Guild Wars 2

Transmutation Charges are almost free if you have an open character slot.

It only takes about 20 minutes to map complete all 6 main city locations, which yields 6 transmute charges. If that’s not enough, delete your new character, make another one, and do another 6 from just the main cities. 20 minutes time isn’t all that much.

Mobility and damage avoidance (through blocking and invulnerability) is intended to be the necromancer’s primary weakness. It is a highly offensive class by design. What you’re asking for would unbalance necromancers.

If you want to play defensively, you’re going to have to focus on your ability to face-tank. Bring skills and traits to the fight that give you good up-time on protection boon or damage reduction from other sources such as shambling horrors (they absorb 50 percent of the damage you would receive while they are attacking). Do what you can to extend and sustain death-shroud as much as possible.

Those are your defensive options as a necromancer.

This problem isn’t just limited to Verdant Brink: I completed Auric Basin a few days ago and haven’t received a map completion chest for it. I asked about the problem in map chat and someone told me that this is a known problem and is caused by already having 100% map completion in Core Tyria. I don’t know if that’s actually the case, but sounds plausible.

MasterMc.7543:

Map completion chest are not being rewarded and all maps. Maps that i left with only one point to complete before patch, and then go to complete point after 100% the map but no chest. Same holds too for hero point consumables that are used to complete from other maps will award hero point and 100% but no chest. See my gaurdian history log for info on maps i have tried.

This is still a problem. I just completed all Hero Points, POIs, Vistas, and Waypoints on Auric Basin last night but did not receive a map completion bonus chest when I did. I was hoping to get the profession specific exotic chest so that I could progress my Elite Specialization Weapon Collection, but I guess I’ll have to wait.

Tonipburg.5043:

Anets number is useless as it will just send you back to forums and opening a ticket. Please do as I am intending to do, contact their parent company NCSoft at 1(512)225-6359 and speak with customer service.

Ummm… I’m pretty sure NCSoft is no longer ANet’s Parent Company anymore… There was a WoodenPotatoes video about that news right around the time ANet announced Guild Wars Core Game was going free-to-play. So contacting NCSoft won’t solve anything.

Razor.9872:

Funny how you are saying hero challenges should be soloable and only take a couple minutes.

I don’t know what your definition of challenge is, but that is not mine.

I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying the ones in Pact Tyria were that way. Not that they should be that way.

I’m saying that the developers balanced the 400 point cost for the elite spec on the assumption HP challenges in HoT would be equally accessible as the ones in Pact Tyria, when that isn’t the case. This assumption made the cost unbalanced when HoT challenges are gated in their implementation.

OP, the precursor scavenger hunt collection is not supposed to be cheaper than the precursors on the trading post. If it was, the precursors would lose their value and that would damage the economy.

The scavenger hunt collections are intended to provide a means of obtaining a precursor for your legendary over time, so that people don’t have to save up gold over months and months to purchase one from another player. It provides a journey towards a goal, so that crafting your legendary feels more rewarding when you finish it and so that people can feel like they are making daily, visible progress towards finishing it.

OP, here’s the thing: The idea concept was sound. 400 hero points to unlock an elite specialization with hero point challenges in Heart of Maguuma providing 10 per completion sounds about right. People who were psyched up about HoT and went ahead and got map completion in Pact Tyria would only have to complete 19 HP challenges to unlock their specialization. That’s about 1.5 Heart of Maguuma maps worth. That’s reasonable.

Until you realize that the Heart of Maguuma HP challenges aren’t the same as the Pact Tyria HP challenges in terms of accessibility.

In Pact Tyria, any character could solo accomplish any of the HP challenges without much difficulty in under a couple of minutes. In Heart of Maguuma, half the HP challenges are gated in some form or another by masteries and the other half are Champion boss fights with a 5 minute time limit. This means a character can’t just go to all the hero points and complete them solo to unlock their specialization before experiencing the new content. They have to experience the new content first in order to earn the experience for the masteries, or they have to acquire some help from others in order to defeat the champions within the allotted 5 minutes and not everyone wants to wait around doing nothing at a champ HP for more players to show up.

So, on paper, Anet’s original reasoning for elite specializations costing 400 points sounded good. But once it was implemented with the difficulty and accessibility they wanted the hero challenges to have, it was no longer balanced properly for a fun experience.

Tora.7214:

try doing that to a revenant, a dragonhunter or a scrapper

You can also add Necromancer and Elementalist to the list. You don’t need revealed debuff to deal with permastealth trap thieves, just a lot of untargeted AoE damage.

I was in WvW yesterday and I was following the zerg train in SoS borderlands. My character’s bags were filling up with loot, so the next time the zerg came to a gate, I had my character auto-attack the gate while I opened the TP window to sell some stuff.

I salvaged a rare and received a major rune. I opened the TP window for buying and selling this particular rune and I pressed the “Sell Instantly” button. Before pressing this button, my wallet had 511 gold. After pressing this button, my character had 456 gold and the rune did not sell instantly: it placed a sell order for 4 silver and 13 copper, which I cancelled several minutes later.

I checked the transaction history and it showed no transactions that would have taken 45 gold from my wallet. I have absolutely no idea where this gold disappeared to.

I fully realize it is highly unlikely that I can be reimbursed for the gold I lost, and I’m not too worried about that: it’s only 45 gold in a fictional universe. What I am worried about is a glitch in the trading post that is stealing funds from players, some of which may not even notice that it’s happening.

Please look into this and see that it gets fixed. Thank you.

Kocoff.7582:

WOW THAT ELITE.

" Ennemies struck with this ability are finished"

goodbye basilik V.

Ummmm…

You’re missing something essential there. It only works on “Downed” enemies. It’s just an alternate way of finishing opponents and takes about the same amount of time to do the whole chain of skills as it does to just press ‘F’ and finish them like normal. The only time it will be faster is when the second skill in the chain causes the enemy to go into the downed state.

Your standard dagger/dagger elementalist traited for water magic and running cantrip utilities and Ether Renewal has some insane condition removal. Ether Renewal all by itself will remove 9 conditions (8 from the skill itself and another 1 from the cantrip trait giving you regeneration boon at the end) and the water magic trait reduces it’s cooldown to about 14 seconds. On top of that, all of your utilities will remove a condition when used. And if that isn’t enough, if you have Arcana traited as well, you lose a condition or two when you switch attunements to water magic and Dagger 5 in water magic will cleanse yet another condition. Evasive Arcana will cleanse a condition when you dodge in water attunement too.

With that much condition removal, there really isn’t any class in the game that can win against you with condition damage.

Silverkey.2078:

It’s the best necromancer condition weapon, which is why condi necro are terrible. Look at good condi classes.

Ok then, even outside of necromancer class. Any class at all. What weapon would you have compared it to in order to show the inefficiency of the Revenant Mace? I chose the necromancer scepter because they had similar auto-attack chains.

Tim.6450:

I’m not sure if necromancer scepter is the best example of how a good condi weapon is being done.

Silverkey.2078:

And yes, go to the necro forum and see how little people like the scepter. It is far from being an ideal source of conditions nor damage.

Koalachan.3451:

As a necro main, I really felt like throwing my hands up in despair after you said Scepter is a balanced Necro weapon.

Is there a better condition-focused weapon that I should have compared it to? It stacks up bleeding quite well and maintains poison and cripple. If you’re running a full-condition damage+duration gear build, what is better in the main-hand?

So, by auto-follow, do you mean you want it to move along at the same pace as the character at the edge of the tether distance when the character tries to move outside of the tether distance instead of just despawning the tablet?

If so, that sounds good. Might be hard to code that though. Probably won’t get that.

If you want it to just always follow you around without having to manually move it at all, like it’s an NPC, I’m against that.

The Revenant Mace needs a buff.

Comparing it to the Necromancer Scepter, which is a well-balanced condition-based weapon already in the game, the inferiority of the Revenant Mace becomes apparent.

First, the mace forces you into melee range. I feel this would be a good reason for the devs to make the damage co-efficient for the base damage the mace deals a little bit higher than the scepter, but even if they did, unless they made it a lot higher, it’s not enough to justify the range difference when you consider the other problems the mace has that work to compound this range issue.

Second, the mace has no skill that gives a snaring effect. No cripple, no chill, no immobilize, no stun, no pull effects. And no shadowstepping or swiftness effects that would help the Revenant cover distance when their enemy is moving away from them. They do have a leaping attack with Mace 3, but the way it’s designed makes it less useful for covering distance, like Ranger Greatsword 3, and more for creating an AoE blast effect. The Necromancer Scepter can cause cripple with it’s Scepter 2 ability, making the Necromancer’s weapon superior again.

And third, the real problem I find with the mace is the conditions it applies. Under the right circumstances, Torment can be superior to bleeding, but that requires you to keep the enemy moving. This is incredibly difficult to do when you’ve locked the person applying the torment into melee range. If you stay moving to keep the enemy following you, you run the risk of moving out of melee range and missing your attacks, while if you focus on staying in melee range, the enemy isn’t going to move and your torment is going to be lack-luster compared to the bleeding that the Necromancer’s Scepter can apply. It seems as though this might have been accounted for by giving the Revenant access to a fire field and a blast finisher with Mace 2 and 3 so that they can get some burning and might going to make up for the damage they can’t sustain with the auto-attack chain. However, if you require the rest of your Mace skills to bring the auto-attack in line with the auto-attack of other classes, then the Mace is underpowered compared to those other classes when you consider the rest of the skills available on the other class’ weapons.

Silverkey.2078:

I did check the coefficients that were on wiki for hammer, mace and axe and added those for staff. I did a very rough cast time estimate (averaged over 10 to 20 casts) and it was not that different from the sum of official cast times. I assume 25 might stacks, fury, banners. I do not pretend my numbers are very accurate, for example I did not include the vengeful hammers which add a small DPS, nor using any utility for that matter (in principle, mallyx can do some damage although I don’t actually think it is a DPS increase especially since all weapons perform better in berserker). I did not include the crit chance which increases over time because it is non trivial to compute (and we already have high crit)

Did you take into account the Invocation Grandmaster trait, Roiling Mists, that makes fury provide 50% crit chance increase instead of 20%?

I’ve found if you are at less than 50 energy, and you start the Mallyx Elite, then stop it before the degeneration takes you to 0 energy, you will begin to regenerate energy, but the regeneration is permanent until you use another skill. This will take you all the way up to 100 energy and you will just stay at 100 until you use a skill.

If any of the devs are still reading through this thread, I’d like to ask a question. How much harder would it be to alter the functionality of player stomping to disallow shadow-stepping during the animation than it would be to change Shadow Return?

I want to offer that as a solution, since it would solve half the problem that led to the proposed change to Shadow Return. As for using the skill while stunned, can we compromise with a range reduction and an initiative cost increase instead of disabling the skill altogether?

Thief changes: Why is it necessary to nerf mobility on the class that is supposed to be the most mobile and relies on that mobility to function?

Quote:
“We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword… [SNIP]… This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again.”

If you make it difficult for thieves to dodge over and over again, how exactly are they supposed to stay upright? Thieves have the lowest hitpoints in the game, very few condition removal skills and traits, no access to protection or aegis (outside of boon stealing and certain rune sets), and extremely limited access to stability. Any change to a thief’s mobility is a HUGE, GAME-ALTERING CHANGE.

If these changes are implemented the way they are listed in the preview above:

- Sword will become unused. It already has inferior damage compared to main-hand dagger and is currently only used for it’s utility. Take away Shadow Return’s instant mobility and the sword will lose the final thing keeping it a viable weapon since Larcenous Strike was nerfed last patch and Pistol Whip can’t reliably deal it’s damage (which already happens to be inferior to the sword’s auto-attack).

- Traiting for Vigor will no longer be an option because even with all the trait options selected a character will never be able to keep it active when they need it.

I’m very afraid that thieves will become lepers, much the same way rangers are stigmatized in PvE groups, because they won’t be able to stay alive against the harder content and in PvP.

I too am on the receiving end of this bug. I transferred to Tarnished Coast over a week ago, back before guesting/server transfers were still free. I still haven’t started receiving WvW bonuses. When I move from an Overflow Shard to my World’s server, my health doesn’t change at all, even though it currently should increase by 2%. It’s bothersome.

Crests: Is the omission of Exotic equivalents for Rabid, Magi, Shaman, Soldier, and Traveler upgrades intentional?

Also, on a semi-related issue: Crest of the Shaman provides a primary bonus to Vitality and two secondary bonuses to Power and Healing Power. However, all other Shaman upgrades, like those found on pieces of armor, accessories, and weapons, provides a secondary bonus to Condition Damage instead of Power. Is this intentional, or just something that has been overlooked?

Will either of these issues be brought into conformity with the established precedents?

Holes in the map/terrain:
In the Straights of Devastation I was quickly lured into a very claustrophobia-inducing cave very near the portal to Sparkfly Fen by a mithril ore node. Thinking (and hoping) that I might have stumbled upon the entrance a jumping puzzle, I continued deeper into the cave to see what I could see. Unfortunately for me, it was a dead-end, but exploring the cave as much as I could, I found several holes in the terrain. The large gear/cog looking object in the cave (seen in the first screenshot) offers no collision/resistance with my character and I found I could jump right through it and out of the normal geometry of the map. The second screenshot is a view from the other side of the gear/cog. The third screenshot is also taken from the other side of the gear/cog and shows more see-through terrain. The fourth screenshot is a completely different hole in a different part of the same cave that doesn’t even have anything visual to deter characters from jumping through it and thus out of the map geometry.

poymode.6250:

Gynxz.4079:

1. Those achievements are account wide so all contribute and all can cancel it
2. The reason it stays at a fixed number is because thats the highest you have achieved. If you got it to 80K and died, it will read 80K until you pass that amount of XP w/o dying.

Yes, this is correct.

Also, logging out of the game will reset the exp gain.

Wait a second. You’re saying the “Lifetime Survivor” Achievement in the Hero section of the achievements panel must be completed all in one session? Anet expects us to accumulate 500,000 experience on one character without ever logging out? And even if I have a character with 0 deaths, my progress can be reset if I switch characters and die on the other character?

That can’t be right.