Guild Wars 2

I’ve never had any real complaints against Thieves, however the first thing the OP brings up about the stealth thing I completely agree with. I play a Guardian and I remember the first time i experienced a Thief in stealth stab my aegis stay in stealth and then connect the backstab anyway. First thing i thought was “is that a bug? because if its not, that’s the lamest thing I’ve seen and it makes no sense”

WvW is absolutely pvp. The only reason pve exists in wvw is so players who traditionally play on pvp servers in past games can have that feeling of excitement when your leveling. Level like normal but with the threat of an enemy popping up and to mix up the sometimes mundane leveling process. I’ve always looked at it as the Guild Wars 2 equivalent of open world pvp since there are no factions.

This change combined with having to go out into the world to unlock traits and stuff now is going to really liven up the world. We all remember the early weeks of GW2, if we get somewhat close to that its going to be awesome. Really really good job Devs, This could be huge. Thanks.

Has anyone seen Whales? No? Enjoy!

Outstanding post Aza, I found myself nodding and saying to myself “ya ide take that” specifically towards glacial heart and kindled zeal. All your changes seem reasonable and itde be great to see them put in.

I think an incredible change for Guardians would be to make Virtue IX, absolute resolution baseline for Virtue of Resolves activation. To be able to viably do damage you end up sacrificing nearly all defensive capability. This would greatly help Damage Guardians survivability, since we tend to have low hp as it is, Conditions ruin us and to get decent removal you sacrifice far too much damage.

This also makes more sense for the class in general since we are supposed to be supportive and the last patch was very support oriented. The cool thing is this wont make bunker Guardians any stronger since if your bunker you usually have this trait anyway. It’s a small change that I think would help out Damage oriented Guardians immensely. I think its rather reasonable as well considering the long cooldown on VoR activation.
As far as the sword trait, I cant think of anything elaborate off the top of my head, I am certainly a big fan of getting chill in someway, or how about flashing blade immobilizes the target it strikes for a short duration? Biggest issue of zealots defense is how easily avoidable it is, with a brief immobilize on flashing blade you could be in range to land most of the strikes and depening how long the duration is it would give the opponent a chance to react to the remaining strikes. Think Thief pistol whip, first few strikes will land cuz of the short stun and the rest can be avoided if the player is smart enough to dodge the rest. When an enemy is right in your face Zealot’s defence cant be avoided by just walking away like usual, it would now force the opponent to either eat the remaining damage which certainly hurts, or use a resource(dodge) to escape the rest. perhaps make the trait increase the range on flashing blade as well?

Logged in just to say, Man the idea of a Grandmaster exchanging all of your burning effects for chill instead would be soooo kitten cool and I would love it. I agree with everything Stice said, it would fit everything so well. Maybe make an exception where a few of our traits having to do with burn would stay the same or be moved to avoid us having Perma chill. Either way, This is one of the coolest ideas yet. No pun intended.

I fully agree with the OP. I love the combat of GW2 and it always sorta felt like something was missing. Ive pondered the charge skill thing for a long time and ide love to see some form of that back in the game. If anything I want my other skills to be the REAL threats rather than Auto attacks. Dragon’s Tooth and 100b are perfect examples of what our other skills should resemble. Powerful abilities that you need to work at to make happen, you feel great when you land them and your opponent feels equally great if he dodges them. I think that kind of playstyle would be something everyone could enjoy.

I think it may just be an update with no tie in to the Living Story. However for any of the Devs reading this thread please take note because if this is tied to the LS it would be extremely welcome and exciting to the players. After the personal story was finished I feel like the games Lore is just not existent.

The living story updates have been great content wise but well, story wise they haven’t really been appealing to me much at all. i’m sure not all, but others feel the same. The New Tequatl has great Lore potential. Please do something with it.

Thryfe.2576:

Idk, first time I saw them I just thought oh they look kitten and hey they are female. Fits nicely considering the Queen is a Mesmer and Lyssa is a god of Beauty as well as illusions. Tbh I didn’t even notice all the details and things people are mentioning. It’s probably best you don’t think about it too deeply. I mean its not like people are thinking to themselves " look at that! the perfect woman!’ I didn’t and im sure others feel the same.

darn filter. they look awesome*

Idk, first time I saw them I just thought oh they look kitten and hey they are female. Fits nicely considering the Queen is a Mesmer and Lyssa is a god of Beauty as well as illusions. Tbh I didn’t even notice all the details and things people are mentioning. It’s probably best you don’t think about it too deeply. I mean its not like people are thinking to themselves " look at that! the perfect woman!’ I didn’t and im sure others feel the same.

Arena net please don’t nerf Liadri, you guys did a kitten job with this fight and it is indeed possible for any class. All these nerf threads are just people whining because its difficult and they feel entitled to getting the Achievement.

This is a fantastic thread and I hope Arena Net takes notice of this. Everyone seems to have some really valid points and decent ideas.

Meriem.3504:

That first goomba in the first mario has killed more people then Liandra ever will!

Lmfao indeed!

Vayra.3290:

Thryfe.2576:

sablephoenix.1593:

Get real. Forget Liadri, a good number of the other bosses are too hard already. I’ll never even see Liadri because too many of the other fights are luck-based. When you’re fighting things that ignore the combat tools that work everywhere else in the game, like evading for example, it becomes a frustrating exercise of trial-and-error. ArenaNet, word of advice: players hate it when the game cheats.

What? Which boss exactly can you not evade? Trial and error is part of any challenge, when you get an Achievement its because you’ve Achieved something.

I’m guessing the mines. They still hit you through evade.

That’s true, even then though the mines don’t go anywhere, just walk around them lol. That’s why his post made me “what?”

sablephoenix.1593:

Get real. Forget Liadri, a good number of the other bosses are too hard already. I’ll never even see Liadri because too many of the other fights are luck-based. When you’re fighting things that ignore the combat tools that work everywhere else in the game, like evading for example, it becomes a frustrating exercise of trial-and-error. ArenaNet, word of advice: players hate it when the game cheats.

What? Which boss exactly can you not evade? Trial and error is part of any challenge, when you get an Achievement its because you’ve Achieved something.

Pure Heart.1456:

1-shot kills have been condemned since the beginning (Dungeons).
no-one likes being one-shotted.
It’s not a smart way to create challenge.

Hence, in my view,

Anet has failed to realise that 1-shot kills aren’t fun, and has failed to create an inspired challenge mechanic.

I don’t mind them, I actually enjoyed every single fight in the gauntlet. I’m sure that im probably not alone in that statement either. I’ve never had a problem with stuff like that as long as there is a strategy you can use to overcome it.

Forgot to mention I used an Energy sigil as well. Saved me multiple times.

This has been my most Favorite update so far. Amazing patch. Right up there with the Halloween update.

Grimwolf.7163:

Thryfe.2576:

If you play through DMD mode on the very first game fresh with no extended health bar with just what you were able to aquire at the time, a Devil triggered shadow will one shot you with the spear attack. With that in mind if you make a mistake you die. Same as Liadri. In devil may cry you would stock up on some health to counter that. which is adapting.

People complain saying I shouldn’t have to retrait specifically for this and that. Yes, yes you do. You bring the right tools for the job or expect to lose. There is a reason why there is an npc to retrait inside the pavilion area. You’ve played Devil may cry, that’s like saying wow I Shouldn’t have to use Ifrit to beat nightmare on dmd I want to use Alastor. Another example is fighting a Conditionmancer and then losing only to complain and say " I shouldnt have to use Condition removal to win". lol what?

Are you insane? That is THE hardest setting in the entire game, which you can’t even do until you’ve already beaten the game, and most people never even used it.
You can’t compare that to first-tier enemies with no added difficulty.

Also forgot to mention im talking specifically about Liadri where most of the one shotting happens rather than tier 1 bosses.

I’m not insane, I used that example because I recently picked up my HD collection again and did just that. If you use the right weapons and know how the boss mechanics work the difficulty gets much more manageable. Nightmare used to annihilate me then I figured out an efficient way to beat him and it was pretty much easy. Same with Nelo Angelo. I’ll link you a vid to show you what I mean. Skip to around 30 sec http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0N5XOw-zXY

The point is, you practice your kitten off until you can perform the fight flawlessly and then once your used to it and know how it works it becomes much more manageable. Same exact thing with Liadri.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Warnazz.8925:

Avoiding being 1 shotted is the challenge. You remember what a challenge is, yes? It must be a sad day for some people realizing that some achievements are still difficult to acquire.

Not only that, but it’s a fair difficulty too.

The 15 minute clear of the Mai and Horrik fight was reasonable, but it had this arbitrary condition of being done on the first attempt and not being doable post-wipe. I didn’t feel that was fair, especially since it would pop up the timer and give you the canon drop anyways.

The advanced support during the election was also badly designed in that you had to use some lame deaggro and avoidance strategy to do it, and it was easier to do solo even though it was advertised as a group event. So while that was difficult, it wasn’t very fair or well made.

However, the gauntlet isn’t like that. It is difficult, but it’s a fair difficulty that doesn’t force you into abusing mechanics. You can beat it with the right plan and following through on execution, although it might take a number of tries.

Even if you don’t like the gauntlet, I find it hard to believe that anyone would not agree that it’s way better than something like the candidate trails were.

I agree completely, I went into the Liadri fight, got rocked and thought holy hell this is ridiculous. Watched some people try a bit and realized there was a pattern to things and as long as you have a plan there is a shot at victory.

If you play through DMD mode on the very first game fresh with no extended health bar with just what you were able to aquire at the time, a Devil triggered shadow will one shot you with the spear attack. With that in mind if you make a mistake you die. Same as Liadri. In devil may cry you would stock up on some health to counter that. which is adapting.

People complain saying I shouldn’t have to retrait specifically for this and that. Yes, yes you do. You bring the right tools for the job or expect to lose. There is a reason why there is an npc to retrait inside the pavilion area. You’ve played Devil may cry, that’s like saying wow I Shouldn’t have to use Ifrit to beat nightmare on dmd I want to use Alastor. Another example is fighting a Conditionmancer and then losing only to complain and say " I shouldnt have to use Condition removal to win". lol what?

Grimwolf.7163:

OHKOs and massive Health pools are THE two worst methods available for inflating the difficulty of a fight in any game. They’re a lazy approach, and a symbol of bad design.
Reason being, they’re severely detrimental to the enjoyment of the fight.
No one likes an instant loss out of nowhere, and no one likes tickling an enemy to death for literally minutes. Combining the two would immediately destroy the game for anyone.

It’s a classic mistake.

That’s a bold claim considering games infamous and loved by fans for their difficulty do exactly that, one hit kills and massive health pools. I’m looking at you Devil May Cry series. Not the new game though ;/

I honestly have no idea why so many people are complaining about this. Its completely doable and the insane difficulty on Liadri is refreshing and to me it was one of those things that you cant really get mad at cuz you respect how crazy it is (again, to me).

The whole “its impossible for Necro” thing also makes no sense to me considering I watched a Necro consistently beat her easily. He saw the pattern of the aoe and just layed on conditions while running. Was able to save his dodges for when she leaped at him and then cleansed any cripple or weakness put on him. Sounds like a l2p issue to me. Its supposed to be hard.

I beat her in Knight’s gear with just the greatsword. Retaliation works well on her so I ran Stand your ground, Save yourselves for vigor and wall of reflection helped immensely.

The crazy psycho whip attack when she starts flailing madly can be reflected, part of the reason it hurts so much is she is shotgunning her ranged attack from phase 1 during it which is why it can be reflected a bit. This isn’t the spinning whirlwind attack. I just went at her head on and used my dodges ONLY for the aoe, pop retaliation and the wall when she does the crazy wip attack and use your whirling wrath at the same time. shes gonna hurt you a lot but youll do the same. heal up and draw her away from the shadows if they get too close. During the brief moment after dodgeing her Aoe use that small window of time to pump out as much damage as you can.

Wethospu.6437:

So anyone meleed her (+ others)?

I just beat her and it was with Melee only.

Easiest way to not get screwed over by the wisps is to get very acquainted with water. Cant place traps or spawn karka in the water. the coastline is your friend.

matjazmuhic.1649:

I would LOVE to see them add more weapon skills so you could maybe choose a weapon and at least replace one or two skills. I. WOULD. LOVE. IT!

Heck ya! I’ve been hoping for that since day 1. I love my Greatsword on Guardian but always thought it was kinda silly to be spinning in place. I thought it would be cool to swap out certain weapon skills for others you prefer.

Siric.3589:

There seems to be a lot of talk about offensive-ish guardians. Seeing as I played one for 5+ months and was one of the only ones NA (kaypud was the other that comes to mind) I have a pretty decent grasp on the subject.

There are 2 big issues with the specs that keep it from seeing competative play.

1 – condi removal
2 – swiftness/passive speed buffs

On the topic of condi removal the guardian, like the warrior, is subject to massive amounts of condi cleave. As a melee class you have to focus on chill, cripple, and weakness to allow you do just do damage, but if you waste removals on those then you die to poision, bleed, burn. The way bunkers survive condi clear is via shout build + 20 into virtures wich force you into vit armor and 30 points into the vit tree. People have toyed with an “offensive” shout guardian, and it works good enough for hot join, but it lacks mobility and damage for tPvP. Then again shouts are much more of a team support-esq skill so they really shouldn’t be super offensive. There are 2 ways to fix this: remove shout runes from the game and make the extra condi clear part of teh t3 traits for warriors and guardians OR (and this is the better solution I feel) buff non-shout removal. Smite condi buff would be huge here, something like doubleish the recharge, remove up to 3 condi deal extra damage for each one. Try to keep the DPS about the same but make it so it can remove covered condis. While your at it, meditation traits need to be more compact so you don’t speed all 3 tiers just making medis worth while. Either move the instant cast in like with the 20% cd OR make instant cast base functionality of smite condi.

The other problem with guardian is that they are easily kited in team fights. While the class should not be a super roamer like thief or ele, it needs more access to swiftness and a passive 15-25% speed buff some how (when traited). This problem can be worked around(kinda) with runes like Pack or Speed… but they arn’t good enough, and again if you are forced into shouts you can not take them. Retreat has WAY to long of a CD. Aegis isn’t as strong as devs thought at launch, something like a 30sec CD with lower durration swiftness to compensate (15 sec? 20 sec?) would be good. As it is right now it just gets stripped. Staff is also the only other form of swiftness, the problem is, a guardian who is speced offensivly cant waste 10 sec in a staff to get this swiftness, to much damage is lost. An idea here would be to move the swiftness symbol to focus thus allowing for sword/sceptar and focus play so you can do damage even when u are in ur swiftness set.

Some other random concerns:
Too many traits that are not as compact i.e. symbol has 3 traits in 1 line and 2 in another, medi has 3 traits, spirit weapons have serveral traits across many lines. These need to be more compact.

I feel like you covered all the problems dps Guardians currently face. I think the biggest offender is definitely traits imo. So much wasted space with traits spread all over the place. If some were more condensed and at least in the same trait line it would open up possibilities to fill the now vacant spots with some of the answers a dps Guardian needs. I’m playing a Guardian so I don’t expect or need to do as much damage as say a Warrior or Shatter Mesmer. I want to be able to at least do respectable damage and be Viable in the process. I made my Guardian specifically for being a dps with a touch of supportive capabilities to help out my team a little bit while I fight, rather than full blown burst. As it is now, Bunker is the best option :/

Nikkle.4013:

jcbroe.4329:

Particularly, if this game is going to push for streaming viewership, there needs to be some understanding that watching a class do strong condition just by strafing and autoattacking (or spamming on a short cooldown), and then watching the defender drop all the conditions randomly, and then have the commentators explain that you passively apply and remove them and then describe the builds so that viewers understand, is boring.

Agreed, there’s to much autoattacking. I like the big cooldown big number format. Promotes counter-play, as long as skills can be anticipated or are telegraphed. When Jsharp was talking about toning down necro’s I think he mentioned grasping dead and maybe tweaking those numbers. I think thats the wrong way, nerf auto’s instead and add a tell to gd(ground goes brown during the cast, samething with marks), give players a chance to respond to it. Weakening blood is a very obvious skill animation and I think thats a good thing in this game. When explaining how to fight a condi class it should be just like explaining how to fight a power build. Watch out for ‘x’, it has ‘y’ tell. Currently, I don’t think thats the case.

I completely agree, Weakening blood is a perfect example. Whenever I see that animation I say to myself “kitten need to avoid that.” Stuff like Engi pistol autos and Necro scepter autos make me sad.

havoc.6814:

Scoobaniec.9561:

“On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013.”

I hope it is legendary armor.

This! I want some legendary boots. Call them Air Logan’s. Make me run real fast.

LMAO, ohhhh man that legit made me bust out laughing. You good Sir have kicked off my morning to a great start.

When I first read about this I was planning on voting for Kiel, BUT if Gnash winning means molten facility you can be kitten sure i’m voting for him. Molten Facility was freakin excellent. LOVED that place.

akamon.2769:

to add, just listing most if not all possibilities:

6. Run meditations if you no likey shouts – Smite Condition and Contemplation of Purity
7. Focus #4 into a bunch of peeps so it bizounces
8. Inscribed Removal if for some reason you’re running more than one or two Signets
9. Lyssa Runes + Renewed Focus
10. Generosity (or Purity, but might as well go Gen) sigils
11. Not condition cleansing but you can try to run Melandru Runes for condition duration % reduction.

@Zkarlet – iirc, Torch 5 and whirl combo on light fiedds don’t cleanse conditions off yourself, only your allies that they hit. but still useful if you’re allies around you obviously.

[added: and general note re: Purging Flames, supposedly it doesn’t remove one condition per pulse, but each time you enter it. so one on activation, another when you walk out and back in, rinse and repeat for the duration.]

Whirl on light combo field does in fact remove conditions, you have to be moving while you do it in an attempt to “catch” the cleansing bolts. After reading what you said I thought maybe he’s right and conditions dropping from me was from my trait and signet. However I removed both of those and fought a condi Thief in spvp real quick. I let him stack up some conditions and did symbol+ whirl and sure enough about 2 or so were removed, you just have to be moving while spinning. This also works if you whirl inside wall of reflection.

Ya when I saw the Queen first thing I noticed was I expected her to have different hair and to me it didn’t fit. Her skin tone is perfect imo, ive always seen Kryta as a Portual/Spain area, we can get pretty dark as well as have lighter tones. Those areas made sense to me because the farther south you go the more dark the tones get and you start approaching Africa, which explains the more common Krytan npc look in gw1. I didn’t mind Jennah’s dress though, It could be better but it looks fine.

Thank you Arena net for fixing the my story tab bug. I know it was a very minor bug and other things took priority, regardless I appreciate it and I’m glad it has been fixed. I still very much enjoy this game and I have confidence it will continue to get better. Keep up the good work.

Sokina.8041:

Crusader Hiroki. Yes, yes, yes.

I chose the Vigil for that beauty. Too bad I saw her for like only 3 kitten missions or something.

I’m going to agree with you there, she was cool as hell and pretty attractive unfortunately I don’t have a decent screenie of her.

Also, if your worried about killshot you could always use Wall of reflection. I use it already so an unblockable killshot doesn’t really scare me :P

Cynrose.9760:

9/10… she looks so young and innocent!
In order:
Adelas Aeterna, Cynrose Aeterna and Cynthe Shadowborn.

8/10, 6/10, 7/10

Had a late night so i may not remember a bunch but ill start you off Murderin, If your a ranged attacker keep an eye out for Wall of reflection from guardians, Big blue see through wall that reflects all projectiles back at you. I see tons of people shooting away at the thing and essentially killing themselves.
Elementalist AoE skills i think its called churning earth, Looks like the ground around them is being uplifted and spread apart. Long cast time hits very hard.
Engineer skill i think is called big old bomb? essentially a powder keg that has a detonation time and it hits really hard as well knocking you away
Warrior hundred blades combo, if you see a warrior charge at you very fast dodge and save youself from being one shotted. once you dodge the bulls charge its a easy fight imo.
Mesmer mind wrack or shatter combo whichever its called, i dont know exact details on it but if you see all their clones running at you they are gonna probably explode and destroy you lol
Necromancer marks and wells, just avoid the red circles i guess.
Thieves, just go defensive if their in stealth backstab steal hurts.

It is so cool to see the progression of all these characters. A lot of them are pretty creative and different too.

This is probably the only game where ive taken so many screenshots. The whole world is just so dang beautiful and well done. Heres my contribution

Red Falcon.8257:

Knight style never gets old.

Indeed, the color your using looks great. Which dye is that? if i may ask

I just finished the area solo yesterday, it seriously does require much effort and being on your A game sometimes. I’ll admit i got a bit frustrated a few times but the difficulty was refreshing. I do however hate the Dredge with a passion now though

I actually completely forgot about Altruistic healing, That was the trait that made is possible for me to do good damage without feeling like i was made of paper. Now i have to agree to bringing symbol of wrath back to normal and just replacing the Retaliation.

I understand the change to the skill mechanics and im not too bothered by that since imo Retalitation was getting a little out of hand, However Anet if your reading the posts in this thread please change the order of the skills back to how it was originally. The new placement doesnt flow and feels very strange.

TeoH.2098:

milo.6942:

Bunker purpose is to “waste time” not necessarily “win” a 1v1 fight.

Listen to this guy, all the complaints in this thread are missplaced because you are concerning yourselves with who ‘wins’ against who, as if these different roles were duelling eachother.

A glass cannon sacrifices survivability in order to be able to kill things quickly.

A bunker sacrifices damage in order to stay alive as long as possible, and hold a point.

If the bunker’s goal is to stay alive as long as possible, it’s plainly obvious that the counter to that goal is a character who is built to kill things as quickly as possible. Any other conclusion would require some alternative victory condition that didn’t involve killing the bunker so you can cap the point.

The problem the devs are referring to is not the ability of the bunker to stay alive for a long time, or the ability of the cannon to kill things quickly. The problem is that the excessive retaliation on the bunker allows them to outright kill the cannon in a fight, rather than just turtling up for time. The bunker is supposed to have sacrificed damage to be able to turtle for a long time, allowing them to kill cannons while turtling through reflection doesn’t make sense.

Which is why their solution doesn’t touch the ability of the Guardian to stay alive, it just makes it harder for them to kill things while doing it.

This make sthe most sense to me by far, i agree.

I really enjoyed this thread, i cant wait to hit that moment of feeling “done” as well

I completely agree with you Taugrim, i’ve been enjoying PvP in guild wars2 much more than any other game. There is still much to be learned, and never once have i cried out in frustration over High damage moves. Certain skills are powerful but there are ways to deal with them.