Guild Wars 2

I agree with the op on a lot of points, It feels like Anet’s playing an entire different game than the rest of us.

I just want to know what they intend for each class to be able to do. What are their strengths? Weaknesses? Roles? The fact is that some classes got nerfs with no thought of what they’re going to do afterwards.

Necro/Rev/Druid/Scrapper/Ele/Thief will all be way overturned. I can’t wait to see how much burst is going to be in this game post patch. I guess Guards/Mesmer/Warrior can just sit in the nonviable corner because Anet has no idea how to balance.

Solori.6025:

Cynz.9437:

… require a target. To make it fair since steal requires target now. I personally don’t see how it is justified that F-Skills from other classes don’t require target. I think it should be fixed asap

Question….

What did you use steal for without a target?

It doesn’t move you, it doesn’t give you an ability.

It just went on a CD that achieved absolutely nothing.

So…What did you steal from with no target?
Why did you steal with no target?

Really?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thrill_of_the_Crime

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hidden_Thief

I guess you’ve never played thief but being able to stealth on demand is life saving and granting yourself and allies swiftness is common place.

Hahahaha, just when I think they can’t make their game worse, they prove me wrong!

Props Anet! Your incompetence rivals even Blizzard’s at this point.

I agree with you OP. There’s so much wrong with this expansion that I honestly regret buying it. I expected something like Gw2’s launch, not endless grinds and gated content.

Guild hall costs are hilariously gold hungry, every single upgrade is hundreds of gold alone. Not to mention that each section is split into 2! I can’t express my surprise when my guild finished Arena 1 and realized we couldn’t even use it. We needed to grind out Arena 2 also!

One of our guild mates tried to do scribing, only to realize how insane the costs are and how much materials you require just to make anything of value. And then of course, banners being locked away behind that is just so gross. Like fractal rewards, stacking them behind masteries? What kind of game takes things you already had access to and then reintroduces them as new rewards?

Dragonstand and Tangled Depths are some of the worst maps I’ve ever seen created. TD having an hour and a half wait for the meta to start and only repeatable events running is mind numbingly awful, while DS requires a 2 hour investment just to begin, god forbid your map fails the fight, you get absolutely nothing.

Pvp balance is back to an all time low, with most of my team being disgusted with the power creep of elite specs. I honestly can’t fathom how we got back to this so quickly after the Ele nerf. Passive healing, passive defenses, evades and blocks and immunes for days with so much aoe spam, my game can’t even load the effects. Anet just doesn’t seem to learn when it comes to pvp.

It saddens me to think back to the game when I first started playing and looking at it’s state now. It boggles my mind how quickly they tossed away their manifesto and went full f2p ideology. I’m expecting massive changes, otherwise it’s going to start hemorrhaging population when people get fed up of being nickle and dimed.

After playing around with Zerker again, I come to the same conclusion. It has no idea what it want’s to be. The condi traits are worse than arms, the power traits are worse than strength, and it brings so little for a cele build that you’re better off without it. Every single trait is like a worse version of something already warrior has.

Discipline is pretty much required for every warrior build, Defense right behind that, and the other 3 fill in your playstyle. Arms for condi, Tactics for support, Strength for damage. There’s just no room for a kitten trait line that’s inferior to the rest.

I mean why would I ever take Zerker over Strength when it comes to damage? Strength has damage on dodge roll, Peak Performance, Forceful Greatsword, and Berserker’s power. All of which outclass things like Always Angry and Bloody Roar.

Most of these traits aren’t even good. One stack of burning for rage skills? Which are already pretty bad outside of headbutt and outrage. The burst skills in some cases become worse, like hammer/longbow. Blood reaction is weak and Dead or Alive is just a worse version of Defy Pain.

I’m not even sure what to do to make it viable. Apply burning on crits? 2 stack? Dead or Alive is just a 6k heal when you pop Berserk? Make it so when you break a stun, you remove 2 conditions?

It’s really got to be changed, I think burning stacking is okay as long as individual skills don’t apply 3+ stacks per attack or whatever. Watching burn guardians just plop 15+ stacks of burning on someone in a few seconds is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.

I feel like Spirits in their current state are just worse turrets. Some of the activated skills are kinda nifty but their small range and delayed activation really cripple their uses.

Just a few ideas that I think would help them:

1. Increase their range and health a bit, so they don’t die to cleave as quickly and so they can be a little farther away without being useless.
2. Give them a pulsing debuff to enemies nearby. Water applies weakness, Sun applies blind, Stone applies cripple, Frost applies chilled, Storm applies vulnerability, and Spirit of Nature applies fear.
3. Their on use skills shouldn’t be based around their body but instead around yourself, so when you activate them, the spirit casts it at your location.

I’m currently running a burn spirit ranger in tpvp and while I enjoy spirits, they just suffer from their low health, their stationary effects, and their on use skills being unreliable.

The same thing that happened to Shadow happened to me, same issue, can’t get the queue to work.

When you activate the spirit’s use ability (the heal), you can spam it multiple times for nearly unlimited health until the spirit sacrifices itself. The other spirits are behaving normally.

Josh Davis.6015:

How about this?

• Shield of Absorption cooldown goes from 30s to 24s baseline.
• Shield of Judgement cooldown goes from 25s to 20s baseline.

Added to the release notes maintained in General Discussion.

Edit: For clarification, the shield recharge trait is still there on top of this. It brings the cooldowns from 24>19s, and 20>16s.

The skills themselves are lackluster, that’s the problem. Focus getting protection pretty much makes shield obsolete.

Why not make Shield of Judgement apply Resistance to allies and taunt to foes? I think it’s really weird that Guardians don’t seem to have some way of applying taunt and shield seems like a good place to add it on to.

As for Shield of Absorption, revert it back to when you didn’t have to channel the bubble and it will be fine. The rooting you to the ground makes this skill almost completely useless in most situations.

That’s a really horrible change.

Mesmer’s rely on blink spots to peel out of fights, without that, they’re going to really have nothing to save themselves with. Thieves use it too obviously, though it’ll hurt their mobility more than their survivability.

It’s not a problem that needed to be fixed.

Welp, no more gems for me. Good luck with that Anet.

I think most player’s learned this game by trail and error. Sure, you may not get downed state the first time because there’s no explanation of it until you’re downed but the second time you’ll know and be ready for it. Same thing goes for all the crap they’ve gated behind levels. Seriously the worst patch they’ve put out.

My large norn male guardian can’t see his feet either… sigh.

If I ever do need to level another character, it’ll be though collecting level books through pvp and never outside of that. They’ve pretty much gutted the leveling experience and left it to die.

CyClotroniC.4957:

I really feel bad for Anet right now, because it must have been a lot of work and I bet they truly wanted to improve it, but I just don’t get why is it good. So basically all the limitations should serve new players and help them to slowly experience every single part of the game, but I still see it as counterproductive.

Curiosity is a huge part of new player experience, and it just feels like that I’m walking into a restaurant and the waiter is telling me, that I cannot have a menu, until I taste the daily special. I mean if a new player is capable of using, learning, unterstanding new skill and aspects of the game, why hold him back? I’m pretty sure if someone is confused by the game (A) he will go with autoattacks by his own will until he is comfortable with using more (B) ask around in mapchat and experience the helpful community of the game and feel welcomed.

I had no problem at all with leveling up 2 years ago, since then I leveled up many alts, most of them with 100% world completion and I’m still waiting since april to level up an engi. Created one a couple of weeks ago, because I hoped you will redesign the trait-system, and now I will wait more. It’s just time consuming and I wouldn’t like to waste significantly more time on leveling an alt, because I want to play the Living Story (which is great by the way) or participate in the WvW season.

The best thing would be to go back to our roots with leveling, because it was perfectly fine. I’m not against changes, I loved most of the improvements you have done so far, but this particular think failed I’m afraid (although one thing I like, the built-in tutorials on starting maps, that was a good idea).

I just really want to understand your side of the story, because I get that you wanted to help new players, I just don’t get that why did you think dumbing/slowing down leveling is helpful. I even give you that you might be right, I just cannot see the benefits of it all.

In case you still believe in your new system, at least you can please the experienced players by allowing them to get traits in bulk (like the old way – you can even raise the price of trait books, I don’t care) and give them an opportunity to start from a higher level. For example I would happily mystic forge level-20 scrolls to upgrade them into level-40-60-80 ones.

All in all I feel bad for the new players, because they will reach the awesome parts of this game so much slower then we did, and I feel bad for Anet, because they must have worked a lot on this change and I know that I won’t level up my alt until it is fixed.

Pretty much this. I pre-ordered the game excited to be able to play. I ran over to everything I could find. Skill points? Neat! Vista’s? Awesome! I can gather things? Amazing!

What’s left for the player leveling now? To auto attack his way through multiple levels until he unlocks basic functions? And I say basic because downed state/TP/Underwater skills/Story/Vista’s/Skill points/Weapon and utility skills are all very integral parts of the game that I experienced immediately.

This patch has failed, there’s no other word for it.

What a ridiculous system… How is this “leveling is the reward?”

Vayne.8563:

Actually they may very well care what players think. But some players don’t think the changes are bad and I’m one of them. I didn’t like the initial trait changes, and think they need work. But this recent change is better for me as an altoholic.

OP, you might not understand why, but I wouldn’t want to go back to how it was. I prefer this current method (though the trait system still needs serious adjustment).

Please watch this video of what exactly new players are walking into. It’s hilariously painful to watch.

I have no idea how gating things that were previously accessible (core mechanics of the game) merits a better experience for your players. All you’ve done is ruin leveling even further with huge stat jumps and gating everything you possible can. Who’s idea was this and why did you allow it to happen?

Pretty terrible patch for newer players, you’re just taking things and gating them and calling them rewards. There’s absolutely nothing rewarding about leveling just to be able to use your weapon skills. Or to go pvp. Or wvw. Or your story missions which were generally the biggest reward for leveling.

Very disappointing.

Jesus christ, please be a bug and not intended. Haven’t we had enough of brain dead warriors?

Also, landing a hammer shock is harder than a thief steal I guess? But steal isn’t an aoe stun that also clears your conditions and then allows you to combo two more knockdowns. Oh boy, sure am glad they added Sigil of Impact! That’s just what Hambow needed!

God forbid warriors actually have to hit someone with combustive shot instead of just kittenting it everywhere and getting free condition clears.

Ayo, looking for one more. We’ll take you if you know what you’re doing, communicate well, and are down to practice at a few nights a week.

Prefer Engineer/Elementalist/Guard, can work with Thief/Necromancer/Ranger. Don’t need any extra Mesmers or Warriors.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Guardian auto attack on all weapons. Every 5th or traited 3rd attack causes burning. With traiting and sigils it was possib;e to apply 30 seconds of burning (The highest damaging condition in game) simply using auto attack. It has also been confirmed by dev’s guardian scepter had the highest auto attack damage. Lookie at that..highest damage and able to apl,y 30 seconds of burn continously in it’s complete rotation.
mesmer you have to destroy the clone, thats all..guard you had to destroy them. You have the torment out of proportion.

What? They’re not even comparable. Every 5th attack procs a 1 second burn, or every 3 attacks with a 20 point investment into virtue tree. Popping the virtue allows for a longer burn but then disables the auto attack burning. Even if Guardians could apply 30 seconds of burning, they have nothing to cover it with and a single condition clear would remove it.

Mesmer auto attack torment is an insane idea, especially if the clones are going to be applying it. Wasting time killing clones while the mesmer is free to attack you is a stupid idea, not even mentioning that clones can apply conditions on death. PU is already incredibly strong with it’s survivability and condition pressure over time, allowing them to auto stack torment on top of that is just plain stupid.

Anet plz, nothing in this game should be applying torment through an auto attack, especially clones that are made every time you dodge roll.

pls respond Zhang He kun~

I’m on FC, Got the correct achievement for fourth place but no chest.

Anet plz.

plzplzplz.

I would be more excited about this if it was an actual wardrobe like Rift. I really despise the current model bound to item system you have, especially now that it’s in pvp.

Why the hell do I have to pay charges to reskin white items for my alts?

It should have never stacked.

+1

Excellent post, anet plz.

Downstate is fine, the only possible positive change might be a cap on how many people can rally off of one death.

That’s it.

Thank you, great news that they’re being pulled!

There is no one in this game that is overwhelmed by jewels. Removing them IS dumbing your game down.

I don’t understand how you can think this is a good change.

Benefits of jewels: Stat diversity.
Downsides of jewels: Some builds might hit the sweet spot of stats? or something?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

New Version: Superior Rune of Perplexity
(1) +25 Condition Damage
(2) 10% Confusion Duration
(3) +50 Condition Damage
(4)) 25% chance when struck to inflict 3 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds. 25s ICD
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) +20% confusion duration; when you interrupt a foe, cause 5 stacks of confusion for 8 seconds. 15s ICD.

Everything is fine except for the (4) and (6) bonuses.

3 stacks of confusion of 5 seconds on hit is too much. It’s not the most problematic but at most it should be 2 stacks.

(6) is the most insane thing I’ve ever seen. How can you think 5 stacks of confusion on interrupt is okay? For 8 seconds (which will last longer thanks to condition duration)?And every 15 seconds? Engineers, Mesmers, Warriors, and Necromancers will be flooding people in waves of confusion.

Just don’t add them, please, you’re not making the game any better.

Agreed, regardless of how much they try to “rebalance” them for pvp, they’re going to cause more problems than they’re worth. PvP is already condition heavy, we really don’t need more.

God help us if they toss in the Runes of Tormenting.

Justin ODell.9517:

Nineaxis.1826:

snip.

Please do not presume to speak for all players. As a PvP player, I disagree with you, and I know others that do as well.

If you want to turns this into a numbers game, please do keep in mind that the vast majority of PvP players play PvE and WvW as well. We definitely want to make the game fun and enjoyable for PvP-only players as well, but we need to keep a broader context when designing systems.

Not to be rude but the forums have been overwhelmingly negative about your plans for pvp unlocks.

I have to disagree. If it meant more skills available to you at one time while you are playing, then yes it would be vertical, but that just isn’t the case. You get more trait choices, not more traits applied to your character.

But that’s under the assumption that all traits are created equal, which we all know they’re not. How does limiting build choices promote anything but vertical progression? There’s definitely going to be a trait that will be stronger than others and if it’s locked behind a gate, that’s a power gap for players with out it.

I just don’t understand what you hope to accomplish with this? How does this make the game any better? I guess it adds a short amount of longevity getting your player base to unlock things but it completely contradicts this game’s philosophy of being able to step into pvp and being on an even playing field.

What’s next? Necklace unlocks? Runes? Sigils? How long until there’s a huge gap between starting out and veteran players?

This must be a joke.

Wasn’t the entire philosophy behind your pvp design that you could just jump in and be on even footing with other players? The entire cosmetic/title grind being the reward? Unlocking skills is not a reward nor does it promote an even playing field.

Stop with the pvp unlocks. We don’t want them nor should you. We want different game modes, we want diverse builds, and we want a decently balanced playing field.

We don’t want to grind to unlock runes/necklaces/traits/skills. We don’t want to have to unlock a ton of things every time we try a new class. We don’t want new players to be at a disadvantage when coming into pvp.

10/10 would thief again.

10/10 would bunker again.

Unlocks are awful, please stop.

I bite a little bit.