Guild Wars 2

IF they go through with this, they need to buff drop rates across the board to compensate. The ONLY reason I am not 100% against MF gear right now is because farming in this game is insanely tedious and unrewarding 95% of the time, particularly because of the stupid DR on drops. If they take out MF gear, MF food + these piddly account bonuses won’t be enough to compensate. Either raise drop rates on stuff, or loosen the DR. Then this change will be great in my book.

Excellent post. I’ve played a PP Engineer since the game launched, though I do also play a Trap Ranger a lot (though only casually, as in hotjoin only) and I do agree that right now conditions are over the top. In general, there is just far too little condi removal, and too many of the games defensive mechanics work well against power yet do little/nothing against condition damage.

The map is getting way more hate and rage than it deserves, but it does need to be adjusted.

- There need to be fewer glass sections on the ground that people can fall through.

- Cannon damage needs to be reduced, or it’s cool down needs to be increased, or it’s area of effect needs to be reduced, or the shots need to be dodgeable. Pick one.

Any other problems with the map are on a class by class basis, like with Elementalists being able to work the cannon while in mist form.

Tada, map fixed.

Divinity.8041:

I like to solo and zerg farm. What are my options? I started on mesmer (legion then shantasm), but pretty much realized this game only has 4 classes lol.

Thief
Ele
Mesmer
Guardian

Which of the above do you think would be the best overall person to hotjoin with, please emphasize build as well, as that is crucial.

My aim is 200+ point games on average, which any of these can achieve, just wanted your opinions.

Yep, those 4 make up 80% of the hotjoin population, and there is a reason for that. Overall I’d say Thief; they have a really high skill floor and a decent skill ceiling. So if you suck, you can still gib people, but if you’re decent, you can do even better.

I have to agree that the traits in this game are all kinds of messed up. I seem to recall reading, or hearing back in beta, that the developers thought that the one of the strong points they had with the professions in this game, is that the trait system would make it easier for them to make balancing adjustments; and it is SORELY needed.

I really, firmly believe that 95% of the balance complaints about this game, in both pve and pvp, can be addressed with a good, solid pass over the traits of the professions. Most of the mechanics as a whole are good, and not TOO many of the abilities and weapons themselves are bad, but many classes have flat out horribad traits, either in power/function, or in fun/flavor. Mug is a prime example of Blizzard level of facepalm inducing questionable balancing; it is WAY too powerful for what it is and where it is. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum you have garbage grandmaster traits like Remorseless, Moment of Clarity, Bark Skin, Autodefense Bomb Dispenser, etc. Forget about overbalancing utility abilities (elites could certainly use a look) and weapon skills, and take a good hard look at traits.

I think the biggest problem is they honestly do not do enough internal testing to really be familiar with profession balance intricacies across the board. And I don’t think they’re capable of it either, because from what I hear they’re VERY short staffed and have a ton of crap on their plate. Combine that with no PTR and it’s no wonder things are as they are.

Poxxia.1547:

daydream.2938:

If thiefs are so overpowered, how come the top players in paids tend to stack eles,mesmers and guardians, and thiefs are less common?

Thiefs are middle of the pack in terms of balance, certainly not weak, but hardly to write home about.

You have said this before, and let me answer it: Stop turning the thread into 1 dimension and get a broader view. Let me elaborate, if you don’t understand what I am saying. Ele’s in particular bring a lot to the group, not to mention their own capability to survive … trust me, ele’s are gonna get their turn as well. I am not sure if the bugs with guardians persists, but if they do, some of them are really unfun for other players as well … I believe they should be addressed as well. Mesmers … especially TW & Portal have been under heavy fire since forever – if you take these things away and compare their talents to fx the thief I doubt you would trade.
Now … that some classes have some imbalances doesn’t in any way validate, that other classes should have imbalances as well. On the contrary. That is really the culprit, and it should be blatantly obvious why is it so.

I think burst is a good thing … insta-gibbing someone from 50-0 or even 75-0 is not a good thing. It happens on anything from 3.3k armor and downwards. Do you in all seriousness think it is healthy for a game to be promoted by a class than can do this? And do you thinnk the numbers of active players will rise because of this or decline? Will it promote more ppl playing thieves or being the lambs that get slaughtered? And is the development healthy?

No one in their right mind wants thieves to be unplayable. A new balance will occur, once classes are balanced. Maybe other aspects of thieves will be promoted, and thieves will contribute more along with being more durable … who knows. Maybe they will have more builds (hopefully) that are viable and fun … for all.

This post, and the one by MR.Big above are the best two I’ve ever seen on the subject, very objective and fair. Props to you both. I agree that burst to the level that is possible right now should not be possible. I don’t know if certain professions or abilities need to be nerfed, attack scaling needs to be nerfed, or the value of toughness needs to be raised, but there does need to be some toning down. On the opposite end of the spectrum, bunkers need to be toned down as well, as this bunker/burst dichotomy is easily the worst aspect of GW2 pvp; pushing everyone more towards the middle of the spectrum would do WONDERS for variance in builds. In regards to Thieves, I’d love to fight something other than Backstabbers and Heartseeker spammers. I can count on one hand how many P/P or P/D Thieves I’ve seen, and there are even less S/D and S/P Thieves; there is something wrong there. Both in terms of the burst build being too faceroll, and all other Thief builds needing small buffs or quality of life changes. You always see this sort of gravitation in EVERY mmo, anything that has an extremely fubar ratio of ease to play/ power will be flocked to by every Tom, Dick and Harry; and currently that is D/D Thieves. If D/D is toned down, I would love for other Thief builds to get a little love. I can recall one fight in BFK against a P/D and Shortbow Thief, and all he did was evade and teleport all over the place, and I had NEVER seen anything like it before, so I didn’t know what to do and slowly got owned. That was a good experience to learn, and I want more of it.

Stiv.1820:

Obsidus.1206:

Regardless of whatever else is done/not done etc, there is NO justification for a 10 point trait (Mug) hitting for as hard as it does. At the VERY least, Mug should be gutted, period. Argue against any other changes/nerfs all you want, but that much damage passively tied into a ranged move that can be used from stealth for 10 points is ludicrous.

This is honestly a decent argument. You could move mug up to 30 points in DA instead of 10 and move Fury on steal up in trickery. That would make thieves have to choose between 2 of Mug, 20% dmg to 50% health or up front fury instead of having easy access to all three.

Yeah, overall it’s a problem with Steal; it’s borderline horsekitten untraited, but it has way too much access to too many low budget traits that all stack up and work simultaneously to great effect.

Dee Jay.2460:

Mug could have its damage reduced, agreed.

But leave Backstab alone.

Heartseeker needs to be more expensive and less efficient. Leap finisher, auto-targeting, 450 range and lots of damage for 3 Initiative is just too good.

I agree with this; Heartseeker is way over budgeted, it’s too effective and has too many useful attributes for such a low INI cost.

Regardless of whatever else is done/not done etc, there is NO justification for a 10 point trait (Mug) hitting for as hard as it does. At the VERY least, Mug should be gutted, period. Argue against any other changes/nerfs all you want, but that much damage passively tied into a ranged move that can be used from stealth for 10 points is ludicrous, and it is a big part of the burst chain that is causing much of the problem that people bring up over and over again. It is also by far the simplest change.

I have to agree, a week ago I was running around with 130% MF and was hitting all the various lodestone farm spots in a cycle in order to avoid DR as much as possible. After 2 stacks of Omnomberry Bars I got one Charged Lodestone off of the Air Elementals at the ToZ, and then gave up. I also got ONE yellow this entire time as well. It was giving me flashbacks to Everquest back in 2001, gotta love auto pilot farming for hours and hours and hours for something that has a .01% drop chance.

And before I go away and ignore this knee jerk QQ of a thread, think for a moment. What is hot join FULL of? Thieves and Mesmers, and to a lesser extent Warriors. Why? Because of the insanely easy and extremely deadly burst combos these classes can pull off, particularly Thief. That Engineer build is OLD news, at best a slight variation on old news, and yet I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen it in nearly 1000 games in hotjoin, and there is a reason for that Mr. Mesmer.

zone.1073:

Kardiamond.6952:

@Zone

The only way this combo can work, is be being in the ennmy, and using it. Exactly like your video.

Mistake one : You got it by net shot
Mistake two : You didn’t use any defensive cooldown
Mistake three : You got no armor if he can hit for 8k with grenade barrage.

Thief can do the same thing, do it with a easier combo, and use stealth and mobility.

Is it balanced? Debatable. Is it super duper cheesy? HeII yes. A Warrior’s burst relies on CC. Counter: Break CC. A thief’s burst relies on multiple things which are counterable. This burst? You don’t even have time to bat your eyelashes, let alone pop a defensive cooldown or react. You can preemptively invuln yourself in anticipation, in which case the Engineer can just wait and look at you funny, then burst you. The burst is quite literally less than a second.

Just no. Out of all the super cheesy glass cannon builds out there, the Engineer nades build is the easiest to hose, and the easiest to kill afterwards as well. You got gibbed because you screwed up in a glass vs. glass scenario. If you have even 10% of your brain functioning in the future, you’ll be able to completely hose anyone using this build in the future simply by dodging Net Shot or Grenade Barrage, which is EXTREMELY easy to do. Once GB is on CD, the efficacy of that build falls through the floor. That build isn’t even in the same league as a Shatter burst build or a glassy Backstab Thief, and in some ways even a glass 100B Warrior would be more dangerous. The fact that you’re complaining this much about this is really indicative of you not being objective, or not very experienced. And to be honest, even if this build did get nerfed into the floor, it would make zero difference, because it only kills bad or ignorant players in niche scenarios, and not many people use it, or play Engineer anyhow, and it sure as hell isn’t competitive in tpvp.

This has to be a joke topic; that build is not even remotely new, and is inferior to the static discharge build anyhow. Additionally, both of those builds are “when planets align” sorts of builds, and are horrendously terrible if things go wrong with the burst combo. Any decent player not caught with his pants down can completely trivialize this build. And the OP is a Mesmer? Hahahahahaha, oh man, definitely a joke topic.

Yeah I agree. It’s duration needs to be increased because 90% of the time it doesn’t matter if you apply 50 stacks of confusion with 1500 condi damage, the mob might attack 2-3 times by the time it ends, making most stacks beyond that useless.

Worst class? I dunno. But Spirits are pretty bad most of the time, Signets are flawed in their CD and the fact you need to trait for them to work on the Ranger, Shouts are too niche to justify a utility slot most of the time, and Ranger traits are HORRIBLE. Longbow is the only weapon that isn’t somehow defensively oriented, or condition oriented, and yet it is flawed and is a poor weapon for going pure power+crit glass cannon. And of course pets are pants on head stupid. If all those things make Rangers the worst class, then ok. But I enjoy mine despite the flaws, and the trapper build for spvp is extremely good, so I’m happy with that.

^
Pistol 1 for applying bleeds is god awful bad, it’s horrid. If they won’t revert the nerf and make it how it was in beta, then at least let us trait for it. I do not think this would be OP at all, and I think that Shrapnel + Coated Bullets could lead to some rather nice bleed application both in terms of stack size and number of targets. Shrapnel already says explosions have a chance to apply bleed, and Pistol one has a small explosive AoE component, so it just seems like a logical buff to answer the fact that the standard bleed application rate and max stack size possible from P1 is horrible. What does everyone else think?

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

Taking away keys without advance warning would be a major dick move.

I don’t really agree, but I understand there’re probably people that ground out 3k badges JUST for keys or something. Maybe they should just greatly increase the cost of the keys then. Something like 750 badges for one key or something, IDK.

Time Warp is BS on paper, and it has the quality of being the sort of thing that when it goes right it is really dramatic and sticks in peoples craws pretty badly, but it’s really not that bad, there are bigger fish to fry. And no, I’m not a Mesmer, I think they’re overpowered, but Time Warp really is low man on the totem pole of reasons why.

The other funny thing, is what would one duel prove anyhow? It’s way too small of a sample size to demonstrate anything. And you just know that he’s gonna be the sort of guy that if you narrowly win, he’ll say you’re lucky, if he narrowly wins, he’ll trash talk and act like he dominated you. Who the hell is gonna take their time to find out his name, set up a time and place, try to set up a hotjoin game and be there at the right time, fight and hope no one joins and interferes, etc; all to try to “prove” something to some whiny internet blowhard that will likely make excuses if they lose anyhow? The people sticking up for him because no one has taken him up on his duel offers really do have room temperature IQs, and adolescent mentalities.

This is like watching someone come from the past and lay down a list of reasons why the world is flat. GJ displaying your ignorance and lack of experience OP, it’s really amusing. And then of course, you followed it up with the token “duel meh bruh!” huff-n-puff. Classic. Real gem we have here.

Yeah this is ticking me off. How hard could it be to turn her inventory back on and just take out the keys if they’re the offender.

Zeldain.5710:

You already bought it, you paid them. That’s their business model.

Anyway, you;ll soon see once you level your toon there are cracks in the design all over this game. Its not apparent right away, but this game cannot hold your attention like WoW did for so long.

Had to be at least one.

@OP: I played WoW for 6 1/2 years myself. This game is very different in most ways, and many people see that as an inherent flaw and cannot handle it. The key to enjoying this game is to just take your time and not worry about rushing to endgame, and then when you’re capped rushing to gear up; those things have little place here. If you do that, and spread your overall time out between leveling alts, WvW, instances, and spvp, there is plenty to do in this game. I haven’t even done most of the instances and I still have 570 hours clocked in so far. There have been maybe 2-3 other games that I’ve gotten as much or more playtime out of for $60.00, so there isn’t a lack of things to do, there just isn’t an intense focus on endgame raiding and gear progression like other mmos, so people hit 80 and think there isn’t a kitten thing to do. And yes, stay away from the forums; as this game has just about the most dedicated whiner/troll/hater following of ANY game ever. Many are bitter it isn’t WoW in new clothes, or Guild Wars 1 2.0. The rest are impatient and act like no newish mmo ever had flaws, or they ever had to wait for fixes before.

Well that settles that then. What a mess. Now we have to get the serial code nonsense straightened out, get her control of her account back. Then try to get her off Piken Square and back to Darkhaven, and THEN hope she doesn’t get banned for what the hacker is currently doing with her account.

I don’t get why when she tries to log in, it is saying her email address isn’t found. Not that the password is invalid, that the email address isn’t found. And yet, she’s getting support responses from Anet on the same email address.

Thanks Captain Obvious. Optimal actions in any given situation are not always how things play out. The point is that there should be a way to rectify this situation, especially since we bought the game directly from Anet. With WoW for example, it memorizes your information on your account and you can download the game client endlessly without having to re-submit such vital info each time, particularly with digital downloads.

Nope, it’s not in the trash. We pre-ordered the game about 2 months before it came out, so it would have been quite a while ago. In any case, I’d love a response from Anet about this. She cannot change any info as it’s saying her email is invalid or doesn’t exist, and she can’t change her password because it’s saying that page doesn’t exist on this site. Additionally, is there any way to get her serial code back if we don’t have the email? We have the account name and payment information of course. And if it wasn’t obvious, I’m here asking all of this because she cannot do it herself due to the issues.

To clarify further, her password also is not working, in addition to it saying her email wasn’t found. But when she clicks the “forgot password” button, it takes her to a page that says “Not available”.

Hello, I’m having an issue I need help with. My wife and I are on the Darkhaven server, and about a week ago or so her character was somehow one day mysteriously transferred from Darkhaven to Piken Square. We did NOT request a transfer, and on the first day of noticing it, she was able to play the character just fine (aside from no longer being on our server). After that first day however she was no longer able to log into the game, she keeps getting told “your login or email address is invalid or has been disabled”. So we were thinking perhaps she had been hacked, but her character is still in our guild and has not once signed on since she lost the ability to, so between that and it being extremely odd that a hacker would transfer a character, I’m not entirely convinced she was.

The problem now is twofold: She was transferred to Piken Square without our wanting that to occur. But the second problem is she cannot even get help from support, because they’re asking for the games serial code, which since we downloaded the game digitally from Arena Net directly, the only way we could get that info would be apparently in an email, which we no longer have. Is there some other way to retrieve this information if we no longer have the original email that came with the purchase? I’m really frustrated by this as in 12 years of playing mmos I have NEVER heard of someone being accidentally being server transferred. And now we cannot even resolve the issue because support won’t do anything without a serial code that apparently only exists in the original purchase email.

How should we proceed?