Guild Wars 2

Word limit encourages the use of active voice. Competant writers should be able to communicate with concision as opposed to being meticulous and verbose. Passive, drawn out responses indicate uncertainty and lack cohesion. The goal is to expidite Chris’s reading, as such our points should reflect that. From what I’ve read on the first few pages there’s deffinitely ways to cut down on word count. I’m by no means a published or even competant writer, but we dont’t have to be to not exceed the word count.

CDI asks alot from the devs, it’s only fair they ask something of us aswell.

Whatever happened to t3 medium is atrocious. The top dyes too darkly and starkly contrasts with the pants. All of the previously possible blending combinations are now non-existent. The two tone nature that certain dyes possessed is now gone. At the very least allow me to shift between glow dominance determined by skin or dye, if the new system can’t be removed entirely.

Elementalist utility signets look really good on paper: they can be traited deeply into, their actives have their uses, their cooldowns are short and their passives can be retained. They become far less useful however in practice due to their 3/4 second cast time, which make them difficult to land mid-combo in pve and generally unusable in pvp.

How are you going to chase someone with signet of earth if they’re out of range by the time you cast it?
How will signet of water help slow your foe when the cast time is slower than the chill you’d inflict on them?
How are you going to get any of these activated without leaving yourselkittenwardly vulnerable and susceptible to a very likely interrupt/stun?

The solution is to drastically reduce the cast time on these utilities. Instant preferably, 1/4 seconds realistically.

Despite the blog post saying any craftable stat would be available with magic find removal, I was pleased to find this afternoon that celestial wasn’t among the available stat combos for Exotic Explorer’s gear. After a while I concluded this was to prevent people from avoiding the absurd hurdles one must traverse to attain celestial in the first place – but then again, what are those there for??

Think about it: Celestial is a very niche stat combo. Only effective in a very small number of builds only for certain classes. It is far from overpowered and most would consider it less useful now that MF has been removed. Anet argues against it – saying Celestial is balanced without that added MF, effectively confirming it is no better than any other combo.

So why all the gates? First off, it can’t be purchased: if you want Celestial you’re going to have to craft it. That wouldn’t be so bad if its recipes weren’t more or less discontinued; the vast bulk bought up by speculators leaving you to gamble rng style dumping untold amounts of mats just to attain the recipes you want. Even after thakittens primary resource is time gated, the refined version of which is also time gated, meaning a full armor set will take 30 days to make, assuming you don’t miss a single, godkitten , day. To top it all off, you can’t even sell it, and it’s not even Ascended.

I’m genuinely curious at this point: the time gates may have had their use at the stat’s inception, but now that the materials and recipes are crafting only, extremely scarce, time gated and account bound as well, it doesn’t seem like Anet could have devised any greater turnoff to the whole stat.

Understandably I am a member of a very, very small minority but nevertheless I feel the issue should be addressed. If the time gates can’t be removed, some sort of rationale may provide solace or at the least be greatly appreciated.

NOTE: This build will NOT function in sPvP for a myriad of reasons. It’s best not to even consider the possibilities.

Since Cantrip Ele is beyond nerfed and everyone seems to be gridlocked into x/x/x/30/30 or some variant of Fresh Air, the goal of this build/thread is help bring some build variety back into the Ele while working with what we’ve got. As someone with >100 hours with Ele, I am not remotely qualified to determine whether this build has any future in it’s current state. This is where you come in:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhMmYbtR3gjEABFCgw4RIiQiowDlC5A-jACBoeBkKBkIAI5rIasFhDRr6KsqaER1qbYSBAx0I-e

Pros:
Celestial gear is taken because the three attunements you’ll be using benefit heavily from all of them. Fire is a mixed bag of power and condi damage. Water is mainly healing with some condi and Air is all crit damage. The toughness and vitality Celestial provides go to improving your otherwise miserable armor and health.

Naturally, being a jack of all trades means you’re a master at none, so you’ll be getting extra bonuses from your signets. Signet of Fire brings your crit chance to an acceptable level, while Signet of Restoration provides enough passive healing to make up for your low health pool. Activating your signets is essential to proccing auras, which in turn provide might, fury, swiftness and protection for up to 7 seconds each. Naturally these boons are short lived, but your 40% boon duration thanks to your runes keep them around long enough without sacrificing too much in the process. The two auras on your daggers also provide these buffs, totaling 4 auras available in any attunement, 6 in total. These make you tanky, fast and powerful. Sounds great right?

Cons:
Your condi removal is pretty kitten. period. You can remove 2 conditions passively every 10 seconds but that’s hardly enough to counter the meta. Cleansing wave will cure one extra condition but that’s on a 45 second cd and from there you’re pretty much screwed. Signet of Water can be swapped for Cleansing Fire but you’re going to lose access to an aura as a result.

CC is also difficult to deal with. Signet of air will break stuns but after that you’ll have to wait until Armor of Earth procs at 50% health to have any safety from stuns. Once your mobility and range is subverted you’re essentially defenseless to this approach. VI in Arcane can be swapped to III for a stunbreaker at 25%, but perma-vigor is a large price to pay.

Earth attunement is also completely useless. Earthquake can’t be cast without a stun set up and there is no feasible way to pull off Churning Earth without Lightning Flash. The bleeds cannot be stacked in any effective fashion from your auto and Ring of Earth and although Magnetic Grasp/Leap are great combo finishers, they are also very, very, very slow.

PvE doesn’t merit discussion because it’s inherently a faceroll. Focus works well here due to all the projectile mitigation.

From there I’m pretty lost as to how to accommodate to the build’s weaknesses. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve pugged enough dungeons to feel remotely qualified to answer this so here’s my two cents:

Current dungeon design does not reward clearing trash or completing all encounters. You will make better gold/hour in far less time avoiding mobs and receive far less frustration for doing so. I have yet to see a dungeon where this isn’t the case save FotM. You can argue that this is ‘avoiding the challenge’ of dungeons but dungeons in their current form aren’t remotely challenging for an experienced player or coordinated group. Tedious imo would be a better word to describe them, and skipping lessens the tedium. This isn’t to say however that dungeons are devoid of any potential to challenge experienced groups. They need adjustment.

Until skipping becomes detrimental to a party or an inferior method of clearing the problem will persist and grow. People have had months to learn the ins and outs of encounters and where it’s beneficial to skip. AC can be cleared nearly as fast as CoF, TA is not far behind.

The best solution to this ‘dilemna’ is the advice you’re giving to people who want to rush, which should really be the other way around. I’m going out on a limb when I say that people who rush in pugs are the majority or close to it. If you want to avoid these people you’re going to a) ask before hand or b) stop pugging.

I’ve heard that dungeon encounters are going to be tweaked in the coming month(s); let’s hope this solves the problem.

Is this really a point of contention? Of course you can play the game solo, nothing’s stopping you until you try and try to take on something meant for multiple people. Arenanet’s philosophy for GW2 dictates that the game should encourage interaction; fitting encounters around that idea is perfectly sound. I don’t see what you’re trying to prove here.

Swords and longbow both benefit highly from condition damage. Bleeds on the swords and burning on the bow, though your #3 on the bow will be somewhat weaker as a result. For utility, I’d either go full shouts or full banners. The grandmaster for tactics is what make these two support options viable, the heal on shouts and the regen on banners, meaning whichever one you pick will severely cripple the other.

Nerfing stealth wouldn’t solve it. You’re still having to continually load and reload your model which will take time. Depending on how active wvw is, the change could go completely unnoticed to a crippling nerf to the point of unplayability. Culling is the priority and short term changes would only squander development time.

Volkon’s pretty much got it. Stealth isn’t the problem here.

Wait, there are MMO forums that aren’t insufferable? What standard are you holding this to?

By ‘Loot’ are you referring to RNG or items in general? Dungeon armor and skins are a legitimate form of progression whereas RNG is an aging but still valid mechanic due to the element of unpredictability and excitement it adds to the universe. Every mob cannot give amazing loot, but every mob has a varying potential to do so, meaning there remains incentive to kill trash but not an incentive to shamelessly farm it. Skins reward time spent in game with visual aesthetics that are pleasing to the individual. The notion of GW2 ‘not being about the loot’ attacks the idea of materialism and the gear treadmill; it’s not debating the legitimacy of equipment-based progression.

That being said, I’d stop playing if loot was removed because it’s a reward and progression system that works and is enjoyable. The proposal that loot is a broken or necessary mechanic is absurd and you’re construing the idea you’re presenting here.

Dolan.3071:

Oh my god people, soon it’ll be considered cheating to have “bait” during Detha’s chain challenge. Clearly you’re exploiting the fact that gravelings (for the most part) go for the nearest target and are using this “glitch” to keep them on the traps… If the game allows it, then it is strategy, if you are using a foreign program to interfere with your actions within the game, THEN IT IS CALLED CHEATING.

Um… no. It’s an obvious fault in the code, are you daft? Your subjective interpretation of the word cheating isn’t set in stone, your is it remotely applicable to anything outside your control.

critickitten.1498:

Apparently, crafting requirements (which many people hate), underwater combat (which many people hate), combo field requirements (which many people hate, and didn’t even work properly so it had to be removed) still qualify as “letting people play the way they want to play”. Apparently he and I do not have the same understanding of that term, as I find that the new system is far more restrictive and forces players directly into areas of the game they don’t want to be involved in, which he specifically promised would not happen until after it was possible to choose your own daily reqs.

And you know what would have avoided all of this hassle and kept a buggy product from releasing before it was ready? I’ll give you a hint, it’s something that players like myself have been suggesting for months: a PTR server.

Sorry, but the dev team that promised us “when it’s ready” doesn’t get very much leniency with regards to releasing broken, buggy, or unfinished content. And they put that burden on themselves.

Problems here:
1) It is realistically impossible to implement a daily system that allows players to pick only the dailies they wish to complete under the parameters Anet have set as precedent. The player base as a whole both enjoys and dislikes every aspect of the game, which each individual player liking and disliking certain things. There will inevitably come a time where no matter how many toggle able dailies you have, you’ll be ‘forced’ (extreme air quotes hair because this exceeds first world problems) to do a daily you don’t like. I didn’t like Daily Kill Variety. I still don’t like Daily Kill Variety. Does that mean the system as a whole is flawed? No.

2)
a)PTR servers don’t fix bugs. The time required to both read player feedback and fix bugs remains the same regardless of their presence but still come with a slew of additional variables that require tending to. In terms of money/time, a PTR for something this minuscule would be an incredible waste of funds.
b)Sure, you can have these issues addressed before launch, but you’ll also have the patch delayed for several days and an immense amount of kitten about an update that isn’t live festering in the forum for weeks.

3)Only the combo Daily has been confirmed broken and removed to my knowledge.

As usual the vocal minority hilariously blows things vastly out of proportion and stands as eternal testament as to why the ’don’t fix what isn’t broken’ mentality is utter tripe.

OP is the pinnacle of knee-jerk reactions.

My mistake, I meant items. It’s besides the point though.

I’ve begun to reach the point in several dungeons where I’m having trouble spending the tokens I get. Even with multiple sets of exotic gear across multiple toons and secondary sets of gear for said toons, tokens continue to pile up with no way to sink them. True, I could buy a truckload of exotic gloves and forge them for MAD PROFITZ, but I’d like to think of tokens as something that isn’t another way to flood the market with items.

Are there any plans to extend the usage of tokens past the dungeon sets? Will we see Gifts being used for more than just Legendaries, or new rewards all together?

I think you should follow your own advise. This mentality has arisen because the meta currently rewards it. It’s rewarding to speed-clear for maximum tokens/profit and it generates a narcissistic mentality in those who capable of clearing dungeons the fastest. The advice you’re giving to your friends is as far as your going to get in changing the social norms of pugs yourself. Pressing the matter further on people who are unwilling to comply will only generate conflict and make you an active participant in it.

A hard mode wouldn’t solve the easiness of dungeons. They’re easy because they lack intuitive mechanics. There are fights where those mechanics are satisfactory to a degree (lupi) but the vast majority remain tank and spanks. Bumping up the stats of bosses only bottlenecks the dungeon community by restricting content to people who aren’t running with the best gear to counter the increased stats. Kholer in AC could 1 shot you with every attack he’s got but he’d still be a cakewalk because he can’t touch you as he is now.

That’d be a problem if there actually were big, unavoidable hits in PvE. The only fight that really comes to mind where damage becomes unavoidable is Alpha, but if you’re playing that fight correctly your squishies in the party shouldn’t be eating huge damage once you’re stacked. Agony is percentage based so vit isn’t really a factor.

Health pools aren’t the be all end all to survival mechanics. Thieves, eles and Mesmers outclass Warriors in every respect when it comes to mobility and will pump out more damage if played correctly. Your survivability in those scenarios isn’t dependent on your stats like the warrior, rather your positioning. Every 1-shot in AC, for example, isn’t dependent on your vitality. Kholer’s pull, the shouts and rocks from the Howling King and Rumblus and the Scavenger’s knockdown cannot be sat through with vitality and toughness alone. You’re either immune, out of range or dead. Even running full p/v/t on a warrior in AC wouldn’t let me live through Kholer’s pull unless I popped Endure Pain. That doesn’t mean you’re unable to melee, though, because you can still whack at kholer after his pull when you’re behind him and the Graveling’s shouts aren’t a 360 degree killzone.

Until PvE actually becomes challenging base health pools will remain to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things. If you can get behind a boss and stay there through mobility as a light class then you’re good to go as far as melee is concerned. Until boss mechanics develop to the point where maintaining this position becomes impossible and distance or vitality is required to stay standing, melee isn’t any less effective.

In hindsight it’s still difficult to determine what was hype and what were statements actually made by Arenanet. My understanding was that there wouldn’t be an [I]emphasis[/I] on vertical progression, but it’d be more than possible to prove me wrong. I believe the current sentiment on the matter is vertical progression will be gradual but not extreme and not enough to lock players out of content. That being said, I’m okay with it. Vertical progression is really only a problem once content becomes available only to a select group of people, and the way things are now we could actually use a difficulty spike if anything.

To be honest, I’d challenge the notion that Ascended Gear in its current form is really a detrimental form of vertical progression. Rings are incredibly easy to come by and require only a maximum of 20 runs to acquire, and only lock players out of content if they’re a) playing fotm and b) not acquiring infusions. For most people in the upper fotm levels, this isn’t really the case. What’s more is that the current methodology of acquiring Ascended gear is going to change very soon and become infinitely more accessible through crafting and the removal of the party limit. Unless the system undergoes a severe change, there doesn’t seem anything to be worried about.

Xx Snoop Dogg xX

Class, race, doesn’t matter.

“seems like” this is your subjective observation and opinion on a mater that is infinitely more complex than you make it out to be. There’s nothing objectively quantitative here to substantiate your claim, so I’d dismiss the assumption as “it’s just you”. You could at least offer a reason as to WHY you blame FotM for this and not the multitude of other variables that could play into your observation.

After sinking 55g on the T3 asuran cultural gear, I’m a bit bummed to see that the the color of the glowing components of the gauntlet is tied to the main color of the undershirt. A monochromatic color scheme + trim for the robes is really boring, so I’m wondering if we could see a 4th swatch implemented on the top to spruce up the aesthetic a bit. With amour appearing being a core part of the pve endgame, I imagine you’d agree that these matters are of some importance.

Also, it’d be awesome if the coat didn’t hide the shoulders, seeing how it defeats the purpose of buying Savant shoulders as a whole.

Anet already said they’re working on a solution for the Fractal leveling system. From what I heard it’s going to involve tiers of some sort but that could all be subject to change weeks down the development line. Going as far as to label it a ‘complete failure’ however is rather uncalled for, however. I’d imagine it’s coming in the December patch or prioritized for next year, but I’m not an insider.

I was on the final encounter in tier 2, dced with an ‘invalid password’ prompt, then was booted to lion’s arch.

In summation,

-kitten the authenticator
-kitten dcs
-kitten anet for not enabling a way to join after a dc

I am so buttmad right now.

Authentication is cool except for when it prompts you with ‘invalid username or password’ while in game and proceeds to autolog you even though there’s no security risk to be found.

Couple that with a fractal run which you CANT ENTER after a dc and my piss runs to a boil.
Might wanna work on that.

Is this a thread seriously trying to argue the presence of something as subjective as fun isn’t prevalent in x y or z?

lol

Erm, no.

There’s still a trinity, you’re attacking a straw man. (Competent) Dungeon runners organize players into dps, control and support. Those categories are broken down into condition/flat dps, hard/soft ccs and boons/heal support in single and aoe variants. You can access a plethora of GW2Codex builds to help understand how these are organized and work in practice. Just because the ‘holy’ trinity is gone and the jack of all trades approach is viable does not mean a trinity is existent.

Zhaitan is indefensible but cherry picking isn’t making your argument valid.

Seeing as the patch didn’t address or do so much as acknowledge any of these ‘issues,’ I assume these points are relevant and will therefore take the liberty of addressing some concerns.

>skin freedom ruins PvP
In doesnt, in fact. From playing roughly a year’s worth of pvp in Runes of Magic where transmutation isn’t limited via armor type I know full well that there are several factors as to why this doesn’t cause issues.
1) If you’re unaware who you’re going to engage with before the first hit you’re probably dead anyways.
2) You can target someone well before they’re on you to know their class
3) You can tell via the weapon selection
4) You can tell via the buffs/particle effects they possess
5) Even if they surprise you the first time, there’s no way you’ll forget who they are on subsequent encounters.
6) Using armor as a class visual cue isn’t a good idea in the first place.

>Class Specific Armor
It already exists, actually. The Heavy armor from HotW is specified as Guardian/Warrior required. Granted, the specification is unnecessary give the current system but I guess it’s a good counterexample??

>‘haha u wrote dung armor’
Sigh.

((I’m unsure if this issue has been addressed/acknowledged but honestly with all the QQing in this forum I don’t think it’s hurting anybody))

This thread isn’t about dungeon armors being too expensive. Take your tl;dr somewhere else.

Two (three) issues here:

1) With the recent patch the AC token values on the armors were lowered slightly to combat speed-clearing or whatever. However, these new values weren’t applied to the remaining seven sets, which is a bug ‘screw you’ to anyone who doesn’t want AC gear for x y and z reasons because they have to run more dungeons. I have yet to see any justification for this and will assume it’s a bug or human error until proven otherwise.

2) Certain dungeons offer stat arrangements that can’t be acquired elsewhere. The problem here is if that stat setup is on an armor skin you don’t like, you’re sol because you’re going to have to effectively run enough dungeons for two sets as opposed to someone else whose skin has their desired stats available. For example, the AC armors offer power, vitality and toughness as a potential stat group, an arrangement that is unavailable via crafted armors or uniques (rurik, yakington etc) gained in the open world. Other dungeons, such as TA or Arah, do not offer this combo. As a control warrior whose optimal stats were previously mentioned, this is quite a setback.

3) ((not specific to dungeons but it’s worth mentioning anyways)) Being unable to transmute skins outside your armor type is pretty limiting in the cosmetic department. As a sylvari I’m quite enamored with the medium/light skins due to their more extravagant foliage while the heavy armors are lacking in that department (protip: don’t bother telling me you disagree, it’s subjective and your opinion doesn’t mean anything). meaning I’d have to reroll a new toon to enjoy something as trivial as an armor skin. One could argue that I should simply get the hell over it, but in a game where cosmetics & skins are marketed via micro transactions over power, you’d think anet would have these kind of options paramount. It doesn’t take a skilled programmer to drum up an “extra-fine transmutation stone” to make this happen.

Sorry your eyes have to be subjected to three heaving text bricks. You poor, unfortunate soul.
Discuss?

Not sure where you’re getting your info from but the wiki says it’s indeed a rifle.

Evidently not, because the mechanics are sound and you’re unwilling to adapt. They’re not something you pick up in ‘a few different runs’.

You seem to be knee deep in unprecedented bigotry but I’ll try my hand regardless for kitten and giggles.

1) There is a trinity. Damage, control and support. If you’re not specced for a certain roll or otherwise fuffilling it there’s no wonder why you’re having trouble.
2) You have a plethora of options once you’ve aggroed the boss as a melee. You can soak the damage through regen and protection, block the hits with aegis/shields/maces, cc them and interrupt their attacks, pull off combos to cover the boss in conditions, kite etc etc.
3)PvE was never built up to be something you can survive by yourself. You’re with people because they’re there to aid you. The dungeons are designed to trash you if you try and handle things solo.
4)Dungeons aren’t pug friendly. From what it sounds like you’re walking in there without strategy, which is more than likely why you’re getting stomped.
5)You’re coining the terms ‘melee’ and ‘ranged’ as seperate classes but that isn’t the case. Weapons are situation-driven, not a preference. There are things you simply can’t melee and can’t range, your setup should adapt to reflect these scenarios.

The impression I’m getting from the OP is that you’re abstaining to adapting to GW2’s mechanics and remain reliant on old MMO combat devices such as target information and whatnot. You argue that the fights only ‘work’ once the aggro patterns become predictable but that’s not how they’re supposed to function in practice. You should be outfitted for handling aggro at any point and be able to adapt to a sudden change, if you continue to be ignorant to surroundings then sorry you’re going to get stomped.

Sorry you’re having pve growing pains. Maybe this’ll help.

Surprise surprise party system is borked again. Someone needs to get on this.

Yes because the only viable pronunciations are the ones you’re acquainted with and everything else is objectively wrong.

But seriously, words carry numerous pronunciations, none of which are ‘incorrect’, it’s horribly subjective. Gathering numerous VAs together for a project of this size (63 film’s worth of dialogue was a statistic, correct?) will inevitably produce a wide range of accents/enunciation. Sorry the game isn’t built around your own little world.

epiphany: not all weapons are used solely for dps

shocking!!!

But seriously, longbow shines in pve dunegons for aoe and mild cc on bosses. You’re doing it wrong if you’re trying to single target dps.

If gravelings are pouncing you in ac em chances are you’re playing badly, and that’s the punishment. Run over to try and rez and get killed in the process? Wow, that was dumb of you. Maybe next time you’ll stay out of its hit box.

That’s because everyone rolls glass canon and cant take a punch. 5 man control/support and you crush everything.

Uerrgh, dead of winter. That leg was absolutely ridiculous. Don’t fret. there are plenty more vet abominations in Orr.

This doesn’t need to be super elaborate so I’ll just put it in plain English. Weapons are just too close to your character. They clip into your pelvis and armor regardless of your waistline. I’m not a modeler but I’m doubtful that simply expanding the range which sheathed weapons are tethered to wouldn’t do more harm than good.

Thoughts?