Guild Wars 2

I was happy by some of the fractals changes (listing fractal dailies inside, less LFG restrictions) and unswayed by others (Mossman, object duplicating, Molten Boss skipping). But overall it was decent just because of the change to allowing fractal level changes within the lobby. A change that’s been needed for so long and is so important can easily outweigh any other disappointments I had with this patch for fractals.

The Ranger skills changes were disappointing and continue a trend of feeling like the team still doesn’t know what they want the Ranger to be.

Hidden Barbs is still a poor choice for almost all rangers due to it’s slot placement with Spotter. Choosing between what’s likely a 5% damage increase for themselves versus a 7% crit chance increase for the whole party is still an easy decision in favor of Spotter. It wasn’t a low bleed damage increase from Hidden Barbs that made me not take it before, and it isn’t the reason now. Barring an insane increase (on the verge of +50-60% increase in bleed damage, taking Spotter is still an easy decision for nearly any group.

Almost all of rest of the changes suffer from being completely lackluster in how they change build diversity or playstyle. They either focus on incrementally small % damage increases, or situational poor skill designs.

A great example of this is “Protect Me”. a 4s protection on 30s cooldown taking up a utility slot. It adds little to nothing even in a PvP setting. Search and Rescue…again taking a utility slot for a poor scenario: having to ressurect an ally. Resources as important as utility slots shouldn’t be taken up by something I might never (or at least rarely) ever use. They’re something I take because I expect to want/need to use it nearly every fight. It’s far too situational. Honed Axes…the weapon’s main utility at the moment is condition damage and minor self might buffing. It is NOT in need of ferocity gain. I don’t ever find myself with an axe in main hand wishing I had ferocity. If there were no other opportunity costs involved in the choice, I’d take extra ferocity…but that’s not the case.

The only change that seems to be good is the one to “Guard”. There’s real choices that have to be made in taking that skill (pet diversity), but has diverse enough impact (affects allies, not just yourself) to fit many situations during play and even includes small bonuses (might gain). And yet still, this is a skill that seems like it needs the benefit of other buffed traits (or even skills) to be fully utilized.

I often wonder what it is the Ranger is supposed to do, and the answer isn’t any clearer after this patch.

Proposal Overview
A hub to allow guilds easier and exclusive access to World Events (and other major events like Pavilion). If a guild wants to do a Tequatl run by themselves or attempt Wurm, a guild now has a room to gather and organize more difficult content.

Goal of Proposal
At the moment, events, world bosses, and living world content are difficult and time-consuming for a guild to organize (especially given specific times). Much of the more difficult content (Tequatl, Wurm, even Pavilion) can be ruined by random players joining your event (scaling, pulling Wurm away). It would be far easier if a guild could tell its members “meet in the Guild Hall @6pm PST for Tequatl” and the guild would have exclusive access to creating a new map only for the event, rather than its current form of creating the event on an existing map.

Proposal Functionality
World Events are already available for Guilds to create. Guild Wars map servers create new servers all the time. Hopefully the two could be combined, with restrictions on time length and frequency, to allow guilds exclusive control over creating their own events without outside influence.

Associated Risks
Abuse of the system if there aren’t enough checks in place could result if a guild creates events over and over. However, that’s simple enough to prevent.

Members of medium-small guilds could find little reason for sticking around if the only focus of a guild for PvE was to participate in Wurm and Tequatl. However, as long as this isn’t the only proposal for Guild Halls, that isn’t a problem.

Being unfamiliar with server space, cost, and fragility, I’m not sure if the monetary cost to ANET would be too high when creating new maps for each large guild that wanted to do a world event.