Guild Wars 2

Here is my take on a viable elite for the elementalist that would have use in all game modes. Elites in this game ideally were advertised as a trump card that players could use to drastically turn the tides of battle. Currently, elementalist elites are extremely lackluster compared to some of the more amazing elites in the game such as Battle Standard and Time Warp.

Introducing: Elements Guide Me!

Elements Guide Me! would reduce the players attunement cooldowns by a flat 10 seconds. This would enable interesting synergies with on attunement effects such as healing ripple, fire aura, and the boons from elemental attunement. Seeing as the tempest has an extremely long attunement cooldown from overload, using Elements Guide Me! would give elementalists an opportunity to reduce the cooldown of an overloaded attunement to a more regular cooldown time of 10s. If the synergy between some of the more powerful on attune traits such as healing ripple becomes overbearing, they could be given an internal cooldown. The area boon and condition application could drastically alter the flow of the battle and give allies a much needed boost through boons and cripple the enemy with conditions.

Strangely and somewhat ironically, I think the only place in PvE that tempest might have potential in is with glass staff. It all really depends on how powerful fire overload is in terms of damage. It will have to beat out the loss of 10% damage at >90% hp from water or bountiful power from arcane. If it beats out fireball (which it most likely will) an ele can put down lava font and use fire overload every 15 seconds. It will also combo fire whirl adding a nominal amount of burning damage and triggering the minor trait burning rage. The fire tornado also remains behind for a period of time providing even more damage.

Additionally staff has traditionally had the problem of having poor damage when locked out of fire attunement when the ele is forced into another attunement to heal or use a utility skill. If the air overload damage is good, an ele can use air overload to dps while fire attunement comes off cooldown.

While the PS warrior has really pushed other might giving methods out of the meta by being the most superior method by far with no setup required, the fire overload tornado does give ~8-10 stacks of permamight if you trait overload cooldown reduction. This provides some additional offensive support as a staff ele to parties without a PS warrior.

I think a standard rotation for staff ele for large bosses might be: earth 2 -> air attune -> glyph of storms ->fire attune – >lava font – >icebow 5 – > icebow 4 -> lava font – > fire overload – > lava font – > meteor shower – > standard rotation until overload and meteor shower come off cooldown, rinse & repeat. If forced out of fire use air overload after you are finished using the skills you planned to use when you switched out of fire.

Strangely and somewhat ironically, I think the only place in PvE that tempest might have potential in is with glass staff. It all really depends on how powerful fire overload is in terms of damage. It will have to beat out the loss of 10% damage at >90% hp from water or bountiful power from arcane. If it beats out fireball (which it most likely will) an ele can put down lava font and use fire overload every 15 seconds. It will also combo fire whirl adding a nominal amount of burning damage and triggering the minor trait burning rage. Additionally staff has traditionally had the problem of having poor damage when locked out of fire attunement when the ele is forced into another attunement to heal or use a utility skill. If the air overload damage is good, an ele can use air overload to dps while fire attunement comes off cooldown.

I think a standard rotation for staff ele for large bosses might be: earth 2 -> air attune -> glyph of storms ->fire attune – >lava font – >icebow 5 – > icebow 4 -> lava font – > fire overload – > lava font – > meteor shower – > standard rotation until overload and meteor shower come off cooldown, rinse & repeat. If forced out of fire use air overload after you are finished using the skills you planned to use when you switched out of fire.

Strangely and somewhat ironically, I think the only place in PvE that tempest might have potential in is with glass staff. It all really depends on how powerful fire overload is in terms of damage. It will have to beat out the loss of 10% damage at >90% hp from water or bountiful power from arcane. If it beats out fireball (which it most likely will) an ele can put down lava font and use fire overload every 15 seconds. It will also combo fire whirl adding a nominal amount of burning damage and triggering the minor trait burning rage. Additionally staff has traditionally had the problem of having poor damage when locked out of fire attunement when the ele is forced into another attunement to heal or use a utility skill. If the air overload damage is good, an ele can use air overload to dps while fire attunement comes off cooldown.

Additionally, while the PS warrior has really pushed other might giving methods out of the meta by being the most superior method by far with no setup required, the fire overload tornado does give ~8-10 stacks of permamight if you trait overload cooldown reduction. This provides some additional offensive support as a staff ele to parties without a PS warrior.

I think a standard rotation for staff ele for large bosses might be: earth 2 -> air attune -> glyph of storms ->fire attune – >lava font – >icebow 5 – > icebow 4 -> lava font – > fire overload – > lava font – > meteor shower – > standard rotation until overload and meteor shower come off cooldown, rinse & repeat. If forced out of fire use air overload after you are finished using the skills you planned to use when you switched out of fire.

Fire camp staff with icebow has the highest damage if there are other party members to provide might and fury but is really boring compared to the other weapon sets in my opinion.

S/F Lightning hammer provides perma 18 stacks of might and perma fury and with the ability to take the arcane tree for things like renewing stamina, elemental attunement, final shielding, and bountiful power has extremely high party support, damage, and active defense

S/D lightning hammer provides less utility and survivability than S/F but has higher burst damage.

D/F is a fractal oriented build with high survivabilty, decent party support with permafury and decent might generation. It also does decent damage.

For dungeons take S/F LH if your party lacks buffing capability, take staff if you already have a phalanx strength warrior

For fractals same as dungeons for most situations but take D/F if you have trouble surviving or you need swirling winds for projectile destruction.

For world bosses take whatever you want. World bosses are extremely easy to the point where you could be naked and using only autoattacks and still win. Consider taking staff if you want for superior tagging potential.

Man I was so excited for HoT, but getting warhorn would just kill any anticipation I had for the expansion after seeing the sword datamine. Warhorn is so lame compared to ANY of the other weapons in the game. Cmon Anet…. I really really hope that is just a gemstore skin or something. If Anet doesn’t announce anything about instanced or “high level group PvE” and announces that the ele will get warhorn, I might not get the expansion at all then.

Condition eles traditionally have the problem of being locked out of their damage when they are forced to switch out of earth attune for around 10 seconds. But with the new attunement CDR and condition damage buffs, condition damage builds are probably alot better now. Additionally, sinister’s is generally considered a better condition damage set.

Sword or melee mainhand

single target burst

reliable (none of that infamous scepter dragonstooth or shatterstone)

NO WARHORN

Warhorn for eles would just kill any anticipation I had for the expansion… This has gotta be some kinda sick joke after the sword skill datamines. I certainly hope that the warhorn skin is just a gemstore item.

I really really hope that the warhorn datamine is just a gemstore skin or something. Warhorn just well… sucks thematically. Sword or really any other weapon would be so much cooler. Not to mention that warhorns ingame give support and buffs, something that the ele already has PLENTY of.

Man I was so excited for HoT, but getting warhorn would just kill any anticipation I had for the expansion. Warhorn is so lame compared to ANY of the other weapons in the game. Cmon Anet…. I really really hope that is just a gemstore skin or something. Give us swords, give us SOME kind of mainhand weapon.

Man I was so excited for HoT, but getting warhorn would just kill any anticipation I had for the expansion. Warhorn is so lame compared to ANY of the other weapons in the game. Cmon Anet…. I really really hope that is just a gemstore skin or something.

I think an easy way to improve conjures in terms of flexibility and fluidity is introducing additional traits that help conjures or changing the existing conjurer trait. It would introduce build flexibility while making conjures fun to use and not as clunky.

For Example:

Fire Adept:
Conjurer

Conjures gain 10 additional charges. Additionally, when a conjure is dropped, remaining charges are refunded as CDR at a flat 1 second cooldown reduction per charge. For example, if you used lightning hammer and dropped it with 22 charges left, the cooldown of lightning hammer would be reduced by 22 seconds. This cooldown reduction would also apply if an ally picks up a conjure and drops it early.

Arcane Master or Grandmaster:
Flexible Conjures

Conjures now shift weapon skill sets based on what attunement the elementalist is in. However when the elementalist switches attunements 5 conjure charges are used. However, conjures do not shift weapon skills until an elementalist swaps attunements. For example: an ele summons icebow while in fire attune and starts with 25 charges. He/she uses deep freeze and ice storm and then swaps to air attunement. The conjure then turns into a lightning hammer. The elementalist now has 18 charges left. The ele uses 9 charges through lightning hammer auto attack and swaps to earth attune. The conjure then shifts to earth shield. The elementalist now only has 4 charges left. Does not apply to fiery greatsword. Additionally, fiery greatsword will not benefit from this trait.

Air Adept:
Bountiful Conjures

Whenever a conjure is summoned or picked up, the player(not limited to the ele that summoned the conjure) gains a boon based on the conjure type.

Fire Axe: 3 stacks of might 15 second duration

Lightning Hammer: 10 seconds of fury

Ice Bow: 8 seconds of regeneration

Earth Shield: 5 seconds of protection

Fiery Greatsword: 5 stacks of might 20 second duration, 20 seconds of fury, 20 seconds of swiftness

Of course tree placement is obviously made up and open to change. However, I chose trees with weak tiers in the specialization patch such as air adept or arcane major as to give them a useful trait.

On a whole there a reasonable number of good changes to the elementalist skill trees. I think that there are a few things that don’t work well or make sense in the new elementalist skill trees:

Fire

Fire II
Combining a key trait for signet builds with the conjurer trait seems extremely awkward and out of place. Ideally there should be additional traits for conjure skills such as CDR, mechanics changes, boon on conjure, etc.

Fire III
Overwhelming Power is on the weak side for an adept numberswise. Additionally, condition builds generally don’t work well for elementalists in WvW/PvE.

Fire VII
I guess merging persisting flames, a key PvE trait with lava tomb doesn’t hurt the skill… on the other hand it also isn’t really useful. Similarly to Fire II, this is an awkward merging of traits.

Air

Air Minor 1
Zephyr’s speed is a very weak minor trait. 10% movespeed in air usually has no noticeable effect on gameplay and is not very exciting as a trait in general. Additionally, it is often made redundant by swiftness boons.

Air III
They mentioned on stream that this trait will likely be changed to scale on precision instead and for good reason. The skill with its current tooltip makes no sense. Niche healing builds don’t benefit from crit damage and standard damage builds don’t take healing power.

Air VII
Many people have objected to the shifting of bolt to the heart from adept to grandmaster. This cripples builds such as S/X fresh air PvP builds which were already niche in addition to D/F PvE builds. If it is to stay in this tier it should at least be raised up to par with similar grandmaster skills such as executioner aka 20% increase at 50% HP and below.

Earth and Water skill trees are well put together and will probably be core for PvP

Arcane

sigh… where do I start

This tree as a whole has become very underwhelming over the years and when the specialization patch hits, in my opinion will be undertuned compared to other specializations.

Arcane Minor 2
Lingering elements has always been an extremely weak adept that is often not noticed. Ideally it should be changed to something more powerful or interesting in terms of gameplay mechanics.

Arcane IV
This trait is really not very useful and I would be hard pressed to find someone who would take it in any game mode. Additionally, gaining an aura after the revive is somewhat redundant as you would want the protection while you are reviving.

Arcane VI
Final shielding seems to be underwhelming compared to other master level traits in the game. It is more on par with an adept trait in terms of power in my opinion.

Arcane minor 3
Arcane Precision is pretty underpowered for a grandmaster level minor trait. 10% chance on crit is laughably low for the effect that is applied to an enemy.

Arcane VIII
Elemental Surge is undertuned compared to other GM level Arcane traits that could be taken. Almost all players will take evasive arcana or elemental attunement instead.

On a whole there a reasonable number of good changes to the elementalist skill trees. I think that there are a few things that don’t work well or make sense in the new elementalist skill trees:

Fire

Fire II
Combining a key trait for signet builds with the conjurer trait seems extremely awkward and out of place. Ideally there should be additional traits for conjure skills such as CDR, mechanics changes, boon on conjure, etc.

Fire III
Overwhelming Power is on the weak side for an adept numberswise. Additionally, condition builds generally don’t work well for elementalists in WvW/PvE.

Fire VII
I guess merging persisting flames, a key PvE trait with lava tomb doesn’t hurt the skill… on the other hand it also isn’t really useful. Similarly to Fire II, this is an awkward merging of traits.

Air

Air Minor 1
Zephyr’s speed is a very weak minor trait. 10% movespeed in air usually has no noticeable effect on gameplay and is not very exciting as a trait in general. Additionally, it is often made redundant by swiftness boons.

Air III
They mentioned on stream that this trait will likely be changed to scale on precision instead and for good reason. The skill with its current tooltip makes no sense. Niche healing builds don’t benefit from crit damage and standard damage builds don’t take healing power.

Air VII
Many people have objected to the shifting of bolt to the heart from adept to grandmaster. This cripples builds such as S/X fresh air PvP builds which were already niche in addition to D/F PvE builds. If it is to stay in this tier it should at least be raised up to par with similar grandmaster skills such as executioner aka 20% increase at 50% HP and below.

Earth and Water skill trees are well put together and will probably be core for PvP

Arcane

sigh… where do I start

This tree as a whole has become very underwhelming over the years and when the specialization patch hits, in my opinion will be undertuned compared to other specializations.

Arcane Minor 2
Lingering elements has always been an extremely weak adept that is often not noticed. Ideally it should be changed to something more powerful or interesting in terms of gameplay mechanics.

Arcane IV
This trait is really not very useful and I would be hard pressed to find someone who would take it in any game mode. Additionally, gaining an aura after the revive is somewhat redundant as you would want the protection while you are reviving.

Arcane VI
Final shielding seems to be underwhelming compared to other master level traits in the game. It is more on par with an adept trait in terms of power in my opinion.

Arcane minor 3
Arcane Precision is pretty underpowered for a grandmaster level minor trait. 10% chance on crit is laughably low for the effect that is applied to an enemy.

Arcane VIII
Elemental Surge is undertuned compared to other GM level Arcane traits that could be taken. Almost all players will take evasive arcana or elemental attunement instead.

With the expansion just around the corner, what long term problems with eles do you guys want to see solved?

I’ll list a few:

Conjures are clunky and generally not that fun to use. They take away any sort of flexibility when summoned and are only used in PvE for their insane DPS. Once the specializations balance patch hits the only conjures worth taking(LH and icebow) will be nerfed. As a result, no game mode will use conjures. Conjures also only have 1 trait that affects them. Honestly, making conjures more like engineer kits would go a long way in making them more fluid and fun to use.

Scepter’s Fire 2 (dragons tooth) is STILL a targeted ability and not a ground-targeted ability. Why the skill is like this makes no sense to me. It makes this skill extremely frustrating to use and makes it impossible to lead targets with the dragons tooth. Additionally, when there is no target the skill seems to hit below ground half the time making blasting fields without a target extremely unreliable. The only good thing that comes out of this ability being a targeted ability is hitting people without LoS in specific scenarios such as WvW seige.

Scepter’s Fire 5(Fire Aura) is extremely underwhelming for a 5 skill. I could understand an extremely powerful aura such as shocking aura be a 5 skill but fire aura is not nearly as useful.

The arcane trait line’s minor 2(lingering elements) and minor 3(arcane precision) are extremely underwhelming in comparison to other minor traits.

Q: When will the first deep dive be?

Myxam.2790:

As a Sylvari Player… No. Are you out of your kittening mind? How about we leave the mature content out a game that’s accessable to children, we already have enough of them running around screaming about murdering people over their skin color and sexual preferences (ala COD and DayZ).

And it was a Gods kitten ed bad idea to give into the Sylvari are Dragonspawn Theory because now you’re just going to see more of this crap in chat about how “Sylvari are less than people.”

If this is the friendliest community in gaming, then it really paints a bad picture.

Really? I don’t think we should sacrifice the quality of the story to cater to the younger spectrum of GW2’s audience. A thing I really hated about the story of GW2 was their portrayal of sylvari as completely white and generally unbelievable in their actions and motives. "Hey we’re sylvari and we are completely good. We have a cheap copout to make “bad” sylvari through the nightmare court but don’t worry, real sylvari will never harm you!" Nobody actually acts like that in real life and it generally made them poor protagonists (trahearne). That is why I was personally very glad that Anet wrote in Canach and the sylvari as potential Modremoth minions. It gives some depth to a race that desperately needed some. Canach in particular seems like an actual believable character. He has motives (not all of them good), he has faults but he also has strengths and good qualities.

Also, would putting in more mature themes such as corruption, racism, and prejudices really be all that bad of an influence on children? Especially if they are portrayed negatively (as they should be)? After all negative qualities such as racism and prejudice are very much present in real life. Shielding kids from the “bad” things in life for too long generally is not a good thing to do. Educating them on why they are wrong and teaching them about past atrocities and mistakes and how to avoid repeating them is the right thing to do in my opinion. Should we really leave them out at the expense of making the game world seems sterile and unbelievable just so we can “protect the children”?

I learned that I love salad for every meal of the day.

As seen in a thread in the HoT forum, people have been figuring out which weapons will be given for each profession in heart of thorns. Someone pointed out that a light armor class is seen wielding a mainhand sword and offhand dagger in the expansion trailer at 1:14 when the three characters are running away from a rolling mordrem. Additionally we also know that mesmers will be getting shield offhand and necros will be getting greatswords as their profession specialization weapon sets. In an interview by shacknews the journalist asked: “Shacknews: The expansion is set to introduce some new mechanics. Can you explain more about Mastery and Specializations?” with Colin Johanson’s response being: “Each of the professions will be getting one of these Specializations and this also is a framework that we’ll use to grow the professions in the future.” While it is disappointing that there will be only one specialization upon release of HoT, this does mean that we will get swords!

Personally I am pumped about getting swords and becoming a spellsword sort of class. My hope is that this will be a direct damage weapon that scales well with power and NOT a condition focused weapon similar to the warrior sword because we all know about the state of conditions in PvE… Additionally we already have a weapon that applies conditions: the scepter (granted only earth and fire attune apply conditions). What about you guys?

Specialization discussion thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Let-s-Talk-About-Specializations

Interview with Colin: http://www.shacknews.com/article/87848/guild-wars-2-director-discusses-heart-of-thorns-revenants-guild-halls-and-more

HoT Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOUk2y0K2m8

Edit: So I looked more closely at a higher quality version of the trailer and it indeed looks like the light armored human female has no offhand (thanks youtube compression). I’ll leave it as likely but not confirmed as a mesmer is already shown in the next shot.

Sounds pretty cool, a death knight concept would be a great addition to GW2 IMO, even if it has been done before in other games. Hopefully Anet will announce something big involving combat changes such as new skills/weapon sets/professions at PAX south 2015 in january.

As simple solution that Anet could implement is this:

At the vendor, have a ticket that can be bought with any fractal skin. This ticket can then be used to purchase a fractal skin of the player’s choice. Now instead of 1/19 * X where X is the chance of getting any skin it is now just X. In fact I don’t understand why a solution similar to this hasn’t been done already. While it is not a complete fix, it would be relatively easy and quick to code and would help to alleviate player’s complaints of not getting a skin they can actually use. I guess Anet doesn’t care about instanced content like fractals and dungeons.

I would recommend leveling tailoring and artificing. Having those crafting disciplines will allow you to craft gear and if you wish, ascended weapons and armor for your elementalist.

A few months ago, they made it so that an elementalist could command the elemental to use their special move, a large improvement to a largely useless(still is a lackluster and bland) elite. However, a large issue that I find extremely annoying is the amount of time it takes for your elemental to use its special ability after you have pressed the button to do so. A good example is the water elemental. The heal on it is extremely strong, however there is almost always a good 5 second delay between when you press the button and when the heal actually comes out. Another good example is the air elemental. Because it takes a good few seconds for the stun to come out, it is largely useless for interrupting enemy attacks. Could we please get something similar to ranger pets where when the special ability button is pressed, the elemental cancels all other move sequences and then has the special move cast relatively quickly? Also could we have it so that the fire/water/earth elementals don’t need targets to cast their moves? Aka instead of the water elemental heal being bound to an attack, it simply casts an PBAOE heal?

Welcome to Anet’s “organization”(censorship) of the forums!

In any case, I think your ideas are pretty good. A basic thing that is missing from group kicking that I find very odd is the inability to say “No” to a kick. Instead the prompt just sits there annoyingly for a few minutes if you in fact do not want to kick the person. Sadly, dungeon/fractal experiences are not a very big priority for Anet as it seems like they have put most of their efforts into living story and new player experience “improvements”. People complained about dungeon ownership for an extremely long time and only a couple months ago was this problem fixed. If they make changes to group kicking expect not to see it for quite a while.

All the fractal dailies that require the completion of all 4 stages are for low level fractals meant for newer or less experienced players. Honestly what did you expect by pugging those levels? “Pros”? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but instead of complaining and whining about “noobs” in levels meant for less experienced players, why don’t you either A) do a guild/friends list run or B ) offer to teach some of these less experienced players about fractal mechanics? You were, we all were “noobs” at some point in time. If you can’t tolerate people that don’t have good or complete knowledge about combat and fight mechanics, then don’t pug.

I personally don’t care what format Anet releases content in. The bottom line is that the actually need to release substantial content. And thus far, in my opinion, Anet has failed to make LS deliver a comparable amount of content to a traditional expansion. The content that GW2 has released since the release of the game is meager compared to other popular MMOs such as WoW and FF14. I personally am more than willing to pay for content as long as it is good and substantial.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Nury.3062:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Nury.3062:

JustTrogdor.7892:

Nury.3062:

Having threads made to basically get the “yea,we want an expansion” players together has no room for the ones who oppose the idea,so having a thread for the ones who don’t want an expansion it is a good balance.

Until all those “X-pac or GW2 will fail” folks flock into the thread and turn it into yet another thread on the topic that has been debated over and over and over and over.

All we can do is to give valid reasons why that’s wrong since this thread was made to drawn the players who can see why we don’t need one.
But sometimes is hard to make the blind see…

Your thread title is already challenging the pro-expansion crowd to join in the debate. "For all those “We need an expansion asap!”" I don’t see how it was meant to draw in players that don’t want an expansion. Either way, yet another expansion thread. It gets old no matter what side of the fence you are on.

Then what are you doing here if you have nothing to add to the matter,nobody needs your opinion in this thread if has nothing to do with the question asked in it.

You didn’t ask a question. You posted your opinion on a topic that is currently being discussed in two threads already on the front page. I’m here because I’m tired of threads being posted several times a day on topics that have been beaten to death. It gets old. If you have thoughts on a topic that is already on the front page you should post them in that topic. Your opinion is not so special that it warrants yet another thread on the same topic.

Everyone has the same right to voice their opinions on the forum, not just what you want to see. There is nothing wrong with having multiple posts on the same topic. If people want to talk about expansions, then they are free to make as many threads and posts as they want. After all, everybody paid a fair price for the game and thus everyone here has access to write whatever they want as long as it is within forum rules. Many people are not satisfied with the direction Anet is taking the game in and how they are handling things. Arguably the biggest problems that GW2 faces today are lack of content and no/poor communication from Anet regarding future content releases, thus many people will complain about it.

pdavis.8031:

Piratoz.8627:

Andred.1087:

Wrong. GW2 does not need an expansion, and it is far from needing one critically. I’ve said it so many times already that I don’t even feel like typing out the full response. Just, no. You’re paranoid / unable to see the full picture, just no.

Yeah GW2 doesn’t need anything, GW2 could continue releasing content at a snails pace and slowly shrink and fade into obscurity as an example of how not to manage a MMO. And no one is able to see the big picture as Anet refuses to talk about future content releases, a communication policy that in my opinion is a farce, an example of how not to do things in an industry where communication with your player base is essential to success.

And releasing a chunk of content every 2 years is a better way to go? So you get an expansion, then nothing for 2 years, then another, then nothing for 2 years, and so on. OR they could continue doing what they are doing and release a smaller chunk every 2 weeks (not counting breaks for holidays and such) for free, and still achieve the same amount of stuff that would be in a traditional expansion?

So during those off times, after an expansion, and everything is played through in less than a year, the game still loses players, as those who are bored stop playing, and the same dire predictions of the game fading into obscurity are even more realized.

Except for the part where the content released by the living story thus far is not even close the amount released by a traditional triple-A MMO expansion pack. I personally don’t care what format they release content in. The important thing is that Anet needs to actually push some substantial content out.

CMM.6712:

HiddenNick.7206:

CMM.6712:

HiddenNick.7206:

Malkavian.4516:

Yes, I do want a Season 3.

Why?! There is nothing to do in the game besides farming skins!

This game is just horrible now! Why? Because there is not much of a game left here! And LS is not helping.

No it isn’t. Why bother to even post this garbage? Go back to wow.

It’s really sad that so many gw2 white knights explain to themselves this way why people criticize the game…

No! I don’t play WoW! I played gw1 hundreds of hours! And I hate this game! And I hate that it was so promising(had a lot of fun with the original release) and now it became that boring and pointless skin grind. There is no gameplay, challenge, reward or fun in here anymore. Just farming… For a new dress for your doll. No thanks!

Then leave the forums behind too and stop wasting people’s time with your hatred! This negativism gets SO OLD. You guys should be lucky I’m not a mod. Call me a white knight all you want I am tired of the kitten.

Everyone has the same right to voice their opinions on the forum, not just what you want to see. Many people are not satisfied with the direction Anet is taking the game in and how they are handling things. Arguably the biggest problems that GW2 faces today are lack of content and no/poor communication from Anet regarding future content releases, thus many people will complain about it.

Amroth.2170:

Zero Day.2594:

DiogoSilva.7089:

pdavis.8031:

Because the LS has only been around for about a year, while a traditional expansion generally takes about 2 years. The LS is fully capable of releasing all that stuff, but instead of getting it in smaller chunks, you’d rather get nothing for a long time, then everything all at once. Which, going by other games who rely on expansion content, leads to a lower player base during the off times, then peaks at when the expansion comes. The LS bite sized chunk way at least keeps players playing on a more regular basis.

FFXIV:ARR does both. It is getting its first expansion before GW2, and we’re talking about a game which was released long after GW2, and it gets monthly(?) patches with plenty new story missions/ classes/ dungeons, etc.

But… It has a subscription fee.
(This was bound to be put out there eventually.)

Which favors long term players who have invested something tangible, besides their time, into the game.

I know people aren’t going to want to hear it, but GW2’s income is mainly generated off of new players at the gem store. Content for veteran players is less important for them because veteran players have by and large spent most of the money they would have spent on the game already. That’s why we’re seeing updates aimed at holding newbies in that gem-buying phase of the experience to maximize returns.

As much as I want to deny it, I get the feeling that this is mostly true. But this kind of philosophy seems so shortsighted. Why would they do this if they want to keep GW2 healthy? Why look only toward short term profits and pure numbers? What happened to the philosophy of “we make money to make more games”?

OP, You raise a lot of good points. I feel like Anet has their priorities completely wrong.

Andred.1087:

Keep living in your tiny world inside your mind. The game is doing fine, the devs actively take feedback from the players, and hundreds of thousands of people log into this game every day. You just refuse to see all that because it makes you feel good to speak out against perceived injustice.

The game’s doing fine boys! Devs are actively taking feedback from players and are implementing things like NPE and locking traits! Everyone I talk to loves these features and just couldn’t wait for them to come out! I can’t wait to do stuff I have already done 10 times to get a trait that I should have had by default! This game was sooo hard to play so I’m so glad that instead of releasing more actual new content or skills, Anet decided to implement features such as locking basic things like asura gates, trading/banking, and traits until I’m a higher level! And I’m impressed by the “hundreds of thousands” of players I see daily! Before the megaserver improvement all those zones were sooo crowded! Anet definitely releases player metrics for all to see to showcase just how successful GW2 is! All those forum users complaining about the game must be wrong so instead of giving a reasonable argument, I’ll just insult their intelligence and personal character instead of actually talking about the topic at hand! (sarcasm)

Andred.1087:

Wrong. GW2 does not need an expansion, and it is far from needing one critically. I’ve said it so many times already that I don’t even feel like typing out the full response. Just, no. You’re paranoid / unable to see the full picture, just no.

Yeah GW2 doesn’t need anything. GW2 could continue releasing content at a snails pace and slowly shrink and fade into obscurity as an example of how not to manage a MMO. And no one is able to see the big picture as Anet refuses to talk about future content releases, a communication policy that in my opinion is a farce, an example of how not to do things in an industry where communication with your player base is essential to success.

I agree, GW2 really needs an expansion/huge LS release to bring back veteran players. The combination of the lack of content and poor/no communication from Anet makes it look like they have no plans for the future. I don’t quite understand people who valiantly defend Anet and their policies regarding communication and content release. People complain because they care about the game and are unsatisfied with the direction it is heading in. Anet’s communication policy of not speaking about any plans for the future is hilariously bad and continues to damage their relationship with the player base. People might be disappointed if a future piece of content doesn’t quite pan out but honestly Anet employees need to toughen up. And no matter how you look at it, the amount of content released in the past 2 years is extremely meager compared to other popular MMOs such as WoW and FF14. Both games by the spring of 2015 will have had an expansion pack released, namely WoW: WoD and FF14: Heavensward complete with new skills, new races, new lands, new dungeons/raids, new skins/weapons/armor etc. GW2 should have these things, but as of now we’ve gotten: 3 small zones, 1 dungeon path with 1 removed, a handful of skins, living world events you can no longer do, about 8-10 of living story instances, 5 grandmasters per class, and a some QoL changes. Sure GW2 does things differently, but do they do it better? As of now it appears that the answer is no for me personally.

I really miss the stretch idle animation that my character did… I hope they fix the cutscene “bug” and add them back soon.

MeanCoffeeBean.2073:

Yeah, Piratoz, not too sure why you want to nerf the movement of FGS considering that is the only reason I ever, ever put it on my bar in WvW. The damage is crap from it. The storm on 5 is awful for damage. The swing on 1 is so bad I actively cancel it as a waste of charges.

The only thing that I like from your post is the Lava Tomb mirroring the Ember fields. That is a clever idea.

If you were advocating things that would make it more elite, then I would agree, but not boosting the storm to at least the level of our -utility- and removing the only real benefit it brings (mobility) and I just cannot agree overall.

I should have said that if FGS is reworked it should give significantly more damage than the current one. Damage from FGS would come more from its 2-5 abilities than its auto-attack. But in order to give it more power in one area (damage), to keep the FGS in line with other elites in the game they would have to take something like mobility away. I feel like one of the biggest reasons why Anet wouldn’t buff the damage on the FGS is because it has a huge amount of mobility right now on a low cooldown. If they gave FGS great damage and mobility, other classes would complain as FGS would become by far one of the best elites in the game. Whether elites in general are powerful enough is another question. In my opinion most elites just don’t feel elite. Elites should be gamechangers not just slightly more powerful utility skills.

The Fiery Greatword elite needs to be reworked to give less mobility. However, its damaging abilities should be vastly improved and it should feel powerful. Of course I am no expert at balance however a concept for a reworked FGS would be this:

(Skill 1) Flame Wave: Similar to how it is now in functionality and about 10% more damage, however now its projectiles each have a 20% chance of being a projectile finisher. Its cast timer should be reduced to 2 sec for 4 fireballs instead of 2.75.

(Skill 2) Lava Tomb: Range 600. Cooldown 6 seconds. Duration 4 seconds. 0.5 second cast time. Ground Targeted AOE. Stab your sword into the ground and summon 3 lava pools that also count as fire fields. Radius would be similar to the traited(Blasting Staff) staff lava font.

It would look similar to the ember NPC attack with 3 lava fonts spaced closely together in a triangle shape. Each lava font does about half the damage of a staff lava font. Since these fonts overlap, keeping an enemy in the center sweet spot will deal the damage of all 3 lava fonts and keeping an enemy in the other overlaps would deal 2x damage. This would also be affected by the trait persisting flames.

(Skill 3) Fiery Whirl: The same but with an 10 second cooldown instead of a 5 second cooldown.

(Skill 4) Fiery Eruption: 600 range. 20 second cooldown. 2 sec knockup. 0.75 second cast time. 0.25 sec delay between when a red circle would appear beneath the enemy and the eruption. Ground Targeted AOE.

Stab your sword into the ground, dealing moderate damage, and knock up/launch enemies caught in the AOE radius. The AOE size would be similar to the traited(blasting staff) staff lava font. Applies 6 sec of burning.

(Skill 5) Firestorm: The damage should be significantly increased(2x?) and each pulse should apply burning. The cooldown should also be reduced to match the duration of the ability.

Example picture for skill 2:

A big problem with conjures I have is that they are very “clunky” to use. Honestly a simple rework that I think would help make them feel more fluid would be a standardization of all conjure summon cast times to be 0.25 seconds with the exception of fiery greatsword, which would keep its current cast time.

Non-elite conjures should also be able to be stowed instead of dropped, keeping their current charges for the elementalist only. Other classes that pick up the conjure copy would use it normally then drop it when they don’t want the conjure anymore. It would be akin to having a second weapon. For example the elementalist summons a lightning hammer and uses 4, 1, 1, 1. The elementalist then presses ~ (weapon switch hotkey) and stows the weapon with 11 charges remaining. The conjure then undergoes the standard 9 second weapon swap cooldown all other classes have. However this cooldown only occurs when swapping from the conjure to a standard weapon, not when swapping from a standard weapon to a conjure. After 9 seconds the elementalist can swap back to their conjure and use the remaining charges. If there are multiple conjures equipped, only the last conjure used would be stowed. For example if an ele used a flame axe, stowed it, then summoned an ice bow, the flame axe would be lost.

As for the fiery greatsword, this elite needs to be reworked to give less mobility. However, its damaging abilities should be vastly improved and it should feel powerful. Of course I am no expert at balance however a concept for a reworked FGS would be this:

(Skill 1) Flame Wave: Similar to how it is now in functionality and damage, however now its projectiles each have a 20% chance of being a projectile finisher.

(Skill 2) Lava Tomb: Range 600. Cooldown 8 seconds. Duration 4 seconds. 0.5 second cast time. Stab your sword into the ground and summon 3 lava pools that also count as fire fields. It would look similar to the ember NPC attack with 3 lava fonts spaced closely together in a triangle shape. Each lava font does about half the damage of a staff lava font. Since these fonts overlap, keeping an enemy in the center sweet spot will deal the damage of all 3 lava fonts and keeping an enemy in the other overlaps would deal 2x damage. This would also be affected by the trait persisting flames.

(Skill 3) Fiery Whirl: The same but with an 10 second cooldown instead of a 5 second cooldown.

(Skill 4) Fiery Eruption. 600 range. 20 second cooldown. 2 sec knockup. 0.75 second cast time. 0.25 sec delay between when a red circle would appear beneath the enemy and the eruption. Stab your sword into the ground, dealing moderate damage, and knock up/launch enemies caught in the AOE radius. The AOE size would be similar to the untraited staff lava font. Applies 6 sec of burning.

(Skill 5) Firestorm: The same as it is now.

Greatsword and sword would give the Ele a spellsword theme and could help to fill combat niches that Eles do not possess currently.

Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Yes the new dailies are an improvement over the old ones in many respects, however the old system wasn’t broken or even bad. The old ones most of the time also didn’t require you to go out of your way to get dailies. The new player experience (NPE) straight up took away a lot of what made GW2 good when I was a new player. The NPE has personally made me extremely reluctant to level any new alts by adding needless grind to the game. Yes, giving new players a helping hand is a good thing. However I feel that Anet is on their own “island” so to speak. How many new players does GW2 get these days? My guess is not too many. Ncsoft themselves have said that the core playerbase has stabilized with most of their income coming from established players. GW2 hasn’t really done any advertising to attract new players and has been pretty low on the radar in terms of MMO releases and expansions(probably because GW2 has none so far). My vain hope is that the developers and marketers at Anet haven’t gone completely bonkers and that they released things such as the NPE and new dailies to pave the way for an expansion of some sort. But that might be wishful thinking on my part.

As many have said before me I feel like Anet is paying too much attention to statistics and metrics which are easily measured. However, statistics alone without any background context are meaningless. It is extremely difficult to turn things like player opinion and desires into a metric. However, this information is invaluable and gives meaning to statistics and metrics. Anet seems to be sacrificing long term gains and player loyalty to gain income in the short term.

I am not sure what kind of feedback, if any, Anet takes from players. Players have been begging for changes such as new skills/weapons sets, new dungeons, more new areas. However, Anet’s priorities don’t seem to match what the general player base wants and while they are getting better on content delivery, it is not enough .

On the surface, Anet seems to be out of touch. These problems are magnified by the fact that Anet has a closed door policy and does not communicate their plans with the fanbase. How are fans supposed to get excited if literally nothing is announced until a month or less before release? Yes, players are going to be disappointed and complain if a feature or piece of content doesn’t quite pan out but honestly, the devs at Anet need to toughen up. Anet can hide behind forum moderations all they want, but they cannot hide from reality. How can a company, especially a company focused on creating games expect to succeed without good communication with their customers and fanbase? Ultimately Anet needs to pump out some real, significant content and get rid of their current communication policy. Sure tomorrow, most players will still be here, but how long until even the most stalwart of veterans start leaving one after another out of sheer boredom?

Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Yes the new dailies are an improvement over the old ones in many respects, however the old system wasn’t broken or even bad. The old ones most of the time also didn’t require you to go out of your way to get dailies. The new player experience (NPE) straight up took away a lot of what made GW2 good when I was a new player. The NPE has personally made me extremely reluctant to level any new alts by adding needless grind to the game. Yes, giving new players a helping hand is a good thing. However I feel that Anet is on their own “island” so to speak. How many new players does GW2 get these days? My guess is not too many. Ncsoft themselves have said that the core playerbase has stabilized with most of their income coming from established players. GW2 hasn’t really done any advertising to attract new players and has been pretty low on the radar in terms of MMO releases and expansions(probably because GW2 has none so far). My vain hope is that the developers and marketers at Anet haven’t gone completely bonkers and that they released things such as the NPE and new dailies to pave the way for an expansion of some sort. But that might be wishful thinking on my part.

As many have said before me I feel like Anet is paying too much attention to statistics and metrics which are easily measured. However, statistics alone without any background context are meaningless. It is extremely difficult to turn things like player opinion and desires into a metric. However, this information is invaluable and gives meaning to statistics and metrics. Anet seems to be sacrificing long term gains and player loyalty to gain income in the short term.

I am not sure what kind of feedback, if any, Anet takes from players. Players have been begging for changes such as new skills/weapons sets, new dungeons, more new areas. However, Anet’s priorities don’t seem to match what the general player base wants and while they are getting better on content delivery, it is not enough .

On the surface, Anet seems to be out of touch. These problems are magnified by the fact that Anet has a closed door policy and does not communicate their plans with the fanbase. How are fans supposed to get excited if literally nothing is announced until a month or less before release? Yes, players are going to be disappointed and complain if a feature or piece of content doesn’t quite pan out but honestly, the devs at Anet need to toughen up. Anet can hide behind forum moderations all they want, but they cannot hide from reality. How can a company, especially a company focused on creating games expect to succeed without good communication with their customers and fanbase? Ultimately Anet needs to pump out some real and significant content and get rid of their current communication policy. Sure tomorrow, most players will still be here, but how long until even the most stalwart of veterans start leaving one after another out of sheer boredom?

The choir bell notes are labeled incorrectly. Do(C.) actually plays Re(D), Re(D) plays Me(E), etc. The scale is labeled as C-C but is actually D-D.

Just wanted to point this out.

cranked.3812:

Piratoz.8627:

But is that really okay in terms of designing a game that is fun and rewarding to play? Is it really okay to have a drop rate for exotics/lodestones that is minuscule to the point where opening things like champion bags isn’t even rewarding?

The game was never really about going out to farm for items that you need. It is, and always will be, about farming gold and buying what you want on the TP. I’m not saying I like that way to go about it, but it’s the world we live in. Not everything in the game can have a high drop rate. There will always be some things that are in high demand which cause the price to be high.

Piratoz.8627:

Call me crazy, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a large amount of the gem sales in GW2 end up being spent on gem to gold conversions in this game(legal gold buying). Thus Anet would have an incentive to make things much harder to get.

No need to call you crazy. Of course anet is setting it up so players are more inclined to spend money on gems to convert to gold. If you owned a business where you needed to pay employees and other costs monthly, would you set up a system where customers wanted to pay you money more often or would you make it so customers were not so inclined to open their wallets?

Piratoz.8627:

And if this is indeed the case, is it really okay to sacrifice game quality to make more money? Is it really okay to put profits over good gameplay systems?

Games will never be as good as they once were when gameplay trumped graphics by a mile. But, this is the new generation of gaming where everyone wants pretty graphics, gameplay is second fiddle, they want everything right now and they don’t want to spend time or money to get it. You might as well get used to it because this gaming world is here to stay.

Yeah… the “new” gaming world is here to stay, but there should be a place to draw the line I guess. It is a little sad to see the philosophy of “we need to make games to make more money” be put over “we need to make money to make more games”. I understand that the devs of Anet are only human and humans make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t learn from their mistakes. I just wish that they put more value into things such as player opinion and feedback over pure statistics and metrics. Sure things like gemstore cash grabs and extreme RNG might net them more money in the short term. But how much more money could they have potentially gotten in the long term with less unscrupulous ways of generating income? How many potential players have they lost through these gameplay compromises? I guess at the end of the day I just wish the RNG was a little better in the game haha.

cranked.3812:

Piratoz.8627:

The fact that charged lodestones are needed for so many recipes and the fact that they have a ridiculously low droprate is really not okay… I agree that it is a nightmare but Anet seems to be okay with ridiculous RNG in this game so I don’t think things will get any better in the near future.

It’s working as intended, or so they say. But, it’s a great gold sink for the game. So, it’s not likely to change anytime soon.

But is that really okay in terms of designing a game that is fun and rewarding to play? Is it really okay to have a drop rate for exotics/lodestones that is minuscule to the point where opening things like champion bags isn’t even rewarding? Call me crazy, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a large amount of the gem sales in GW2 end up being spent on gem to gold conversions in this game(legal gold buying). Thus Anet would have an incentive to make things much harder to get. And if this is indeed the case, is it really okay to sacrifice game quality to make more money? Is it really okay to put profits over good gameplay systems?

I don’t even think it is that great of a gold sink, considering that charged lodestone trade makes up a tiny proportion of the economy. The TP as a gold sink will function the same no matter what the prices for items are as it is a flat 15% tax on every transaction and almost all trade in the game must go through the TP. Yes gold inflation is a problem for every MMO, but having terrible RNG is not an ideal or even a good way of solving inflation problems.

You could say “working as intended” but if players don’t speak up then Anet will never make changes that could benefit this game. And GW2 could really use a rewards rework/rebalancing.

The fact that charged lodestones are needed for so many recipes and the fact that they have a ridiculously low droprate is really not okay… I agree that it is a nightmare and that it should not be this way but Anet seems to be okay with ridiculous RNG in this game so I don’t think things will get any better in the near future.

frifox.5283:

Piratoz.8627:

Hey frifox! Speaking of addons, has Arenanet said anything or taken any action when you use your dps addon that you posted several months ago on reddit? I assumed that the addon that is posted in the screenshot was yours.

Nope, not my app in OP and nope, zero acknowledgement from ANet. It’s understandable though, it’s a gray area and they rather pretend it doesn’t exist than do anything about it. Still using it daily for the good of the mankind.

I guess I will be using your application haha. If people who exploited snowflakes for ectos were able to plead for and get 72 hour bans instead of permabans. I figure this dps meter can’t really hurt as I am not harming other players or altering the game.

frifox.5283:

I highly doubt it shows you data or location of stealthed enemies.

Hey frifox! Speaking of addons, has Arenanet said anything or taken any action when you use your dps addon that you posted several months ago on reddit? I assumed that the addon that is posted in the screenshot was yours.

I found a working DPS meter addon for GW2. Personally, I think that GW2’s policy of no addons is extremely disappointing.

I will only use this for personal use. There is no way to link information shown in the addon in chat so there is very little risk of creating “player toxicity” in game. (I don’t plan on sharing information from this addon anyways) This is not an exploit and will net me no gains. It does not give me any kind of in game advantage over another player. It is simply a way of seeing information differently in game for PVE only.

My question is will this get me banned?

An image example: http://i.imgur.com/mZ2a8WB.png

Yes, I am aware of the terms of service such as terms 8,15, 17, 19, and 20 in the code of conduct but they are quite vague on consequences.

Edit: Alright, the meter that I posted in the screenshot is not the dps meter that I thought was publicly available on github. The author, frifox informed me of this in this thread. The application in the screenshot is a different program. The guy who made it is looking for a tester but he has not released it to the general public. If you want to or are using these applications, please don’t be BM in chat or use this information to spoil other peoples experiences. Stuff like this is what ruins addons for everybody and is probably why so many people are opposed to helpful addons like these.
Link for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z859taGsiPw
Link to the frifox application: https://github.com/frifox/gw2dps

Rip Van Winkle.4859:

What does it get you. Combat chat shows the damage so why need something else?

It gets me an easy to see and read display for assistance in making optimal builds without having to sift through and compile information from combat logs.