Guild Wars 2

neat…can see some are working to get basic functionality nerfed…thanks.

“good”?….no.

if you are power and want ranged and an offhand, then you use it.

agree w/ OP………..this is bad.

Raelag Arkhen.6347:

Goldenrevolver.4371:

and dont get me started on calling it “zerker meta” when half of the group NEEDS to be condi to even kill the kitten first boss.

Sinister is just a condi zerker, that’s basically the same thing: you have to max your damage out if you want to succeed. So far, raids are meant to zerk( & sinister, woah, revolution there!) meta. Otherwise you just don’t have enough DPS to kill the boss
I like the boss mechanics and everything, but that timed thing…

while i get what you’re saying, i also kinda think they didn’t want to stray too far from fractal/dungeon comps w/ the first wing….i’ll take condi having a place (and moments of necessary concentrated cc) as a step in the right direction. hopefully, later wings will require more varied comps.

Warscythes.9307:

Reporting a bit on boss 2.

Boss has a phrase where he will spawn 4 adds and slowly walk toward it. If any of the adds touch the boss then the raid wipes. The adds are ONLY affected by chill, cripple, immobilize. Reaper is actually pretty good for this one since we puke out cripple and chill with some immobilize

nice!

zerk is probably ideal, but i like marauder armor w/ zerk weaps and trinkets….the extra HP helps with condi mitigation….and rev isn’t short on ferocity buffs

thanks you, Irenio. very nice to see this changed back so quickly. i can now use this pet again in pve.

Phy.2913:

People want an xpac to be as big as the original game? That’s not how it works, especially in an MMO. Part of the price is future content.

agree…..but it was clearly rushed/unfinished.

raids and new legendaries should have been there day one. the revenant should have functional underwater combat to the same level as other classes. the druid and scrapper should have had more beta testing.

that said, i love the new maps. there’s more to do and exploration is actually fun and not mindless. it feels like a boring chore to explore base game maps now (on my revenant)….and gliding is awesome ( sounds simple, but it adds so much to the fun of gameplay in the new maps).

its still easier than BW2….so i’m not sure why there are complaints. its at a perfect level.

skilled players can continue to run their glass cannon gear, but have a bit more of a challenge than before, and subpar players (like myself) can gear/trait up a bit more defensively and have the same experience.

the content can be explored solo no matter skill level…so getting from one event chain to the next is not a problem.

the new pve maps are 10x better than anything in the base game…….exploration is no longer mindless, but not hard…its somewhat like a platformer once you have basic glider and mushroom jump (which you can get in the first hour or 2 in game). mobs are a bit more difficult and varied in behavior than base game, but still not so hard that you can’t travel solo. the events are mostly familiar, but some are new and pretty cool (in the first zone, there’s part of an event chain where you defend high ground on a ruin wall with rifles against hordes of mordrem…basically archer-like castle defense).

and probably more important to you, the main complaints people had at launch are gone. story mode is no longer unreasonably gated by masteries,, mobs guarding HP and Mastery points in the first zone were nerfed so that even a mediocre player will have no problem getting them, and the amount of hero points to earn your elite spec was reduced from 400 to 250.

there is no valid “grind” or “gating” complaint anymore.

i can’t recommend the new content enough….if you found the base game too easy/boring/mindless. its not crazing hard mode…but there is a lot to explore and loot is quite nice.

there’s a bunch of other stuff, like the new class and new class specs, new gear stats (that are actually good), guild halls, new skins, new ways to get legendaries, tons of new collections/items, and the things that will come shortly like raids and new legendaries.

game isn’t perfect, but bugs are surprisingly few for a new expac launch and overall, i enjoy the new content significantly more than the base game in every respect.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Here’s some comments from Roy’s twitter:

• Underwater skills not saving properly is getting fixed;
• A second underwater weapon will eventually be made;
• No underwater glint “right now, we’ll be looking at adding more uw in the future”.

what kind of horsekitten is that?

love a lot about HoT, but there are so many incomplete/ missing features….pretty clear this expac was completely rushed or they are completely understaffed.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Khael.7325:

Over nerfing/buffing something and then adjusting it is not a bad thing. In fact it’s a very good thing. Balance is a small moving target and sometimes it requires a few shots to connect. That said, I don’t think the devs are doing a great job at correcting themselves when they miss the mark. Rather than adjusting a few inches to the left, they shoot off in a totally different direction.

It is a bad thing, it makes the balance team look unprofessional and biased. It also makes the development team look like they have zero clue about balance.

It is far better to say to the community “We are looking at this skill/trait because we think it is too powerful in certain circumstances, so we will shave it slightly several times until we get to where we think it is in a good place. Be aware it is going to change several times.”

To just smash something so hard so that it becomes terrible is a really bad thing. Look at how everyone is reacting to it. They could save all of that with communication and explanation.

If they actually adjusted things back up after this, often, until it was right, then it would work, but they never do this.

Vox Hollow.2736:

brave but volatile > stable but slow

I think I’d rather get occasionally stung by having shiney things dangled in front of my eyes and snatched away, than improvements happening at a pace so glacial it never really managed to outpace general powercreep and could be interpreted as inaction for months at a time.

We are getting both at once. Totally OP skills and traits making it into live and then over-reaction nerfs as well as glacial pace improvements over time.

It’s time to stop ‘booning’ skills and traits and adjust them incrementally, ie, no more than a 20% reduction in effectiveness at a time.

exactly….we’ve historically received balance patches on average every 4 months. 90% of these changes are very small “shaves” (some are effective, but most are ineffective and need another iteration) and about 10% are WTF game-changers.

ideally, we’d get balance passes twice as frequently….at least 6 times a year (alternating each month w/ bug fix patches).

Jim Hunter.6821:

It’s kind of like this…
They give you a delicious looking steak, let you smell it, maybe even have a bite.
Then some kitten at the table next to you starts screaming that it’s not fair that you get a steak and they don’t, even though they ordered ribs, so anet takes the steak and throws it in the trash.

When you try and ask why your steak got thrown in the trash they ignore you.
You end up getting kittened and demanding a new steak and when you cause a big enough scene they realize they need to do something to avoid bad pr.

At this point they will either give you a cheeseburger (that will likely be thrown away) or dig your steak out of the trash.
It’ll be dirty, it might be missing chunks where the rats got at it….. but hey, you got your steak back.

brilliant and accurate.

glint/jalis in HoT content (love the jalis AoE); glint/shiro everywhere else…….zerk weapons/trinkets and marauder armor (the extra HP helps midigate condis). s/a + hammer

will happen within the next few days.

scaramanga.4915:

Anet is basically politicians. They flip flop so much, they should run for office.

this…..but your ranger always end up worse for it.

oshilator.4681:

Just wondering what tonight’s “new build” will nerf.

The smart money is on Ancient Seeds.

its coming for sure.

very glad i haven’t wasted any time or HP on druid. they are systematically destroying it one update at a time.

kitten calm.

the balance team, as it relates to ranger, stinks…and has always stunk. 3 years of stink.

AgitatedFox.5287:

Holland.9351:

Just remove the combo field from Smoke Cloud and call it a day.

May as well delete the pet if you do that. The whole reason this thread exists is for the on-demand combo field.

this.
just delete the pet if there is not going to be an on demand smoke field.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Going to be investigating this. It may require some change to Smoke Assault, since the active skills are intended to be a little stronger than the passive skills.

lol…what’s to investigate?

you already nerfed smoke assault significantly (50% dmg reduction) and then made the pets smoke field uncontrollable, thus making it unusable in any thing other than solo roaming (since it will overwrite group-coordinated fields such as water and fire).

these types of changes you guys are making are just absurdly illogical.

i literally sigh every “new build in 10 minutes” notification…..because each one bring a “bull in the china store” nerf to ranger or druid.

why are other classes “shaved”, while rangers are decapitated?

kitten.

THANK YOU!

now i have my “oh kittene” button back on non-healer builds.

druid moves back up to third priority (under herald and reaper)

BeardRex.6739:

Pretend you’re level one again. Do everything. Explore, kill stuff, follow people around and participate in events with them. Gather.

but that sounds like insane grind!

joking of course.

Phy.2913:

Anyone remember Orr on release?

exactly.

sadly (to me) i see this totally nerfed in a few months……..but it shouldn’t be.

good to see some rational threads being made now that the dust is starting to clear.

haven’t had a deployment problem, but i have died a few times, even though i successfully managed my glider bar to get safely to a surface. seems odd…and my only complaint w/ glider so far.

BeardRex.6739:

These zones have some of the best level design I’ve ever seen in a game, not to mention an MMO. I’ve “wasted” so much time un-effeciently exploring. Luckily the game often rewards you for taking a random path/mushroom/updraft. I barely even look at my map sometimes. The Meta events are extremely entertaining as well even if I haven’t been in a map that had successful completion yet. I especially love the Tarir event. Discovering and learning about Rata Nova was spectacular as well.

The story is amazing so far as well. I’m not going to say more to avoid spoilers, so yeah… just really good.

Unlocking my elite spec (scrapper) has been fun too. I decided to take the hard-mode route and playing with my elite spec enabled. It felt like my character was actually making progression again. I felt like I was earning it too. As someone who loves jumping puzzles and exploration, this was definitely the way to go. I hope Anet doesn’t give in to the people who will forget it took them a day or two to unlock their elite specs. Once they beat HoT and get a lot of the masteries and go back through the maps on their alts they will breeze through unlocking their elite specs. Really the only people I feel bad for are in WvW. It seems pretty hard to unlock elite specs just by WvWing, but Anet needs to be careful as to not make it so easy that it encourages PvEers to WvW just to unlock their elite specs.

exactly (and agree about wvw)…..but people seem to not be taking into account masteries are account bound. its really not that time-consuming of a task when you consider this.

love it so far. maps are awesome….gliding is amazing…mobs are tuned just right…

still haven’t fulling unlocked an elite yet (really close on necro)….but don’t really care. the content is fun to play.

its great for loot. its probably one of the more profitable things you can do, by just selling off your loot…………or you can open you halloween bags to convert the candy corn into cobs to get vendor items (and maybe get a rare rng halloween weapon skin while opening the bags).

its not pointless at all, unless you don’t care about either

i love gliding……..works so smoothly. such a great addition to game play.

and agree…..outside of some terrible, TERRIBLE balance decisions on certain classes, i LOVE this expansion.

Soon.5240:

Chrono.6928:

The “problem” was when the maps were empty.

Uh, the maps were empty because Anet was unable to draw new customers to the game.

Megaservers were an admission of failure —not something for Anet to be proud of. Had the game been properly managed, they would have had to ADD servers, not effectively reduce them….

So, when we see drastic changes to HoT, it will be because the game is failing to retain and/or draw new customers.

It really is as simple as that.

When the HoT maps are empty, the game has failed – no matter what spin is put forth.

agree…but i’d wait a few weeks. halloween events + tyrian masteries/new legendaries might play a role.

still, if they “fail” for creating a better product….i’ll enjoy it until it shuts down….because the new content is vastly superior to anything in the base game.

kurfu.5623:

Fan-boi detector asploded.

no, just a competent player.

while you can’t really solo an entire outpost chain (or at least i can’t) most individual events are easily soloable. so are some champs (if you build in some xtra sustain/active defense over normal zerk dungeon builds).

Call me a “fan-boi”, but i finally got the open world pve i wanted.

an uncontrolable smoke filed is kittened………and the burst is no longer strong enough to be called a burst.

the pet is more a liability in group play now than anything else.

my guess is it is to serve our pvp overlords’ complaints…..these devs serve the interests of the incredibly few to the detriment of the masses simply because they will not split all skills. so lame

Levetty.1279:

oshilator.4681:

If we wanted to play another class, we’d be playing another class.

Then there is not much reason to complain. We have seen what Rangers have been like for the past 3 years, we have seen the strange nonsensical reasons why they nerf us, we have seen that everytime Ranger manages to rise up it gets cut down again, we have seen how they will lie to us about the nerfs, we saw how they handled the Druid reveal, we saw the absolute joke that was the druid spec, we saw it only had 1 BW so there was no chance it would be finished by launch.

If you want to play Ranger you will have to play with a broken class the devs don’t care about. If you don’t want to play with a broken class the devs don’t care about then you don’t want to play Ranger.

agree.
removed all ascended gear from my 2 rangers and made them storage mules, today. all that saved bank space feels good.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Relshdan.6854:

Hammerguard.9834:

Not only that but “Smoke Assault: This skill has switched places with Smoke Cloud so that it will now be the F2 skill for this pet” is a huge mistake.

We need to smoke field on demand for invis. Wtf is Anet thinking.

wouldn’t want ranger to infringe on thief/ mesmer territory and be useful in a new way…..i genuinely dislike the devs in charge of balance.

their vision for ranger stinks.

What vision? All evidence points to flailing in the dark at this point. They launched HoT with CAF in a blatantly unusable state, and haven’t even bothered to discuss it with the playerbase. Instead, they throw heavy-handed nerfs while we’re already down.

my bad indeed…should have said “their lack of vision” stinks.

they’ll stay silent on the matter until 4-6 months from now when they decide to do a balance patch….because only buffs on certain classes like necro and ranger get quick dev attention.

Hammerguard.9834:

Not only that but “Smoke Assault: This skill has switched places with Smoke Cloud so that it will now be the F2 skill for this pet” is a huge mistake.

We need to smoke field on demand for invis. Wtf is Anet thinking.

wouldn’t want ranger to infringe on thief/ mesmer territory and be useful in a new way…..i genuinely dislike the devs in charge of balance.

their vision for ranger stinks.

Hammerguard.9834:

Ranger—Smokescale: Smoke Assault: This skill has switched places with Smoke Cloud so that it will now be the F2 skill for this pet. Fixed an issue in which this skill dealt higher than intended damage; it has been reduced by 50%.

Typical Anet. Always ready for nerfs but never ready for buffs.

its kittening amazing how true this is.

I played it for a few hours last night and enjoyed it (was around 3am and fairly empty), but i probably won’t do much on the new maps until halloween is over….which is why they should have delayed or extended the halloween festival.

Pecar.1236:

you forgot say most thing what is locked behind masteries so i must farming boring low exp reward event for unlock another farming?

you can get gliding and mushroom jumping in an hour or two just playing the game……what “unbearable grind”.

Kristine Heath.1483:

Relshdan.6854:

they’re a lost cause, OP….they’re going to rage even when what they are saying is nonsense . its almost comical at this point.

Go ahead and explain what you think is nonsense.

see my previous post replying to the “nothing’s new” guy or black and white silly nonsense, such as having to earn your elite spec being outrageous “grind”.

wasn’t referring to those arguing in the the grey area:

i can see a rational argument for delaying the need for masteries to progress through a map until a later map….or that 400 HP might be too much to earn you skils/traits….or that maybe you should be able to choose which aspects of the elite to put you HP in……………i get all that (and agree with some of it).

Pecar.1236:

so There is a ton new in this game now. list something .

new maps that are explored very differently, like a platformer game
new story instances
competitive pve events called “adventures”
customizable guild halls
guild arenas for casual 1v1 dueling
new earnable/lootable weapon and armor skins
legendary crafting
new food/item recipes
new mob-types w/ new and improved mechanics and behaviors
new bosses
more gear stat combos in all modes to allow for more customization
new collections for those that like that kinda thing
a new profession
a new traitline in each profession w/ new skills and expanded weapon selection

i can go on…but you get the gist. whether you like something new, doesn’t change that its still a new thing.

they’re a lost cause, OP….they’re going to rage even when what they are saying is nonsense . its almost comical at this point.

regular necro MM can, as well…which makes getting your HP much easier

Dynasty.5127:

Sizer.3987:

Not sure why everyone is so kittened at elite specs actually requiring stuff to unlock. Its not like when you bought the base game you got a free level 80 with all your traits unlocked and could do lvl 80 content the first hour. Yet suddenly people feel like they should be able to unlock everything in HOT in the first day? Odd.

Anyway, I second the OP, even though no one takes the forum trolls very seriously (though they are entertaining) someone has got to post something positive every once in a while.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

and all opinions are subject to criticism….most importantly, the dumb ones.

lakeshadow.8427:

Fantastic.5298:

You’re doing it wrong. Elite specs have nothing to do with the events, you unlock your elite specialization traits and skills from hero challenges and you only do those once.

Too bad that to get some hero challenges you need masteries, aka getting xp or often doing events. Perfect example is in Verdant the northern Hero Challenge requires you know the language (I forget the exact name). Oh and in Auric (I believe) there’s one where you need toxic resistance.

i know. like why do we even have levels. you have to grind and grind and grind just to use a weapon you like….or not die in a zone you want to explore…or use a certain skill….or enter a dungeon. that’s BS, man! Anet are kittens…so many gates! Arrrrrrghhhhh!!!!!

sarcasm/

since when is playing a game “grinding”. this is like complaining about character levels gating gear or content (which no one does).

grinding is finding the one most efficient way to achieve a goal, and thus doing it repetitively for a very long time to the point it is no longer fun.

you don’t have to do that here…the basics are earned fairly quickly by just playing. they even start you off with a mastery point and default you to glider….so you can then get to other Hero points (and progress your elite spec) and mastery points (so you can then get mushroom jumping). the simple basics of the first few masteries allows you to do the bulk of exploration….but then you have real choices to make in prioritizing how you want to progress and what goals are most important for you to achieve. Its quite meaningful and thus…pretty cool for this specific game.

if you want a true sandbox game….play something like Skyrim or Witcher3.
GW2 tried that at launch (as much as a MMO can) and the players devoured everything in 2 weeks and then raged on the forums about lack of content and no real “endgame”. now you have some open world pve “endgame”.

Salvatore.4983:

I agree ^^, also never seen an expansion launch that runs so smoothly. Well done!

don’t want to jinx anything, but totally agree. well done Anet.

meh…..go back to the base game or play another game if you just want to stroll along without any challenge or meaningful progression.

i really like the new content (so far)…..earning mastery levels/points and hero points in the new area isn’t just a given like in the base game….it is a reward for being a semi-competent player. it feels the exact opposite of a grind…its the exact opposite of mindless repetition.

LOVE the first map (as far as i’ve explored, since i only have glider)….the mobs are fun to fight, though a tad on the easy side compared to BWE2, but better than BWE3….which makes exploring solo very doable on any class. the vertical layered nature of the map is incredibly fun to explore.

great stuff so far.

not the death of soloing….but certainly more difficult.
had no problem soloing to explore or get from event to event on the first map…..but you’d want at least one other player w/ you to do the events. duoing thedefend events is actually pretty easy….3 make the champs go down fast. have no idea what happens with larger scaling…..

granted i was a zerker minion master necro (which is quite tanky once you build up enough jagged horrors…that +toughness per minion trait is amazing)…and a soldier guardian…..so some tankiness/sustain makes things a bit easier.

in my rage over the AF decay, i missed this.

very nice.

now really tempted to make one just to try out a wvw lockdown build.