Guild Wars 2

I think the complexity of the spec actually makes it kinda fun, however I agree OP that attunement cd needs to be reduced significantly and barrier feels very weak given how squishy weavers are and the dps is lackluster given how many drawbacks the spec has.

Luindu.2418:

Imho:
1. Attunement CD is the worst
2. Barriers do nothing
3. Low damage

This is what I feel as well,

the mechanics are fun, but just another non-viable build for ele, I dunno why A-net keeps building really fun specs/builds and then making them non-viable and forcing us into boring specs/rotations (for competitive play).

Yeah definitely feels very lack luster.

I really like where they took the spec in terms of weaver, mixing elements etc. the spec was designed well in my opinion but has been tuned to be way too weak.

They should reduce the attunement cool down would definitely make the spec more fun and viable, then toughness should be increased given its a melee spec.

Laurie.1698:

Reading that there is no area like Verdant Brink makes me want to try out the demo. The very name Verdant Brink makes me cringe. I disliked HoT areas, since the day it started. If I never see another vertical area with no indication of what level the object I’m looking for is, that would make me very happy to continue playing. No more “mushroom pants”, no more updrafts, no more areas that I have to spend hours getting mastery points amassed just to get to the area I need to be in to continue the story based on vertical maps and grrr jumping mushrooms or some other gimmicky way of getting around is great. Its been several years of enjoyment for those who like that kind of thing but not for those who don’t. Mounts…well I’ll have to see more reviews to figure out whether or not they are just a substitute for jumping mushrooms, updrafts and the like before I buy this expansion at all. I’m not pre ordering this time like I did with HoT…I’ll wait and see. I’ve been with GW since GW1 beta. I barely played in HoT, I did not like it at all. This time, no preorder and it may be the end of my time playing GW2 at all if its anything like HoT. If you liked it, great but for me, I’m hopeful it won’t be a repeat of HoT.

Try out the beta now, you can try out the raptor and see one of the new areas for yourself.

I disagree OP, this is good design, people who played the original GW2 and HoT content should be able to unlock the elite specs quickly if they so choose, you can choose to keep your elite spec locked till you farm enough HPs to make you happy.

In old RPGs players handicapped themselves in various ways to increase the challenge, no need to change the game for everyone to make it harder for you.

Plus I plan on unlocking every HP anyway for the next expansion.

I have all elite specs unlocked and all HoT hero points unlocked on my main, so its not that I don’t want to play the content, but I rather start enjoying the new elite spec straight away rather than having to wait for all the maps to be close to finished before I can finally play the new spec.

The mounts make my silly looking character look even more silly.

Having PvP wings while sitting on the raptor makes it look like some kind of mutated firefly or something, I don’t know.

Its also sad you no longer see any footstep effects from legendary weapons while riding a mount. Part of the fun of a legendary was seeing those trails while running around the place… (maybe you can change this)?

While on the general theme of cosmetics, the raptor itself looks cool, not sure why a giant bunny creature, and as many would’ve already mentioned in other threads, we definitely need to be able to customize the colors a bit more.

I agree with you OP.

When I was demoing HoT, I was like wow these areas are amazing, GW2 has always impressed me with the visual scenery and Heart of Thorns really took it to a new level. There scenery itself made me want to buy Heart of Thorns. While the initial story instance surrounded by fire in POF was okay I think in terms of visual appeal I find the new area quiet lacking.

I personally enjoyed the vertical depth of HoT too, I definitely got lost especially in Tangled depths (still struggle to navigate it) but that was a huge draw card for me.

I am finding this map even more boring than some of the original core GW2 maps, a step backward I feel.

Miellyn.6847:

Supz.9836:

snip

Why couldn’t she find a group in the beginning? Everyone was inexperienced, it was pretty easy to find groups.
Yes they could, but with a cost. Either longer development for raids or other content. Between Wing 3 and 4 were 8 months, Wing 4 was released 6 months ago. The development is already slow, there is no reason to decrease it further.

Raid access in WoW seems easier because you can outgear it. You won’t find a rnd group with an appropriate level, all groups have the same item level or higher as the drops as requirement. LFR is not a raid.

WoW is built around instanced content. Of course it would be dead if you removed it, they have nothing else.

GW2 is built around open world with tacked on instanced content as a challenge. Instances are not the primary content or focus of GW2.

Do you have any metrics how long the average player stays?
Doing the same content over and over in different difficulties is the exact opposite of smart.

There are 3 or more guilds in EU dedicated to raid training. It is actually really easy to find a group to train with if you want to. There is no need for difficulty settings for a training purpose. It would actually increase the gap.

Yes you need content that leads up to it. Not the same in different difficulties. T4 fractals and fractal CM is where it at. Why do fractals not provide training for mechanics?

The only metrics we have (GW2efficiency) actually shows that more people raid or have tried raids than reached lvl 100 fractals.

When HoT first came out her and myself included spent a lot of time exploring new content and leveling up masteries etc. I unlocked every elite spec before even looking at raiding. By the time I got around to looking for raids people were already asking to link completions. This has obviously gotten a lot worse now.

Regarding WoW I now you don’t consider LFR a ‘proper’ raid but for casual players the content is still a raid. Which is why I am asking for the different difficulty.

Raids are a significant part of the game nonetheless, if it wasn’t both you and I wouldn’t be here discussing it.

I am already in two raid training guilds, as I said its not impossible, however the hours that the training raids are done, and getting an actually spot in them is not always easy. Even though I do train some raids in this way, it would be much better if I could raid at the times I want to play and having the ability to train easily with more players.

Why would the gap increase if there were multiple difficulty levels?

Fractals do not provide training for it because its not the same raid, would you take someone who ran VG for a Deimos run and call them experienced? No

While they teach you to use your build while playing around instanced mechanics they do not teach you the specific instance. Which is why a difficulty with lower DPS checks and mechanic damage would help. So players can focus on learning the mechanics and getting a feel for the map. Once they do that they can focus on perfecting the rotation etc.

There is nothing that says all aspects of the raid has to be training in one go. Why do FPS players train aim separately rather than playing scrims all the time?

Why does GW2 have a training area to practice rotations in isolation?

You are correct I do not have any hard and fast metrics. The fact that more players have tried raids according to GW2efficiency doesn’t prove we don’t need difficulty levels.

Only GW2 devs potentially has access to the real metrics. All I hope to do is as a customer who has spent a lot on their product, have already bought the ultimate edition of POF is to provide feedback on their product. I hope that it will provide more clarity around the stats they see and at least help them analyse my spending and playing habits.

As I said before previously I took a long break, went and played WoW and FF 14 which I didn’t enjoy as much as GW2. I also know devs want to bring back a lot of old players, I have been trying to get my friend to come back and raids were something she explicitly mentioned.

Of course you could be correct and me and my friends could be in the minority and losing my sales for hard core raiders in the future might be worth it. The cost of developing easy mode might not be worth it and Raiders might be spending more money.

I just want to be sure that the devs take my point of view into consideration IF players like me who want an easier to access version of the raids are not in the minority and do form a material component of sales.

Miellyn.6847:

Supz.9836:

Honestly from a Revenue point of view for GW2 I think it makes a lot of sense to add a ‘easy’ and ‘normal’ difficulty to the current existing raids.

I think players who are strictly against the implementation of additional difficulties would be in the minority here. I would also imagine given how much time said players would be spending in game, selling raids etc. they would have enough gold that they do not spend too much real money on buying gems (devs would have actual information on this).

Taking these 3 factors into account, i.e lower spend on GEMs, lower percentage of player base and only a portion of raiders (I don’t think all current raiders are against multiple difficulty settings only a portion would be). The loss of revenue from implementing this would be minimal.

On the other hand I know plenty of players who I use to play with during the release of HoT who have quit due to lack of accessibility to raids.

I myself who spent quiet alot on GEMs, took a very long break from GW2 because the way raids have been implemented left a very sour taste with me and have recently come back in anticipation of the new expansion.

I tried to convince another friend to come back and buy the expansion. One of the key reasons she mentioned that made her find GW2 no longer interesting is how hard it is to get into raids and how toxic it can be.

I honestly wonder if the time and resources devs spent on developing raids in its current form vrs the net increase/decrease in real world money spent on the game was profitable. Given how many players who have told me they have either quit or taken a long break from the game due to raids I would imagine they actually lost money by making raids so hard to access.

Let me be clear I am not saying remove raids with the current difficulty. Challenging content is good. However not having steps to learn the mechanics and progress your way to the more challenging content makes no sense.

Fractals do it very well as you progress to harder and harder content, why not for raids?

Fractals are NOT a stepping stone into raids because you DO NOT learn actual raid mechanics, having an easier version of the raids, with a higher chance of success would encourage more players to form the group of 10 players required to go and try learn a raid.

In the long run raids can be a very good thing for the game if the difficulty modes are added. Currently I think its one of the few things done very poorly in GW2 due to lack of difficulty settings.

ArenaNet is not big enough to maintain multiple difficulties in raids without major drawbacks.

If your friends quit over raids they would have quit anyway shortly after.

Look at WoWs LFR. It teaches you nothing, mechanics are irrelevant. The only way you learn mechanics is if they punish you for failing, everything else just teaches bad habits that kills you in normal mode.
Raids have easier and harder encounter, the same content in different difficulties is boring and most leave before they get to the end.

Thats not true at all, she quit shortly after the expansion which they were really looking forward to. Additionally I can say with certainty I took a very long break and stopped spending because of raids.

If Arena net can implement new raids and have multiple difficulty in fractals they can surely implement multiple difficulty levels in raid. If resources are an issue they should take time to develop difficulty levels first before implementing new raids.

Actually I started WoW very late (when I took a break from GW2, I actually thought raiding stinks in GW2 so lets give it a shot in WoW). I find the game itself mediocre compared to GW2. However it is very easy to break into raids in WoW. I have never had to wait long to access any raid in WoW. They did a much better job than GW2 at getting more players joining the raid community.

I think if it wasn’t for raids WoW would be dead so it makes sense that they spend time improving the system and catering for the largest and most profitable player base.

WoW still at the same time manages to have hard difficulties as well.

The reason why players stay longer in WoW is you bother to stay and learn and you aim for more challenging content because you can set SMART goals which are achievable.

Currently in GW2 the challenge in finding a group to learn with (although not impossible) and then the time required with such groups to effectively learn the raid for new and returning players usually puts them off raids altogether. The gap is too large which is why we need multiple difficulty settings.

The achievable goal to get to harder content is why you need BOTH challenging content and content which leads up to that content (again I stress fractals doesn’t provide sufficient training for raid mechanics). This will probably increase the number of players, and the time spent on raids by those players.

The point is however by raiding and running fractals you get access to legendary mats etc. Which is the reward type for that content.

By running open world/WvW/PvP you get access to standard loot which is the reward type for that content.

There is no reason why you should get both types of rewards from fractals and raids UNLESS you get both type of rewards from PvP/WvW/PvE.

However you want to try and spin this, you are asking for more loot. Even if you reduce certain drops (presumably you already have that type of drop which you are happy to have reduced) – you are still asking for more loot whether it be the amount or variety of loot.

If you are not asking for more loot are you asking for less loot? What you are asking for is not having to run certain content (that you don’t like) and still be able to access the reward for that content. I.e not run LS3 content and still get the rewards for it.

I don’t mind if you do that but I don’t enjoy raiding and Fractals so to make it fair lets have raid loot and fractal loot accessible in PvP/WvW? You can have the PvP wings in raids I don’t mind. You can even reduce the drops of other types of items in the reward tracks its okay.

Honestly from a Revenue point of view for GW2 I think it makes a lot of sense to add a ‘easy’ and ‘normal’ difficulty to the current existing raids.

I think players who are strictly against the implementation of additional difficulties would be in the minority here. I would also imagine given how much time said players would be spending in game, selling raids etc. they would have enough gold that they do not spend too much real money on buying gems (devs would have actual information on this).

Taking these 3 factors into account, i.e lower spend on GEMs, lower percentage of player base and only a portion of raiders (I don’t think all current raiders are against multiple difficulty settings only a portion would be). The loss of revenue from implementing this would be minimal.

On the other hand I know plenty of players who I use to play with during the release of HoT who have quit due to lack of accessibility to raids.

I myself who spent quiet alot on GEMs, took a very long break from GW2 because the way raids have been implemented left a very sour taste with me and have recently come back in anticipation of the new expansion.

I tried to convince another friend to come back and buy the expansion. One of the key reasons she mentioned that made her find GW2 no longer interesting is how hard it is to get into raids and how toxic it can be.

I honestly wonder if the time and resources devs spent on developing raids in its current form vrs the net increase/decrease in real world money spent on the game was profitable. Given how many players who have told me they have either quit or taken a long break from the game due to raids I would imagine they actually lost money by making raids so hard to access.

Let me be clear I am not saying remove raids with the current difficulty. Challenging content is good. However not having steps to learn the mechanics and progress your way to the more challenging content makes no sense.

Fractals do it very well as you progress to harder and harder content, why not for raids?

Fractals are NOT a stepping stone into raids because you DO NOT learn actual raid mechanics, having an easier version of the raids, with a higher chance of success would encourage more players to form the group of 10 players required to go and try learn a raid.

In the long run raids can be a very good thing for the game if the difficulty modes are added. Currently I think its one of the few things done very poorly in GW2 due to lack of difficulty settings.

If they ever implement this please make sure all fractal and raid drops (including raid legendary skins) can be obtainable from PvP and WvW.

I agree OP that the skins look much worse than even very cheap in game items/armors. However I purchased the package for the other benefits, I saw enough value without the skins so not really too disappointed.

I wouldn’t expect they would generate too many sales if they were selling those skins as stand alone items in the gem store.

The problem isn’t raids as a concept its how they have been implemented (specifically in terms of accessibility) in Guild Wars 2 that is an issue.

Difficult challenging raids are a good thing.

However there should be difficulty settings and possibly in game voice chat to makes raids more accessible.

Difficulty settings for raids are available in almost ever other MMO, and I think probably the biggest issue in for newer players trying to break into raids. I honestly don’t understand why it isn’t a feature in guild wars. Even fractals you progress from easy to harder versions as you learn the mechanics/get better gear etc.

I understand that raids are meant to be the most difficult content but that alone is not a reason why they can’t have a easy or ‘normal’ difficulty for newer players to learn the mechanics of the raid before the DPS checks/boss damage etc. gets tuned up for the ‘real challenge’

The second issue is lack of in game voice communication now I know that the work around is TS or discord and it seems to be common that other large scale MMOs don’t offer this feature. However there are other MMOs who have implemented voice communication in instanced content very successfully (for party instance of 6 players and raid content of up to 12 players).

In game voice communication makes raiding with pick up groups so much easier. At the very least allowing the squad commander and 2 other players have voice comms would make a significant difference and would be useful in WvW/PvP too, also personally I think it would be a good thing for the community too.

There are plenty of Australian/NZ players a server would definitely help pvp/wvw quality of life, probably even raiding. Playing with 350-400 ping sucks :/

I have a lot of gripes with GW2, but the UI is not one of them, while I usually like the flexibility of UI that other MMOS offer, GW2 has done an amazing job at designing the ‘base’ UI.

Seriously poor and lazy quest design. So much for the GW2 No grind philosophy.

I rather see more time taken to develop quality content than trash like this. I ignored this achievement but then coming back for the legendary and doing this seriously makes GW2 a chore…

Hope nothing like this is in the expansion.

Panda.1967:

mazut.4296:

Its actually 16, but nobody comments on the real drawback, namely the internal global cd. Now if I want to use certain skill I swap attunement then use the skill with almost no delay(up to half a sec). Wit the new spec I will need to swap attunements twice whit the global cd and only then use the skill I want. Am I suppose to predict my oponent every move 3sec in advance?!?!?!

The way I see it, the 3sec global does what the charge time on Tempest for overloads was supposed to do… it creates a loss that is equally weighted to the new mechanic. With Tempest the idea was that you’d give up some versatility by making you remain in attunements longer to gain some new powerful abilities… but that didn’t work out at all, the charge up time was short enough that people could still dance between attunements quite easily for all the versatility in the world. I still attunement dance on my Elementalist as a Tempest exactly how I did before HoT with no difference other than now I have 1 extra spell per attunement that is more powerful than everything else.

With the weaver, they are enforcing the penalty via a global cooldown. You gain these new powers and the versatility of dual attunement at the cost of you can’t just attunement dance as you please anymore, you have to be more thoughtful of your actions.

Firstly with tempest although you can switch between attunements to keep casting you couldn’t switch back into certain attunements as often as say an old arcane type d/d ele would, I definitely wouldn’t say there is no difference.

There are times when I skip an overload to use other skills, so its not just a no brainer every time (in PvP).

The second thing is this mechanic means that it takes 3 seconds to access skills 3,4 and 5 which is a very heavy cost. Quickly switching to water and using off hand skills to heal (or gain invulnerability in the case of a focus or reflect projectiles from say staff) will not be possible – you will need to think a lot further ahead with the new spec.

Thinking about it a bit more, its sad that it will be harder to combo the blast finisher from the dagger off hand if my understanding of the mechanics are correct.

All that said, I still think the new spec is really cool and I am definitely not calling it weak (or strong) without trying it and the other classes out.

mazut.4296:

Its actually 16, but nobody comments on the real drawback, namely the internal global cd. Now if I want to use certain skill I swap attunement then use the skill with almost no delay(up to half a sec). Wit the new spec I will need to swap attunements twice whit the global cd and only then use the skill I want. Am I suppose to predict my oponent every move 3sec in advance?!?!?!

Agree with yo,u really hope ele has a bit of durability given most heal skills sit on skill 3/5.

I haven’t bought any gems in a long time (use to buy a lot) but with raids being very inaccessible to myself and many of my friends in game (many who have stopped playing now) and the huge nerf that D/D ele received in HoT I took a long break from GW2.

I logged in every now and then to see if anything has changed and I enjoyed the latest two LS3 map and just watched some of the videos/twitch on the new expansion.

I am very happy to see the elite spec for elementalist – From the footage I’ve seen its seems a lot of fun to play with a lot of attunement switching – part of what I really enjoy about playing an elementalist. Love how you can mix two elements for new skills.

The new areas also seem very cool and I am feeling hyped the way I felt for Heart of Thorns. I hope the devs continue to focus developing content which everyone can access.

Thank you to the devs, it seems like the game is going back in a direction which I personally really enjoy and best of luck for the launch!

For what its worth, its what made me pretty much quit GW2 (I have logged on occasionally but no where near as much as pre HoT, so sad because GW2 was meant to be the MMO without the grind) was so excited about HoT too.

I haven’t read through this whole thread but I agree with OP’s sentiment.

I want to experience the story development available in raids, people say not everyone needs to play all content but for a causal PvE gamer not seeing the story is like watching a movie and not being allowed to watch 20 minutes of it after paying for… not going to that cinema again.

Me and a few friends use to play GW2 alot, up until HoT expansion, we were both very excited for it too (especially me) but the raid scene really put me off GW2, in fact after raids were introduced I tried out both FF 14 and WoW (I have also played many other MMOs) and I must say they are much better games for elite gamers/raiding (opinion).

I think what the devs failed to see was they designed a MMO ‘without the grind’ which really appealed to a Niche market, casual gamers or players who were sick of the weekly ‘required’ raiding gearing etc.

GW2 also had a very good (in my opinion) PvP system and very unique combat mechanics.

However in trying to capture the raiding player base I think they definitely lost a significant part of their player base. Many casual gamers (feel free to see how much I spent on this game if a Dev is reading this) spend significant amounts of money on cash shop costumes etc. and I think GW2 could’ve sustained and possibly built on that player base and continued to be very profitable.

I hope GW2 goes back to focusing on good WvWvW content, PvP and fun open world PvE content that can be easily accessible to all players.

FYI, I also have full ascended gear, however a combination of erratic play times for a raid roster and poor latency (No Aussie servers) make it impossible for me to to raid effectively.

I still occasionally log in because I miss the game but I barely play it now.

Couldn’t agree more OP, I main an ele and it has just been nerf after nerf for some time now and as someone who primarily likes to sPvP the class (and the game) is honestly no longer much fun.

I also think Tempest was a really poorly designed elite spec that could’ve been done alot better.

I hope they at least make arcane dagger/dagger ele viable again, I am willing to sacrifice my elite spec if our old school arcane dagger/dagger builds work again

Fantastic post OP couldn’t agree more.

As many have already said, please keep adding them, so we can play the game we want to play and not be forced into adventures which I do not enjoy at all to be able to unlock skills and items which I do want.

Great patch/update overall.

I am finding the same problem, might also be my play time, its sad that they designed so many features of this game around getting into the game straight away and now there is this…

Same as every other mmo you need to grind just to play the game… time to go back to cs or dota.

Yes varying difficulties should be available for instanced content.

I consider myself a casual player with work and other commitments I find it difficult to make myself available for a set time each week to raid with a raiding guild.

I also have played various other MMOs (not WoW) which has implemented very successfully 12 person dungeons with varying difficulty scales.

The balancing act is to make higher difficulty levels more rewarding (not just in terms of absolute reward but also reward/minute completing the raid) otherwise everyone would run the easiest difficulty level to get loot the fastest.

I have tried running a raid with a PuG and it just doesn’t work, the current difficulty is good for challenging content which it should be but the same content should be playable for regular players but with more time taken to acquire rewards at lower difficulty.

Having played several MMOs with raids etc. in the past my 2 cents.

I am very happy that they are implementing Raids, I hope the content is truly challenging and not just a DPS fest.

I also hope that although the rewards may be exclusive in terms of cosmetics they do not create new tiers of weapons/armor,

This will only create a divide in the player base, one group which asks for raids to keep getting harder (as their equipment gets better and they spend more time learning the raids). The other not allowed into this elite circle. I have seen it happen many times with other games.

Newer players (or players new to raids) will be excluded as they don’t know the raid or their equipment isn’t good enough to participate in said raids. Now players would get better at the raids of course over time, but higher tiers of equipment would only result in a further divide.

You can already see this with dungeons with the bring zerker etc. but this isn’t so bad and most players can easy get this equipment and there are plenty of groups who are easy going willing to not take in the ‘meta’ equipment.

However with raids being more difficult and if the equipment provided from raids is indeed a better tier you will see ‘meta requirements’ in terms equipment not just effective builds being increased resulting in a large part of the player base being excluded from this content.

That being said make the raids very hard so correct build and equipment (which isn’t insanely difficult to acquire) and skillful game is required as challenging game play working in a team of 9 (or however many others in other games) others can be amazingly fun.

One of the reasons which made me buy Gw2 and i’m still happy to spend so much money on this game is the lack of Trinity, no one needs to wait for class A or B etc to run a dungeon.

I can also play any role I want on my favourite class when I feel like it.

I can see why some players like the trinity play style, however that is not the game I paid for and if I wanted to play that type of game I would be playing something else.

I like the way it is, I don’t see a need to encourage builds which will spike down the lord, if you want to win by attrition, win by attrition, if you want to try burst down the lord then burst down the lord, besides if the enemy team wants to counter it they can try healing the lord.