Guild Wars 2

Have/will the World Bonuses get tweaked around this new scoring type. Right now on NA with the new Skirmish stuff displaying I noticed that the World Bonuses seem to be going off of the Skirmish score which makes most of the world bonuses impossible to obtain and the few ones that get obtained.

The World Bonuses are the buffs that everyone on the server(s) get when they reached a set amount of points for the week.

Revenge for all the small guilds that were complaining about them being to ‘hard’ or to much of a grind for them. Seems you can’t have a small or large guild with halls now :P.

Joking aside hopefully the get this sorted out.

Does anyone else think there is too much evade and invulnerability in the game?

Seems like 80% of a fight on point is just waiting for evades or invulnerability to fade out so you can go back to fighting.

Discuss!

So I have noticed that some other classes get some of their ranged attacks ‘unblockable’ and the reasoning that keeps coming up is that it’s important for the ability to land for it’s mechanics. For instance the Mesmer greatsword 2 is unblockable because it’s important to the Mesmer class to get the clone from the attack. Theif mainhand dagger offhand pistol 3 is unblockable now because it’s essential for the class to be able to get on top of people quickly. Guardians get an unblockable attack (although for different reasons to which I do not know) and Warriors can become unblockable on demand. How is it that rangers don’t have either some access to unblockable or have a few of our Longbow abilities marked as unblockable (like Longbow 3, the stealth is kinda critical). It seems that almost every other class can have at least one ability that is unblockable at range can we get one please we kinda are the ‘ranger’ class after all?

So now that HoT has been out for a good time now are we going to either see elite specs nerfed down to core levels or core build brought up to elite levels. It’s not fun feeling locked into one specialization tree simply because you would be silly not to run it and because it is as good as the other two you select by itself.

Chaba.5410:

Those got replaced by Veteran Harpy for the dailies.

Oh RIP. Thanks for informing me next time I log in I can save the 5 min walk.

There is sand in the desert borderlands (or at least there was haven’t played in a while). It’s over by the right (air?) keep on top of some plateaus. Few dust mites and dust tornado things. I actually ran into a few people form other servers trying to farm there as well (near launch) and had some good fights (all epic on top of a cliffside but with plenty of room nobody got knocked off).

Just a little something to make stomping more valuable than just running over people with the zerg. If you stomp a downed player you take their supply (up to your supply cap). By linking it to stomping only one player can take supply for each player killed (only one person will get the stomp) and allows different ways to resupply when out on the battlefield. This also allows you to deny supply from the enemy team even if you can’t force their group away form the players you kill. On the plus side it’s a change that will help the smaller more organized groups with supply and will likely not do much for the zergs (they will just cleave people before stomps can be finished).

Anyhow nice to see lots of WvW changes in the patch notes, super excited for the ‘big changes coming’ for WvW and I hope it makes it a more enjoyable place to play.

I just want to start of saying I’m enjoying the game and the expansion and I will still continue to play I have just noticed some core elements that were unique to GW2 have seemed to vanish with the release of HoT.

In original GW2 if you wanted to earn something you didn’t need to go to a specific zone or do a specific type of content. For the most part you could play the game mode you liked and work towards you goal. There were a few exceptions such as dungeon gear(skins) and originally PvP was kinda its own area that didn’t transfer over to PvE (that changed later). With the addition of PvP rewards tracks some of these became more accessible such as dungeon armor being obtained in PvP rather that just in dungeons. Even the more prestigious items, like legendary, could get worked on in any area of the game (other than world completion).

Now lets take a look at HoT, if you want to get something that comes with the new content you almost always have to go to a specific place to earn it. Magmuna jungle mastery, has to be out in the Magmuna jungle. Centeral Tyria mastery only in central tyria not even just in core GW2 content zones. To this some people say, “Why do you need those masteries if you don’t plan on playing in those zones?” To that I would say, “Why did PvP’ers get ways to level up and earn PvE skins and gold if they never planed to go out to the PvE zones?”. It’s the freedom to play the game the way you enjoy and be able to easily SWITCH BETWEEN DIFFERENT AREAS OF THE GAME without having to ‘level up’ in that area of the game.

There is also the new legendary armor which is stuck behind raids. I love that raids are difficult, I have managed to down the first boss and have fun running it for hours. What I don’t like is the only way to obtain Legendary Armor is by completing Raids (for now at least) which are designed to be super difficult and for more hardcore players. Why can’t there be a more casual way to obtain the same armor? Most people would say it’s only really needed in Raiding where you have to change build often (which is wrong other areas would like this too). It’s a piece of content that a majority of GW2 players would love to obtain, reason doesn’t matter, that got put behind content designed for hardcore players.

Now, I’m not saying everything they have done for ‘unique’ rewards for specific areas is bad. For example you might think I’m against the fractal and PvP legendary backpieces but I think this is the right direction. Just needs a little more, like a PvE legendary backpiece and WvW one. That way if you want the legendary backpiece you can get it however you like, but the skin is unique so it sill has a uniqueness to it.

Original GW2 didn’t limit you to playing specific areas if you wanted a specific tier of gear, or to level your character to 80. In HoT you are limited (for now) and it takes away from the play your way style that was unique and super casual. I like the newer more hardcore content but I feel the casuals of GW2 got left it the dust a bit. Overall I like what HoT offered as an expansions and I don’t regret buying it, I’m just concerned in the direction of the future of GW2 if it will get tunnel vision for the more dedicated/hardcore players and continue to leave the casuals in the dust.

Thanks for reading have a good holiday season!

Correct, you get the exp but it is not applied to any mastery lines. Unfortunately I think this is working as intended as the auto loot was when it original came out. Luckily they have decided to look into changing that for WvW maybe the mastery experience will get the same love. Unfortunately the play anything you like and get progression towards what you want is not longer a GW2 theme. If you want something that came new with HoT you normally have to earn it in a specific area but that is another discussion.

I don’t think you have how the system works down 100%. If you do then there system is kinda botched for games that end on time because neither team is at 500 and so both can lose pips even if they win the match (although that seems to be happening anyhow so maybe). It is more likely (and should be) based on point difference rather than point thresholds. It most games where it reaches 500 points it will feel more like point thresholds. Just a thought I know no clue how their system actually works would be nice if they cleared that up for us (and made it more visual in game after the game is over).

I do believe I remember them saying they were going to make it more clear, the sooner the better.

Compared to League of Legends decay time one week is incredibly short. That said their season it also much longer than ours. I don’t think this is the way (might not even be the purpose of this change) to discourage players from being on multiple top teams. Just some thoughts nice to see they are keeping a close eye on things and tweaking things to try to make the system better.

Bubi.5237:

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

You can still do this it’s just not convenient. The only thing you can’t do is have two commanders in the same ‘party’ for buff purposes. You can split you squad into several squads if you want and they can still have parties in their separate squads. The supply shouldn’t be an issue since it seems more organized groups would be using multiple tags and they can just have the different squads report the supply. Again not convenient but doable.

One of the best feature of the Squad UI change is the “hidden commander tag” (only squad members can see it). It’s in the game, right? Couldn’t log in yet, so dunno..
It makes guild raids possible without unwanted pugs.
But you can’t use focus/ranged party tag with this setup as you either don’t see it from the other squad (close to pointless to use this way) or everyone can see it (you can’t do really-closed raid).

Ah, didn’t realize that was an option, yea that would make it much harder xD.

Sigz.6943:

Sorry for not realizing that sooner guess its just how slow WvW has been going that has made it feel like it takes longer. Once everyone gets back into WvW I’m sure earning ranks will pick up. Unless your on a small server than nothing will change probably. Anyway thank you both for the reminder about wxp gain.

No problem, hope your server-mates get back to playing WvW soon.

People specifically asked for the rewards for that event be increased so yea. They have stated they are looking into some of the others but they take some time and a lot of work to prevent them form being ‘farm-able’ or to get them working in a good way for WvW.

You can still do this it’s just not convenient. The only thing you can’t do is have two commanders in the same ‘party’ for buff purposes. You can split you squad into several squads if you want and they can still have parties in their separate squads. The supply shouldn’t be an issue since it seems more organized groups would be using multiple tags and they can just have the different squads report the supply. Again not convenient but doable.

December 1st patch. Source

I was actually a bit surprised with some of the changes. They are definatly considering peoples opinions on the forums (just hope the forum opinion matches the majority of WvW). Reduced strength of walls/doors, WP in keeps now. Seems WvW is getting more love than PvP balance :P.

I would still like for the WP to be hidden until an objective reaches T2 but this is a start I guess.

I believe this first season was supposed to be a bit longer than 2 weeks (the “balance” patch was HoT) because it was kinda a larger than “normal” balance patch. The changes getting made from now till the next “balance” patch will likely be minimal.

It’s the same WXP per level once you get past the first few levels. Flat 5,000 I believe.

ZilentNight.5089:

Why is this adventure so much more difficult than the others?

More like, why are the others so easy to beat (scrap pit…). Some I got first try and didn’t even know the adventure before hand. It should take some serious dedication to achieve gold, that way when you finally get it you feel like you have mastered it.

PokerStar.5081:

Simple and best solution to get WvW back on track, cause right now many guilds don’t even bother anymore cause it takes 15 mins to run to some towers which is silly.

If by run do you mean role play walking?

1) ArenaNet won’t use different borderlands for ‘balance’ purposes.

2) I agree would be fine if these were a one time expensive cost and they unlocked permanently but it’s expensive to have to remake them every time, and we all know WvW isn’t not the best at giving out rewards.

3) This isn’t so bad because it’s just a one time thing. Once this gets up the problem will have gone away. Feels good to unlock things that require some ‘effort’

4) The whole point of the new maps being slightly larger (they aren’t that much bigger than the old ones) and a bit longer to get between objectives is so that zergs can’t defend multiple maps at one time. Either by WP into a keep with wp and being right one the ‘frontlines’ or as you suggested all taking a tunnel to get to the battle quicker. Maybe if there is some one person at a time use (like the fire hounds) with a few minute cooldown it could work for people catching up to the zerg (a few stragglers).

5) This is not a good idea because of how the Gliko system works. What we really need is rewards based on Gliko gains for a matchup, because Gliko takes every point into account it is already designed for players to ‘want’ to play and get as many points as possible. If you introduce a ‘catch-up’ mechanic then servers will just slack off earlier and then catch up later. They will basically be earning more Gliko with ‘less-effort’. Also would favor servers that play later in the week rather than earlier.

Sviel.7493:

assuming you buy the Pigment Pouches, as those cannot be farmed.

Not true actually, they are made from salvaging dyes and dyes can be ‘farmed’ either by farming the materials to craft dye, or by going to the map (forget which one) that has unidentified dye as a map reward and complete events there.

None the less here are my thoughts on the ‘cost’ of guild halls. If it’s a one time unlock go ahead and make it kinda pricey that’s fine feels better when you get it. However, for the one time use items (such as WvW tatictavator things) they shouldn’t be too expensive. Right now from what I have seen for the one time use upgrades is they are super expensive like the one time unlocks which doesn’t seem right to me. Guild Halls are a big drain to WvW player’s rewards as they will always have to keep crafting expensive items to use the fun new features of WvW (and if you don’t use them you will have a much harder time participating well in WvW).

DiogoSilva.7089:

PvE players do not have to sacrifice systematic progression (masteries) to get Guild Hall’s upgrades. Why do PvP players have to?

Partially not true, just look at silverwastes shovels. They can’t progress magmuna mastery when on in the new maps, there for they have to pause their mastry track to farm the shovels (also not trade-able as pvp potions).

Please make it a toggleable option similar to how you can use simplified character models. As someone more casual I love the effects that spells have and would be a shame to just ‘dull’ everything out for visibility. I understand in competitive pvp or even PvE (raids maybe)? being able to see what is coming at you and what allies are using is super important just be nice in casual PvP (unranked / wvw) and casula PvE (open world, map completion) to still have some ‘wow’ to spells and such.

They need it to look more simple and take out the brambles on it. This is a good example of a skin that looks good from afar and has some nice detail up close.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sovereign_Pillar_

To be honest if you do land the ability with strength of the pack going you get lots of might. So it could be intentional to ‘balance’ out the ability making it harder to land. Just a though.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Personally, I would move the 3 Alpine puzzles to ‘annexes’ in the Obsidian Sanctum that you access from 3 spots around the lower floor in the first room. 3 portals that send you to 3 ‘fractal isles’ floating somewhere in the same map, but out of view.

I like this idea, although you probably don’t need 3 of them since they are copies (other than for achievement which can just be merged into one).

EDIT: I personally wish there was a capture point at the top that if taken by your server would grand some buff to it (like magic find or increased gold from kills not power or anything). I think that OS is a megea-server map though so it would be hard to determine what server get’s the buff but I supposed it could be ‘all green’ or ‘all blue’ servers.

Ayrilana.1396:

Colly.4073:

Yea sucks that all of us who already played dry top to death are forced to re-visit it to farm for stuff in new content just to make the place not look like a dead zone for new players.

There’s a farm in VB.

One as well in WvW in the new desert borderlands. Best part about WvW is the loot spawns at your feed so you don’t have to run up to the mob when it’s dead (if you are ranged and don’t have auto loot mastry).

Do people think it would help if the mastery lines were ‘merged’ and you could earn exp towards your mastery anywhere?

It’s seems that a lot of people don’t like being ‘confined’ to one ‘spot’ to ‘level’. The core game didn’t have this so why should the expansion. Maybe something to keep in mind for future expansions or even an adjustment to this one down the line.

So, a lot of people feel like the new masteries are grindy, why is that? Here is my theory, ArenaNet picked experience levels that closely matched the exp required to get level 80 in the core game (I’m not 100% sure but, I feel like that use it as a point of reference). To them if nobody had issues getting to 80 they won’t have issues getting masteries. However there is a difference that is causing problems. In the core game there were loads of maps and places to explore, in fact if you started at level 1 (technically 2 after intro instance) and you just explored new content you would hit 80 well before you explored all of the content. In HoT this is not the case most people have found that you explore 90% of the new maps (where you have to be to earn the jungle mastery) well before you get near completing your masteries (even with exp boosts). One what ArenaNet looked to ‘solve’ this problem is possibly making masteries account bound so you can earn them on different characters as you explore (the same maps). There are also other good reason for account bound masteries. In the end these masteries will probably take about the same amount of time (exp) as getting to level 80 in the core game took there is just less content (maps) to explore making it feel like a repetitive grind. Truth of the matter is, once many players get their mastery complete they will remain in these new maps an grind them anyhow for gold/armor/materials so even without the masteries there players will ‘grind’ the new maps the mastries just make people more concerned about their exp gains while playing. This grind will get reduced as new maps get added in living world and with raids coming in, however most people will have gotten their mastery done by then and will not benefit from more content to explore helping the ‘Mastery Grind’. Do I think they should do anything about it? No, people just need to relax and not try to ‘rush’ and finish masteries in my opinion.

I like the idea of switching up the color throughout the match up to take care of the ‘fairness’ on the border maps. I know that is one of the big reason ArenaNet want all the borders the same. I personally like being able to spawn on any ‘side’ of the border maps so if I have a preferred ‘corner’ of the map I can pick the borderlands completely.

styx.7294:

WXP links rewards to kills + objectives, the first of which favours higher tiers. The sort of thing it especially encourages you can see on Edge of the Mists.

I still think that WvW was better before WXP.

Ok, I see your point. Yea I just know no matter what you do you are getting slightly better rewards after the WXP (other than scouting which is 0 rewards before and after) but I suppose it does kinda promote playing in a different fashion.

misterdevious.6482:

Oasis Laser Event:

• Starts 3 hours after the previous Oasis Laser event on that map ended.
• Power Cores left on the ground despawn after 1 minute.

If the event fails… the next event on the same map will start 3 hours after the 1 hour event ends. If the event succeeds… the next event on the same map will start 3 hours after the laser stops firing, which is about 3 minutes after the final core is turned in.

I always though it was a set 3 hours between the start of the event (meaning if it started at 2 next one would be 5) and that each map started the ‘first’ event an offset of an hour of the others (so there was an even at the start of every hour on one of the maps). Nice to know.

Plenty of open servers below T1 and T2, just pick one and transfer. Or wait till you both are the same color and play EotM.

Raid on Capricor was not removed because it was ‘bad’ or players disliked it, it was because ArenaNet decided they didn’t want to ‘support’ water combat anymore and that map relied heavily on it.

By support I mean they didn’t want to try to balance it, it still exists in the game.

Tongku.5326:

I also wonder if it is related to people crashing, as too many bags not disappearing will eventually fill the memory. There seem to be a few seperate sources of crashes, this may be one of them.

Actually, it won’t do much if anything to memory. In memory the only thing they will take up is a cordinate (3 float values, not much memory) and ONE model for ALL of the bags. There are other things taking up a lot more memory then these bags (different model for every player/piece of gear on screen/map), however it would be nice to clean up the clutter. :P

styx.7294:

Sometimes they do things that make things worse (WXP, Edge of the Mists, desert borderland?), sometimes they do things that make things better (tourneys, culling, locked transfers).

Wait you think WXP was bad for WvW? Care to explain your thoughs? Also I was just looking at rewards specifically not the whole of WvW since this is WvW themed thread.

Main single player story and HoT story spoilers

Does anyone else feel like how we ‘kill’ elder-dragons is kinda backwards. I haven’t played GW1 so I’ll start with GW2 on Zytan. So in the personal story in original GW2 you learn slowly about Zytan and how he is an elder-dragon and is controlling ‘zombies’. What do you do about it? Gather together fighters from different ‘clans’ (Durmand Priory, Order of Whispers, and Vigil) and form a massive army to fight him. In the end though a small group of people kill the elder-dragon while the pact does… whatever it was doing (mostly just fighting minions that will continue in endless fashion). Ok now skip ahead to HoT, same exact thing happens. We for an alliance between strong fighters (this time races). We create a massive army to fight the dragon. This time there is a bit of a disaster and most of the army get’s destroyed. It’s ok though because all you really need is a small gorup of players to defeat the all powerful and mighty elder-dragon.

I understand the idea that, hey we kill one by doing this repeat unless we get other intel, what I’m more dissapointed in is the execution. Both times the ‘powerfull’ elder-dragon was kill by a mere ~5 heros. Both times the ‘massive-army’ basically just kill minions near where the dragon ‘lived’. Where is the epic large scale battle to defeat the dragon not just some small party experience. I know there is dragon stand and they did mention in the story Mordremoth was distracted however the killing blow was delivered by a small group rather the other way around.

TL;DR
A small party of ‘heroes’ killing the elder-dragon felt to ‘easy’ for something that is supposed to be so powerful.

Any news on PugQuest NA this week. Didn’t seem to have one last week.

Would be nice to see Friday nights turn in to large fights or GvG since the match is already over at that point. It would give the players looking for WvW fights a ‘set’ time to get on and find them.

Jana.6831:

Hey, I wiped 2 zergs! See how many bags I got!

Unfortunately those bags aren’t yours, the bags that appear and stay around for some time are actually other players I believe. You bags still ‘glitter’ and de-spawn if you loot them.

To all they players saying they have done nothing in 3 years, wake up. They added the WXP system which helps a lot for rewards in WvW. Not saying it’s in a good spot but they have done something.

Try the 64bit client it helps. You can find it under you account on the downloads page right under the regular game.

If you are playing WvW for rewards, you have gone to the wrong place. I would recommend to keep playing Druid if you find it fun. That’s what games are played for anyhow, not just for the shinnies. But who knowes maybe when they start to ‘fix’ (not that I feel WvW is broken) WvW they may find a way to help support roles get more rewards.

Chingiz.6481:

Before HoT garri was important to defend because of wp, now some commanders don’t even try to defend it prefer flip it for reward.

This issue isn’t just from HoT there has always been commanders who would rather let objectives get flipped to flip them back later. This is more of the rewards for defending vs the rewards for attacking. Something ArenaNet said they are looking into, hopefully they come up with something nice I think battles over objectives are the most fun. Only place you see battles over objectives is EBG and SM just because it’s normally open from trebs in towers/keeps and it’s in the middle of the map. This probably leads to the higher populations (pre-HoT) in EBG.

It’s been fun on the new maps when people are playing, there are a lot of T1 guild still playing the new PvE content and working on getting their Guild Halls upgraded so they can take advantage of the new WvW mechanics. EBG has always have more people playing on it and a bigger wait time to get it, this is because most people who aren’t doing a guild raid just log in here (pre HoT). More or less it’s the unoffical PUG map often with good PUG commanders running it

Rumor is that Veteran Creature Slayer can be completed by going to the NE corner of the map and kill a Wyveren found there. They have mentioned they are working on the Ruin one although I feel it couldn’t have been too hard to just disable it by now.

I’m assuming there is a pattern that after a while of WvW being out will be known and common. The first event will always take place on the same map and the same time meaning, you should know that if the time is x the event in on y map. Just too new for people to know this. Also 3 hour timeframe splits evenly into a day so they same map will have the same event every time for the week. Meaning, if blue bl has it at 6PM on Monday it will have it at 6PM on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday ect. It’s actually set up nicely so there is always a map you should ‘focus’ on as a server because either the event is going on (huge event) or you need to attack or defend based on how the event went.