Guild Wars 2

Does anyone know if taking off your armor affects how much damage you take?

If you haven’t played season 3 ep 6 then you missed ANets take on bard. If we ever see a bard spec then it will be some form of that.

Classes that could do bard would be Mesmer or Revenant, possibly ranger but doubtful.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Siren_of_Orr

Anet’s silence on the matter is par for the course when they make a controversial change. They introduce and idea and how it’s implemented, and then see how the reaction is. Things are iterated on internally and then discussed, internally. Sometimes that internal discussion is tested on internal testers and semi-external testers who could not be described as “public”.

The weekend playtest demo was a public reveal to a system in this process. Give them feedback on that system and leave the guessing and speculation out.

My feedback: I like the system as a whole except that you cannot see rarity differences for rare and exotic gear. Splitting those out would do miles for this system. As a player I do not like having to gamble to find rares that I was getting from the previous system. If the intention was to add a new gold sink I do not think this was the way to do it. It adds stress (in that the player feels worse about a game system ie has less fun) to the game and only adds small amounts of QoL. Splitting out the rarities stops that stress and allows for the player to identify (and use the gold sink) for rares and exotics and salvage or sell the rest.

As a player I would be far more likely to sell the unidentified blues and greens on the TP to let others gamble if they want.

Lokki.1092:

xikira.3264:

Will we be forced to use mounts to get to certain areas for the story? Or will we have the choice of walking to get there or using a mount? I am super excited for the expansion I love guild wars but I don’t like mounts. It is a personal preference I feel they ruin the immersion so I don’t want to use the mounts. Will this be an option or will I have to use mounts to get to certain areas for the story?

It seems the Raptor will absolutely be needed.

The mounts are not speed increases, they are movement skills just like the HOT mastery skills.

They all will be needed since they stated that each has a unique movement skill. The extent that they will be needed is the important part. You don’t need Leyline gliding but it sure helps in some places.

The real question I want answered is will be able to use the mounts in other areas of the game like they added gliding to everywhere.

They know how many tickets are out there that people have been sitting on. They also know that people freak out when anything Abaddon is mentioned, so they are testing the market and glut of tickets to see if it will sustain the price increase.

Pay for Fun

There is also Personal Story instances that you can be doing to supplement your exp gain. GW2 game world is huge and if you take time to do everything, harvest everything, raise every corpse you see and look for events and event chains you can level quite quickly.

You are also not limited to staying in areas that are for your level. You can go to higher levels and jump in on events that large groups are doing. There are champion trains that you can get on that will give pretty good experience.

Use this website to find out what is going on and when: http://gw2timer.com/

HoT introduced a system to GW2. That system is not fully implemented until there are more Specializations added.

You can’t think of Reaper for example as a vertical progression of the Necromancer, but rather as a focusing on a particular play style.

Classes like the reaper will be most likely patched to be closer to the original design as time goes on. The Reaper was supposed to be a close quarters direct damage build. But because the current state of the game doesn’t have other choices, people play condi reapers instead. In a few years as the HoT introduced system is fleshed out we will have more and more specializations and Reaper can be patched to its designed build style. If soothsayers are to be believed then a Condi/Debuff specialization is next that will thrive in Condi build arena. This allows Anet to move the Reaper back to its roots as a power direct damage heavy hitter.

This only works when there are more and more specializations. As we get more, the system will make more sense. It just a game of time.

Work in HoT isn’t useless and never will be as it feeds the system they designed for the future.

One of those 400 is the guy refilling the snacks.

Yeah…this is premature…also pointless as this release is the culmination of two years of paid developer time. They will be released no matter the overall opinion.

I like the heavy set and don’t know about the light, since it seems very dependent on the VFX with it.

IMO, I think they should have made the armor less about physical appearance and more about an VFX aura you get, maybe even choosing from a group of auras to display.. That along with full stat swapping would have made it work for me.

That would allow me to choose whatever skin I want/like with a cool aura and setting my stats for the situation. Doing it this way would increase the value of the armor in my mind and actually be something I’d want to work for. As it stands now, since the medium is so ugly (IMO) I wouldn’t waste my time.

This wasn’t in GW2, but in GW1 I remember when the game first came out getting a black dye drop in presearing and selling it to a vendor to clear out my pack.

I agree with Vayne that of the mechanics of this fight, the penalty box is the one that makes things “unfun.” I play with family members in GW2 and we often do story steps together. GW2 is an MMO and should be playable in all modes taking MP play into account. The penalty box is a bad mechanic. It’s not fun, and should be replaced with something else.

Sadly, the devs have already stated that there is some technical reason why they can’t (or won’t) get rid of it. I’d love to know why as for the life of me, I can’t see a reason.

Watching the last WP video, he was going through the Bastion of the Penitent raid for story bits and reading a book dialog popup he came across the following dialog:

“An old, tattered book, assumedly from the prison library.”

I’m not a teacher or a grammar stickler, but for some reason it jumped out at me. “Assumedly” is not a word. It’s probably because WP read it out loud.

It should be “assumably” or better yet “presumably” for it to mean what it was meant in context.

My daughter wants to go into game design as a writer and narrative designer and after pausing the video, I used this as a teaching moment for her, that even big companies with large budgets can make mistakes, and why proof reading your work is important.

All this to say, I’m curious about the process of writing these small bits of dialogue.

Also, what other weird bits have people seen in the dialogue throughout the game?

Personally, I wish this is how all of the precursors for Legendary Weapons were done. They can keep the expense and all that, but make quests that give you lore about the item. It was so good, and adds so much to the game.

This is good news for everyone as this fight has been a thorn in everyone’s side…

OK…sorry.

What I’d like to see addressed is:

The Penalty Box – This isn’t fun. The encounter isn’t a raid and it’s required to finish the story which is what a lot of people just want to do. If you were to change the encounter to have challenge motes that include a penalty box mode for an achievement, I think that would be the only way I’d like to see it stay.

Gliding – This part is OK if you hit the updrafts and don’t get smacked down by rocks. The problem is that the entire player base has been trained to jump into updrafts to glide…not run into them and hit a key. Why did you change how it works in this singular instance? Also…they are buggy…so there are many times where they just don’t work.

Encounter Phases – The entire thing needs phase waypoints that you can restart from as you progress instead of having to do EVERYTHING over from the beginning if you wipe. Again…this isn’t a raid.

Break Bar Bugs – The ONLY way I was able to finish this encounter was a lucky hit after playing through it multiple times. Each previous attempt had us stuck at the final phase unable to break his bar and do any damage. Just an endless stalemate. There needs to be some sort of timer that kicks in if this stalemate happens so that the encounter just finishes at some point. Playing a Valkyrie Reaper, I was indestructible, and so was he. I ran around for 30 min trying everything I could to get the breakbar to fall while my party mates were stuck AFKing in the penalty box. This isn’t fun.

Over all, it’s not a bad encounter…just not well put together.

From the recent AMA, they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Wooden Potatoes talks about it in a video:

Hats will never have your hair style attached and visible for one simple reason: Hat are your hair as far as the games models are concerned. For ANet to give you hats that include your hair, they would have to do one of two things:

1) Create a separate model variation for every hair style for every race and gender for each hat. Then they would need to update that hat with every new hair style they add to the game, forever.

2) Completely change how player models work in game by adding a new layer to the models specifically for hats. This would mean a complete rework of every player model head for each race and gender to add this layer. Then every hair style would have to be adjusted to line up with the bottom part of the hat, for every race, gender and hair style in the game and updated every time they add a new hair style to the game, forever.

Or they could just leave the system as it is and make new hats.

The combat speed debuff is there to add tension to areas and make them feel more dangerous. Personally I think it should be changed to only take affect under certain circumstances:

1) If the player uses a combat skill that targets a creature.
2) If the player is hit for a certain percentage of their hit points.
3) If the player is hit with a specific lockdown skill.

So a drake hitting you for 5 HP wouldn’t trip these conditions unless you turn around and hit them back. This is basically a QoL thing but would make a huge difference in traversing areas.

This bug has hit my group as well, so it isn’t that rare. We get to the 25% mark and no rifts and locked bar. NOTHING can damage him or break the bar. All CC tried but nothing happens…no rifts spawn…just endless looping of lightning and running around.

Frankly, this boss fight needs a count down timer when he gets to 25% that just hard breaks his bar to break the stalemate.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Yeah, I’ve long wished the quality of the loot drops were better overall. Most of what I get – crafting mats included – are just not worth anything really. Would be nice if this changed, but I don’t think it will.

I don’t mind opening bags if there’s a decent chance for something decent inside, but mostly it’s not that great.

Finally, getting that mastery for auto looting has actually improved my attitude for loot. At least I don’t have to pick it up anymore.

I think the only solution to a horizontally designed loot system is massive variety in loot. Variety adds value if there are enough game systems to apply it too. GW2 needs so many other things to do with low level crafting mats besides mindless TP flipping. Completely change how the decoration system works for guild houses and allow even green planks to be used to make decorations. Add guild member housing so that each player can make decorations for there own room or suite. Add craftible trophies for player Halls of Legend that we can fill with reminders of our exploits. Add junk collectors throughout Tyria like GW1 had that will give you map currency for trading in seeming worthless junk.

I’m sure there are more ideas and ways loot could be used but sadly this all takes development time that doesn’t add to the bottom line like living world updates and expansions do.

So I just read through the review of the new legendary process on Dulfy and it’s basically a grind and buy mechanic now for all future legendaries. This is pretty disappointing as it’s just boring. Grind currency, by precursor. Rinse repeat.

I understand that they couldn’t figure out how to make journeys without spending development time on it, but isn’t that the point? With the new system, you might as well just get out a CC and buy it off the TP. It’s just as meaningful.

Getting a legendary should be about crafting it by digging through the massive amount of lore that has been written for the GW franchise. Teach us about your world ANet by earning something really cool in the process.

Right now, the system is just “Push 1 to win” and that’s just sad.

I have always agreed with the OP’s position on this topic. GW2 suffers from a design flaw for loot in that GW2 is not a game of power creep like other MMOs. It is a game of skin collecting. The GW2 end game is all about collecting/creating skins for various equipment. You can easily acquire gear that has sufficient stats to play any content in the game, but acquiring skins for armor and legendary weapons is what takes the majority of the play time.

This design is what leads to the issue the OP is talking about. Loot must be had, but play time must be stretched to maximize gem purchases. The problem is there are actually far too few skins in the game. Now looking at the wardrobe you might think that isn’t so, but in reality each weapon should have hundreds of skins with customization options like colors and effects. Each armor piece should have swappable variants and hundreds of choices. Without this its vary model of skin chasing is crippled.

Now, the problem with this is that it is much more expensive to create a skin for armor or weapons then it is to create new and better weapon stats. Fashion Creep vs Power Creep. Games like WoW, which are designed for Power Creep can add new content and people chase after the next cool weapon with better stats that took much less development dollar than a brand new fashion outfit.

In the end, I don’t see a solution to this as GW2 is built on this core concept.

Vayne.8563:

MokahTGS.7850:

Madastertwo.8729:

For my group of 3, we can get to the end fight with Mordremoth, and not sure if it is due to the fact that the instance owner dies in previous stages and is sitting in the penalty box or not, but when the first rift is opened on the final stage, all the adds are killed and gone and Mordremoth remains invulnerable, just spamming his electric damaging circles with no way to do damage to him. This has happened to us 3 times so far. Where the rift used to be is a couple of squiggle white lines. Eventually we just give up and leave.

I wish there was a way to get assistance on these when it happens rather than having to fight your way through the dang thing over and over. I’m assuming it is a bug, but it has happened pretty consistent for us.

This is exactly what happens to my group. We have attempted it many times and it always bugs out in this manner. We have bug reported so many times but it seems to be ignored. Haven’t been able to finish HoT because of this exact bug.

Are you breaking his bar though?

Nothing we attempt has any effect on moving the encounter forward when this point is reached. This includes bar breaking.

Hands down Bubbles is the most dangerous because 98% of the player base has no idea how to handle underwater combat.

Animaltracks.9628:

It is ridiculous that you can get all this useless cheap stuff from the Black Lion Chest. Like crafting bags and transmutation charges and such. I feel sorry for those that buy keys then get crap like this in the chests. At least take out all the bullcrap that is so easy to get in game although mostly useless…. Example….. Transmutation charges , tomes of knowledge, and other junk

Then it wouldn’t be gambling.

Paulytnz.7619:

Two words:

Pirate Skritt

That’s all that matters, nothing more, nothing less. Now, lets just hope this indicates they will be a new playable race with the next expansion!!!!

A new race is actually quite unlikely, even in an expansion. Wooden Potatoes had a good reasoning of why in one of his videos, but it basically boils down to the amount of content that would have to be produced for a new race is just too much. New classes, specializations, masteries…sure, all possible in the current format of the game. New race, not so much.

Mea.5491:

psychosiz.7109:

Most people quit due to content difficulty

My opinion is that as a Knight Necro I never get downed or die in HoT maps / story, thank you very much. LOL at people wearing full dps meta gear and complaining about “too difficult” content. Full dps gear can be nice if you can handle it, but 9 out of 10 people can’t. Just go to Dragon’s Stand. You will see 5+ people getting downed every second. It’s ridiculous yet they refuse to wear defensive stats. -shakes head-

Yup…I see this all the time. I was a knight necro for a long time until recently switching to a Valk Shroud build. Really just needed a change up but its funny to watch the DPS crowd go down all the time.

Yay….let the speculation continue!! Good job on the trailer…now where did I put my condition cleanse…

Madastertwo.8729:

For my group of 3, we can get to the end fight with Mordremoth, and not sure if it is due to the fact that the instance owner dies in previous stages and is sitting in the penalty box or not, but when the first rift is opened on the final stage, all the adds are killed and gone and Mordremoth remains invulnerable, just spamming his electric damaging circles with no way to do damage to him. This has happened to us 3 times so far. Where the rift used to be is a couple of squiggle white lines. Eventually we just give up and leave.

I wish there was a way to get assistance on these when it happens rather than having to fight your way through the dang thing over and over. I’m assuming it is a bug, but it has happened pretty consistent for us.

This is exactly what happens to my group. We have attempted it many times and it always bugs out in this manner. We have bug reported so many times but it seems to be ignored. Haven’t been able to finish HoT because of this exact bug.

The worst part about this fight is it’s length adds to the likelihood of one part bugging out continually. I still haven’t been able to finish this story due to it bugging out every time on one of the stages throughout the play through.

Blanche Neige.7241:

MokahTGS.7850:

Considering this is the first major boo boo bug in a LOOONG time, I think they are actually do quite well.

But on the other hand, I don’t remember a GW2 patch or update that did not required a fix for something soon after being implemented on the game servers.

This might be true, but since the OP is suggesting that a public test server would help things more than hurt, I’m pointing out that MAJOR issues…like bugs that corrupt databases…happen once out of all the time GW1…and GW2 have been around.

Hexinx.1872:

Apply for job at ArenaNet … full access to test servers.

/closethread

You actually don’t need to work there…

People don’t seem to realize that they do have a test server. It just isn’t public. It is played on by testers taken from the community by invite only.

Many of the bugs don’t happen until you add the changes to a live environment, which means things break. Considering this is the first major boo boo bug in a LOOONG time, I think they are actually do quite well.

Here’s a shot of some fine WvW cuisine…

ShadowPalm.5160:

I already owned gw2, and i just recently purchased HoT so i was wondering if there was any way to give just the core game to my girlfriend?

The price paid for HoT is for HoT regardless of owning GW2 prior to the HoT or not. This is why there was much anger over the set price of HoT for all of the veteran GW2 players.

Hopefully you bought HoT during the 50% off sale which would put its price at a reasonable place of value based on content.

The final stage of Hearts and Minds is still broken. After closing the final rift, Mordy just stands there invulnerable and nothing else happens…NPC don’t push forward and you are stuck in an endless broken instance….

Also, the penalty box needs to go….it’s a horrible mechanic.

All I want is to finish the story.

General Health.9678:

You said “enjoy your content” which is nothing like “actually finish it”.
Happy to have that cleared up.
However the bugs people were reporting initially do seem to have cleared up a bit. Or maybe I was just luckier the last time I did it compared to all the other times I’ve tried it. I no longer see tons of posts claiming this is broken.

Looking through this post there are complaints about the penalty box. That isn’t broken, it’s stupid and horrible but not broken. I see two people saying the updraft didn’t work but one had a friend who managed to complete the mission. Because updrafts work differently in this mission compared to the entire rest of the game (god knows who signed off on that decision) it may be player error not broken updrafts.

So unless I’m mistaken there’s only you with an issue in this thread.

You are mistaken and it’s not just me having the bugs:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Heart-and-Minds-Final-Story-Step-Bugs/page/2#post6191694

Other people in other threads reporting the same…just not that many people reporting as before because…let’s be honest, most people have given up and left it long ago.

Saying that a bug it’s “just you” is irrelevant and actually just wrong information designed to belittle and demean people. This bug is repeatable, reported by an entire party of players and posted here so people can post similar experiences. If you don’t like it or how I express myself, go somewhere else…your response isn’t required.

Vyrulisse.1246:

It’s getting to the point of ridiculousness. Why even have an exchange if most people will not be able to ever afford it.

To give the illusion that this is an option for cheap players. ANet has no motivation to change the current trend. They WANT people buying gems with cash for gem store purposes…they DO NOT want people to buy gems with free in game gold.

The more people get frustrated by high exchange costs the more likely those same people will pony up $10-20 for gems of their very own.

General Health.9678:

MokahTGS.7850:

Anet, fix this boss fight so that those that solo it and those that don’t can actually enjoy your content.

From the number of people talking about having completed it and offering advice to others I’d say it’s actually working. I don’t think a goal should be to make it enjoyable.

Pretty sure you misread my post to read that I think it should be ANet’s priority to make it fun…I said to make it work. From the number of bug reports its clear that it doesn’t and still has bugs. Critical story breaking bugs. By enjoy, I mean actually finish it…which I can’t due to the critical game breaking bugs encountered.

While I appreciate people evaluating the fight and the mechanics, this thread doesn’t need to devolve into “Is it soloable?” debate. That’s not the issue.

The broken mechanics are. Anet, fix this boss fight so that those that solo it and those that don’t can actually enjoy your content.

There are zero reasons why this fight should still be broken. Design it so that things have failsafes. Just do something.

I don’t know about any other gorillas in GW2 but ANet needs to make this happen…

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mallyx's_Savagery

For #2 I’ve been playing a Valkyrie build of reaper and its quite fun. It’s a shroud build with high vit and high crit chance when in shroud. I do enough damage and can take some pretty big hits.

Silencer.7614:

As for Mordremoth being invulnerable after the rift have you tried breaking his bar? It’s been a while since I did the fight but I believe he is only invulnerable until you break his bar. After you break it you can dps him down for a short period. Then you use the rift again, break his bar again and dps, rinse and repeat until dead.

Yes, tied everything…his bar was basically grayed out and not able to be broken…it was just bugged out.

The final stage of Hearts and Minds is still broken. After closing the final rift, Mordy just stands there invulnerable and nothing else happens…NPC don’t push forward and you are stuck in an endless broken instance….

Also, the penalty box needs to go….it’s a horrible mechanic.

All I want is to finish the story.

I agree that there should be something given for leveling after mastery cap. Progression is a game design mechanic, not some entitlement…we are playing a game…rewards are part of the core design mechanic.

There will be however more masteries added, but the system should be designed from the ground up to handle what happens at cap. End game design.

sirsquishy.2619:

Auto loot doesn’t let your characters to afk out of the game. That is why

Ah, ok…but this is a patch thing…not a policy thing. Something that clearly is not working as intended and will/should be patched.

I’m not understanding why this is such a difficult problem to fix: Why aren’t players bumped offline after an hour if they don’t move? Skill use is irrelevant as you will auto-1 if something attacks you.

Taking a step in any direction however is something that doesn’t happen automatically…have the system check for that. If that is in place only macro-afkers would still be around. You couldn’t leave your character in a location to farm over night since you’d get bumped after an hour…unless you macro-stepped which is a clear violation of the rules.

I’ll leave this here…

Not really sure why they would limit the slots in the first place…its just more gems for them. Its not like the shared slots suddenly make you over powered or something. If they are worried about PvP for some reason, you just disable the slots in the arena and enable them in the lobby…