Guild Wars 2

Elyndis.2130:

DeltaZero.6310:

3. "Whatever “normal” trait you put in the last slot is “powered up”."
If you don’t use an elite spec the specialization you put in the last slot has better effects.

This is a decent idea, but a lot of the places where elite specs aren’t broken aren’t really the numbers… it’s more that they make the class more well-rounded, and give them more utility, and skills. Like, mesmers are tanky now, you can no longer easily kite guardians, who also do more damage… elite specs basically turned most classes into something that has both high offense and high defense. The exceptions are daredevil and berserker – daredevil improved the thief’s defense, but not significantly enough to help the class keep up with the rest in fights, and berserker didn’t do enough for the warrior’s ability to help it survive in teamfights either.

It’s really difficult to balance things when most classes have both high defense and high offense. I think builds should excel at one or another – not both. So, I should be able to have either a tanky elementalist that can hold a 1v1 without being much of an offensive threat (being able to hold a 1v2 indefinitely is broken), but I should also be able to have a squishy elementalist with poor sustain that can burst people down.

What this comes down to is… elite specs should be an alternative. Herald should turn rev into a lower-dps tanky class, whereas it should be a moderate-dps bruiser class otherwise. Herald becomes not an obvious improvement, but something that changes the way the class is played – it offers benefit at a cost. Dragonhunter should turn guardian into a high-dps squishy class, whereas it should be a lower-dps, tanky class otherwise. I feel like dragonhunter is relatively close, but it should be squishier than it is.

So that’s just my thought. I’d like to see Berserker as a class that gives the warrior even greater offense while making it a bit squishier (maybe applying some damage to self for some insane burst capabilities), but this would only be decent if the other elite specs weren’t giving classes ridiculous amounts of everything.

Berserkers are objectively bad, this coming from a warrior. I also have alot of exp with other classes too but got bored of them since HoT cause they are too ez.

Berserkers sort of add to warrior damage if you use GS or Rifle or Mace. Any other weapon and the primal burst skill is just plain inferior to normal burst.

The berserker utilities are also exceptionally bad for pvp, seemingly more geared towards pve. Effects are very marginal such as reflection, launch and kb. Outrage = a bad or mediocre stun break for berserker depending on using melee or range.
Note that the cast time for these utilities have also relatively long cast time and do nothing more than do not alot of damage for their usage. For comparison damage utilities from necro do up to 3k damage rating within respective build or dragon hunter for the same cooldown while being aoe + inflicting controlling effects.
Headbutt is the most usable utility due to instant cast time, and completely filling the adrenaline which is important.

Entering berserker stance is actually a sacrifice because it needs the entire adrenaline bar, which is a hard to pull off unless you go signet of fury or headbutt. I found using either of those utilities to be mandatory when using the trait line and using both for maximum effectiveness. In berserker stance, pulsing stability from eternal champion is only good for down secure for the most part cause it only stop one stun, which in this meta where dh trap daze spam, grav well stun spam, necro fear and stun spam, it serves almost no other purpose.

I can go on but my last point is that berserker damage is also bad. It adds more damage but not to any significant degree that strength trait gives and it removes one of war’s best counter for blind, the rolling.

Draknar.5748:

ITT: People that honestly thought that legendary crafting “journey” meant they would simply get a list of items, go to TP to buy them, and it would be cheaper than buying a precursor off the bat.

The legendary crafting gives you a long term goal to work towards. You can make all of those deldrimor ingots on your own, for FAR less than 9-10g if you farm the materials yourself. That’s the point.

If you were planning to shortcut by using the TP, then take the ultimate shortcut of buying the precursor from the get-go. If you aren’t interested in speed and want to do it over time slowly for far less than buying on TP, then do legendary crafting and gather the mats yourself.

It’s really that simple. Don’t listen to OP, he doesn’t understand what the point of the crafting is.

do you value your time? If no then we have nothing to discuss because regardless of whatever points I and the people who agree with me makes, you don’t care.
Here is another question.
Are you, by yourself, gonna farm 16,820 mithril ore in any reasonable amount of time? Or about 9,000 iron ore?
Like it or not, all the things that you are farming have a price tag and while you are free to choose to spend your time farming all these materials or get it however you wish, there is still an inherent cost to your decision. I am just telling you what that cost is.

In my view, farming is not a journey. It is a means to an end. Most people are not invested in the act of farming, but the goal from farming. If farming is the “journey”, then the journey is about taxiing into maps to mine ores and chop wood.

So read the posts and main counter arguments are which I’ll reply in order:
A/ This method provide guaranteed legendary
B/ This step by step process somehow keep people on track.
C/ This helps the economy.
d/ This increase the amount of money going out of the economy via more taxes collected on trades off TP.

A. Guaranteed legendary was never an issue. Someone aptly replied to this argument by saying that individual chances at precursor is not guarantee but the community’s chance at precursor is. This meant that even though the individual may never get a lucky precursor drop, someone, somewhere playing GW2 will due to sheer probability and this person can sell it for a price which our unlucky friend can choose to buy or not buy it. The price of precursors are determined by this process.

If said individual still wants to pursue the legendary, despite the process already costing more than what it is worth in term of cost efficiency, then such zeal or masochism, I don’t know what the innate motivation is, do not care about any guaranteed method. Furthermore I’m pretty certain that majority of people do not possess this zeal or masochism.

B. I’ll agree that this process will keep you on track, but in a really toxic way. The legendary crafting tiers are essentially the money collecting process broken down into smaller micro transactions. I’m certain of this because 1 process had me getting 3000 mithril ingots, a sum no single individual will likely get in a reasonable amount of time. This coupled with the other stuff that is required in bulk and quite clearly the only way is to just buy these mats off the TP.

This meant that essentially, the players are slowly gathering the amount of money needed for legendary and then converting it into these things that have no monetary value because they can’t be sold. This makes the player likely more invested in the process because he/she essentially wasted money if he do not follow through, Since the money gathering process is the same, by not being able to convert those things into money the player will literally have wasted time and that makes it a toxic investment.

C + d/ This increases demand for mostly time gated goods and slight increase for components + other mats. Is this good or bad? I think it is bad, currently anyway. This meant that cost are going to be increasing for almost all goods but the amount of liquid asset the player gained each day is marginal at best. This leads to massive deflation which is coupled by the amount of taxes collected from these extra micro transaction which, imo, not a good thing for players especially now.

New players, since F2P, won’t be able to get their foot in the door for essential processes such as max crafting levels because money is harder to get atm. Gold buyers because gem to gold is already a bad but fair ratio comparison now gem to gold will be even worse for gem buyers, which this really only benefit Anet.
Will price of goods lower due to this, idk. Because so many people want things done atm such as guild hall ascended gear for fractals and raids, I can see price staying high for another few months but dropping in at most a year. This is bad for the game because the biggest influx of player is every expansion, right now, and risking losing people in 5 months due to stressful economy is not my way to go.

TL;dR: Monetary cost and opportunity cost of legendary crafting feature far exceeds the cost of just buying the precursor off the TP.

From my own personal experience, I am crafting dusk 2nd tier atm. dusk cost 1100 gold atm. Crafting dusk requires me to get 70 deldrimor ingot, which cost ~9-10 gold. Furthermore there is an extra of 200-300 gold cost of all the other side materials to complete this journey. This is a total cost of at least 830gold -1000 gold.

Furthermore this process is locked behind a time locked barrier which is at least 2 months long. This time lock is impossible to escape because buying all the ingot off of the TP is an un-viable strategy since low supply.

Thus the question comes down to, is it better to just buy the legendary or to craft? The answer I came to is that it is better to buy just because it is less frustrating, and in two months a serious player can get at least 600-800 gold. Because the crafting process cost both time and money, actual cost is exponentially higher than just buying the precursor.

Furthermore, Anet claims that they do not intend to change the price of precursor but they instead arbitrarily increase the cost of the already high costing precursor this way. The only reason why precursor price can stay decently low because most sellers probably recognize that increasing the price will make it astronomically more difficult for them to sell the precursors. However, if taking into consideration of how absurdly long the legendary crafting process is due to time gating, I suspect sellers can raise the price by 100-200 gold to account for it.

In general I think this is a terrible implementation of a possibly good feature because no one in their right mind should do it, it is very shallow and not the journey to uncover the deep story behind each precursor as promised. Furthermore it will not cause deflation because while legendary crafting is a big gold sink, the gold is actually not going out of the economy just to other player who are willing to sacrifice w/e progression they may have in ascended gear, guild hall for gold.Thus it makes legendary more exclusive gold wise than it already was for any new players.

This is not a good strategy for GW2 cause it seems to assume that players will actually stick around for years on end for these aesthetic despite little “progression” . Since very little new content had been released since launch, aesthetics is the bulk of the time sink atm, and aesthetic is not a very good long term incentive for most people. When considering that other MMO ares coming out, such as Blade and Soul next january, it make more sense to reward the already hard effort that players put into crafting the legendary instead of punishing them by arbitrarily lengthening the process.