Guild Wars 2

Didn’t read the whole thing through but I want to say this;

Spirits for PvE won’t and aren’t broken.

Slotting Spirits Unbound trait was a waste of DPS and never ever a good choice to have. Part of being a good ranger was knowing how to manage your skills – that includes how to minimize the cooldown time of your spirits by either swapping skills or timing the placement.

60 second lasting Spirit is more than enough to kill any dungeon boss with the current state of game and with current content.

Maybe I didn’t explain it well enough.

For F-keys, you’d still have your attack/come here, just with different skill – I called it changing stance (engage/disengage). The one that makes pet passive/active I wouldn’t even consider an F skill but rather an option.

For making pet stronger, I don’t mean to give it more HP pool or anything like that. I want to be able to play with 1 pet, eg. Wolf, since as a norn, that pet is majestic and looks stunning (if it only was 50% bigger model size) – so making that single pet a bit stronger wouldn’t be a bad idea. What I meant however, is being able to choose pet’s attributes and skills.

If you were to play with 1 pet, you should be able to choose from different attribute builds (tanky, DPSy, etc.) and same goes for pet utility.

As far as leveling pet, you could level it as you level your ranger – or instantly unlock all once you hit level 80. Doesn’t really matter. I just want the pet to progress instead of staying juvenile for ever.

So, as we all know so far, we aren’t gonna get rid of our pets for quite some time. Anet decided pets are an important aspect of both Rangers and Druids and their unique thing.

This isn’t a post in which I’d cry for ability to remove my pet when in combat because I kinda like my pets.

This is a post in which, if pets really are that important aspect of this profession, they need to be more interactive.

Some of us choose our pets to be efficent, others use them for pure aestethics.

However, pets currently just seem to be there rather than actually doing anything. You have canine pets that provide interrupt on F1, drakes that provide blast and that’s pretty much it as far as the useful ones go (maybe I missed some? Don’t really play around with pets too much, only use effective ones to my needs). Then there’s this F2 skill that’s pretty much a 4th utility skill that requires queuing.

Personally, I’d love to choose a pet that I like for looks and would still be able to effectively use it.

For example, Eir’s Garm looks absolutely stunning and really gives her that unique feeling for her character.

Our pets on the other hand seem kinda small, not too impressive, certanly not a real threat in PvP content.

So my idea of how we could improve this, is to have an option to evolve our pets, be it through a course of story or a progression as we level or a simple unlock.

Things I would love to do with my pet:

• Invest points into certain attributes – Power, Precision, Ferocity, Vitality, … (Would let me build my pet to fit my needs)

• Select pet’s abilities – Complete rework to F-skill system for rangers. Instead of F1 being “Attack my target” there could be a skill that I’d want to use (such as interrupts for canine pets currently – keeping your pet passive, activating it only when needed). F2 being 2nd skill, the way it is now, maybe with a selection of different skills – depending how you build your pet. F3 perhaps being another pet skill, maybe used to tactically position your pet – and finally, F4 being a skill to change pet’s stance (Engage – Disengage).

• As I progress through content with my character, I want the pet of choice to become stronger, unlocking new pet traits/abilities, growing my pet larger (at least 33% larger if not 50% – I want it to look as majestic as Garm does). This could be achieved by giving the pet a separate progression, maybe a leveling system of a sort (Many MMOs have that – usually in a way where you “train” your skills to make them stronger).

• Be able to help my pet once it dies/goes down, I don’t care if this removes the ability to switch through different pets as you could build one to provide utility for both, I just want it to feel unique and a good part of a class, not a liablity.

What impact would these changes make?

• Provide Rangers with more interaction with their pets

• Make pets feel like a really unique profession mechanic (Currently, they feel just like an extra utility skill and a liability in many situations – If they weren’t visible, no one would probably even notice it)

• Let people who use pets for aesthetic purposes still feel effective, with ability to build their pet

I mean … There are 2 other professions that also use a similar unique mechanics;

Engineers have turrets and mesmers have phantasms and clones. Both turrets and phantasms look fearsome and you always want to destroy them, sadly, that’s not the case for Rangers … The pets just seem to be there.

Well … just my idea, I know it might be too much to ask but hey, it’s either this or ability to remove our pets from combat for me, before I am satisfied with Ranger mechanics.

Harny.6012:

klemen.8439:

First of, I don’t see where my math failed

I had a short post prepared for you yesterday but I deleted it. I was afraid it might sound rude although it wasnt meant that way.
Pity

I’ll admit that I was mistaken with the math, sorry about that … Never was my fav. class, although the percentages are right and you can double check.

As you can see someone pointed that mistake out and I got no problem admitting to being wrong.

Next time just say where I made a mistake cos I truly didn’t see the mistake :p

Tarasicodissa.7084:

I don’t question the percentage you calculated. I haven’t checked the numbers precisely, but 7-8 percent seem about right. The problem is you concluded the boost for the whole party is 5*7,48 = 37,4%. If exotic->ascended boosts your personal DPS by 7,5 percent, then you wearing it will have the whole group do 1,5% more damage overall (that is assuming every member has the same DPS, which is not true -> just simplifying). And if everyone is wearing ascended, the group as a whole will get that 7,5% boost. Not five times that.

As for the ranger vs thief problem, I would always choose thief. Rangers don’t have shorter rotations than thieves, both of them can usually execute the important attacks before the boss dies. Also, since thief has naturally more DPS, it will do more damage with conjures.
The skipping part plays an important role in coordinated runs as well, most strategies rely on not aggroing mobs and saving significant amount of time. These are not necessary by any means (you can complete the dungeon anyway), but saving time is what all of us aim for.
I have nothing against rangers. I like them and when they play well, they do decent damage as well as party buffing. I do casual runs with rangers regularly, but I was just pointing out that in optimized group ranger is probably as good as a second war (maybe a tiny bit more). You still tend to see 1 war 1 thief 2 eles 1 guard in most speedruns and there’s a good reason.

Good that we got few things straight

I’ll admit that I was mistaken with the math, sorry about that … Never was my fav. class, although the percentages are right and you can double check.

I just think you understand me wrong. I’m not saying ranger is better than thief, I’m saying that in few situations, for ex. AC where there’s practically no mob skipping, ranger can be just as effective if not more on specific fights (From my own experience, I’ve never ticked 10k hits on icebow with thief, where as with ranger I have).

As for party DPS, highest party DPS is with 1 war, 2 ele, 1 thief and 1 ranger. I’m not saying this to justify anything, I’m just trying to prove your assumptions about me being “inexperienced” because I choose ranger over thief in specific situations, wrong.

Like I mentioned previously, me playing as a ranger plays a HUGE role in filtering out newbies and wannabe experienced players from joining my LFGs. I know for certain that the moment I’ll roll guard, war or ele, my party will fill up in an instant, mostly by ~5k AP players, which I don’t mind if experienced but they usually aren’t.

pranker.3748:

I’m glad you messaged me Klemen! For daily runs it doesn’t really matter if u go with exotic or ascended and as for the tactics themselves a bit of team speak solves all the problems

I hope we can set up a trial in CM with ur biggest norn

Ah great! A fast response

As I’ve already said in this post, on Fridays I work afternoon shift so unless you have time after 20:30, I’d love to do it tomorow after 16:30 GMT+1.

Other than that, I’m free anytime, you name it.

Quick compilation why I hate CM :p
(Was a random pug for story I needed for title and far far away from typical group setup)
http://i.imgur.com/HkJQe2L.jpg

GrimmR.3541:

Hey man, there are some guilds which you might take into consideration;

[SC] Snow Crows
[qT] Quantify
[tS] Transnational Syndicate
[iV] Intricacy

Those are the guilds I can recommend.

Hey, thanks for response! I know of these guilds, however, when I was reading through their requirements, many require two fully geared classes which I understand as fully ascended and whatnot and that I don’t have.

Also, whenever I play with players from those guilds, their positioning, knowledge and tricks seem to be better than mine. I don’t know how accepting they are and willing to teach these tricks – I am most certainly willing to learn and listen.

Maybe a more transitional guild, that would give me the pillars for future dungeoneering and more experience to be more eligible for joining guilds you mentioned., would fit my experience level better?

I might be wrong though and players hit this skill cap at the same point I did and they go over that skill cap by joining one of these guilds.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Well, last time I managed to avoid 2+ warriors in a PuG group was… probably never. Nonetheless, as long as everyone plays well and knows the stuff, I don’t mind the group being suboptimal. Recently I’ve had a PuG FotM run with 3 wars and 2 eles, I was kinda afraid and ready to leave, but actually the run ended up being decently smooth (for PuGs).
klemen.8439: If I pass over the maths fail, I really hope you don’t consider yourself an experienced player. You complain about 2 warriors in a party being suboptimal, yet you bring a ranger to META parties yourslef? Meh, I’d like to see where giving up thief to make room for ranger can make DPSing bosses or skipping mobs (which is pretty much only thing you do in dungeons) go any smoother.

I’m not saying running multiple warriors is necessarily bad but it’s far from optimal.

First of, I don’t see where my math failed, if you want to, feel free to correct me but as far as I know – pure stat wise, when comparing full exotic vs full ascended, you’ll end up with chart I’ll add up as attachment.

Weapon damage excluded, you end up with 3.47% difference between the two sets and with weapon damage included, you add up 5.01% which leaves you with 8.48% and yes now I see where I failed :p basics … I was typing at 1:30 am.

Anyways, a thief might have more DPS on bosses where you can actually use it properly.

For example, in AC, you’ll rarely be able to do a full backstab+hs spam rotation properly due to bosses dieing too quickly. This is where ranger comes into play as a class that does most damage with conjure weapons ex. icebow. You precast lb5, 25% dmg boost signet and QZ, wait for boss spawn, cast LB2 to get vuln. stacks to 25 (along with other players) and then cast IB4. Just an example of how much damage IB4 deals: In CoE, I hit 10k on the average with 1 icebow projectile where as warrior for example hits 6-7k.

Another reason why ranger is good for parties is Spotter. If you’re running phalanx warrior which I prefer in PUGs since it’s far easier to stack and keep 25 might with and requires far less coordination, skill and time, a spotter gives him just enough precision so he can swap to power signet for more damage – this a thief can’t do.

As far as skipping goes in dungeons, a thief is only necessary for pugs in Arah and CM.

I don’t do CM cos I’m a Norn player and I get nervous when camera is clipping all the time.

Arah is optimal to go with thief, yes. It can do more damage due to bosses lasting just long enough to do a proper backstab+hs rotation and as always, stealth is welcome.

It is something I do know and I just roll a setup of 1 guard, 1 ele, 1 thief, 1 war and 1 ranger.

fracture.9754:

Since the last patch rangers and their pets are a broken mess, so I try to avoid them as much as possible, especially in dungeons with lots of stealthing sections (CoF P3, TA, CM, Arah, …).

Rangers are only broken mess on reddit. An experienced ranger will know how to control it’s pet, even remove it or stealth it to avoid any trouble. I never had any problems caused by pet, ever.

The only place where pet is a real liability is in CoE p2 grass boss because you can’t control robots normally.

However, there’s a very simple workaround: let 4 people do it and you wait back in the lobby.

Having 5 people doing the robots is pointless anyways since only 4 spawn. All you’d do is cause unnecessary agro to them.

Hey!

I’m looking for EU dungeon speedclear guild that is preferably semi-hardcore but can also be hardcore.

What I’m looking for in a guild

A guild that has preferably but not mandatory scheduled dungeon runs, possibly even on more occasions per each day.

Being able to provide players for daily dungeon speedclear tours, with minimal usage of LFG tool for PUGs.

Relaxed enviroment that is also able to provide knowledge needed to master what needs to be mastered, giving me good pillars for future dungeoneering.

What I can provide

Classes

• Ranger [Main] – Full ascended – 80 AR – FotM lv50 – Adaptable builds
• Guardian – Ascended trinkets + weapons – Exotic armor – Adaptable builds
• Warrior – Ascended trinkets + weapons – Exotic armor – Adaptable builds
• Elementalist – Ascended trinkets – Exotic armor + weapons – Adaptable builds
• Thief – Ascended trinkets + armor – Semi-ascended weapons – Adaptable builds

• Necromancer – Fully geared, not too experienced in PvE
• Engineer – Fully geared, not experienced in PvE at all
• Mesmer – Fully geared, semi-experienced in PvE

Personal info

Age: 20
Country: Slovenia
Teamspeak + working microphone: Yes
Timezone: GMT+1
Note about playtime:
I can adjust my playtime and attend dungeon runs at anytime from;

• 10:00 – 0:00 GMT+1 (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday)
• 10:00 – 13:00 + 20:30 – 0:00 (Thursday, Friday)
• 16:30 – 0:00 (Saturday)

Experience in dungeons

I know most tactics used in dungeon speed clears (Can provide details or do trials) for AC, SE, CoF, CoE, Arah and FotM 50 – there’s always place for improvements and I am more than happy to learn new tactics (Would avoid ones using major exploits such as map-breaking etc.).

I am not so experienced in CM which I dislike doing because most of my characters are Norn and my camera just clips insanely in this dungeon, but I haven’t tried it with the recent camera update so I’ll leave it as an open field – willing to learn tactics.

I am also not so experienced in TA, however I know tactics for this dungeon, I just can’t do it flawless.

Conclusion: I’m not super extra pro MLG player that will never go down so please, keep your expectations as real as is the provided information.

Other notes:

• Willing to adapt builds
• Currently not willing to craft heavy/light ascended armor set
• Willing to learn and adopt different playstyles and tactics
• Already am using consumables, even top notch ones

That’s about it, if you need more info just ask for it here or add me in-game!

Nikaido.3457:

I can’t even.

Message Body length must at least be 15.

This is probably my lfg lol.

I always do it like this:

READ: Gearcheck – 1x phalanx war, 2x dps ele, 1x guard – metazerk + food, exp pplz – x path

(Classes change depending on dungeon and amount of friends/guildies tagging along).

You might laugh but it’s actually the most efficent way to find PUGs from my experience.

Playing as a ranger myself, filters out all those unexperienced “all warrior elitist wannabe mlg pros” and gearcheck filters out anyone who wants to get carried.

The way my LFG is written usually attracts people with ~15k AP in the average (based on doing it the same way for past few months), 9/10 times, people actually know what to do and 5/10 times, we do a full dungeon tour – for example, just today, we did a dungeon tour in under 2 hours (AC123, SE13, COE123, COF1, TAupfw) with everyone being a complete stranger to one another.

Not to mention that 7-8/10 times people who join are fully ascended which is individually 7.48% damage boost but in a party full of ascendeds, that’s 37.4% damage boost which is always welcome!

I don’t mind waiting up to 15 minutes (even tho it’s usually ~5min wait) if the dungeon goes smoothly. I enjoy doing dungeons with people that make them enjoyable rather than struggling on basics, even though due to the waiting time, some less “elitist” (bad word but can’t find better one) PUGs can do it faster overall (Wait time + dungeon time).

Anyways, back to the point of OP;

LFGs I find funny the most:

Metazerk full exp ppl only War/Ele/Thief/Guard – more than 1 warrior on 1 team

Full zerk exp ppl only!!!! 7.5k AP+! (No ranger/necro) – 3 warriors on 1 team

There are few similar ones but they all carry the same point.

Here’s my message to you if you do the LFG-of-above-type:

Your argument of being experienced fails the moment you run more than 1 warrior in your party. Same goes for when you do the No ranger part – it’s simple, if you think warrior is good for your DPS, you’re more than wrong and hopefully, my blocklist will keep you away from me.

RoseofGilead.8907:

No, not all give you an aura. Kudzu, Meteorologicus, and Flameseeker Prophecies (although the shield is so big that it’s almost like it gives you an aura while you’re using it) all don’t have an aura. There may be more. And Kudzu was my first legendary. I’m not disappointed with it at all.

Edit: And, honestly, kudzu is one of the cheaper (and, thus, easier) ones to make. It requires no lodestones, for example. And one of its gifts is a Gift of Wood, which is one of the cheapest/easiest to get.

Well, the price differences on TP are 100-200 gold and precursor sure isn’t one of cheapest.

So I wouldn’t say it requires any less effort than other legendaries (Except Eternety for obvious reasons).

So I’ve just recently crafted my Kudzu and there’s one thing I’ve noticed.

All (correct me if I’m wrong) legendaries give your player an aura or a cool effect on the wielding hand.

Kudzu for some reason doesn’t.

It has the least effects of all legendaries and it just seems kinda unfair that it requires same amount of effort as other legendaries but doesn’t deliver nearly as much.

Is this a common issue among the people who crafted Kudzu or am I the only one disappointed here?

Ok I’ve found some ridicilous statements and I’ll just say it now, yes I’m offended by rangers being easy and cheezy class.

I have all 8 classes on 8 and am very good with most of them (-engi and -ele which I don’t play anymore nowdays).

To say a class is easy to play and all you have to do is spamm buttons that’s a wrong statement.

In dungeons, most classes do highest DPS on auto attack rotation:

Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Necromancer, Elementalist, Mesmer
(And NO! Warrior doesn’t do highest DPS with GS HB, it just gives fancy numbers)

So basing a statement that a class is easy based on skills you have to press is pure dumb.

Legend:
RAO – Rampage as one (Elite)
SotW – Signet of the Wild
QZ – Quickening Zephyr
LB – Longbow
A – Axe
AA – Auto attack
S – Sword
GS – Greatsword

PvE content first

Ranger’s main rotation for dungeons:

RAO -> LB5 -> SotW + QZ -> LB2 -> Swap to S/A -> A4 -> Proceed with S AA chain until the opponent dies

Simuntaniously you must control your pet which you should of course keep on defensive so it doesn’t agro mobs (Reason why many people dislike rangers is pets agroing unnecessary/unwanted enemies – this doesn’t happen while pet is on defensive! Not even if the whole team is in stealth and the pet isn’t, it will not agro mobs).

After you do your rotation to the point where you just continue with AA chain, comes the hardest part of the ranger and it’s what makes difference between a good ranger and a very experienced ranger (This is past the point when a ranger knows to adapt weapons and utilities properly) – it’s breaking the AA chain without DPS loss in order to evade attacks, pick up conjures or rez an ally.

PvP content

For PvP there really isn’t any standard rotation. A good ranger knows how to adapt to the situation and the enemy he’s facing.

Usually, most noob rangers will engage with LB2 and then go LB5, rooting themselves – giving opponent the time to come close and nuke them down.

Someone also said a ranger is useless in higher-skilled PvP parties because it’s easy to counter. That is untrue on many levels. I’ve watched plenty of PvP matches and many times there was a ranger on the team – be it for spirits or power ranger.

A power ranger is really really good at countering other power classes like power necro and thief in solo situations and in group fights it can do an ENORMOUS AOE BURST which usually downs any zerker fighting on point.

Common weapons used in PvP:

LB+GS (If you’re really good with sword, you can do with S/D)

To answer OP question now, why you’re seeing so many rangers in WvW lately:

Ranger is a class that is really easy to get hands on. You grab your bear which you send in to attack the enemy and cleanse your conditions while you shoot at the enemy from a safe distance.

Most rangers you’ll ever come across are noobs and I’ll never stand down from this statement.

How to spot a noob ranger:

Uses longbow to attack, uses shortbow as panic weapon or a greatsword as an alternative escape weapon – not knowing that greatsword on ranger is one of if not the best counter melee weapon in the game right now.

How to spot a good ranger:

Uses meta weapons (PvE – S/A + LB, PvP/WvW – GS or S/D + LB), SotW, Grey wolf, Spider, Krytan hound, Jungle stalker, Jaguar.

That said, these are things you can spot instantly on a ranger without being in combat or asking him to ping stuff.

Also, this does not make that specific player a good ranger, it’s just somewhat a base line on which you can judge whether to keep that ranger in your dungeon party or not etc.

If the ranger is really good, you’ll notice superior DPS to one you’d get in a 3war parties.

Drawing a conclusion now;

Ranger as a class was hated for 2 years straight in PvE content and it still is by some players although times are getting better.

It is hands down one of easier classes to start with – along with Warrior and Necromancer – but it is a very hard class to master.

With the ranger, it’s all about timing, positioning and knowing your opponents or in other words, being aware of the situation you’re facing.

So please, don’t ruin what ranger has become. It’s one of my favorite classes and I was unable to efficiently play it due to clkittene, don’t spoil it.

And for the record OP:
“I heard that their damage output is meh”

Ranger’s DPS is 4th best DPS when played as it should be (that is not spamming LB AA etc.)

DPS rankings are following: Thief – Ele – Engi – Ranger – Guardian+Warrior – Necro – Mesmer

So please, don’t talk nonsense ^^

nGumball.1283:

klemen.8439:

• Dungeons
• Raids
• Races
• End to all zerker all dps
• Complexity to dungeons
• Non-heavy classes

The first two points aren’t confirmed. They may be added to the new region. Not a new raiding system but perhapd, raid-like content in the new maps.

Well, according to their FAQ (https://help.guildwars2.com/home);

Q: When is the next big feature reveal for what’s coming in this expansion?

A: We wanted to reveal Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns when we were ready to talk about every major feature we’re planning. That’s why right now, every major feature planned for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is there for you to check out at http://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com. That said, there are so many details left to uncover and share with you, to show you, and to eventually let you play as we take you on the journey from now through launch.

… every major feauture was revealed or mentioned.

As far as I know, dungeons/raids and new races are major feautures in the MMO genre. What would MMOs be without dungeons and races?

• Dungeons
• Raids
• Races
• End to all zerker all dps
• Complexity to dungeons
• Non-heavy classes

jackaljag.8637:

Mainstream PUG is so far from meta it wouldn’t reach it with traited grenades.

Yet again, you fail to understand the definition of meta and the type of meta that’s being discussed in this post.

Molch.2078:

klemen.8439:

Q: Do you realize you can play any role you want? Just join parties that don’t say meta zerker speedruns!
A: I know this and I do run meta, but it’s boring, it doesn’t bring any challange and complexity and the whole concept of current meta is based on exploiting issues with current AI and other mechanics such as buffs and debuffs.

You can quote this as often as you want, but it still doesnt make sense. The question is “why do you play meta when its boring” and your answer is “I play meta and it’s boring”.

I hate the meta and I find it boring, yet I want the shinies and in order to be efficent, I have to play it for fast gold.

As for that guy smacktalking, be my guest, make a list of your issues and keep on talking. You haven’t played with me, you don’t know me, you don’t know how long and how i’ve been playing the game or what I have accomplished and vice versa. I don’t go around calling you a noob as I have nothing to back up my statement, and the same goes for you.

As for your understanding of meta, let me break it up for you. Meta is the most optimal way to do something. Hardcore and competitive takes on the meta might be far more efficent. Currently, there are builds that can be better than meta but only if used properly, yet they are not meta because the majority of people would be unable to use it properly and it would result in being less efficent than the current one.

And meta isn’t DnT world record run or whatever guild holds most records nowdays (SC maybe? not sure). Meta isn’t guild run or run with your friends, meta is mainstream PUG run where things are done as efficent as possibly. Of course meta has many different meanings but it’s the one that’s being discussed in this presentation and post but again, you would’ve known if you would’ve read.

You’re being ignored until further notice.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

klemen.8439:

oxtred.7658:

Won’t comment on this one, I was toxic enough for today. I lol’d at the fgs part, though.

Try the Noob guild, they help people inexperienced in dungeons.

Maybe read before judging people’s experience I’ve been playing this game for 2 years using meta, even doing hardcore dungeon speedclears but I am sick and tired of doing the same thing in same content for 2 years straight.

I think you’ll find he did. Or ox is very good at estimating players skill with very little information. Either way, ox is correct, you should go away, and learn the meta, before sprouting about it. See further up about the 29 page thread i linked? Take your own advice, and go read it before making claims.

How is he right? I play in meta for 2 years but am tired of it. How does this make me need instructions for new players? Are you dumb?

Minigrump.4961:

please tell me in what situation inside a dungeon would you just button mash and it being mindless? And there is complexity and challenge, but it is stale, 2 year old content. So for that bit I agree with, that we need new content. But sadly Arena Net disbanded their dungeon team and are no longer paying any attention to dungeons.

Whenever I play Arah, AC, CoF, CoE,… I precast my utilities as a warrior/ele, and then just do my basic skill rotation. And yes, it’s in singular because most bosses die within 10 seconds.

When playing guardian, there is complexity to some extent and you do have to pay attention to other party members who get debuffs etc. but I’ve already made guardian an exception and my main prof a long time ago due to exact same reason.

Minigrump.4961:

I think it goes ele, thief, engi, guard(with unscathed contender), ranger, warrior, mesmer.

I left necro out because nobody uses necro. And I might have gotten guardian and ranger mixed around tho with their spots.

Edit: for proper groups, not pugs.

In proper groups I think it’s thief, ele, ranger, guard/warrior, engi/necro, mesmer.

Necro and engi both deal quite good spike damage with wells/grenades where as mesmer is very low on DPS and is useful for his utilities. Necro is useless for bringing 0 contribution to the team other than dps.

As far as I know, thief is currently highest DPS, being able to strike 100k damage with use of heartseeker in under 5 seconds. Ele follows up with the use of meteorite shower, lava fond and ice bows.

Ranger engages with lb2 and casts 5, then goes sword/axe, throwing axe 4 and spamming sword auto attack. This is 3rd highest dps afaik.

Minigrump.4961:

klemen.8439:

The whole concept of warrior, being vanilla class, is wrong. You can’t have it all, you can’t have highest hp, highest armor/defence rating and fit in top3 highest DPS in the game.

wait where did you get this info from? warrior is definitely not in the top 3 dps in the game. Isn’t it like 5th or 6th?

I’m not speaking on base of minimalist profesional and proper party specs and calculations. I’m speaking based on PUG meta and in PUG meta, warrior is easy top 3 DPS because to out-dps a warrior with a guardian/ranger you need greater knowledge to skill rotations and find proper use for them.

Even in proper groups, warrior is still easily top4 DPSer, sharing 4th place wiht guardian probably – don’t take my word on it though.

Minigrump.4961:

i know this is highly unlikely, but it feels that all these threads about the meta needing to change are created by the same person with a lot of different accounts

Not really, it’s just probably people getting sick and tired of doing exactly same thing they did 2 years ago. Stack, buff, spam dps – 0 complexity, 0 challange.

At least I am sick and tired of it. Most of posts against current meta I’ve read are from people disappointed with the fact that their prefered professions and playstyles aren’t as efficent. And I understand them, it’s totally true and it needs to change but there are too many people enjoying the comfort of mindless buttonbashing and easy grind.

Molch.2078:

Every stat-combination is used in dungeons. Not neccesary by the people you play with, but I know enough people running condition damage, celestial, knights/zerk mix or whatever. Noone of them calls them best and noone joins “p3 gear check 17k AP” runs, but they are not useless. That’s quite an insult.

Q: Do you realize you can play any role you want? Just join parties that don’t say meta zerker speedruns!
A: I know this and I do run meta, but it’s boring, it doesn’t bring any challange and complexity and the whole concept of current meta is based on exploiting issues with current AI and other mechanics such as buffs and debuffs.

Molch.2078:

Lupicus Dome is caled “Necrid Trap” and he uses it on tragets that stand not near enough to him. If you don’t try to run away from him, why shold he try to trap you? And Bosses using different moves for melee and ranged targets is fine imho.

The problem still persists, such mechanics glorify the use of melee and that’s against the mindset to suit everyone’s playstyle. Ranged damage in dungeons is ignored and that’s not right. With the balance of DPS-Defence ratio, that would change as the more risks you have to take to deal higher DPS, the squishier you would be and along with proper boss mechanics, that leads to stay behind and range the boss while tankier people can melee it.

The whole concept of warrior, being vanilla class, is wrong. You can’t have it all, you can’t have highest hp, highest armor/defence rating and fit in top3 highest DPS in the game. That’s wrong, higher the risk, higher the DPS is how it should be.

And don’t get me wrong. I know there are classes that do excel at ranged damage – Ranger having 5k auto attacks on longbow range over 1.000 and elementalist getting 10% damage boost while in range of 600. I also know elementalists risk a lot by staying at melee range but they could easily stay at 600 range and still deal the same if not more amount of damage due to easier upkeep of 90%+ HP Scholar buff. However, for the sake of party, you are to stay stacked on boss to exploit the targeting mechanic which I haven’t adressed. The problem with it is that the damage will spread among 5 people instead of a single or doubble target, and that again results in less need for support, no need for control, in fact control is NOT wanted usually as it pushes bosses away, and easier use of full on DPS builds. There’s no complexity here.

Molch.2078:

They introduced ferocity because they wanted to make crit dmg work like crit chance. It is kinda strange if you have to watch out to use rings for crit dmg and not pants or vice versa because one of them gives a better % to statpoints ratio.

And they nerfed Zerk because some people were crying. And it changed nothing.

And I’m not saying to nerf zerk, I’m suggesting to improve mechanics such as AI and buffs/debuffs to create demand for more supportish roles. Along with advanced AI, this would finally bring the long promised trinity that Anet introduced pre-launch – Support/DPS/Control.

Molch.2078:

By the way, what is your problem with blinds and blocks? Both aegis and blind only negate one single hit, and many mobs hit multiple times with a single attack. Good luck stacking against arah trash mobs without projectile protection. They own some mobs, but I dont see the problem with that.

With thief spamming blind fields or guardian spamming F1 on a meta build while killing trash mobs, when done properly, it negates 100% damage income. What bothers me here is that being able to do such things with any build, it leads to everyone using berzerker as it is highest DPS. The problem here is, higher risks = higher damage, but when you can easily negate 100% of incoming damage, the risk doesn’t persist.

As for the blocks, if you play with a guardian that knows when to time his blocks, you are once again able to negate 100% of incoming damage. Of course, I’ve split blinds and blocks into two issue categories – blinds being an issue versus multiple monster stack where as blocks being an issue versus single targets such as bosses.

The idea of blocks and blinds is good but if we want to create demand for game complexity and usage of other builds in the meta, their effects need to be nerfed.

evilunderling.9265:

Moreover, the game already makes successful use of co-ordination and positioning checks — such as Ralena & Vassar from AC and the Dredge Fractal boss — despite not having stock MMO-style tanks.

As for the assertion that trinities somehow lead to better teamwork, please could you explain your reasoning?

24 paths, excluding story instance and I did say dungeons. Fractals are great as they are – mechanic wise.

To answer your question, let’s take a sample PUG meta group:
1 Guardian, 1/2 Elementalist, 2/3 Warriors – this is what I call a standard group.

In that group, warriors in particular, pre-cast their banners and after that, all they do is solo. Not solo as in soloing all the bosses but mind their own business. There’s no to little cooperation and the only actual cooperation we have is those 321go bits of the dungeon that are pathetic.

Elementalist also spawns a fire field, does ~3 blast finishers (considering eles usually run staff in PUGs) and after that, it’s minding their own business.

As for guardian, this is the only profession currently that focuses on other players over himself. It’s the reason why I chose it as my main profession (and don’t get me wrong, I play all 8 prof on lv80 meta). It is one of rare classes that has to adjust his skills to the situation for group’s sake – wall of reflection, stability, protection, aegis and so on and so forth.

Sure warriors, eles, thieves and mesmers also have to adjust their skills to the situation from time to time but …

… skills eles will get are self-dependent and don’t benefit the group (flash, mist form).
Skills warriors take are also self-dependent and don’t benefit the group either (berzerker stance, dolyak signet, …).
As far as mesmers go, they aren’t as demanded class for daily speedclears, but when they are needed, their extra duration on glamour skills does indeed impact the group so they’re a class in-between.
Thieves will change skill sets but only for stealth stacking which is also questionable. There’s no content that actually requires you to have stealth from a thief, as long as you’ve got the skills for it. It does make that content easier with a thief however, therefore I put them in question.

Currently, there is no actual teamwork, the one where team needs to synchronize their skill rotations, positioning and what not. And in the current build, this is acceptable. Why?

Well, with 5 members spamming as much DPS as they can create, any boss in a dungeon will die within 10 seconds – giving them no to little chance of even using some of their abilities.

However, in my presentation I didn’t jump on this problem from a perspective that we need a nerf for current damage. Rather than that, I suggest we make ourselves more vulnerable to bosses’ attacks and that will start a process of creating a demand for some sort of trinity, more teamwork as players will need to cooperate and help eachother if they are to survive the fight.

Although, I doubt this would be enough for major changes, so I also suggested a fix for AI, where they don’t follow you up in a stack. From lore and sence perspective, how much sense does it make that a human-sized boss can take on a team of 5 outstanding heroes? Well, in a stack, very little as the boss can’t use the enviroment to his advantage – it’s similar as if you’re cornered by a group of 5 street fighters. In an open fight however, the boss, even though your size, can pick his targets and make his focuses, taking you down one by one and equalizing the fight. Such mechanics are used in fractals and they work, why not have them in dungeons as well? Well, we probably have them, they just don’t work properly.

On top of creating the demand for more support and fixing how AI acts in fights, I also suggested a few solutions for rewarding system.

Since the fights would last longer – considering not everyone will be able to 100% spam their DPS all the time – time to complete content would extend. To make it worthwhile, I’ve made few suggestions for different dungeon types and difficulties:
Easy mode to attract lower leveled players – bosses wouldn’t use too many abilities,
Normal mode as the one we have now,
and Hard mode where bosses would get BAM mechanics.

As the final difficulty I suggested a legendary mode or a raid, but more about that you can read in my presentation.

All this stuff is to bring complexity to the game. I don’t want DPS and berzerker to disappear, they’re very useful stats and I’m fully aware that everyone will try to play at highest DPS possible, it’s just the risks we take for such high DPS need to be higher in order to create a bit of a challange.

oxtred.7658:

*All stats are used outside of speedclears and optimized runs. The fact that berserker is the best doesn’t imply that all stats aren’t usable.

• Monsters aren’t only vulnerable to condi. THey have high armor rating, that’s all. A berserker build is still faster in killing time due to the ramp-up time and the condition cap.
• This show how much you need a teaching. Please tell me one skill lupi or alphard won’t use against a wall.
• The ferocity patch actually increased a lot the damage output in low level dungeons. It was a nerf only for level 80 dungeons.

But yeah, please tell us more about your daily dungeon tour using fgs.

And the condition issue has been also adressed in my google doc presentation. Of course you would know that if you read at least combat parts of it or even by looking at table of contents.

Lupi doesn’t use dome when in melee range. That’s for one.
Alphard’s minions are often obstructed while you are in melee range and stacked against a wall/corner.

The fgs was only an example of how competitive guilds ignored exploits, once again. If you read it, you would know what I said and wouldn’t twist words. My conv with you is done until you grow some respect and until you fully read and understand what is said.

As for the part of being able to play any build, ONCE again, if you read things, you’ll be much wiser. Here’s a quote from the first post pointed exactly at people like you:

Q: Do you realize you can play any role you want? Just join parties that don’t say meta zerker speedruns!
A: I know this and I do run meta, but it’s boring, it doesn’t bring any challange and complexity and the whole concept of current meta is based on exploiting issues with current AI and other mechanics such as buffs and debuffs.

Pull your head out of your butt, bye.

Jerus.4350:

Again, 2/24…

As for the rest, I just have to say I disagree on just about everything but the comments on Conditions (which to my knowledge are only good in PVE for a few professions in solo settings).

I will point out, that you seem to understand that teamwork is available and is good in this game, it’s simply that PUGs don’t take part in it. I’d like to highlight that last part, why do you think PUGs don’t utilize these advantages that we can gain through teamwork (defiance stripping, reflect rotations, stealth, etc)? It’s simply because PUGs don’t like to communicate, so any changes that would require more talking… how popular do you think it’ll be?

What bosses don’t use skills if you stack btw? I know Lupi won’t use his Rapid Fire if you wall him, but what others? I know there are some bosses that have melee and range attacks and will use whichever the situation demands, but that’s not the same thing.

Currently, zerker is the best meta because you can basically negate the damage by 100% using various techniques.

Now, I never said we should force implement anything like trinity.

By making those damage modifiers such as blinds and blocks less effective, while also fixing bosses’ damage values (removing one shot kills and adding more damage over time attacks), it would create a greater demand for support and control. Keeping bosses with melee attacks away from your DPS core party would be cruical, as well as the support, which includes healing, buffing and removing debuffs.

A PUG party currently doesn’t need to communicate in order to still do things efficently. However, by changing the way damage modifiers work, it would demand from players to prepare themselves for each situation. It would work similar to now, except there would be much more complexity if one will be unable to just 100% block and ignore all the damage.

Spider queen didn’t use poison AoE fields until recent patch.
Lupi doesn’t use dome while in melee range.

There are of course other bosses that have the same issue but along with that, the game is too focused on melee combat and limits playstyles available.

Oh also, I’ll give you the 2/24 when you’ll tell me one class that efficently and commonly uses full Assassin’s build.

oxtred.7658:

Won’t comment on this one, I was toxic enough for today. I lol’d at the fgs part, though.

Try the Noob guild, they help people inexperienced in dungeons.

Maybe read before judging people’s experience I’ve been playing this game for 2 years using meta, even doing hardcore dungeon speedclears but I am sick and tired of doing the same thing in same content for 2 years straight.

Molch.2078:

You can only fix things that are broken. Just because you think that something is broken doesn’t make it broken. Just because you say “THIS is an exploit and THIS is not” doesn’t make it true. You say “AI should never act the way they do” and I ask you: “Who the heck do you think you are to make such absolute claims?”

If there are people who dont play gw because they cant play a healer, thats fine by me.

Oh and edit: I want to remind you that your entire statement is still based on the fact that you want the best results. As soon as your “new player” doesn’t need his legendary in 2 weeks he can do whatever the heck he want. And thats the great thing about this game. Not everything is optimal, but everything is possible. Go back to gw 1 and try uw hm with, idk, 8 minion masters or 8 prot monks and tell me how well that went.

If that’s the case and I’m mistaken about mechanics in this game being broken,

• How do you explain 23 unused stat combos, with 20 of those primarly designed for PvE, considering PvE is the vanilla?
• Why do developers add monsters that are only vulnerable to condition damage? Is it because game isn’t broken and they just want to add additional stuff or is it because they want to slowly fix and balance it out?
• If being able to stack against the wall, preventing monsters to use certain skills, isn’t a broken mechanic or an exploit in other words, what do you call it? Skill? I doubt
• If the mechanics aren’t broken, how come with each patch we get a fix for content, just like Spider Queen was fixed not too long ago? Same goes for Lupi, Alphard, …
• Why were there nerfs done to Berzerker builds?
• Why did they introduce ferocity?

These are questions you can start with, I’m sure I can think of more later on.

In case I am wrong, I will stand corrected. However, I would love to hear Anet’s official opinion on their satisfaction with the game as it is right now.

Jerus.4350:

The only problem with control is that with how defiance is set up it really requires good communication. If you watch the videos of premade groups they utilize it quite well, if anything close to that was possible in a less organized group with less communication then control wouldn’t be viewed so negatively.

As far as Support… /shrug, look at most trinity games. 1 heal,1 tank, rest dps, so yeah…

As far as the reply in general… I’d have to argue the opposite. The idea that people enjoy the current setup is exactly why major changes shouldn’t happen. Now some new content with altered AI and what not, that coudl be cool. But nothing kittenes off a player base more than massive changes to the current gameplay. Look at SWG NGE if you want the prime example.

And personally I think blinds are possibly a bit overkill, but mainly just thief’s, the rest are more like blocks… you can’t block everything. Active defense is what makes this game fun, if you play correctly you can really do well. It’s not about wearing the right gear but having enough skill.

That’s your opinion and I’ve gotta respect it for that but I will still argue with it.

Changes are always welcome, even major ones. Current player-base in Guild Wars 2 doesn’t consist of core players – those who are willing to dedicate to the game 100%. Percentage of such players is rather small because they aren’t satisfied with the game how it is, and I’m one of them. Just look at how many players GW2 had at launch and how many it has now. Or look at how many veteran players still play every day … not too many.

We were promissed things before the launch and the promisses weren’t kept. I’ve seen some work done in this direction (increasing boss damage – hence why we got 1 shot kills and wipes) but they were fail attempts to fix combat issues.

The concept of blinds and blocks is nice but if they negate 100% damage, it gives berzerker gear in such huge advantage that we get 1 out of 24 stat combinations being used in GW2.

Not to mention that conditions currently have NO solid state in PvE.

This game is huge, it has tons of potential but it’s all hidden behind 1 build and 1 gear. The game is far from satisfying everyone’s playstyle as it should and it’s far from working the way it was designed to work.

As far as skill goes, currently, there’s no skill other than making sure you survive.

There’s next to none team-work other than 321go mechanics which are laughable, there’s no complexity and skill rotations remain the same for 2 years.

And I’m not saying all this requires no skill as we’ve got some kitten good guilds but they are guilds afterall and they use minimalist things for best possible outcome, using great teamwork – but that is currently impossible and not glorified in PUG parties.

Having more build complexity and more combat mechanics, suiting everyone’s playstyle, this game’s learning curve would grow huge. Currently, once you learn when to dodge, block and blind, you’re the master of this game.

Molch.2078:

So, let me get this straight: You want all those huge changes to the game and your only reason is because… the way you want to play the game is not the way you get the most shinies…

Egoistic. There are people who like the game as it is, what about them? And by the way, stacking in corners with meta groups is not even close the best way to make money.

Edit: I want to mention that this is only about the gameplay changes you suggest. A lot of the other stuff, like new classes or better game balance are very valid points I’d love to see.

I don’t see how it’s egoistic from me when all I’m asking for is this game to be fixed.

The way combat mechanics are now and the way the AI acts in dungeons is far from how it was designed. Anet promised us a type of trinity but a different one from what we see in classic MMOs. Instead of healing, dps and tanking, we were supposed to get support, dps and control. Hence why we have so many control skills but at the moment, we’re only using 80% of DPS, 19% of support and 1% of control. That is far from a balanced and challanging trinity.

I know many people like it and that’s the problem. There are way too many comfortists in GW2. The blocks and blinds are overpowered for PvE the way stealth is overpowered for PvP. AI should never act the way they do (following into corners and not using all skill rotations when in range under 150).

I’m sorry if I’m attacking you with this reply but by saying,

Egoistic. There are people who like the game as it is, what about them?

this is the dummest counter-argument I’ve heard in ages. Of course everyone will love exploits and use them as long as they can, doing the easy mode. But there are also people who don’t like exploits and want to play the game without bugs – afterall we did buy it and personally I buy lots of gems.

The people who like the game as it is are comfortists and they’ll like it however the game will be, as long as they can make quick gold. Who is being egoistic here would be rather you because you leave out all those newcommers who want to play the game as they like it, but sooner or later find out that their cool necromancers, rangers and engineers aren’t that desired in dungeons and that they can’t play healer/tank/support roles the way they enjoyed them in previous MMOs.

And what’s even more heartbreaking is that sooner or later, they all find out that this game is 90% melee in PvE. Those 10% are ranged bosses with PUGs in high level fractals.

It’s almost impossible to get completely new players to MMO genre in 2012-2015, when there were so many other MMOs players were exposed to pre-GW2 and many have preferenced playstyle based on those previous MMOs, so having no type of trinity is lack of complexity.

petyr baelish.9675:

I ask because you mention stacking bosses and using FGS. I assume with stacking you are referring to using LOS to place bosses against walls.

99% of PUG meta groups I join still use LoS to lure monsters/bosses in corners. FGS was just an example of how competitive guilds refrain from using what some call exploits.

Molch.2078:

Before I dive deeper into this discussion, I have one small question regarding this:

Q: Do you realize you can play any role you want? Just join parties that don’t say meta zerker speedruns!
A: I know this and I do run meta, but it’s boring, it doesn’t bring any challange and complexity and the whole concept of current meta is based on exploiting issues with current AI and other mechanics such as buffs and debuffs.

If you think meta is boring, and if you know that you don’t need to run meta, then why do you run meta? If you think stacking is an exploit, then why join groups who stack? You need ~5 minutes more to find such groups. I know this for a fact because it’s exactly what I do when I am bored.

I disagree with current meta but I still want to get the shinies. And for shinies you require gold, of course I will go with the most efficent way to gain it.

Sometimes when I’m bored, I join those “all welcome” parties for AC and carry level 35s and I do enjoy doing that but it just doesn’t give me what I need.

petyr baelish.9675:

klemen.8439:

Also, many competitive guilds refrain from using exploits such as stacking and using fiery greatswords.

How long has it been since you’ve done a dungeon?

Why do you ask? I do them every day joining meta groups.

However, I do quit the game after a week or two due to lack of motivation to keep playing it, but whenever I return after a month or few, I barely notice any changes so.

Jerus.4350:

O.o??

Mesmers are part of almost every record run, and if we’re not talking record runs then engi and rangers both have spots if properly played.

Again though, Warden’s feedback is the key support trait on mesmer, also far reaching manipulations to get some of the portal tricks done more efficiently. Even Harmonious Mantras at times could be fitting, though I don’t think it’s generally meta.

Also, Subject alpha isn’t stacked in Meta runs, maybe PUG runs, but path1 it’s very dumb to stacks, and path 2/3 you’re going to save time by simply rushing in and killing, especially the second spawn.

(also, even if it’s only a few professions who prefer assassins, it’s still 2)

You’re mixing meta with competitive record dungeoneering.

Meta is the standard and best option to go when doing daily dungeons. It’s based on PUG groups rather than competitive guild groups. In competitive guild groups, rangers and engineers also find spots due to 10% and 25% damage increase (ranger the spirit and engineer vuln stacks).

Also, many competitive guilds refrain from using exploits such as stacking and using fiery greatswords.

Jerus.4350:

I got through part1, few comments already…

First, 1/24 stat combos used? you showed yourself it’s 2/24

Second, Meta Mesmer has multiple builds, some of which include support traits (warden’s feedback anyone?). Thief will also swap for longer stealths for some skips if they feel like it.

Third, Subject alpha and Alphard can both one shot as well.

Assassin’s gear is viable for some professions but isn’t common.

Mesmers are useful but not too demanded for meta parties. I haven’t played my mesmer a lot but as far as the build goes, only thing that wasn’t DPS oriented was switching traits for additional glamour skill duration mostly for fractals.

As for subject alpha and alphard, they don’t fit in the category of non-stacking bosses so their one shot abilities don’t fit into a counter-argument to my statement sorry.

Hey there!

In this post, I am going to address issues that have been bugging me a lot over past few days. After 2 years of Guild Wars 2 exsistence, these issues still persist and I haven’t heard a single word from Anet about them being fixed.

Before we get going, this is mainly focused at current meta of doing things in Guild Wars.
__________________________________________________________________

TL;DR Scroll down to Part 2 and follow the link, enjoy more reading!
__________________________________________________________________

PART 1
__________________________________________________________________

Let’s start …

Currently, there are 24 different stat combinations to choose and build from. I’ll make a list of them and cross out those that are almost never used in the game:

• Berserker’s
• Zealot’s
• Soldier’s
• Valkyrie
• Captain’s
• Rampager’s
• Assassin’s
• Knight’s
• Nomad’s
• Settler’s
• Giver’s
• Sentinel’s
• Sinister
• Carrion
• Rabid
• Dire
• Winter
• Cleric’s
• Magi
• Apotheracy’s
• Celestial

Bolded out are stat combos that are useful in PvE (excluding the new Living Story content); Crossed-out are stat combos that are never or almost never used; Underlined are stats that are rarely used; and in italic are stats that are used for PvP related content only.

From what you can see in the list above, there’s only one stat out of 24, being used for PvE content.

7/8 professions are utilized and traited 100% based on damage – with guardian being the only class that has trait points and utilities based on support.
5/8 professions have a stable spot in PvE-related parties – with necromancer, engineer and ranger being the least or unwanted professions.

Moving on …

We have 8 dungeons and 24 dungeon paths (story instances excluded). Only 14 of those are being ran on daily basis.
Out of those 14 paths being run on daily basis, 7 (+/- 2) of those paths have bosses that don’t include stack and kill tactics.
Only 2 of those bosses can actually deal any real damage to the players and the damage dealt by that boss can instantly kill you – they are both in Arah. One is Lupicus and the other one is final boss of path 2.

If we draw a line here and pull out few conclusions, we find out that Guild Wars 2 has no combat complexity, although it is advertised as a dynamic game which is very different from other MMOs.

PART 2
__________________________________________________________________

To make this game more appealing, I’ve made a wishlist of things I think are the pillars of this game and need serious rework and restructuring.

You can check it out by following this link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CE5hmboBFMXIo_5DulMR6vl2bq-PMLjHHpDLoThsVkY/edit

PART 3
__________________________________________________________________

If you are about to leave your comment, keep in mind this is solely my opinion and is based on what I think the game should look like in the future.

Q&A:

Q: Holy trinity that you mention was never intended for Guild Wars 2. Maybe you should go play some other MMO.
A: Holy trinity that I mention and the way I describe is not the one used in standard MMOs. Anet has promised a type of trinity before the game was released and due to unknown reasons, they’ve left that concept unfinished.

Q: Do you realize you can play any role you want? Just join parties that don’t say meta zerker speedruns!
A: I know this and I do run meta, but it’s boring, it doesn’t bring any challange and complexity and the whole concept of current meta is based on exploiting issues with current AI and other mechanics such as buffs and debuffs.

Q: The bard has nothing to do with lore, why would you even mention them?
A: I love the idea of defeating your opponent by using musical instruments, that’s all. I know it’s not lore-correct but it’s still on my wishlist, up there with playable centaurs and dwarves.

Q: By classes, do you maybe mean professions?
A: Yes.

I might add more quick answers later on.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Here are a few tidbits from the team:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.
• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.
• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.
• The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.

So please keep your thoughts coming on the new system. Feel free to make suggestions but please, keeping them constructive would be very much appreciated.

Truth is there aren’t nearly as many new players as there are veterans, it’s the case in 90% of MMOs (This is just my opinion based on what I see in-game, I don’t have any insight to data of new characters created).

Even if there were that many new players that a change like this would highly affect their experience, new players will never ever ever make enough gold to convert it to 400 gems. I mean, I needed like 3-4 months as a casual player to even get going well with the build etc., at the time I wasn’t even thinking about farming 60 gold to buy Devil’s horns.

All the disappointment aside, let’s look on the bright side;

The new UI will make gem store items more rare and special. As much as I tell myself that this new change is really stupid, a thought keeps coming to my mind … it’s actually not stupid at all. It’s going to be a planned progression towards attaining gem items, not just a cash and carry store.

Also, a lot of people who feel disappointed by this new change should look at this from different perspective, take a step or two back; Not many MMOs or other games with special currency even offer you the option to buy their special currency by using in-game money. Usually it’s either cash or nada – which is understandable from an eye of a game producer who is ultimately after $$$.

John Smith.4610:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

John Smith.4610:

The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

John, could you give us a bit direction here? I’m not quite sure what specifics we could/should discuss… it seems pretty one-sided that many think RNG is bad and tokens could work.

At the heart, there’s 3 basic options:
1. Mostly RNG
2. No RNG
3. Hyrbid RNG (where most games are)

starter concepts for cons of each system:

1. Many players can feel like they have “bad luck”, in fact players with standard to pretty good luck are still likely to feel bad because of how humans interpret data.

2. A completely predictable experience lacks moments when something fantastic happens.

3. You run the risk of getting the cons of both systems without very precise design

An important question may be to ask if a model is still a good concept and a great implementation just needs to be focused on or if the model doesn’t work fundamentally.

The RNG system as a concept is fine because it has that surprise and excitement when and if you get extremely rare loot. To clarify why I only mention extremely or at least highly rare loot (exotic and above), it’s because in the end-game, they’re the only loot worth to mention imho.

But that RNG concept fails when you, as I said in one of my previous replies, have players who receive good things and players who don’t.

Personally, I love the dice system in other MMOs but if that will lead the community to become more hostile towards one another due to unknown reasons, you should keep RNG but fix it!

Fix it in a way where everyone can get something good or at least make us feel that way with an implementation of a hybrid system to RNG with reward tracker that includes items dropped by RNG (exotic drops – from weapons to living story items, ascended drops, etc.) not just tokens or the stuff you get in PvP reward tracker which is pretty much tokens as well.

I hate it when I have to see posts of my guildie on facebook of how he gets new precursors every month. I mean … sure when you have money you can do mystic toilet all day, especially if you’re lucky like him … but I’ve spent 1000gold+ and never got anything … played dungeons for over 500 hours and never got anything … played WvW for over 1000 and never got anything … It was all a grind for me and many other players while some people are pure luck boosted.

TL;DR

What I would love to see is just a balance between those who get nothing and those who get it all.

Cormac.3871:

Klemen, why do you not feel that dungeon tokens do not currently fill the role that your suggestion is intended to?

Well for once, when you hit level 80 with 8 characters and want them to look nice, dungeon tokens are useless. I never use dungeon tokens anymore to get armor. From level 80 dungeons, I buy rares and salvage for maybe few ectos but that’s about it.

I’ve been doing that for over a year now and here I am, still 0 legendary, still 0 rare drops (not rare as quality but rare as rare), only shinies I grind gold for because that’s the only guaranteed way of getting something.

And my suggestion is focused at exactly that, guaranteed rewards – why? Beacuse I feel some accounts are RNG luck boosted and some cursed, and as I explained in my first reply, there are people who always get good stuff and get rich with shinies and then there are people like me who never got anything and have to struggle with the grind.

I understand that there needs to be a balance between those who get and those who don’t get but it shouldn’t be like 1:0, more like 2:1 or 1:1 in way we all are eligible to get rare loot, not some more some less.

As for rolling dice, I’ve never been mad at anyone getting what I needed in other games, if not else, I engaged in a conversation with them, offering them stuff in exchange for that drop. It often ended in a friendship which resulted in doing more dungeons together.

I haven’t had time to read any of the replies other than the OP but I would still like to say this (Whether it’s been said before or not).

I feel like there are accounts which are RNG luck boosted and RNG luck cursed.

Personally, I’ve played the game for almost 2 years now and I haven’t received any item worth more than 50 gold. I’ve once got a Mini Molten pet, other than that, there hasn’t been a drop that exceeded 10 gold worth.

On the other hand, a guildie of mine posts pictures of him getting precursors at least once a month. He has received more than 15 so far which I find A LOT!

In totals I’ve spent more than 1.000 gold total in Mystic toilet, more than 500 hours grinding dungeons and around 1.000 hours doing WvW, yet I haven’t received any real rewards so far. If I combine gold received from selling exotic drops I got, I doubt it would exceed 100 gold.

If you’re reading this, don’t jump to some flaming conclusions straight away. I know there has to be a balance between players, some get good drops, some don’t but it shouldn’t make me feel like my account has been cursed, knowing that no matter what I do, the only way for me to get shinies is to grind gold – the only guaranteed reward.

My add to reward suggestion is to add something that many other MMOs have, rolling a dice.

Suggestion 1
Every 5th time someone in the party has completed a dungeon path, that party gets a highly rare item drop at the end of the dungeon.

Only the one who rolls the highest number receives it.

Suggestion 2
Every hard content such as dungeons, world events or guild missions, drops 1 highly rare item per every 5 players.

Each content has different pool of items that drop – for example Arah drop pool would range from Dusk, berserker ascended gear, Arah weapon and armor skins, to many more.

Players would compete for receiving that item by throwing dice. (Easy system for parties, would get complicated at world events).

Suggestion 2.1
Based on suggestion 2, every dungeon path would have additional difficulty level.

Arah for example:
Doing Arah exploration on normal mode (Level 80), would give you 1 guaranteed exotic drop for 5 players at the end of the path, using same dice system as suggested above.

Doing Arah exploration on heroic mode (Ads and bosses boosted to level 85, higher life pool, higher damage values, higher defense values, ….) would give you 1 guaranteed extremely rare drop for 5 players (For example a precursor, ascended item, …).

With these guaranteed extremely rare drops from doing dungeons on heroic mode would finally make grinding dungeons worth it. It would also push the community that plays them towards acquiring the best gear possible in order to get through heroic mode easier (Currently, crafting full ascended gear isn’t really worth it unless you’re a minimalist for those 5% buffs worth 500gold+ which you will most likely never get back – this changes with my suggestion).

Alright so pre-WvW season I transfered from EU server to NA because I wanted to see how NA WvW is.

Now that I want to transfer back to my “home”/prime world, the price is ?!?! 2400 gems …

Will the price go down eventually? It’s a silver tier server so it’s not like I want to bandwagon transfer to some gold tier. And 30€ is kinda too much for a world transfer, I mean seriously… that’s like 300 gold or in other words 2 weeks of farming dungeons just to be able to play with my real life buddies again.

Buttercup.5871:

There is a bigger bug with bloodlust than that. If you equip underwater weapons with a bloodlust sigil you won’t lose the stacks at all. So you can build a bloodlust stack (on land), unequip the weapon (still on land), and not lose the bloodlust stack in the process. Effectively, it means you can have the benefit of 2 sigils at the same time, just like it functioned before the update.

That’s technically an exploit, what I posted about is a bug that prevents stacking bloodlust in first place.

Post-April 15 Update: Superior Sigil of Bloodlust is bugged

I noticed that I don’t get bloodlust stacks while using specific weapons that have bloodlust sigil on them.

I’m running full berzerker mesmer, using Sword (Superior Sigil of Force) + Pistol (Superior Sigil of Bloodlust) in main weapon slot and Greatsword (Superior Sigil of Force + Superior Sigil of Bloodlust) in secondary weapon slot.

I get stacks when enemy dies while having sword+pistol in my hands but I don’t get stacks with my greatsword in-hand.

Hotfix:
It seems that if you unequip all your weapons to loose all stacks and re-equip them, you’ll get bloodlust stacks from both weapons.

NOTE: This is still a bug and an annoying one, please fix it soon!

PATCH APRIL 15: Clones appearing in armor look instead of outfit look

With new update, you can now wear ex-town clothes over your armor looks.
I’m not sure if this is intended to happen but when wearing town-clothes, your clones appear in your original armor which makes it easy for pvp opponents to spot you and not mistaken a clone for you.

POST 15 APRIL UPDATE: Ranger’s ranged attacks obstructed on flat areas with no objects

Since the last update, I’ve been getting A LOT of obstructed hits on ranged skills. First, it was about 10% of hits getting obstructed and it didn’t bother me, especially not in zerg fights. Then it started happening more often (30% and more of hits being obstructed) and it got to the point where I’ve had enough of it.

I can’t do normal 1vX not even versus NPC mobs … I mean, group of dredges taking camp got me downed because 50% of my hits were obstructed and I didn’t get a chance to kill them before they kill me (zerker logic :d).

Anyone else has this problem?

I’m also attaching an image of my problem, it’s an image of downed-stance ranged attack.

(I am using piercing arrows trait, I suspect that’s the cause of this unusual bug)

Xbon.9086:

doraemon.9170:

Xbon.9086:

doraemon.9170:

no dual legendary refunds ? So my dual incinerator didn’t have any refunds , i can’t get back anything ? good job , anet

legendaries are legendary BECAUSE you can change their stats at ANY time for no cost, they are every stat, and now they’ll be account bound instead of soulbound, so you still have 2 weps that work on any character build.

laughed , everyone said legendary can change stat for any time , but do you know what is the main part of legendary ? it’s the skin , i don’t care about change stats for no cost , i only care about the skin , everyone craft the dual legendary is wanna have a beautiful skin , not for the stats , ok ? After patch , everyone can use two incinerator together at the same time ! So anet didn’t want to give back any refunds , fine . i wouldn’t spend any money in gw2 , because anet can let you time/money become nothing after patch when they happy

the main point of a legendary…. IS the stat changing at any time… If you don’t see this, you got a legendary for the wrong reason, lol. It will always retroactively be the highest tier, and ability to change stats, there’s no better item than it, so you never have to get another weapon of that type again.

I have a question regarding the feature pack; what exactly does “The chance of rares and exotics in the mystic forge will be adjusted. This will not affect precursors.” entail?

People like you make me laugh. You do realize that stat-changing with legendaries came nothing more than few months ago? The game has been out for almost 2 years now and you think people made legendaries for stats?

Let me put it this way, get charts of how many ppl made legendaries prior to stat-changes and after them, you’ll see my point. (hint there was no skyrocket boost in legendaries crafted after the update, just a little bit more)

Leo.8792:

Pros of stacking:
No skill is needed

Cons of stacking:
less fun and enjoyment of game.
No reason to even play the game if the main goal is to rush through it
A lack of skill

You could also try a game called WoW I hear that all you do is push buttons in that game too.

I’d like to know what do you do in Guild Wars 2 besides pushing buttons? Is there some kind of physical effort while you’re playing the game? Maybe some ab-normal intelligence that has to be used in order to play it?

Besides, WoW is considered one of best if not the best MMO ever to be made, along with Guild Wars 1 that is, and ANet sure knows that. Yet ANet tends to rush things in and lacks on effort they put in – from what I can see -> pure and very fresh example:

Edge of the mists:
GW2 has 25 explorable zones and 90% of them are overflow-capable, which probably means the overflow code is the same in all of them. On the day of the release of EotM, servers crashed because there was no player-limit in the overflow. To move on, Overgrown part of EotM seems like someone was running short on time because most of the kitten buildings seem to be half-done and placed under an angle that makes no sence (walls going downhill, gates fitting in there and guards standing straight on these steep walls).

That’s for the rushing things in part, now for lack of effort:

Last pack of gem armors is only a remake of already used armors (they only added flames) and is sold for 10€. Last 5 updates of the living story all included probes around the world, the only difference was the look of the probe and mobs around it – and yes, even in this “last epic ending of first living story season” on which they worked from December to January.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Guild Wars 2 nor ANet.
I’m getting a feeling though that the more we, their customers, are trying to give them hints on what we want and on how we think this game could improve, the less they’re listening to us because you know, they probably can’t stand criticizm (which is by the way the best way to learn things even if you might get offended by it in most cases).
They have their vision of the game which they won’t change for nothing, at least not yet. But they forgot the most important thing in the marketing and that is that the customer is ALWAYS right. Well, either ANet forgot it or NCSoft keeps screwing them over like they do to every other game developers they own.

Iris Ng.9845:

^ klemen, please. Look at the prime example of Marionnete champions. Have the healers and tankers contributed any thing at all?

By the ways, a friend and I had to carry two of such ‘healer Necro’ and support ‘mesmer’ all the way through Arah P3 last night. Healer Necro couldn’t make any skips, nor remove any conditions, nor tank Lupi long enough to rez the downed people. And the support mesmer couldn’t drop a port for the poor necro nor put any feedback during Lupi.

You are asking for the game to change in a way that the party viability would have to depend on healers and tankers. Yet, those healers and tankers I have seen in dungeons are all with sub-par skills and happily leech off their DPS members without a shred of guilt while fooling themselves with the thought that they are actually doing something. I don’t support that mentality nor believe the game would go to that direction either.

#JoshForemanForPresident

I know I write a lot so I can’t blame you for not reading it all xD but I’m only including dungeons and not open world and I’ve also said that in dungeons atm it’s best if you run full berzerker team as you have less chance to wipe due to bosses/mobs getting killed very quickly – which I don’t like but you gotta adapt if you want $$$ right?

Perdition.5981:

Klemen, so what are you criticizing? Ease of bosses, and Arah, or S/S/S or lack of rewards? If every player had your same level of virtuosity at GW2 then S/S/S and/or tank-healers is going to be trivial. You solo run every piece of PvE content with ease and grace, so regardless of mechanics players like you will master the game. I would argue that you’re the exception and not the rule. I dunno, run things at half-level or self-impose some limits to your available toolset. I really want to know your beef and how a trinity would fix things.

If Anet didn’t want you to use certain skills then they would just put up arbitrary barriers, i.e., invisible walls, FGS rush/WW will end as soon as you hit a wall, WoR fails or is removed, buff boss HP even more, remove dodges, etc. Then, like WoW, a tank will figure out how to gather mobs, whilst DPS AoE/Cleaves everyone down and a healer stacks Healing and just heals all day (assuming they fix boss damage/ CDs).

I’m basically criticizing ANet’s approach to dungeons, bosses, rewards and combat mechanics.

They wanted dynamic combat, they got stack/skip/kill.

As it goes for making the game challenging for yourself, as I said before, you can if you want that but you aren’t rewarded for it. You can kill all bosses in Arah and get champ boxes that give you exp scrolls and fine/masterwork items or you can kill all bosses in AC and still get the same reward – no matter the effort you put in so the rewarding system sucks all through out – speaking on my behalf as I didn’t get anything worth more than 50g in 1 year and half where as others got 10+ precursors (people I know) with the same or less amount of effort.

Iris Ng.9845:

^ Warrior is also an Easy Mode. I suggest trying something more challenging like Necro, Ranger or Engi. By the ways, why asking for healer-tanking when you actually play in easy mode?

I don’t doubt it’s harder but they most likely use the same technique.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Not really. There is nothing inherently skill-based about having to “tank and heal” damage. This is an active combat game. They can make bosses challenging by encouraging active defense and twitch skills.
The Archdiviner in fractals is a great example of this. Can’t dodge a telegraphed (but still quick) hammer bash? You die. Can’t react to him switching targets and hitting you with an auto attack in time? You die. Try to stack in a corner and burst him down without dodging? You die. There is a good reason why this boss and (to a slightly lesser extent) the Dredge Power Suit are the best bosses in fractals.

I didn’t say anything about fractals because I don’t do them since ANet lowered my personal level from 50 to 30 and gave me no compensation for lost progress. I do know for the fact that it’s not wise to stack on bosses in fractals, however in fractals 10-30, you could still go full melee on most of bosses with a guardian that was providing blinds and blocks (berzerker guardian not healer) and with the maximized damage, bosses didn’t have time to unleash the high damaging attacks (eg. Fire shaman, you only needed to dodge aoe every few sec or if you had aegis that wasn’t even necessary, archdiviner same, with aegis he was unable to get you downed and you did the stages quick enough to avoid aoe attacks and agony (aprox. 20-30 seconds for getting through each stage).

As for the active combat game, you might want to try out some other MMOs like XXXX Online (I think you can find out the name yourself) which has combat mode with dodges and aiming – so much for active combat in GW2 – and yet it has BAM fights and no stack/kill/skip mode. Most bosses in GW2 have attacks which will either one-hit you or damage you really bad and the best way to avoid that is to either have guardian to give blind+aegis or to dodge – with that being said, you can do that with any kind of build. As a berserker you will have to dodge like 3 times in total due to the damage you deal as a whole party where as with more tanky/random build party you will have to dodge a lot more times which will make you much more vulnerable to wiping.

Yeah, I already said that I’m doing speed runs and they are the current meta for dungeons and for me it’s the only way to get money due to my account-bound ‘unlucky’ curse but I didn’t say I like it this way. Moreover, I said I want things to change to become actually challenging to kill but at the same time rewarding. If you make things challenging for yourself like doing Arah solo with necro, yes you will get more challenge but the time you spend doing so won’t be compensated by the reward you get and therefore it’s complete bs.

Perdition.5981:

I love it when people use AC runs as the standard. Oh and if you think Lupi is the only real boss that spams AoE, then you never made it past Lupi and somehow never experienced phase 1. Also, requiring players to bring a healer-tank will defiantly kill “play how you want” it’s bad enough that certain classes are highly recommended for certain dungeons/fracs. However, if you’re looking for a challenge and don’t like short runs why not solo Arah?

I did solo arah p2 (no exploits) for some time and sell it for gold but it repeats and gets boring. Arah p4 i’ve only done once but other than that, there’s no other challanging bosses in Arah to be honest. Even lupicus can be very easy with team of 2x war, 1x guard, 1x mes and 1x whatever because from p2-p3, mesmer will melt lupi if everyone stays melee and those 30-1min kills on lupicus arent a challenge once you’ve learned it – thus why it’s not a real BAM or a boss or whatever u wanna call it.

As for Arah solo in the times I did it (Not after these new updates), Belka was easy-mode, Berserker only has 2 different attacks when melee + bonus berserker stance and is also easy mode with war, Lupi once you’ve learned animations and to time your dodges is also easy mode (takes about 5-7 minutes to kill solo – yeah solo), Alpkitten p2 if you stacked in corner or lured around boxes → also easy mode, last boss isn’t even worth to mention.

P3? No doubt about it, first two bosses are only hard if you don’t have condi-cleanse cos ranger immobilizes you, second boss I’ve never done solo so I won’t be kitten about it, lupi same as p2, last boss ritual solo easy though I’ve never fought last boss solo other than the ritual.

P1? First boss easymode, champions as long as you keep moving = easy mode, tar requires 4 players and with immobilize is easymode, lupi same, last boss solo easy mode just reflect and dodge fire field.

And all that is with full berserker warrior using healing signet, fgj, banner + precision signet with elite signet too (swap precision signet for shake it off some times).

For the running part, with sword/warhorn + greatsword + bull’s charge, no mob will ever hit you and you will stay out of combat all the time (If you think you’ll hit mobs just swap weapons before leap finishes).

Anicetus.1253:

Obviously I’ve been new to dungeons in general once too and had to learn. Does that somehow interfere with my previous statement? All I said is that dungeons (explorable mode) were meant to only be completable with a skilled and organized group (story mode being for others). Thats what arenanet themselves advertised.
Being a skilled player and being experienced in dungeons are two different things. A skilled player is able to read enemies skills on his own and acts in a way to counter them, possibly benefitting the whole party. Experienced (non-skilled) players mindlessly use skills preemptively in order to be safe from certain attacks.
And this should, in my opinion, not work. In order to be able to complete a dungeon, your party should consist of 5 skilled players (who can adapt to the most optimal gear/weapon/traitset). And currently five randoms with extremely subpar builds can faceroll their way through, as you can see from our cleric runs.

This should be changed.

You mean skilled players aka 2x warrior, 1x guard, 1x ele and 1x ranger for AC where you use Fiery greatsword on Kholer and last boss (which should be the hardest one) with skill 4 inside the wall and the boss falls in 5 seconds? Or you mean skilled players aka 3x warrior, 1x mesmer, 1x guard where all the players have same skill rotation all the time and yet again they stack on the wall and just button mash?

The only real boss at the moment in Guild Wars 2 (Dungeon-wise) is Lupicus but as I said in my previous post, even Lupicus isn’t a real Big kitten monster because all he ever does is spamm epic aoe which mostly one shots you throughout all the area and most of aoe rings are bugged and don’t appear. To make bosses challanging, the trick is not by making insane damage attacks but to make attacks that you have to survive by harmonizing with others (aka. healer-tank).

hendo.1940:

No, you will have three DPS players waiting half an hour for a tank and healer.

To be honest, after playing XXXX Online, I have never had troubble finding players and I never waited over 5 minutes to get proper roles in my party.

And to summon up, I highly doubt that what you said would be the case. There’s already a very high amount of Guardians, Elementalists and Warriors and these are the main classes that currently do dungeons. Guardian and elementalist would perfectly suit for support role and warrior would perfectly suit into tank role, allowing classes like engineer and necromancer to take their place in the party as well.
(I’m not saying to make each class role-specific, just by making BAM fights, the difficulty would require players to roll holy-trinity and by that said, any class could be anything – healer/support, DPS, tank)

hendo.1940:

I’d recommend joining a major dungeon guild. It’s too much for me to want to make the effort explaining (unless you want me to), but we take group compositions that synergise well with each other, or “harmonise”. The only time groups don’t synergise is in pugs, and that is perfectly understandable because it’s just five randoms. I’m not sure why you’d expect co-ordination outside of the bare necessities (if that).

Again, the holy trinity requires you to harmonize with one another, be it pugs or organized group. I had no problem harmonizing with pugs in XXXX Online even if one of them was a complete noob – that’s because there are 4 other players in the party to back him up.

hendo.1940:

I agree. If they make elites and bosses in dungeons drop dragonite ore (maybe 1 per elite, 5 per boss, so if you just kill bosses in something like Arah p2 you end up with 25 ore) it would actually be worth doing full clears.

I was thinking about something that I actually would call a reward (T6 materials for example – each elite has a chance to drop from 1-5 T6 materials depending on their mob-type) because I personally got too much of that kitten dragonite ore, dust and fragments that I delete them everytime I get them – I don’t plan on crafting ascended armor/weapons because I don’t find it worth 200g+ for a ~4% boost overall. T6 materials on the other hand, even if you don’t intend on crafting anything, can be still sold for a decent amount of gold.

hendo.1940:

I disagree vehemently with any sort of trinity for this game as it makes me reliant on others. I purposely join Arah lfgs stuck at certain bosses because I enjoy carrying through the dungeon, imposing a trinity means that I wouldn’t be able to carry on a class I prefer and would be forced to take another. GW2 combat is skill based, not class based (entirely), which is a good thing and it should stay that way.

Guild Wars was also skill based but you still had DPS, Healer and Tank.

Here’s something from GW1 wiki for you:

Team roles and builds
Type General Particular
Damage Pressure • Spiker • Nuker Beast master • Bomber • Dagger spammer • Touch ranger • Trapper
Support Healer • Protection Battery • Bonder • Imbagon • Infuser • Orders
Control Lineback • Shutdown • Tank Cripshot • Hexway • Minion master • Spirit spammer
Utility Caller • Toolbox

Anyways, the whole self-sufficient class builds in Guild Wars 2 only have 2 versions (PvP excluded). You’re either full berzerker DPS for PvE and dungeons or you’re full tank for WvW. There’s only one site that posts Guild Wars 2 builds and they’re posted mostly by random theory-crafters and on top of that, they’re all basically the same.
Unlike in Guild Wars 1 (Which is by many considered a better game than XxX) where you had full build community always going for different things and making so good builds, they had to nerf them asap.

To be able to rely on others, to trust them and in the end to make it all work is still the highest point you can reach skill-based (not attack skills but skill as your ability to do something) and it’s very good for community as people get along better (from my experience, though, EU nations usually have many problems with each other and their e-battle will last for ever no matter what).

If ANet manages to implement things such as Holy Trinity and BAM fights, here’s a list of things that I predict will change:

• LFG Tool system won’t display LFGs that want 4 out of 8 classes in their group, but will instead look for most likely 1 healer, 1 tank and 3 DPS classes (No matter which class plays which role)
• People won’t stack in corner but will fight Big kitten Monsters with effort through different stages of Bosses’ attacks and will actually require to harmonize with each other – Tank taking in most of the damage, healer keeping tank alive, DPSers do their job
• Making different types of mobs (Elite, Bronze, Champ, …) always dropping something valuable (depending on their type) would most likely make players kill them due to knowing that they will get rewarded for doing so (Currently, you have higher chances of acquiring T6 materials by killing non-hostile mobs like baracudas and skelks than by killing Elites who for example at Jade Maw drop stones)
• People will probably change the approach to parties as they would know that they are going to spend next 2 hours with people in their party, supposingly people would argue less

There would be many other things that would change with such update and so far, I can only see positive ones. Therefore I’m looking forward to the day Guild Wars 2 takes a step back and notices that the essence of MMOs is missing in it and by that, this game makes an insane step forward – becoming my personal Best MMO released so far.