Guild Wars 2

I guess there is no arcane attunement because arcane is not one of the four basic elements. I always thought this is a good thing, because it makes the arcane line stand out from the other 4. Weaver looks to have quite a nice synergy with arcane since you will be switching attunements a lot more!

As I said that’s the first thing I tried, but sadly it doesn’t fix the problem permanently. The taskbar pops up over my skillbar whenever the mice comes to close to the bottom of the screen and when I switch the taskbar back to always show the problem is still there.

Hey,

I have a problem with the windows taskbar since (I think) the latest major Windows 10 update about a week ago: When I switch to “Windowed Fullscreen” mode the taskbar will stay above the game. Quick workaround is to make it hide automatically, but that’s pretty annoying, so please fix it (or help me fix it on my side).

Thanks,
Shrugal

I like the idea, but I’ve heard it before for other games and the main problem that always comes up is that it will make raids easier if you have a dedicated raid leader that is just spectating and doesn’t have to worry about dodging attacks himself/herself. To compensate you would have to make the spectators lag behind, and that in turn means much more coding effort and load on the servers (I guess).

Also there are plenty of raid videos on YouTube that do more or less the same thing.

This might not be the most popular opinion, but I think part of the appeal of raids is that there is no shortcut to it. You either choose to learn, practice and eventually master the mechanics, or you don’t. It’s a hurdle that you cannot circumvent and there is no easy mode.

I know it sounds quite elitist and maybe it is. I myself did not yet find the time and group to actually try out the raids in GW2, but I raided quite a bit in WoW and it is true (at least for me) that many bosses just lost their prestige after they introduced easy mode raiding (LFR). It doesn’t matter if the loot that drops has a different color or not, you are just not supposed to be able to kill some prestigious bosses if you didn’t learn the fight and mastered the mechanics.

It’s like if the primary villain in a book/movie is defeated by a kid or something. You have this picture in your head that this guy is powerful and cunning, and all that gets destroyed if some random kid can just easily kill him. That’s why in many stories someone who is not supposed to be defeatable gets e.g. wounded beforehand, so you can tell yourself that he would have been victorious if not for the handicap. It still feels a kitteneesy though.

It’s like creating an easy mode for legendary weapons with different colors but same models. The point of a legendary is that you worked for it and that you earned the right to wear it, that’s what makes it legendary. If you want an easy mode legendary, than make it something completely different (Anet fortunately introduced ascended weapons), but don’t make a watered down version of something that has value precisely because it is not watered down.

I don’t know if this is more important than giving more players access to the content, but I think it might be the primary reason many raiders don’t want an easy mode for raids, even if the rewards are completely different. Because part of the reward is to be able to kill the bosses in the first place.

I think you are approaching the mastery system the wrong way. I remember reading reviews of HoT online and those said the same things you are saying: It takes too long and is an endless grind to max out masteries.

The thing is: You are not supposed to grind them or max them out as fast as possible. Masteries are a way to gate the content and drag it out, so you can come back to a HoT map one month later and find something new to do, because it was previously inaccessible to you. As others here pointed out, there are just a few masteries you really need like Updraft Use and (to a lesser extend) Bouncing Mushrooms. That’s pretty much it! Everything else is just a bonus and you can unlock it at you own pace. Sure things like Ley Line Gliding are useful, but they would not be accomplishments if they weren’t and the new map is completely playable without them.

I agree that the game could do a better job at telling players which masteries are baseline and which are nice-to-have, but you really don’t need to grind them if you don’t want to! I recently got Ley Line Gliding and Itzel Poison Lore and it enabled me to go to some places I couldn’t go before, but I’m still far from maxed out. I only do HoT maps when I feel like it, and I also vary metas to keep me entertained.

Also: A new addon will definitely introduce a brand new mastery category where everybody starts from 0, so there is no deadline or anything and no endless need to catch up.

So just get those baseline masteries and do what makes fun afterwards. Don’t try to farm stuff you don’t really need! Instead enjoy the fact that you just passively unlock more little things while playing the new content.

I think there is really much to like in this update. The story was great (especially the VO), the map is quite fun (more below) and I hear the fractal changes and new PvP map are good as well.

What I didn’t like though:

• Balance changes missed the mark for many professions. There clearly are skills and specs that are used disproportionately often, and some that are never used. I’m waiting for the day you finally balance these things out (or keep on balancing them) to make every skill and spec useful in some way. Also I don’t think it’s a good thing that some professions are basically mandatory in proper raid compositions, you should make every profession replaceable by some other professions and strive to balance dmg, healing and utility across professions as much as possible.

• The new map feels empty in terms of story. There are these notes all over the place, the small Pact encampment and (afaik) two notable (named) event bosses. Other than that it could very well be a Super Mario map, without any RPG elements whatsoever. Like: Those WM soldiers are just standing around the Bloodstone shards, evenly spread out, picking daisies and waiting to be killed. It’s as if some dev used a special painting brush to let one spawn every 15m and call it a day. No patrols, no resting miners, no campfires, no named NPCs with little stories, no piles of Bloodstone ore, no ways to transport the ore, nothing. And most events are just “here are some random mobs spawning because magic, please kill them”, without any stories behind them, apart from the overall setting itself. Why not let us help some named creature get back to where it came from or have a small rebellion withing the WM or see how they deal with this apparent Bloodstone frenzy? I’m sure you could come up with great little event stories, but you just didn’t.
  It makes this map feel shallow to me and that’s really sad, because the gameplay is actually quite good, the art design is brilliant and the story behind this map is great as well. Why not fill the map with a few stories (apart from just notes) that make it feel believable?

• The sudden introduction of Primordus at the end. I mean it makes sense and clearly had some buildup (one elder dragon has to be the next after all), but you could have done more than just slap a mention at the end of a story chapter that had nothing to to with Primordus (as far as we know).

• I would like to see a new map that is not either completely destroyed or has death waiting around every corner. I mean it’s great and all, but it gets old after a while. Please make a map with civilizations, settlements, cities and temples that are still in tact, working as intended and with characters that live there. I’m sure you can still come up with nice stories surrounding it, and it’s much more satisfying to protect stuff that is still standing instead of ruins and burning camps. Also event stories can be much more political and/or personal in nature if it’s not this constant disaster prevention.

Other than that I think it was a really good update!

I thought Lazarus and Caudecus where both very well placed withing the story.

The resurrection of Lazarus and him taking the WM’s leadership has long been teased in the raid story, and the sudden appearance made perfect sense as well: He is a “Unseen One”, so he is invisible by default and can make himself visible whenever he wants to. I guess he observed for quite a while, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Just when Caudecus was basically defeated by us, he shows up to show everybody that Caudecus is weak and he is the true leader of the WM. I don’t know why he didn’t kill him right there, maybe he hopes to get him on his side once Caudecus realizes that he has lost the WM to Lazarus. Also worth noting is that Lazarus didn’t kill us. In his lates video WoodenPotatoes speculates that maybe we will forge some kind of fragile alliance with the Mursaat against the elder dragons. They fought them before and in GW1 they used the Bloodstone and allied with (used) the Humans to keep the Door of Komalie closed.

I guess Caudecus’ strategy was to do what he can from within to prepare the Human kingdom for an invasion. Then he thought the right time to strike had come, so he left DR to lead the assault. Sounds like a good strategy to me, he just didn’t know about the whole Lazarus thing.

I also didn’t like sudden introduction of Primordus just at the end. I mean it was hinted at for quite a while that either Kralkatorrik or Primordus would become active, and it makes perfect sense right after the death of Mordremoth and the Bloodstone explosion. I just wished they would have made this moment of truth a bit more special than just “Oh yea, Primordus is active now, you know? Just came in the news.” right at the end of the fight against Lazarus/Caudecus. I felt like they needed to squeeze that in there at the last moment and had no more devtime left to give it a proper buildup. But maybe sometimes things don’t need to be epic, sometimes you just get the news and go from there.

What I really do not like is that the new map is pretty empty in terms of story. There are these notes all over the place, the small Pact encampment and (afaik) two notable (named) event bosses. Other than that it could very well be a Super Mario map, without any RPG elements whatsoever. Like: Those WM soldiers are just standing around the Bloodstone shards, evenly spread out, picking daisies and waiting to be killed. It’s as if some dev used a special painting brush to let one spawn every 15m and call it a day. No patrols, no resting miners, no campfires, no named NPCs with little stories, no piles of Bloodstone ore, no ways to transport the orr, nothing. And most events are just “here are some random mobs spawning because magic, please kill them”, without any stories behind them, apart from the overall setting itself. Why not let us help some named creature get back to where it came from or have a small rebellion withing the WM or see how they deal with this apparent Bloodstone frenzy? I’m sure Anet devs could come up with great little event stories, but they just didn’t.

It makes this map feel shallow to me and that’s really sad, because the gameplay is actually quite good, the art design is brilliant and the story behind this map is great as well. Why not fill the map with a few stories (apart from just notes) that make it feel believable?

I actually thing this is a fairly thought out post about how this game appeals to competitive PvE players. It might not be your preferred playstyle, but the points made are decent and should be taken seriously. It’s definitely not a “give DPS meter” post, it’s just pointing out some problems that hardcore/competitive players have with GW2’s structured PvE content.

The main thing that bugs be about dungeons and raids is that you have very limited feedback about what is going on. You get downed and have no idea what just happend (unless it was an obvious boss ability), your group fails do do enough damage but nobody really knows if they actually managed to contribute enough to the group’s dmg or not etc. I don’t think it’s necessarily about who other than yourself failed, but getting feedback on one’s own performance. I can hit my buttons as I think is best, but if it’s really optimal or better/worse than last time is hard to tell. It’s also often desired to find out what goes wrong (at least in friendly and helpful groups), e.g. to help a guildmate do more dmg or interrupts.

I would like to see two things to fix this without introducing the social problems that DPS meters create:
1) A tool to tell me what just killed me (I think this already exists in PvP/WvW).
2) A tool I can activate to tell me how I am doing in terms of dmg, healing, rezzes, interrupts etc. compared to my group as a whole (no numbers of other individual players in the group) and compared to my performance on the last (or last recorded) attempt. This way I can see if I am doing good or not, I can try to better myself and see if the last change I made in my rotation actually had a preferable effect. I can also choose to share the info with my group (and maybe ask for help) if I want to via TS/chat (no ingame option to enable sharing, since it would become mandatory) or keep it to myself since nobody else can see this info about me specifically. I can also just leave it disabled.

I think this would go a long way in helping players working on their own playstyle and performance, as well as figuring out (in a helpful and cooperative manner) why a wipe happend or why something didn’t work.

Idk guys, I’ve been playing around with a cleric staff tempest, and the amount of healing I was putting out was pretty awesome. 800/sec from auto attack + surging mists alone, then water 3 and 5, water overload, shouts with heal on aura application, heal shout, the occasional blast finisher on ice/water fields, maybe evasive arcana.
I can nearly camp water and always have a heal skill up, occasionally I was switching to earth for protection application, earth 3 aura and combos with earth 2 and 5. And all the while I could switch to air for cc/swiftness or fire for meteor shower or a fire field for might stacking.

Seems pretty solid to me!

Xillllix.3485:

The new elite is very situational. It’s only an interesting mechanic for PvP and it may be for raids or fractals. However I think you should also make an elite that has more to do with the concept of storms.

It gives you an aura if you just use it without somebody nearly dying, so its not that situational, but rather defensive.

Fun fact: We already have tornado as a storm-themed elite, its just bad for doing anything but cc or just having fun. It would be nice if we could add some effect depending on the attunement, to make it viable in more situations and not a waste of time.

Some ideas (something other than the usual buffs/debuffs):
Fire: Electrified tornado becomes skill that applies AoE burning on a large range, kind of fire shout does now. Doesn’t have to be much, the focus is on spreading it far and wide to many targets. Also leave behind a trail of fire, just because its awesome!
Water: Electrified tornado becomes a skill that creates a moving water field around you (its raining around you). The constant whirl finisher will through healing bolts in all directions and players can combo in it for more AoE healing.
Air: Destroys projectiles. Electrified tornado is fine for this one, just make it a bit more responsive and reliable and make sure the dmg is good.
Earth: Electrified tornado becomes a skill that constantly pulls people in, so you can kind of drag them behind you! It should also do some dmg while it does that, but not to much.

Also don’t through enemies around anymore, that just messes with everybody’s dmg. Just knock them down or daze them.

caerulean.4837:

Agreed! But in regard to naming I still have no idea why the Tempest is even called the Tempest.

Its actually quite fitting: Blowing in your warhorn, shouting shouts into the wind and creating storms with 2/4 overloads.
Earth and water overloads should be stormy as well, then overloading could (should) be renamed to Elemental Outburst or something and we would be done!

tostadude.9214:

air#5 increase dps, swap location with orb , dont let the orb just fade when hitting a wall, make it get reflected or walk the same way back

That would make it insanely strong in certain circumstances, as you could make it go through your enemies four times if they are fighting you next to a wall (Hit -> Bounce -> Hit -> Teleport -> Hit -> Bounce -> Hit). But it would definitely be a lot of fun and difficult to pull off!

Furthermore, the weapon needs an aura, my sugestion: make heat sinc give a fire aura aswell

2nd that!

Wolfric.9380:

I am one of the eles that will try shouts as alternative to arcane/water/cantrips and agree with BlackBeard here. Especilly on the instant cast part. It makes a huge diffrence for me using shouts while channeling. This is the main breakpoint now to substitute cantrips or i guess stuck again with lighning flash and cleansing flame, which in the end will let tempest unused.
So we are back at the point water+cantrips is ele. Break it or face the truth of no diversity.
Moving aura traits to tempest might be a step to far and even make tempest auramacer to powerful. Its good to decide which synergy you like to use and not put all in one class.

Absolutely! I was about to write the same thing.

On one hand people complain about missing synergy with other specializations, on the other hand they want every possible synergy in one traitline.
I think the best approach is giving tempest the aura creation traits/abilities, and adding extra aura effects to other traitlines (e.g. water: chill/heal, fire: might/fury, air: swiftness/cc, earth: protection/stability/vigor).
One could argue that Powerful Aura should be a Tempest trait, but shouts and traited overloads already apply auras to 5 allies around you, so its not really necessary to share the occasional aura proc. It might be nice, but it would force you to go Tempest if you want aurasharing.

Also shouts need to be able to be cast in between other casts, otherwise they don’t stand a chance against cantrips. Especially if you consider, that they are currently unusable while overloading, that seams to be a major design flaw!

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

What if we had a regen on aura trait for tempest…

We already have, don’t we? Elemental Bastion is a grandmaster trait that makes auras heal. Or do you mean the boon regen? That would certainly synergize well with condi removal etc.

Overloads sound pretty solid with the upcoming BWE3 changes, but I feel WH has been barely addressed and is still a bit slow and lackluster. My suggestions would be (some taken from a previous post):

Wildfire: Make it appear faster.

Tidal Surge: The knockback should happen right away to make it more reliable and responsive.

Water Globe: Make it always move as fast as the character or make a 2nd tab teleport the orb to the character. This way its always useful, not just when the character exactly matches the orb’s speed.

Lightning Orb: It would be great if we could swap location with the orb on 2nd tab. This would make it a great and unique tool for mobility and also improve damage on enemies standing still or moving elsewhere, since we could make the orb move through them twice. Also just make it move into the direction the character is facing.

My two cents from playing some Verdant Brink events with this elite:

Overloads:
Fire is at the right spot, but the risk-reward factor isn’t quite there. I would suggest giving it earth’ defiance bar, to make it more useful against interrupts, but also add the counterplay of breaking the bar and being stuned.

Water feels just fine! Its a nice support skill with heal and condi-cleanse. Also don’t add any defensive utility to this since its supposed to be interruptable and cast behind the frontline.

Air is currently just offensive AoE dmg, without the CC or single-target properties of the attunement, maybe add blind or daze to improve survivability, or increase single target damage to fit the theme and differentiate it from fire overload.

Earth is currently the worst IMHO. It didn’t feel defensive at all, since all overloads get protection and the range is to small to reliably kite enemies with the pulsing cripple. Either add survivability to withstand incoming damage, or increase the range so I can kite opponents and reduce damage that way.
Secondly remove the defiance bar and just add some stability stacks. This is supposed to be the go-to overload for going in there an taking some hits (it doesn’t do much damage) so why should it have a drawback for actually taking those hits? This kind of risk-reward gameplay fits much better with the fire overload as stated above.
Also adding bleed as some suggested would fit nicely with the attunements theme.

Warhorn
Tidal Surge: The knockback should happen right away to make it more reliable and responsive.

Water Globe: Make it always move as fast as the character, even if his speed changes while the orb is up. This way its always useful, not just when the character is in combat and has no speed/slow on him.

Lightning Orb: It would be great if we could swap location with the orb on 2nd tab. This would make it a great tool for mobility and also improve damage on enemies standing still or moving elsewhere, since we could make the orb move through them twice. Also just make it move into the direction the character is facing.

Utilities:
They work pretty well for what they want to do and I managed to run a pure shout build (hot including heal and elite, Signet of Restoration is just to strong for solo play and rebound currently to weak).

Flash Freeze: It feels underwhelming as a CC tool compared to Aftershock. Maybe lower the CD, increase chill duration, add vulnerability (to make it a nice option between the pure offensive fire- and the pure defensive earth shout) or add a short Deep Freeze.

Elite:
The current version is just to weak and difficult to use with others, but I like the sound of the new version! Please make sure the type of aura depends on our attunement while casting rather than when the effect procs.

Overall I enjoyed playing the tempest more than I would have thought! Its quite clear that this is supposed to be the auramancer spec for the ele, maybe rename it as its much more fitting than Tempest (probably to late though). :P

If you wanna go D/D I highly recommend the Auramentalist build: http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/?lang=en&code=3232i0gjgmlklglm00kaaak0je7eeeqf0f109
Damage, support and survivability are extremly good.