Guild Wars 2

Tken.1986:

Hi, I feel the need to say something that is important in regard of the design of this HP requirements and Elite specialization combination/balance.

We are all casual here, and some people are fortunate enough to have a lot of playtime, but…

Please respect and put in consideration to people who have only a short limited amount of playtime.

I expect something to be done ASAP. I’m not happy about the current state. Please don’t repeat the same mistake as in NPE Trait Issues.

This is it right here. Vanilla GW2 had enough content for the casual to catch up to, and play with, the people who made GW2 their main MMO and enough content to separate the two as well. HoT immediately shuns the casual. I logged on for three hours on day 1 and 3 hours on day 2 and felt like I got literally NOTHING completed except for a minuscule amount of the story and a mastery point. I cannot bring myself to boot the game up again because it was so disheartening.

User Tulki on Reddit has an incredible write up on this whole HoT debacle:

“I’m actually starting to agree with peoples’ sentiments. I love the new stuff that was added to the game. Elite specs are really cool, the jungle zones are ridiculously huge and fun to glide through, the music is fantastic, and the story is actually surprisingly well-paced and isn’t afraid to pull out dire character consequences. Many of the story steps are the kind of things that would make this subreddit explode if they were released as part of the living world chapters, it’s just that they’re not as talked about now because it was chunked out in bulk so there’s more to talk about.
HOWEVER. Everything is gated. Hard. ArenaNet is falling back on their pre-expansion ways of making everything a confusing chore, which is something I was hoping they would NOT do seeing as the expansion is already PAID.

I can’t play my elite spec properly until I’ve already completed 50-100% of the jungle including all masteries that gate those hero challenges, and some of them absolutely require groups. To make matters worse, some elite specs require pretty radical stat shifts from the previous meta, which are made more expensive by how ascended gear was changed to require more materials. Time-gated materials. I don’t think I’m ever going to use Scrapper in any serious capacity because I simply don’t have time to invest in the gear.

I have to grind mindlessly for masteries. In the case of language masteries I’m grinding to have the opportunity to grind to purchase items, as if this is supposed to make me feel accomplished.

Why are the new stat recipes not discovered in crafting? Why do they require random drops? Again, this was a paid expansion. I don’t understand why the new mechanics are gated to extremes I’d expect from a free game. I honestly expected things to work in a smooth, easy-to-understand way as everything in the base game did.
Why are there so many keys / baubles / crafting materials that don’t go into the wallet or material bank?

The masteries for precursor crafting require grinding for experience to gain the ability to dump ludicrous amounts of gold into an item. Turns out the epic journey to craft a coveted precursor is going somewhere and pressing ‘F’ and then running the Silverwastes and selling materials until you can craft it.

Why the hell do I have to pay 15g to unlock the PvP reward track for a mist champion which I then have to earn my way through to actually get the mist champion? Why are ALL of the new sigils, runes and amulets locked behind gold paywalls in PvP? There is no longer a level playing field, and I cannot consider PvP to be competitive any more. Seriously. Check out the prices yourself. If you want all options in PvP it costs an absolute kitten-ton.

Unfortunately, the systems in this expansion are tedious enough to make me feel like this is a free-to-play expansion, even though that’s not the case.
And, here is my biggest concern.
This type of expansion model will kill the game.

Suppose GW2’s second expansion comes out. It adds a new region, and a new elite spec to each profession. It adds a whole bunch of masteries. The masteries require kitten tons of experience, and the new elite spec requires a kitten ton of hero points, again. It also adds new options in PvP… except they all cost insane amounts of gold.
Do you think a new player will actually stay when they realize they cannot catch up to existing players? I honestly would not stay if I knew I had to grind through two regions the size of Magus Falls in order to have both of my elite specs.

The sad thing I realized is that I actually would rather the game expanded the level cap including having higher stat gear instead of gating content the way it’s doing now. At least that way would be less hostile to new players and not as grindy. This is something I would have been violently against before launch, but seeing how hard they’re trying to stop players from progressing actually makes me prefer gating behind levels and gear treadmills. Ouch.

I expected the game to be a large up-front payment for a large chunk of up-front, uninhibited content. What it actually is is a large up-front payment for the opportunity to consume tiny bites of a large chunk of content. If masteries required only mastery points and each Maguuma hero challenge was worth a single point and the elite spec cost the same as a regular spec + regular skill line, I would be totally satisfied with the amount of content that exists in the expansion. So all this gating just makes the game worse. Just make the masteries require only mastery points… even if it means they cost more each. At least then the progression becomes about overcoming difficult challenges, not overcoming easy content repeatedly for hours."

Interesting. I will have to pick up some Assassin armor and give this a try! Thank you for the detailed graph!

Volrath.1473:

Nice to see that every one is using the new IMBA Grandmaster Traits!

aw wait…

Seriously. Some of them are good for PvE but I am not jumping for joy over the traits for WvW. I am rather disappointed.

I hope this thread takes off, I am so freaking lost now!

Do you run full backstab? Thats kind of my theme at the moment. I dont mind more sustain in terms of damage rather than just gearing for backstabs,, i just want to be effective at roaming still

I was running full zerk+divinity with valk trinkets. Are more people going to run valk now? Im so lost on how to build since the patch!