Guild Wars 2

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to help bring attention to what we believe could be improved. You guys are awesome.

Now for my “OVER-THE-TOP” DEMANDS!

1. Bring back Alpine. Please, for the love of God. At least any siege placed there could be countered with other siege. In the new maps there are unbelievable amounts of places where people can be invulnerable with their arrow carts (go through walls without sight, etc.) You also have the added issue of porting. There are too many places inside of “Fire” Keep for example where anyone with a teleport skill can utilize it in the most non sensible ways. It doesn’t seem like that was intended, and it leaves the doorway open for hackers. I am a firm believer in not allowing one person to be able to sit on an invulnerable arrow cart (out of reach and behind a wall) and defend against an entire blob because the siege cannot be countered quickly enough. Siege is an important role in the game, but come on. When you take the active War out of Guild Wars 2, you bore your player base. Why do you think so many have left after the new maps made it nearly impossible to counter something?

2. Please make the upgrades on camps a little less time consuming. They never get upgraded in time to experience the fun little things that were added to them.

3. Please stop implementing PvE nerfs into your WvW and PvE. Separate your issues, depending on where the problem is. If a blind stack is too OP in a Maguuma meta event, please kitten it thoroughly with tests in fights before you make it completely worthless elsewhere. (AHEM… Druid <3…)

4. Something needs to be done about the buffing on keep lords. Two people should not be able to take a lord down 10 times faster than a blob. If anything, defending a lord should be the thing that makes it stronger, not the other way around.

5. I have been on bronze, silver, and gold tier servers throughout my time on Guild Wars 2. I have seen full-on ghost towns down in bronze and purely unbalanced population in silver and gold. I wish there was a way to separate your slots based on WvW vs. PvE. The one thing ESO did right was their PvP with only three alliances to choose from, meaning those actively in WvW are hardly ever outnumbered to the point of being unable to fight point-wise as a whole. I’ve seen a sad lack of balance here, especially down at the bottom servers where your player base is mocked for lacking the “skill”, when it’s more about the numbers. How can a server improve if not enough people are there playing the same game mode? I know that asking for something like this is a bit much to expect soon, and it’s not an easy fix, but given that you’ve already been able to successfully implement a mega server for PvE, please do something about your server selections when it comes to WvW. I don’t know if there are too many servers. You don’t want everyone waiting in queue for hours on end like they did upon the game’s first release. Maybe because people aren’t excited about WvW anymore, there are just more people doing PvE than WvW these days, but perhaps when the other things people have mentioned are finally fixed, and the majority of WvW players return (if they do) we’ll see what the population issue is and if there is a way to fix it?

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

“Nim” from Jade Quarry’s Born Villain [CAIN]

Definitely going to check this out. I’ve been spending too much time the last 3 weeks in PvE, and I’ve lost any kind of quick reaction time I needed in sPvP and WvW roaming. O.O So, thank you, thank you!

I agree that over-the-top complaints and whining without constructive explanations will not help, but sitting around and saying nothing at all will just place rangers in the same situation they have been in for years. It will cause the devs to assume that all is right, or that the only people who are right are those speaking out, meaning those complaining that Druids are OP. The blinds were OP. I don’t see many people at all in these forums saying otherwise. The issue we have is how it was dealt with. Instead of actually balancing the blinds and keeping the heals of the trait useful, they just decided to scrap it. Hopefully, this means that they are working on how to bring it back to usefulness or are redoing the Druid traits and spec altogether, but waiting another year for it to balance out, hoping to someday have fun on it is a waste of time and money on the player’s part. I hope they understand that the reason most of us (not the trolls) are giving our two or more cents is because we love the concept of our Druids, and we just don’t understand what Anet is doing to them in correspondence to what they said they were for. I’ll try to explain what I mean:

I found the Druid role as a support/healer and a hybrid dmg/healer somewhat fine in PvE, not that there weren’t good changes to be made. (For the love of God, yes, the blinds were OP all across the board. We get it.) There are multiple game types here, though. As much as some would hate to admit it, PvP does matter to a large chunk of Guild Wars 2 players, and nerfing Lingering Light is not the issue that struck me as wrong, it was the removal of Minstrel stats for PvP. The one thing that a support Druid could do well in PvP was bunker with Minstrel stats.

Now, in regards to someone’s statement on their Druid holding out against 3 people for a while and it being unacceptable, you said you were running Minstrel. Did you end up killing all three of those people that you stood against, or did you die or need to run away? What I can say is if you were able to kill those 2-3 players while you were being fully focused by them in Minstrel, that would be OP. Holding out for a little while and still dying or needing to run is not OP. Thieves can do it with stealth. D/D Elementalists have been able to do it in general. Why not Druids?
As for 1v1, you also said you were able to “nuke” people with the right pets, 150 condition damage, and Minstrel stats. Nuking is killing people in 2-3 hits, like a thief or a warrior, or burning someone down in a matter of 3-4 seconds with conditions. If you were fighting only squishy classes who didn’t know how to react, that would be one thing, but as for anyone else, exactly how many seconds did it take you to kill a non-squishy enemy with 150 condition damage and Minstrel stats? I’d like to know what your meaning of “nuke” is for this build, mostly because my only experience with Minstrel was bunkering, not “nuking”, so I am unaware of how you were running it. Perhaps minstrel was not the problem. It was the burning, which everyone knows is still OP. But again, I did not have your personal experience.

As for my own experience, I find that people are truly not used to Rangers being able to bunker correctly. Bunker Guardians can do it. Bunker Revenants can do it. I’ve even seen warriors do it. What is the problem with a healing class (Anet said the Druid would be heavy healing) being able to hold out against other people and support their team? Is it because of the medium armor? As I said, bunker D/D elementalists could do it, and they wear light armor.
No, what would actually be OP about any bunker is if they also killed the 3 three people that are focusing it. In the case of the Druid, it will die against 3 people if one’s not standing around auto-attacking and thinking that’s enough. The job as a bunker is to hold points, while sacrificing the ability to kill people. (I’ve seen Dragonhunters take out 2 people easily without needing to bunker at all. Is that balanced?) In a 1v1 situation, a bunker Druid will probably have a hard time against the right counter class, and may not ever win, just stay alive and hold the point for a while. This is what makes people rage. When players aren’t used to seeing anything new do the job of a bunker, they are quick to say: “OP! I’m supposed to be able to kill this ranger thing fast, like usual! Now I actually have to get help or run the right build or class to counter it!” Instead, they think they should be able to beat everything without help, even against a class built only to hold a point and heal allies. You are supposed to get help against a bunker. That’s why it’s sitting there, holding your point and staring at you until you do.

I agree on the blinds as well, and I love my Druid, so I’d like them to figure out what it’s supposed to do in Guild Wars 2. It seems like since they first announced it, it was gutted, remade, and it’s been all over the place since. What they say it’s supposed to do, it is now not allowed to do anywhere else besides PvE. So, I’m waiting till they decide. ***PLEASE decide. :’(

It’s had a some fair nerfs like the damage on the Smokescale and the way that Astral Force is built up. As for Amber’s suggestion on making the blinds function differently than they do currently, I’m sure there’s a way, but this is the second time they’ve changed this trait radically since beta weekend 3. It used to create a wisp every now and then that circled around the Druid, and that helped to build up Astral Force when offensive strikes weren’t cutting it. That became unnecessary when they re-worked Astral Force completely. So they threw together this idea of blinds, and it’s not bad in general, but the problem is, they ignored what was actually OP about it and took the “easy” way out to appease those who complained, rendering this trait useless. Hopefully they will give more on the subject, but they have yet to explain exactly why and in what context of gameplay type this trait was OP, not that we can’t guess. Even a few details on where this was causing issues would tell us what they expect the Druid to do in those areas of the game, according to what it was supposedly designed for. I do hope they look deeper into the way LL actually functions and into the way the Druid itself works, so they can tell us what they really want this class to be, instead of pulling it into different, ineffective directions. Some of these nerfs coupled with the removal of Minstrel stats in PvP makes me wonder if anything they initially said about the intent of the Druid was solid then, or if they have a few conflicting designers who are in constant disagreement and are buying time, unsure of where the Druid fits into the game. Please tell us, guys! We love our Druids, and some of us still have hope!

I don’t see you striking while the foe is dazed, unless you did with your pet? Just dazing them won’t root them from that skill. You must hit them while the daze is active, I believe. Please correct me if I’m mistaken.

“We had ONE job!”
What else besides a healing bunker for PvE does Anet have in store for the Druid? Is the answer nothing? They said many times that if you want a more damaging class that Druid may not be the best choice. I accepted that, and I’ve been playing it as a bunker healer for several days both in PvE group events and in PvP with decent success. Because of the lack of innate stability (and the stability in Natural Convergence is NOT a good enough solution, trust me), a squishy or semi-squishy Druid trying to support or hold a point will die very quickly to almost anything in PvP. Trying many different types of these builds, Minstrel was definitely the way to go. For once, there was fun to be had in a tankier ranger for PvP! Is Druid the reason it’s gone now, or have other classes been using it to an over-powered level? A Minstrel Druid was The Answer, given that the trade off was never killing anything in most matches, only holding points. Isn’t that what they wanted them to be able to do?

I’m a little disappointed of course, and I’m sorry: I’m done ranting, but I am looking for some advice on alternate bunker builds for PvP until Anet decides what they want this class to be in those situations. Cleric’s is not good enough with the low vitality. You don’t hold points, and you don’t kill things. If I am doing something wrong without the Minstrel stats, please tell me so I can learn. (I was doing quite well and having the most fun I’d ever had before this nerf. xD Maybe it was because it was working.)

Hi there!

Firstly, I have been looking forward to the release of this beta class so much. I’ve got to say, thank you for your ideas in this mastery. Thank you for putting some thought and time into the Ranger and attempting to give it more versatility. There’s still work to be done, but it is a fantastic take on an aspect of nature, not yet touched on in Guild Wars 2. I spent all the time I had this weekend on the Druid and tested it in several areas, but mostly in WvW, so I’ll address my findings in segments.

STYLE:
The all-around look of the Druid was a pleasant surprise stylistically. The sounds are beautiful and its skills are just gorgeous! But the look of the character while in celestial avatar form could use a bit of a makeover. It ended up looking a little blah, which was disappointing because of my excitement. This is the best place for honesty though, because I plan to play this as my main once HoT is live. And if it’s something that bothers me, I really think I may not be the only one who has this in mind. So… I hope that you look into a makeover for the Druid’s celestial look. Even the Necromancer while in death or reaper shroud looks more amazing, and they’re calling on the powers of death. Shouldn’t the powers of the celestial avatar look less like the Silver Surfer? If the focus of the form itself is going to be healing and support, then maybe it could look a little more daytime celestial like the Celestial Dye. It doesn’t necessarily have to look like the black screen of a planetarium, as you already have a dark theme going with the Necromancer. This seems like it should play on the opposite theme, even closer to the way a star looks from here on Earth. Maybe more sparkly? Shiny? Something? Also, holding the staff like a hammer is a little strange. I don’t know if the Revenant staff stance was copied to save time, but it did seem a bit off to carry it around like it was so heavy.

MOBILITY – SUPPORT IN WVW:
As I played, it became more obvious to me that the Druid was meant to be up close and personal when doing most of its healing. If that is not the case, then it needs some serious re-working on the ranged heals. The melee-ranged heals are the only ones that are worth the limited time on your celestial. Which brings up another point… the form needs to last much longer. Although I know that this isn’t supposed to be an exact opposite of the Necromancer…. I feel like it should be. So, the Necromancer can spend much of its time in its shroud, which is its most damaging state, if traited that way. I believe what the Druid needs is just as much ability of healing and support as shrouds are for damage and CC. In general, the ranged healing is not strong enough to be useful, even when you are full cleric’s heal spec. Either that, or they are meant to make you get so annoyed with how little they heal that they make you want to be up close to your allies.

Examples: Ancestral Grace: re-positions you to your allies, again in melee-range (a nice skill by the way). Astral Beam: the healing on this is so weak even at max range, it makes you feel the need to get closer to your allies. This means that in order to be effective with its healing, the Druid must become a completely different class and give up any other niceties that a ranger has possessed previously, such as high power or high precision. Instead it must become a wet-noodle, solely focused on support and defense. The problem with this? The Druid lacks innate stability in its own mastery.

BIGGEST PROBLEM NOTED BY DRUID PLAYERS (LACK OF STABILITY):
In order to acquire enough stun breakers to get yourself out of trouble just to be able to do your job as a melee healer, you must also give up better skills to keep yourself alive in the melee range. I found that the only stabilities I could get were the elite shout “Rampage as One!”, or the Signet of the Wild. Neither of those are suited for a supportive healer. Those are damage-based skills, and when you’re not set up for influential damage, they are selfish ways to keeping up with your allies, causing at least two skill slots to be wasted on personal gain, neither of which will break you out of stuns. “Rampage as One!” is still was better than no stability, which means a Druid would rather run a selfish stability that doesn’t belong in their support bar instead of that neat “Glyph of Unity” as an elite. The glyphs provided to a Druid are far better in theory as a support, but if nothing changes in the way of stability, what’s the point in choosing support skills when you keep getting knocked around and cannot use them anyway? Other stability-lacking challenges include having to run “Lightning Reflexes” to supplement as a stun breaker, but this moves you away from your allies which is counter productive. “Signet of Stone” is not a stun breaker, but because of the lack of other protective skills against stuns, you feel that in the mid- to front-line, you still need it just to stay where you need to be. This leaves you with only one of the new glyph skills feeling useful, and that is the “Glyph of Equality”, one where you must make it into celestial avatar form to use as a stun breaker.

A FAIR SOLUTION TO THE LACK OF STABILITY:
Please give the Druid stability while in celestial avatar form or a way to obtain it. Necromancers have a skill that pumps stability while in their new reaper shroud. This makes them able to stay upright during their most devastating times. As a celestial avatar, (basically the opposite of death and darkness), the Druid should be able to keep upright during their most supportive times. Providing a stun breaker trait option when entering that form would also be fair. Please give them a way to support in this close range. Stability is a must.

GENERAL FUNCTIONALITY
This is in close relation to the lack stability, but even when your healing power is above 1200, something about the healing on this class is not in good synergy with its positioning. The Druid seems to be having an identity crisis. Based on the numbers, it seems to favor melee-ranged heals over ranged, but many of its own skills fight and don’t play nice with each other. And the auto-attack heal is very small.

STAFF SKILLS
Astral Beam
This heal is not much. It scales the farther you are away, which is an okay idea, but only if the Druid was meant to heal at range. Again, here is that synergy problem. Is the staff for healing or CC? It certainly doesn’t have condition damage as its base. If the staff is meant for both healing and CC, there is nothing on this auto-attack skill that does anything well. It doesn’t damage for much, it doesn’t heal for much, and it doesn’t CC. If Astral Beam is supposed to heal for more than it damages, then there should be more ranged healing skills to work well as a partnership, and there aren’t. If Astral Beam is supposed to damage more based on its longer range, then there is nothing else on the staff that is worth using as a dps spec on it, because it doesn’t do nearly as much damage as the longbow or even the axe.

~Possible Solution: This would blend better with the rest of its melee support skills: making it an aoe small heal with a similar animation effect as a guardian staff would also solidify its place as a supportive melee weapon instead of trying to pretend that it’s a good replacement for the longbow in damage.

Astral Wisp
This skill was something I liked. Again, the healing and damage could improve, but since it was able to be used at long range or up close, it was still more helpful than Astral Beam, and it provided a good source for building up astral force.

Ancestral Grace
This skill was beautifully designed. It healed for little if you weren’t spec’d as full healing, but the main strength that it had was the ability to re-position yourself at a far range. As the Druid lacks in way of stability, I would like to see this skill remove immobilize because even the greatsword Swoop doesn’t remove it, but I will understand if you don’t do this if you provide the Druid with another route of stability and/or stun breaking.

Vine Surge
This skill is great. You still have to think and position it correctly, so its effects are quite fair and useful.

Sublime Conversion
This skill is also quite neat. The idea that it would heal instead of reflecting or just blocking is very cool. The healing, as said before, needs a boost though, and the position of the healing water is not aimed well. It hardly ever is useful as anything but a block, but even as such, it looks great and can function adequately.

CELESTIAL AVATAR SKILLS
This form in general needs to last longer, not just provide stability somewhere. The player’s healing should be passively boosted while in celestial avatar form or increase the amount of healing done by each skill.

Cosmic Ray
I found myself wasting a lot of my celestial avatar time just attempting to position these skills correctly, as the radius was far too small, and the healing was not significant enough. It would be good to see the healing of this get boosted, even if the damage doesn’t, since celestial avatar seems to be more about the support and CC than it is about damage. The radius should be closer to that of Lunar Impact. This was basically the Astral Beam of the celestial avatar form, needing just as much change to it as the staff skill I talked about.

Seed of Life
This was decent. I found it very useful, and giving us a trait to plant one of these upon using each glyph was also helpful. Functionality-wise, it’s wonderful! However, please… PLEASE change the way it looks. Some of us agree that it looks like the earth turned over and decided to start pushing out a real number 2 (and no that’s not a skill name this time.) Please use whatever coding you had for Sylvari turrets/blossoms as a base. It really looks gross and far from anything to do with celestial goodness.

Lunar Impact
The radius on this was good. The daze was good. The healing, well… I think you get the idea after I’ve stressed it so much.

Rejuvenating Tides
Ah, the Druid’s one “burst” heal is in average standing, considering that it has to be blasted by others. If the passive healing was boosted while in celestial avatar form, this would make for its most impressive skill and it would really help a lot.

Natural Convergence
This is one of those skills that you are massively lucky if you even get to pull it off. Without stability, it is easily interrupted. Attempting this skill was just not smart, given that it did little to no slowing on its enemies and by the time you were able to cast it without moving, most enemies had moved out of the way. It became a skill that was wasteful of your limited time in celestial avatar form.

Possible Solution: Make it a mobile skill? Or perhaps reversing its effects would help make this more worth the time and the long cool down? You could make it immobilize any non-stable enemies within range and upon the end of the cast, create the slowing effect, because slowing your enemy while you, yourself cannot move at all or use any other skill is pointless if not suicide. It’s like creating a further reason for enemies to focus you while you can’t do anything but stand still and they can at least use skills. (Again, a just synergy problem.)

GLYPHS
Glyph of Rejuvenation
This skill seemed to be worth it when using the trait that allowed for condition removal. The healing on it when out of celestial avatar form was adequate. Being able to heal allies for much more than yourself is okay, as you can use Rejuvenating Tides to keep yourself healed.

Glyph of Alignment
Applying conditions such as cripple to your foes is not a bad thing, especially if you can trait for more damage to foes with speed impediments, however again, it needs stability to make the celestial avatar form of this glyph worth keeping on your bar.

Glyph of Equality
This glyph was the only glyph besides the Glyph of Rejuvenation that was worth keeping on the bar, as it stands right now. It was useful both in PvP, PvE, and WvW, but again, you needed other stun breakers while out of celestial avatar form to supplement your own survival in order to make it into that form to use this skill as a support.

Glyph of the Tides
This one had a synergy issue. It seemed like its effects should have been the opposite of what they were (pushing away while in celestial avatar form and protecting your allies, not pulling the enemies in.) This isn’t a big deal though. It was still fun to use.

Glyph of Empowerment
This was not as useful as it sounds. The boost isn’t as useful if you can’t be stable enough to be close to your allies, but like most of the other healing issues this mastery has, it could be an easy fix. It wasn’t as significant of a change to make me want to use this over a stun breaker or signet.

Glyph of Unity
This would have been so much more useful if it was boosted both in damage and in healing. Its effects were so little, that even though it had a small cool down, I found I kept forget to even use it, as it wasn’t as useful as say, Entangle.

TRAITS

Celestial Being (passive)
This one goes without saying anything. It’s obviously a necessity as a Druid.

Cultivated Synergy
This was alright. Again, boost the healing, and it would be more functional.

Druidic Clarity
This skill was nice. I believe though that this is where the window of change could be for stability. Removing all conditions is sure helpful, but using Seeds of Life are good supplements for that. What if you removed less conditions (say, 1-2 instead of 13) and/or broke out of a stun when entering celestial avatar form and had stability somewhere in all of that? As a trait, this would make it necessary to give up Primal Echoes in order to stay stable in celestial avatar form. A fair trade.

Primal Echoes
This was a great way to use the staff offensively. I saw no problems with this, and reducing the staff skills was also a good reason to choose this trait over removing conditions if your focus was more offensive than supportive.

Live Vicariously (passive)
This was a good idea. Again, needs a heal boost, although it could be a minor one for a passive like this.

Celestial Shadow
This one was fun to use, but the stealth was really not that long. Also, because it was based on when your own celestial avatar time was up, others would often reveal themselves, not knowing when the stealth was going to activate, so it became difficult to time for allies.
Possible Solution: Give some sort of indicator that you’re going to be stealthed, like you would hear with a mass invisibility or see with a shadow refuge.

Natural Stride
This was great for roaming and keeping up with other people. If that’s what a player would rather have, it was a strong skill.

Verdant Etching
This was probably the most useful trait of the three in its section, if you were planning to support at the front of a fight or even for yourself. I saw no changes needed. (Except for the look of those “blossoms”!)

Natural Mender
This whole skill needs reworking. There was hardly ever much of a change in these stacks. THIS is where you could put a passive heal boost inside of celestial form. Get rid of the stacks and boost it immediately upon entering the form, so that the heals actually matter as support class and the boost is active in the form.

Ancient Seeds
This was great for offensive play. Even if the Druid decided not to go with staff for dps, this made for a great alternative to the support side and had good synergy with Primal Echoes.

Grace of the Land
This skill was a good protection against conditions. I saw no problems with it, although most of the time, with the ability to remove conditions so often, it had less of an impact on allies than Lingering Light.

Lingering Light
These were useful to build astral force, but as far as supporting as the heal they are advertised as, they really weren’t much. Just a small boost in these, like most of the other heals would be helpful.

PETS
Although for some reason, I had to keep remaking my Druids because my ability to use pets would disappear, and I couldn’t ever use the new pets in PvP, I do like the new pets. I was able to test them in Verdant Brink and WvW. The one thing I do have to say is that the knockback on Electric Wyvern is really difficult to position and make other skills work well with it. It seemed like a knock down would have been more useful, but it’s still a really strong pet either way. Also, the bug on the Bristle Back… (while using Signet of the Wild) it’s adorable, but quite distracting. xD

CONCLUSION:
I feel like I’ve said it too much, but I really haven’t. We get one beta weekend on this Druid, so now is the time for me to give as much feedback as possible. Stability and healing boosts on the Druid are definitely the two main issues we’re all feeling. I’m grateful if you’ve read this far, because the reason I had so many suggestions for change is not because I hate this class. It’s because I LOVE it, and I want to see it be loved just as much by others who have it in their party. I want to see it be used in a more effective way for what it seems like your aim was, which looks like a melee-ranged healer and a CC support. I salute you guys! Lots of us had so much fun testing things and I know I’m looking forward to Heart of Thorns even more because of this mastery.

Adrienne (Nim!)

Thank you for clarifying the questions. First off, I have to say that even though the particular elite specialization that I’m looking forward to is not released for beta testing yet (Druid), I still ended up making a ranger to play in Verdant Brink this weekend and enjoyed the experience very much. As I spent the majority of my time there, I will answer what I can based on what I did test.

Creatures:

How is the difficulty of the new hostile mobs, and are they fun and exciting?
The new creatures, from the mysterious Coztics to the bloodthirsty jungle mordrem have certainly revitalized the need to think through your strategies several skills ahead of time. You need to react quickly and preserve cool downs, but this doesn’t make them impossible beat in the right setting. This is what many will remember the Orrian maps to have been like when they first explored them around level 70. Over time though, aside from major world events, group combat on maps such as Cursed Shore have in general become mindless grinds, only to be expected after repeatedly farming them post-level 80. Upon arrival in Verdant Brink, you really do feel like you’ve run blindly into enemy territory and you’re the one being hunted. Even the adorable mushroom soldiers are deadly! You do not want to stay long in their habitat. Overall, these mobs make for engaging group fights, even more so than in the Silverwastes, which I’m sure was one of the main goals for this expansion.

World:

With the Opening of two new outposts, we are adding in a bunch of new events. Are they fun?
Do the new events bring you more into the world?
I found that both event chains at the two new outposts included something more than just fun. At the southern outpost, we reunite with Lord Faren: still weird, still funny. There was outright humor throughout this, from nobles worrying about their shoes getting ruined to Flirty Faren having roped in yet another hopelessly clingy woman, and of course… the loincloth, or more accurately, the Speedo. Again, he’s ever-the-weirdo, and I love it. No matter how many times I farmed mastery experience out of this chain, I didn’t grow tired of the conversations. They were well scripted. Up north, there was a different underlying feeling: death. The tones with these NPCs were somber, as they should have been with the things they’ve seen. This is where I really started to notice that the war on Tyria has had an effect on even the smaller creatures. The quaggan in charge of the northern outpost has begun to use the word “I”, and her quaggan comrade is calling her “ma’am”. The events here naturally bring about more urgency to pitch in for the sake of protecting others, which is a great contrast to the southern events.

Are the new events challenging, meaningful, and interesting?
Both chains lead you to an area of the map with interesting points to the personal story and the world. The wyvern in the south is an formidable boss, and killing it is satisfying, however the bombing of the Blighting Tree in the north could use a bit more oomph. The explosion is barely audible or visible (perhaps a mastering issue?), and the ending to this chain is disappointing at best, for how positively challenging it is to complete. The NPC suggests, “Let’s get out of here!” almost as though you are in danger if you are too close to the explosion, even showing the timer for how long you have to get yourself out of range. Nothing negative happens to you if you’re standing in the middle of it though. Nothing. Wouldn’t it be interesting to feel like you NEED to resurrect or buff your allies and move out before the tree explodes? Even if I died every time, I would find that event pretty exciting just because it would be more realistic.

Mastery System:

How is the progression?
Understanding that the event chains we get in the beta are going to be done once as parts of an even larger chain for the region, I felt that the mastery progression was going as it should. I farmed the two outposts and nighttime events enough to complete the few usable masteries that I wanted in time for the Druid to be tested. Basic gliding was finished in the first beta weekend, but I now have three mastery lines in Itzel Lore and two in Gliding. Getting to this point took about 17 or so total hours of a lot of farming on a very small portion of the region. Even so, I knew that these outpost events were not going to be repeated in the same way later on, which means you won’t be watching Faren sword fighting in his underwear a thousand times each day, unless, for some reason, you really felt the personal need to cherish it.

How is it using the mastery abilities in the current area?
As I’ve been preparing for the next beta, I spent a little more time in Verdant Brink than most of my friends, probably to the point of almost burning out. To get started, Basic Gliding, Bouncing Mushrooms, and Updraft Use are the most important to achieve first, respectively. I pushed my progression a little further to acquire Lean Techniques in gliding and Blazing Speed Mushrooms in the Itzel Lore, and although they were nice to have, they weren’t as necessary as the others were in the current zones we’ve been given. Knowing this helped me plot out what I’m going to progress through first when it counts. Also, the blazing speed was not so blazing for how cool the description sounded. The boost either needs to last longer or be faster. It’s only 7% faster than a normal swiftness buff, and so the result made it seem like more of a filler mastery and an obstacle to something better, rather than something to aim for.

Is the mastery system providing a meaningful area of progression?
Well… of course the masteries are going to mean something as progression. It’s achieving something after level 80 that wasn’t there before, and you are doing great with this expansion, but it sounds like the question you really want answered is this: “Is the mastery system providing enough content as post-level 80 progression for the amount of money you spent on it?” Since we haven’t seen everything, before we can answer, we may ask, “When will the next expansion come out? What is the total amount of content we’re getting?” As neither of those questions are able to be answered yet, I suppose the generic answer to the first is that there could always be more, and with further expansions, there probably will be. For Heart of Thorns in particular though, I’d like to see a couple more truly excellent mastery lines available inside of the Heart of Maguuma section alone that make a player say, “That’s gonna take forever! But you know what? It’s worth it!” I’m someone who likes to feel like once I’ve unlocked an entire map, I still haven’t explored it.

Do you care about experience and mastery points?
Absolutely. Out of the few descriptions that we can read in beta, I thought they all sounded like something that I will want for my character(s) and that I will have fun working toward. I just want to see more of them involving Maguuma.

Does it provide a good framework to add more masteries in the future?
Yes. Please do.

Do you want to learn as many masteries over time to overcome challenges later in the future?
Spending as long as I did in Verdant Brink, I definitely want to achieve as many as I can with the future in mind. I already had that planned, and it makes farming even in a small area less tedious. This question does bring me to my final hope for the last beta weekend: Please give us another part of the map. Even if the map is as small or smaller than the first, please give us something new. I keep seeing the usual, “Anet doesn’t want to show too much!”, which I totally understand, but showing one more piece for one more weekend can’t be giving too much away if the new zone is truly as massive as it’s been hyped up to be through marketing.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this long review. Again, involving our feedback for the content you release is one of the biggest reasons why I love this game and its creators. Looking forward to next time. FOR TYRIA!

Sincerely,

Adrienne

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

The entrance for that story step is in the Black Citadel, not the stockade. It’s right by the lower entrance to the Bane Elevator.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! That was very helpful.

Quest title: “Time For a Promotion”, Charr level 4
Objective: Report the destroyed supplies to Steelbane. (Report to Steelbane.)

I do not know if this is classified as a bug, but I’ve tried to work this out several times, and here’s is my issue:

When trying to enter the story quest, you first have to enter a small location instance called “Citadel Stockade”. Once I’m inside of the prison, I can clearly see the green star for my story quest, however when I move close to it or around it, the only option I get is to Exit the Stockade, back into the regular area of the city. The only thing I can think is that the story entry point is too close to the door of the Citadel Stockade.

If anyone knows about this, please help. Maybe there is something I can do that is a nice and easy fix. For now though, I’m stuck with mapping to level. I cannot go further into this character’s story, though I’d very much like to. Thanks for reading.