests give you a different type of Champ Bag, so the prices on some of the rare exotics you get will be slightly better.)
3. There’s the Meta Boss train. You know, Shadow Behemoth, Claw of Jormag, etc… Everyone has their preference, but there are various “Timer” websites to help you keep track of them (<a>“http://dulfy.net/2014/04/23/event-timer/”</a> for example). If you look at the Timer, you’ll even note that if you dislike the bigger, more involved bosses like Tequatl and the Evolved Triple Wurm the bosses have been laid out so that an easier boss always spawns right around the time that these “big” bosses spawn (at the time of this writing, the Taidha Covington event is set to begin a mere 5 minutes after Tequatl), so the “big bads” won’t interfere with your train.
4. Though it’s been altered many times, the Frostgorge Sound Champion Train is still as strong as ever.
5. Similarly, Cursed Shore farming is still a prevalent thing, with people also branching out into other parts of Orr to do temple events.
6. Finally you can also kick it old school and go node farming: iron, platinum, hard wood, seasoned wood, all the “mid level” crafting materials are worth a pretty penny, if you happen to have the disposition for this type of farming.

All of the above are relatively rewarding. None of it requires that you have friends/guildies/or even a particular skill level. You may have to take a little time to familiarize/get comfortable with an area’s indiosyncrasies, and you will have to spend at least some time “following the zerg,” but all of these things can be done without having a reliable pool of friends/guildies to draw on.

And if you can’t find something on that list that you can enjoy and/or tolerate doing… (and I really hate to be this guy but) maybe you’re a bit burned out and should consider taking a brief break from GW2. Maybe play through a single player game or something, then come back refreshed.