Guild Wars 2

Dadnir.5038:

Well… you just can’t design an e-spec around the fact that you’ll be forced to take a specific elite skill. An elite spec need to work with the core profession, only new mechanisms can be forced to the player. You should have put glint revenge on F5.

Also… to much lore… seriously, there is not a lot of lore behind actual e-spec, it’s better this way.

Thanks for the reply. You got a point there with the design around the Elite Skill. Would be kind of limiting to some players. Will see to solve this issue.
As for the Lore part, I read on different media that some players find the actual lack of lore of the current e-specs breaking the immersion in the world. Going by the events in HoT the lore would bring the immersion back to this e-spec.

[ Skills ]
Healing:
- Essence Shift: the Aspect is a magic presence and is able to provide nearby allies and itself the ability to heal a small percentage of the damage done in a short period of time.

Utilities
- Solar Flare: emit a bright light from your body blinding and damaging foes caught in its aoe. (Arcane Shield or Magnetic Wave with a fiery touch.)

- Mirror of Ice: reflect a portion of incoming damage back to the attacker.

- Thunderclap: crack the lightning energy stored in your body and electrify nearby enemies. Making them vulnerable.

- Earthen Shackles: summon shackles from the ground on you target immobilizing them for a short period of time.

[ Elite ]
Increase resilience to condition damage and increase the condition damage of allies and the player by an amount of time. Also increases the outgoing condition duration. This Elite skill has a major trait which increases its effectiveness based on the amount of crystal essence stored before activating.

[ Traits ]
I did not spend too much time on the masteries, because it would take a lot of time and would become quite complex to balance it out. With the current Trait system, there are three major trait lines focusing on a specific part or skill of the specializations mechanics and three minor traits focusing on the overall mechanics. The Trait tree is called ‘Aspect’

Minor traits
- Unlock the ‘Essence Bar’ and enable the use of the Focus in main-hand or Trident. (or two-handed Focus.)

- Increases Essence absorption by a small percentage.

- When the Essence bar is full the Aspect receives an influx of power receiving two seconds of quickness. Cooldown 20 seconds or when the Essence bar is depleted completely.

Major traits
- Top: this line focusses on improving the weapon usage. Reducing cooldown and improving certain skills.

- Mid: improves utility skill effects and grants certain effects as a passive/active skill with a cooldown.

- Bot: focusses on the Essence bar and Glint’s Revenge. Reducing the essence cost of skills and granting additional effects to the skills.

[ Weapon skills ]
Below I have thought of certain skills with the main-hand focus in mind, but these could as well be applied to the Trident or 2-hand Focus. Looking for possible skills, I looked at GW1 Elementalist skills. I noticed the developers re-use some skills from the previous game, so this was a good starting point. After that, I looked at other digital media like games, anime etc. Since we don’t really want to have the same skills on different weapons I slightly combined different attacks and thought of some unique ones specific to the focus. The last 2 skills in each attunement are the current off-hand focus skills. In the brackets behind each skill I noted references to existing versions of these skills which I know of. Furthermore, I did not limit the list to only 3 skills, because that would limit the creation of new skills which could be derived from these.

Fire
- Fireballs: channel fire through the focus and shoot damaging projectiles. (Similar to Fiery Greatsword Skill 1, but faster bursts. )

- Blazing Pillars: summon 3 increasingly larger eruptions from the ground which hit foes in an aoe. (Eruptions could be similar to the Fire Mining Pick when using it.)

- Reactive burn: channel a flaming circle in front of you. When it gets destroyed it explodes in a cone. (Spell summoning, Fairy Tail and Mage Energy Barrage, Dragon Age Inquisition.)

- Flaming Wings: cast a fire whip from each hand, jump your target and slash it with both whips. (Natsu, Fairy Tail) or jump towards a target area with flaming wings behind you, crashing in the target area result in a fire field.

- Burning Slash: after a brief channel slash a vertical beam of fire downwards on your foe. (Sasuke’s Chidori beam, Naruto Shippuden.)

Water
- Water Bomb: channel water through your focus and shoot bubbles to you foes which explode on contact. (Squirtle’s Bubble Beam, Pokemon)

- Ice Shrapnel: freeze water in a ball and hurl it to a location. Before landing, explode in a cone of frozen shrapnel.

- Ice Floor: cast a trail of ice on the ground slowing foes down who move on it. After 1 second on the floor the foe gets knocked down. (slippery floor. general cartoons.)

- Frost Step: propel the caster through the air leaving a trail of water behind. (Similar to Burning Speed, but creating a water field and healing at the end.)

- Water Dome: cast whirling spheres of water around you which absorbs projectiles and converts them into healing in a small aoe. (Neji’s Chakra Rotation, Naruto or Gaia energy balls, Rappelz)

- Shattering Prison: envelop your foe in ice for a short time (<1sec) after which the prison shatters chilling the foe and shoot damaging shrapnel in a 360 radius.

Air
- Air blades: throw bursts of compressed air towards your foe. (Young Karka attack.)

- Crescent Turbulence: cast a crescent form of wind in high velocity towards you target pushing foes hit back. The closer the target the more it’s pushed. (Hinata’s Vacuum Palm, Naruto.)

- Suction: focus air around your target/location and pull all foes caught towards the center. (Guardian greatsword 5 or a Mesmer skill.)

- Wind Cut: channel a whirl of air around your focus and shoot it in a straight line. The longer channeled the further and stronger the projectile. (Krillin’s Destructo Disc, Dragon kitten.)

- Thunder Burst: Cast a lightning strike on the caster channeling its energy to nearby foes. (Similar to Scepter Lightning Strike, but targeted on the caster grant movement speed and shocking nearby foes.)

Earth
- Earth Gauntlet: cover your arm in rock hitting your foe. (Green Lantern Summon First)

- Mud Slap: throw a sticky slab of mud towards your enemies’ face blinding them for a period of time.

- Seismic Slam: slam the ground with your rock-hard fists creating shockwaves in 3 directions in a cone in front of the caster. (Giant Stomp, GW2 Giants)

- Fissure: stomp the ground with your foot creating a fissure in a line. Enemies walking on this fissure are crippled and are damaged when it collapses at maximum range. (Elder Titan’ Ultimate®, Dota2.)

- Magnetic Attraction: magnetize your target pulling nearby debris towards them. This does a small amount of damage but hits a couple of time.

- Earth Wave: summon a wave of earth which propels the caster towards the enemy. (Taff Earth Stomp, Avatar: The Legend of Aang.) Implemented in Tempest’ Earth Overload

[ Class Mechanic ]
For the specialization mechanic, a Crystal essence bar is added to the players HUD. This is a bar below the attunements, like a Warrior, a Necromancer, a Thief and a Revenant have. With the Aspect this bar interacts with the Elite skill which will be mentioned later in this section. The bar is filled with elemental essence from using spells in different attunements. When full essence is reached, the player has two options:

1. Leave the bar filled to get a small increase in stats to attunement specific stats from the 4 attunements. Power for Fire, Vitality for Water, Precision for Air and Toughness for Earth.
2. Use the F5 skill and try to control this immense magic power with Glint’s Revenge.

Glint’s Revenge
The Aspect tries to control the immense energy stored after gathering crystal essences. Not being able to fully control this amount of power, the elements merge into an unstable and chaotic state. This results in losing stored crystal essences with each attack. Activating this skill grants the player a dragon aura from Glint herself.

1. Essence Blast (Arcane):
   Channel a ball of crystal essence and fire it towards your target. This is a slow attack, but being of the Arcane type it always crits. To compensate its strength its base damage is lower than normal and uses more essence than the other skills.
2. Telekinetics (Earth):
   With deep wisdom of manipulating earth magic the Aspect can pulse a confusing shockwave to nearby enemies’. The confusion pulses a total of three times.
3. Null Field (Water):
   Having learned the healing properties of the crystal magic the Aspect uses the cleansing power of water to reduce the effectiveness of condition damage in an area.
4. Disposition (Air):
   Having mastered the aspect of air enables the Aspect to move fluently through the air for small distances. This spell can be cast two times within 3 seconds before going on cooldown.
5. Obsidian Flame (Fire):
   Having felt the true heat of fire the Aspect can merge the corrupt magic of Primordus with all fire and engulf its target in intense dark flames. This casts eight stacks of burning on the enemy.

[ Weapons ]
Focus (Main-hand)
Through fantasy and fiction, the focus has always been an item used by magician-type characters. When I saw the design for the focus ‘Anomaly’ it seemed awesome and unique to be able to wield it in both hands. Also, the power from aspects come from Glints’ crystals. Making a main hand focus from such a crystal would fit into the lore from which the Aspect can draw its power for and collect crystal essence with. Thus, the idea to wield a focus in the main hand.

Seeing what the developers did with a staff for the Daredevil. It seemed like the most fitting weapon how I imaged the Aspect would be a focus. Alternatively, a similar mechanic to the thief’s dual wielding could be applied. Dual wielding different weapons would generate a different 3rd skill. The difference in this case would be what the Off-hand weapon would be. This mechanic would only be applied when the Aspect is dual-wielding Foci. As the 3rd skill would become a stronger version or something like that.

Trident (Two-handed)
Another magical weapon would be the Trident. As it is already a weapon the Elementalist can use underwater and the animations for a staff are already present the clipping issue should be minimal. Although it looks cool I don’t think there would be much difference between the staff and trident for the Elementalist, unless it can be used like a javelin and be thrown.

Focus (Two-handed)
This one is a bit tricky. Currently, as the focus is positioned as a one-handed weapon it might be difficult to make it into a two-handed weapon. I think too many factors to the item must be changed for this to work. This could maybe be a new weapon type. Like a spheric object which the character keeps afloat. Or even maybe multiple floating object like “Scepter Earth Skill 2 – Rock Barrier.” The Aspect would then use these objects in different attacks. Also, the objects could either regenerate and thus be expended on certain heavy attacks or be available always. The issue with this option is, even though I really would like this, it would have to be a new weapon type with all the development drawbacks coming with it.

Either one of these three variants would fit the Aspect Elite Specialization and not require too much effort from developers to implement. At least that goes for first and second options.

[ Aspect Elite Specialization ]
The previous version of this Elite Spec was an empty shell with no lore and no relation to tyria at all. At a certain moment it dawned on me how this Elite Spec could fit in the world of Tyria and the story up until Heart of Thorns.

Lore
The Zephyrites are a secluded, zen-like organization composed primarily of humans of Canthan or ELorian descent that live in a fleet of airships, the largest of them being the Zephyr Sanctum, that roam the skies of Tyria. Their magin incorporates power from the Aspects – three forms of air magic that are stored in crystals recovered from Glint’s corpse in the Crystal Desert.

After the Festival of Four Winds the Zephyrites set off on what was a long journey west, however the Zephyr Sanctum was Blown up by their recent convert, the Sylvari Aerin, as they entered the skies above the Maguuma Wastes, leading four of their airships to crash into Dry Top. The Master of Peace fled with the last remaining egg of Glint. After defeating the Elder Dragon champion Mordremoth and Glints’ egg hatching the Zephyrite knew they had to learn to defend themselves.

With the Master of Peace dead and the remaining Masters injured they needed to act to protect their once so peaceful and pacifist way of life. The Zephyrites rose to the conclusion they would study the aspects from Glints’ crystals and learn how to use them offensively for the greater good. They knew Glint would not approve of this, but she would understand.

The best students from the Masters of the Sun, Lightning and Air temporarily took daily management into their hands and chose a small group of Zephyrites to study the Way of the Aspect. In the deepest secret this courageous group of Aspect Monks, as they are called, travelled to the northern part of the Crystal Desert and study the hidden lair of Glint herself to unravel the true source of her magic.

To strengthen the bond between the Zephyrites and the Tyrians the newly appointed leaders of the Zephyrite contacted the Pact with a proposal. Because the Aspect Monks were making great progression in unravelling the secret to the real power of aspects they proposed that the Pacts’ best Elementalists are allowed to study the power of the aspects on one condition. They need to help the Zephyrites with the remaining challenges which required a strong force to collect the final pieces of the puzzle.

Storyline
The player is summoned before the Pact Commander and presented this proposal of the Zephyrites. After agreeing to help the Zephyrites they player joins the Zephyrites to meet with their new leaders and start their training.
The following challenges had to be met during the training to successfully aid the Zephyrites cause and master the different aspects.

• Meet with Ogden Stonehealer to learn about the healing properties of magic crystals. Collect the catalyzer needed from his hidden cave in the Deldrimor Front.

• Defeat Jormag and recover an ice crystal imbued with Jormag’s magic, so Ogden can finish his study on healing properties of crystals.

• Heal the Masters by collecting all the ingredients needed for the crystals to cure the Teragriff poison.

• Collect shards imbued with the power of the 3 Elder Dragon champions.

1. Mordremoth last Avatar in the Maguuma Jungle (hidden seed imbued with Mordremoth’s earth magic)
2. Imbued Destroyer Queen in Ember Bay (lava shard imbued with primordus’ fire magic)
3. Kralkatorrik in the Crystal Desert (crystal imbued with Kralkatorrik’s magic.)

• Bring the imbued magic crystals to the 3 Masters of the Zephyrites to cleanse the magic shards from their corruption with Glint’s light magic crystals.

• Learn the final steps in mastering the power of the aspects from the Masters.
Ascend to the Aspect of Glint by defending Aurene from danger again. During the fight Aurene feels and absorbs the pure power from her mother’s magic and grows into an adolescent dragon.

Welcome to my vision of a new unique mastery for one my favorite professions in Guild Wars 2. I have thought of fun and new ways to expand the Elementalist the future of Guild Wars 2 and the following post is the result. The original idea for this Elite Specialization was posted by me about a year ago, but is fine-tuned with new insights in lore and content. For immersion purposes in the world of Tyria I added some Lore behind this Elite Spec and how it would be achieved. I hope you like it and be sure to leave some constructing feedback.

[ TL;DR ]
The new Elite Specialization I thought of is called the Aspect. The whole idea behind it is that the Elementalist acquired deep knowledge of the aspects from Glints crystals. Because the air magic nature of aspects the Aspect, as the Elite Specialization is called, can manipulate the other magic types to tap into other properties of that type. Does this make the normal Elementalist useless? Definitely not! The regular Elementalist is a jack-of-all-trades and the Tempest is leaning more towards party support, whereas the Aspect would be focused on a more aggressive and offensive playstyle with either Direct-Damage or Condition damage.

As a new weapon I couldn’t choose between a main-hand focus or a Trident with a two-handed focus (named an Oracle) as a third option. The overall attack range would be similar to the scepter or maybe between dagger and scepter. As monks don’t usually fight long range. This would also balance the more offensive nature of the Elite Specialization by increasing the risk of damage. For weapon skills I designed them to be leaning more towards offense (power and/or conditions) and crowd control.

A new Elite Specialization also comes with an addition to the current class mechanics. For the Aspect this would be an Crystal Essence Bar. Think of it like the Warrior, Necromancer or Revenant have but with a different touch to make it feel unique. The unique part being that it interacts solely with the new Elite skill called ‘Glint’s Revenge.’

Glint’s Revenge’s design is drawn from ‘Elemental Lord’, which is a skill from Guild Wars 1. Having looked at its icon and skills I tried to recreate them with a Guild Wars 2 flavor which also fits the overall design and class mechanic of the Aspect itself. The skill mechanics are also quite unique for this Elite skill. I think through proper balance in damage output, cooldowns and use of the Essence Bar this Elite skill can still be the center of this Elite Specialization. Something similar to Revenant’s Mallyx Elite skill.

Reserved for future posts

TL;DR
The new Elite Specialization I thought of is called Avatar or Sage. The whole idea behind it was to create an Elementalist which through deep study of the arcane arts has mastered the elements on another level. Does this make the normal Elementalist useless? Definitely not! The regular Elementalist is a jack-of-all-trades and the Tempest is leaning more towards party support, whereas the Avatar would be focused on a more aggressive and offensive playstyle.

As a new weapon I couldn’t choose between a main-hand focus or a two-handed focus (Oracle?). The overall attack range would be similar to the scepter or maybe between dagger and scepter. For weapon skills I designed them to be leaning more towards offense and crowd control.

A new Elite Specialization also comes with an addition to the current class mechanics. For the Avatar this would be an Essence Bar. Think of it like the Warrior, Necromancer or Revenant have but with a different touch to make it feel unique. The unique part being that it interacts solely with the new Elite skill called ‘Elemental Lord.’

The Elemental Lord is a skill from Guild Wars 1. Having looked at its icon and skills I tried to recreate them with a Guild Wars 2 flavor which also fits the overall design and class mechanic of the Elementalist itself. The skill mechanics are also quite unique for this Elite skill. I think through proper balance in damage output, cooldowns and use of the Essence Bar this Elite skill can still be the center of this Elite Specialization. Something in the way the Mallyx Elite skill from the Revenant works.

Skills
Healing:
- Essence Shift: the Avatar is a magic presence and is able to provide nearby allies and itself the ability to heal a small percentage of the damage done in a small period of time.

Utilities (Chaos-type utilities):
- Solar Flare: emit a bright light from your body blinding and damaging foes caught in its aoe. (Arcane Shield or Magnetic Wave with a fiery touch.)
- Mirror of Ice: reflect a portion of incoming damage back to the attacker.
- Thunderclap: crack the lightning stored in your body and electrify nearby enemies.
- Earthen Shackles: summon shackles from the ground on you target immobilizing them for a short period of time.

Elite:
Finally the time has come to unveil the Elite skill for the Avatar. As mentioned before this will play a large role in the Avatar specialization mechanic.

- Elemental Lord: the Avatar tries to control the immense energy stored after gathering elemental essences. Not being able to fully control this amount of power, the elements merge into an unstable and chaotic state. This results in losing elemental essence with each attack.

1. Essence Blast (Arcane):
   Channel a ball of elemental essence and fire it towards your target. This is a slow attack, but being of the Arcane type it always crits. To compensate its strength its base damage is lower than normal and uses more essence than the other skills.
2. Telekinetics (Earth):
   With deep wisdom of magic the Elemental Lord can pulse a confusing wave to nearby enemies’ brains. The confusion pulses a total of three times and lasts 1 second per pulse.
3. Null Field (Water):
   Gathering knowledge of the elements the Elemental Lord learned how to reduce their negative effects on himself. By using the cleasing power of water the effectiveness of condition damage gets reduced in an area.
4. Disposition (Air):
   Being one with the elements enables the Elemental Lord to move fluently through the air for small distances. This spell can be cast two times within 3 seconds before going on cooldown.
5. Obsidian Flame (Fire):
   Having felt the true heat of fire the Elemental Lord can extract the warmth out of it and engulf its target in intense dark flames. This casts three stacks of torment on the enemy.

Traits
I did not spend too much time on the masteries, because it would take a lot of time and would become quite complex to balance it out. With the current Trait system there are three major trait lines focussing on a specific part or skill of the specializations mechanics and three minor traits focussing on the overall mechanics.

Minor traits:
- Unlock the ‘Essence Bar’ and enable the use of the Focus in main-hand. (or two-handed.)
- Increases Essence generation by a small percentage.
- When the Essence bar is full the Avatar receives an influx of power receiving two seconds of quickness. Cooldown 20 seconds or when the Essence bar is depleted completely.

Major traits:
- Top: this line focusses on improving the focus. Reducing cooldown and improving certain skills.
- Mid: improves utility skill effects and grants certain effects as a passive/active skill with a cooldown.
- Bot: focusses on the Elemental Lord and his skills. Reducing the essence cost of skills and granting additional effects to his skills.

Final Thoughts
1. Why I chose for the Focus as the weapon is because it’s normal that a new Elite Specialization gets a new weapon. So I thought to use an existing weapon in a new way. A sword, mace, pistol or rifle would really overhaul the complete playstyle of an Elementalist. And a scythe is something we can only hope for in the future. The scythe would be the runner-up for a weapon, but would change the majority of the skills completely also.

2. The reasoning behind the whole Avatar concept is that I was looking to elevate the general potential of an Elementalist. With Aang becoming a real avatar and mastering all elements as an example.

3. I was experimenting with different other elements like Telekinetics, Dark and Spirit magic, but all of these were already in use one way or another in Guild Wars 2. So I had to look for a creative way to add a new flavour to the profession. Resulting in Chaos magic by combining all elements in an unstable state.

4. If you guys and girls have ideas for another name which potentially fits the Lore more just post it in the comments.

5. Hope you enjoyed reading this post and would like to hear and read what you thought of this concept or certain parts of it.

Weapon skills
Below I have thought of certain skills the focus in the main-hand would have. Thinking of possible skills, I looked at GW1 Elementalist skills. I noticed the developers re-use some skills from the previous game, so this was a good starting point. After that, I took a look at other digital media like games, anime etc. Since we don’t really want to have the same skills on different weapons I combined attacks from different and also thought of some unique ones specific to the focus. The last 2 skills in each attunement are the current off-hand focus skills. In the brackets behind each skill I noted references to existing versions of these skills which I know of. Furthermore, I did not limit the list to only 3 skills, since I want to keep this post more open instead of shoving everything in a precise fitting box.

Fire:
- Fireballs: channel fire through the focus and shoot damaging projectiles. (Similar to Fiery Greatsword Skill 1, but faster bursts.)
- Blazing Pillars: summon 3 increasingly larger eruptions from the ground which hit foes in an aoe. (Eruptions could be similar to to the Fire Mining Pick when using it.)
- Reactive burn: channel a flaming circle in front of you. When it gets destroyed it explodes in a cone. (Spell summoning, Fairy Tail and Mage Energy Barrage, Dragon Age Inquisition.)
- Flaming Wings: cast a fire whip from each hand, jump your target and slash it with both whips. (Natsu, Fairy Tail)
- Burning Slash: after a brief channel slash a vertical beam of fire downwards on your foe. (Sasuke’s Chidori beam, Naruto Shippuden.)

Water:
- Water Bomb: channel water through your focus and shoot bubbles to you foes which explode on contact. (Squirtle’s Bubble Beam, Pokemon)
- Ice Shrapnel: freeze water in a ball and hurl it to a location. Before landing explode in a cone of frozen shrapnel.
- Ice Floor: cast a trail of ice on the ground slowing foes down who move on it. After 1 second on the floor the foe get’s knocked down. (slippery floor. general cartoons.)
- Frost Step: propel the caster through the air leaving a trail of water behind. (Similar to Burning Speed, but creating a water field and healing at the end.)
- Water Dome: cast a whirling sphere of water around you which absorbs projectiles and converts them into healing in a small aoe. (Neji’s Chakra Rotation, Naruto)
- Shattering Prison: envelop your foe in ice for a short time (<1sec) after which the prison shatters chill the foe and shoot damaging shrapnel in a 360 radius.

Air:
- Air blades: throw bursts of compressed air towards you foe. (Young Karka attack.)
- Crescent Turbulence: cast a crescent form of wind in high velocity towards you target pushing foe hit back. The closer the target the more it’s pushed. (Hinata’s Vacuum Palm, Naruto.)
- Air Funnel: create an absorbing funnel of air redirecting part of the attack back to the attacker.
- Suction: focus air around your target/location and pull all foes caught towards the center. (Guardian greatsword 5 or a Mesmer skill.)
- Wind Cut: channel a whirl of air around your focus and shoot it in a straight line. The longer channeled the further and stronger the projectile. (Krillin’s Destructo Disc, Dragon kitten.)
- Thunder Burst: Cast a lightning strike on the caster channeling it’s energy to nearby foes. (Similar to Scepter Lightning Strike, but targeted on the caster grant movement speed and shocking neaby foes.)

Earth:
- Earth Gauntlet: cover your arm in rock hitting your foe. (Green Lantern Summon First)
- Mud Slap: throw a sticky slab of mud towards your enemies’ face blinding them for a period of time.
- Seismic Slam: slam the ground with your rock hard fists creating shockwaves in 3 directions in a cone in front of the caster.
- Fissure: stomp the ground with your foot creating a fissure in a line. Enemies walking on this fissure are crippled and are damaged when it collapses at maximum range. (Elder Titan’ Ultimate®, Dota2.)
- Magnetic Attraction: magnetize your target pulling nearby debris towards them. This does a small amount of damage but hits a couple of time.
- Earth Wave: summon a wave of earth which propels the caster towards the enemy. (Taff Earth Stomp, Avatar: The Legend of Aang.)
Earth Wave was implemented in Tempest’ Earth Overload!

Avatar/Sage Elite Specialization!
The name is debatable. I was searching for some lore of ancient or name worthy mages or elementalists in the Guild Wars (2) Lore, but had no succes in finding any information thus these 2 names. The link leads to a description of what an “Avatar” is.

Class Mechanic
For the specialization mechanic I had a few designs which, to be honest, were not all usable or just rip-off from other professions. One that I did like was the Essence bar.

This would be a bar below the attunements, like a Warrior, a Necromancer, a Thief and a Revenant have. With the Avatar this bar interacts with the Elite skill which will be mentioned later in this section. The bar is filled with elemental essence from using spells in different attunements. When full essence is reached the player has two options:

1. Leave the bar filled to get small benefits to your stats from all 4 attunements. The stat boost will be applied to related stat for each attunement. Power for Fire, Vitality for Water, Precision for Air and Touhgness for Earth.
2. Use the Elite skill and try to control this imense arcane power.

How the essence bar will behave depends heavily on the masteries the Avatar has. To compare it with other profession that have access to a bar. A Thief spends initiative for certain attacks, a Warrior gets certain passive boons or a powerful attack, the Revenant’s Energy bar is used for Upkeep skills and the Necromancer uses it for its profession specific skill, the Shroud. I think to make the Avatar unique in this fashion the Elite skill would use the essence in powerful attacks.

Weapons
Focus (Main-hand)
Through fantasy and fiction, the focus has always been an item used by magician-type characters. When I saw the design for the focus ‘Anomaly’ it seemed awesome and unique to be able to wield it in both hands. Thus, the idea to wield a focus in the main hand.

Seeing what the developers did with a staff for the Daredevil. It seemed logical the most fitting weapon how I imaged the Avatar would be a focus. This would make the Avatar really unique in the sense that the elementalist has mastered this weapon throughout the years. And make the Elementalist have a really unique feature worthy of its profession. Alternatively, a similar mechanic to the thief’s dual wielding could be applied. Dual wielding different weapons would generate a different 3rd skill. The difference in this case would be what the Off-hand weapon would be. This mechanic would only be applied when the Avatar is dual-wielding Foci.

Focus (Two-handed)
This one is a bit tricky. Currently, as the focus is positioned as a one-handed weapon it might be difficulty to make it into a two-handed weapon. I think too many factors to the item have to be changed. This could maybe be a new weapon type named Oracle. Like a spheric object which the character keeps afloat. Or even maybe multiple floating object like “Scepter Earth Skill 2 – Rock Barrier.” The Avatar would then use these objects in different attacks. Also, the objects could either regenerate and thus be expended on certain heavy attacks or be available at all times.

Either one of these two variants would fit the Elite Specialization and not require too much effort from developers to implement. At least that goes for first option.

Up next are the weapon skills.

Welcome to my vision of a new unique mastery for one my favorite profession in Guild Wars 2. When ArenaNet announced they were working on the first expansion it gave me motivation to think and write what future expansions might hold for the Elementalist.

When they released the details for the Tempest I knew more than half the ideas I had were not implemented. After a short break of, cough 4 months cough, I finally purchased Heart of Thorns and continued to fill the blanks in my concept. Especially, when I read how the developers do read the forum to gather cool ideas and such gave me a boost to finish this forum post. This is the result of my brain crunching. I tried to make it as readable as possible instead of just a wall of text. If it’s still too much try reading the TL;DR at the end. Hope you like it and constructing critisism is always welcome.

The Elementalist!
In this section I will just sum up the main features of the Elementalist as released in the base game. Feel free to skip this part if you are already familiar with the profession and the Tempest Elite specialization.

Class Mechanic
The class mechanic for the Elementalist are attunements. With the choice from the main types of magic, Fire, Water, Air and Earth, it enables more multiple attack combinations with 20 weapon skills at their disposal. Each type has its own mastery and role for the Elementalist with a 5th mastery for general improvements called “Arcane.”

Specializations
The Fire mastery is used to give the Elementalist a broader range of improvements and boons for the use of the Fire Attunement. With more offensive boons and burning conditions together with improving the Conjured weapons. Next to Fire, for offensive tactics, Air focusses on spike/burst damage and the mastery improves Glyphs and movement speed of the Elementalist.

The masteries for Earth and Water focus on providing more defensive options. For water this means mainly healing, but also stacking vulnerability on enemies. Earth on the other hand boosts Signets and improves the bleed condition on attack in this attunement.

Arcane skills are only usable as utilities, because they always crit or mitigate damage completely. Furthermore, this mastery line provides general boosts to these types of skills and to switching attunements.

Weapons
The Elementalist is only able to wield 5 physical weapons, namely: a dagger, scepter, staff, trident and focus. Each weapon provides a different playstyle for players. As you read in the previous section an Elementalist is also able to use Conjured Weapons. These are summoned weapon which can only be used periodically and have limited use. For Conjured Weapons a Shield, Axe, Longbow, Hammer and Greatsword are available. This enables the Elementalist to wield a broad range of weapons from close range to long range and defensive to offensive.

Tempest Elite Specialization!
The Tempest is the latest mastery and was introduced in Heart of Thorns. The class mechanic attunements are the same but can be overloaded. This grants the Elementalist 4 active skills which, after a brief channel, can provide extra utility to the party. This mastery also gives the Tempest access to another off-hand weapon, the Warhorn, for support and condition application. For the remaining Utility, Heal and Elite skills the Tempest can use offensive shouts.

With the introduction of the Warhorn the remaining weapons available for the Elementalist profession are: Sword, Mace, Torch, Shortbow, Pistol and Rifle. I won’t mention the underwater weapons, since that is only used in a small part of the gameplay. So, let’s continue to the fun part!

Thanks for the replies guys! Might just have motivated me to re-think some things and post it.. @Aetrion ,, that might be true, but my idea won’t probably be worked on (If Anet likes it in the first place) before the next expansion.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Eles can only stack 25 vuln with lightning storm, after which it’s then on cooldown for a near a minute.

There’s only one class that can consistently keep up 25 stacks of vuln and that’s an engineer.

You got a point there, but what bossfights last longer than 1 minute in 5 man groups? As far as I know 80-90% of the dungeon bosses below Arah are done super fast.

But my point being, vuln is so easily accessible with Heart of Thorns that a full group could probably stack up to 50 vuln easily at every boss fight. And that is not even building for it probably. I’m just making assumptions here and I know they can’t be taken for a fact.

Hello folks,

Was just wondering if it a waste of time to post suggestions on the forums or not?
I know there was a sub-forum which got removed still in year 1 I think. And I see so many threads with players giving suggestions.

I myself have a few, but I’d rather not waste time on writing up a topic if ArenaNet won’t do anything with it. Maybe ArenaNet can answer this one the best?

My own suggestions are for new elite specializations. And I’ve been occassionally thinking about future elite specializations. Thus my question.

Thanks for the replies.

As far as I have seen for the new specializations vulnerability is super easy to come by. Almost all revealed elite specializations have gotten tons more of it and some have gotten a little extra.

Seen that it already is pretty easy to stack 25 vuln in a group. Now the elementalist for example can solo stack that amount on a single target with only 1 skill. The general skill starts to dissipate entirely from Guild Wars 2 so it seems. I think in the expansions after Heart of Thorns, if this continues, we can start calling the game Kitten Wars 2, because probably every profession will have the ability to

Either the amount of vulnerability needs to be toned down in a way that group effort is required to boast tons of it or that single professions can’t output the amount it would usually take a group to do it. Not even when you spec for it. Else each profession might just get an increase in damage of a flat 25% and then there is one less condition to worry about right.

To me it just seems a bit too much of the good juices. What do you guys think?

PS: This is what it seems to me, so my opinion at the moment.

Nope, just, nope..

Well for me that is. :P

Melanie.1240:

Healer specialization, a viable full-support role. I don’t care what the name it; Ringmaster, Priest, Cleric, Bischop, Saint, as long as it heals.

One can dream.

One can dream indeed since “support” roles haven’t really been fixed/balanced yet to be viable in majority of the game other than either WvW or Big Boss battles in PvE. But that’s my opinion.

To be honest I do think the first round of specializations is going towards a somewhat supportish concept. From what I’ve heard about the Druid. But Anet can surprise me again with some awesome innovative style to a “Druid.”

Svarty.8019:

It’s not my perspective, I’m not fussed what happens. I am just reporting what’s been posted in the Guardian forum since the dawn of the game.

To get pedantic about your point: I don’t see why eles shouldn’t have greatsword, except that you don’t have axes or bows as regular weapons and you do have elemental ones. With guardians, they DO have spirit greatsword, hammer and shield and regular ones of the same types. But like I said, I’m not bothered about what happens, I can’t change anybody’s minds anyway.

Because the FGS gets so stale and I like the look of a GS on my ele
Conjures make the Ele unique, so Ele wouldn’t be able to get any new weapons anyways unless it’s a conjure or a real “magic-ish” weapon like scepter, dagger, focus or staff. :P

It also doesn’t matter, since Anet probably already have finished their designs and ideas.

@BlueOcean
I have had the same feeling multiple times.

Tesla.1427:

With elementalist, at least how I imagine them and partially how they’re portrayed with the conjures, I see them being able to use any weapon and apply magic to it. Of course, if they had a weapon range like say, warrior, that’d be kinda ridiculous with the twenty skills they already have.

Regardless, I still think at least eles should get sword and a damage bump on dagger. I mean, dagger is a melee weapon after all. Shouldn’t it not do as much damage, if not less so than ranged damage in the game? Give ele some kitten good melee weapons and I’d be a pig in kitten.

Uhm, Elementalists have 20 skills on 1 weapon set. What about the 5 skills you get on Frostbow, Lightning Hammer, Fire Axe, Earth Shield and Fiery Greatsword? This also puts the ele in range of the amount of weapon types Warrior wields? :P

Caelmir.2514:

I think a conjurer that equips the existing weapon conjures in the F1-4 slots would be interesting. It would keep all of the existing traits and mechanics intact while completely changing the play style. Fire Axe for ranged offense and skirmish. Lightning hammer for melee offense and control. Earth Shield for defense and Frost Bow for healing and support. I’m excited just typing about it!!

You got a good way of thinking there. Reading that I have a few suggestions/changes to add.

Adding the 4 minor conjuers to the F1-F4 slots. This would eliminate the limited usages you get out of one weapon and looking at it’s skills type would kind of give the incentive to changes attunements also. Thought going the “Conjurer”-way would have to be beneficial to the Fiery Greatsword aswell. Some options:
1. Unlimited use for 2-3 minutes (recharge time or a bit less.) Since it’s not so OP anymore with the wall-rush it. Thought it wouldn’t really be an Elite anymore would it?
2. Make the the Fiery Greatsword (usage amount + timed) and the other conjures more potent.

My own idea to add:
Specialization name: Ethereal
Has kind of divine effects. Maybe something in the way of ghosts, afterlive etc.. No clue tbh. haha Which might add another attunement in the traits (Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Arcane) → Arcanist wouldn’t be possible since I read, if the info was correct, that you would swap one trait line for a new one. And you can’t swap Arcane for Arcane. :P UNLESS you swap one of the other 4 for another Arcane?

Next to the above mentioned I had something in mind regarding combinations of elements. → The last airbender ish avatar. In fact an Ele is already a kind of avatar thingy using all 4 elements?

Svarty.8019:

All Guardians ever asked for is one of the bows, heck one of their spirit weapons is a bow!

I think it’s inevitable and I think Arenanet are teasing them by not showing Guardians with bows yet.

If this is your point of view on Guardians than mine on Elementalists with Greatsword isn’t that bad either.!

nekretaal.6485:

Sounds like tweaks to the class bases. I figure something like.

New Thief — uses cool downs instead of initiative now, F1 is now a profession specific attack
New Necromancer — Different Death Shroud Skills
New Warrior — Different, defensive F skills
New Guardian — different F skills, healing
New Ranger — Pets completely reworked, fufill a pure support no DPS role
New Engineer — Different F skills
New Elementalist — slow attunement swapping, more health, ability to weapon swap
New Mesmer — Different F skills

1. Hard to immerse in a game where a feline has a supportive role? Would kill the immersion, unless your pet gets a new or second F2 skill which suites the breed.
2. Would give the Ele 40 weapon skills? 20-base+20-swap. Seems legit.

Snowball.3497:

_
Light:

• Necromancer – Uses a Greatsword (PAX announcement)
• Elementalist – Uses a Sword
• Mesmer – Uses a Shield (video)

I only hope for a greatsword for elementalist.

I’d really be hoping for the revenant to have a class specific weapon. Seen that he channels powers from the mists I’d be appropriate to let him wield weapons as such an equip certain gauntlets/gloves which he can use to weapons from the mists. Having said that a potential way to add the class mechanic would be summoning these weapons. Which automatically adds 5 weapon slots to the bar. F1-F4, going from attack to support, double sword/double dagger/dagger/focus – greatsword/hammer – mace shield – staff.

On the weapon slots though, since they’re empty in the previous paragraph, would come either regular weapons (which aren’t shown) or some kind of fist-weapons rev-only.

Would make the rev unique in comparison to the other classes and not just copy paste. :p

EDIT: would give the Revenant a similar mechanic to Elementalists, but where Ele’s have offensive/defensive/support attacks combined in 1 attunement. The rev would have them seperated to the specific weapon-mode.

Crash.5362:

It will be a HUGE disappointment if no New weapons are comming up…
I cant believe this game haves Torches and Warhorns as weapons but no Pole-arms and Greataxes like 99% of all Mmos have. Like, what?

Fun fact: Guild Wars 2 is among the 1% of all MMO’s since the start.

Revenant should be able to apply a good number of condies himself if he doesn’t want to be limited to group-play only.

What I foresee about the specialization: If all specializations at launch are limited to 1 and limited to a support-type of specialization then specializations will be used by players to test the water. And will be left behind after they have been fully understood.

As far as I’ve come into contact with support = providing boons and ripping conditions in Dungeons only. Since healing is such a small part of GW2 and the Berserker-stats meta is usually still the best to go for pve-wise players will wait for the new damage dealing specializations and the rest will be left un-used as was the destiny of like 80% of the stat-combinations are today.

Before implementing new mechanics/changing class mechanics or do anything that builds upon the current game they’d be better off balancing out the current mechanics in the game. Make Conditions more viable to name one thing quickly. There is no incentive unless you’re playing solely in pvp/wvw content to use other stat combo’s because the pvp content more builds are viable to use so more stats combo’s are viable to use because defense and counter enemies mechanics are more of a deal.

We’ll just have to wait what the expansion will bring us Specialization-wise, but looking at the druid if it doesn’t provide superior party boons to other professions like Guardian, but doesn’t pack the slightest punch it’s going to be left unused. But as I said, will just have to wait and not get overhyped.

mtpelion.4562:

Imaginos.3756:

Far fewer choices in pve for those who only do pve. This is an amazingly crappy change. I thought we were going to get more options not less. You already did Less and people HATED it. You can’t be that clueless Anet.

Add more options!

It’s a good change.
It rewards people who enjoy all areas of content, incentivizes players to try other forms of content, and is possible for people who refuse to expand their horizons.

Yes, but not all people enjoy all areas of content. I hate wvw since I never get in a good map. I hardly do any pvp, since it doesnt add to my PVE progression as much as doing PVE only would give me. I don’t need an incentive to try WvW for example when my only experience with it has been negative and mainly lonely. I’ve tried every area of the game and I’m doing the one area that I like most if I want to keep playing enjoyable.

If you’re intent on only doing PvE, then you’ve got a self-imposed restriction that is making it more difficult than it needs to be for you.

Self imposed restriction or not it’s not a valid reason to take away content for people to do. This isn’t Skyrim that we have to imposed restrictions when the game doesn’t do it for us.

Note that this message comes to you from a guy who pretty much ONLY does PvE and who will need to expand his own horizons now.

If you want to be forced to expand your horizon be my guest, but I’m not the kind of guy who needs to be fed other types of content which I have already tried myself and aren’t liking too much.

@Straylight I think I have gotten over 20-30 popups until hitting lvl 14. 1-3 where the regular ones, but some came back multiple times and the ones for healing when you’re low is super annoying.
They don’t have to do major changes. Just in the options menu to turn off those tutorial stuff.
I really didn’t feel leveling going any faster though that previous times. Took me around 3 hrs to complete Queensdale. :S

I feel the hardships new players have to go through now that I bought a new account and was leveling an elementalist on it.
Posted a topic with my top 3 annoyances I ran into in the GW2 Discussion Forum.

My lord is the incentive to make new characters been affected greatly. :S
I think the leveling time from 1-80 is increased by maybe 30-50% considering I could level much faster in the early levels of the game prior to this change.

You have to force feed a baby or someone who isn’t able to feed himself, but not seasoned players or people who grasp new stuff pretty quickly.

Hey,

After 3 months on rehab from gaming due a way to lengthy RMA proces I was able to experience the huge annoyance which was implemented somewhere last year.
Somewhere around the time the traits were for sale at an NPC

So with the GW2 sale during last weekend I bought another acc for NA and when I started the usual explorationfest it turned out to be less a fest and more a hell-grind. Since it took me quite some time to kill all the monsters with only the basic staff attack/lava font pre lvl 14. It took me that long to reach level 14 that it’s going to be a major pain in the kitten to finish it.

Next to that, what is up with not being able to get the skill point thing on the minimap and the absence of the minimap markers? Every skill point I ran into in Queensdale was blocked for reasons unknown but that I was “too low level for them.”

Third, it’s SUPER annoying annoying to be a seasoned player and get all those tutorials popups on screen ALL the time.

Was it so hard to make an on/off switch for those things and just leave everything in the map collectible so you don’t have to re-visit that specific map again just to get the skill points?

Glad I made most of the characters already on my main account, because this is one thing I’m not looking forward to doing multiple times. Better said, I’d rather take my losses and not play on that account if it’s going to be such a boring hell to do map exploration. It was MUCH more fun before they changed this stuff for new comers as if the rest of the playerbase doesn’t exist and isn’t going to make a new character.

Hope Heart of Thorns does a better job.

PS: I’m making a post on, in my opinion, balanced Elementalist changes which would make the Elementalist re-worked and even more fun to play. It’s not finished yet, because I’m having some dilemmas, like this one. :P

Hey folks,

Like the subject might suggest, I would like to know weather the community thinks the Fiery Greatsword should be replaced by a new Elite since it’s totally not worth being an Elite anymore when comparing it in Power to normal weapon sets.
Would you guys think ArenaNet would make this choice at any moment. As we can not know for sure what ArenaNet thinks at all seeing their choices in the past. So this is just a speculation.

See you in-game

Nope. The point of an Elementalist is that it’s the master of all 4 elements. Your idea would mean the Elementalist would lose either 2 elements or you would be limited to using D/D in Fire and Water and Staff in Lightning and Earth. Your idea would mean a complete revamp of the Elementalist which isn’t likely to happen.

layzoe.6035:

I made the artificer one last night and upgraded it to elegant.. They are super cute. I did see an infusion slot, so maybe in the future.. we can upgrade them to ascended? The easiest way to obtain a backpack for sure and I love how you can pick the stats.

Only reason I would make on, seeing your comment, would be for the stats on some of my characters as I seriously don’t see any backpack which would fit a normal style. So I would hide it anyways. But might be an idea just to make it for the stats since my new main doesn’t have a normal backpiece yet. A placeholder till I get an ascended one that is

Vol.7601:

For one, the game shouldn’t promote everyone looking like disco balls or unicorns. There comes a point where a character has too many special effects.

This. Personally, after seeing their vision of Ascended Armor (Best in-game) I have little faith they would make Legendary Armor worth calling Legendary. Fancy effects have to stop at one point, because their comes a time where too much effects are only becoming more ugly. So the “Legendary Armor” would have to have a look worth calling legendary, where they would have 3 different styles of Light, Medium or Heavy armor which all just plainly look jaw-dropping. They can add subtle effect like for example COF dungeon armor has with the flames. (Just naming something random.) But more aura’s would only counter a beautiful design and style. I got some ideas for how they could fill some slots of Legendary Armor, but I’ll keep those to myself since I also have little faith Anet will implement them any time soon and use these ideas.

Tomas.5029:

That’s not light armor exclusive. I’m crafting a heavy ascended armor set right now, and having to get 300 silk scraps with current prices every single day is just not fun.

OP refers to needing 36 Bolts of Damask in total for a full set of Light Armor. Heavy needs like 25 Bolts of Damask. The price difference at current prices is already over 180g.
And the higher need for Elonian Leather section for Medium/Heavy armor doesn’t come close to that, because the price is 17g vs 2g.

So yes, silk/cloth sucks to get. But heavy/medium ascended armor is just way easier to make, just because it needs less of Damask and less Leather/Deldrimor steel than Bolts. So you can also make it faster using cheaper mats.

Sad enough, yes :P would cost aprox. 700g if I would buy all the mats straight off the TP.

Got my first 4 pieces finished. The last couple of bolts of damask cost me over 180g :/ Went for Ele in the end And indeed I do like the Ele’s versatility.
Thanks!

Hey peeps,

What I’ve been thinking about lately is what character to progress.
I switch quite often between them to do different parts of the map, but the haven’t been specialized yet in a particular region or dungeon gear-wise.

I’ve started accumulating some of the components to make Ascended armor, but as you guys might know it’s quite expensive and time consuming to craft. Next to that I was thinking about splitting the effort and slowly working towards my first Legendary also.

The choice is limited between character of mine. A Warrior and and Elementalist of which both I really like to play. Even my Ranger is fun to mix is a bit, but I’m disappointed in the implementation of the pets AI. So I left my first ever character to collect the bits and pieces of my progress.

My question now to you guys and girls is: What do you think would be the best profession to build out further? Taking future also kind of into account.

Both profession are nerfed with each patch in some way, but are still wanted in Dungeons a lot. Which is what I am to do most of the time, together with some World Bosses. Next to that the only really difference is the weapon choices each profession has and the difficulty of gameplay that comes with each. Warrior is a bit easier, but Elementalist can be made easy also with a Staff for example.

I would really appreciate some advice so I can finally start getting at least one maxed out character after pre-launch. ^^
If only ArenaNet would flip out the Fiery Greatsword Elite for a new one and give the Elementalist a regular Greatsword. Or that the skins on the conjured weapons can be swapped out also my decision would be much easier. xD

Looking forward to some great replies.

Regards,

Hey there,

I’m playing on Far Shiverpeaks since the start. Been on GW2 on and off. Came back for a little break and ready to rock for a while.

What I’m looking for:
- PvE guild (on European Server)
- Dungeon runs
- Guild missions
- Social

What I offer:
- Skilled player
- Always ready to improve
- Active
- Well mannered
- Elementalist/Warrior/Ranger + leveling/gearing more

Looking forward to a message/invite.

Take care.

ionix.9054:

You can hit 80 in under 2 weeks playing a couple hours a day.

Two weeks for 1-80 is quite long. I think you should be able to get 1-80 or close within 7-8 days by just doing world completion. But I think you would then be putting in approximately same hours as you would do in casual play for 2 weeks.

Sin.4130:

Brigg.6189:

I’m not sure I get what the problem is here.

The problem is that nearly nobody use dual wield In GW2 because you have absolutely no advantage from using this. It is weaker , more expensive then any other weapons set

I think the advantage you get with ‘dual wielding’ is that you can get a more diverse skillset than when just using 1 two-handed weapon. They way Anet made the game wasn’t to make one weapon be used in every situation. But align skills to each weapon and combine them as needed for the situation. Where some combinations get you more dps and other get you more control or are more defensively align in combat.

That you don’t like this idea probably comes from you being used to other games where it’s programmed the way you explain. But I’m not allowed to imply things and guess your reasoning.

Sunreva.8714:

Warriors – Make it so that adrenaline bar segments/burst skills are earned through completion of the personal story. That would be so exciting!

Rangers – Make it so that before they can charm a pet on a particular map, they have to have that map 100% completed. Bam wham! Instant fun!

I would love to see the system continue to develop down this path, I’m sure new players appreciate it as well.

I can tell you that would make players actually have to complete the map which now is a choice. And I think that would benefit the normal way of working towards a legendary for example, where you need the gift of exploration.
So I would say it’s a good thing, but then they could also make it a bit easier to charm the pets for rangers by having a pet farm in those maps where you do 1 quest to befriend the NPC and be granted the privilege to charm the pets from the NPC. So players don’t have to run through the whole map again to charm the pets. Or maybe where you could pay maybe x amount between 1 – 10 silver for 1 pet at the NPC. Would compensate you having to put extra effort in to be allowed to even charm the pets by making it a bit easier to get your hands on them.

RedStar.4218:

MangoMonkey.7582:

RedStar.4218:

Barely surprising. They realized that the general level of the community isn’t too great and that if they released something hard, it will barely get played.

So instead of doing something few people will actually enjoy, they actually prefer to cater to the vast majority that loves to “play how I want” (with them it means “I should be able to the same thing as someone geared with full damage gear and traits”) with not too hard content.

Now if only they could fix bugs in the current dungeons (without putting more bugs…) and maybe, just maybe make some encounter more interesting (like Tazza).

Still they released wurm? i don’t know what Anet is thinking, but not every player on the community is of general level. Might aswell make a server with dungeons enabled and others focussing on LS and other boring PVE content.

But still, instead of focussing on make players better and making them really see if they are getting better or not, Anet prefers to hold hands (well now it’s more of a weird forceful hug). Instead of making “hard” or “easy” content to please a side of the playerbase, I would be happy if at first they things to improve the general level instead of doing “easy, easy, easy and here’s something very few are accustomed to”.

I agree with you on that part for sure.

SkylightMoon.2098:

The other day I asked about the communities current satisfaction(or lack there of) with the amount of update to dungeons/fractals.

Its been confirmed in an interview at gamescon that Anet have no plans to really add any dungeon content. TA aether was apparently a big endeavor for them and theyd rather stick to small QoL changes. That being said, theyd also prefer to do fractals since its less work.

Looks like you guys will be playing the same content for the next 6 months at least. Its really unfortunate how the living story hogs all the resources. Im just waiting for it to go if this is the reality we have to live with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umpR6LhBhW4

4:15

For TL;DR people: It’s about my take on GW2 and what’s become of it in my eyes. A little comparison and what path I think Anet could go.
(reason for it being quite long is that I just jammed the text out of my sleeves with what I was thinking about. Tried to make it a bit fit together but ahh well. It’s late after a long day.)

Well first, thank you for sharing it with us. Second, I’m afraid I wasted over a €100 on the gemstore if Anet keeps this game so under developed. (Might not seem a lot, but it’s the most I’ve paid on MMOs ever.)Third, sad to see Anet throwing away a pretty potent game down the ley lines for Mordremoth to eat. Just because they are too stubborn to focus all their attention to the Living Story. Which is NOT replayable endlessly unless you make a new character which you won’t because the game has nothing else to offer.

What I would like to see is Anet spreading their resources according to what THEY want to implement and what the community would love to see. And if micro-transactions don’t pan out financially as planned switch to another mode, but on if Anet can assure to pump out more content. I’m getting bored here by all the crappy games that have come out in the MMORPG genre. Either over-priced subs or just generally not my piece of cake.

nov 2004 WoW launches
8 months later launch in China
jan 2007 first expansion (Burning Crusade)
Which offered(after 2 years 1 month):
- 2 new races
- new pve area on the map
- dungeon modes for more experienced players

GW2 (After 2 years):
- no new races/classes
- a small area added to the map through living story (Gates of Maguuma)
- A lot of QoL changes with a big amount of changes that just had to be in the launch version.
- expanded some content with new features
- a new kind of dungeon (FotM)
- a kind of side-WvW map (EotM)

To end this reply. It must probably be hard pumping out content when you don’t have a set amount of finances to work with. Next to that you have players who are either interested in one of PvP, PvE or WvW or a mix of them. So you have 3 areas you have to work on. But that doesn’t beat the fact that players are getting bored with the content and a lot don’t bother a lot with playing the LS. I can’t speak for others, that is just my observation.
If Anet wants to pump out story lines why not write more books or make the game offline and put a good story to it. (Don’t get me wrong, the story isn’t the problem it’s quite good.) When I think about it. LS for me is like playing Elder scrolls quests with 4 followers = easy mode. When you finish you get on to the next part.

Well, this post will probably get flamed and is probably a waste of time as of no one will read it anyways especially Anet I think. But just had to get this off my chest.

Thanks for reading,

RedStar.4218:

Barely surprising. They realized that the general level of the community isn’t too great and that if they released something hard, it will barely get played.

So instead of doing something few people will actually enjoy, they actually prefer to cater to the vast majority that loves to “play how I want” (with them it means “I should be able to the same thing as someone geared with full damage gear and traits”) with not too hard content.

Now if only they could fix bugs in the current dungeons (without putting more bugs…) and maybe, just maybe make some encounter more interesting (like Tazza).

Still they released wurm? i don’t know what Anet is thinking, but not every player on the community is of general level. Might aswell make a server with dungeons enabled and others focussing on LS and other boring PVE content.

What I wanted to say is: How about no!
How much I would like to see it, pets in Guild Wars 2 aren’t the same as in for example Rappelz. (Which is centered around different kinds of pets etc.) Because of the simplistic skill-interface pets currently have it’s hard enough to use 1 pet let alone use 2. A second pet summoned in my opinion defeats the purpose of having it summoned when the cooldown on the f4 skill is only like 10 seconds if I can recall.

So no for me. 10 seconds isn’t that big of a deal to just use a pet for it’s buffs. Each class is balanced enough to be able to combine skills that will give you a certain playstyle. Build your ranger around a certain pet if you want to have DPS or have good party buffs. You can’t excel in both at the same time. Would make Rangers OP sending a jaguar and jungle stalker on someones kitten xD