Guild Wars 2

No surprise there, as ANet seem oblivious the the potency of water fields.

Seems like someone just checked the “projectile finisher, 100%” flag on the skill entry and called it a day.

Would not be a massive patch without ANet goofing something. I swear their “CVS” seems to be a pile of sticky notes on the conference table…

Well the “preview” showed a guy using somewhat flaming hammer while wearing a metal welders helmet/mask…

First thought on seeing bomb kit:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I believe the lack of divisions or numbers on health bars serves two purposes: primarily, it’s part of the, “We want people watching the world and creatures, not the UI.” A secondary benefit is that we don’t know exactly how big the huge sacks of health on some mobs are.

I would agree, if the thing was a minimal line near the edge of the screen. But it comes with a massive portrait and is the primary place for spotting special mechanics (never mind boon/condition status).

rapthorne.7345:

I for one don’t understand why we can’t get numerical hp readings, myself. Would make life a lot easier

Because the numbers change as the event scale in relation to the people participating.

Not so much that support “classes” are not there, but that you can’t really build into them. Most of the buffs/debuffs have a fixed effect no matter what gear etc is equipped, and the heals barely change when built for. On the other hand, you DPS really changes depending on build.

And i agree on the terrain stuff. I seem to constantly get stuck on some outcropping i should have easily stepped over when going up onto the walls in Silverwastes. whats worse is that getting so snagged will often make me move sideways with much the same speed as when going forward. End result is that unless i notice and let go of the key asap, i am liable to drop off a ledge.

And the respawn has been odd since day one of this game. Best i can tell a killed mob is added to the end of a spawn queue. And when it comes round it looks for any available spawn spot on the map keyed to that “class” of mob. so if someone ran through and killed some spiders over there, and you start slaughtering spiders over here, all of a sudden you can have new spiders spawn on top of you because the queue has come round to those killed by that other person. For the player this makes it appear as if the spawn rate is much higher than it really is.

Krestfallen.8025:

It’s one of thise things that’s just crazy wonky in Guild Wars 2: Conditions are super powerful in PvP, debatably decent in WvW (depending on what it is you’re doing), and utter trash in all but Solo, Open Map PvE.

The basic issue is that mobs and characters are not the same, but the limitations of the engine and server code is set based on character vs character (aka PVP) fights.

This then throws the whole attempt at balancing PVE and PVP as one out the window.

Frankly all the major issues with PVE can be traced back to how the mobs violate just about every hard set limit on character capability.

Apparently the mouse code of the game is a mess.

One guy showed up on Reddit saying he had looked into adding a right button toggle because he was tired of holding it down, and found that there was code all over the place checking of the button was down or not.

Conditions are in essence tuned towards melting SPVP bunkers without overloading the pr instance server cpu budget. End result is that they break badly when faced with the walking health walls that are PVE bosses (or anything aimed at taking on several characters at once). Basically, PVE mobs do not play by PVP rules. And thus the PVP balanced combat mechanics are thrown out of alignment.

Over on reddit there is a collection of stills from the trailer, and the one marked mursaat brings more to mind glowing krait than humanoids.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2tjqxw/all_shots_from_the_trailer_in_stills/

http://imgur.com/a/cU062

As such, i’m starting to think we are etiher looking at forgotten, or some kind of forgotten/mursaat hybrid.

During the room entry shot i don’t think they were so much floating as standing tall on their tails.

https://i.imgur.com/eytBbvE.png

And during the “new allies” moment there is a tail poking out in the lower left corner.

https://i.imgur.com/vNzfTLw.png

Captain Swag.5893:

great in use but very clunky.

That sums up the engineer in total.

The basic theme of the profession is very “mad scientist”.

So, time to roll a engineer called MC?

lordkrall.7241:

I suppose Rytlock technically could have emerged from the Mists years before he went into the Mists and as such the profession existed before it was created. ^^

Yay for time traveling paradoxes…

May well start referring to him as the doctor.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I’m concerned for how specializations will mix in with base profession:

1. are they an alternate profession, with own skills, traits, equips, that does not mix with base profession? So I’m either druid or a ranger but i can’t use ranger skills as druid, or druid skills as the ranger?

2. Are they alternative sets of skills, profession mechanic and trats that does mix in with the base profession and it’s total freedom what i select?

3. Are they free for all jobs, or each stuck to one base profession? Can my engi become a druid?

4. Is there one specialization per profession or more if above is restricted?

Just spitballing, but i think they will be a set of utility skills, weapon(s), and traits that gets added to the base profession.

So picking druid will unlock (at least) the staff (and its weapon skills), a heal skill, a utility skill pr tier, a elite skill, and a set of traits.

As they then introduce new specializations you forgo that set for another by switching over. If this holds it will make sense that we can switch specialization as we switch skills and traits today.

Dunno why, but i think we will be looking at something like a elementalist or engineer in mechanical terms.

Kendra Nightwind.8734:

No player housing.

Get a personal guild, now with a hall.

Well it seems we will be allying with the mursaat, or whatever they were…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

digiowl.9620:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Revenant: Lowbong, sword, hammer

err?

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en

It’s what he’s holding in the announcement concept art

I was attempting to highlight a humorous typo…

Uhaen.9876:

digiowl.9620:

I guess it will start with 1 pr profession, and then they can expand from there.

I was thinking this. Colin kept talking about the new vision for character progression in GW2, and I was thinking exactly that. They’re going to leave specialization open for new options in the future.

And thinking about it, they will likely allow us to only have one specialization active at a time. Thus you will choose between ranger/druid and ranger/xyz etc.

This will allow them to expand the build choices while keeping a tighter leash on the skill interactions than they had in GW1.

I guess it will start with 1 pr profession, and then they can expand from there.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Revenant: Lowbong, sword, hammer

err?

Anyone else read that as Los Angeles?

Those skills demonstrate the limitations of the skill balancing mechanics.

The only thing holding them back from being used is that they have cooldowns that are disproportionate to their effects.

Ensign.2189:

Most of the balance changes are naturally going to focus on sPvP, as it’s the most sensitive

PVE would be just as sensitive if the base mob design was something other than bags of health swinging tactical nukes.

You can’t balance both at once when the PVE and PVP metas are polar opposites.

/me plays the zerker card

Instant victory!

Iirc, that fight can be annoying, not conceptually hard, but annoying. This because one of the two golems is a knockback weed whacker, and the fight is happening on a cliff edge.

Anyways, the one thing one should perhaps keep in mind about ANet instances is that defeat does not mean reset (though it can, as i found out in Glint’s pocket dimention. This when a respawn landed me on a narrow walkway that i walked over the edge of, and was ported so far from the boss that it reset). In essence any fight can in theory be won simply by respawn skitten your way through it. I may not be the most glorious victory, but it allows the LS to progress…

A bunch of soulbound mementos from events past, parts for items i am slowly working towards, and some account bound gathering tools.

Really wish our home instance held a shelf of sorts where we could show off items from past events that hold zero economic value.

I find the PDF unreadable as it puts two panels on each page.

The basic problem with shifting builds around is that so much of a build is carried by the armor worn rather than the skills on the bar and the traits set.

Lishtenbird.2814:

I found the “new marionette” to be too easy. While the original required a lot of coordination and felt like a raid event where each player mattered (and yes, as a result was susceptible to trolling and noob failing), this one feels zergy like all other current world bosses: spam skills, spam more skills, spam skills again, wait for others to finish, collect loot.

Meh. The original didn’t require coordination. Where it broke down was that one could not help struggling platforms from others that finished early. As such, 5 people could mess up a entire lane outcome.

I suspect that once a fix hits, we have to cycle it through the bank to get it properly set.

Tengu was planned as playable before launch. They share a overall posture etc with charr. But apparently their beaks interfered with presentation of the living story dialogs.

Eirian Direstorm.9748:

I’m impressed you can hold them solo.

Indeed. Sooner or later an attack wave will consist of multiple trolls and/or griffs, resulting in a mass of DOT and knockdowns centered on the commander.

The other day i was doing indigo, and found myself face to face with a legendary griff inside the fort!

Things like that makes me feel like the agent looking down the barrel of Trinity’s gun, and hearing “dodge this!”…

Belzebu.3912:

Not sure what is preventing Anet from making new PvP modes, but I don’t think it is about the current class balance.

I dunno. Looking over the skill sets offered, i find myself thinking that 1/3 or 2/3 lose purpose once the fight is not over a fixed location (capture point etc).

This because they are oriented towards either putting pressure on someone to leave that location, or help them in staying while being attacked.

The necromancer profession mechanic seems like it got heavily nerfed right before launch, as it was seen as overly good as allowing a necromancer to stay in place when played a certain way (10s cooldown block).

ArrDee.2573:

• AED needs to not be bad! The first thing that needs to be done for AED is to lower the cooldown! Even with a reduced cooldown, it will still be pretty subpar especially in comparison to Healing Turret! But it’s a start I guess!

Not sure if the problem is AED, healing turret, or simply the lack of a energy mechanic.

The more i look at it the more i am tempted to say that it is the latter.

This because i notice similarities between AED and the engineer shield skill. This in that the cooldown is set high because AED may be strong under the right circumstance, even though that circumstance may be rare.

The only way really to solve this would be if the cooldown got longer depending on how a skill is used.

With AED this could be that the cooldown was 20 if the low heal triggered, while 40 when rescued from downed.

With the healing turret, it should perhaps rack up to 40+ as deploy, overcharge, detonate was used in short order.

With shield skills it should produce a short one when the first skill is used, but a longer one when the second is used.

but another problem is that the current cooldown surrounding turrets, and healing turret in particular, encourage using them as anything but turrets. This because the cooldown starts when they are destroyed rather than when deployed.

This is particularly bad with the healing turret, as it does most of its work when deployed and when overcharged. The regen boon is simply not enough of a benefit to leaving it out, when detonating it give a short cooldown towards another heal and water field.

One option may be to replace the regen with a pulsed heal, and have the overcharge add a pulsed condition cleanse or boosted heal pulse. And drop the water field.

Yep, it is one of those dichotomies of PVE.

Those pesky reef drakes are perhaps the most dangerous creatures in Southsun Cove, thanks to how much confusion they spam…

I can’t really figure out why ANet designed mobs the way they did. Rather attack like characters, rapid but individually weak basic attacks, they do fewer but harder hitting attacks. This ends up breaking the mechanical usefulness of both confusion and retaliation, as they depend on the attack rate of the enemy.

Only way i find it makes sense is to think about ANet’s insistence on “active combat”. And with the mobs being slower but harder hitting, the defensive emphasis moves from armor to avoidance (dodge, block, aegis, blind etc etc etc).

Thanks to how mobs are designed in GW2, armor etc matters less for survivability than how many invulnerability frames you can spam.

NoobOnSteroid.7192:

digiowl.9620:

I can somewhat relate. While i finished it on first pass, the “bulbs” in particular is the nightmare tower stalks cranked to 11.

Sometimes i could run right past them and they would not pop. Other times i could be nowhere near them and several would pop. And the brief AOE marker that showed up after they popped showed me nowhere near them.

The bulbs come in duos, and are connected by a vine which acts as tripwire. If you cross that vine, they blow up. Their AoE however does not overlap, so running over the vine in the middle, will make them explode but not damage you. You have to do this to get one of the achievements, if I’m not mistaken.

Makes me wonder what kind of graphics they test this on, as i never noticed any thread connection two of them. And i suspect i am not alone.

Yeah, the map was already a pain and it is getting worse. It is easy enough to retake a fort or escort a dolyak. But then comes the defense events, and it all goes pear shaped (trolls and griffs everywhere…). But when finally a breach is reached, people pop out of the proverbial woodwork to zerg the champs.

Back before megaservers there may have been worth it to get some server organization going. but now it is every humanoid for himself…

I can somewhat relate. While i finished it on first pass, the “bulbs” in particular is the nightmare tower stalks cranked to 11.

Sometimes i could run right past them and they would not pop. Other times i could be nowhere near them and several would pop. And the brief AOE marker that showed up after they popped showed me nowhere near them.

The whole thing seemed like a lazy bullet hell event. RNG stacked upon RNG upon RNG…

But then this is a constant problem i have with ANet, a complete lack of consistency in tells etc.

Sometimes you need to react the moment the tell shows up, other times you need to do so when it goes away, yet others shows the tell after they are no longer useful, and then you have situations where there are no tells at all, or they are obscured by particle smog or camera angles because the map is made with little regard to the camera.

Its like they have us play 9 fights that play out the same and we build up muscle memory (vital for such a action focused game), and then they go and violate it all during the 10th fight.

The reason that PVE is borked it simple, defensive numbers don’t matter.

If it does not do damage, it is as effective with zerker gear as it is with any other gear. End result, everyone is packing DPS to the eyebrows and switch around a few skills for “support”.

What has always puzzled me about retaliation is how Arenanet managed to come up with two slightly different mechanics for doing the exact same thing (make it expensive to attack someone). By this i mean retaliation and reflect. One breaks PVE (hello boss fight speed runs on anything with a projectile spam attack) the other PVP (death by 1000 needle pricks).

I would love to see retaliation be turned into a percentage based boon, and one that goes from 1% to 99% based on the toughness (or healing power if renamed “support power”) of the caster. that would make it a interesting boon.

But then i have a general issue with boons and non-damaging conditions in general, and that is that build choices flat out don’t matter. Meaning that no matter how i build i get the same boost from a stack of might, the same percentage reduction from protection etc etc etc. This makes building for support a false option.

There are 20+ armor variants in the game, yet the handful that offer any of the “trinity” of Power, Precision or Ferocity (never mind offering 2 or all 3) trade for up to 10x that of items that are more defensively oriented.

This is because there is not a real trade off to be had. All you do when you go defensive is to kitten your DPS for no good reason. This because defensive numbers do crap all for your skills, traits, boons or conditions.

Point 4 may be true for a single no-rank grunt. But anything bigger is likely to tear you a new one if you don’t dodge every third attack or so. And no, build does not make a whole lot of difference against those attacks.

GW2 is not about control in the traditional MMORPG sense. It is about fighting game interrupts masking as control…

Meh. The basic problem of the game is that so much of defense and support is not tied to stats. This makes them not change in effectiveness alongside other changes to a build.

Aegis: you either stop the attack or you don’t.
blindness: same.
Defense: 30% reduction, no matter what.
block, dodge, evasion: immune to damage for the duration, no matter what.

Maybe you can shift their duration up or down by a percentage. But their numerical effectiveness when hit is the same no matter what gear you grab or trait line you go for.

Or Taimi has come up with a way for Rox to go chase down Rytlock…

Try moving the sound quality slider a notch or two away from “fastest”. Seemed to sort the issue for me.

Also, any spoken dialog that is done while you can see the game UI can be read in the chat log.

style.6173:

Condis have always had the same issue: Underpowered in PvE and OP in PvP/WvW

And the basic reason for that is that stat differences are tighter between combatants in PVP than they are in PVE. In particular power and health are very high in mobs.