Guild Wars 2

Someone on reddit had a really good idea IMO. Since our DPS is already low and our role in PvE is to provide group support, and since our ability to provide alacrity and quickness is based on our receiving said cool down reduction, make it so we get 66% faster for ourselves, and everyone else gets 33%. Let’s us keep up our role, reduces overall DPS of the group and keeps us effective in the long run.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/414soi/skill_balance_preview_livestream_notes/cyzn5xq <— original idea here.

Alone.1784:

So i’m writing this while sitting at Nightthistle Bloom HP waiting about 20 minutes for anyone else to show up with my mentor tag on and spamming map and thinking about how this is the absolute worst expansion I’ve ever played in my life. Just thought i’d check in to all those people who claimed to come help people with HPs because they sure aren’t on my map.

Also adding evade frames and stupid amounts of damage isn’t how you make challenging AI.

Post an LFG? Change maps? Ask your guildies? Ask people on your friend’s list? Wait a couple hours and message me and I’ll help you? Seriously dude, it’s not like anyone in the game owes you their help. If people don’t want to do it, you can’t scoff and them or anyone else and get all bitter about not being able to do something. The more I see people spamming for help, the less inclined I am to help them. Personally, there’s only one hero point in any of the new maps that I’ve had problems getting people to help me with, and that was the one in Tangled Depths (Vampiric something or other, spawns a champ spider I think).

I posted an LFG and moved on to the next one. By the time I got to the next one, someone had joined and we duo’ed it. We then proceeded to go through all the ones in TD, AB and VB so we could both get masteries.

It wasn’t rocket science, it look about 2-3 hours together clearing all of em. However yea, if you’re on a map that’s trying to do the meta event, duh? Of course no one is going to help you. They’re BUSY. It’s not anet’s fault for creating this content, most people love the way they did this. I mean most people were actually annoyed they reduced the HP cost to 250 from 400. It became far too easy to get elite specs. Couple hours a night since release and I’m just about done with all my alts. It became disappointing that it was so easy to complete it.

I find it more offensive that we go through a 90 minute event only to have the boss launch his loot all over the zone in a death throe. Imaging a D&D game where the party busts their posterior, kill the CR30 dragon, then the dragon laughs hysterically as he casts his final spell that scatters the treasure all over all levels of the World’s Largest Dungeon, then the whole place begins to shake as the magic that was holding it fails. You have 10 minutes to get out of the dungeon and get all your loot on the way out.

I would anticipate player revolt at the gaming table.

So far because of the amount of crashes, I was leveling up my mastery points by unlocking elite specs on all my alts. Now, I think dragon stand might be decent, if not the mindless slaughter for VB spider farm. I don’t think there’s an easy place like CoF. Events, mini games, event participation chests are the fast xp hits I’ve gotten with the least amount of time investment.

LostSQ.4967:

Perfect example, except imagine if a few sequels to the “good movie” came out that sucked.. would you pay to go see the next sequel?

I’d pay to go see the sequel if I enjoyed the base movie, yea. Some people didn’t like Terminator 2-5, but I enjoyed em and watched em. This does not mean that they “suck” it means they weren’t to your tastes, and that’s totally fine. However, don’t knock it til you try it. Just because you read a bad review on metacritic doesn’t mean it’s a bad game, it means someone else thought it was bad. Do you always form your opinions based on other people?

All the GW2 updates have been like mini expansions.. they have given us new zones, new updates, new.. well most everything.. and it’s been slouching/going down hill.. so when they finally ask for us to pay.. should we pay for half put together work?

But you’re getting significantly more than that with the expac. You’re getting a new class, an expansion of every other class, brand new WvW map with new features, new armor sets, guild halls (they were actually balanced around 10 man guilds, not 500 man guilds), masteries both in tyria and HoT that add a whole new dynamic to the game, vastly improved personal story, etc. This expansion gave a ton more than living story updates. There are bugs, yes. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind about that. However what makes guild wars great is the fact that they’re constantly updating and fixing things, far more than any other MMO I’ve ever played.

The other thing I know is that for my $50, I’m going to keep getting more and more content, just as I did with the base game. More living story updates, more balance updates, more skins, more more more; all for the low price of $50.

Not me, if there was extra stuff that I could only obtain in the expansion for pvp/wvw then that would be different. But a new class that I won’t play, an elite skill that kinda interests me, and a mastery system that give me… umm slightly faster res for my pvp/wvw (and might not even apply for all I know).

Shards of Glory as an example? There are several things in WvW/PvP that are only attainable there. Then you have the fact that guilds can now claim locations in WvW to give additional benefits. I mean, that’s amazing as all get out! Get in your WvW guild, claim a location and ride around on a freaking motorcycle cannon hybrid! Forget alpha golems, it’s all about the new add-ons specifically to WvW that came with guild halls!

Yeah.. unless the player is omg about the new class it’s rather useless for us pvp/wvw peeps out there. The elite skills might be ok, but i’ve yet to face someone with them… so not enough info on them.

Useless? It’s been out for a week, A WEEK! It’s one of the most entertaining classes I’ve played in awhile. IMO, most people playing it are probably doing PvE content before jumping into WvW. I mean it has so much WvW potential, and it’s currently roflstomping in PvP along with reapers. There are also two elites that get stomps as part of the move. It’s freaking awesome for WvW and PvP.

Just hope a dev looks this over and understands to not let the producers do this to the game! I’m sure they are the big threat with their money grabbing hands.

Do what to the game? You haven’t even tried the expac. You read some summary notes of what comes with the expansion and made a judgment. I hope the devs DON’T pay attention to you. You’re trying change something you have zero stock into. That’s on par with you walking into HP headquarters and complaining about their new printer line when you haven’t bought a printer in 10 years. You think they’ll give your opinion any weight?

Money grubbing hands? Are you kidding me? You bought the original game for $50 and had three years of constant updates, “mini-expansions” as you called them, balances, updates to old systems, etc FOR FREE! Now when they try and do the exact same thing again, you go nuts and call them money-grubbing? That’s ridiculous! GW2 has been designed in such an amazing way that you don’t NEED the cash shop to play the game. You can buy the initial game, and play for free, even getting cash shop items for in game currency; all with no subscription cost!

I have complete faith in arenanet to do this right, and from what I’ve seen, they have.

I just wish they worked in instances. I don’t wanna spend 300g so my little asura tank can be visible to my party during Mai Trin =P

winterchillz.2564:

Fractals, as an instance, originated in the vanilla game so if they change something to it, I believe all the changes should be accessible to vanilla players too.

And the vanilla 1-50 is still available to you. You want up to 100 (expansion benefit), then you have to buy the expac. You’re viewing fractals and everything associated with fractals as one entity. It’s called an expansion, it expands content. For you to expand your current vanilla experience, you must purchase the expansion. Otherwise, feel free to do things as you’ve always done.

Kanebrake.6192:

maniamsmart.7981:

RustyMech.9876:

I’ll play the hypocrite and apologize for you for apologizing for others.

No thanks. Because the things that I’ve seen in map chat, forums, and Reddit are uncalled for and plainly rude and disrespectful. You can voice your opinion and give feedback without being a kitten. It is possible.

There comes a time when the kid gloves come off and you deal with adults as adults. Including saying/writing things that might not be all hugs and cuddles.

Even adults know that you don’t get change by saying "Your stuff sucks, you’re a bunch of liars and thieves. Seriously, what world do you live in where this works? Diplomacy and empathy tempered with a strong frame is what gets stuff done in the real world, not selfish, childish ranting.

The internet has seriously turned into this rotting cesspool of bile and filthy thanks to the anonymity it offers. People hide who they are, chest thump and just in general say and do things they would never do in real life.

Do you guys seriously believe that insulting anet is the way to get things to change? They even have a thread titled HOW TO GIVE FEEDBACK! Whether or not they’re emotionally affected by it, the mods have thousands of posts to read through. If there’s one gem hidden in 10 pages of bile, they’ll skip it. That’s just common sense. It’s naive on the parts of you guys to think anyone has time to read every single post, word for word just because you’re a customer. Do you seriously think someone’s job is to sit there and read every single comment you put in the comment box, especially when everyone is blowing problems hugely out of proportion? Hero points are the biggest complaint I’ve seen, yet last night in about 4 hours I got 150ish hero points, and gliding 2 done at the same time without using any guides. This is hardly what I’d consider end of the world talk that people on the forums make it out to be. Maybe 10 hours invested to get your elite specialization is this daunting task, maybe it’s not fun (personally, I had a blast); I don’t know. “Fun” is relative/subjective to the individual, therefore it’s worthless in helping the dev team do anything to help you. Give details about what would make this fun for you. Complaining then saying “fix it” is not constructive in the slightest, yet that’s 99% of what I’ve seen on the forums. Even reddit has had more constructive feedback, REDDIT!

Then realize that anet’s team is quite good about giving updates. You paid $50 for an expac that comes with years of support, changes, story updates, etc. I paid $50 for gw2 and between the living story updates, balances, updates to old systems, etc, I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth. I doubt HoT is going to be any different. Considering that most MMO’s don’t get that level of support, $50 is a bargain bin price.

Actually, the way I understand it, its something in the base coding of Tyria maps. It’s not an “easy” fix; probably a larger undertaking than the devs are currently unwilling to do.

Guard offers quite a bit of buffing capability, as they’re also the only class that reliably offers Aegis, one of the best buffs IMO. You also get symbols that if traited right can offer healing capability (not a lot), as well as one of their heals which heals people directly in front of you. If you work with a nice dedicated team, you can really hammer out your party tactics to where they always stand on the opposite side of the mob from you and your heal can hit them while you tank.

The new elite spec ranger (Druid) is a fairly dedicated healer class, though I don’t remember how much buffing it actually generates.

That said, this game isn’t really about having a dedicated support character in the traditional sense. The guardian is a heavily armored character that does offer a good amount of support, but its not a class you really sit in the back and support; you’re a tank that can also heal and support. All characters kind of specialize in a wide variety of things, and you use your gear and traits to focus it in a certain direction. Mesmers (time warp, alacrity, etc), Elementalists (healing, blinds, might generation, field generators, etc), Warriors (banners and might generation); even rogues (blinds for days!) all give a fair amount of support as well, really letting you fill almost any role with any character. It’s one reason you’ll probably come across difficulty getting a straight answer to your question.

I love what they did with fractals.

Get to lvl 2 fractal mastery and you get access to a vendor that made it so much easier to hit that 150AR requirement for lvl 100. Farm the lower end fractals and stock up on relics, grab the +5’s, then upgrade them to +7’s later. Get a cheaper progression on the +1’ infusions.

Masteries added some really cool bonuses like gliding, shroom jumping, auto-loot, etc. I haven’t played the story yet, as I really wanted to progress it on a revenant. I’m gonna go through tonight and get my hero points for the mastery while leveling up my gliding, shroom jumping and exalted history so I can run through the story without any hold ups. I spent the last weekend grinding out my Tyria mastery stuff (and I do mean grind since I did it all in CoF, but that was 100% my choice so no complaints ^^)

I’m way excited about all of this. I’m probably leaving work in a few minutes so I can rush home and get to work on masteries and heroes. My plan is to have the prep work done by Thursday night so I can spend all weekend getting through the story and working on achievements in the coming weeks. All in all, I’m loving the new expac and have been giddy like a little school girl to try it out!

Hadephobiac.6095:

They had years to add new Fractals yet didn’t, instead nerfing the rewards completely and gating out normal players like myself who can’t afford to just convert gems to gold to get up to 150AR, then destroy Fractal and dungeon rewards to the point where I can’t even play the game anymore.

Just doing some basic math. Get to fractal mastery 2 and you can access the island vendor that costs 150 fractal relics for a +7…(75 for the base then 75 for the +7), which gives you 98 AR for a cost of zero gold. You buy a couple upgrades for your ascended rings to add the 2nd infusion slot, which gives you a total of 5 more bonus slots.

That new vendor also has a better exchange rate on agony infusions 4 +1’s = +3 instead of +2, etc), and a lower thermoclastic reagent cost. You can get up to +10’s for less than before, which you can put in 5 slots for what appears to be about 60% less than it previously cost… Furthermore they added in infusion removal items for 24s each, so you can remove all your old infusions and upgrade them to the new stuff.

Am I missing something about needing to be ridiculously rich? You’re at 98AR without having to spend a penny, and just needing relics that come from running fractals. Then remember that while you’re building up your relics on the different islands, you’re getting +1 agony infusions like mad, which will go towards your +10’s and up that you need for your 150AR to run 100’s.

Not to mention that just like when fractals first came out, and there were no ways to get to 70AR without farming the lower level tiers for relics, pristine relics, etc to get ascended gear. Just get your 98AR after getting fractal mastery 2 (takes like under an hour in cof1/arah farms currently).

I dunno about you, but as soon as I saw that vendor on the other island, I was doing a happy dance, since that meant I could totally pimp out more than 1 character in 150AR gear and not be bound running fractals only on a single character. I liked being able to swap between chars to do fractals.

It’s actually easier to solo the Lich because zergs are full of kitten y people who don’t understand the boss mechanics and end up wiping, thus destroying the zerg.

Zergs operate on a “Press 1 to win” philosophy. Lich is not one such encounter.

winterchillz.2564:

StaticX.7695:

- Fractal levels locked behind Masteries unless you have a couple hundred gold to waste on agony infusions;

You didn’t buy the expac, meaning your experience from fractals 1-50 has not changed, infact they’ve gotten even faster and even better since you get to pick your favorite stages. You’ve gotten an expac benefit without buying the expac, awesome!

Not really. They took vanilla content and gated it behind an expansion.

Again, in what way? They even made lower level ones easier, theoretically you could go all the way to 59 with your 70AR, without needing the expac at all. What exactly is gated that was available to you pre-expac?

Yea, you’ve got a legit complaint about elite spec in PvP/WvW; I’ll give you that one. The rest just sound like bitter because you’re not getting the same rewards you used to, which is just.. Meh, tough; expac isn’t what changed that, it’s something that’s needed to happen for a long time.

winterchillz.2564:

- Dungeon rewards nerfed to the ground;

This was coming for awhile, expac just seemed like the right time to do it.

- Fractal rewards nerfed to the ground and require you to waste gold on keys if you want to have a chance to get reward in first place;

See above. This is a drastic change that anet is doing specifically to get gold out of the economy.

- Fractal levels locked behind Masteries unless you have a couple hundred gold to waste on agony infusions;

You didn’t buy the expac, meaning your experience from fractals 1-50 has not changed, infact they’ve gotten even faster and even better since you get to pick your favorite stages. You’ve gotten an expac benefit without buying the expac, awesome!

- PvP? Yea, well, you should know Masteries apply in there too, so have fun being underpowered as opposed to a HoT player;

Mastery in PvP? Of what do you speak? Are you talking about the couple of champions that are expac only? Do gliders and mushroom jumping even work in PvP? Res speed mod doesn’t, speed boosts don’t either, legendary crafting I doubt makes a single bit of difference… Please do elaborate.

- WvW, I don’t know yet, simply because I haven’t gone in there but I’m even scared to at this point.

Why? You’re getting access to the new map, as well as all the benefits expac buyers have.

I’m not bashing everyone who bought HoT, don’t get me wrong. I just feel disappointed that suddenly I find myself being locked out of content and underpowered in content that I’ve done just fine before the expansion although I have paid to play this game.

But you’re not. Dungeons, Fractal 1-50, open world, world bosses, etc have not hampered your abilities at all to do what you previously did. The rewards have been nerfed, but that has not locked you out of content, that’s de-centified it.

So, what do I and other players who don’t have the expansion, have as an option? Quit, stay and play whatever content we still have or being forced to buy the expansion?[/quote]

I heard that we’ll need things like bloodstone dust for guild halls?

Palador.2170:

Only with raids, it’s really not. Is it?

From the sounds of things, raids may require you to have multiple sets with different stats on them. It’s a natural way to slow down players’ progression through the raids, really. Make them earn more ascended gear to beat the raids. It’s part of “killing the zerker meta”, too.

And yes, I still support them being tuned to ascended, even thinking that.

Yea, but considering all ascended armor is account bound, and they made swapping stat sets both easy and cheap, that doesn’t seem like a huge inconvenience. You can get enough spirit shards to convert a full suit of armor in 20 days just from doing dailies, not even counting the ones from champ chests (personally about a 25-33% chance in my experience). then a little bit of gold (or if you got the mats saved up) you can theoretically take your one ascended suit, drop a portable mystic forge and even change armor suits between fights!

Or if you’re like some players who have a couple suits (I like heavy characters and have about 3 sets of heavy armor) you can drop em on a single character and set up the stats for different characters, etc. They’ve added so many avenues for getting ascended gear from world bosses, fractals, WvW, PvP, crafting, achievements (From LS1 and 2), I don’t know how much easier they can make it without selling it at vendors.

And wow… I can’t believe how much fail I see in this thread. Seriously, just because a reward or event comes out doesn’t mean every single player should have access to it. This whole “play how you want” mentality started off as a good idea, but people have taken it and run to mean “I can be worthless and you have to like it” idea. Seriously, it’s a game, and games are supposed to have challenges to be fun, otherwise you might as well just read a book or watch a movie. Final Fantasy 1 was an amazing and difficult game, Final Fantasy X had a freaking red arrow TELLING YOU WHERE TO GO! What has happened to gaming?! People want loot, but for that loot to have any kind of value (both monetary and emotionally) there should be some degree of challenge and a sense of accomplishment.

What happened to the days of getting together with a few of your friends and trying new content, the pain of defeat, the joy of busting your posterior for weeks trying to figure out the encounter and finally beating it, then the pride that came from rocking around your new and shiny loot for everyone to work towards? Where someone having a shiny wasn’t met with jealousy and envious feelings of bile, but rather serving as an inspiration for people to work towards? Now people are complaining about having to do a raid that’s like 30-45 minutes long that’s difficult and might take a few tries to learn how to do it? I work 70+ hours a week and still have time to log in every day for dailies and my daily rotation of fractals and dungeons, maintain a social life, spend time with my fiance, etc. If you want to do something, you’ll find a way to do it and budget your time accordingly. This whole mentality that a guy who spends an hour should have the same experience as a guy who plays 50 is ridiculous, and that’s all I’m seeing in so many MMOs. These are the same guys who cause my fractal runs to take twice as long because they want to “play their way” and demand I like it. Then they get mad when I boot them from my group because I don’t want to spend the next 30-45 minutes carrying them.

NO ONE is suggesting that you play this game like a full time job, those days are long gone (but we’re fun in their own right back then). Spending an hour a day trying out a raid to learn how to do it is not asking you to play the game like a full time job. If you can’t afford to spend an hour learning content then really gaming in general is not for you. Candy Crush is likely more your speed.

Asmodal.6489:

Your hertiage is really not the point. Actual experience is and the language, choice of words and comparison that go along. That being said how about we all agree that we are all wise kitten and and could spin this on and on. I might even admit that I set the example up to turn out this way.

I value Black Box passionate opinion in any case and we have seen that if we are vocal stuff changes. so lets continue to do that.

perspective is still important because there are enough people that read these forums and repeat everything unfiltered in one way or the other without actually forming an opinion for themselves.

You’re right, it really isn’t the point, and yes we can go back and forth on this until we’re blue in the face. I do maintain that BB sounds like he has enough base experience with the class to have enough information to form an opinion and don’t think people should be dismissing his opinions simply because he hasn’t played the class, but I supposed we can just agree to disagree on that point.

That said, I do disagree with him given that the more I look at the classes, it does seem to have potential. I don’t like the long bow, I don’t care for most of the traps except in super special circumstances, but I do see your points on both the DPS side and I do want to try out the build I linked above as a defensive option. As much as the game tries to pull away from the holy trinity, I love playing tanks and have a great deal of fun with it in “difficult” content like lvl 50 fractals.

I really don’t know why the community revolted so much against the daredevil elite, I tried it out and had an absolute blast with it. The dodges added a really different slant to the character, and staff was just nuts in how much it reminded me of kungkittentheater (Certainly helped that I was watching Ip Man while playing it). Reaper, I only had a little bit of play time on, but yea, the chill synergy was really cool, reaper’s shroud was fantastic, but also the minionmancer being amazing as well. It really reminded me of the gw1 necro (which is what I was initially thinking of when I mentioned synergy on the necro).

With guard, I’m starting to see a little more collaboration in skills, but I never really noticed the gaps in the damage bonus from symbols, since I usually have 100% symbol up time between mace and hammer (I don’t use greatsword except when I want the pull, which is going to be replaced by the new tether pull thingy we just got, so I’m even more happy about that).

Basically each class got new four different things: new F skill, new traits, new utilities and new weapon. I figure if 2/4 were cool, it was worthwhile. DH traits were kinda meh to me, but some of the changes have been worthwhile to lend weight to them, one of the traps is interesting, and I do like the new virtues which has me leaning more towards liking it overall. I do wish they’d replace our shield 5 skill with the revenant shield 5 skill, but that’s kinda wishful thinking at this point. ><

Asmodal.6489:

the chinese cuisine is probalby the most diverse in the world. There are so many dishes simply due to thousands of years of culture and land mass. You basically proved the point all the way.

you are thinking in stereotypes and what chinese Food represents for you in your horizon of knowledge. But really having no idea what baozi is or tastes like – or you did not consider it for your argument which basically leads to the same conclusion. You think you know. But really you do not or do not consider all options. Which is understandable chinese food in my country is exactly what you describe. But it is a very narrow way of looking at the whole picture espcially if you try to grasp what else might be out there.

I am Chinese and grew up on Chinese foods of all kinds, thank you… No, I’m not thinking of stereotypes, I’m thinking of my life where I had to bring cautious newbies to Chinese restaurants (not Panda Express) for the first time. You’re not missing a whole lot if you have exposure to the more common spices around the world (ginger, saffron, garlic, etc). There are a couple that might surprise you, but overall it’s really not that special.

Call it a bad example specifically with Chinese food, but the general principle of a professional cook being able to read a recipe for a dish and without tasting it, come up with a general idea of what it tastes like due to his/her exposure to difference spices from their own experience. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be close enough to have an intelligent discussion. Which Black Box seems to be going from.

Azure.8670:

easily the worst thread of 2015. too lazy to load into a map. takes 3 minutes to get daily from pvp using a DAILY PVP ROOM FULL OF OTHER LAZY PEOPLE THAT HATE PVP. 5 minutes to do 2/3 wvw dailies. PVE dailes are as simple as cutting a tree. this IS THE WORST POSSIBLE THREAD.

^ /thread

Seriously, you can log in, open pvp window, go to custom arena directly and get 2/3 dailies mostly afk in under 5 minutes. Then you can either do another one with a class that’s up for win, hop to WvW for an easy one, check the world boss schedule, check the gather, etc.

OP is simply lazy and is blaming other things instead of facing to the real problem of, they don’t enjoy the game. Here’s a magic thought: If you don’t enjoy doing dailies, don’t do em! It’s 10AP and a few worthless things that usually get thrown in the bank to rot, and spirit shards which can be gotten from champion chests in any aspect of the game you could possibly enjoy! What do you want? a free 10AP and rewards just for logging in?

I was messing around with some defensive builds that may be required for some of the new content and actually DH came out with some decent stuff that’s all about granting aegis for days.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAS5en8ABlChFdC+CBEEhl4BrKAslqXYLh/TWQ+/FAPgA-TRCBABap0ANlgYpMDgLAglq/U1+D5prRvjAoRIgHCQAAEgJOxkYJWiTMTciTciTciNxJOxJOxJWKg80aB-e

I think I’d be willing to give this build a shot, as well as Asmodal’s idea regarding zeal / virtues / DH trait line. When I first tried it out, it was boring as all hell personally. It’s pretty, there’s no debating that, but after some of the updates, I can actually see quite a bit of interesting things to run in there (though I have yet to see them mention anything about allowing the symbol from LB being shootable behind and such, which is yet another sadness point). Longbow felt quite a bit like scepter to me, but without the focus bonus. 10k from true shot? Against large hitbox bosses, doesn’t scepter do about that anyways?

The biggest thing about the other Elite specs was that there was quite a bit of “wow” factor with them. Daredevil gets another endurance bar AND 3 different dodges with different effects! I mean, that alone is worth the trait line! Reaper got some much needed love with greatsword! Herald got some awesomeness with shield and massive party support potential! Druid became a god of healing (Zealots might actually become a thing)! Chronomancer gets Alacrity AND quickness! The list goes on, but guards get mediocre traps, arguably non-synergizing traits, minor upgraded virtues and longbow that is arguably no better than scepter. You can see why people are salty.

In Black Box’s defense, yea, when you have someone who’s comfortable with the class in it’s regular role, reading the skills and watching the videos are pretty sufficient for figuring out what it’s capable of. You gave an example of having someone who’s never eaten chinese food yet having an opinion, but someone’s who’s familiar with the taste of oyster sauce, MSG, sweetened sauces, etc can likely form a fairly informed decision about the taste of a lot of chinese foods without having ever tasted it. It’s entirely possible to make a fair judgement about something with previous related experience rather than first hand experience.

Ventari really needs more support added to his rep in the form of buffs. Aegis, protection, weakness on enemies; things like that. Staff is a great weapon, with of course the #2 skill still being somewhat worthless.

Shiro is cool, but as has been said, #3 gets broken too easily, especially given how valuable a resource energy is.

As it is now, nothing can replace the group support that a guardian provides, which IMO is a huge problem for guards who want to do dragon hunter builds.

So here’s my schtick.

I main a guard, I play 3 types, healer in nomads for WvW, zerker meta for just putting around, and a tank type for high level fractals (our guild meta build, it works really really well).

I understand that the idea behind the elite specializations was to give a different field, but the whole point was to give an alternative, not something vastly inferior. It’s not really a problem with any one thing, but the general concept. In the game, Guardians provide unmatched defensive support to a party. No one can pump out as much aegis as us, our healing without DPS loss, blinds, blocks; we’re pretty much the life’s blood of a party keeping alive all them squishy zerkers who haven’t learned to dodge or memorized enemy attack patterns.

The longbow is nice and shiny, but seems really lackluster, very much the same as scepter (which honestly, I never had a problem with). The saving grace I can see with it is that it does provide decent hit counts to trigger supreme justice, making it somewhat viable as a burn condi build type thing (stacking more burns), so in certain situations where you’re ranging (solo’ing lupi comes to mind), I can see a possible longbow/scepter+focus for stacking burns and keeping ranged pressure. However, on large hit box bosses like Lupi, smite is still a superior skill and has a really low cooldown. In Tyria, as has been discussed massively, there’s really no room for condis. The ramp up time for condi’s to be worthwhile is very limiting when most of your mobs are dying in 30 seconds or less. PvP and WvW, condi builds have a little more room, as do the traps that come with the new specialization.

Traps, they’re very pretty, but again, what you “lose” by taking a trap over our signature utilities like wall of reflect, hold the line, retreat, etc just doesn’t seem like a worthwhile trade off. I mean, what’s better? a block for every single member of your party, or doing a couple thousand damage? I’d take the block 10 times out of 9 without question. That said, obviously we haven’t seen all the content coming out in HoT, so maybe there’s a place for it, I just have yet to see it.

The virtues however, I think they did a great job with. They added a much needed flavor, actually giving me motivation to want to hit F2 for the distance closer/heal. The burning chain type action is pretty cool as well, I can see those synergizing well with some of our other trait lines. However, the virtues aren’t enough of a reason for me to drop one of my other specializations.

Right now, the specialization has an interesting flavor, though not unique (as many have said, we’ve become bear-bow rangers, without the bear or the trap supporting specialization line). More to the point though, with everything you’ve lost, it seems like it’ll be like an ele not taking ice bow. Sure, don’t take it, just realize you’re 30-40% less effective by doing so.