Guild Wars 2

Recently started playing again and stopped as soon as I heard about this. Just another stupid change for the sake of microtransactions.

Thief healing skill is terrible and no one in their right mind should want to run it. You’ll still be forced to heavily invest in venom traits, you’ll still lose out on important utilities like condition cleansing, shadowstepping, and stun breaking, you’ll still have less survivability than other builds, and the “team support” you gain from venomsharing will be insignificant compared to the actual support you’d have if you were running something else.

Until venom traits, cooldowns, and general lack of utility gets reworked, venoms will remain poor, underwhelming skills.

I don’t want any legendaries, I don’t care about celestial things, all I want are one or two weapon skins that I think look good. Unfortunately, they’re only available through mystic forge recipes, and require what I think are pretty ridiculous materials for exotics.

How do I go about gathering hundreds of charged lodestones? I can’t just buy them, that would take hundreds of gold that I don’t have. I’d love to be able to just farm them on my own, but the mobs that drop them are locked behind a temple event and even when they’re up, the droprate is so abysmally low that the anti-farming methods will kick in before I see more than a single drop.

What’s a guy to do? How do people manage to get lodestones and similar materials required for the mystic forge?

Venom sharing isn’t even strong to begin with. If they were balancing around it, they’re still doing a crappy job of it.

I wish Anet would give us explanations behind these changes rather than just giving vague promises and throwing the patch out. I can’t see how the new Body Shot is anything but useless. I at least want to know what they were thinking when they made the change.

So with today’s changes, has anyone been trying to run a condition thief? I keep trying to put something together with D/D or P/x but nothing seems to work particularly well enough to take over D/P.

Even if torment does work correctly, is a condition damage build even worth it? It seems like you’d just end up worse since it’s dependant on utilities that aren’t the mobility and stun breakers you’d get otherwise.

I’m scratching my head trying to come up with a pistol build that takes advantage of the Ricochet change.

Aside from a reworked shadowtrap, nothing in those leaked notes looks good for thief. And before everyone who loves to complain about the OP thieves that oneshot them starts celebrating, the nerfs are all directed at things that aren’t d/p and d/d, so have fun running into even more backstab thieves.

I was expecting good changes/buffs to MH pistol sets to bring them up to par. Nerfs to other sets and the ridiculously ineffective Body Shot change is just about as bad a job as could possibly be done.
Hoping these are fake, but given Anet’s balancing history, I could see them being real.

That Body Shot change is so hilariously ineffective that I really, really hope these patch notes are fake, for Anet’s sake.

I’m hoping Thieves get MH Pistol/Unload reworked. If you want to give thieves a good condition build, have MH pistol be a condition weapon rather than an ineffective halfway point between conditions and direct damage with terrible skills like Body Shot that just take up space.

And no , the Body Shot change in those leaked notes is not nearly enough.

I was thinking the same thing. Ideally, p/p would be reworked with a bigger emphasis on conditions with the addition of torment.

Extremely disappointing if true.

Takes too long to get the nice looking weapons and gear in PvE. No, not the precursors or legendaries. Look at the other stuff in the Mystic Forge, the stuff that’s supposed to not require a huge grind like the legendaries do. 250 lodestones as a single component of a single exotic? That still seems like a huge grind to me.

The PvP Mystic Forge is infintely better. Play a tournament, open a chest, salvage whatever you don’t want, and you’ve likely already got enough materials to craft something nice. And you can spend a small amount of glory for a token that guarantees whatever you’re forging will be the kind of item you want (weapon type, armor type, armor slot, etc.).

When I use multiple weapons that decide my skills, I don’t want to have to spend hours upon hours grinding materials just to make a single visually impressive weapon. I want an alternative to what the Legendaries are supposed to be, and I see no reason why those alternatives have to be locked behind such ridiculous requirements as 350 lodestones, 250 ectos, 250 t6 mats, etc.

I love Norn, but because they’re so large their running animations are terrible and seem incredibly slow. Can’t deal with that, so it’s Sylvari and Human for me.

I wouldn’t mind having bolt, but the grind is too insane for me. I’d much rather make a couple of normal Mystic Forge weapons, and even the grind for those is ridiculous to me.

In-game rewards that don’t force me to go through some terrible grind that has no hint of progression. Grinding bosses in GW1 for green weapons was ok because you knew that X particular boss drops X weapon, so even if it takes you a bunch of attempts to get it, you’ve still got the path marked out for you, and the only roadblock is the boss’ loot table.

With the Mystic Forge, if I want to create any good looking weapon, and I’m not even talking about legendaries or precursors. Just normal Mystic Forge exotic weapons like Mjolnir, Infinite Light, or Jormag’s Breath, I’ve got to gather a TON of materials that don’t drop from anything in particular and have an abysmally low drop rate to begin with. Then I have to spend even more time getting skill points and money for the other components.

To me, that’s just as much of a turn-off as the grind for a legendary.

Yeah, the OP post is gone.
It was just full of whining about misinformation.

I see a lot of people who think that the idea of a Norn thief goes against a “code of honor” or some other belief system that the Norn have, but if you really take a look at Norn lore we’ve been shown that they don’t adhere to anything like that at all. It’s more a case of individual achievement and character than anything else.

A renown Norn thief who has become famous for always being able to steal from his targets without them noticing, or a Norn assassin who has infiltrated some incredibly well-secured locations and taken down each of his targets would be celebrated just as any great hunter would, but a Norn pirate who regularly raids and steals from the poor and defenseless would be looked down on (or seen as a good foe to beat into the ground).

Shields don’t appear like they do in the preview, and shouldn’t clip with the chest at all. However, a few shield do clip with the shoulders.

400 karma, 4 silver, no changes to anything else that drops in the entirety of the dungeon, all tied to MF.

Doesn’t sound like much of a fix to me.

Don’t see the need for a new dungeon when so many people haven’t done the ones already in-game, with lack of interest in dungeons spreading because of unfixed bugs and crappy loot.

phooka.4295:

Trust me, the rewards are not on the list. People complain about rewards because currently, the rewards are not enough to offset the pain some of the encounters are. Don’t increase the reward, remove the pain.

I disagree entirely. The dungeons would be fun enough to get me to run through each path of each dungeon once, given a few bug fixes (like the glaring SE issues). Dungeons won’t be fun enough to get me or anyone I know to continue to run them if there are no decent rewards to be gained from doing so.

On the matter of Asgeir knocking out Jormag’s tooth, keep in mind that he was being aided by the Spirits of the Wild during that battle.

Maybe if it actually rewarded a decent amount of coin. 1-2 silver is garbage, and I stopped needing karma a month ago.

Doesn’t just affect legendaries, either. Tons of unique skins only available through the Mystic Forge, which ARE NOT legendaries, require a LOT of lodestones. Hell, some require 250 lodestones and a gift which also requires upwards of 100 lodestones.

For a single item that ISN’T a legendary, that sort of grind is just crazy.

Even with the maximum amount of magic find, the loot system rewards so much trash that you’ll quickly find yourself wondering what the point is.

zippo burntfur.9307:

Actually if I had known how much they want you to rely upon the mystic forge, I probably never would have bought the game.

QFT.
The Mystic Forge and Anet’s ridiculous pushing of it have pretty much sapped any desire I ever had to play this game. The majority of recipes require extensive amounts of rare materials. These rare materials hardly ever drop from specific enemies in specific locations, making them very difficult to farm; and that’s not even counting the automatic anti-farming diminishing returns this game has. Sure, there are mystic forge recipes you can use to craft, say, lodestones from other materials. The problem with that is that those other materials are also rare and difficult to farm, and then have to be combined with items that can only be obtained from an NPC for a fixed price.

Ultimately you’re better off just slapping on some magic find gear, going to Orr, and following the giant zerg while tagging everything in sight in the hopes of getting drops good enough to make some gold, and then just buy the materials you need off the trade post. Good luck with that, by the way, as the vast majority of loot you will ever see drop will be useless vendor trash.

When you finally do obtain all of the rare materials needed for a non-legendary skin, there’s still the matter of those fixed-price NPC-sold items. Grind yourself a bit more gold, pop everything into the Mystic Forge, and congratulations. You’ve got a single skin for a single item for a single character. What’s that? Not the stats you were hoping for? Well, time to grind some more gold for a couple of transmutation stones.

The big problem with all of this is that, the entire time that you’re doing this, you’re ignoring dungeons, jumping puzzles, world bosses, the majority of events, every single chest that ever was, etc. The rewards for all of these things are so terribly, terribly underwhelming, and the loot that drops is so universally crappy, that you are better off sitting in Orr tagging as many things as humanly possible to vendor every drop that fills your bags.

This ridiculous system of making valuable rewards available only through the Mystic Forge is not fun or enjoyable because it does not reward gameplay. It rewards botting, buying gold, and mindless grinding at the expense of everything else this game has to offer.

A bunch of kitten I didn’t have any use for. You know, the same kitten I’ve gotten out of every chest and off of every mob since release.

Playing the game in the first place is optional. Is that really a good reason for making all rewards so terrible?

The rewards for kittening everything in this game are terrible. This shouldn’t even come as a surprise anymore. Chests routinely give out whites and blues that you can’t even use, dungeon loot is only ever useful as vendor trash, even the extremely rare exotic drop is more often than not under level 80 and only going to get salvaged.

Not sure what in the hell Anet’s been thinking, letting the loot system stay like this. It’s kitten, and from what I’ve seen has only succeeded in turning people away from the game.
Oh boy, ten MK runs and you get a level 76 exotic pistol of asskittenery that no one would ever want! kitten that.

Needing to forge a recipe for a recipe component, then forging the recipe component, then forging the weapon itself.

Doesn’t this seem to be a bit ridiculous to anyone else? Can’t at least ONE of these things be rewarded directly through gameplay rather than having the entire process involve mat grinding and the mystic forge? I’m not saying every single skeleton should be dropping recipes, but come on.

The Mystic Forge is complete kitten and you’re better off buying gold to get whatever you want off the TP than wasting time with it.

Outright kills any desire I ever have to play this game.

So six out of the nine things I can do at endgame involve farming/grinding. Fantastic.

I’d just like to hear what other people think about the role the Mystic Forge has been playing in the game thus far.
Do you enjoy this method of crafting as it has been implemented? Do you find it fun? What changes, if any, would you like to see made?

The heads in particular. They’re really tiny. Some of them look more like staves than anything else. A lot are just flat. I’d like at least one hammer to look like a weapon that belongs in the same setting as all of these gigantic greatswords.

The fact of the matter is that right now the system sucks and nobody likes it.

The fact is that classes that have performed well have been nerfed and continue to perform well, and classes that have underperformed have not been buffed and continue to perform poorly..

No one likes being poor, no one likes having to farm to not be poor, no one likes anti-farm policies keeping them from being able to farm to not be poor.

Give us more gold from actually playing the game so we aren’t forced to drive the trade post into the ground and kill ourselves halfway to a tier 3 cultural set or commander icon or legendary weapon when we realize how much we have left to go.

Adjust dungeon loot so that people have a reason to be there beyond getting tokens. As it is right now all you ever do is vendor everything that drops anyway. Make events give more than the cost of a single waypoint on a successful clear. Have chests drop useful items instead of white crap that your character can’t even wear.

Sincerely,
This kitten is dumb.

If you aren’t dodging everything a hammer warrior does that’s even remotely threatening, you’ve got brain problems.

How did you end up making so much gold so quickly?

Slow sing speeds, dramatic animations, and two self-roots means opposing players have to be brand new or completely braindead for you to land anything important like backbreaker or earthshaker. Staggering Blow is so unreliable that it’s completely useless outside of a CC chain, thanks to the self root. High cooldowns and low damage are just icing on the “why would you ever do this” cake.

There are much better options available to groups who want CC.

All you need to do is go D/D, take Caltrops, and spam LDB. Points in trickery helps for the extra 15 int and initiative return on steal (which means don’t open with steal).

Grab gear with condition damage (which is on practically every karma merchant and can be easily made by a leatherworker.)

That’s what you’ll use 90% of the time while leveling and it will work on practically everything. If you need to kite a champion or something, take a shortbow, or p/d, or be a man and blindtank it with d/p.

Target more necromancers and warriors. AoE fear and whirling axe with built in evade is just downright amazing.

All around a very mediocre weapon. Sure, it may seem like a great choice for the CC options, but then you get past 100 glory and run into people who will, surprise surprise, dodge a skill that’s as slow and obvious as a hammer attack.

Not to mention the fact that skills 2 and 4 root the warrior during the animation. Not a terrible thing on skill 2, but my god it makes skill 4 utterly useless on it’s own. Thanks to the self root, you’ll never want to actually use skill 4 outside of a CC chain. By itself, it is a terrible mess of a skill that roots you while you go through an absurdly long swing animation just to knock nearby enemies out of your attack range.

Then there’s the high cooldowns on the skills, which means when you miss your Backbreaker because anyone who isn’t an idiot can see it coming a mile away, all you can do is flail around uselessly. I say uselessly because not only do the only worthwhile skills have high cooldowns, but the damage is so pathetic that you’ll only ever want to use a Hammer as a secondary weapon anyway.

TL;DR, if you want CC that badly stick with Mace/Shield. Better defense, faster swings, CC on a burst skill that doesn’t bug out whenever you and a target are on different elevation levels, reasonable cooldowns, and blocks.

Have yet to see the sword change appearance since that one odd occurrence.

Just to clarify, I have been unable to recreate the situation by going into and out of water. No idea why it happened that one time, it just did.

Update: Logged in just a while ago and wandered around Frostgorge Sound. It was night in-game, and the sword still wasn’t changing appearance. I went underwater, did some combat, revived a few NPCs, and when I got back to dry land the sword had changed and was displaying the proper appearance.

It stayed that way until I zoned into the Honor of the Waves dungeon, where it again regained the “day time” appearance. When I zoned back out to Frostgorge to check if it was working properly, it did not change back, even though it was still night.