Guild Wars 2

I love underwater exploration. The problem is, traits skills and weapons don’t synergize at all while underwater because we build them up thinking about on land combats.
I personally think they should leave the underwater content on hold until they do a complete overhaul of the underwater combat system.

To begin with, they should totally dissociate on land and underwater builds (equipment, skills and traits). Then, they should design skills and traits specifically for underwater mechanisms.

I think that they should implement that kind of change whenever they introduce the underwater dragon. It would, in my opinion, be awesome if they manage to pull that off and provide in addition underwater specializations (which would only apply to the underwater section of the game, since underwater and above land builds would be dissociated entirely. You would revert back to your ‘normal’ elite spec when you get back on land)

I’ve raised that point a while ago and people made an interesting remark about this.
Each specialization is tied to a new weapon for the profession. But there will be a time when professions will have access to every weapon types available. At this point Anet won’t be able to assign a new weapon to the next generation elit spec if those weapons become baseline [without developping entire new types of weapons which would amount to a kittenload of work].

By tying weapons to elite specs, they’ll be able to add new specialization which will use existing weaponsets in an entirely different manner. For example, there could be a new Thief elite specialization which would use range/magic staff, or with different dagger attacks, etc.

So, since now we’re about to have access to choices concerning elite specializations, is there any intention to provide in the future a feature to let us save build presets with chosen traits, skills and gears ?

Of course there would be some restriction to avoid changing specializations on the fly in the middle of the fight by disengaging, but I feel like it’s soon going to be quite tedious to change every single bit of customization every time we decide to engage in a different mode/instance/role in the game.

It would be a very welcomed QoL add imo

From the little time I got to test it (approximatively 10 minutes)
I think it’s gonna become the perfect troll specialization.
Giant bullet ant spike damage from afar and almost unavoidable (that new steal buffed with all dem traits), and then stand up and run for your life (or jump off a cliff).

10/10

Also I love the kneeling concept, the sound, the rifle effects, and the cantrips utilities (I was super disappointed by the daredevil’s utilities)

I would love that. To me, old LA is a thousand times better than the new one.
However, I guess it would take a considerable development process to implement that kind of feature.

But, if they do implement that kind of thing, it would unlock new possibilities to make the story concretely progress and actually influence landscapes. For example, we could have two versions of Orr : The first being before the personal story, and the second one with a healed and flourishing Orr after Trahearn cleansed it (The old one being accessible through that said portal stone).

It always felt weird that we would go through all that process to eradicate the undead army and in the end, nothing changes.

I kinda feel there’s a chance rifle specialization traits might also benefit pistols. I’m definitely ok with that.

There’s just one single and dumb reason I’d like to see an item shortcut bar somewhere near the existing action bar.
I just got myself some rad travel item, and I’d like to have easy access to it whenever I feel like using it while traveling. Travel items are cool, but getting through the trouble of finding it among your hundred and so items just to have some little fun while running gets tedious pretty fast.

You still keep your masteries.
Masteries is a great and better alternative than adding a new tier list to whatever we got. I like the idea of getting new abilities that permits you to interact with the environment in a different way. It adds another kind of gameplay without rendering previous progression obsolete.

Elite specialization was designed in the scope of having to choose between different alternative. It’s like class evolutions in other mmo, except this time you’re free to revert back to whatever build you feel like playing the most at the moment. The problem is, they couldn’t, for obvious reason, implement multiple specializations at once for each class. I’d say, the release of the next expansion will be the moment we’ll truely be able to say that the specialization system is settled, because we’ll finally get to choose our path.

However though (and I don’t know how badly it would break the class balancing), I definitely wouldn’t be against being able to keep weapons from previously unlocked specializations.

I personally just wish that we will be able to save build presets in the futur, so we don’t always have to go through all the process of manually change every traits and skills whenever we change specializations (and just fighting style in general).

Khyber, your first screen looks sooo rad !!! It could be on the cover of fashion wars weekly

So here’s my mesmer

There’s an npc in this map that sells an unlimited shrinking tonic.
I think it should help if the size of your charr is a problem for jps.

Why not call this specialization :
The Venom

(and then we’ll get the Hulk, the Dr Strange, etc…)

fyi
All those suggestions from the OP have already been done in an old super popular mmo (before the Wow trend). I’m not sure if I’m allowed to give the name though. It was an mmo with 2D slightly chibi anime sprites on a 3D environment.

It worked beautifully, added a sense of challenge and dread, and you always could just avoid the section of the map until the event faded away.
Those events did reinforce the sense of community and promoted teamwork (even in a context where players could kill steal each other).
It also made the whole world feel alive.

The reason people and Anet think that armor cost more than outfit to create, is because they’re stuck to that idea that if they make an armor piece, they have to release it with the whole set, and with a version for each weight class.

It would be way cheaper if they focused on just one particular piece of equipment for an update, and rotate the weight class after each update.

To be honest, I think adding just one piece of armor every black lion update instead of a whole outfit would attract me more (and if they did that from the start, by now we would have a rich and attractive collection of pieces to buy)
It would be the same amount of work (if not less). And after a while, it would make the whole collection more worthwhile than the outfits, as the collection gets richer and newer pieces of equipment could possibly make old ones more attractive with the combination possibilities.

I mean, I wouldn’t mind updates like :
week 1 : light gauntlets
week 2 : heavy gauntlets
…
week n : medium trenchcoat nice overtop

At this point, it’s fair to say that most people have many types of characters. Even if the current item of the week isn’t compatible with their main, it can fit with their alts. Personally I wouldn’t mind investing in a nice piece of equipment even if it’s not for my main thief, providing it can look awesome on one of my alts.

And seriously don’t even give too much thought about those clipping problems. There are already some with the current pieces but it’s not really THAT shocking. Even my current style revolves around an interesting effect due to that said clipping.

ErebusVindictus.6514:

I want Ricochet back, but I also want a big nerf to Unload’s damage, it’s way too much currently. But it did make Shadow Shot like spinning a slot machine. My question is: why not just change it for shadow shot and leave it the same for the others?

WTF I want ricochet back specifically BECAUSE of shadow shot.

venom share as baseline ? I’ll gladly play condi thief now thx

The OP posted a thread to warn people with the same kind of condition as him that they can get harmed.
Yet, some people come in like : " hurr durr so don’t play, what do you want anet to do blablabla "

The OP is jus attempting to prevent harm to others guys.

The only thing I loved about the pistols was being able to keep a group at bay with AoE cc.

Now it’s long gone, and my pistols took the dust.
Purity of the weapon is a subjective view that I definitely don’t share with the devs. Ricochet should be brought back (range + bounce)

- Dust strike seems to be a good candidate for the reveal tool thematically.

- Another thematically accurate buff I’d like to see is applying dagger training trait to every dagger themed skills aside from the weapon (impairing dagger, impaling lotus, distracting dagger)

- I strongly agree with the bandit’s defense kick evade frames. Correctly timing a block should be rewarding, not just a ticket to another risk.

- But I also disagree with making Vault unblockable. One of the reasons is the backlash leading to other random nerfs in the class.

It was hands down the best experience I had in Heart of Thorns.

I wish there was more guild events that work that way, like for example some kind of tower defense mechanism where the guild has to defend itself from monster raids.

Or adding, in the future, new areas within hall maps that guilds have to conquer the same way.

Guild dungeons beneath the hall, where all members can possibly participate at once.

etc.

Well, here’s my two cents :
toxic players usually don’t even realize they are.

It generally comes from an inability to think outside one’s own box.

Playing with friends and guilds is a good way to avoid dealing with them.

The only thing I want about this skill is having finishing blow being useful in PvE.

Labjax.2465:

BloodyNine.7504:

I think maybe it is because I am newer to this game. But none of this surprises me. The game is F2P. They have to make money somehow. These people don’t work for free. The astronomical costs of items in games is by design. Why pretend otherwise? They NEED you to pull out your credit card and buy gems or the game goes away. Purchases of the game will only go so far. To keep it running there needs to be a revenue stream.

I can understand why people are upset. To be honest I would rather have no gem store, pay a subscription and have everything earn able in game. But that isn’t happening.

This doesn’t excuse the the obvious problems stated in many other posts. I am just saying, I understand why they do this. Not just why, but why the have to do it.

Basically, a number of people are abnormally mad at anything Gem Store related because they are tee’d off about the general direction of the game, HoT (the expansion), and, in some cases, more recent Gem Store practices (such as stuffing desirable items inside of “packs” and making them only purchasable through those packs with a bunch of assorted crap that no one wants, or releasing gliders as a new feature and then making 1% of the glider skins available through actual gameplay and 99% Gem Store purchase).

In other words, people are looking for more reasons to hate on the Gem Store because they’re already mad at it and the game. It’s understandable frankly. It’s not entirely logical half the time, but it’s understandable.

So here I’m going to put some logic in it.
Your character gets like 2 new skin sets by playing HoT. The rest is through the gemstore. Every week, we get to see new outfits going through the gemstore, while not seeing any new skin unlockable by playing the expansion.
There’s a clear overwhelming balance issue here.

Now people are going with a “but it’s f2p” as an argument. The thing is, this expansion is sold the same price as the core game when it came out. But the core game came with a lot more skins than this. The core game came with a lot more maps than this.

Yeah, you’ll come back by saying, “the expansion provides whole new mechanism which is a lot of work etc”. Well I agree. But they could at least provide at least a satisfying amount of new gear set so we could further customize our character.

And then you’ll say “They didn’t have time to create many new gear skins because they focused on providing actual gameplay”… well they have time to create those outfits every week.
“But it’s f2p” uuuuuhh…

AsurasRCute.4136:

Yeah, the moment HoT downloaded I unlocked DD, equipped staff, went through the animations, said “Nope!”, put staff in the bank.

I was reading a lot about how bad the animations were, but thought that surely the Asura ones would still look good; but they’ve even made the Asura ones look bad which is quite an achievement!

I’d have been happy with the regular Asura staff idle etc animations to be honest – especially that cheeky twirl they do – bless ’em.

I agree with giving melee staff the regular staff stance. Before they show any gameplay footage, I’ve been expecting my human to wield the staff the same way it carries the banners he picks up.

Why did it turn into an “action cam VS non action cam player” thread ???
Why are people blaming players for lazy game design on the devs side ?

Let me get this straight :
Steal WAS a problem for those who use action camera. It NEEDED to be adressed.
They just DIDN’T fix it the RIGHT WAY.
In fact, they just managed to create a problem for BOTH types of players. It’s stupid to jump on each other’s throat on a matter that hinders both parties.

I love how this thread is top thread in the thief subsection of every languages available in the forum xD
(Just check it out, French German and Spanish versions)

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Why not both ? :p

I know this is probably a joke, but it’s because thief should not have to be a mandatory pick either.

Well technically, it wouldn’t be.
The downstate bar would still be able to be burst normally with attacks (and the length of this hp bar can still be balanced accordingly)
And people can already manage without having to steal stuff.

It would be no more than compensation without having to buff our class.
The finisher would balance the argument of not bringing enough dps.
The steal would compensate the lack of knockback against the seekers.

PopeUrban.2578:

Easier fix:

Give the bosses fulcrum shifting stolen items. if, for instance, you could steal an item from the guardians that give a shield against seekers, thieves would be instantly viable.

Stolen items are hands down the easiest way to balance/implement thief balance for raid encounters as unlike other professions its actually natural to give thieves a different skill in different encounters through steal.

You know how easy having a thief makes mai trin? It’s because thieves can steal 3s invuln on a 20s cooldown and just facetank her in the lightning fields. Similar design should have been the first idea for thieves in raid encounters. It’s literally our class mechanic.

Why not both ? :p

Sounds fun ! I’m in, if I’m at home at the time it’s decided

If only people would let me in their raid group with my Daredevil I would be able to confirm what you say.

Add a downstate to every mobs in raid (with a high amount of downstate health), that can’t be finished by pressing " F ".

Done.

Every raid will ask for a Daredevil. We win.

PS: On a totally unrelated side note.
Staff #3 : replace the cripple by a knockback
Staff #4 : reveals ennemies hit (because it makes sense)

Talking about the purity of the class, I’ve made myself a reaper alt, and it’s flat out outrageous compared to our class.

I managed to fight solo a champion while being 95% of the time in reaper’s shroud state.
With 15% attack speed trait, I could attack with the speed of a dagger auto-attack.

Then there’s this… that trait that apply burning (yeah burning… for the reaper master of the cold… purity of class gtfo) for every single auto-attack I land (The whole fight the mob has 15 stacks of fire on it… ).
Not only that but there’s also that trait that gives might every single auto attack too (so about 20-25 might all the fight).

Meanwhile, our dagger training gives us just 33% chance to land poison on dagger…
With my reaper with random rares and exotic on it and half the trinket slots empty (with barely 500 base condition damage), I felt more at ease and had better condi sustain than with my full equipped dagger viper condi Daredevil and his 10% condi damage bonus on lotus.

As a solo player dealing with most of the contents (even PvP), I know we have somehow the tools to make up for shortcomings due to our class design.

The problem is when having to contribute in your group. I’m specifically pointing out Raids.

Our class is balanced enough to fair well against most of the content, but our lack of baseline necessary skills makes us on the paper subpar to other classes, getting us shunned by raid runners (because we have to compensate, while other classes accumulate).
I’m just pointing out that this kind of design decision (the subject of this thread) is what tones down our class compared to others.

I guess it comes down to the question about : having a better separation between pvp and pve contents.

To me it’s not well-designed because we don’t have enough access to condition removal without stealth.
What would have been fair is choosing between more attack or more defense, not between more attack or a defense mechanism.

Condition removal on evade can arguably be considered very powerful. But aside from that, we either need to sacrifice a traitline to get acro, or shadow art (and rely on stealth once again), or we sacrifice all our utility bar to get the single condition removal on tricks (utility bar is precious to our class). That leaves us with not enough leeway to get a desired build straight.

What would’ve been a better design is having something along the line :
having a condi removal that works in a similar way as pain response as a minor, and having to choose between the staff trait or an improvement on the condition removal minor.
Which means, we still have some condition mitigation but in a lesser scale without the trait. That’s how the trait choice should work.

Having an all or nothing kind of choice like choosing between fighting superman with or without cryptonite isn’t good design to me.

I get that you want a reason to choose another weapon set beside staff. But that’s not the way to have it. It just means that those said weapon sets need a bonus on par.

YuiRS.8129:

That’s kind of the whole point. You have to make a choice, you know? Daredevil is pretty well designed in this regard, actually. All of the trait choices have some validity to them.

The choices we face is kinda unfair compared to other classes though.

The problem is, the amount of traits we need to sacrifice for each mechanic of our class to be decent is higher than other classes.
Baseline, we don’t have much.

Steal requires to dedicate whole traitlines to become relevant.
Dodge needs the same kind of care since our extra dodge doesn’t come with an appropriate endurance regeneration.
Same for minimum condition mitigation.
In addition with that, we also have initiative that feels comfortable only traited.
(And that is while being the class with the least amount of slotted skill, with our only class mechanic being that one steal button. The initiative system makes it so switching weapon doesn’t contribute in increasing the amount of actions possible. Each of our utility slot is more precious than with other classes)

All of those four points (well arguably initiative in a lesser scale) are almost mandatory for our class for basic survival, but it then sacrifices traitlines and slots for damage dealing purposes.

This very choice illustrates in a small-scale what the whole class suffers from.
Sacrifice essential survivability for decent damage, or dealing poor damage to have a way to defend ourselves.
Whereas other classes’ trait choice is either about choosing the way to deal damage, or higher bonus for defence or for attack.
(our choices feel more like having to choose between having a dodge button or an attack button).

Even with all our traits dedicated to damage, we are considered far from top dps dealer.

Nury.3062:

Just to prove my point a bit.The human is my main,the ranger i would love to make a legendary longbow for…
Tell me on which one fits better…

Personally I find beauty in diversity. I don’t like to enclose myself in predefined concepts and visions. Venturing yourself by associating seemingly incompatible pieces together to bring out a whole new vision is what I find interesting and pretty.
I find more visual opportunities with your human holding the Kudzu then with the already leafy Sylvari with a leafy bow.

So in short, yeah, it looks better with your human imo

John Lightning.6293:

I love how Anet had to ruin Acrobatics to make an elite spec for thief. I love how Anet had to get rid of the one thing pistol had going for it (Ricochet and the range buff lol). I love how thief is supposed to be the best single target damage but in reality does some of the least damage in PVE. I love how thief is almost completely useless in raids: chronomancer boon strips and cc’s better than a thief, most classes have better DPS, most classes do condi better than thief, and thieves can’t tank or heal.

Thanks Anet I love my main class.

I’m still kind of salty about the ricochet deletion and the :
“oh well we forgot to also erase the range bonus lol. Now it’s fixed yw”

My Daredevil with the Nevermore (yes)

ps : don’t mind that huge dude photo bombing me

My gut feeling is Viper stats is the way to go.
It gives both power and condition damage, but also condition duration in addition. Since the raid mobs last so long, that condition duration comes in handy and helps the stacks to go up.

If you look at the world map, you can see a little space between Verdant Brink and Spirit Vale that looks like a corridor.

So this space can become an independent corridor map.

There are only two things that I’ve found cheap in the PvE.

1) When it’s a bit laggy and the attack comess faster than the AoE visual you need to dodge the atttack.

2)When mobs reset because of a slight pull, or anything involving the landscape, making them casually walk back while being invulnerable and healing (dat moment of despair… at least make them run… or make them moonwalk to add to the taunt)

If you got lotus dodge, dodge spam to inflict as much condi as possible. They’ll eventually get you and down you, but at least one of them will fold from the condis to revive you.

Bound dodger, stomp them all.

Dash, well… just run away, at least you can.

So here is mine

Personally, if they don’t intend to use the monkey king idle animation right now, I’d like at least to have the proper staff stance (the one for caster).

They could have at least put the beginning of the story at the point of the map where it actually starts.
If I saw from the very beginning that it starts at the bottom of the map, I would have taken my time to discover stuff in between my starting point and the story starting point.

So I’ve got a complaint about it.
From the beginning of the expansion, I’ve been careful not to rush my progression and fully explore the maps before going to the next. Before starting the part of my personal story at Dragon’s Stand, I’ve 100% completed Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, and Tangled Depths.

And the moment I start the part of my story in Dragon’s Stand, the game just slaps me in the face and spit all over my effort to discover things at a moderate pace.

So here’s the thing :
Why does the story instance start at the beginning of the map, and the moment you enter the instance you are instantly TELEPORTED TO THE BOTTOM END OF IT ?!!!
I didn’t even get to see what’s in between those portions of the map ! It doesn’t make sense !

Also, WHY HAVE I INSTANTLY DISCOVERED ALL THE WAYPOINTS IN THE MAP ?!!

I know that in the near future this won’t make a difference anymore but seriously, it spoiled the fun to me.
The discovering and exploration of the maps is what I was looking forward the most.

Yeah staff #3 applies cripple. It doesn’t cleanse cripple.

Personally I’d find this skill more useful with a daze rather than a cripple. It would feel useful against break bar, and would provide a safer dodge against mobs with an AoE interrupt.
(And with impacting disruption it would be so satisfying)

I personally think that the footprints should be black feathers and not transparent blue ones. Nevermore has already a lot of blue effects on it. It would add a nice contrast to add more of the black crow to the effects.

(just a personal opinion)