Guild Wars 2

Any leaks about the changes to Spite & Signets? If not, best guesses?

Didn’t Deathly Chill originally just make Chill do damage on its own and it didn’t connect with Bleeding? What was wrong with that exactly?

Yeah, I don’t see why they have to nerf an existing elite just to prop up the new one. Thought this was horizontal progression and not power creep.

In WPs stream he hovers over it. 1 stack for 9.5 seconds. (Not sure if he had any gear/trinkets that affected duration.)

Pros:
Very little Taimi this time around.
Boss fights were interesting and well-tuned.
New map looks nice. Great atmosphere. How it stacks up in terms of farming efficiency compared to some of the others remains to be seen.

Cons:
Most of the season 6 writing has been somewhat incoherent to me. This chapter was no exception.

At the start of the season I felt like there was a chance we’d see Jormag & Primordus at each other’s throats, in some kind of epic power struggle but that plot never really took off and developed as I’d hoped.

Lackluster ending leading up to the next expansion, especially compared to how it was handled during the lead-in to HoT. Was that a vision of the future? Or how things are looking this very moment over in the Crystal Desert?

Overall:
Still very much looking forward to the expansion and can’t wait to see what happens next!

Thanks to everyone who worked on the Living World this season, even though it wasn’t exactly perfect. Its provided countless hours of enjoyment playing these new maps.

Thanks Healix that worked. I wasn’t sure about resetting the instance and having to re-do everything leading up to that over again.

Stuck on this for 45 minutes. How do you turn them all on?

One thing that’s important to note, for me at least, is that this new zone appears to be much less gpu/cpu intensive compared to other more recent maps. There are parts of VB/AB that bring my frame rates down so much it becomes very hard to play. Ember Bay is proof that you can have a visually stunning map with a lot going on without those sudden and annoying frame drops. I hope the devs keep this in mind as they continue to push forward with new areas to explore.

There’s quite a few people in the www forums that feel the same way, a faction system might be preferable to what it is currently.

a faction system doesn’t necessarily need to even fit in with the narrative story of the main game. When you’re in eotm or www the three sides that face each other has nothing to do with lore and thats fine. But there are certainly ways to go about doing iteither way.

If.we are talking about PvP, I would love to see anet add a few dedicated servers for open world PvP similar to how it was done in star wars galaxies where a player had to type a /command in order to being attackable by the opposing faction or had to willingly entered a zone and was flagged. I miss the thrill of doing open world questing being flagged up and never knowing who you might run into.

Infusion.7149:

Karahol.9840:

Sorry, they are needed for HoT pve. Angry mobs too hard to kill without blocks or perma stab. One correction though, Necro does not have perma stab.

The durability rune should be reevaluated for WvW, this is the Wvw forum not HoT PvE forum

Durability rune currently:
+175 toughness, +125 vitality , +20% boon duration
25% chance when struck to grant nearby allies protection and regeneration for 3 seconds and resistance for 1 second. (Cooldown: 20 seconds).

Are those stats correct? I’m at work now but the wiki shows it as 100 toughness, 125 vitality and 15% boon duration.

I’m all for a faction system. Maybe they could expand upon the Vigil, Priory and Order of Whispers in some way to make it work storywise.

I’ve always thought it would be nice if there were Cultural quests that players can go on that either rewards new armor or a currency that can be be traded in for it. Quests could take place across any number of zones in the world. The Norm for instance, pride themselves on the hunt. Imagine each day starting a new quest where you’re tasked with taking out a certain vet, champ, or legendary boss across tyria. I think that could be a lot of fun!

Just a quick question. If one of my abilities applies a condition for say, 6.75 seconds, does this get rounded up, down or applied as stated?

Thanks

Just wondering if it’s possible to salvage/remove the ghostly infusion from the ascended trinket i’ve applied it to.

wait…you said you haven’t played the zone in months so how do you even know what strategy works or doesnt work? The zerg strategy still relies on a handful of players staying behind to lower the slime layers and do small burns whenever they can, so I don’t see what the problem is.

Welcome aboard! If you ever have any questions or need some help in the open world feel free to send my user name an email. Would be glad to assist in any way that I can.

Thanks Cameron. I’ll have to play around with sword 2 and work on those 3 hits connecting.

If you mean rotation, all you need is auto attack for the best dps. The other skills.are situational.

2 will combo with fields and does decent ranged damage.
3 is good for some quick might generation and will evade attacks if needed.
4 is good for tagging mobs as well as interrupt I believe.
5 gap closer.

It really sounds like you need to bring more condi cleanse. Being constantly cc’d IS a survivability issue. There’s a few problematic sections of maps that can make it harder to traverse. (nothing that cc’s every 3 steps as you put it.) Take some time and get a few masteries under your belt. It makes a world of difference getting around.

lordhelmos.7623:

Are we playing a game here or trying to build the perfect utopian society?

The new direction of HoT is build on massive community driven events that require immense coordination.

This is to the point of completely shutting out the single player out of many rewards and content including but not limited to:

-Specific gear vendors
-Rewards from collections that require group event rewards
-Hero Points that require 3-5+ people
-Specific areas of a zone (such as the tarir treasure room)
-Electric Wyvern and Tiger Ranger Pets
-Sometimes you can’t even WALK to certain areas alone because of the sheer difficulty of some of the mobs. Examples are the living hell known as Tangleroot (this map encompasses everything wrong with the game) where 10000 veteran chak hide around every corner. It’s like playing halo 1 where every flood alien is replaced by an elite with laser swords and overshield.

This makes personal hero progression very difficult.

The game also promotes organization of large groups but the maps themselves constrict it. This is due to platformer elements that prevents less coordinated members of the zerg from reaching the event point, such as putting a 5 man boss behind a jumping puzzle.

It becomes really frustrating to explore as a solo player and go through all sorts of mario bros. hoopla to reach a hero point or area locked behind a group event.

Players are unable to group up due to certain areas requiring certain masteries. Also the maps are so large and confusing, half of the players on the map can’t even reach where the event is and just end up running around lost while scaling up everything around them.

The introduction of guild halls, large cost of upgrading, and the group based unlock method also pushes the idea of large organized groups. Solo players have no possible way of creating the most basic guild hall due to the high cost and maintenance of the hall itself.

The game presents this oppressive feeling of “join a social group or die.”

Sometimes I just want to explore by myself. Sometimes I don’t want to rely on 100+ people to complete an event so I can advance my own personal character. Sometimes I don’t want to tag up and herd 100 cats because I do enough management at work and I don’t need to be doing it at home.

This game used to be fun and relaxing.

If your trying to test the coordination and teamwork abilities of the human race, congrats. You succeeded. Zerg herders and leaders that like pulling blobs of people around and large prestigious guilds that can pull people into an area with a wave of their hand are in heaven.

The rest of us are living in hell.

Solo player of 3 years here.

Personally speaking, this expansion delivered exactly what I’ve wanted and hoped for. Are the new zones challenging? Yes. And that is explicitly what the Devs told us to expect for our level 80 characters months before going into this expansion. (And this makes perfect sense from a storyline perspective…we’re literally venturing into the backyard of an Elder Dragon. This should be one of the most difficult challenges to embark on for our heroes.

Why should the devs further nerf the new zones simply because you refuse to play group content?

Why should Mordremoth and his forces ease up on our advance simply because a small minority of players don’t have what it takes to cut it outside of Queensdale?

If survivability is an issue, you probably just need to add some vitality and toughness into your gear. Do what any real combatant would, study your enemy. Spend some time taking on various enemies and learn their scripted patterns. Follow the commanders around. That’s what they’re there for. You’ll find the Mastery bar goes up a lot faster when you participate in the dynamic events. More mastery = getting the skills and access to the vendors that you say you’re “Completely” locked out from at the moment.

Zalladi.4652:

Their reasoning in the livestream as to why they didn’t nerf it, and did instead buff it, was because they didn’t want it to become an obsolete skill like many others (as far as I can remember).

Too bad that reasoning wasn’t also applied to Thief’s P/P Ricochet trait.

Dodom.1760:

Losing Ricochet has made me lose all interest in my thief, a character that was previously one of my favorites to play. All this time and still no DEV response… fishy.

Same here. Losing this trait has effectively killed my desire to play this class anymore. I still log on to him but only because he’s attained 100% map completion and can hit up all the rich iron & plat nodes really fast. Once my gathering is over I simply log back onto a character that can more reliably tag mobs in places like Cursed Shores and the Silverwastes.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Ricochet was an interesting trait, but it was always really odd. And at this point, it was too odd to stay.

No more odd than any of the other traits in the game that have RNG related bounces or 100% pierces.

Count my signature in for bringing it back.

Captain Jack Sparrow.2674:

They can give me all the infractions they want, I’ll repost as often as I want until there’s a non-sarcastic, well explained reason.

All ranger bows, warrior rifle, Engi rifle shots can pierce up to 5 targets, so technically 50k+ damage is possible from 1 ability.

Engi/Mesmer pistol shots bounce, greatsword 2 bounces, 1 pierces 3 targets if hitting furthest.

Ele/Necro staff pierce, bounce, or aoe on target impact.

Even Guardian scepter 2 has a fantastic short cd aoe from range.

Thief pistol all stuck to 1 target and doesn’t pierce because Anet.

On a scale of 1 to Logic, Anet is about even with those Westboro Baptist nutjobs.

In addition to all of those, the devs have added new bouncing and/or piercing mechanics into the elite specs.

- Reaper’s Chilling Nova
- Dragon Hunter’s Spear of Justice, Longbow #1 Puncture Shot & Longbow #2 True Shot.

Stormclaw.5031:

Still no response I see.. ricochet thief, just another victim of devs’ callous insistence that people play the classes the way they want them played.. 3 years too late.. with no research done to see what the players actually enjoy.

“Warriors are using their adrenaline to chased down foes or prime alpha strikes with Eviscerate, Kill Shot, or Combustive Shot! This isn’t what WE want now, so let’s cripple adrenaline!”

“Rangers are throwing their traps around offensively and using them to keep foes at bay! This isn’t what WE want now, so let’s remove trap throwing!”

“Thieves are using their pistols to have fun in a way that isn’t overpowered or hurts anything! This isn’t what WE want, so let’s completely neuter pistols!”

“You guys aren’t playing our classes right!! We have to be Esports!! Quick, remove all complex or creative builds, and just buff the damage of the 3 meta builds we approve of so twitch streams look more dynamic!”

Well said. That’s what it really feels like. Especially when they’re quoted in a twitch channel saying that Ricochet “doesn’t fit the purity of pistols.” Move along…

My P/P D/D thief is the only character I have that has 100% map completion. He’s sadly been relegated to full-time mining/gathering duty because he simply can no longer contend with this game’s large dynamic events that require constant AoE for tagging mobs. If you see me doing an event it’s only because it got in the way of an Iron Ore I was headed to.

Play shortbow? No thanks. I gave that weapon an honest try at one point but something about it just felt off. It sucks because he’s probably my favorite character and with his Old West theme, fits perfectly in the landscape of the Silverwastes and Drytop. Some of the best times I’ve had in this game where playing into that specific archetype. I never cared if it was meta or not. But at the time, it at least remained competitive in open world PvE and out of the characters I have leveled, was second only to Guardian Staff in its ability to tag mobs & contribute to group events.

I’d certainly like to have some Icebrood/Svanir ice-themed armor made available.

I honestly believe the real reason for why it was removed was in the devs mind, they wanted to make room for other trait selections, and within this new system where its limited to 3 choices per tier, felt ricochet wouldn’t be missed. I think this thread and its view count provide enough proof that it has indeed affected a very significant portion of the player base.

so, maybe the devs were right, I’ll play devils advocate. They had to make room for more interesting trait synergy and something needed to be let go. Ricochet got the axe. Fine. But what I’d like to see happen is add that functionality back into the weaponset.

pistol #1 A 7-10% chance on crit to regain 1 initiative.
pistol 2-5 have the ability to either pierce or bounce to targets.

this puts us back in business and doesn’t require any further changes to the traitline.

There’s no denying it has damage potential against single targets. p/P had that going for it before the patch, not despite it.

In addition to the very similar damage spikes you’re seeing from it now, before the patch it was able to tag mobs. This is the what we are all up in arms about. When I’m out in the open world doing events, I’m not necessarily looking to see the largest possible damage spike I can do against a single target, I’m looking to be viable in group events – And that means tagging large numbers of enemies to stay competitive with the other classes that have also ranged or melee AoE along with traits that allow their attacks to pierce/bounce and hit multiple targets.

There’s no logical reason why the weapon set can’t have the damage load-out you mentioned above, which is what most of us are probably running anyways, or something very similar, and have the AoE from Ricochet as it’s always been.

This is currently the highest viewed topic on the front page of this forum and by a good margin too.

5855 and rising.

Quite sad…I finally logged onto my dual wielding gunslinger today, ported into SW to do some events. A group of us were defending Indigo fort from the inside. The doors were breached and in comes a group of Modrem. The Rangers standing next me immediately open up with Longbow Barrage AoE’s followed by Rapid Fire arrows that PIERCE deep into the oncoming enemies. And there I was, the lowly P/P thief, attacking a SINGLE target. By the time it was focused down, and I went to tag another enemy in the Zerg, the rangers pretty much had them taken care of.

Same thing at Vinewrath. Single target P/P just doesn’t get the job done. It was rather embarrassing tbh.

Devs, Please reconsider the changes you’ve made here. Either by making our projectiles pierce (like so many other classes have access to or bring back the bounce. Baseline or throw it into Trickery where it used to be.

It is especially dead for open world pve, which is what a majority of players play. No bounce also makes it completely useless in WvW to tag zergs. The only place I can see it being used is in small scale PvP against mostly inexperienced players.

Muusic.2967:

Jon,

Any word on why Riccochet was removed? This effectively ruined a large percentage of PVE Thieves who had been using this since start, many of us are sitting here with Quip and a blindsided look on our face

Someone asked him this during a Twitch stream and Jon was quoted as saying Ricochet was removed because “Too much RNG, too hard to balance around and took away from the purity of weaponset.”

Head over to the Thief forums. There’s been plenty of discussion on it.

Just read in map chat that Guardians and Mesmers can apparently combo for 40 seconds of Quickness. lol

I just don’t understand the “Too much rng, too hard to balance” excuse when there are so many similar traits spread across all the classes that have “bounces on hit.”

I also seem to remember a balance patch that came out within the last 6-8 months that, according to the devs, corrected an issue with Ricochet’s bounces to bring it more in line with what was needed out of the weapon set’s performance. I don’t seem to recall any issues being brought up by the players or the devs after that patch went live…It certainly didn’t make P/P overpowered by any means and IMO, did have a positive affect on the weapon set. I certainly don’t recall seeing any top PvP teams including a P/P Ricochet thief in ANY major events.

It’s also odd that this trait was being considered for a GM slot only 3-4 weeks ago, but in that time span someone all of a sudden thought it contradicted the “purity” of the weapon set. (No clue what that even means, or even why a similar argument isn’t being made to any other weapon set that other classes use! When’s the last time you smashed a Hammer on the ground and it created a magical ring on the ground that damaged your friends? Give me a break…That kind of logic doesn’t hold up. Not in a game based around fantasy and magic.

Now we are left with a weapon set that has zero AoE. Low damage modifiers, very situational skills, and badly FAILS to compete in every aspect of the game. Especially dynamic PvE events where tagging mobs is essential!

I could get behind changes like that.

Jon Peters was recently quoted as saying that the Pistol trait “Ricochet” was a mix of too hard to balance, too much RNG and took away from the purity of pistols." And with that, the trait was completely removed from the P/P toolkit.

If that is truly the case, how about giving our bullets a Piercing function, identical to Ranger’s Longbow trait Piercing arrows? This way, at the very least, we have some form of AoE to compensate for this game’s countless dynamic events that REQUIRE you to bring AoE to the table in order to compete and tag mobs. There would be no RNG with Piercing…

Gunslingers, is this something that you feel could work well? Or other suggestions?

By the way, big thanks to Auesis.7301 for posting the Dev response here and sharing it with us. Sounds to me like the skill won’t even be considered for the Elite spec.

Takes away from the purity of pistols? lol

Might as well take away Longbow #2 and #5 since there’s no way those are “pure” and realistic either.

Too hard to balance around? I don’t buy it.

They can’t be speaking on the damage aspect. It was never op. Even in full zerk. Was it too good at tagging enemies perhaps? The devs are aware of Guardian Staff #1 is a thing, correct?

Give me a break…

So wait, gear that has condi damage on it is not receiving the 30% increase? Only P/T/V? where was that mentioned at?

Does anyone know for sure if this applies to Amulets, Rings and Accessories as well? I’m assuming that it does.

Thanks.

Agreed. It’s no longer an option as far as I’m concerned. The very nature of dynamic events pretty much requires you to bring weapons that have reliable aoe damage in order to compete. P/P as single target? No thanks. You can’t always rely on utility skill aoe, but Ricochet got the job done and did it quite well. I loved pulling off mass interrupts and was looking forward to using that to apply torment when it was announced. Even started building a Sinister set for exactly that purpose.

Great points. They had to know it was there,as of a few weeks ago it was one of new Grandmaster traits that was competing against another valuable P/P trait, Invigorating Precision. Whoever is in charge of thief changes, IMO, is being rather reckless with this particular build and play style based on what many of us have seen from these balance tweaks over the past month.

IP vs Ricochet was simply the first red flag.

Moving Ricochet into the elite spec is far from what Id consider a proper resolution. I’m sure I’m not the only one here who doesn’t want to be forced into using two ranged weapons. (pistols / rifle). Having that melee option should remain open. And, like others have said, recycling old traits in an expansion feels like a cheap tactic and one that I dont believe has been done for any of the other existing classes.

Which begs re question, did the devs actually scrap this completely? Or will they add it to the baseline?

I hope we can get a dev response soon.

I pretty much main a gunslinger build. I crafted 2 different sets of Ascended pistols, 1 for looks, 1 for stats and also spent several months saving up gold to purchase the Aetherized pistols back when they were somewhat affordable. Needless to say, I have lots of time and money invested into the character. Not to mention, a small person guild that is themed entirely around gunslingers and an old western theme.

Now after reading these changes and wondering what the heck just happened to nearly all of the traits that made Pistol even remotely viable, (A trait, that only a few weeks ago, was apparently deemed good enough for a Grandmaster slot!) I can’t even bring myself to log in to my Thief.

Out of all the 80’s I’ve leveled up in the 3 years, Richochet was one of the best AoE tags I had at my disposal, probably 2nd to Guardian Staff #1. It worked amazing in all PvE events such as Plinx, Melandru, escort events in any map, and finally the Silverwastes…

Even if it’s been added to the Elite Spec, I’m not sure how I really feel about being forced into 2 range weapon sets at the same time. But if that’s the case, I guess we have to accept it…Really hoping they just add Ricochet to the base functionality and give pistols a nice 10% damage bonus on top of that since we’re apparently missing that trait as well.

It would be nice to get a Dev response on this. The silence leads me to believe it’s been completely thrown out the window or is being saved for the Elite reveal.

Good thought on Ricochet simply being built in to the functionality of the pistol. That easily gets my vote. It’s been said a lot of times on these forums, the pistol set needs a lot of help on being made more ‘attractive’ for players to want to use it. This would , IMO help seal the deal. We can all certainly agree that Ricochet is not a Grandmaster trait and really has no business being in that tier. Devs?

I was extremely bummed to find out that IP and Ricochet has been taken out. Especially after the nice buff we saw to IP not that long ago. P/P was already a build that wasn’t played by the vast majority of thieves so it’s sad to see fun playtyle options taken away from us.

Why not just take IP completely out as a selectable trait and incorporate it onto Unload. Give it a 10% heal and call it a day. I don’t know, just a thought.

Forgive me if this has already been brought up since the live-stream aired, but with the announcment that Quickness is now being treated as a boon, has it been confirmed that it will now stack in duration?

Thanks!

It looks like my ranger won’t be able to use Spotter and Piercing Arrows at the same time seeing as how they’re both Master Traits. Hopefully this isn’t the case…

IGN: Gilded Sappling
Server: Fergussons Crossing
Role: Scholar
Playstyle: Pve

This sounds awesome, count me in! I’ve been maining ranger since launch and have to say its my favorite class. I do have a lvl 80 mesmer that I still hop on when I need to mix it up..

I’m mostly focusing my time on doingevents in CS/Frostgorge for gathering ascended mats, occasionally eotm farming too but will help out with whatever I can. I would like to get more experience in dungeons and some of the revamped world bosses that have changed since I came back from break.

Sounds like this will be a great community and a lot of fun! I’ll send an request after I get off from work!

lvl 80 ranger – One Life One Arrow
Fergusson Crossing