Showing Posts For binidj.5734:

[PoF Elite Demo] No Access to PvE Zones?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

So to answer a few of the points that have been raised …

I don’t particularly enjoy SPvP at the best of times with builds I’m familiar with, the notion of going into a match in order to learn how to play seems ridiculous, and a terrible idea. Also HotM is so overcrowded at the moment there is no way to learn on the NPC opponents.

As for WvW, that’s another environment which is lousy for learning a new spec … and frankly, I don’t want to be a liability to my server (any more than I normally am).

The open world PvE environment gives an opportunity to learn, to figure out what I do or don’t like about a given spec … to decide which new specs I enjoy playing. At the moment I have only ANet’s hype to go on which, frankly, isn’t very useful. Who knows I might enjoy Holosmith rather than the HoT elite Engineer spec (I am not now, nor am I ever going to use that bullkitten name as anything other than an insult) but unless I get access to an environment where I can concentrate on learning, I guess I won’t know so it’ll be developed last … if at all.

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[PoF Elite Demo] No Access to PvE Zones?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Can’t tell you how disappointed I am that I can’t test this in a PvE environment. I was so looking forward to this weekend and now I feel that there’s just no point playing it. Couldn’t you even have let us run around the chunk of Elona we had access to last weekend?

Who on earth thought this was a good idea?

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Staff Ele...

in WvW

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

I’d like a lot of the changes made to PvP to come across to WvW, especially Geyser … obvs.

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Magic Carpet Glider

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

You don’t have to rebuy the toy. They already offer the Glider without the toy.

The Magic Carpet Glider alone (no toy) is 400 gems

Yeah, was having a brain-fart. Still 400 for the glider or 500 for glider+toy does leave a sour taste in the mouth when you already have the toy.

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Magic Carpet Glider

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Just to add my voice to this. I bought the toy ages ago and was kind of disappointed at the way it works so ended up not using it a huge amount. To have to buy the toy again in order to get the glider seems a little harsh. If you wanted to give the glider to those that already had the toy that would, of course, be especially nice; but offering us a discount so we aren’t buying the toy again really doesn’t seem unreasonable.

So how about it ANet?

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Black Screen with 64 Bit Client

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

New NVIDIA driver came out today, fixed it for me.

Well I’ve been keeping my Nvidia drivers up to date and I’m still getting the issue.

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Shooting Gallery Target Dummies Invisible!

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

The Verdant Brink adventure “Shooting Gallery” is the last one I need for a couple of achievements but for some reason I cannot see the targets at all. I’ve tried on a couple of graphic settings but to no avail, the targets simply aren’t visible … I can see others shooting at them, so I know it’s far from being a universal problem. I’ve reloaded the game and my drivers are up to date, but that’s made no difference either. In a possibly related issue, the Shatterer “incoming attack” warning doesn’t display on my character (I’m led to believe that it’s similar to the mordrem sniper graphic cue – which works just fine by the way) which is making the avoiding attack while gliding achievement pretty much impossible.

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Black Screen with 64 Bit Client

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Started having the same issue a few weeks ago, approximately 50% of the time the game goes to black screen on launch and I have to restart my PC because even Task manager doesn’t work. Graphics drivers are up to date and reinstalled the game last night … no difference.

I am running the SweetFX post-processing mod through Overwolf, though uninstalling that didn’t change the black screen of musical death; so I would guess that it’s probably not to blame … though I’d be interested to know if anyone else is running the same.

The issue started at about the same time as I switched my old AMD graphics card for a GeForce one, so again I wonder if there might be some relationship not related to keeping drivers up to date.

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Hearts and Minds Bug

in Bugs: Game, Forum, Website

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

So broken.

Canach occasionally doesn’t transition into his different phases during the blighted Canach fight, leaving an invulnerable Blighted version and no shield to break the invulnerability.

Blighted versions of friends refuse to fight my pet (playing a Ranger) which makes for a desperately annoying fight as I’m just running away rather than jockeying for position.

Braham occasionally decides to put a rift in an inaccessible location, breaking the encounter.

Please ANet can you fix this awful fight as a matter of urgency.

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Why so many gear sets?

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Without the enrage timer, raids stop being a test of your skill, since everyone can just facetank it and slowly whittle down the bosses.

This really gets my goat because it’s so patently not true. If you screw up the mechanics, the raid wipes; doesn’t matter what gear or what build, if you don’t stack in the green field/get off the platform/beat the boss before the platform is destroyed then the raid wipes. Removing the enrage timer just means that you have to beat the mechanics consistently more often, the fight goes longer but no matter your gear you can’t face tank the bosses because the mechanics will kill you.

At the moment there is literally no choice, you have to run zerker (or condi equivalent) or your raid will fail. That, to me, is bad design; enrage timers are a lazy gear/meta check, nothing more.

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Why so many gear sets?

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

To quote from another thread regarding raids:

So what ends up happening is:
1 tank in Soldier gear
1 healer in Zealot gear
8 Full-meta DPS in Berserker or Sinister (or Viper?) gear.

So why have other armour sets (like nomads, monks, givers, knights, marauders, etc.) in the game? If these sets cannot be used (and thanks to the enrage timer it’s a hard “cannot” because the content requires optimal dps or the raid wipes) in raid content then isn’t it pointless to have them available since the required endgame playstyle is dps or go home?

Mind you I suspect that, like dungeons, the raid content will be “hard” for a while and then, when all the zerker-pros have passed through it, the content will be turned into a faceroll that isn’t entertaining for anyone. Dropping the hard enrage timer (preferably sooner rather than later) doesn’t reduce skill but it does allow for more variety in builds, it allows hybrid damage specs (rampagers) to be viable, allows monk-tanks, and givers-healers. Don’t drop the mob health, don’t reduce the damage, don’t simplify the mechanics, just lose the enrage timer and the world of raids will be open to more than just the zerker meta.

I don’t want easy, and I don’t want cookie-cutter … let raids be a test of my skill, not a test of which website I got my meta build from.

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Post 250HP- How you Rate HoT fun factor

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

6 before … would recommend to others with caveats.
8 now … would absolutely recommend to others.

I haven’t played in the new borderlands yet or experienced all of the HoT zones so I’m being rather more conservative with my second score.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

A fine compromise, thank you.

I do think that there are still issues around the acquisition of HPs and the scaling of some challenges but those are, I suspect, much more complex issues to address.

For now I’m super happy that I can do the bulk of my unlocking in core Tyria to enter the jungle pretty much complete … or I can just go straight into the jungle … choice is good. :-)

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Really, everyone should go to the Metacritic site and give HoT a low score. Then maybe ArenaNet will feel motivated to fix this faster than the months it took them to improve the trait system.

That’s the second time you’ve posted that Test and it’s a real kitteny thing to suggest. ArenaNet got one thing wrong, which was the amount of HPs it takes to fully unlock skills and traits for eSpecs. Everything else in this expansion has been marvellous so far, indeed it’s been quite a bit better than I was expecting it to be. I’m not going to mark an entire expansion down because of one problem and your suggestion that I should will do no good for the game and is almost certainly reportable. Do it again and I’ll check to see if that last theory is true.

By all means be critical of areas of the game you feel could be improved but trying to sabotage it does none of us any favours at all and just makes you look like a kitten.

Engage in the discussion or kitten off, this forum doesn’t need childish negativity from either side of this issue.

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(edited by binidj.5734)

Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

For those people who are making up their own little fictions about this thread rather than read what’s been written, or who were commenting on threads that have been merged into this one:

Nobody is asking for anything on a plate

If eSpecs were unlocked with regular exp, there would be no issue.

People do not want to take incomplete characters into a zone that is harder than other 80 zones in the game. Which is why the partial unlock which then requires HoT zones to complete is unwelcome. The same is almost certainly true of WvW players, although at least there they can acquire the HPs through “levelling” albeit at a glacially slow pace.

At the moment I’m enjoying myself, taking a character I don’t want to eSpec into the jungle to explore and open up the masteries so that, in the event that ANet don’t make the requirements for eSpecs more reasonable, I can at least get the soloable hero challenges on other characters without any content blocks.

There have been a great many suggestions for resolving this issue, just read back and you’ll find a bunch of them. So before you tell us to “kitten off” or accuse us of being unreasonable, maybe actually read a few of the posts first eh? As in, read the words that have been written rather than what you think has been written.

Frankly I find the level of hostility from some members of the community disappointing, and entirely unwarranted.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

-Maybe then make the 400 hero point grind more for the skins, than for the class itself, I think this would be reasonable, and fashion is the content most folks enjoy working towards, whether you enjoy the new “progression” or not, people like working on their own unique wardrobe… and guess what it doesn’t damage the playing experience for any groups of players. Besides, the skins are pretty well done for the most part, I would joyfully play on the elite specs I find exciting for quite some time through normal wvw and what not to get those skins.

This is something that the developers don’t quite seem to have grasped. Want us to do every mastery in the new expansion and have us be happy about it? Just put shiny weapon and armour skins at the end of it. People, in my experience, have no problem grinding patiently for cosmetics.

Looking at the eSpecs as a reward is, I believe, a mistake. The eSpecs are a tool, skins (or exploring, or playing the game, or gold, or legendaries) are the reward.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

The mastery system as only been available for 15 hours. Your complaining about it being forever is just pure over dramatization. Congratulations on being awarded the William Shatner award for dramatic excellence.

First, thank you for saying, in your first sentence, my very thoughts: “It’s been less than 16 hours, and that’s ’forever?” Secondly, thanks for a smile. I’d love to see the statue that goes with that award.

Wow. Just wow.

First someone from aNet FINALLY comments about the grind problem with hero points after THOUSANDS of posts complaining about it, but not only do you NOT even address the problem, you actively encourage verbally putting down players that are voicing their opinions using hyperbole to make their point.

Wow. I can’t even. I’m Disgusted with that comment Gaile.

Thanks Gaile, you just confirmed my worst opinion of ArenaNet.

Of all the ways that you could choose to respond to this thread, that is pretty much the worst choice you could have made in terms of how your customers view the company.

I realise that you’re probably tired and that this thread is harshing your launch day buzz but I’m afraid that’s not a valid excuse for being snarky to your customers. And if you think this thread has kittened you off, just try to imagine that we feel very much the same about the issues raised in it.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Did you seriously drop $40-100 for nothing more than an elite spec? I mean, that really seems kind of excessive.

Was no one excited for the game itself?

Well initially I thought it looked amazing, then the betas happened and I really didn’t like Verdant Brink (my favourite zones are in Ascalon … really not a fan of verticality or canyons) so yeah, the new maps are right at the very bottom of what I’m interested in.

New profession, new eSpecs, guild halls, craftable precursors … those are what I found exciting. That is what I spent my $100 for. What it seems I actually got is a whole lot of the one thing that I really wasn’t that keen on engaging with blocking my access to the stuff that really excited me.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

40 pages in and no response from ArenaNet.

I take this to mean that either they are frantically working to find a fix for this clusterkitten, or they are sat on their thrones looking down on the peasants saying “let them eat hero points.”

Time was I’d absolutely put my money on it being the former, now though … I’m not so sure.

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Masteries and Writ of Experience

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

The way Tomes and Writs work was changed recently precisely because of this. Tomes will not help you advance your masteries, Tomes will not help you advance your eSpec.

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HoT New traits

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

So if a character has map completion they will “only” have to gain 40 levels in WvW to cap out their eSpec traits? If they don’t have any extra HPs (eg. if a character was levelled using Tomes) they will need 80 levels in WvW.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

They said some time back that items that give experience can’t be used to progress Masteries. This means those writs can only be used on a char before level 80. After level 80 you can turn 20 of them into one tome and get a shard.

If we could buy HPs with shards that’d be helpful.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

To everyone defending ANets ridiculous decision and telling the rest of us that we want to have everything on a plate and if this were any other game we’d have to grind ten more levels:

We would be ECSTATIC if all we had to do was play for ten levels, or even twenty, in fact pretty much any amount of levels. If we needed to gain levels to unlock eSpecs that would be the best thing ever (even if tomes didn’t count) because we could just play the game as you so sanctimoniously keep telling us.

I defy you to find one person on this thread who wouldn’t be happy to exchange levels for hero points. Just one. Go ahead.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Well if I wasn’t happy before launch, I’m WAY less happy now. We can’t even decide if we want to prioritise traits or skills now? That’s pretty much the worst case scenario of how I thought this would go. Add to that the 25% stealth nerf of exp (and other rewards) in EotM and you’ve even made that grindy avenue less effective.

Don’t you understand that we want to play the new content … all of it. We want to explore the new zones (both in PvE and WvW), we want to unlock all the new masteries there is no need at all to enforce this hero challenge nonsense on us. Maybe if you gave us the choice to use our gained experience to unlock eSpecs or masteries that would be a thing, I’d be totally happy with that, with unlocking the new spec in the normal way … but this? No. The ball has been well and truly dropped.

There was no need to make people this unhappy, no need at all … please fix it.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Hello, so i have a question, i have seen that you need around 400 hero points to unlock all of the elite specialization, and you get 10 points from challenges in the new expansion, but are there enogh (40 on that case) hero challenges or i have to do some old content to unlock all of the specialization?

As far as I am aware, you gain enough HPs through the basic levelling process to complete all core skills and traits. After that there are, I believe has been said, sufficient hero challenges in the HoT zones to fully unlock an eSpec … assuming you complete them all. How simple or otherwise it will be to complete all challenges in the new zones is unknown at the moment as there were none available in the beta content. However it is likely that at least some of the challenges will be gated behind mastery tracks. It is vanishingly unlikely that completing all 40 HoT challenges will be a trivial matter.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

IF core world map completion will grant full access to skills and traits for elite specs then I have no issue with the system at all. Indeed, I’d be quite happy with it because discovering runes, sigils, and skins gradually through the expansion might be quite cool. However the blog post from Colin suggests that might not be the case and that characters will still need to complete hero challenges in HoT maps in order to gain access to skills and traits … and that I’m NOT happy about. I want to play the new elite specs and I want to experience HoT properly but I know that the Elites will take precedence for me and that I’ll most likely just blitz through the content in order to get to hero challenges which will be a terrible shame. If there’s grinding to be done then I’m very happy to do it in the core world but I don’t want getting an elite spec to eclipse the experience of playing through the new HoT zones.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

So you want elite spec unlocked right away?

Yes.

With all skins unlocked as well including all new legendaries? billions of each mats in the bank? All maps unlocked with an instant teleport to wherever you want option? Dev Menu? OHKO button? Cheat mode?

No.

I don’t even remember anyone crying at GW2 release because they didn’t have all their skills and weapons unlocked right away.

Correct me if I’m wrong but the new Maguuma zones are pitched at level 80 characters? However they are also the only zones where you can effectively gain the hero points to get your traits and skills to the point that they should be on a level 80 character. So, in order to complete the level 80 content (without leeching), you need to do so with your current spec and then switch to your elite when you have sufficient points to be productive. So that’s not unlike levelling one character in order to play another in content you’ve already completed … and that’s just odd.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

The way I see it is that the only way to effectively register my disappointment at this choice is with my wallet. So, on the basis that I spend roughly $10 a month in the Gem Store, I guess I’ll be holding off buying anything until about March.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

So I’ve slept on it and I’ve come to the following conclusion:

The thing that hurts the most for PvE players, and does the most harm to WvW players is the 10x multiplier on Maguuma Hero Challenges.

The 10x multiplier hurts PvE players because it all but invalidates any “work” they’ve done in the original game to prepare alts for HoT. It invalidates those characters who have got world completion, suddenly instead of 214 hero points, they have the equivalent of 21. Now if all traits and skills can be unlocked inside the original datamined figure of 170 and the remainder is used exclusively to unlock skins, runes, and sigils, then I don’t think anyone would be complaining about that. Very few people would feel the need to blitz through content just to unlock optional things like that.

The 10x multiplier hurts WvW players because they are disproportionately hit by anything that involves Hero points, even under the new system. If the 10x multiplier requirement were dropped (but their special 10x bundles remained) then I think that would be okay for them.

In short, make all the Maguuma Hero challenges yield 1 point, and recalculate the requirements for elite specialisations based on that, and I can’t see anyone complaining too bitterly. It’s not as if we wouldn’t play through all the content anyway, it’d just be nice to play through the content on the profession we choose, rather than play through the content and then have nothing new to explore (except raids which aren’t going to be open to everyone due to hard skill requirements … not complaining about that, just pointing out a fact of life) with their new profession.

I want to explore with my Berserker, not in order to get my Berserker.

People will happily grind themselves into a stupor for cosmetics, but don’t ask them to grind for things that matter … please.

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Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

170 points, absolutely fine … it was a bit of a chore but I was up for it. In fact the past few days I’ve been running my various alts around the maps grinding out Hero points in preparation.
400 though? No. Too much.
10 points per HoT hero challenge? No. Reduce it to 1 point per challenge and reduce the total required to something more sensible.

I think I’m going to take a bit of a break for a bit … this has just made me too angry.

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Druid Armour Types

in Ranger

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

I really enjoyed playing Druid during the beta but I’ve been wondering what sort of armour I should be wearing at release. The idea is to play Beastmaster/Wilderness Survival/Druid and there just seemed so many things that I wanted from my armour that in the end I thought why not use celestial and then use more specific weapon types? Does this seem a reasonable approach? Or would celestial leave me so diluted that it wouldn’t be worth running?

NB this is primarily for regular PvE, with maybe a bit of WvW thrown in.

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Class unbalance will kill Raids

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

I think that the thing that will force the meta is the enrage timer. If you get rid of the timer then raid groups no longer need to enforce specific professions for specific tasks so rigidly. Getting rid of the timer doesn’t get rid of any of the skill requirement, the raid will still wipe if they don’t do the right things at the right time but it will give other professions a look in … and that’s no bad thing in my opinion. Beating the raid should be about player skill, not whether or not you are playing BiS. If groups want to speed clear then more power to them, for a speed clear you’ll need the BiS professions, you’ll need full ascended, and that’s great … and something I’d be interested to see. But dropping the enrage timer while keeping the difficulty high will allow more “casual” groups to win through … they might take a few minutes longer but as long as they have the skill to deal with the challenges, I don’t see why they should be excluded.

Also please anything to get rid of the kitten zerker meta, let’s see some of the other armour types getting a look in!

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BWE3 Feedback

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Engineer Elite Specialisation
(It’ll be a cold day in Junker’s Scrapyard before I use the other name for it)
One of the things I’ve noticed about a few of the elite specialisations (especially the ones that I really enjoy) is that they are essentially supporting a play style that I already have. This leads to a weird feeling that nothing has really changed, or that I’m not really testing the specs. However, as fun as hammer was with Engineer I felt that it just didn’t provide the raw power of the juggernaut build, so I stuck with the latter and had a marvellous time! I was running Soldiers armour with Strength runes, my dps wasn’t through the roof but the toughness and vitality did keep me standing through a few incidents that might otherwise have hurt a lot. I did give gyros a good try and, although they weren’t entirely horrible, the effects seemed frankly lacklustre and I probably won’t go back to most of them again. If they were permanent in their current state I think I’d be fine with them but with their short durations I would expect something significantly more effective in terms of their effects. Frankly I’d rather they were like more powerful (because they can be destroyed) signets, always on but with overcharge effects that deactivate them for a short while. If they stay in their current non-permanent state I can’t see myself bothering with them.

Druid
Really enjoyed Druid, very different to my normal Ranger play but super fun and I look forward to playing it come launch. I think that my gear choice (Shaman’s armour with Dolyak runes) might have been a little too weak in terms of doing damage but it did mean that I could stand up to quite a surprising amount of punishment. Also I was never in a position when using the Celestial (F5) skills were really worthwhile (see my comments on dynamic events below) so I can’t really talk about that and I found the tooltips for the glyph effects quite confusing as to which was regular and which celestial. As a consequence I didn’t really experiment with the glyphs very much. The staff was a lot of fun and felt very satisfying (with the caveat that I wasn’t exactly running the gear set to expect faces to melt … and they didn’t) but one key issue that bugged me was that I couldn’t use the autoattack on friendly players. I think it would be great to be able to target an individual player with the staff autoattack, the actual effects of damage to surrounding mobs and heal dealt to the player in question probably wouldn’t be that different (probably a little less damage, a little more healing) but it would really help the supporty feeling of the spec, and would probably offer some more engaging gameplay at higher levels (eg. raids).

Chronomancer
Late to the party on this and don’t have a huge amount to say. It struck me as quite a lot of fun and very active in play but it’ll take me a long time to properly get my head around it so I can’t see me being an early adopter … this is, I think, more an insight into me as a player rather than the quality of the elite spec.

Other Elite Specialisations
I didn’t play Dragonhunter, Reaper, Revenant, Daredevil, Berserker, or Tempest this time around, so can’t comment on any changes that may or may not have been made. However I enjoyed Dragonhunter, and Reaper very much in previous betas, Revenant was okay but I was struggling to find a sweet spot with it (almost certainly an issue with me rather than the profession), Daredevil I just didn’t enjoy but then I don’t enjoy playing vanilla Thief either so no big surprise. Tempest I didn’t try at all as it didn’t look like my cup of tea, I’ll probably take a look post-launch but I don’t play vanilla Elementalist well enough to provide any meaningful feedback on the specialisation. Berserker was probably the most fun I’ve had with any profession ever and it took an effort of will not to just play that constantly; needless to say I am really looking forward to converting my condi Warrior to a Berserker post-launch.

Dynamic Events
So I’m sure you’re aware of the various bugs that stopped the primary event chains from actually running, that was infuriating but I have every faith that the issues that broke them will be fixed post-launch.

However possibly the most frustrating issue for me was the very poor scaling in both day and night events. As it seemed like most of the testers either left Verdant Brink after dark, or just loitered around the raid entrance looking wistful; I spent an awful lot of time on my own in camps at night. If it was just me then I would be finished, I just couldn’t keep up with the sheer number of mordrem that appeared; and the respawn rate of the vines was so ridiculous that trying to just keep them cleared was a Sisyphean task. So soloing the events was impossible for me, eventually the weight of mobs would just grind me down. With a couple of other people participating, the events actually became super interesting … no room for laziness but if we worked really hard we could keep a lid on the spawns and win through. Small groups made the events very satisfying. Then you’d get the zerg … as soon as the zerg arrived at any event it went from fun to just trying to tag mobs for credit. Now I get that event scaling is probably a very hard thing to get right but it’s something that I really hope the devs can put some more time into because at the moment there’s a sweet spot that is incredibly rare to hit (I think over the entire weekend I just got two or three events with a small group) and the events really need to be agile enough to cope with both tiny and vast numbers. I really don’t enjoy face-rolling events but if the choice is between success or failure then I’m going to go with the success option every time; failure doesn’t progress my masteries. I really like the idea of defending the camps at night, actually I quite enjoy having just me and some NPCs defending a camp but if it is just me then the number and respawn rate of mobs really needs to reflect that.

The Wyvern fights were odd this time around, the break bars (I know that’s not the right name for them but …) seemed impossibly hard to break as opposed to the utter irrelevance of the bar in BWE2. I think there needs to be something of a happy medium between the two, not so easy that a single cc ability will stop it but not so hard that ten need to land either. Also a bit more time would be nice, I know I’m probably in a minority of being slow and middle-aged but my poor old brain needs a little bit longer to (a) realise what’s going on and (b) do something about it … add casting times into that and really just a couple more seconds would make all the difference. On the other hand, either people (including myself) were much better this time around (frankly unlikely) or the wyvern damage had been scaled down hugely. This was sort of good in that it made the unbreakable break bar less of the nightmare it could have been, but bad in that the fight didn’t feel as dangerous … and that’s a shame. I like my bosses to be … well … boss; and my trash mobs to be trashy.

I mentioned above about the Druid’s celestial abilities being largely unused and that is an issue with event scaling. Where there were only a handful of players at an event, it may have been worth using the transformation (that I didn’t is really down to not being in a group or squad so not having a clear idea of what was happening with people’s health until they were downed … so it’s me, not you ANet) but in a zerg either people were taking virtually zero damage or they were instantly downed, there was no middle ground. If you want healing to be a thing in the game then damage has to be less spiky but also needs to be more widespread, and there needs to be some damage that can’t be avoided actively. The time I saw healers really come into their own in the game was at the end of the sorties into the invaded Lion’s Arch, when the poisoned air was killing everyone as they scrambled to escape and healers were waiting by the gates rather than escaping themselves, dropping healing fields, shouting, throwing elixirs, dropping turrets, symbols, pulling out all the stops to keep the stragglers with enough health to just make it through the gates … while keeping enough healing up on themselves to be able to survive the experience. That was amazing and one of the very few times that people have widely acknowledged support roles in the game. When damage can be avoided with dodges blocks and blinds there is no reason not to run ’zerker because all health lost can be put down to a learning to play error. Put in damage that cannot be avoided, only healed, and suddenly the ’zerkers rely on the healers to stop them dying … while they still need to be avoiding the circles on the floor!

Verdant Brink
I’m sure there’s a lot of QQing on here about how the mobs were all too easy but I found that it was a massive improvement over previous BWEs. When I’m trying to run from point A to point B I do not want to be in an epic battle for my life every step of the way … mostly because it takes too kittening long that way. In terms of navigating around, I found it much less irritating this time around in terms of mobs trying to stop me, and could concentrate on the irritations of the place being a blasted maze. Hopefully come release the layers will allow for navigation to be a little more straightforward but at the moment because there is no way up other than waypointing if you miss a glide, navigation can be frustrating. But I digress! Trash mobs felt trashy this time around, and that’s how I like ‘em. I love big fights too but not all the time … even chocolate can get a bit much if that’s all you get to eat.

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Why can't my Flesh Golem swim?

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Flesh Golem being disabled is only a big deal when you [are] going back and forth a lot (also pretty rare).

You are aware what “roaming” means right? I am going back and forth across the borderlands literally the whole time I’m playing on my necro. Once my flesh golem ahs been summoned to take, say, a camp I can’t then put it away again for next time I need it. Once it’s out, it’s out. So if for some reason I have to swim (like if something is kicking off in Bay) then I lose the golem … that’s not me playing badly, that’s poor design since every other minion can be used underwater. Now a lot of the time I can avoid water (and goodness knows I do) but that adds to travel time, which is an annoyance at best.

Flesh golem not functioning underwater is a fault with the game, not with how I play it.

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Why can't my Flesh Golem swim?

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Rarely as in multiple times every kittening day rarely?

I haven’t touched underwater in ages. PvE is the only place where underwater combat is an issue, and very few important PvE encounters take place underwater (namely like 2 dungeon paths and one fractal). ANet has completely given up on trying to deal with Underwater, and I guarantee the majority of players don’t have a noticeable issue with just having Plague underwater as opposed to Flesh Golem, it isn’t causing people’s build to become weaker in an appreciable way, just an annoyance that you can’t have a preferred skill UW.

From this it is abundantly clear that you don’t spend much time roaming in WvW borderlands. Having my golem go on cooldown every time I exit the water is almost as annoying as not having an elite skill that I will ever use while under it … not even a Norn racial skill. When I say multiple times a day I am absolutely not exaggerating, and since my build is pretty dependant on minions for healing and condi clearance, yes it is a pretty big deal to me.

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Why can't my Flesh Golem swim?

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

an extremely minor problem that shows up fairly rarely.

Rarely as in multiple times every kittening day rarely?

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The MINION MASTER we deserve!

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

I agree with the OP on pretty much every count. Maybe instead of a destroy button (because I just BET Victor von Frankenstein wished he had one of those) a “come here” function, where out of position minions would be summoned to the Necromancer’s location. But tying the AE damage to that of the Necromancer and teaching the Flesh Golem how to swim I really like the sound of.

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Why can't my Flesh Golem swim?

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Frankly I’d take any solution that stops the flesh golem being dispelled underwater and having a cooldown when I get back to dry land. At this point I don’t care if they use a quaggan model, just as long as the thing works!

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[Suggestion] Bring back 1-time events

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

I remember the karka event too, when I pass the stone-encrusted ancient karka I always remember the time that I saw it happen. However I never want to see an event like that again, ever. Not because it wasn’t utterly memorable (it was) but because in making events so time-limited ArenaNet excludes a whole bunch of its players and creates bad feeling in the community. Also remember all the people who disconnected and couldn’t get back into one of the maps where the event had actually advanced? I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t want it back. Even I, who have quite fond memories of the event, tend to forget the slideshow combat as my FPS went into the realm of fractions and the waiting around defeated desperately hoping that someone would find you and rez you so that you wouldn’t have to start all over again on a new map.

What I treasure are the repeating events (like Halloween … especially the epic first one) which add content to the game which can be revisited (and built upon) for years to come. I like the sense of anticipation as the festival draws near, the redecoration of the cities, the madness as people run around completing the events. All without the pressure of a short duration event or the sinking feeling that with a one-time only currency, if you can’t afford the thing you want then you’ll have a bank slot cluttered up for the rest of time in the desperate hope that the event currency will return.

Essentially everything that the mordrem invasion wasn’t.

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Why can't my Flesh Golem swim?

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Probably decided they weren’t satisfied with UW combat overall, and so didn’t want to use resources to fix something for a mechanic they aren’t really supporting anymore.

I think you may be right, however there’s still a bunch of underwater environments in the game so really I’d be happy if they just put back the golem’s ability to operate underwater, animations or no.

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Why can't my Flesh Golem swim?

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

This is something that has been grinding my gears for a while now, and it’s finally come to the point where I need to rant about it here. Why is it that all my minions function just fine underwater but my flesh golem is dispelled as soon as I go under the surface? While the lack of an underwater elite (the only options I have available dispel my minions and that’s not going to happen) is a pain, what’s worse is getting the summoning cooldown when I get back onto dry land. This is particularly onerous in the WvW borderlands, and it makes NO SENSE.

Please for the love of Pete allow flesh golem as an underwater elite skill.

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Mordrem Invasion: Share Your Shots!

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

I’d do a screenshot but all the tag-and-run characters are just blurs.

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Mordrem Invasion Update: 11 September 12:30 PM

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

To address the issue of very little reward and characters tagging events and then running to the next in order to get their quota I have the following suggestion:

1. At the end of each event spawn a chest containing some blooms.
2. At the end of the meta-event (in addition to daily bonus) give blooms to all participants based on the number of events completed in the zone.

This will stop people tagging a few mobs and running off (because of the chest) and will give everyone a vested interest in completing as many events across the map as possible, breaking up the big zergs. It will also give people a decent number of blooms because surprise surprise we can’t all play 24 hours a day for the entire weekend!

Also please reactivate karma and exp for the events, it makes no sense that they have been removed.

One thing I’m finding is that it’s crazy difficult to actually get event credit when there’s a zerg at the event (trust me, I try to avoid them but the number of events is so small that unless you play out of hours you aren’t going to find a small pop event) because the mobs just melt. In scaling events please don’t buff mob damage but rather increase (significantly) mob numbers (ie. increase the frequency and distribution of the spawning globes) so that everyone gets a look in.

Finally, didn’t you learn from Southsun Cove not to do short duration events? Absolute base minimum duration of the invasion should be a week, not a weekend.

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Suggestion: Solution for the Mordrem Invasion

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

To address the issue of very little reward and characters tagging events and then running to the next in order to get their quota I have the following suggestion:

1. At the end of each event spawn a chest containing some blooms.
2. At the end of the meta-event (in addition to daily bonus) give blooms to all participants based on the number of events completed in the zone.

This will stop people tagging a few mobs and running off (because of the chest) and will give everyone a vested interest in completing as many events across the map as possible, breaking up the big zergs. It will also give people a decent number of blooms because surprise surprise we can’t all play 24 hours a day for the entire weekend.

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Another Mordrem Invasion Post

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

+1 I don’t really have anything to add to the OP’s excellent points. Although the event reward bug has been fixed (apparently) the rewards are completely insufficient for the events. Think back to the clockwork invasion, now THAT was some great content.

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I hope that the rewards are still bugged

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

I agree, the rewards seem ridiculously undertuned. Why bother with this event when the Silverwastes (or pretty much any other farm circuit) offer much better rewards? This actually feels far less rewarding (not to mention FAR less fun) than Scarlett’s clockwork invasion events (I mean the ones before she invaded LA), or the battle for Lion’s Arch; given the experience of running the game shouldn’t you build on the success of your large scale events rather than get worse at them?

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Damage is Too High...

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

OP you are absolutely correct. Everyone who is saying “learn to play” might I suggest learning to read?

When damage exceeds the ability of a full defensive build to mitigate, then there is no point using that defensive build. Scaling is currently boosting spike damage too high, Perhaps it should have a hard cap on the amount of damage that can be dealt to a single target in one attack. By all means boost mob numbers, or mob vitality/toughness but boosting damage too high makes tanking specs useless at some scales.

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Knockdowns

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Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

So I use my stunbreak on the first knockdown skill, narrowly avoiding the attack that hit just where my head had been … what do I do the next time I get knocked down when my stunbreak is still on cooldown? Let me answer that for you, I get defeated.

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A certain Jungle themed mastery is missing..

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

I could see a problem arising when multiple people want to follow the same path

You see a problem, I see giant macramé!

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BWE2 Feedback

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: binidj.5734

binidj.5734

Specializations
I played a bit of Daredevil (though it didn’t “click” with me enough to carry on with it for long) and fought one in WvW. The WvW experience was absolutely infuriating … in a good way. I didn’t have the build to counter that amount of mobility and stealth (though not perma-stealth which made the fight much more interesting for me) but neither could the Daredevil land enough damage on me to stop me; so it was a stalemate but an okay rock-meets-rock sort of stalemate.

Berserker I played a bit more and had a blast. My main has long been a condi-warrior and the Berserker just felt an incredibly natural fit for that. The sheer number of conditions I could land on one mob in a tiny amount of time was staggering but it didn’t feel particularly OP (I wasn’t just charging through the jungle laying waste to everything with auto-attack) but it did feel like the condi build I’d been wanting since release. One criticism is that the explosion at the end of torch #5 didn’t deliver much visual feedback, it would be nice if there were a more obvious explosive animation just at the end.

Dragonhunter remains a lot of fun, I wasn’t particularly conscious of any changes but then I enjoyed it at BWE1 too so I wasn’t looking for anything massive. Ranged damage felt solid, though either (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) making the traps ground targeted by default or with a trait would be nice; it felt odd dropping traps at my feet just in case something came into melee range.

Played a bit of Reaper and it felt less frustrating than at BWE1, was playing around with builds though so moving away from familiar territory meant that I didn’t feel as though I dominated as much as I did last time when using dagger/warhorn.

Creatures
The new mobs are fun and pitched quite well I think, though the adolescent beetles seem to have an unexpectedly long range on their MASSIVE knockback. I think reducing the range on that to melee would be great … or give a decent indicator of the range of their ability.

Further to knockbacks, some of the mobs had a VERY annoying combination of stun/knockdown immediately followed by a powerful attack that meant instant death. I can’t help but feel that it’s a bit harsh to defeat a character for missing one dodge. Mind you, the sniper’s lines also seem way too punishing. Admittedly I am old and my reactions are slow but it just felt that even running across one of those lines would down me when on a non-Vitality build. I really don’t want to have to slot PTV gear with Dolyak Runes every time I venture into the jungle! It should be noted here that it didn’t seem to matter if I was running a lot of toughness or not, the attacks that would kill me would drop my toughness tanks as easily as my glass cannons. Mind you, perhaps the mobs don’t need to change, perhaps just the density needs to … but more on that later.

World
The new event chains felt really fun and engaging, my only real criticism is in scaling. Fending off waves of frogs felt really wearisome when in a small group of people, the waves were really quite challenging but they just never seemed to end! On the other hand when in a zerg, they just felt faceroll easy and over in the blink of an eye. Although this makes sense, I’m not sure it makes for good game. Similarly (though sort of in reverse) the wyvern fight was an absolute blast with a small group, saving CCs for when the break-bar came up, keeping mobile, trying to squeeze out every last ounce of dps … great fun. With a zerg, there was no real effort to do anything, there was some skill use and mobility but nothing like the edge-of-your-seat experience I had in a smaller group and the fight was, again, over in the blink of an eye. Please don’t scale the damage it does but maybe increase its health and break-bar as active player numbers increase?

Another problem with the wyvern fight was very much highlighted by the event to recover scrap metal from the mushroom cave. It seems that in an awful lot of cases missile users have a massive advantage over melee characters when it comes to receiving damage. I realise this is nothing new but with the explode-on-death mushrooms it was particularly exaggerated. There was one point (on the low-pop map with only a few of us on the chain) when all the melees were defeated, and the fight was won by a ranger shooting the mushrooms from a distance, while her bear face-tanked them … and did a kitten sight better than I did, despite my deliberately tanky build. Similarly during the wyvern fight, melees have a much harder time of it than ranged. Maybe cut the melees a little slack and stop punishing them quite so hard? Maybe cut down on the one-shot kills? I understand that you want challenging content but maybe have the mushrooms behave rather more like the bomb golems in CoE, so melee characters have a chance (and a cue) to dodge out of the way before the things explode.

One major problem with the world was mob density. It may be fine for groups of players but for solo characters, some spots can be ridiculous. Now I think I’m a player of average skill, I use all my attacks and try to do so when it’s sensible to use them rather than just whenever they come off cooldown, I try to stay mobile, and I know how to dodge; I’m under no illusions that I’m a highly-skilled player but equally I’m not someone who just hits auto-attack in zerker gear, doesn’t move at all, and wonders why they die all the time. One veteran I can pretty much confidently handle, even if that one veteran is a mordrem cavalier! I have a reasonable chance of beating a veteran even with one or two regular adds. However all over the place there are clusters of veterans, there was one spot (on a main road) where I tried to get past a veteran, only to find that there were two other veterans in the vicinity, not to mention the regular mobs that were also pounding on me; in the words of Trahearne, it didn’t end well. So it’s become apparent that the only way I can move around the map, if I don’t latch onto a zerg or a decent-sized group, is to do so at a constant run bypassing literally all of the content, until I reach my destination. This isn’t fun. A major problem with having such concentrated packs of high-powered mobs is that each of them seems to have an ability that will one-shot kill you if you fail to dodge it; with 5 mobs and one player … well, the maths doesn’t really add up does it? Clusters of veterans are literally nothing more than the tiniest speed-bump to a zerg, quite fun for a 5-person group, but an absolute road-block for solo characters. Maybe move the clusters off the beaten track a bit? Away from the main thoroughfares through the jungle, so groups can still go hunt them but zergs and individuals won’t run into them (the zerg would destroy great group content, and an average individual couldn’t get past) so moving around becomes easier but content, when you go looking for it, is still challenging.

Although the event chains are fun at the moment, I wonder what they will be like when the maps are emptier.

Mastery System
The mastery system this time seemed much more fun than it was at BWE1, with the sense that mastery points ranged from the relatively easy to the genuinely challenging, it was also nice to get points through event completion (this may have been true of BWE1 too but I was never encountered one of the chains that hadn’t stalled prior to the climactic battle … I saw it happening on the map occasionally, I just was really unlucky). On the whole, much more satisfying and engaging this time around.

In terms of using the various masteries, my biggest bugbear is that we only have one map level to play with so gliding, if you miss your target, leaves you with nowhere to go but a waypoint. Maybe next time around (presumably the final beta) you can unlock all three layers of a small part of the jungle so we can truly get a sense of how they are interconnected and how we move between them.

While I’m on the subject of gliding, admittedly this is probably just me being daft but I couldn’t see how to access updrafts, maybe a short tutorial when you first get the mastery would be useful? Or maybe have tutorials for gliding in your home instance?

As for the jumping mushrooms, although these are an interesting mechanic, I found that too often I was bounced straight into aggro range of one or more grumpy (veteran) hylek. Now if there’s going to be a mechanic to earn reputation with hylek tribes to make them non-aggressive (I really hope this is the case) then this is absolutely not a problem; however if they are permanently aggressive then it would be nice if the landing zones themselves were always safe … even if they were surrounded by peril.

Footnote
If your response to these observations is along the lines of “learn to play” then please don’t bother. I’m quite happy with my current level of skill, and I’m happy to keep improving every day but I play this game to relax, it’s not my job, and I don’t want to feel locked out of it if I don’t meet some arbitrary standard set by people much younger than me who complain that League of Legends isn’t as hardcore as it used to be (actual conversation in map chat today). Of course your money is as good as mine and you deserve the game you want; but conversely, my money is as good as yours and I shouldn’t be forced to play your game at the expense of the game I want.

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