Guild Wars 2

What made FA more interesting and successful tended to be the class specialization, unlimited targets on AoE spells, larger number of players, random matchup element
…and, not least of all, Kurzick/Luxon faction points.

It was the rewards driving the popularity, I believe, while the game was fun because of the asymmetrical map and the glut of casual players bringing unexpected twists with their builds. But, all this is a bad comparison since we’re talking about Ranked GW2, which is an entirely different concept from the heart of FA.

A better comparison is the MOBA market, where other games have things like two-way streets that force PvP, and turrets that punish greedy, careless, defenseless tactics.

What I really think is the problem is the unwillingness of devs to put resources into rethinking the single stronghold map and branching it out into a few unique attempts. On the whole it would have been good, but all together the champions, trebs, gates, supply, etc., crowded each other. A series of “great expectations” …that all flopped.

Stronghold needs clarity of strategy to make room for a variety of tactics.

Please turn Stronghold back on, with a separate ladder. (Personally I’ve liked and played both in ranked)

It’s far more interesting in concept from a tactical/strategic point of view. That is to say, it has potential.

There was no reason to give up on it so quickly. Why don’t we have three maps by now? Why don’t we have a class of combat that is more kin to a MOBA on a competitive level than anything else in the game, if you say you’d like GW2 to be Esport-worthy? There is a reason, you know, why games like LoL make it large…

Seriously, some of the mechanically apt twitch-fingered kids playing in GW2 these days have no concept of actual strategy, and much of that has to do with the simplistic conquest format. You could fix all that by creating stronger barriers to the PvE-race known as the battle of champion’s dusk. Turrets are a huge part of MOBA’s for a very good reason, and it’s precisely the lack of real danger in attacking that killed this map. All it needs is some well placed ballistae… (oh and an anti-stealth mechanism, like a turret with true sight)

I can’t agree more with the OP’s assessment of power creep.

What I found most disappointing is not touching the dragonhunter’s wards (longbow and Maw). It literally looks like a white velvet stanchion and we still can’t dodgeroll past it? How about reducing it to 2-3 seconds? How about at the very least reducing it to 4 seconds on par with the aura changes?!? Teamfights can be trivialized by this one skill that hard-counters kiting for not just one person but everyone on point, or looking to enter the point in the near future. It’s basically as disrupting as the Ele’s shocking aura, but with 50% longer duration and affecting everyone at once.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Beginning with Season 2, matchmaking for Ranked matches will use your placement in your current league division as your primary matchmaking consideration and pair you against players who are placed in the same point range as you, regardless of the skill level (MMR) of the other people in that point range. While we’ll be using divisions to match you against your immediate opponents, we’ll still use your MMR to place you on teams with similarly skilled players (from your division point range) to help ensure that you’re not forced to play with individuals that are of a much higher or lower skill than you. Ultimately, this means that the new matchmaking changes will make PvP Leagues much more reflective of your actual skill, and each division will be progressively more difficult to compete in.

We need a little more clarification on this one. What I assumed, from when I first read it, is that ten players are thrown into a room based on division standing, and then divided by MMR into the two teams. But then I thought about it more.

Now I’m hoping what you meant is that players are grouped into a Team of 5 first (with similar MMR), and then thrown into a match against opponents of the same division, regardless of MMR, or skill level. Which one is it?

Agemnon.4608:

Starfleck.8392:

I don’t understand how placing players in teams with similar MMR ratings is fair. Ultimately, isn’t that just placing the top 5 MMR players on one side and placing the lower 5 MMR players on the other side? Assuming we’re talking about an average solo-queue Emerald game, for example, the system tries to place someone with others close to their rating, while simultaneously placing another person with others close to their rating on the opposite team. One is closer to the high-mmr players and gets a high-mmr team, while the other gets stragglers by default, resulting in lower-skilled teammates and earning a loss.

Win streaks and loss streaks will run rampant, and MMR will reflect things like being rated low for being on a losing streak with other low-mmr teammates, and vice-versa.

Since all the players in the match are being sent there by virtue of being in a certain division, and since that division will have a wide variety of skill levels, then what? Is our only option for raising our individual MMR going to be to play Unranked for a long time and wipe out those losses?

It’s fair because it makes it easier for people getting to their appropriate league. What really isn’t fair is when most of the people who have the sense to go for mid at start are on the other team while your teammates are busy killing NPC early. The problem with the current system is good players could hit a snag in emerald or sapphire because they’re facing teams of similar strength making leagues not a reflection of skill but grinding since you’re always facing players of the same strength anyway.

On the other hand if leagues are truly a reflection of skill then good players will be paired together against weaker ones early on, then they’ll rank out of the lower divisions leaving only weaker players to face each other.

No but what I mean is that your MMR won’t reflect your actual skill level if you’re constantly being farmed by being put in losing teams, and the situation will continue to progress your MMR even lower. Instead of getting a more accurate MMR over time, it will polarize the system even further, giving us huge win and loss streaks.

Edit: Ok, I suppose the flipside of the coin is you can try harder to carry your teammates and turn the match around, earning a win against their prediction algorithm and raising your team’s MMR. If their system is as accurate as they claim to be, though, essentially what’ll happen is even if you’re just barely under-average, you should get stuck at the first tiers of either emerald or sapphire.

Burtnik.5218:

Locuz.2651:

Burtnik.5218:

And whats wrong with it?

Most random guild teams will consist of mixed division players. Which will basicly be an easy pip farm for any regular pvp team. Without using extremes and without taking classes/setups in to consideration ill put this in an example.

Team A: mixed casual guild group with a mix of 3 sapphires, 1 ruby and 1 diamond player.
Team B: set team that plays toghether with 5 diamond level players.

The system will see them as equal. Result = uneven matchup and easy pip gain for team B.

The only fair system is a system like we see in wow. Based on individual mmr /div vs the opposing teams mmr/div.

This is the lazy way out.

You do realize that division doesnt matter right? Its not like..hey that guy is diamond, he will one shot whole team due to +1000000000000stats. Its not how it works at all. Time to end such exploits as this one in pic. If thats a problem you can always go unranked and que there together really.

Seems like someone is salty about being beaten by a ranger…
(no I’m just kidding, sorry xD)
That’s more an example of team composition at work (judging by meta builds). Red team has a good balance with a bunch of hybrid damage and a solo-que Tempest (which 9 times out of 10 carries anti-projectile/reflect). Blue team has at least 3 projectile-heavy members for their main damage, and much less teamwide boon support, as well as lacking soft CC and condi damage. Plus you got more than 100 points, which is not exactly a blowout…

I don’t understand how placing players in teams with similar MMR ratings is fair. Ultimately, isn’t that just placing the top 5 MMR players on one side and placing the lower 5 MMR players on the other side? Assuming we’re talking about an average solo-queue Emerald game, for example, the system tries to place someone with others close to their rating, while simultaneously placing another person with others close to their rating on the opposite team. One is closer to the high-mmr players and gets a high-mmr team, while the other gets stragglers by default, resulting in lower-skilled teammates and earning a loss.

Win streaks and loss streaks will run rampant, and MMR will reflect things like being rated low for being on a losing streak with other low-mmr teammates, and vice-versa.

Since all the players in the match are being sent there by virtue of being in a certain division, and since that division will have a wide variety of skill levels, then what? Is our only option for raising our individual MMR going to be to play Unranked for a long time and wipe out those losses?

Sorry to hear about your bugs, guys. I just finished the story for my first time last night on the first try, with caithe and braham. Died once for each fight, though.

Maybe just hang in there? I know several people have finished the story in my guild.

I have to disagree about pistols. Shortbow should be the go-to Power weapon, and in my opinion, it should have clusterbomb’s bleeding changed to vulnerability (not sure what skill you’d replace poison cloud with, though. Perhaps leave it as is). Really it should receive treatment like the sword.

Since dagger (moreso D/D) is the melee hybrid weapon, P/P should either stay as ranged hybrid, or finally give it a fitful place as condi-heavy. There are good arguments for turning P/P into a power spec, but there are no excuses for nerfing the best condi build thief has (Pistol mainhand), when that build isn’t even used in any metagame.

Actually, Headshot would be a good place for a stealth: two seconds is plenty, if you critically hit. This would go along thematically with critting someone in the head, which would be like hitting them in the eyes, making them unable to see you.

Still needs vulnerability on Unload. If rangers can have it on Rapid Fire, then at the very least, we deserve it at just 900 range.

The one trait pistol has, though, needs a pretty drastic overhaul to be taken seriously.

Daredevil’s bounding dodge should have been left a leap finisher, because of P/P. It was by far the best option for a P/P condition build we’ve ever had, and instead it was changed to Blast?

Black Powder is an extremely small target to aim your dodge for, the leap finisher combo-ed perfectly, and the only really good use of the bounding dodge is in builds that don’t use dagger main hand already. Everyone knows we have a great blast finisher in the cluster bomb already! Condition pistol is a much lesser used build than everything else, and deserves something to make it shine. Even better to throw it behind the elite specialization gate.

One other idea that is terribly obvious: Unload needs to be given the Vulnerability application of Rapid Fire. This fits now in both Power and Condi builds. Tweak Unload’s raw damage slightly, accordingly. Also maybe take the Vulnerability out of Body Shot and compensate that one with longer Immobilize (Agreed, too, Body Shot needs 1k-1200 range).

I always found it painfully obvious that Body Shot’s CC was too short. If you chose P/P and Shortbow, it is actually a horse apiece between shadowstepping on the bow to chase versus immobilizing to snare your enemy. One should be for retreating (SB), while one should be superior for closing the gap against a single enemy (Body Shot).

My biggest request for things to bring back is the Reaper’s Rumble
PLEEEASE?!?!?!

My feedback is from a balance line of thought. Were they fun to play? Certainly, but they weren’t balanced.

Chronomancer:
Very heavily based on shattering, it would appear. There’s not even really a need for the F5 skill if you’re allowed to take both chronophantasma and illusionary reversion. You can easily 2-illusion-shatter twice without spawning anything else. Without even swapping weapons. To balance, make these two traits mutually exclusive (put in same tier), or face massive gimmick builds. Even deceptive evasion doesn’t spam quite so many as these. However, F5 has too short of a period… There’s no counterplay if the rift is only open for a whopping 2-3 seconds, and if you then allowed players to go 10+ seconds before snapping back to their original timeline, wouldn’t that also add 10+ seconds to the cooldowns of any skills they had used before activating the rift? That’s even more risk.

Daredevil:
Probably the most creative, and only slightly less powerful than the vanilla backstab thief, but with more clever combinations. This is probably the best balanced elite spec I saw, with it’s strengths lying in utility. I saw a few cool options, the hardest-to-catch slick-slider, the leaping perma-stealth pistolier, and the double-death-blossom. Interrupts were a breeze on my favorite, dual pistols with distracting daggers, dodging through my own smoke field for unconditional ranged stealth, which worked for nice bleeding bursts.

Herald:
Too passive. Too strong for passive play. Too powerful a gap closer in the sword makes it super powerful for a glass cannon. I did not play revenant hardly at all, but those that did made me facepalm.

Berserker:
Loved the torch. I totally loved the elite rage skill, and the 10s cooldown stunbreaker. The thing that worried me was it’s potential application in PvP. It’s supposed to take time to store up adrenaline for a burst, not be spammable. I understand what you’re trying to do with the theme, but from a gameplay standpoint, going berserk lasts for such a short period and headbutt has such a low cooldown, that it just takes all the fun out of it. I’d rather be going ragey for 20-30 seconds after building up for 20-30 seconds, making for clearer tactical decisions rather than just spamming F2 on cooldown.

Reaper:
Pretty balanced, I thought, but just scary to go against xD. Kinda hard to comment since I didn’t spend much time on it aside from learning the shroud skills. I liked to see the ice field get more play, and giving necro access to whirl and leap finishers makes sense for the playstyle, which is more selfish than usual. Strong for PvE, somewhat balanced for PvP, and useful.

Tempest:
LOL, way to improve D/D ele. Seriously should be looked at because of the gross amount of auras and d/d-style enhancing warhorn skills, like spreading boons. It’s like another dagger offhand, in a way, but with aura-shouts instead of instant cantrips, and it makes it even more detrimental to fight against a teamful of these. How many tempests does it take to blow away the competition? As many as you like.

On the second gate, Nika, the stealthy mists champion, gets bugged and teleports back to the beginning of the lane often instead of attacking it. Almost looks as if it’s a part of her melee attack, but not certain. I saw this at least twice today. Not sure if she also does it in any other cases, though.

Edit: this is of course on the new stronghold map, battle of champion’s dusk

Sounds pretty cool TBH. Scepter is a good spike/power mainhand, and dagger is a good condi/utility mainhand, but each seems mostly locked in to an offhand (S/F and D/D are pretty substantially superior to the opposites). Horn for some reason really seems like a good fit thematically, and I’d love to see how sounds and weather phenomena play together. Thunder and rumbling, and such. Plenty of GW1 skills to revamp (Storm Djinn’s Haste? Chilling Winds? Sliver Armor? Sandstorm? Flame Djinn’s Haste? Double Dragon? Breath of Fire? Maelstrom? Shard Storm? Winter’s Embrace?).

I’m excited for more storms! hehe

No. Everyone has out of combat weapon swapping already available: Inventory. This doesn’t solve any problem for the vast majority of players.

Waste of resources.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Ensign.2189:

Evan – this is a problem with a pretty well understood solution under Glicko – you rank players by their point estimate MMR, minus a multiple of their rating deviation (2 or 3 typically).

We actually do this during matchmaking to err on the side of inactivity dropping skill level. If we had a strict Glicko leaderboard now, I think this is an approach we would take.

One problem we really want to solve for a new ladder system is how easy players can understand their rating. With Glicko, we don’t really get that. This is one benefit of the point system we’ve been testing (Though it needs some in-game info).

Ensign.2189:

I can link relevant papers if you are interested.

Sure, link all the papers.

I think you should test Ensign’s approach internally, just to see for once how the outcome of the last ladder test season would have gone. It makes a huge amount of sense, and I think if you had an MMR-based leaderboard with that sort of natural downward push applied to players with large deviation, and deviation was increased gradually over time, you wouldn’t see those inactive players at the top like we did once before. Each day of AFK should add a little to the player’s rating deviation, progressing them down the ladder, but if they hopped back in and were still as good as ever their deviation should quickly expire and shoot them back to where they should be, if they really are top players.

You’d probably see more consistent win/loss ratios grouping up then. Players who can consistently win (75%+ ratio over a period of two dozen rating periods) after several games that ought to decrease uncertainty, and therefore deviation, should climb the ladder much more quickly since the ladder will be reflecting the combination of MMR gain and DR decreasing.

I’ll echo some of my previous feedback from the first stronghold beta (without so much side-talk), because hardly anything seems to have changed in a significant direction, and because I’m seeing a lot of my concerns now being echoed by others here.

• First of all, there’s too much going on in one map.

This format deserves more than one map, and I think it would be way more appropriate to separate it into 3- maps, (so that you can also vote for them in a separate queue) so that it’s much more newbie friendly. Currently there’s no basic idea for the format, it’s all stuffed into just one map.

1. One map could include a cannon/treb/ram/oilpot or something useable that you can use to assist the NPC’s, or use to defend against them, at close range.
2. Another map should include the heroes and on-demand NPC’s, (like the supply running mechanic or simply channeling a door) to develop strategies of creating a wave of attackers that fight together (push-pull strategy).
3. One map you could try a single lane with doors that players could damage, but automatic sentry guns that deal massive long-range damage to players. NPC’s would spawn at intervals automatically and fight each other in lane, then deal big damage to the sentry guns.
4. Last map could use door guards like in the Fort Aspenwood mission of GW1 that let the door drop once NPC’s are killed, but they and the door can be respawned by running supply. Healing/protecting/buffing the NPC’s should be significant. Like putting stacks of Might on them should increase their damage by a larger percent than putting might on a fellow player, and healing you do to them should be about 100% higher than to other players.

Essentially all of these secondary mechanics I’m suggesting are to force points of conflict between players for interesting PvP, but not making so many on one map that it gets diluted. Fighting at the doors, or at supply depots, or at mists essences, should be significant, but all these things currently actually diminish the PvP.

Mists essences are a perfect example of how the current mechanics discourage fighting. You can use some mild protection and stability and get the channel done, then run off, and if someone is already channeling it when you get there, you’re screwed unless you have boon stripping and CC together, so might as well leave the fight before you even begin. Unless it’s a teamfight at the essence, which would only happen if that’s the only secondary thing going on in the map, it encourages timer-watching then running away.

• Skritt bombers should attack once, for 25% of the door’s health, then disappear (burrow away like a dredge). They also despawn if the last door is broken.

Simplest solution to the DPS-race, forcing conflict to happen by the supply depot. Currently there’s no significant advantage to fighting by the supply, since all you have to do is buy 5 doorbreakers and rush the gates. If you do happen to lose all 5, then rush the whole team to take supply, fuel up, and re-rush the gates with 10 doorbreakers. Instead of having to kill each and every doorbreaker on the first push, which defenders are finding impossible unless more than half the team goes to defense, you’d only need to kill 2 doorbreakers to keep the outer gate alive that much longer.

• Defending guards should focus 100% on attacking doorbreakers, and be given piercing shots.

This is a newbie-friendly suggestion to help people that are unfamiliar with the game’s major objectives. Once the door guards are taken down of course they’re not a threat, but if defending players focus on attacking players it shouldn’t be the cause for the door to be broken. Forcing attackers to fight the NPC’s briefly gives the otherwise always outnumbered defenders an edge for that moment, but currently you can just go attacking and ignore the guards since they’ll start attacking players and have no chance to take out the doorbreakers, quickly wiping the few defending players first.

I know it’s too early to answer everything yet but these things should be thought about and tested to eliminate possible bugs and unintended exploits.

1. What happens with both Slow and Quickness on at once?
2. How, if at all, does it affect aftercast delays and aftercast animations?
3. Does a blocking skill block for longer if it’s casting time is increased (and if not, then does the animation suggest it does, misleading the user)?
4. If applied mid-cast, does it slow down the remainder of the skill activation, like quickness used to (or still does) speed up actions if applied in the middle?
5. Does this have synergy with all the “while channeling” traits, and could we possibly cause Slow on ourselves (like some necro skills do with stuff) to benefit from the synergy?
6. Does it slow down actions as well, like stomping?
7. Does it slow down reviving others, so that it’s useful on a downed ranger’s pet?
   Feel free to reply with any other questions you can come up with. I mainly started off by asking myself whether it could make a block last longer, and the others came to mind.

The wooden sword is level 7, that’s why. Transmute it to a lvl 80 sword and it should work fine, regardless of rarity at that point. It was because you were using equipment that didn’t match your real character level that it scaled you down, just like if you really had been level 7, it would have done normal damage.

bandgeekdp.9237:

Omarbhn.6741:

Anet still shows no love for Chicago most updates I get this error

I have this problem every patch….The download speed slows to 0KB/sec and the client freezes. The repair client doesn’t work either.

The only thing I’ve been able to do is end task and restart the client for sometimes several hours and it will eventually patch piece by piece. I rarely make it to the login page of the launcher. I get stuck at initiating page.

This describes my situation exactly, and living in Milwaukee it could be going through one of the same gateways as Chicago. Patching gradually slows down to a stall, but the internet works fine. Netflix is streaming on another comp in the house, forums work fine, etc.

I can only use Task Manager to end the torture and restart the client, hoping to get a few more inches of progress at a time, until at some random point it just jumps ahead at a normal rate of 180+KB/sec and continues for awhile.

It is actually fine, when you think about it alongside other well known PvP games, like League of Legends, where they do allow soloQ alongside duoQ in ranked, as well as any sized Q along with pugs in unranked games. The reason it works even better in GW2 is that matches are much shorter, so you can play more of a variety of matches. Unfortunately however, GW2 has a much broader PvE side that’s likely drawing in a lot of this “I want to play the game exactly my own way” attitude, instead of seeing a bigger picture.

When players make an incomplete group and are on voice comm, the remaining players are still afforded the opportunity to have fun and to win, and the opposing players are afforded the opportunity to go against players that have had their MMR slightly artificially boosted, that they might be able to outplay more easily. It really shouldn’t be happening 19 out of 20 games, but even if it does, then so what? Being an avid soloQ player myself, I’m constantly surprised by some of the decisions and various skill levels of group-Qers, and I welcome that opportunity to see what goes on in their minds.

I had this happen to me during the Stronghold beta test, I thought it was a map bug. lol

(continued)
Now on to criticisms:

• Heroes spawn too often for anything else to be meaningful. It seems it takes about 2 1/2 minutes to push your NPCs forward, then another 2 1/2 minutes to run supply and have new NPCs run down the lane, resulting in no more than one wave in between hero spawns. Then when he’s yours you simply burn any leftover supply and do a rush, usually, forgetting the rest of the map objectives.
• Strategy #2, controlling the center, was the worst. Trying to endlessly supply your attack lane with NPCs was ineffective, and I’m pretty sure the center of the map will be the least populated of all. This is probably counter intuitive for most players, and newbies will have it the worst.
• Wiping the enemy push is useless. I agree with most of the posters that the respawn timer near the end of the match makes for a huge disappointment. Snowballing is much easier in this format, you can’t turn things around if your entire team focuses on defending and then suddenly the enemy has a free shot at two heroes and it starts all over again.
• Too many special objectives means that it goes to a timer-ending more often than it should, and it’s more PvE focused. Other maps have one, maybe two special things going on, tops, but this one has a whopping 3+ minigames, between treb, mists essence, and barracks. Channeling control, lane pushing, lane defense, trebbing, using heroes vs using normal NPCs… all these are strategic decisions that have to be made and things that take time to do, whereas on other maps you have one, maybe two things, to keep in mind, and the rest of the game is a PvP skill matchup. It’s honestly like two maps shoved together, almost like you had too many cooks in the kitchen all trying to shove their ingredients in.
• Heroes’ defiance is a little too strong, for the other buffs they give, making it possible for a team to easily push with just a few players all the way to a lord with their damage reduction and force defending players to call in reinforcements, snowballing the game with almost no hope of relief by successfully defending. Ticking down his defiance bar only stuns him for a few seconds, and for all the effort it cost, the PvP suffers dramatically. Again it’s too much PvE focus at that point, becoming a DPS race.

Suggestions: Some of these are mutually exclusive suggestions for improving the map’s flow, some is strictly for the Stronghold format including all future maps.

• Split the map in two. Launch the format with 2+ versions, one which includes the heroes and one with something entirely different, like static turret emplacements or moving the treb, or a third type of NPC.
• Increase the timer to 20 minutes. This is something that I would agree with in it’s current state, as well as spacing out the hero spawns accordingly to make the lane phase seem like the “normal” flow instead of just filler in between the more important hero pushes.
• Skritt bombs should be one-and-done explosions, chunking out like 1/4 of the door’s health and having them burrow away safely, causing more conflict and control in the supply area, more use for Archers, more effect from CC, and fewer noob-rush team compositions. Archers’ stats should be buffed enough that a 5-tengu team could take out a door in 3-5 minutes unhindered so that’s a viable strategy as well, or a player in one or two volleys, though countered by skillful bunker defense (skritt countered by DPS). Supply running for skritt would then be meaningfully helping the team.
• Increase the respawn timer later in the match, so that attacks have more risk/reward built in. 40-60 seconds to respawn is not abnormally frustrating for players, but getting rushed by the same player every 30 seconds who dies and runs back is extremely frustrating for defenders.
• Eliminate one of the hero spawn times, like the first one, completely. This causes fewer distractions and more opportunity for strategic thinking as your team plans to take down both gates.
• Increase the effectiveness of guards for taking down attacking NPCs. Whatever it is, be it tweaking their aggro priority, changing the doorbreaker’s pathing, making their shots piercing, having them deal more damage to players, whatever. Let them defend meaningfully or eliminate them completely, please. MOBA’s do it with equally matched minions or with high-powered turrets, not these weak easily manipulated “guards”. I’d prefer aggro priority paired with piercing shots, so that while they don’t do much damage to players, they can wipe doorbreakers fast.

TL;DR : I had a blast trying it out in it’s beta form. If I had to pick one suggestion it really ought to launch with more than one map. Break up the kitchen, separate the cooks into batches, decide on one special objective per map like you used to do. NPCs in the lane need to become “the norm” before you introduce heroes, trebs, and all that jazz.

@ Exedore I am +1ing your post, because of the insights on the current doorbreaker and guard flaws, but I’m going to disagree with you about the importance of heroes. I’ll get to that later. Many other comments in this thread I’ve agreed with as well.

First, to Arenanet, I want to explain my experience. It was much different than conquest. Overall it was excellent, so thank you!

I played a handful of matches with guildies on different professions (PvE focus guild, so low-mid tier and no abnormally high or low skill levels) where we split 3-2 or 2-1-2 in favor of offense. The two defending players were usually staff or d/f elementalists, and they could quite easily fend off the attacking players long enough for us to push the lane with doorbreakers or heroes. Later on I played a lot of solo-queue games with pugs when I switched to staff ele, and I also had a good time in the defending lane, able to CC and melt doorbreakers before the outer gate was down, or at least before inner fell. True, coordinated teams worked much more effectively, but that’s not really the heart of the issue right now, it’s just the nature of the beast until people become more aware of the format. With around 6-8 hours of play on the map, none of us were extremely well versed in the various strategies that you could use, but I’ll explain the three I saw being used so far, for the benefit of those that had either very high level or very few matches.

Strategies:

1. Rush the lane mostly with attackers (3-5) pouring all the beginning supply in to make 5 doorbreakers and running forward to not resupply at all. I like to call this the battering ram method, and it’s especially effective for the first gate. You sacrifice control of the supply area and basically let them have a free run or two in which to build up their lane with lots of NPCs that might become too much for your very meager defense to hold off. Usually your superior numbers can power through guards and player alike, and usually defenders are too focused on surviving to burn down the doorbreakers.
2. Control the supply depots. This seems like the catapult method. Instead of running with the initial rush of doorbreakers, your team might send one player (or none) to take out guards but focus on fighting off their supply runners right away, forcefully gaining control of the depots for a brief time (until you are able to supply yourselves), then running back to spend it, rinse, and repeat. This becomes an exercise in futility without a good group in the attack lane to actually cause some havoc once your forces are moving. One mild advantage I saw was that using this method, going to supply as a group, you have almost guaranteed movement in your attack lane. Useful if you have a support character who wants to buff them all with swiftness and other long-duration boons, or useful if your supply runners would like to roam to other things at times.
3. Focus on defense. This is the artillery method, trying to stay well out of harm’s way until you get the chance to focus your group on the mists essence hero spawn points. Players in the supply depot try to CC enemies to stall them from making NPCs, and take advantage of down time to run some supply over to make archers just to keep the attack lane occupied. When the mists essence pops up the team forces it’s way in there with as many people as possible and goes for a powerplay, reversing the momentum and pushing forward with as much as they can. It can be a viable method if you have the presence of mind to save up some supply to spend right at that crucial moment (acts like an artillery shot, winding up for one big spike). Unfortunately it requires timing and is susceptible to counter-snowballing if you let them have too much free reign of supply. Very effective if you expect the attackers to be glass cannons that 3-4 defenders can wipe quickly.

(tbc)

HaxTester.9816:

I also would like to have this in-game. I made a sample UI they could implement for this.

That’s not half bad at all, and it really is starting to look like the GW1 “skills and attributes panel” that I loved. It was attached in the same window, skills along the bottom, except it would be much better with a drop-down menu instead of the “A, B, C” buttons.

The drop-down menu would have the options “save template” “load template” “send template code to chat window”, as well as the possibility for expansion. However, your window is also missing the crucial parts of items: weapon type, sigil, rune, etc.

I was thinking we could re-use the Spectator Mode UI where you can see exactly what is in another player’s build and load it from there. It’s really simple and includes everything in the build in just two tabs. All we need is to add on the top of that window a drop-down menu for the options listed above (and add the same options to the respective build windows).

I think the problem is they can’t decide how much they want to implement down the road, and they keep getting hung up on equipment. If we can think of a good catch-all solution to equipment templates…….. ahem

Arenanet! Problem solved: PvP Equipment Templates were a thing, in GW1, remember? They were separate from Skills & Attributes templates, and they were only possible for PvP, but it was a thing. If you want to put build templates in the game you already can, without the equipment templates, OR create an area for drop-down menus or whatever to simply list what weapons, runes, sigils, are supposed to be used with the skills template (at which point it’s up to the player to load those manually, depending on what they have in their inventory and what they have unlocked for PvP use).

Only in Unranked and Ranked arenas, but not in hotjoin. I’m not sure about leaving and coming back on another character before the match starts, though, and I’d like to know if anyone has an answer to that.

Basically there would be a different completion reward, and it makes a lot of sense, with the new legendaries about to go in. HoT completion would be for new legendary weapons’ gifts, and the old legendaries would use the old gift of exploration. I hope so.

No sorry I get what you mean, I edited my post once I thought about it for a second more. I figured what he meant is, like he said in the first post, “trash mobs weren’t to drop loot”, but that the greater mobs would. I haven’t played Silverwastes enough to know but I gather that champs don’t drop loot either? Kinda makes up for it a little. But nearly everything in the silverwastes seems to be tied to an event anyways so what’s the difference?

That would suck. Way to encourage skipping content, downplaying effort, and glorifying ignorance.

edit: I assume what you mean is that loot would only drop from champions and chests, or something like that, which is what would suck. Essentially you’d be encouraged to zerg with all your might just to get anything at all, instead of allowing yourself to fight lesser creatures.

I apologize if this question has been asked already, but I searched briefly and couldn’t find any discussions so far.

How will the Tomes of Knowledge be used with regard to the new mastery system? (If you know of an official answer that’d be great to link)

We know that experience will grant you mastery points like gaining character levels, where in the past it would have given a lvl 80 simply another skill point. Theories so far are that they won’t grant you any mastery points, or that they will, or that they’ll give something entirely different. So which is it?

My preference would be that they do give mastery points once they reach the threshold but only allow one to be used per day (or maybe up to 3, or 5 max) by a level 80 character who is gaining mastery points. Because while it does give you something significant for having them, and while it does give the SPvP player an opportunity to gain masteries without having to grind PvE (meaning a PvP player can finally unlock legendary weapons by precursor crafting, among other things), it doesn’t allow players with a stash of these to walk into the new area with instant mastery and make the whole system pointless.

On a side note I’m assuming skillpoint scrolls won’t change, that they’ll only give you extra skill points without any experience.

Argon.1563:

I would’ve rather payed for HoT early to beta test it, like we did for the GW2 beta.

Both happened, actually. Prepurchasing let players into the later Open Beta events, but much earlier events were closed to a limited number of random-picked newsletter subscribers, the exact same way.

Loyalty comes in many ways. Fun also comes in many forms.

If the people who are going to be playing Heart of Thorns enjoy silly gizmos and “cool looking” armors, or if they enjoy hard work and the frustrations of grinding, how does that affect you? Is one a more “pure” experience than the other? Is showing your loyalty with monetary support better or worse than showing it with time spent playing? And which of these contributes more to a quality end product?

The truth is, one type of gamer supports the other, and vice versa. The company gets valuable gameplay-related ideas, and a budget big enough to implement them. So I don’t care if some of the pool of testers prioritizes long-term players or gem-buyers, I want both in the krewe, because they both help the game get better in the end.

Think along the lines of what each profession currently lacks the most of…. Ranger lacked support (in the metagame) so they got staff. Engi lacked melee so they got hammer. Necro lacked a 2nd 2-handed weapon so they got, you guessed it, a 2nd 2-handed weapon that isn’t a duplicate staff. I am willing to bet the necro’s GS will have more Marks, finally. That’s just one example.

Not a lot of things are set in stone right now. They have said profession mechanics that fundamentally change the way your profession plays is one of the cornerstones of specializations, so we can only surmise they’ve been thinking about existing weapon skills, traits, utilities, all of it. Think most about what your profession is really bad at so far, and that’s probably one of the areas they’ll develop with specializations.

A new weapon, whether two handed or even just an offhand, is sort of minor in comparison to the other changes. So when you speculate about what new weapon you’ll get, try and think about what aspect of play you think it should expand on.

Known: necro, engi, ranger, mesmer.

As a speculation thread:
Guardian – Longbow, used for condi ranged spec
Elementalist – Torch off or mainhand, used for melee builds in condi spec
Thief – Staff, used for melee bo staff, cleave, blocking or reflecting, power spec
Warrior – Pistol main or offhand, used for evasive maneuvers and/or support, like stacking vulnerability, cripple, and immobilize while leaving room for warhorn

I’m attempting to make best guesses on where the classes need to fill in the most gaps, or seems most interesting and counter to their current playstyle.

They’re probably not going to tell you, because that would essentially allow you to game the system. Just play and then you don’t have to worry about it.

Or leech and allow yourself to be flagged as a player that lets their team down. I’d report a leech if bad enough. Your choice.

(besides, like Lewis pointed out, you already know the answer)

I just got one of these from “GM Fridgid Ice” (note the misspelling of frigid). I won’t post the pic though, I’m just going to save that just in case.

For a minute I was concerned that maybe I had been flagged for sending several things in the mail to my guild leader, but then I realized it was talking about “currency transactions”… i.e. RMT companies, so I decided it was safe to ignore and block it.

I wonder if, with the increase of gold seller spam, and subsequent reporting, they’re trying to take advantage of people’s gullible paranoia by making them think they were accidentally reported.

I was having the same problem until just a minute ago, but in Milwaukee with AT&T Uverse. After several attempts having it stagnate after a couple hundred kilobytes, and getting “Connection Error(s) Detected” it eventually worked.

Try using your Task Manager to close the GW2 client manually as it stalls, and try it again. That’s all I had to do.

First year’s Halloween was the best! That’s just the point.

Blood & Madness really shouldn’t make a return, in most players’ opinions, but Shadow of the Mad King was an update that truly set a good precedent for GW2, akin to the glory days of GW1. In fact, had they just about repeated the first year’s content in the 2nd year, I’d be willing to bet most players would have been ecstatic, however they didn’t.

So yes, I’d say please take a solid look at the first year’s activities and bring most if not all of THAT back, but just… no, no Blood & Madness again, please. >_<

YES, thank you . Definitely on the ahem right track. . .

Can’t wait for more consideration given to other formats than just PvE grind, to get some special new rewards. Love to PvP because I hate the grind. Dungeons for new rewards, anyone? Maybe just a new dungeon… hint hint

Claridiana.5230:

+1

I used to play Fractals directly after their release, but i stopped because they were too annoying in several ways. Havent played them at all after the introduction of the newer fractals. Should i really learn all the new mechanics now from youtube- vids or other sources before i can even think of entering? You know how you will be insulted in the fractals (or other dungeons) if you dare to not know all mechanics by heart and have to figure out what to do in the beginning, even if you are basically an experienced player. If you dont move to the correct pixel at once, and attack the one of 20 mobs you are supposed to attack, and use the correct class and weapon and build, And dont know all exploits the “community” has found during the last year, you will be called **** and **** and **** immediately.

With the toxic dungeon community in this game there is no way i will start with fractals again. But i would certainly appreciate a way to spend my 1000s of wvw badges in a reasonable way.

Holy crap you’ve got issues to work out there… Believe me the whole of the dungeon community is not toxic, and while I will admit several exceptions exist, people aren’t generally that stupid to rage and insult newbies on the first go, at the first opportunity. If you’re there, being one of the 5 in the party, then they’re inherently in your debt already for saving them the time to find another, so take ownership of your spot and be bold.

It is actually your attitude which is more widespread, and therefore more detrimental to the community atmosphere. It’s classic fearmongering, which is preventing numerous newbies from trying. Give it a shot in a fractal run less than level 10 and prove yourself wrong, because I do believe your experience, having thousands of Badges, should be plenty to get started with. Better yet, do some story mode dungeons. Better yet do nearly any level 80 dynamic event chain, it’s not that different. See, wasn’t that easy?

The Lost Shores update was a lifetime ago.

The thing about thief though is that nothing truly ever destroys another option, because it’s always limited by initiative. D/D condi is possible without destroying dagger mainhand because the burst is all about saving initiative for the CnD in order to backstab, and then saving initiative again for the HS spam.

Besides, D/D condi is conditional in the way that it’s all about AoE. Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger work well only against multiples, and condis work better against multiples where you’re less likely to reach the stack caps. So there’s another limiting factor keeping D/D from being OP for both single targets and multiples.

“Giving up” on the condis of the D/D set would probably only cause people more concern, because it would essentially turn the playground into a desert with only one good option. Less build variation.

A smoke field (Black Powder) would make the most sense right now, of all things. It’s low-hanging fruit to change it from a utility skill to one half of a weapon skill, otherwise known as an easy fix.

Because of the change that is planned for Black Powder (blinds half as much), it makes the most sense balance-wise, since it wouldn’t throw things off very much. If it works better balance-wise, swap it with Meld With Shadows so that you need to go up three points in order to get this highly useful new trait.

As far as the Shadow Arts traits go thematically, it ties in to a certain extent because your smoke field can be used to combo stealth. I can’t think of any real good trait to replace it with, unless it’s to swap with Shadow Protector or Shadow’s Embrace, given the defensive and controlled nature of each of those traits.

At the heart of the problem, ANY trait that “gives you” stealth, by it’s very nature, gives you Revealed out of sequence (and while I highly believe that a good thief needs to be able to adjust and react on the fly, and I believe that “sequence” and “rotation” are things you shouldn’t encourage… the problem is much more compounded by the low-health requirement).

The only other thing I could suggest is that below 25% health, your stealth be augmented by the trait. Last refuge could proc at 25% to make:
1) Stealth last longer, or grant one Aegis
2) Cause blind or a short weakness as you stealth
3) Regenerate a small amount of health while in stealth, or decrease incoming condi durations
….all of which depend on the player to actually DO something to enter stealth first to be able to benefit from the trait. Granted these are simply mirrors of existing trait functions, so the others would have to be considered briefly. If I were a dev I would lean toward the Black Powder solution.

While I do agree with the main argument, that an event chain, even an obscure one like this that hardly gets attention, should have been fixed long ago, there’s a number of things I disagree with.

First, you have to put this into the perspective of time. Down the road a month or two, these events will get limited attention by the people playing the LS episodes via the new journal. Contrary to the natural hype that you’d get today, you’ll see a more steady and natural stream of people going to those events that have been “victimized” by this update, rather than flat-out ignored events.

Secondly, you need to remember that Anet has a way of only coming up with fixes for things that they’re able to witness firsthand, and that players using the “report bug” function (yes, it still exists on the menu) is the most common way that they hear about problems in a non biased, non hysterical way. I happen to have completed Bria’s event chain successfully, easily, some time in 2012 if I remember correctly, so I know for a fact that it wasn’t gamebreaking. When it was, though, it was admittedly just a small part of the overall world.

Thirdly, it’s your fellow players’ to blame. The company caters to the audience, and they have shown time and time again that they are not interested in the “trash mobs”, the “fluff events”, the recycled quest format that’s been used a thousand times yet is necessary to be used in order to create the extraneous side lore… which you feel is important. (I’m in the same boat, I like the smaller details). Unfortunately other players don’t care, and Anet’s time (read: corporate funds) is not spent on it when 0.02% of players gush over it.

I came across an interesting find today while perusing the Armillary Sphere page then looking for more images to find what I believe I saw.
http://www.smphillips.8m.com/article-46.html
[img]http://www.smphillips.8m.com/images/A46fig2.JPG[/img]

I think it could quite easily be a “tree of life” diagram we saw at the center of Scarlet’s drawing, and in the eternal alchemy.

Taimi has a mount!!! I demand fair and equal treatment.
(tongue in cheek)

Well you have a good point, biofrog, in all cases. It’s certainly possible that the six-node diagram is referring to Arah, but then it could be the crucible of eternity, or even a simplification of the Firstborn with each node representing two (note the double-circle at the center of Scarlet’s drawing).

More likely? I believe there’s some underlying pattern at work in the world, more kin to the eternal alchemy theories. The six natural forces coalesced into six dragons, and simultaneously six gods? The way things tend to settle into a pattern of six (with or without a seventh oddity in the middle),
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/7/72/Bloodstone.jpg
…is unmistakeable.

I mean absolutely no offense by this, but, if it took you 40 minutes to play through the Gates of Maguuma story then you’re probably doing something wrong. I mean that’s, what, not even one sandstorm?

Go back and retrace your steps to find out what you’ve missed.

p.s. Of course you’re not alone, though. There is no such thing as a thing big enough for a “rushing player” to take a few weeks to get through. The first ever level 80 took less than two days, and the first group of people to Orr took less than a week.

The Fall of Abbadon Fractal that was voted down is interesting, but I’d like to get to that in a bit.

Unfortunately, the viney, tangly things found in Dry Top have to be none other than Maguuma-native stuff… The reason is pretty simple: none of the native inhabitants of the nearby mining town find them the least bit peculiar or interest-worthy. Seen here http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/thumb/e/e2/Tangle_Root.jpg/800px-Tangle_Root.jpg it’s pretty easy to see how the jungle has been full of overgrown weeds for centuries. Now that there is obvious corruption in the jungle, that seems to explain the purple shards of light protruding through the surface of some vines. The living vines are nothing new, either. Plant creatures were prevalent in Tyria during GW1. It’s reasonable to argue that living vines are simply curious about new stuff, like the waypoint that one happens to be poking at.

The Pale Tree is basically a living plant, too. It’s capabilities, it’s scope, and it’s alignment is all shrouded in mystery still at this point, but you have to remember it played a huge role in the Zhaitan storyline, plus it’s body is the home of a playable race that they can’t just retcon out of the world later. The Pale Tree simply has to exist for the duration of the game’s life, for too many reasons to count. Therefore we must assume that her involvement in laying the foundation of our heros’ quest against Zhaitan is (not due to an elder dragon rivalry) due to her being genuinely inclined to help save the world. Therefore, how could she not help fight against this new dragon? Therefore, it’s more than probable, it actually is fact, that living plants can be of good alignment. (so the conspiracy theories about the Pale Tree should probably cease)

My prediction is that the Pale Tree, like Glint, will be targeted with hostility by this new threat from the west which is to be announced later as her origin. My prediction is that the Grove will be hit, hard, and possibly burnt to a crisp like LA was.

…however… it still begs the question, Mr. Gnashblade, why Abbadon? Why were you so interested in how Abbadon was brought down? Now we know why Thaumanova was important to the living story, of course, Scarlet was involved there looking for a magic current to disrupt. We know that Abbadon was defeated by heroes from GW1 in a completely unrelated incident. But why, then, was it a potential part of the GW2 Mordremothe storyline? What would Abbadon’s death scene have told us about what’s happening today? Since he’s dead, I mean, what significance is there, aside from what he left behind…?

He left behind the goddess of “truth”, namely, and then the Six quietly disappeared. Kormir’s inheritance of power is what remains of that scene, so one possibility is that, had Evon won, we would have witnessed something important about Abbadon which fell to Kormir. The strange drawing of the Pale Tree at the center of the eternal alchemy tells us that structure, (concentric rings, six nodes, duality in the middle) is something repeated, and it’s quite probable that we would have seen the depiction of the Realm-of-Torment-turned-Kormir’s to be an echo of that exact drawing… had we voted for Evon. Also, the steam creature’s Abbadon-face is a good catch, and who else had the opportunity to create that structure than Scarlet? Steam creatures are most probably entirely invented by Scarlet (until they started recreating themselves through artificial intelligence). Would we have seen Scarlet, steam creatures, or anything relating to Mordremothe in the Abbadon Fractal, no way. Since he should have no power left (barring any random possible unknown ends), we’d have to surmise… Scarlet was corrupted by Kormir?

Maybe….. Abbadon didn’t quite fully die, after all. Maybe he’s still alive to this day. (the power of a god cannot be destroyed, sure, but does that inherently kill the previous owner of that power?)

On the other hand, redesigning is just what they do, every single day. That’s the point of the “iterative process” that Arenanet employs. It’s not “incredibly stupid” it’s just a little waste of time, which everyone does once in awhile.

You just… gotta remember something, that literally hundreds of people worked on creating this game. Just because one employee was told to create a portal on the edge of some map doesn’t mean they ever intended to use that portal. But in this case…..

A line of champion bandits that are level 80 guard the walls of a “fort” that has a back door, and yet has it’s back turned toward an inaccessible area. As far as we can tell right now, the fort including those bandits existed as early as January of last year (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Fort_Vandal&oldid=488099), not necessarily (but probably) since launch, but with no explanation why level 80’s would be in a level 23 zone.

The best question right now is simply…. why are they there, when they could just as easily not have had guards, or a fort, but instead just a bunch of bandits and a blank cliff-face? (The answer is probably simpler than we know, and it’s probably got something to do with the nearby renown heart existing at all)

That said, here’s the real kicker……

The ley line ran through Metrica Province (through Thaumanova), significantly south of Brisban. :p …start looking there.