Guild Wars 2

I know pets get a lot of hate, but that’s what drew me to the class and keeps me playing it.

I think the class is also getting consistently better to play. Our trait lines all have a purpose, and each line is useful somewhere. Traits like Quick Draw and Remorseless also make for much more interesting game play than we’ve had in the past. I love that the devs have enhanced our pet interactions through changes to “we heal as one” and traits like the one that casts “call of the wild” on pet swap.

When I heard that our specialization was going to be a healing spec, I was pretty disappointed, but I’ve had some fun with incorporating Druid into a dps spec.

I love the look of celestial avatar.

In general, I love how versatile our class is. I can play condi, healer, power, tank. I can roam in wvw. I can pvp without feeling like I’m starting at a disadvantage.

But ultimately, it all comes down to the pets for me. And the more the devs create interesting interactions between our characters and their pets, the more I love the class.

Tamasan.6457:

penelopehannibal.8947:

As someone said in another post about this, a Beta Weekend is different to a Stress Test.

Sure, and that’s why I said I understand why they’re doing this from an intellectual perspective. But it feels like the same kind of lawyer talk nonsense like “you didn’t actually buy that ebook, you’re just licensing it and we can delete it from your reader when we want” or “unlimited* mobile data (*not really unlimited)” that people get legitimately up in arms about.

Adding terms and conditions and exceptions to something after the fact isn’t how you keep hype and good feelings about a coming expansion.

Except the WvW stress tests were talked about before HOT was available for prepurchase, and in their news article it was specifically mentioned that for the first one at least it would be invite only to hardcore wvw players. So they didn’t add terms and conditions after the fact, it was well before. WvW stress tests link.

DoogySnowStalker.2069:

Lomopop.7028:

Morwath.9817:

Lazze.9870:

We need the Robert Gee treatment. A dev that cares.

Disagree, I think Kui Calmon-Huang did pretty well.
We got more good changes than bad ones. Obviously Ranger requires a bit some more work, but it’s going in right direction.

Agree. I think the changes have added more depth to playing a Ranger. Quick draw and remorseless make combat more interesting, and the beast mastery traits gave our pets some excellent utility. I’d be happy to see more from Kui in the future.

I don’t understand how teaching a player to properly weapon swap adds depth to Ranger… Quick Draw, yes is a very good trait, allowing us to learn more burst potential with weapon combos and skill-chains; although, it seems to carry the same lesson of learning how to weapon swap. Remorseless is a very nice access to burst damage with the Ranger, but in turn we lose another damage multiplier possibly decreasing our overall DPS. With having Hunter’s Tactics changed from 10% damage increase while flanking to 10% crit chance, so in total a maximum of 20% damage modifiers we’ve lost due to the specialization update.

It adds more depth in the decision-making process. This is mostly the case with Quick Draw and the added utility of pets by traiting into BM. You can cancel cast F2 for a quick blind, but that locks you out of your full F2 CC for a few seconds, if you have Moment of Clarity traited you can double stun, etc. As you pointed out, it gives us a wider variety of skill chains which, for me, adds depth to the class.

As you also pointed out, we’ve lost some damage modifiers and I agree that this is a problem for us. However, the devs can buff weak weapons fairly easily. If instead of Quick Draw, Remorseless, etc., we got the old damage modifiers for traits, our class would have less depth and any fixes would take considerably more effort from the devs making it less likely to happen. That’s why I think these changes are a step in the right direction and I’m happy with them for the moment.

I think you’re right to be concerned about some of the things we’ve lost, and in the end, we’ve probably stayed pretty much the same. What we’ve gained, I think, is more interesting game play that is easier to buff if needed.

@eura: If the devs add an ICD to Go for the Eyes (lets say 10 sec) so that you can’t cast and cancel, would you still spec into BM?

Morwath.9817:

Lazze.9870:

We need the Robert Gee treatment. A dev that cares.

Disagree, I think Kui Calmon-Huang did pretty well.
We got more good changes than bad ones. Obviously Ranger requires a bit some more work, but it’s going in right direction.

Agree. I think the changes have added more depth to playing a Ranger. Quick draw and remorseless make combat more interesting, and the beast mastery traits gave our pets some excellent utility. I’d be happy to see more from Kui in the future.

frifox.5283:

Lomopop.7028:

Mind sharing your build.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-R;9;9;9;0TUW;0248146056;9;9;0Fy

Staff. Rabid all around. Krait runes and Bursting/Earth sigils. Domination/Midnight signets & Mirror Images. Ether Feast. TW.

Thanks!

frifox.5283:

Yesterday I solo’d SE p2 on my mes.

Nothing came even close to Staff & Rabid setup. The DPS was awesome (30+ bleeds when in melee with 3 clones) and survivability is insane. Full toughness from Rabid + 3% damage reduction for each clone clone, of which I almost always had 3 up, allowed me to facetank the insane dps pressure from those dredge. Often, I engaged 3+ at once and had no problem surviving.

I tried going with Duelists/Wardens but they couldn’t sustain the pressure and I couldn’t re-summon them fast enough. Things just didn’t work as well as I hoped.

This pretty much confirmed my belief, condi staff is the best (except those niche cases where condi’s just don’t work) for solo pve.

Mind sharing your build. I tried soloing CM and was having a horrible time with a power phantasm build, which is what I used to use. I can’t figure out if it’s the scaling, it’s weaker than before, or I just haven’t found a groove yet.

PVE point of view:

3. I made a condi ranger using the BM traits that add blindness, weakness and taunt to F2. I used birds because people complained about the range on beastly warden, and bird F2s have low cool downs. And yes, I am using my pet a lot. For dungeons I’d probably take Zephyr’s speed over beastly warden. Traps seem a little clunky but it might just be a matter of getting used to the cast times.

4. Using GS and sword axe with clarion bond, remorseless, quick draw, two-handed training and zephyr’s speed. Absolutely loving it. For me it feels much more fun to play than the old LB, S/A combo. For the first time it feels like our traits synergize well, and I hope the devs continue this when designing future traits.
I’m also very greatful for the increased stats on the pets. All-round I’m very happy with Ranger in PVE. Ranger has become my favourite class to play post-patch.

Curunen.8729:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

The biggest loss to me with the patch was effects on clone death, but overall I’ve still seen my kill times improve noticeably due to the condition changes.
Fixing the pistol and scepter traits will help.

I deeply enjoy cloning. Even as a less “fiddly” approach to mesmer than most other builds, it’s still more complex to play than my longbow ranger, for example.
A great deal of clone play depends on your positioning, where you drop your clones, how you manage clone creation. Clones die fast, period. Making sure you keep uptime on your condition application can be tricky, especially when you introduce scepter/pistol into the mix.
It becomes all about timing, knowing where to drop what and what you can get away with…it’s not simple, even if it’s not as complicated as the play Curunen seems to prefer.

Frankly, I’m not sure how anyone gets away with insisting that every possible Mesmer build has to reach some arbitrary level of skill difficulty, that just happens to be greater than other classes.
.
.
.
. even given how rarely I shatter.

2. Anet deleted clone death.
I don’t see you complaining about that being a “selfish” decision that negatively affected your preferred playstyle.
Was the nerf to glamour confusion “selfish” in that it destroyed that playstyle overnight?

The point is builds are made possible and made obsolete all the time thanks to (often poor) balance decisions – how is my suggestion of removing conditions from clones any more selfish than any nerf Anet has made in the past which has had the consequence of deleting certain build options.

And refer to point 1 above if you’re afraid about damage output – you can keep the same playstyle with the only difference being that YOU and Phantasms have to apply the conditions – not clones. Clones will still work to deceive pve mobs and do non-zero damage to keep an enemy in combat.

Regarding playstyle – deception and positioning requires thought, but passively letting clones apply damage to your target is mindless and requires no thought. Please understand this – it is about the way conditions are applied and how that is distributed between mesmer, phantasms, clones and interrupts/shatters. Changing the distribution to reduce the application from clones and increase it from the mesmer/phantasms/shatters/interrupts has NO bearing on using clones to deceive open world pve mobs. And in pvp or wvw it makes no difference because no one is fooled anyway.
The only difference is in where your condition application and damage is coming from.

I don’t think I need to say any more than this – I feel I’ve been polite and answered both of your posts sufficiently.

Please take time to read all this through and understand where I’m coming from, because I honestly don’t see any issue with my suggestion having a huge impact on your playstyle, any more than the removal of clone death traits has already done.

This response is a bit silly. Alpha did complain about the loss of clone death, but it doesn’t make sense to call it selfish since Anet has nothing to gain from dropping it. Your proposal does seem selfish because you want to nerf something that doesn’t work for you in exchange for something that does.

I understand your position and agree with you that the MtD trait shouldn’t have been nerfed and should be fixed. And maybe we will have to trade something for getting it back. But also understand that others don’t want their play styles obliterated to fix what suits you.

In the end we all want the same thing: to have multiple viable ways to play Mesmer in all game modes.

I was hugely disappointed at the quick nerf to MtD and the loss of confusing combatants. I was so looking forward to playing a condition Mesmer in PVE, and it isn’t viable unless you play passively with clones applying condis.

However, I don’t think we should be so quick to make concessions. My nightmare is that the devs will read this and say, “yeah, clones applying condis is too strong and too passive, let’s change that” and we get nothing in return. And let’s face it. That’s more likely to happen than the possibility of a trade off.

TL; DR I think we should fight for everything we want and not give the devs more reasons to nerf us, because at this point it is all going to be nerfs.

LB should still be fine, it just won’t be optimal. If using LB, it might be better to go with the old Predator’s Onslaught over Remorseless and use sword/axe. Rotation might be something like rapid fire, barrage, rapid fire, swap, path of scars, auto, path of scars, etc.

Yeah, gave up my LB after trying out the combo you mentioned. The synergy between remorseless, quick draw, clarion bond and two-handed training is amazing. I’ve never had so much fun playing Ranger.

I don’t know. I can’t really speak for them. For me, I would have been happy to buy the game for $10 (so $10 more than the prepurchase bundle) in order to have a character ready for HOT so I can step into HOT right away. But, I’m sure that there are people who bought it for $40 between sales and are now legitimately disappointed.

I’m responding more to the argument by veteran players who say they are getting gypped because they’ve paid more for the same content as new players are getting. Personally, I feel like I got a lot more than new players will get, and $50 for the expansion does not seem like it is an unreasonable price.

There’s a lot of complaining about how the pre-purchase of the expansion is bundled with the base game. In particular, people are ranting that newbies get the base game plus the expansion for the same price as we get the expansion and that sucks because they’re getting a better deal.

They’re not. I got the game almost two years ago, and the one thing that I got that newbies won’t is some of the most memorable experiences in my gaming history.

1. The tower of nightmares: I just finished leveling a character to 80 when this was released. I will never forget the utter insanity of going into that place for the first time, especially when we realized that stopping to rez downed players was a death sentence. The sense of chaos in that place was overwhelming, especially for a newly minted lvl 80.

2. The Marionette fight: If my entire account was stripped so that the only difference between me and a new player was the experience of this battle, I still wouldn’t complain. This was one of the most fun battles in my gaming history. The marionette looked amazing. Watching people fighting on other platforms was incredible, the feeling of helplessness when you saw member of other groups go down, wishing you could help, all of it built up to an incredible experience that I don’t think can ever be replicated.

3. The battle for Lion’s Arch: I will never forget watching that cut scene of Lion’s Arch in flames the day that patch hit, and the emotional impact of seeing some very well-known Lion’s Arch NPCs fighting for their lives. It really hit us right in the feels. The mayhem of trying to escort people to safety from the rising levels of miasma was intense. Also, I got a selfless potion which new players will never get.

4. The introduction of Triple Trouble: trying to battle that thing when it first came out, and after a few tries, thinking that we were close to beating it. HAH! Then we discovered that there were different phases, and killing one head required killing the other 2 in the next 60 seconds.

5. The festival of the four winds: Morphing into a baby dolyak for dolyak racing. Dolyak’s flying through the air. Enough said.

6. SAB: if it never comes back, newbs will never get to play it.

This list could go on. The point is, with living story being mostly instanced now, we will never experience the game the way we did in the first two years, and the memories created by those experiences are priceless.

TL;DR I think the argument that new players get more for their $50 than we do when buying HOT is a silly argument because what we have experienced in this game so far can never be replicated.

There’s currently a WvW stealth trapper build for rangers. It uses the newish Superior Runes of the Trapper, which allows rangers to stealth when they lay down a trap. The runes give 3 secs of stealth and 3 secs of quickness per trap. So with hunter’s shot, they can potentially chain 12 secs of stealth and 9 secs of quickness. Max would be 15 secs if you start and finish with hunter’s shot. It’s not indefinite, since after laying 3 traps their traps are all on cool down. Also, if anything activates a trap, taking damage, the ranger will be revealed.

Noah.9654:

DeathReign.7821:

“Arguing” is used very loosely here.

Well that’s a tough pickle to swallow, as “good dungeon parties” basically means “highest DPS parties” in this game. Most of the dungeons are easy and require little to no team co-ordination. If you want to be top DPS, you are limited to the 2-3 weapons or cookie cutter builds that provide that top DPS.

I thought you were looking for ways to utilize staff in dungeon, because, you know, fun, without being a dead-weight. There is a difference between being able to carry your own weight and being optimized into dps.

Staff will never out-dps a dual sword or sword/pistol set up, and will therefore never be used in “good dungeon parties” (read: high dps parties). You can’t make a pig fly no matter how high the window you throw it out of is. That is why no one uses Torch in dungeons either – but at least iWarlock has the potential to hit like a truck unlike the iMage.

If you’re really level 78 in PvP, Mesmer must not be your main class, as I find it hard to believe that a Mesmer main with that much experience in PvP doesn’t even know how Chaos Armor works.

Mesmer is my only class XD I’m guessing you either don’t PvP much or didn’t understand what I was asking. I was asking that in situations where you are stacked tightly, and thus the mob is/should be hitting you as frequent as the rest of the party, if the boons you get from being hit while in chaos armor would proc every time said mob hits the stack. How often are you stacked in PvP? The answer is never XD

While DPS is important in higher tier dungeon parties, that isn’t the only option. There is the support Ele’s give with their might stacking, Guardians and Aegis, etc. That is what I wanted to explore with the staff. If that just isn’t possible, then at least I will have tried.

To answer your question, I’m pretty sure that the boons you get from being hit only apply to you. Even though your party appears to be in your bubble, the game is only going to recognize chaos armour as attached to you.

When you talk about wanting a more supportive role, I’m guessing you mean something along the lines of a Phalanx Strength warrior who, in non-optimal groups, trades some personal dps in order to increase party dps. However, that’s focused more on traits than weapons. I’m not sure anyone has tried theory crafting a support mes focused on staff, largely because staff is more condition based. It might be worth trying to theory craft one if you can find traits that boost staff and synergize well with each other. My guess is that staff simply won’t offer enough party-wide utility to make it worthwhile most of the time.

Fay.2357:

To actually answer your question, op, untraited warden no longer blocks unblockable projectiles. They did “fix” this sometime in the recent past.

As far as when as where to reflect goes, there have been a couple changes. Basically, Anet has been making a rather unfortunate habit of turning previously reflectable projectiles into unblockable ones. The only one I know off of the top of my head is that projectiles from spiders such as malroana can no longer be reflected.

Too bad
Thanks for the info though

Can someone fill me in on the current status of untraited iWardens? I’m finally coming back to my beloved mesmer but I can’t find any current info on whether untraited iWardens still block unblockable projectiles. I’ve seen it mentioned in a number of places that iWarden was fixed, but I’m not sure if it was fixed to prevent it from blocking unblockable projectiles or it was fixed in some other way.

If they do still block unblockable projectiles, do they do so consistently i.e. do they always block unblockable projectiles or are there some unblockable projectiles that they can’t block?

Finally, is Chaos Archangel’s list, in Lyssa’s Grimoire, of where and when to reflect still accurate? That’s an awesome resource, as is the How to Mesmer in Dungeons, so many thanks to the people who put those together

DaedalusDragon.3754:

@Lomopop
I am biased against the concept of living story, but I am/was interested if it was a good STORY. I don’t think your Starbucks coffee point is any good because I would rather buy a few good coffees (I wouldn’t go to Starbucks in the first place) that only lasted 30 minutes than buy 30 to 90 minutes of bad game. I’ll say it again, if you plan on focusing almost solely on story, then you better do it very well. At this point I couldn’t see myself playing these unless I was absolutely desperate for more GW2 specific mechanics, and with all of the great games out right now I’m just not.

To everybody else who answered my questions and gave good feedback, positive or negative, I am very grateful. I’ll pass for now based on what I’ve heard but if they ever release content that actually interest me as a gamer then I might come back.

And yeah, I do wish the developers would cater to me because I’m a selfish human. We all do it. I might start up some GW1 because, imho, it is still a better game with a smaller player base and fewer updates.

I get that spending any amount of money on a truly bad story is not worth it, but I doubt that anyone can answer the question “is it Interesting to you?” It sounds, from your original post, that you don’t think it’s worth it, and that draws people who don’t like the story which is only going to confirm what you believe already.

In any case, I didn’t really want to rant at you. I’m just tired of the attitude that nothing is ever good enough. There have been amazing parts in this story, and there have been weak moments. if you want perfection, the story will never be for you. But if you’re willing to overlook some of the weaknesses for the moments that really shine then it’s worth it. The build-up where we could see the vines spreading across Tyria, our introduction to Dry Top, seeing the Eternal Alchemy and running through Glint’s Lair, seeing the Priory library,, all of these were amazing. And while some of these things happen in the open world (e.g. the spreading vines), they all contribute to the overall effect of the story. So for me, I definitely get more than 200 gems worth of enjoyment out of the stories.

Is it worth the money?
Seriously… it costs less than a Starbucks coffee per episode and lasts longer, so yeah, I’d say it’s worth it. Considering that most people can probably scrounge that money together by checking their couch cushions, I don’t get the angst over being charged IF you don’t log in and get it for FREE. If it’s not worth it to you, move onto doing something else. Very few people will notice that you’re no longer playing the game.

You say that you’re genuinely interested in discussing whether the living story is interesting but this doesn’t come across as sincere since, by your second paragraph, you seem intent on pointing out that it isn’t. If you’re not enjoying the game, don’t play it. But stop with the thinly veiled troll posts. If you have some genuinely interesting comments to make about the game, that haven’t been made 1,000 times by other equally hard-done-by people on this forum, then by all means make them. Otherwise, this just comes across as another whiny post about how this game isn’t the game YOU want to play, along with the respective entitled belief that the game developers should cater to you.

The story isn’t perfect, but if you log in every two weeks it’s FREE, and for free game content, I’d say it’s pretty good. This game has cost me about 20c/hour and I can’t think of a single other form of entertainment that is cheaper and still manages to be entertaining more than a year later.

/rant

Zoso.8279:

Lomopop.7028:

Most women don’t stretch the way the female human toons did in This game. The animation used in this game is a totally cheesy boobs thrust out stretch created purely as fan service to tween boys. Since I’m not a tween boy, yeah, it’s immersion breaking. Especially in an LS scene where something serious is happening.

But….but…..but….. the boobies. We want boobies! (just kidding lol…….well kinda… I’m just a man!)

Lol, there are plenty of boobs to be seen in this game, especially with female light armour. Since boobs aren’t what I want to remember most about my character, I’d rather not have the repeatedly thrust in my face

Most women don’t stretch the way the female human toons did in this game. The animation used in this game is a totally cheesy boobs thrust out stretch created purely as fan service to tween boys. Since I’m not a tween boy, yeah, it’s immersion breaking. Especially in an LS scene where something serious is happening.

I’m so glad those animations are gone. I really hope they never fix this bug. That tacky female stretch was completely immersion breaking every time I saw it, and I hope I never have to see it again.

Best thread ever! I have no clue how to solve this riddle, but it is so much fun reading the story along with everyone’s attempts to figure it out.

Another problem with vertical progression (sorry if anyone has already mentioned this), is that it’s a barrier for new players. I’ve only been playing Guild Wars 2 for 3 months (it is now my favourite game), and I simply don’t have the kind of resources that players who have been playing since the beginning have. I don’t have the stockpiles of mats, and I don’t have any gold. On its own, getting my crafting levels up to 500 seems like a Herculean task, never mind actually crafting the items I need. I just don’t have the money to buy the mats to craft my way up to 500, and I don’t have the mats to do it either. Moreover, one of my main character’s crafting skills is cooking, so in order to get fully geared in ascended, I would have to pick another crafting profession and level that up from scratch. As it stands right now, working towards ascended gear for even one character seems hopeless. If it wasn’t for a friend giving me a stack of globs of ectoplasm, I might not even be able to make exotic gear yet.

In short, my point is that vertical progression is something that could really be a deterrent for new players. If potential newbies know that they will have to play for a year just to be on an even playing field with other players, they might now want to buy the game.

Horizontal progression, on the other hand, I’m all for. This game has so many possibilities, that even after playing it for 3 solid months, I feel like I’ve just begun. Trying out different builds, having an active community that discusses builds and gives advice, etc. are all amazing. There are so many possibilities there that it would keep me playing this game for years to come. Tired of playing a condi mesmer? No problem! For a mere 3-4s I can change my spec to a phantasm dps build. This is a great way to keep the game interesting…until the potential of horizontal progression runs up against the drawbacks of vertical progression. Now the ability to change from one to the other, if it involves different gear, becomes a three month time investment, rather than something I can try out on a whim.

P.S. someone posted earlier about title progressions. I love titles, and I think title progression would be amazing!

Edit: I just want to add that I really appreciate the CDI, so thanks for taking the time out of your probably insanely busy schedules to listen to what we have to say.

Happy Wintersday!