Guild Wars 2

Right now the popular choices that I am reading on map chat for Raids is to bring 4 condi rangers, 2 mesmers, 2 ps and 2 druids. It’s not the best team for sure but it points out something quite stupid: The best profession to run for healer and the best class to run for DPS in the game right now is the same profession.

If nerfing the tempest a bit was just so we don’t have only tempests as DPS professions, the same treatment should be done against the condi ranger, because 6 out of 10 spots in a raid is likely to be that. Rangers already had their secured spot as druids, I don’t get to understand why their damage is so high against other professions that can only go to a raid as DPS dealers (thief)

I suspect that most of the changes done at balancing try to address stuff broken months ago, and that’s why it usually fails. 3 months ago there were tempests everywhere at raids, but now the tempests where slowly being replaced by condi rangers to the point that it’s rare to see a raid without one or 2 condi rangers, however the nerf to tempest still came up to address something that it’s not happening anymore.

Small off-topic suggestion: I think Anet should join random LFG raids with DPS meters on to see the real damage of the average population on certain professions to address better the way the meta uses them. And then manage to create a perfect balance where choosing one profession or another is actually relevant to the group and not everyone would go for the “best” one.

For me, balance means that if 2 professions (X and Y) would do 50 of damage with perfect rotations, X would bring to the party something that Y cannot, and the other way around. But right now I don’t think the game is balanced because we got X doing 34 and Y doing 41 while X bringing barely any utility and Y bringing some.

The ele nerf was highly unjustified. Ele has a hard time enough surviving high level content so now we have to suffer with a damage nerf too? I do appreciate the glyph of harmony buff. Thats the only upside about all of this.

just out of curiosity, what was the reasoning behind adding the line-of-sight requirement to Vault? I’d been using it for out-of-combat travel for a while now, but after the latest patch, I get the “no-line-of-sight” thing a lot. it kinda feels like the pathing errors on shortbow, which I was kinda hoping to avoid…

>We’re also looking to reduce the elementalist’s damage in high-level content, as this profession’s damage and utility mix currently crowds out other potential high-damage dealers.

Elementalist is the only class that has no survivability (other than the 2 dodges) and brings 0 utility to the team, especially with the Fresh Air Staff build that was very common until now. The only thing that they would bring is damage, and it required skill to stay alive as an Elementalist.

What is the place of an Elementalist now, after the patch from your prescriptive?

In the post, you guys say that tempest brings a lot of utility to the in large group content which is raids basically which is entirely not true they bring no boons and no class specific buffs either, maybe rebound but that is a very niche thing. They have such little health so giving them damage balances out and only good Elementalist players are able to pull those numbers give it to the average player and they might not even get to half. So my question is why nerf damage then? Also what utility did you guys think they gave?

I totally understand the Meteorshower nerv.

But why the Air-Overload?
D/W ele was at one level with thief and condi ranger. (and maybe engi if he is really good)
Now there are better classes in the only thing eles can do in raids.

Ok, you can heal. But then we would need an uniqe group buff or something like this. Otherwise Druids are better.

Make Eles great again!

0 love for eles huh?

I have a couple of comments regarding the rift events, one obvious and one not so.

Firstly, I would implore the Devs to look carefully at the design of all future events, so that the amount of time players are expected to ‘stand around’ waiting for things to happen is minimized.

Unless you are very lucky (and the destination rift is open), whilst completing all 13 rifts, the vast majority of your time is going to be spent waiting for a rift to open.
Yes, I know you can map back to the pond to continue but in general, a lot of the events recently involve too much standing around and it is an issue I think the Designers should consider more carefully.

The second issue may well be a bug, but for those with Alts, The Rift device is currently soulbound so can not be used on other characters. Assuming that the device may well be essential or be very useful for getting around in future, and considering that the number of possible locations you will need to visit to upgrade the device further is going to increase exponentially – obtaining one for all alts is going to be a hugely time consuming task.

good work on the speedy update to let the community know what happened. also a good lesson to everyone to understand how important 2 factor authentication is

Up until about 2 weeks ago, you could “game” the system and create multi-floor arena layouts in Gilded Hollow (I am unaware if the fix prevented it in Lost Precipice also). In which cases you could place clouds(or infact, other non-arena decorations) against the inside of the “outer” barrier" to create a staircase leading up the inside of that wall.

To clarify, there is the edge of the arena, then the toggle-able upgrade barrier, then a ring out /pit/hole and then another invisible barrier to prevent people from jumping into the arena. The clouds could be placed against the final outer barrier.

This was important because if you notice, you cannot place non-arena decorations on the floor of the arena, however you can place non-arena decorations above a certain height, using walls for support.

Combining these two things allowed me to create a staircase up the outside of the arena to reach large flat areas of a 2nd floor using the SAB floor and ramp decorations.
This meant we could bring jumping and gliding elements to our arena and make things little more interesting!
Some pictures;
http://i.imgur.com/jAvMNth.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/fDfKq23.jpg

However, as I say, about 2 weeks ago a fix was implemented that prevented you from jumping into the arena from the cloud stairs, rendering everything kind of useless and disappointing. Now if you climb the staircase and attempt to jump into the arena or the 2nd floors, you are removed with the message “Improper arena access detected” and teleported outside.

I talked with support about this but there was nothing they could do but suggest I think of a solution and post about it in the forums.

Which leads me to my suggestion. Which I, in my limited knowledge, think is the easiest way to get around the restrictions without having to do any crazy reworks;

tl;dr Use the SAB ramp and floor models, (reskin it to match the arena decor) and implement as arena obstacle upgrades.

As an arena obstacle, it would have no issue being placed on the arena floor proper, and would remove the need for the cloud staircase and jumping through the “improper entry” threshold.

Thanks for reading!

Yes.

What was that phrase? Six or nothing?

Be bold. Watch videos for VG and learn all of its mechanics as best you can. Go suicide against the trash before the boss a few times. Once you’ve done that and are very comfortable with the mechanics, join a PUG and try your best. Alternatively, you can look in the guild recruitment forums and find a guild that does raids and is flexible. Good luck!

The story was a mess, there wasnt enough time to connect to any character in HoT and I feel like that was its biggest weakness, while the commander certainly shined brighter than anyone else it came at the cost of everyone else feeling like a niche.

Eir’s death was forced for the sake of forcing it, it didnt feel necessary to kill her off but they decided to none the less in the most rushed way possible. Faolain’s death also completley undermined her potential as an interesting villian since she became nothing more than a generic modrem after that, which sucked.

The problem with HoT in terms of its story, is layers, it didnt have a kitten shred of them to save itself. Everything was face value and boringly lacking in character growth for your companions or for the antagonists motivations or why “you” should care about them.

The impact LS2 had was alot more personal in my opinion than HoT, HoT felt like a typical “bad guy attacks, we repell attack and we defeat the bad guy” story. It didnt feel like Mordremoth did “anything” truly impactful during HoT’s actual storyline except the death of Eir.

Caithe was terrible this time round, with no actual reason for screwing up than the sake of screwing up, she never developed at all throughout it and frankly the fact my commander didnt just outright shoot her in the head after all the crap she put me through was beyond me.

Rytlock was also a very “Meh” character, it was alot of Rytlock is awesome but not enough “why” is he awesome, what did he actually DO in the mists? Not gonna tell us? Well Im not gonna care much if he dies then because I dont really care about him.

DE 2.0 was a joke, Braham’s story is entirley, shaving his head after his mother died, and thats it.

Taimi was the only one that got any real char development with Scruffy dying too, but that wasnt even shocking anymore since Scruffy got broken at least 2 times before that if you played since S1.

Jory and Kasmeer’s romance just cringed as badly kitten after how amazingly it built up in season 1, plus they were just… there for the ride, it felt pointless even having them.

The only show stealing character in DE 2.0 I loved to bits and absoleutley believe 10000% stole the show was Canach. His development from season 1 shone brightly in HoT showing that he truly was a redeemed criminal with a strong conviction and yet he retained that cruel, sadistic side of his personality towards others making him a loveable kitten.

Treesus sadly was underplayed, again, another char that needed more time, as were the exalted, itzel and the entire story around the nuoch.

Simply put, HoT was too short.

It needed at least another 4-5 hours of story development with alot more character growth between it to make me care about the characters involved.

Moving forwards, my advise to A-net is, if your character has no reason to be in that situation that is going to contribute something productive to the group or to develop in a way taht would actually make a player care about them, dont include them.

Jory and Kasmeer were red herrings in this, as was Rytlock, Rox and most of DE 1.0

Nothing came out of this that honestly mattered and that dissapointed me.

TPMN.1483:

Players found Silverwaste too hard when it was released – now no-one is struggling in Silverwastes.

Mobs were nerfed, and due to elite specs players got a buff.

TPMN.1483:

Players found Upgraded TEQ too hard when it was released – now its faceroll.

Due to several serious nerfs, general power creep and megaserver supplying numbers that the original upgraded version didn’t have.

It’s funny how often in those kinds of arguments people tend to ignore that the content they are bringing up was harder before.

I really hope Anet is done with jumping puzzles.
Everything you journey to do gets you to jumping puzzles.
They add new features, but it has to do with jumping puzzles. They add new endeavours, but it has to do with jumping puzzles.
Crafting, if you want to explore it to the fullest, you gotta do a half dozen jump puzzles.
You want to get mastery points, you gotta do jumping puzzles.
You want to get gear, at some point, you have to do jumping puzzles or hundreds of other things instead, your choice.

It may be fun for those who likes it, but it is really boring to do the same jumping puzzle all the time you need some new thing that is added by that particular jumping puzzle.

I don’t get it a lot, but I have gotten it. Usually, it’s because something didn’t go as smoothly as they wanted it to. Getting it when everything goes well is crazy insane, but that’s gamers on the net for ya.

People love to be critics when they’re not the ones doing the work. Report and ignore.

yes it happens. dont tolerate it.

side note, losing 2 islands is not a clean kill and is prolly why they said something, but it isnt any commanders fault. there are 100 other people who prolly arent paying attention or dont know the fight who are to blame for that. and posting copypasta instructions into map chat is prolly the best way to make sure people know what to do and is the best thing you can do as a commander trying to lead a map to success. but one can only herd cats so much.

Sird.4536:

Are you ever going to do something on this forum? I am getting frustrated with the amount of devs that keep posting on Reddit and topics here get ignored.

While I also would like to see more dev activity on the forums, Reddit makes for a much, much more readable format for a Q&A than these forums. It’s easier to do Q&As there, in general.

Frediosz.2718:

Crash.5362:

…snip…

Dont want to destroy you perfect world but if it weren’t for Trehearne you would fail in fight against Mordy. It was HE who let you inside of Mordy’s mind and weaken him so much that he was easy to kill. HE sacrificed himself so that Mordy wasn’t able to reborn.

In the end HE transformed from marshall into a real hero that sacrificed himself for the greater good like a real hero should do – player was just a tool that finished the job.

As a famous proverb say There is no greatest thing that a human being can do then to sacrifice his life for others. So unless your toon dies permanently you wont become a true hero.

(also why whine of an NPC stealing anything from players – in a game? lolwut)

I’m afraid you missed the point.
I’m not saying Trehearne wasnt important. I’m just saying that the way the story completly shifts towards him and his story in the game ruined a lot of it for me. And that is also the general consensus, or at least was, of almost everyone who played the vanilla guild wars (Just google it out and you’ll see people’s rants about that.)

I never said he wasnt important or that he did nothing :P. lol. But having been important or not, I believe the “PERSONAL STORY” is about being PERSONAL, as in being MY STORY. IN other words, it should be about me, not about some other character that I just happen to accompany. If I wanted to see a story about a different character than my own, I’d watch a movie, or play a game in which I play a character rather than a MMO. :P

I understand there are things to be cricized about HoT, and I agree with many of them, however, for a change, I want to praise what they’ve been doing with the personal story in it, which, in my opinion, fixed MANY of the problems from the vanilla story mode.
Adressing them in order… I want to praise Anet because:
(Spoilers incoming, stay aware.)

1- Not having trehearne around and actually letting you be the one in charge, a commander, a leader.
You get credit for things you’ve done, you’re recognized, you lead a team and you call the shots. You have a voice. With Trehearne around, all you were was this “voice-less, name-less sidekick” in HoT, you get to be in the highlight, you get to have your PERSONAL STORY be YOURS again. Which, ever-since Trehearne steps into the scene, stops being the case in the original story. Thank you so much for making me feel like a really important character to this world again.

2- I actually care for the “New Destiny’s edge” characters.
I feel like many of them are way more interesting and thats a lot because, this time, we had the time to see they devleop as chracters: We seen Braham’s mother die, Kas and Marjory get together, Taimi and her issues to prove herself to the team and how she always feels like people make little ofher for being tiny… Anyway, I just feel like the characters developped through with us from ever since Scarlet up to here.
I cant help but feel much more part of “their team” than with the old Destiny’s edge, in which we kinda barelly get to know or see the characters develop much. Rytlock was the only one I really liked from the old destiny, and I was glad to still have him around. To top it off, I like how they made Caithe be a bit of a double-agent-like character and I like Canach a lot too, I feel like the characters became more colorful, instead of everyone being the “Good guy personality without much to it” that everyone had in the original destiny edge.

3- The way they dealt with the “battle with an elder dragon” situation.
To me, this was the most important bit, and the one I was happier about.
In the original story, the battle with Zhaitan, though “awesome” because of the music and the visual greatness of Zhaitan, was extremly boring and felt pretty much the same of what we had been doing all the time. I think everyone felt disappointed at that last battle, and I CAN SEE EXACTLY WHY the battle turned out the way it was.
Anet had a big problem in their hands: “An elder dragon is a HUGE thing, we cant make a couple of characters kill him on their own in a direct confrontation.” … They also couldnt let Zhaitan be a world boss, because that would make the story-mode extremly confituous, you could end up fighting zhaitan in the open world, without having evne finished your story, that would be awkward, eh ?.
…
Well, with HoT, I think they solves BOTH issues perfectly.
We get the Mouth of Mordremoth, which is basically fighting Mordremoth himself as a big-kitten dragon… Its a battle that makes sense, we’re 300 heroes together using every strategies we can to take down the beast. It feels epic, its big-scale. Its all an elder-dragon should be. And… It. Makes. Sense. After all, MOdremoth can regenerate himself for as long as his mind and the dream exists, therefore, there’s nothing wrong about dealing with him in the open-world version of him without having finished your story yet. WE get the elder-dragon boss battle we wanted… But… Something is missing: We need to feel like WE, in OUR STORY are responsible for his death… A duel! or something!
… WEll, we get that in the story. In his “dream” we fight him directly. And it was a very very interesting boss abttle to me. I loved the theme with mind-controlling, it made sense, and turning your allies back to your side to fight Mordremoth’s mind-gaming was a very cool spin on a over-used concept. It was a fun battle, and I culdnt help but feel like a kitten on the fact I was puppet-dueling with an elder dragon all on my own, toe-to-toe. Being the great hero I am in “MY personal story.”
(I reckon though, the boss-battle against modremoth’s mind, though fun and epic, could have used a bit of a balancing. He wasnt hitting hard enough to make me too worried most of the time, and the only time I felt like I could die was the gliding part, which I did, a couple of times. To top it off, he was TOO FREAKING TANKY… I run a full-zerker build on a full-ascended warrior, so my DPS is pretty high, and still, it took me a TON of time to take him down… I understand a “final boss” must be a lasting battle, but that was a bit too much IMO. I’m sure someone running a more tanky build would have gotten bored in that fight.)

… In the end of the day, I just think the story mode made many deicions that were on the right directin in comparison to what happened to the vanilla story. Not sure if people agree or not, but I used to read A LOT about people’s opinions in this game, and people used to complain about the exact same things that I adressed here.

1- Zerk =/= Zerg.

2- I did the Octovine Zerg for the first time yesterday, and it was hella fun. There was more people on the Zerg than static, so the Zerg was the real force behind the event. First we smacked East until it was close to 0 life, then North, West and South, always leaving the Octovine at the brink of death. Then the group divided in four and did the coordinated killing. Simple, effective, and fun.

3- Armors should get 4 times the reward because they cant move with the Zerg to get the other areas.

Randulf.7614:

BrotherBelial.3094:

What? I’ve not seen this ever. Maybe you’ve been unlucky with your maps, but then I’m on an EU server, so that might be it.

Im on EU, there is a rotating group on every ab meta I play.

To be honest it doesn’t appear to hurt anything. As long as no one then afks after, i havent seen any noticeable problem.

The last time I played AB, everyone seemed to rotate through all four areas as opposed to four groups staying in each one. This was the first time I’ve seen this strategy, but it worked and we got the meta done. Not sure if this is what you mean, though.

“ppl in the zerk”
You have no idea How much I want to respond with:
“as opposed to: people in the nude?”

Seriously though they can and should spread out after a rotation of all vines, so it’s not a big deal. just chill out and go with the flow on it.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Astralporing.1957:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

The future of our 5 man end game content consists of 3 minute 1 room encounters with no intricacy in level design, am I the only person in this entire game who thinks this is absurd?

You weren’t saying anything about the short fractals. You were saying that it’s a good idea to buff the longest one. In this, yeah, i think you’re pretty much alone.

The fractal wasn’t difficult or long because of two things

The fractal is still longer than other fractals AND more annoying on top of that due to what you’re supposed to do in there. Difficult? No. Annoying? Definitely.

They need to add more unskippable cutscenes to cliffside to enhance the experience like the molten duo fight. It’s super obvious that the only reason people farm fractal 40 is to watch the unskippable cutscene over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

If they add it to cliffside (preferably one cutscene every seal), it’ll seal the deal (pun intended) and totally make everybody want to run cliffside 24/7.

It’s annoying..especially the arms seals. I don;t care if they change the boss but doing the arms at a higher level is a nightmare.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

The fractal wasn’t difficult or long because of two things

when you say this it makes me think you never did 50s back in the day or 80+ today or before they reverted the scaling they introduced with hot.

the archdiviner fight has never been the hard part of the fractal, but getting 1 shot by him used to be somewhat annoying.