Did Mirage get any rework? Please post the class changes, if any.
It’s way too late to rework an entire spec, at most, you would only see some tweaking of parameters. Case in point: HoT elite specs, there were some changes in the final product (as compared to the hoT beta) but those changes were mostly bug fixes and there were some trait adjustments.
Absolutely nothing wrong with how u feel, guardian isn’t quite paladin-esque. Most players will probably run guardian as a DPS spec.
While Guardian do have powerful supportive abilities, those abilities rarely come into play in PvE mode. Channeled blocks are incredibly useful in WvW mode; in PvE mode though, such abilities only results in a dps drop and is generally frowned upon in grp play. Reflects are handy in WvW environment where most attacks are projectile-based; In PvE, reflects are very situational. Stability is kinda crucial in WvW; in PvE, stability is non-essential.
If u’r trying to roleplay as a paladin in PvE mode, the best build u could go for is perhaps, the hammer guardian, it’s capable providing ur entire party with perma protection.
I spoke to one of the balance team at Pax West. He believed that Mirage was “in a good spot.”
After some questioning, he hinted that ANET’s idea is that the Mirage play around the mirrors, ( which make aoe weakness. )
According to that dev, Mirage is basically fine. I don’t see us getting help any time soon. He also talked about nerfing chronomancer and seemed to feel it was OP.
In my eyes, that’s out-of-touch. We’ll see.
Reminds me of anet’s past response towards the guardian class.
Community: Spirit Wpn is useless, Retribution is Worthless, Sword need fixing, and there’s too many pointless traits !!!
Anet: Guardian is in a good spot.
Then rolls out fixes for those issues years later…
Sorry, but I just can’t get behind ur optimism. Firebrand feels like it’s in a worse shape than the beta-HoT DH; back then, Karl provided frequent updates on the fixes and solutions for the DH lackluster skills and traits. This time round, there’s no such communication from the devs, can’t help but wonder if they are even listening to the community’s feedback.
Condi guards need the Radiance + Virtue traitlines (Permeating Wrath is just too powerful for burn guards to ignore) to remain viable. That means u have very little access to healing traits, hence those healing stats will be wasted on a burn guard.
Most considered Stalwart Speed to be “bugged”, this “bug” was reported on reddit as well, and the general response towards it has been one of amusement; most do not expect Stalwart Speed to remain unchanged at launch. With 100% boon duration, u can grant 20 seconds of quickness with a single shout, which is pretty insane. It will be tweaked for sure.
With the expansion due in just weeks, nope, don’t expect sweeping changes to the elite specs. Any major changes would likely be on the next balance patch. Color me surprised if FB receives a badly needed overhaul for its’ tome mechanics. Players will (predictably) run FB as a burn guard and little else.
I feel ya, op. Unfortunately, FB will offer more of the same (the curse of burn guards)
As for the shield,
In PVE, it is kinda situational. For the most part, focus is a better defensive choice. Shield 4 might work well with the FireBrand trait, Stalwart Speed.
Shield 5 is godly in WvW where most attacks are projectiles, use it to cover a retreat or lead a charge. Shield 5 can also be used to absorb the Mordrem Mangler’s spinning attack in VW.
Tomes are fine.
You can always play an Engineer if you want instant kits…
With CDs that long and healing abilities that weak, Tomes will never make it into any meta. Players will just run firebrands as a burn guard; if we wanna play as a burn guard, we can already do it on the core specs, the mechanics and rotation are almost similar, trigger VoJ and use torch 4 when it’s up… Yawn.. As a condi fireguard, u can maintain those burn stacks without even activating tome of justice. Tomes felt so tack-on and did not feel like it’s an integral part of the spec.
Tomes are definitely not fine and will need alot of tweaking.
Imbued Haste has to be tweaked, no reason for it to favor condi builds over power based ones. Either make it a major trait or change the stats bonus to impact both power and condi builds or modify it into something else different. As of now, it feels mandatory to run FB as a burn guard.
Support capabilities on the firebrand are way too weak or sporadic, tomes have way too long a cd and the payoff for using those skills just isn’t there; the heals on tome of resolve are especially weak, druids and heal-bot tempests run circles around the FB. It’s a shame really, becuz the visuals on tomes are lovely, unfortunately, tomes of resolve and courage are way too unreliable to be considered for use in any game mode or meta.
In the current iteration, FB is just another burn guard with lackluster support. If elite specs are meant to change the way the class is being played, FB does not achieve that because burn guards has been around forever.
In PvE I expect FB could be completely DPS oriented
In the new benchmarks qT released, Guardians are already pushing tempest for close to #1 DPS on large hitboxes, Viper FB utilizing Zeal/Radiance/FB should easily outdamage the current power spec
Why would that be? Retaliation Guards are entirely power-based. Many of the Condi Traits are competing for the same slots as those retaliation traits; U can only pick either one. And burn guard is already a thing, it’s just not optimal, firebrand might make it barely optimal but I don’t see it being top dps; the axe is pretty subpar for a condi wpn, those condi durations are woefully short (1 sec), FB probably have to rely on Tomes to maintain respectable dps.
Guardians builds are mostly dps builds, and DH is kinda crucial. Since u lack DH, your dps will be not as optimal, which translates into longer fights.
Enter the hammer guardian, which provides perma protection for the party, allowing ur team to survive better; it’s a relatively dull playstyle though, since u will be auto-attacking most of the time. Hammer guardian works just as well for both core guard and DH. The main traits are Writ of persistence (Honor) and Symbolic avenger(Zeal).
As for gear, zerker stats. Wpns: hammer for main, scepter/focus for secondary.
Another option would be the mediation guardian, but that’s a more selfish playstyle with more focus on self-substain. Main trait is Monk Focus (Valor). U could even create a hybrid spec with hammer mediation guard.
U don’t necessarily have to go the condi route, the power route seems viable as well.
as we all know, there’s a firebrand trait that grant quickness whenever u drop aegis. You pair it with wrathful spirit (which grants retaliation when aegis ends), plus the recently buffed retaliation traits for further empowerment.
Condi is not necessarily the end-all, be-all; power-based firebrands seems intriguing and might even end up as a better hybrid/support spec. We might even see the return of the Mace.
Righteous Instinct + Retribution +Wrathful spirit + Stalwart Speed seems like a powerful combo. of course, until we get to test it, this is all speculation.
All these silly assumptions about making scourge the only boon corrupt spec or turning necro into condi only- no. Just rethink your build. You have new stuff to play with, too. Some of these changes like making signets of suffering much more support-y and required for keeping shroud up better don’t make sense though.
For now, just adapt. Every other thread is already telling Anet about how much “we”(not me anyway) dislike how “our” builds were all broken due to some trait changes.
Plus, vital persistence is only required if you’ve been using it your entire life and have grown way too attached too it. Most people can get in shroud, do what they want to do with shroud, and get back out when they need to. Dhuumfire and the like aren’t gone, and spectral armor & walk still keep you up- spectral grasp even gives you 100% shroud back if traited(not sure about this, i didn’t test it but it would make sense since the tooltip doesnt say that every one of the five gives you 4% lf)
What are u talking about? The vast majority of builds are dependent on 1 or 2 key traits, remove those traits and the builds are dead, necro builds are no exception.
Balance patches are supposed to encourage build diversity, this recent patch obliterated reaper power builds, it’s indefensible.
Isn’t this patch supposed to empower power reapers? Now with the vital persistence nerf, power reapers are dead, for good. Rest harder in Peace, power reapers.
Scrapper is mainly a WvW , PvP spec. For PvE , core engie is more effective. As for Holosmith, it appears to be a power spec, u can’t kit swap while in photon forge mode and kit swapping is a necessity for condi builds.
It seems to me that Holosmith is designed to address the skill rotation “issue” that players have with engie, engie has a notorious reputation in PvE for being too complex to play as. Holosmith seems to simplify the experience. Of course, this is just my opinion based on current info, things could change in the final release.
On the PvE side of things, u still have to kit swap (for condi builds) or camp the bomb kit (for power builds), game is relatively unchanged, will have to wait for xpac to shake things up.
Engie has the reputation for being difficult to play (well, at least in PvE). Holosmith kinda addresses that problem. No more kit swapping since photon mode disables that. U get the engie experience with high tech gimmicks but there’s none of that complexity.
Tomes have huge cooldowns (30, 45, 90 respectively) so they can never be anything similar to Celestial Avatar.
Tomes have huge cooldown becuz they are essentially virtues. Yes, it’s disappointing that player couldn’t roleplay as a dedicated tome-caster, but you have to look at bigger picture; adjusting the CD on tomes meant that Anet have to re-adjust the core specs as well, it’s a cascading effect.
Encountered the same problem. Restarting the game does not resolve the issue. Literally game breaking as players cannot complete the episode and there’s no work-around the issue.
When previewing the armor pieces, if user hits an undo button or happens to click on an armor piece that’s already in use, the ENTIRE preview is undone/reset. It makes wardrobe preview a hassle and annoyance to use.
Some people report not suffering that much in this fight, which baffles me, so I do wonder if it’s bugged somehow and different people are experiencing different levels of CC. Cause for me I literally could not stand up without being knocked down a few minutes into the fight. I only got him down to 3/4 HP after like… 30 minutes of trying.
Just ignore them, Gw2 reddit is also reporting the same issues with the final boss fight; It’s a badly designed encounter, quite possibly the worst fight in the entire game.
It’s not even fair to compare Dark Souls to the boss fight; Dark Souls, for the most part is pretty fair, this boss fight however, feels as if it was designed to punish players.
The final fight is very poorly conceived; gw2 camera is just not designed to handle action in such a tiny enclosed area, not to mention, the sheer amount of graphical effects just creates visual dissonance. Very messy, with spell effects, constant AOE avoidance zone cluttering a room the size of a typical apartment living hall. It’s also very badly balanced, getting knocked back every 2-3 secs does not make for a fun experience. Not to mention, the boss is capable of 2-shotting a player.
Don’t bother with confessor’s end unless u’re in a party; even then, be prepared for a frustrating experience. Or better yet, skip it altogether, the fight plays out so poorly, it sours the entire experience.
At any rate, I suppose that area is supposed to be a zerg-dream, but I have yet to see a single zerg go up there.
There were numerous zergs earlier when the patch hit, but the interest waned dramatically. If this farm was supposed to boost leather supply, it’s failing in that purpose.
The farm is fizzling out before it even got started. The “low” prices of leather (due in part to the announcement of the farm), coupled with the rather tame drops (from the farm) just isn’t holding players’ interests. U net approximately 3-4 gold worth of leather from an hour of farming ; general opinion is that it ain’t worth the time.
Endgame is unrewarding, becuz players are being funneled into meta builds, moreso if you’re participating in high lvl grp content. There’s no experimentation, no unique builds to call ur own. The lack of viable build diversity makes the endgame rather stale and dull.
Disappointing that there’s no skill updates, game badly needs more build varieties, and the balance team is way too focused on balancing the game around a few select meta builds. There are too many under-utilized skills/traits that need a massive buff or rework. GW2 already has a plethora of content, what it needs right now is more build flavor.
What’s the point of crafting legendary armor when players are locked into meta builds anyway? U ain’t gonna change builds often.
Hammer hasn’t seen any changes (except for the trait which is meant for PvP anyway), but it is still great for PVE; excellent AA with perma protection on the right build, and perma protection really helps with the guardian’s sustain.
Yes, Silverwastes farming requires more effort than Octovine. You don’t even need to finish the event yourself to loot the chests, because the chests are spawned for everyone when the event ends, regardless of whether that player has done the event or not. So you can just stand idly at the eastern gate and loot the chests after it’s done. My proposal here is you have to finish the Octovine event to spawn the chests once, so you can’t loot the chests in another instance unless you finish the Octovine event again. This works like the Tequatl event, where the chest you loot is bound to your character who has completed the event.
I only proposed a suggestion. I know I don’t have the data, but what I know is that gold to gem rate will continue to increase until it reaches a point at which players are more willing to spend real money to buy gems, so the fact that it’s so high right now indicates that players are more willing to buy gems with gold—which you can get from Octovine easily—rather than real money.
I think you have been misled somewhere along the way. AB meta does not generate gold, it removes gold from the economy. All of the profit is through mats which are sold on the TP. selling these items takes 15% of the gold they are worth out of the economy. This causes deflation, which leads to lower gold to gem prices.
The rise in gold to gem price that we do see is due to the massive inflation that Anet introduced in the last patch. Everyone is given 2g a day just for logging in. This has led to rapid inflation of the economy, causing prices for everything to rise, including gems. If you wish to have the prices level off then you need to start petitioning Anet to remove the log in gold, and buff the AB farm.
I think you don’t get the point, so I suggest you read my posts again. Yes, I’m aware of the trading post tax and its function, which is to prevent inflation. The point is that this method we’re talking about gives you ridiculous amount of gold and requires so little effort and time.
Two gold from just logging in? Your statement is wrong. You have to complete 3 dailies to get it. I believe this has little impact on the economy. Octovine however, can give you about 30 gold per 15 minutes of pressing F!
U have a very poor understanding of economics. Those gold earned at AB comes from other players (thru TP), AB does not print money, it has no part in the inflation. TP just redistribute the wealth within the community. Inflation is caused by fresh input of currency thru daily, Tequalt, fractal farming, shiny baubles etc.
And Gem to Gold ratio is now very attractive, great time for ppl to buy gems (with real money) to convert to gold; it used to cost 80 gems to buy 10 gold, now it only cost 50 gems to purchase 10 gold.
On the other hand, Gold to Gem conversion has suffered, gem prices is at a all time high, meaning ppl have to work harder to earn more gold to convert to gems; it used to cost 80 gold to purchase 400 gems, now it cost 125 gold to purchase 400 gems. So how does this impact Anet business model? Care to explain?
Here is my thought: why would you buy gems with real money to convert gems into gold when you can just spam F for 15 minutes to get 30 gold?
Your hypothesis is short-sighted and flawed, it’s too simplistic a view; It does not account for inflation, it does not account for rising prices due to rising demand.
As the community gets more affluent, the demand for gems will raise as well, causing a further spike in gem prices. The more players that convert their gold to gems, the more pricey gems becomes. I do farm AB irregularly for ectos and the current gold to gem conversion rate is so unattractive, I actually decided to purchase gems using real life currency, and that throws ur theory out the window.
Yes, Silverwastes farming requires more effort than Octovine. You don’t even need to finish the event yourself to loot the chests, because the chests are spawned for everyone when the event ends, regardless of whether that player has done the event or not. So you can just stand idly at the eastern gate and loot the chests after it’s done. My proposal here is you have to finish the Octovine event to spawn the chests once, so you can’t loot the chests in another instance unless you finish the Octovine event again. This works like the Tequatl event, where the chest you loot is bound to your character who has completed the event.
I only proposed a suggestion. I know I don’t have the data, but what I know is that gold to gem rate will continue to increase until it reaches a point at which players are more willing to spend real money to buy gems, so the fact that it’s so high right now indicates that players are more willing to buy gems with gold—which you can get from Octovine easily—rather than real money.
I think you have been misled somewhere along the way. AB meta does not generate gold, it removes gold from the economy. All of the profit is through mats which are sold on the TP. selling these items takes 15% of the gold they are worth out of the economy. This causes deflation, which leads to lower gold to gem prices.
The rise in gold to gem price that we do see is due to the massive inflation that Anet introduced in the last patch. Everyone is given 2g a day just for logging in. This has led to rapid inflation of the economy, causing prices for everything to rise, including gems. If you wish to have the prices level off then you need to start petitioning Anet to remove the log in gold, and buff the AB farm.
I think you don’t get the point, so I suggest you read my posts again. Yes, I’m aware of the trading post tax and its function, which is to prevent inflation. The point is that this method we’re talking about gives you ridiculous amount of gold and requires so little effort and time.
Two gold from just logging in? Your statement is wrong. You have to complete 3 dailies to get it. I believe this has little impact on the economy. Octovine however, can give you about 30 gold per 15 minutes of pressing F!
U have a very poor understanding of economics. Those gold earned at AB comes from other players (thru TP), AB does not print money, it has no part in the inflation. TP just redistribute the wealth within the community. Inflation is caused by fresh input of currency thru daily, Tequalt, fractal farming, shiny baubles etc.
And Gem to Gold ratio is now very attractive, great time for ppl to buy gems (with real money) to convert to gold; it used to cost 80 gems to buy 10 gold, now it only cost 50 gems to purchase 10 gold.
On the other hand, Gold to Gem conversion has suffered, gem prices is at a all time high, meaning ppl have to work harder to earn more gold to convert to gems; it used to cost 80 gold to purchase 400 gems, now it cost 125 gold to purchase 400 gems. So how does this impact Anet business model? Care to explain?
PvE? Nope, if players are unhappy with HoT, they could always fall back on core Tyria. Moreover, the April patch addressed most of the issues that players had with the HoT meta(s).
As for WvW and PvP? well, the damage has already been done.
I thought this was done by taking multiple characters through the same map. In that case you did participate in that map and contributed to the rewards. Maybe this doesn’t work tho but that is how I did it when farming my legendary.
it still works, but the farm has gotten better. Before the April patch, there’s only 1-2 successful Octo instances; farming already existed back then, it just wasn’t as efficient since players were confined to that single (or 2) successful instance(s).
The April patch unbounded Armors from the pylon events, making it easier for players to complete Octo as players no longer have to spend an hour 30 mins running pylon events (before the challenges begins). This results in more successful instances, and now players can hop across 5-6 successful instances.
Ultimately, the farm is severely limited by the timer, players can’t farm AB chest 24/7, unlike SW.
Speaking of the Mat prices, HoT mats are either holding stable or they have dramatically fell in prices, an example would be Black diamonds which fell from 3 gold to just 30 silver. Farming isn’t a bad thing if it helps to keep the prices stable and affordable. And yes, some of the earlier posters are totally underestimating the number of ectos that this event generates, it’s definitely not “a drop in an ocean”.
The recent inflation was mainly the result of other elements, namely the introduction of the daily 2 gold rewards. To get rich on AB, you have to use the TP, and TP merely facilitates the transfer of wealth between 2 parties, it does not generate gold and u are getting taxed for using the system. So ppl really ought to know the system before running accusations, gems/gold exchange rate has nothing to do with mat farming, there’s no correlation.
Just need to slightly tone down amount of keys given for events.
Would stop that activity quickly.
Or raise the cost of Keys.
Either Way, OP is over-reacting; as others had pointed out, AB doesn’t generate much in-game gold, it just enables more trading opportunities. Economically, it is harmless.
If OP has an issue with this, I presume he also has an issue with player farming rich nodes over and over again using alts? Becuz technically speaking, it’s no different from the way AB farming works.
I rather Anet focus their resources on other matters; In the grand scheme of things, AB chest farming is trivial.
Guardians are totally not competitive at all. The class offers too little; Retaliation is a joke, Aegis CD are too long, guardian heals are insignificant compared to the likes of eles and druids, guardian boon support builds are vastly superseded by other classes . In short, other classes are able to DPS just as well, they can tank better and they provide way better support than guardians. So what’s the point of playing guardians?
Guardian is like a relic from the past; while the others classes have received polish and fine-tuning on their respective class mechanics, Guardians have remain relatively unchanged and it shows.
I feel ya, OP. Sanctum Scramble is probably the most unfun adventure of the lot. Very stressful adventure with Crappy controls, very tight timer and Frustrating platforming design.
I have just completed 2 story missions (strange observations and predator’s path) for the first time, and I have not received the mastery points associated with those story missions. Considering that much of the HoT content is locked behind the mastery system, this is game breaking !!!
VB is the most glide-friendly map; having the advanced gliding mastery unlocked really does bring out its’ fun factor, with it, you are able to avoid much of the mobs, makes navigation a breeze.
If you’re having issues with the HoT starter map, it’s very likely that the other 3 maps would enrage u as much or even more. AB is infested with pocket raptors and rolling devils, irrelevant and annoying mobs that would down a careless adventurer in mere secs. Tangled depths truly leaves up to its’ name (it’s truly tangled), and much of Dragon’s Stand is locked behind the meta.
And just as many are content in reddit, which has a much larger population than any particular game’s forum.
So an unspecified amount of people don’t like it while an unspecified amount of people like it, awesome, that gets you far.
Lol, i have been visiting Reddit for the past several weeks, and the sheer number of negative posts far outnumbered the positive ones. It is a little less toxic than the main forums, but things are getting fairly negative there.
And during HoT launch it was overwhelmingly positive, so what?
Like my post said, an unspecified amount of people like it and an unspecified amount don’t, the posts that claim to have some sort of majority on their side are lying.
MMO success is determined months after it’s release based on sales and retention, sales were fine according to one of their e-sport websites but we don’t know how reliable those are.
Retention is far more important and it can’t be known yet.
What are you trying to imply? Dev shouldn’t address players’ issues until the retention numbers dip?
And just as many are content in reddit, which has a much larger population than any particular game’s forum.
So an unspecified amount of people don’t like it while an unspecified amount of people like it, awesome, that gets you far.
Lol, i have been visiting Reddit for the past several weeks, and the sheer number of negative posts far outnumbered the positive ones. It is a little less toxic than the main forums, but things are getting fairly negative there.
The requirements for adventures to be completed need to die in a fire. They are fine for side things with leaderboards, but making completing them a requirement is not okay when they are so completely different from any other aspect of the game. I’ve already sunk who knows how much gold into making HOPE and now I’m stuck on trying to get silver on A Fungus Among Us, which is like the worst combination of a jumping puzzle and race with horrible tonic skills. I can make it to the end, but I have not as of yet managed to have the twitch factor to make the time required for even silver; I did manage bronze. Getting to the point I want to break my keyboard.
I play the game to have fun, not to yell expletives at the screen. Adventures are fine if you want to compete for best times. They are NOT fun if they gate your progress.
The skills are bugged, i believe. Half the time, Skill #2 don’t even launch you at all, and u’re stuck with a 9 sec CD.
Experienced the same thing; once a map has been tagged for closure, no amount of taxi would resolve the issue; even if the map was refilled, the map would still be closed. Invest an hour into the meta just to realise that it’s all for naught.
These are game breaking issues that need to be fixed Fast.
It’s only the first day, and from the looks of the forums the groups going full zerker are not having much luck (they are trying to kill it quickly enough that the mechanics won’t kill them, but it isn’t working). Give it a few days while people figure stuff out, or join a guild where that doesn’t happen
EDIT: It’s not Anet’s fault that people in the community aren’t nice.
Game design decisions do influence community behaviour, With raid being designed the way it is, teams are forced to cherry pick certain builds/ professions, the onus is on the dev.
Nah. They should hire some hardcore guild like DnT and invite them to ArenaNet for few weeks of testing. Ask them to kill bosses several times and then record their fastest kill and set the hard-enrage timer to that value. There you go, legit challenging content for you!
^^^
Ok. Your idea wins
That’s what Anet did. And hard enrage timer is silly since it forces players into pure DPS specs.
The main issue lies with scaling and the spawn numbers; It can be problematic on certain Meta, as evident in the dragon stand spitfire event; throwing a champ sniper + several elite snipers and vets snipers into the fray does not make for an entertaining fight, players just view them as distractions and rather not deal with the them. Regular snipers are fine since they can be bursted down with ease but the elite and champ variant can be overwhelming at times, moreso if you’re engaging them in tight confined areas (pale reaver event).
And oh, they can attack while stealth-ed which makes the champ and elite variant all the more annoying to deal with, champs and elites can’t be bursted down and they deal a ginormous amount of dmg while invisible. Challenging? Certainly. Rewarding and fun? Nope.
(the curse of burn guards)
