Guild Wars 2

Yes, he’s being whiny and destructive. No, we don’t like the direction his behavior is going. But y’know what? We aren’t supposed to. When a protagonist does things you don’t like, that’s an arc in the making, perhaps a fall from grace and subsequent redemption. That’s classic character development. It creates tension, and tension creates emotional investment, and emotional investment creates good stories. Braham might end up being the best thing to happen to this crapshoot of a story so far. Gods know none of the other supporting cast have anything going for them right now. Will he throw a tantrum if Jormag goes silent? Will he amass an army and cause more needless death? I don’t know about you, but I’m excited to find out!

Here are my opinions, for what they’re worth.

Legendary armor in its current state is tripe. They look terrible, all of them. Those “professional” designers need to have some sense slapped into them. Not only are the designs underwhelming and ugly (“legendary,” yeah sure), but the transformation mechanic is a nightmare for backpieces and clipping in general. And they can only be acquired via raids? Are you serious? What about the “a game for everyone” part of the manifesto? What if you don’t have time for raids, or you don’t have friends to do them with, or you just don’t like raids?

I may seem unreasonably salty, but that’s because I was so looking forward to legendary armor. I’m just in shock. This was supposed to be the next big thing, and Anet is a proven powerhouse. What happened?

I NEED it. Same goes for the Shattered Bloodstone Glider!

We know you already fixed it once, but that was more of a bandaid than a permanent solution. For those who don’t remember, the current iteration of the Bloodstone Visage skin is a reduced-intensity version of the original. It was bugged and was visible through the back of the character’s head, as showcased in the wardrobe preview which has not been changed. As annoying as it was, the old version looks awesome – vibrant and striking, much better than the current. We know it’s not an urgent matter, but we do hold out hope that you will find a way to fix the visibility bug while returning the effects to their former glory!

Interesting, I’ve never seen it fail so I didn’t know that. Perhaps in that case the other NPC could “read her notes” or something if she does die and take her role in the final fight. Or they could just change it so that Crea’s health doesn’t go down over time and it’s just a simple breakout. I feel like the latter would require a lot less coding.

There are a couple problems with this path that stick out to me.

1. Crea follows us to defeat the effigy because she “knows how to break it,” and then literally doesn’t do anything for the rest of the path. She’s pointless.
2. The effigy’s crystal-borne regeneration gimmick is completely overwhelmed by player damage. We need only mindlessly curbstomp the boss.

The effigies were extremely dangerous in GW1, and it’s no wonder why the Flame Legion wants them back, but they one they get is weaksauce. I know people value this dungeon path for the speed with which it can be beaten and little else, so inb4 “don’t harsh on my times,” I doubt this fix would add more than 30 seconds to the path for players who are awake. I’m proposing a rework to the effigy mechanics to give it a threat level that is appropriate and to bring Crea back into relevance.

Basically, give the effigy an aura that deals extreme damage over time to players if they interact with the effigy in any way. The players must destroy crystals, and Crea will approach the crystal remains and reverse engineer them into a held item that the player then throws at the effigy. This will dispel the aura for a few seconds.

I think it’s a simple and efficient way to both make what little plot the path has more cohesive and create a more engaging boss fight without drastically increasing its length. I wish the world bosses would also be given such a treatment, but that’s a can of worms for later.

What do you think?

Bumping in hopes of getting an answer!

A few sets like Stalwart medium armor were not obtainable in PvE before the feature pack. How about now? Can we get them, and if so how? I really would like some of those pieces but nobody seems to know where they went!

I saw on the livestream that you at ANet intend to unify the skill balancing for PvE and PvP. Have you learned nothing from GW1? Do you remember how half the skills were either overpowered or totally useless in one of the modes? That’s already the case today. If anything you need MORE rebalancing between the two. Each profession has 30-ish skills, which is nothing compared to the hundreds in GW1, and we only use a third of them at the most in either game mode. Tactics are different in PvE and PvP. If you do not create separate functionalities for PvE /P, you will never achieve anything remotely resembling balance.

Durzlla.6295:

One thing a ranger does better than everyone else, use environmental weapons, if a warrior or any other prof picks up a FGS or another conjured weapon he’s hurting the DPS of the group since a ranger with the same gear and stats would deal MORE damage due to the fact that he also has a pet that’s dealing damage ontop of the fiery great sword damage, and picking up such an item removes the “pet tax” that the ranger is often plagued with for power builds.

I feel the need to mention that this is false, as thieves and engineers both have a trait that increases bundle damage by 10%.

Also the big issue with pets is that they are an enormous liability since they screw with the stacking agro control and get everyone killed.

Durzlla.6295:

and if you run a Sword/Axe Ranger + a thief with a smoke field you can VERY EASILY combo that ranger into stealth regularly in order to achieve perma

Thieves do that by themselves.

Durzlla.6295:

Additionally a ranger can achieve perma regen, swiftness, and fury for his group

You will already have those with a guardian and elementalist.

A couple quick counter arguments:

• Spotter is useless when the team already has near 100% crit rate thanks to zerk gear, perma fury from elementalist, and Discipline Banner.
• Frost Spirit I do like, but to me and others that one skill isn’t enough to justify taking a ranger over something else that brings more to the table.
• Reflects and resurrects are, again, already provided in greater quantities by other classes that themselves fill additional roles on top of those.
• Just for the sake of thoroughness, I should mention that it is numerically impossible for a ranger to approach the damage of a thief or warrior, even with a pet. The base damage is lower.

Don’t think me ignorant, I have a ranger of my own that I have put through the same paces as my other classes. I am simply reporting my findings.

I am going to get a lot of heat for this, but nobody else has the balls to say it.

I run with a core group of skilled players that achieves incredibly fast dungeon runs. When someone doesn’t show, we are one of “those” groups that posts on the LFG tab with “Full zerk only, no Ranger/Necro/Engi!” We have min-maxing down to a science and we know every niche tactic for every instance, so I can tell you this with conviction from an objective standpoint: ranger hate stems from the unspoken idea that rangers are selfish. Allow me to explain.

When you are on a team you are expected to contribute to its success as much as possible, and rangers are not better at any one thing than any other class. If you need more direct damage, why would you bring a ranger when you could bring a thief or warrior? If you need more support, why would you bring a ranger when you could bring an elementalist, mesmer, or guardian? That is the crux of the issue. Rangers can’t maintain 25 stacks of might and vulnerability like mesmers, elementalists, and warriors. They can’t put those stacks to work like the high base damage of warriors and thieves. They can’t maintain stealth on the entire team to enable them to skip large, annoying portions of dungeon paths like thieves can. They can’t reflect projectiles like guardians and mesmers. They can’t provide emergency instant resurrects like guardians and warriors. The large portion of incompetent bearbows doesn’t help the ranger’s image either. A bad ranger harms the team more than a bad warrior or guardian or etc.

It’s on ANet’s shoulders to fix this. I can assure you that nobody wants to hate rangers. It’s just cause and effect. If ANet changes rangers enough to give them a niche in PvE, I can assure you the hate will stop.

I realize that many people don’t care about optimization, they just want to enjoy the game. And that is fine, but don’t expect the large portion of the players that do care to be okay with it. It’s a game and ideally you should be able to play how you want, but since it’s a MMO you also have to play with other people. I’m just explaining the situation. I’m not saying you should stop playing ranger, I’m saying you should stop feeling victimized. Like I said, cause and effect. In this meta of min-maxing, a ranger is a jack of all trades that does not shine in any one area. A ranger is not “efficient.” You could have brought anything, and you brought a ranger.

This only applies to PvE. Rangers are superb in PvP.

In order for a path to be ignored completely, its reward must be greatly out of scale with its difficulty/length. I have seen plenty of groups do all four Arah paths because they are extremely profitable despite the relative length of path 4.

With that said, we can all agree that almost nobody does Honor of the Waves beyond path 1. The aquatic final battles in paths 2 and 3 take forever and are incredibly dull, and furthermore the end rewards are no better than those of other “normal” dungeons that can be completed much faster. I say it’s time to give HotW 2 and 3 an overhaul.

I am aware that the issue stems from the uninspired nature of underwater combat in general, but that’s a much larger fish that I don’t want to reel in right now. Baby steps!

They prioritize speed over than quality lately.

They finally release a nice-looking heavy plate skin and make the female version of it look like garbage? What happened? Why is the female version grossly asymmetrical and missing lots of pieces? They could have at least given both genders the awesome helmet. You all know which one that is.

Do you think we could get them to change it if enough people complained? I certainly see nothing but complaints so far.

With these changes there is even less incentive to use a hammer on a PvE warrior sine their main role role there is raw damage. We definitely need to start seeing PvE/PvP ability splitting like GW1 has.

This game was originally designed with a level playing field in mind, so why in the world did they stray from the GW1 model of giving everyone the same base HP to start with? You can still build for more or less HP depending on your role. You could introduce new upgrades that are more powerful than normal but have a penalty like reduced vitality or some other stat.

By leveling the playing field you encourage build diversity and creativity, which is what everyone seems to want anyway.

As a guy playing on a 1366×768 laptop I find that the normal party display can take up quite a bit of valuable space. The simple party UI condenses it wonderfully and I would love to use that instead, but it only shows basic boons, conditions, and HP. Lots of information is left out, which I suppose does make sense since it is supposed to be simplified and conserve space. It does not show class-specific effects like virtues and mantras, and it does not show consumables. These are not terribly important and I can get by without them, but I would definitely like to see some kind of simple color coding of the HP bar indicating whether that person is alive or downed, or even in the same zone. Including that would be a big help to most players, will not compromise the simplicity, and probably would not be terribly difficult to code.

Thanks!

The stun time has not changed, it’s just that the stun sigil has been un-bugged. The skill has functioned as more of an interrupt anyway since the evasion phase comes afterwards which somewhat diminishes the importance of the stun except to force the target to take the subsequent damage.

Lithril Ashwalker.6230:

except pistol whip is nerfed as well -_- cant ger a flurry off and hit all swings now.. only 2 swings…

I’m not sure what you mean. Pistol Whip hasn’t been changed in a very long time. It’s still a great all-in-one skill, an interrupt-evade-spike. When it hits multiple foes with Signet of Malice equipped it heals you for almost half of your HP. Very good skill overall. But this thread isn’t about Pistol Whip, it’s about Larcenous Strike.

KenSniper.8690:

something akin to Dark Souls where you collect and amount and then a big burst of damage after it hits a threshold

A friend of mine came up with an idea for compounding conditions, similar to combo fields where if a specific set of conditions are on a foe they suffer a combo effect, like for every 10 stacks of bleeding they get 5 seconds of weakness, or something else. I say they should raise the bleed cap to 50 and add a poison stacking effect.

Ah sorry, didn’t see the part where it was suggested that every sigil would have to be bought. I figured it would just be a free selection like the with the base stats.

Initiative cost is actually 5, as Seras said. It is only spammable if you divert significant resources to initiative regeneration, which means detracting from other utilities and damage sources. Furthermore to even access this skill you have to use sword/dagger, which means you lose out on all the great skills offered by sword/pistol and dagger/dagger. Large scale boon stripping is not a foreign thing as demonstrated by the Mesmer skill Null Field, which very quickly nukes every boon within a small radius. I see no problem with Thieves having a strong boon strip of their own. It’s very helpful against certain enemies in PvE, notably Dredge. All this nerf has accomplished is removing yet another PvE niche use of Thieves. At this point Thieves need all the help they can get.

Thieves are supposed to be sneaky and underhanded, yes? Let them.

Sawnic.6795:

No. It will screw with the price of sigils on the TP.

Since legendaries are such a small percentage of sigil sales, no, it won’t.

I for one am wholly behind this idea. It makes legendaries that much more appealing and further rewards the work that players put into getting them.

I never did understand why they penalize people for working hard towards a goal. They really overdid the DR thing. Farming events and dungeons is a lot of work. Shouldn’t we be rewarded for it?

tom.7468:

1) Support builds is useless.

3) Tank builds is useless

6) Armor make NO difference. Even with 4k armor you are still getting 2 shot by mobs.
You are still getting downed in a few seconds in pvp.

These points are wholly false. It is true that control is moot thanks to Defiance and that building around Healing Power detracts too much from other important aspects of a build. But do not dismiss support and armor.

First of all, support can be defined as amplifying the abilities of other allies. Lots of classes do this well, and they have a marked impact on every battle. Mesmer, Engineers, and Elementalists can stack vulnerability and might for DRAMATIC increases in team damage. Thieves and Mesmers can reflect projectiles to decrease the damage that your party takes and therefore free up the team to focus on damage. In my experience bosses fall fastest when there is one support class to aid the DPS classes. Time Warp and conjured weapons are other sources of damage. Have you seen an untargeted Fire Greatsword skill 4 on a large boss? It’s a nearly religious experience.

Second, tank builds are vital in some dungeons to absorb alpha damage from bosses and to keep the heat on themselves so that squishier, higher-DPS classes can again focus on dealing their damage. Though this game has no explicit taunting skills, agro can be easily managed by knowing how the AI responds to proximity and toughness. I try to always bring one dedicated tank Guardian on my teams so that I know that the DPS can do its job safely. You can’t deal good damage if you’re dead (unless you’re a Necro).

Third, and I don’t know how you could claim this having played the game even for a little while, armor is definitely NOT meaningless. Have you tried killing a PvT Guardian in WvW? It takes like five people. According to the wiki, the damage formula is as such:

Damage done = (Weapon Strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

This means that armor decreases damage geometrically. 2,000 total armor will take 50% more damage than 3,000 armor. I definitely notice the difference between my Guardian (3,330 armor) and my Mesmer (2,049 armor). The two have basically the same amount of HP but the Champion Ice Wolf at the beginning of CoE explorable will kill the Mesmer in one hit with its ice patch AoE while my Guardian is left with about 40% HP. In terms of combat, I’d say investing in enough armor to be able to take two shots instead of just one is very important. That’s basically increasing your survivability by 100%.

I like this idea and I wish I had thought of it. I always forget to activate my minipets and they do take up inventory space. Maybe there could even be a minipet locker similar to the dye window of the hero menu.

Olba.5376:

But if you buff the bad professions, all you’re going to achieve is make a new subset of the professions “bad”, which you’ll then have to buff. And then you’ll have again changed the subset of “bad” professions, which will need buffing.

This is not necessarily true. There will always be classes that are slightly better, but if you elevate the bad classes out of their pit then at least they won’t get kicked on sight. Look at GW1, every class has a role and, with the exception of specific speed clears, is generally welcome on any PvE team.

Olba.5376:

The same is of course true for nerfing professions, but the difference is that by buffing the player characters, you’re making PvE content easier and risk running to a point where all characters are bursty, dulling PvP encounters into “who gets their burst off first without being foiled”.

PvP is already quite burst-heavy. The best case scenario, and I’m sure Anet realizes this, is to split PvE and PvP skill functionality. It worked fairly well for GW1.

Rangers are a little more difficult. They have several flaws, but this can be summed up in one sentence: Rangers do a little bit of everything that other classes do better. I’ll make this quick so as to offend die-hard Rangers as little as possible.

Firstly, the main hand sword skill 1 attack chain, which is a Ranger’s single highest damage source, roots you in place, which is ridiculous in a combat system that emphasizes dodging. It forces the ranger to trade DPS for survivability. Lots of high-end PvE has three requisites for success: stack in one spot, apply as much damage as possible, and dodge attacks that take half of your HP or more. Remove the root and you have already made Rangers usable in those situations. I realize that stacking isn’t 100% required for success a lot of the time, but most teams agree that doing so drastically increases success rate.

Second, pets are a tactical nightmare. They are unresponsive and make aggro control difficult by breaking the stack and changing position unnecessarily. Stacking is the most powerful tool in a dungeoneer’s kitten nal, and breaking that stack reduces the likelihood of success and generally annoys people. Add a heel command to the pet that makes it stack with its owner and makes it dodge when its owner does. To avoid ruining immersion, make it only apply while the Ranger is standing still or against a wall. While you’re at it, give pets more HP to withstand hits from opponents like Bloomhunger at level 48.

Third, Ranger support is mediocre compared to other classes. Shouts are pet-oriented rather than teammate-oriented. Spirits die in one hit even with the Vigorous Spirits trait, can’t be traited to be near-permanent like Warrior banners can, and their effects have a 10 second cooldown (except for Spirit of Frost which is bugged). To begin with, make shouts give some noticeable benefit to other team members without excessively specific traiting. Then increase spirit health by maybe 300%, add a duration increase or recharge reduction trait, and remove the cooldown from the aura effects. Before you claim that removing the cooldown would make the Spirits too powerful, note that Guardians can already produce all of the possible effects of the Spirits by themselves with a boon duration hammer/staff/shout build. Also we think that Ranger greatsword and axe should get a damage buff to be competitive with other weapons.

If you worry that this kind of broad-spectrum improvement would make PvE too easy, that if all the classes were elevated to the same tier dungeons would become dull, I ask you: is it not already too easy with a full zerk team? Just do what GW1 did and add Hard Mode, a greater challenge for jaded veterans and better loot to encourage people to reach the level of necessary skill. I for one can’t imagine a better way to improve the staying power of the current endgame material and make GW2 PvE a more interesting and egalitarian combat experience.

There WILL always be elitists, there WILL always be that one build that works better. That is unavoidable and impossible to fix, so I have simply proposed ways to lessen the gap. I want to see players whose favorite classes are currently seen as inferior not always on the defensive. Those people have a right to play how they want without detracting from other players’ fun by slowing the team’s DPS by bringing an inferior class.

Please add your thoughts! I expect I have missed some things that people with other perspectives can fill in.

Reposting from Reddit, modified slightly based on responses.

There have been many threads like this, but this one is mine. Note that it is long and written right before bed after a long dungeon circuit, so please forgive any writing errors that I’ve missed.

In the current state of the game, due to the existence of Defiance and dodging, raw DPS is king in high-end PvE. “Balanced” teams will always finish an instance slower than an experienced zerk team. This is boring – a far cry from the build variety of GW1 (with the exception of speed clears, which are highly optimized to bend the rules of a mission in the player’s favor and are an unavoidable consequence of having the thousands of specific skills that GW1 has) – and generates a lot of heat between the two impromptu political parties of PvE, the Elitists (“zerk or kick!”) and the Traditionalists (“variety is the spice of life”).

Here are the collected, abridged thoughts of my dungeon static on the issue of how to improve the PvE metagame based on our comprehensive experience. We have chosen to focus on buff-based balance adjustment rather than nerf-based because this tends to generate less negativity. The changes proposed are small and do not address game mechanics, which are much harder to change. The following are just duct tape style solutions, quick and easy alleviations of the most-complained about issues. Please note that this post ONLY pertains to PvE. PvP is a whole different animal.

To begin with, Warriors, Guardians, Mesmers, Elementalists, and Thieves are just fine (though we think Thieves need about a 10% higher base HP pool to really shine). They have their roles and are good at them. Don’t change them too much when the less desirable classes still need a lot of work, as that will alter the center of gravity, if you will.

Engineers and Necromancers can both be immediately and effectively improved by increasing their damage output. They have great support and utility and low damage output. That is fine from a team role perspective, but Guardians are a more min-maxed form of that very role. This means that from a team optimization standpoint, Engineers and Necromancers are effectively pointless while Guardians exist. Give them maybe 30-50% more direct damage potential to put them on par with Elementalists and then we will see less hesitation to bring them into high-end PvE. Another way to improve them is to rework condition damage but that is complicated and I don’t feel like getting into that now.

Human male light Heritage chest and pants clip through each other at the waist in the back.

I suppose I should have clarified that as “player-induced deaths.” And even if you’re willing to transfer servers for a week to make some map progress, there is virtually no chance that you will be able to get every map item you need.

All I want to do is get 100% world completion. Due to the dynamic nature of WvW this is quite difficult, and now there is a one-week world transfer cooldown? How is this fair to those of us who are not interested in WvW?

While you’re at it you can make PvP deaths not damage armor. Not sure who thought that was a good idea.