Guild Wars 2

It would be nice if people would learn to read BEFORE posting snarky, childish nonsense.

I never said AR shouldn’t have been changed. I said it shouldn’t have been changed without giving engineers other, better options for dealing with conditions. And also that it is off-base nerfing something that affects all players because of a game mode used by a tiny minority.

Engineers used AR because they didn’t have better options. Removing it without giving us other options is counterproductive.

But hey, why not make one of the least-played classes even less attractive? Makes a lot of… well, “sense” isn’t the right word, is it?

I use it in WvW.

And I use it in PvP. Not in a decap build, but simply as a way of staying alive a bit longer given all the condition-heavy builds out there.

If a decap build is the problem they should deal with the decap abilities, of which AR is not one. And if something is a problem specific to PvP IT SHOULD BE CHANGED ONLY FOR PVP.

MonMalthias.4763:

I can only hope that more active condition cleanse through traits outside of Alchemy can be introduced because active condi mitigation of Engineer is now at its lowest point.

Which is why AR shouldn’t have been touched unless those things were done at the same time.

What they’ve done here is made one of the least played classes weaker in one of its weakest spots, in all game modes, for all players, because of the bellyaching of a handful of PvPers.

That’s not balancing. It’s being reactionary and not thinking through the broader ramifications.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Think big picture.

I am .. I’m thinking about just how much faster now I will die in WvW due to a lack of condition cleansing abilities, because of an overly-broad change that is intended to nerf one gimmicky build and instead makes life more difficult for all engineers, everywhere.

That’s the big picture — 0.1% of the GW2 playerbase whines about one specific build used in PvP, and all engineers are left even more weak in an area where they were already terrible. With, it would seem, no new condition cleanse abilities added to compensate.

Also have to love how when warriors have something overpowered it gets very slowly and gently and carefully tweaked by small amounts.

Other classes? Hit them with the nerf hammer.

Also love the contrast in how engineers and warriors are nerfed.

Warriors: “We must be very careful! Make only small tweaks, very slowly! We don’t want to risk them becoming underpowered (even though they’re by far the most broken, OP, overplayed class)”

Engineers: WHAM

lindstroem.3601:

The best thing about this change is that even more engineers will play a decap build cause bunker engineer isnt viable with the nerf to AR and without proper condition removal utilities.

My thinking was along the same lines. I played bunker before in PvP, not decap, despite everyone suggesting I should. Now I feel like maybe I should switch.

I knew this would happen. They’ve removed one of the few ways engineers had to deal with conditions.. and gave us nothing to compensate.

Worse, it was due to incessant whining in PvP about decapping, but seems to apply everywhere, which means getting owned even worse to condition spam in WvW.

Disappointed… I haven’t played much recently and this doesn’t make me want to ramp up in the future.

Simon.3794:

or maybe you should actually get better, because every good engineer i know do not use AR, and think AR are pure BS.

Thank you for your insulting and useless reply.

Engineers have very few tools against conditions, which are spammed everywhere in PvP. AR should not be nerfed without compensating improvements in condition removal.

ETA: If this change is game-wide (not just PvP) it will be even worse in WvW.

And what are they giving engineers to compensate, given their near total lack of ability to deal with conditions OTHER than AR?

Let me guess.. nothing.

I mostly play engi in AR.. not one designed for decap. I use AR to stay alive against condition-heavy classes. Maybe I should just start playing decap now?

Someone’s never played (or been attacked by) a necromancer.

I’m game in general.. though my playtime is currently severely limited. :/

ShinsVortex.3175:

but why does it have to be like this?

Human nature combined with a lack of adjustment by the development team.

It is natural and expected for players to choose the course of least resistance in selecting builds. Their goal is to help their team win, and that’s the way to do it.

The development team is supposed to counter this by observing builds to adjust down the power of overpowered builds and improve ones that aren’t often used. And they have done virtually none of that in the 5 months since I started playing GW2.

And that’s how you get metas that go on for ages.

Most of this is an artifact of SoR’s collapse, I’m afraid. These sorts of rating systems don’t deal particularly well with sudden, dramatic and permanent changes in competitiveness; it takes time for them to adjust.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Mesmers are not viable in the meta. Their primary issues stem from Thieves being the Apex Predator for roaming, a super-heavy bunker meta, and slow out-of-combat movement.

For me at least, the lack of AoE is another factor in my mesmer now getting very little gameplay time. It’s not that this is a primary issue, but in addition to some of the other problems we all know about, it makes it less viable in WvW and especially PvE.

Yep, I already thanked Autumn for posting in another thread.

Autumn Frazee.3158:

We are currently working on the difficulty of the Assault Knight fights; I realize that sometimes its hard to get a full overflow or that there are non peak hours where server populations will be lighter. Hopefully with the difficulty changes, it will also make it easier for a good server to get ‘Six Minutes to Knightfall’.

Thank you for the response and for considering reducing the amped-up difficulty, both are appreciated.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

Yes? You were questioning why there was no comment yet, if there is one it’ll be either today or sometime this week.

I said there’s been a lot of feedback, and no response yet, and said that I hoped there would be a response. I never asked why there was no comment yet, nor implied that anyone should have posted on the weekend.

(And for the record, we do fairly regularly see comments posted under Anet tags on the weekend anyway.)

Carighan.6758:

Thing is, overall people are probably very happy. The forums show a minority snapshot, driven there by being unhappy with the game in the first place.

I’ve been around Internet forums and groups for now close to 25 years. I know how the dynamic works.

The difference in tone this past week compared to that two weeks prior was quite obvious. It’s not just the usual “people who complain are louder”.

And it’s not just the forums. People are quite unhappy in-game. Again there, unhappy ones may chat more than happy ones do, but I didn’t see this in the “Escape” installation.

I also find it interesting that in that one they made it easier to get the best reward, by changing it from 1500 citizens to 1200. Whereas here they haven’t just made the entire event a little bit harder, but punitively so.

I don’t understand why this was done, nor why people are bending over backwards to defend Arenanet’s lack of comment on this matter. They usually do post at least somewhat frequently, and it’s one of the things that’s kept me playing GW2 until now. The silence here is noticeable.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

I’m sure they have, like kuma said they can’t do much on a weekend.

I didn’t post this on a weekend. Nor did I indicate that I expected them to comment on a weekend.

It’s a weekday now. It would be nice if they would acknowlege the feedback provided on the dramatic changes made to this event mid-stream. Obviously it’s their product and they can do what they want with it — as they did on Friday.

But the result of their changes is a lot of frustrated and disappointed people. The fight, as they’ve made it now, is tedious and unrewarding for the vast majority of participants.

I wouldn’t have thought they really wanted all their hard work with the living world to end on this sort of sour note. I find the decision to nerf this event to oblivion right in the middle very hard to understand.

There have been a great number of comments about the changes to the event made in the recent patches. Most of them quite reasonable and polite. But I haven’t seen any response from anyone at Arenanet on the matter.

Some sort of indication that we’re being heard would be nice. An idea of whether you plan to make any changes to address the current widespread frustration, even better.

Thanks.

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

..once the Knight counter gets to 0..

.. which doesn’t happen at all on a lot of servers now.

Well, they were there in spades before this patch. You know, when it actually was worth doing.

illutian.7630:

@kokiman: Checked the daily and monthly tabs I didn’t see anything specific to the Event. Just the usual (ie Skill Interupt; Veteran Slaying, etc).

Look for the daily that has a special icon next to it. It’s there.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

If servers do not have enough players to get 150 people together at LA for the living story event, the great final, something is seriously wrong.

I’m sure every server has at least 150 people on it. The problem is how many of them want to participate in the event.

In this case, they’ve transformed what was a relatively straightforward and fun final chapter of Living World into an annoying nightmare. People get frustrated and don’t want to participate any more, which then creates a vicious circle — fewer people makes it harder to win, so more people leave, and there are fewer people still, and so on.

I’m on TC, a large server, and last night was surprised to find myself not in an overflow. Because people are bored and/or fed up with the event. I ended up leaving myself after trying a couple of times — why sit there auto-attacking for 15 minutes to get a few boxes? If I wanted to do boring crap for boxes, I’d run around in circles in Queensdale. At least there, I know I’ll actually get the boxes!

I’ve been playing this game for 5 months now, and the destruction of this event through the most recent patch is the most inexplicable thing I’ve witnessed. They’ve taken what was a fun climax to the living story and ruined it.

Yeah I thought the story was pretty well done. The implementation, well…

It’s more hassle, more failure, less rewards. Which for me at least means less fun; your mileage may very.

I don’t like standing around and then spending 15 minutes auto-attacking something in what is really a very boring fight, and then failing the event because a bunch of people don’t even apparently figure out that they’re doing zero damage on one of the other bosses.

This event was shipped before it was ready. Then after waiting several days for bug fixes, you instead jumped in and basically destroyed the event with overly-aggressive difficulty boosts.

Very disappointing way to end the living story. I’m just glad/lucky I got to do a few runs before it was nuked. The story and cutscenes were nicely done, which was at least the saving grace.

I’m not sure what’s going on over there, guys, but I really hope you have a different plan for the next living story series, because what you’re doing now is not working.

Well I for one like the LS and the regular releases of content. It doesn’t matter if it’s temporary, because the honest truth is that people would get bored of permanent content and stop playing it anyway. The devs understand that, which is good.

The problem is that they’ve clearly set a pace they can’t keep up with. Hopefully they understand that now and can adjust when the next LS story begins.

Over my few months of playing the game I’ve tried to focus on the positive because there’s quite a lot. But it’s getting hard to do. The quality of the releases seems to be going in the wrong direction.

The OP’s comments were overly harsh, but the overall gist of the complaint is hard to argue with. There’s a distinct lack of polish in this content that’s noticeable even to someone like myself who only started last fall.

I think the reason is obvious: tying the releases to specific dates rather than putting stuff out when it’s actually ready. This LS event was not ready, and quite obviously so.

This whole forum is overrun with performing egos.

Those assault knights looked a lot like the marionette to me.

Middle of the event. Killed all three champions — no loot.

Now I’m stuck permanently levitating in the air in the Scarlet fight. Can’t help, can’t get rewards. So basically, waste of an hour, of which I only had 2 to play tonight.

This is really quite frustrating. And disappointing that so many bugs made it live and are still not fixed 48 hours later.

EDIT: Somehow I got unstuck while writing the above, so don’t let anyone tell you complaining is pointless.

That’s what I figured, based on what it contained. Thanks.

So can anyone actually answer my question, please?

I just did the whole event, and at the end the instance owner left right before the end. I’d rather not endure the whole thing yet again if I’m only getting 3 alliance bags as a reward.

Thanks.

Seems to be a random bug. I’ve done events where I got drops from all 3, some where I got none, some where I got 2/3. And it’s not tagging, as I’m getting “gold level” XP/karma.

So this was pretty impressive, at least for me as someone who’s not rich and is in particular intimidated by the cost of ascended stuff. Is it one-time only or once per day?

Thanks.

The black tonic has been more expensive than the others since they first showed up 2 weeks ago. I think people just like them more.

Adula.3698:

This means that illusionary berserker that hits for 5k can be spam cloned while the Mesmer afk’s in stealth.

You can’t “clone” an illusionary berserker, and mesmers have no stealths that last more than a few seconds. The only way to get two berserkers is using the horrendous signet, which leaves you with no healing for something like 40 seconds.

These sorts of comments just make it clear that people are criticizing the class without even understanding it.

A defensive mesmer can use stealth to (mostly) evade fights. And they can be great 1v1 in the hands of a skilled opponent. But they are useless except as utility bots in groups.

Let’s see, you play warrior. Which class is it that there are more of than anything else in WvW? Which class is it that people run whole “trains” of? Hint: it’s not mesmer.

Um, listing a pile of skills on different weapons used in different builds puts you into “30/30/30/30/30” territory.

For all of how “uber” mesmers supposedly are, I see fewer of them than almost any other class in WvW. And don’t even get me started on how useless they are in large group fights.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Say one thing for Sanctum of Rall (and those Rallians that made a name out of it), say out of the three long standing tier 1 servers, BG with its ultra stacked mega blobs, JQ with its long standing tier 1 streak, It’s SoR that people have pointed at, talked about, worried about, named guilds regarding, and had questions about more than the other two combined.

Hasn’t been my experience, at least over the last few months I’ve been involved in WvW.

SoR is getting a lot of attention basically because of its abandonment of WvW, collapse in the ratings, and the associated drama. I’m not sure why anyone would consider that a good thing, unless they are obsessed with fame for its own sake.

“If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.”
— John Kenneth Galbraith

Bharel.4328:

We slapped a few dolyaks, picked off reinforcements, and took a supply camp. The commander was attacking garrison, we asked in map if they wanted us to join up with them. This time one of the members of the group that was on TS asked there as well. Still no answer. We go ahead and take a 2nd supply camp after they capture garrison and this exchange takes place.
Map: Hey are you guys that took Stargrove a guild group?
Us: No
Map: Are you in TS?
Us: 2 of us are
Map: Could you guys leave this bl so [blank] can get in?
Us: Why?
Map: You’re not following the commander’s orders and we’re trying to win here.

Man, if I saw an exchange like that on TC I would raise a royal stink. I wouldn’t blame anyone from being completely turned off after such treatment.

I admire your loyalty to your server, especially given experiences like that one.

Peetee.9406:

Shrug, I agree with him.

Simply believing the exact opposite of whatever Sanduskel posts has rarely led me astray.

warriorjrd.8695:

Oh right, I forgot “real” wvw wasn’t just who has the biggest blob running from tower to tower. And that this strategy you speak of wasn’t to just build as many arrow carts in objectives and running with the most people possible. PPT is all about who has the biggest army on a 24 hour rotation. When will people learn there is no strategy in that.

EotM is not WvW. It’s more like a living world release where you can kill other players.

Real WvW means going out there and doing your best for your server, win lose or draw. The rest is noise. That’s what I believe and what a lot of people on TC believe, which is part of why I am there. And why I feel confident TC will do fine whether we win in T1, lose in T1, or fall back to T2, or even below that.

warriorjrd.8695:

People are clearly enjoying it for a reason.

The main reason is that it’s easy. It’s not real WvW, where you have to coordinate and work together and use strategy. It’s just yet another “run in a big group and get goodies” event.

Nothing wrong with that per se. EotM was a great idea.

But it should have been rolled out along with changes to fix WvW.

Instead, permanent damage has been done to a major game mode, and all we get from Arenanet on the matter is silence.

Basically, they gave up.

A couple of weeks ago a bunch of SoR people were in here proudly declaring that they “only care about fights” because “PPT doesn’t matter” and that they were essentially tanking on purpose to move from tier 1 to tier 2. And so they got slaughtered for a couple of straight weeks.

They seemed quite pleased about this, with some even expressing glee that they were (in their view) messing things up for BG and JQ.

Apparently quite a number of people on SoR still do realize that PPT and server pride do matter, and so they went to servers where others also care about winning regular WvW. Most of the others are probably still in EotM.

SoR had the ability to remove itself from tier 1, but not to decide where they would end up. It’s a great lesson in how hard it can be to stop a slide (in any context) once it starts.

Oh, and also a great example of how EotM is destroying WvW.

Well, there’s still hope that some of the enhancements in EotM will work their way to real WvW. But as I’ve said from the start, releasing a map with significantly better direct gameplay and better rewards without revamping the main game mode is leading to the destruction of conventional WvW on a lot of servers.

I don’t blame players for going to EotM if they find it more fun. Those decisions make perfect sense on an individual level.

But taken collectively, they are destroying WvW.

It was an extremely BAD idea for Arenanet to release EotM in its current state, complete with exaggerated rewards, before fixing regular WvW.

Less than 12 hours after reset, and already several of the NA matches are complete one-sided blow-outs.

This is what the “great new addition” of EotM has given us.

I haven’t taken my mesmer into open-world PvE since I rolled my engi. There’s that much of a difference.

In PvP it’s no contest either, at least for me. My win percentage is somewhere around 40-45% on my mesmer and 60-70% or so on my engi.

I’ll still go into WvW occasionally, for the utilities and for old time’s sake.