Guild Wars 2

I’ve changed some of the current masteries to reflect my suggestions below.
Examples:
[Glider Mastery]

¹ Gliding Basics – (381,000 exp. to unlock)
¹ Updraft Use – (635,000 exp. to unlock)
² Lean Techniques – (1,143,000 exp. Use 5 updrafts, and glide for 2,500 meters to unlock)
³ Stealth Gliding – (2,413,000 exp. Use 15 more updrafts, and glide for another 5,000 meters to unlock)
⁵ Advanced Gliding – (4,191,000 exp. Use 25 more updrafts, and another 10,000 meters of gliding)
⁸ Ley Line Gliding – (8,128,000 exp. Complete a certain gliding race/obstacle course adventure on gold to unlock)
¹⁸ Glider Master – (~15,000,000 exp. Use 40 more updrafts, complete all the gliding adventures on gold to unlock.)
Become a master of the glider. Every maneuver is second nature to you, even diving. Dive to gain momentum and release to fly through the air faster and further than ever before.
(Putting all the points in gives the player an achievement for completing the mastery track, but they still must prove themselves a master of the skill for the title. Players must complete a gliding-based jumping puzzle that you can only reach with ley line gliding and requires diving to complete. This grants the jumping puzzle achievement and the mastery track title, as well as a dope mastery exclusive glider skin that changes your glider NOT your backpack.)

{I pulled this straight from the batman games. Not gonna deny that. Players would hold shift or control to dive and release to swoop forward and up for a second or two before returning to normal glide mode}

[Itzel Lore Mastery]
¹ Bouncing Mushrooms – (381,000 exp.)
¹ Itzel Language – (635,000 exp.)
² Blazing Speed Mushrooms – (1,143,000 exp. Bounce on 15 mushrooms. Talk to two Itzel merchants and see what they are selling to unlock.)
³ Itzel Poison Lore – (2,413,000 exp. Eat 20 speed mushrooms, talk to all important Itzel villagers in a village to unlock.)
⁵ Itzel Leadership – (4,191,000 exp. Bounce on 30 more mushrooms. Defeat all contenders in the Itzel fighting pits except the champion to unlock)
⁸ Adrenal Mushrooms – (8,128,000 exp. Eat 40 speed mushrooms. Complete the hardest mushroom-based race/obstacle course adventure on gold.)
¹⁸ Mushroom Master – (~15,000,000 exp. Use 50 bouncing mushrooms. Complete all mushroom based adventures on gold to unlock.)
Become a master of mushrooms. You can bounce with the best. Learn to position yourself perfectly for a second bounce that propels you higher into the air. Gain more horizontal momentum while jumping and learn to chain jumps from mushroom to mushroom.
(Players receive an achievement for completing the mastery track, but no title. They must prove they are a master for that. Players must then complete a mushroom based jumping puzzle that requires skilled use of the three mushroom types to complete. This grants the jumping puzzle achievement and mushroom mastery title, a mushroom mini, and highlights useable mushrooms on the player’s screen.)

{This is ripped from a mechanic in many platformers, most famous of which being Mario, called the ground pound. Mechanically, a player would jump on a shroom and when they reach the height of their jump arc they get another prompt to ground pound. This throws the player back at the same mushroom and gives them an even higher jump arc after hitting the shroom a second time. A player could also interact with a mushroom and move their character towards another after hitting it. They must be close enough and at the right height to chain to the next shroom, but a second prompt should appear to allow them to chain the animations. One could easily see a maneuver being: Ground pound to get the extra height, then move towards another mushroom and chain to the normally out of reach mushroom.}

I want to talk a bit about what masteries are to me, then I’ll put my suggestions down below. I want to hear what other people think about this too. Am I insane? I won’t know till other people tell me.

Masteries look to be what I’ve been waiting for. Didn’t get to try em out much in the beta cause I only got one point and unlocked gliding. But, I did read each of the masteries in each track and some of the later masteries in some tracks didn’t sound powerful enough to me. That is what I feel is the issue. It’s probably cause I haven’t played through the content that makes them relevant, but still I think that they are missing something big.

Masteries are supposed to be this mechanic that allows progression past 80 without a level cap increase. To me they are succeeding greatly at that. Another thing mentioned in the talk surrounding masteries is the fact that there is supposed to be a clear difference between playing the content without them, and playing the content with a whole track mastered. And right now, I think that is where some masteries are lacking. I’m mainly talking about map traversal in this post since I don’t know what role the other lore tracks are playing in the content and I haven’t seen all the content they are releasing. Gliding is the one that is doing well in this aspect. But, take the Itzel lore track for instance. It introduces the mushroom bouncing mechanic. After completing it what do I have? I can bounce on shrooms, get a couple vendors, eat some speed shrooms, eat some skill shrooms, fight a champion each day, and get to some previously locked areas. These are great perks, yes but they won’t change how I play the content much. Yeah, I can run faster. Already drowning in swiftness as is on my guardian. I will grab the gliding and bouncing shrooms asap so that stuff will be usable on the first play through. Skill and speed shrooms are great but the buff will probably last less than a minute. The Champion might drop some good loot but that’s not effecting map traversal, and unlocking new areas is awesome and will change the traversal (especially if they are shortcuts [lookin’ at Dark Souls]), but none of the masteries change the core mechanic of mushroom bouncing.
This also goes with my feeling that the final mastery in the track doesn’t really feel powerful enough. For instance: Adrenal Mushrooms “Learning to eat these mushrooms tweaks your adrenal glands, giving you a surge of adrenaline and instantly refreshing your skills” Yeah that’s cool and all and I’m looking forward to getting it, but to me that doesn’t feel like something that proves I’m a master of mushrooms. It doesn’t convey my skill with using mushrooms or how much effort I put into getting that mastery. See what I mean?

Regardless, I would like to see a seventh mastery called the Elite Mastery in each track that takes double plus a little more of the points that 6th one takes and grants some very very powerful mastery. It should take a long time to unlock and to master. It would act as a sort of finale/one final push I feel the mastery system sorely needs. It would be the mastery that proves without a doubt that a player has mastered that ability or set of skills. It should also give cool rewards upon completion of a challenge that requires said elite mastery to complete. It should definitely give and achievement and a title(that’s a given). But there should be a third or fourth reward on top of the title and achievement. Things like an exclusive glider skin or a frog backpack skin or some other passive perk should be included as well. My ideas are included in the mastery track section.

The final thing I feel is missing is: more requirements for unlocking the masteries on which I spend my precious few points. These are simple additions and would only take a little checkbox/achievement tracker type thing beneath the mastery itself to tell players what they need to do. I feel masteries should be obtained with a combination of three things.

The first two can be done side by side. So you can get credit for bouncing on mushrooms while doing events and adventures for the experience needed.
-You should have to train the mastery of your choice with experience.
-Use the previous masteries a certain number of times or in certain ways.
-After those two things are done it should unlock and allow you to drop points on it.
Only after all the points have been put in should a player gain the ability the mastery provides.

Edited: Re-worded some stuff to make what I’m trying to say more clear.

Revenant is ON POINT! I had so much fun playing one. Only gripes are “where are my skills?” I only get four utility skills per stance? I pray to Kormir that changes. Would like to see more passive skills too. Would also like a third hammer on Jalis’ channel skill. Pretty please. The animation doesn’t feel satisfying enough with only two. Maybe some traits that make the hammers stun occasionally or inflict weakness? A trait that makes the staff bubbles that pop off give boons like quickness or retaliation would be great too.

This rolls in with my other concern. I feel like there aren’t enough traits and variety of traits in the game. They are the things that really give the classes build diversity and synergies and I feel there aren’t enough of them. I also feel traits are more passive stuff that changes conditions you put out or damage you deal to enemies with certain conditions and less skill changing. Maybe that’s what y’all are going for, but I feel, in general, a decent number of traits should change the way some skills actually function. Like the Jalis’ hammer channel I mentioned earlier. Adding a third or fourth hammer that occasionally stuns would be a great trait. Or maybe a trait that changes shiro’s speed buff to an AoE passive, but at greater cost on your energy regen. You could have two master traits that manipulate overloads for eles. One makes the AoE larger, the other makes them last longer. Stuff like that.

The map looks gorgeous! Phenomenal job by designers and builders. Can’t wait to play more and reach that golden city looking place. Getting so hyped. My sense of wonder and my longing to explore every nook and cranny has never been higher.

Adventures were fun, hoping there is a lot of variety in the types of adventures out there.

Events seemed nice, didn’t really notice the difference between day and night in enemy behavior. I would like to see some enemies change appearance and behavior. Maybe they could be larger in the day than at night or something. Idk.

The story stuff looks to be great. Voice acting is great too. No awkward silences between npcs talking. I’m overjoyed my character finally has a voice. Though I did make multiple characters of different races and they had the same if not very similar lines. I want my race, class, and sex to change what my character is saying. I know that’s a lot of work and voice acting, but I believe in you anet.

The choices appear as though they are going to be good, but would like to see more than just two sometimes. The choices don’t have to lead down a whole story path, but some should change which characters like me and dislike me based on which other character I’m agreeing with and how I’m choosing to attack the situation. I’m also hoping they actually change my trajectory towards Mordremoth long term.

Those things really made me feel that the world is going to be alive and changing when HoT releases.

Healix.5819:

Imagine having to take ~100k fall damage to unlock gliding, glide for ~5 minutes to unlock updrafts, use ~20 updrafts to unlock the next and so on. Finally mastering gliding would require completion of a timed glider “jumping” puzzle.

THIS IS PERFECT. I want some hybrid of this concept and the current system we saw in the beta.

I don’t like the idea of getting mastery points for level ups one bit. If you look at what happened with the skill points, it’s obvious that people will eventually end up with more mastery points than the game has masteries to spend them on. That’s completely inane when you think about what the mastery system is attempting to accomplish. Masteries are the key to our post level 80 content. These maps where you get the mastery points like we get hero points in vanilla maps are going to be challenging and they are meant to be played multiple times with multiple different experiences going through them. Metroidvania, right? The first time you go through you have no masteries. I was playing the beta during the event last weekend and it was thrilling to see mushrooms everywhere that I couldn’t use yet, and ledges that I couldn’t glide to cause I hadn’t gotten the updraft mastery yet. It made me feel like the map was far more complex than what I could see in front of me. It also made me want those upgrades with a fever I haven’t had in a while in this game. Not having these skill force you to experience the world in certain ways and think about your approach to situations differently. If you just tie masteries to level ups after lvl 80 that defeats the whole bloody purpose of the system. What is the point of putting the bouncing and speedy shrooms or updrafts or lore stuff in there if someone can have them all before they even enter the area where they exist. And bypass the whole ‘mastering’ of the area. That’s what it’s really about people, mastering the maps. Getting points and using them proves that you’ve gone through the content, that you’ve glided and jumped to the precarious mastery point locations, or you beat that stoneskin monster before you got a passive buff that helped you mitigate his charge attack. (That’s just a hypothetical) I can’t understand why any logical person would even think about giving mastery points out on level ups. You haven’t mastered anything that way. You’ve just leveled up which as we all know is super easy even at level 80. In my opinion it was great the way it was in the beta. You had to select a mastery to train, then once you leveled up, that mastery would be available to master. Then you could spend your much treasured mastery points, that took you a while to find and obtain, on the mastery. If you tie mastery points to level ups, people will get tons from not even touching the content. And u can just spend em willy nilly. “Sure, I’ll drop 20 points here to get the speed boost shrooms, and I’ll max out my gliding masteries, and I’ll throw the rest into precursor crafting cause that’ll be nice to have.” For the love of all things eternal alchemy, NO!
I would also like to see the later, more powerful masteries down a track take more than one level up to unlock, and lots of points to master. However, the last two or three masteries in a track should also be FAR more powerful/useful than the first 1-4. I wasn’t getting that vibe from the beta. I felt some of the earlier masteries were better than the later ones in some tracks.

ticket submitted. Now we wait and see if i will quit for a month or two out of frustration.

Thanks a bunch. This makes it better, i guess. It’s still extremely disappointing. This needs a warning somewhere, i shouldn’t have to lose an entire trinket’s worth of laurels to learn my lesson.

Evans.6347:

No, but there is a work-around, even if it’s rather time and resource consuming.
If you infuse one of the rings (using the MF recipe) you can still equip both.

It does warn you however, but it’s very vague. It says it’s unique.

Pretty sure i can’t put a magic find infusion on the Druid’s Circle. It has a defensive infusion slot. Can it be another infusion? Such as Resilient?

I didn’t know that you can’t equip two of the same ascended trinket. Now I am 35 Laurels down and have one soulbound druid’s circle that i can’t use. AT ALL. Is there some way i can get a refund. GW2 does not tell you what a unique item is anywhere in the buying process for the trinkets, and warn you not to try to equip two of the same item. This is ridiculous.

Open on dragonbrand server. 5:54 pm server time US.

thanks a bunch. didn’t even consider that. quite happy ill be getting the full 5k reward and not just a 3k one due to a glitch.

not available yet. dont know when its being released. srry.

Well hello, dear reader. You many notice from looking at the screenshot I have included, that i have have 5,020 achievement points. However, there is a certain discrepancy. The “Point to next reward” section indicated that I only have up to the 3,000 point tier unlocked. I am waiting for the 2,500 and 3,000 to come in, as they are only awarded once per day. If i had unlocked the other rewards they wouldn’t be greyed out as they are. I do not know if this is an issue with my points being wrong or the counter hasn’t recognized them for some reason. It would be nice if i could get some kind of answer to my mild dilemma. Also dive master is bugged but that’s whatevs atm.

I want to add my thanks as well to the long list. just want to make it a little longer for all of you devs truly deserve it.