Guild Wars 2

So I could be confabulating this or confusing guildwars2 with some other game, but I feel like there used to be more transparency with the balance changes. Something that we are definitely lacking at the moment.

I think if perhaps there were a few notes as to why a particular set of changes are being applied it would help mitigate the knee jerk reactions from the community. In a lot of cases these reactions are justified but in other cases its just a typical response to a seemingly arbitrary change. So the goal here is to provide the method behind the madness.

Example: “We feel the druid was performing too strongly overall compared to other healing builds and had too much access to Astral Form. As such we have reduced the ability of players to spam heals to fill the astral meter on targets that were already at full health. These changes should bring it more in line with other healing builds but we will continue to monitor the class closely and will adjust the numbers accordingly if the performance dips too low. Viability and fun factor for all healing classes is important to us!”

Note that the example above is completely fictitious but something explaining these changes could be very helpful it containing anger from the community. It might also help solicit better feedback from people actually playing the class. This applies to every class in the game and not just angry rangers.

Which brings me to my next point. Why are the patch notes hidden away on the forums? I remember at launch when we had to ask just to get the patch notes. Why does the launcher not show the patch notes or at the very least have a link to them?

What information you generally do provide in the notes still routinely fails to cover all the changes that go in. There are tons of little ninja changes each patch that go unmentioned and usually there is a negative reaction to them. Is it that you deem them insignificant? Do you not want players to know you are changing them? Are you worried about the economic implications about players who have immediate access to the patch versus people who cannot be on for several hours afterwards? Are there just too many changes to track them all? If that is the case I am genuinely curious as to what source control and build system you guys are using (seriously even if its not the case I am really interested in this).

While this probably comes across as a wall of text or a complain post it is not intended as such. Quite the opposite. I think this could go a long way to help the community and help mitigate some of the complaining and negative feels that seem to be associated with every balance pass.

The SAB weapons (horn, rifle, pistol) had custom sound effects with them if I remember correctly.

The plasma rifle skin looks pretty sweet. But I cannot get over the bang bang effect. Why not add some sort of pew pew sound?

Another one I would love to see updated. The whispers pistol.. why does it not sound silenced?

Is there a technical reason this cannot be done? Is there a chance the devs will ever go back and update these skins to have custom sounds?

Sublimatio.6981:

pls add lupicus fight to fractals while buffing him a lot

I would love to see some of the more challenging boss fights from various story mode instances and explorables like lupicus added to encounters for fractals.

With that said I have been around for several attempts to ‘improve’ fractals. While I can appreciate the content they have added and the attempts to make them more rewarding (anyone remember when they said they added weapon boxes only to realize they hadnt actually done it?). They have pretty consistently made fractals not terribly rewarding to play. I still played them anyways all the way up to 50 prior to HoT because even though the rewards sucked it was my favorite type of content in the game.

After playing them pretty extensively there are a few things I wish had been done in the over haul for fractals.

1. The reason people rolled swamp is to guarantee they didnt start with dredge or cliffside and then get one of the other long ones later. Changing there to be short medium and long fractals didnt change the desire to have swamp first since it is by far the shortest fractal. Add one more puzzle to this to make it as long as underwater and the endless re-rolling stops. Most people would be happy to not always have to do swamp if the length was truly comparable.

2. Old style Fractals are long but one fractal seems too short. Why not have 2 Fractal islands and then a boss every other level. This seems like a blend of the old classic style fractals but there is more to it than just a single island.

3. instabilities – I loved when these were introduced. I am sad to see them truncated to only a couple of instabilities. I think it would be better if it changed every level or every other level instead of 10 levels with the same challenge. These were fun and some were insanely hard.

4. Rewards – I love fractals but the reward system leaves a ton to be desired.
4a)These give practically no experience what so ever. I once brought a level 29 necromancer into a level 30 fractal because my guild wanted the challenge of it. I finished all 3 and jade maw and didn’t even gain a level. 0.o Shouldnt they contribute exp so you can actually work on fractal mastery while in fractals?
4b)Liquid rewards – why is it rewarding to get vendor junk worth X silver or gold? Why not just give gold? Is there a technical limitation here? I was under the impression that dungeon gold was moving here? Is that no longer a thing?
4c) Non liquid rewards – Fractal skins and ascended chests.. the drop rate on these is garbage. I think at my worst streak I ran 29 straight level 48 fractals without a single one of either dropping. When I finally did get a fractal skin it was the shortbow right after I got the legendary shortbow. Why is the drop rate on cosmetic items so horrendously low? It is not rewarding to get blues and greens and vendor trash.

5. Increased difficulty – So they added 50 new levels of difficulty and mainly utilized what is known as fake difficulty (hit points of mobs increased, armor and damage adjusted). Why couldnt the fights have added mechanics? Telegraphed attacks and such? I think I was hoping it would be more like wow heroic dungeons where in lower difficulty the boss does x but in higher it does x and y. Don’t get me wrong I love a ton of the boss fights in fractals. The molten alliance boss fight is one of my favorites in the game. I just wish the higher scale fractals did more things.

6)risk vs reward – Why not give people a chance to double down on attributes of the instances for additional rewards. Extra agony or additional instabilities to increase magic find or gold rewarded by a %

last but not least -

Add additional fractals. I love the addition of the aetherized, reactor etc. Why cant we keep adding them? Loads of people would love to see more lore based fractals like abbadon or something using the forgotten or the mursaat.

apologies if this sounds like a rant. I love the expansion so far and I am keeping my fingers crossed that fractals will get improved.

Snowball.3497:

Proposal overview
While many people despise difficult content like how tequatl was, the great jungle wurm is and maybe high level fractals there is still a lot of players who love being challanged. Make fractal the place for the most coordinated of groups. Where the task would look close to impossible at first glance. (ie. Wurm content for 5 players)
.

Yes please. I love the idea of content like the wurm, teq and the marionette on a scale for 5 people to do. Something other than a dps check. I love that you have to get eaten and grab the thing inside the wurm and then drain its stacks of armor. I would like to see something intricate like this in a 5 man instance.

Snowball.3497:

I believe the instabilities are steps towards the right direction, higher health pools and damage isn’t adding to the difficulty.

again yes please. “fake difficulty” is more annoying. Mechanics difficulty is far more interesting.

Proposal Overview
reward structure tweaks and fractal re-balance

Goal of Proposal
High end fractals currently do not reward sufficiently for time and effort required to complete them. Additionally some of this is caused by fractals not being balanced properly.

Proposal Functionality
Increase gold rewards for running higher levels of difficulty (40+) and add titles for running fractal content. Fractals are perceived as the end game PvE content and there are no titles (that I am aware of) associated with this content. Why?

Re-balance what are considered opening fractals. People always roll for underwater or swamp (usually swamp) b/c they are the shortest of the openers. Its great that you cant get dredge AND grawl anymore but nobody in their right mind will start with the harpy fractal knowing what could be next. I wouldn’t mind seeing additional NEW opening fractals and the ability to roll for a fractal being removed if they are all equal in length/difficulty to start with. What I mean is put a timer from the start of the fractal before re-rolling is ok. This would allow a run that is going poorly to still re-roll but prevent the endless this isn’t swamp lets go back.

Its been said before but warrants saying again. Remove the clown car from the dredge. Honestly just remove the room with the mini boss and clown car outright. That should put it roughly in line with other fractals in terms of time.

Associated Risks
Putting the gold at too high a reward level could mess up the economy. Since players who run the end game content tend to be wealthy enough to at least afford ascended armor/weapons it might widen the gap between the casuals and hardcore crowd.
Offset this by slightly increasing tangible rewards and giving intangibles such as additional unique skins or titles.

looks like the original blog post that said they were going away has been changed:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/player-vs-player-rewards-roadmap/

So I guess I will still be able to work toward the finisher that I want.

Can anyone tell me what if any changes to the ranking system are coming in the patch on the 18th. They have stated that glory is going away then as well as the mystic forge in the heart of the mists.

I also heard the ranking system as we know it will be going away. Does this mean it will no longer be possible to rank up to shark/phoenix/dragon? I would really like to get the shark finisher but dont see it as being possible to rank up that high before the 18th (I am currently 37). Will the ranks be going away then or is that a later change?

If and when they do go away will we lose the rank finishers we have unlocked?

ronpierce.2760:

Just because I’m 100% certain ANet cant read anything that is a bug for necromancer, I put it in caps. Minions are randomly not attacking and attack too slow. You fixed precious mesmers within a day, fix Minions now, please? >_>:

And while you’re fixing their ability to not randomly drop combat and stand around like idiots, fix moa from killing them all. Would appreciate it. Bug has only been around since release now.

So in my experience it happens most often when your pets are out of melee range before you engage your target. So if you run past your target a bit then turn back around and start attacking it appears less likely to occur.

This also seems to be triggered if an enemy immobilizes you prior to you engaging the target with your pets in range of the enemy. Even if the minions do eventually attempt to engage a lot of them will get stuck on or in the terrain. They do not intelligently path to the target and even kiting the mobs back to your pack of pets does not correct the issues. It is particularly noticeable in s/t pvp as a lot of the capture points are on hill tops (Khylo / Foefire for example).

EDIT – note that this can completely break minion master builds as when the pets do not engage they will not pull conditions from you and will not heal you from the siphon effect and most of your damage in this build is coming from minions in most cases.

First before we get started.. Please remember the forum rules. Be constructive. Be Polite. Don’t dev bash here.

Since this seems to be the only mac specific forum, can you guys tell me what bugs and issues you have aside from what is stickied in the known issues that seems to be so game breaking and frustrating to make you dislike the client.

I have seen a lot of people complain on here about a lack of a native client and a lack of apparent support. Coming from the windows side of things can someone please explain what is so very bad about the cider port? Aside from a slight dip in performance that is.

So inline answers preferred:

Be Realistic here – What would it take from the team to make you happy as a customer and a mac user?

What about the current situation makes you so unhappy?

What bugs do you consider deal/game breaking for you?

What expectations do you have about the game for the future?

Remember be polite and absolutely NO developer bashing please. This is meant to be constructive and not a rant filled hate post.

Thanks fox. That’s probably as close to a definitive answer as I’m going to get.

can someone go look in the game folder for it? I think in Spores’ case, it was installed in the game folder. If I remember correctly in the “p_drive” folder.

I could be mistaken about spore though. So take that with a grain or two of salt.

Given that it impacts potential and current customers I would not underestimate the importance level. Regardless either of our personal opinions on the matter is not relevant to the question that was posed.

I agree with the logic behind what loseridiot said. That does not make it correct no matter how much I would like it to be the case. If anyone knows for a fact one way or another I would like to hear it. Speculating isnt helpful one way or another.

Cheers.

EDIT – changed words to sound less hostile. Hostility perceived is not intended.

because of the following article:
http://transgaming.com/news/transgaming-utilize-sony-dadcs-securom-technology

which indicates that "TransGaming will utilize Sony DADC’s SecuROM™ digital rights management (DRM) solution for all video game titles enabled through TransGaming’s Cider portability engine for Mac games. "

I would love a red response here to indicate yay or nay on this.

I read that cider ports by default have this but I also read ncsoft doesn’t use it. I have a friend that absolutely refuses to buy anything with securom on principle and I’ve been wanting him to play gw2 for ages. Anybody know?

Seras.5702:

Excalibur.9748:

cluster bomb is hard to land, that’s what’s keeping it from being OP imo

Clutster Bomb spreads bleeding better if you detonate it in mid-air. Leveling conditions, this was my goal when I used it but it was tough. It shoots slowly and the arc is inconsistent, leading to early or late detonations on my part quite often.

If you have the dreamer detonating at the wrong time becomes a thing of the past. It is pretty hard to not see where your giant rainbow unicorn bomb is. That was a pleasant side effect of finishing my legendary. That said shortbow is def not OP its just the best zerging weapon thieves have.

Arale.4207:

but IC nerf is definitely valid. The trait was required in like 85% of all builds.

Many classes have a trait that 85% of viable builds require that didnt get nerfed in this manner to “promote diversity”

Guardian builds come to mind in particular. I think that is one of the reasons many are upset by this. The trait is powerful and still mostly mandatory but now you are more or less forced into shatter builds to get it.

Understand that I am mostly not impacted by this change. But if the goal was to promote diversity as stated this was the wrong way to go about it. What should have been done was make other traits more appealing so this wasnt the only way to go. A difficult task to do without power creep but still the “correct” way to fix and do what they said they were setting out to do.

*spelling edit

I guess by build diversity they meant Mesmers would build other professions instead

I am more than a little disappointed in some of the nerfs.
the trait changes didnt impact me too much since i run a shatter build but it basically talked me out of changing my traits around to try anything else. So much for diversity.

The nerf to sword was pretty brutal if you ask me. I dont feel like the sword auto attack was particularly high in dps relative to a lot of other classes for the risk involved in being in melee range. The nerf to sword 2 skill was even worse. I wouldnt have minded one or the other but both of the changes make it pretty harsh.

Why did they nerf sirens call underwater. Most ppl loathe underwater combat and you just crapped on the one thing mesmers did reeeeally well underwater. Being able to stack 25 bleeds was essential to underwater combat for me and it sounds like that will be a lot harder now.

shimmerless.4560:

I’m going to assume you’re posting from a PvE perspective, in which case sure you’re not going to be competing with a Warrior for damage any time soon. However outside of PvE, 100B is a virtual non-entity while Guard Hammer is very strong (you do not need to self-combo the field for it to be valuable).

Correct ^^

shimmerless.4560:

If you’re not building for damage I’m not sure why you’re expecting it, that said the Hammer skills for Guard and Warrior are functionally identical in damage except for Mighty Blow, a blast finisher that hits harder than anything in the Warrior’s repertoire. This isn’t to mention that the last auto on the Guard’s Hammer chain is a cleansing combo field that grants AoE protection and can be traited to AoE heal as well (lol).

Valor (the Guard Hammer line) naturally grants 20 – 30% crit damage so you can swap out some Berzerker gear for Knight’s/Valk’s at no appreciable loss.

I believe I said short of going full zerker. I never said I didnt build for damage. I use a mix of zerker/ valk and knights gear have nearly 50% crit and empowering might. I do not remember what my crit damage is (havent played the toon since dec).

As you stated you can easily swap out zerker for valk/ knights and that is exactly what I did.

I also use staff for my other weapon so I can build up a ton of might really rapidly. My complaint was that the auto attack is so slow and if you are waiting until the 3rd in the chain to throw down your mighty blow for the AH proc and the prot from the blast finisher its extremely slow and compared to a GS warrior with a single button press even when not spec’d zerker can out damage it yes I would argue that it does in fact not hit like a truck.

1-2k crits on auto attack x 3 plus 4500 for MB vs a non zerker warrior in greens dealing 13-17k with 100B the guy sitting behind me at work states he routinely sees these numbers in green travelers gear.

I’m sure someone will say I am doing it wrong and for that I say you are missing the point.

I imagine if I spec full zerker with all ruby orbs that my 2 skill presses and nearly 8 seconds of time spent waiting on the chain before popping MB results in close to 100B damage. That is why my Gaurdian sits on the shelf collecting dust and I play my other toons a lot more.

killahmayne.9518:

favourite weapon on the Guardian is the hammer because it hits like a truck, has good CC and the ring of warding is so beast.

I have an 80 guard with a hammer build and AH. Auto attack is so slow and doesnt seem to do much damage. My MightB crits only seem to do 3-4k damage. Short of going into a zerker build it doesnt hit like a truck for me. What kind of damage are you dealing with the hammer?

I feel like GS or Rifle warriors dwarf the amount of damage I can put out with a hammer guard

EDIT* also did they ever fix the ability to jump over the ring of warding? for the longest time it was useless b/c everyone just jumped over it.

Has anyone else noticed there are times when clones or phantasms will spawn and just stand there and not go away after the target dies. Ive had more than one occasion where this happened and after 2-3 minutes of the clones just standing there doing nothing I shattered them for the heck of it to make them go away. I wonder how long they would have stayed there.

This seems to happen in wvw a lot and might have something to do with the previously mentioned stealth reveal phantasm glitch. My phantasms ALWAYS look like me when this bug occurs.

I actually stopped using the extra bounce trait b/c the bouncing seems so worthless now. As for the zerker I never played GS when it wasnt broken so I’ve only ever known the current gimpy incarnation of it. I would love to see it buffed a little bit to work as you guys stated it once did.

I noticed that too. Seems like a bug but I have not seen an official response yet.

Thanks for the responses, I am sorta fine with the idea of the rares I might get being crafting materials. I do not believe dungeon chests say grand on them though they are roughly the same size in terms of visuals on the chest itself.

the wvw chest in eb seems to drop 2-3 blue prints for seige, some badges and 2-3 blue to exotic items. I do not believe I have seen crafting materials drop out of it (doesnt mean they are not in the loot table).

Still would love to see this thread stay active and have a nice list of what you can get in which type

The problem is I cannot determine what is considered “harder” for example the halloween chest in the labyrinth was extremely easy to get and yet contained exotics at a very high rate (bugged)? the Eternal Battleground puzzle can contain exotics and yet ive never gotten anything above a green in it. There are some in Orr that seem easier to get to and I have gotten rares out of them. So I am trying to determine what the structure of quality is. Assuming something along the lines of glorious > grand > large / dragon > marvelous(possibly confabulation) >splendid > chest. Are there more than this? I don’t even know.

Is that even the correct order?

So there seems to be a big discrepancy in the types of chests you can find and what they can offer in terms of quality of items.

Example – Regular chest, splendid, grand, glorious, etc

So can anyone explain or point me to a guide that elaborates on the hierarchy of chests and what they contain? Ive heard certain ones can contain precursors and as such exotic items. I’d love to know which types can contain which items so I know which ones to bother going back to once I have encountered them.

Nretep.2564:

MeveM.7913:

Point is, each pistol illusion shoots 8 times. That makes it 24 shots from 3 illusions. Each and every single projectile (gun shot, arrow) that goes through a chaos storm or Nullfield causes a combo. In this case it’s 1 confusion per shot fired by the illusions.

So technically if all 24 shots crit, it’s 24 bleeds and 24 confusion every time the pistol illusions shoot. I usually get around 15 bleeds and 24 confusions.

well, assuming you have
- 3 iDuelists up (not fitting for environmental targets, pvp, wvw, normal mobs)
- Sharper images
- all 3 iDuelists shoot while the combo field is up
- you have 60% crit + phantasmal fury trait
- they don’t ever fix the 100% combo bug from iDuelists
- the target has <7 bleedings
- the target has <2 confusions

3×8 shots * 80% crit = 19 crits -> +19 bleedings
3×8 shots * 100% combo = 24 combos -> +24 confusions

if they fix the bug, it’s
3×8 shots * 20% combo = 5 combos -> +5 confusions

I suppose 3 iWardens would do a better job once they fix the 100% combo.

So the idea is to have 3 duelists up and then pop chaos storm or other combo field? But I tried with a duelist and popping the combo field and it def aheres to the 20% combo finisher. 8 – shots with 1 – 2 proc’d combos. Only 1-2 stacks of confusion trigger where teh warden seems more effective but seems to die nearly instantly when i pop it leaving me with no chance for multiples. On top of that the timing of getting a combo field in place before the attack seems problematic at best since they attack nearly instantly after summon then have a long cd before attacking again and chaos storm / other fields dont last but a few seconds. Time warp is most effective but very long cd….

Is there any better way of stacking confusion on an enemy? I feel bad b/c it feels like this thread is being side tracked

oh my.. how did I not know that. Thanks so much for the explanation. Looking forward to trying that.

MeveM.7913:

I do 0/20/30/0/20, changed Mr Prometheus’ build, not sure why he wants Power since it does nothing for a staff build. The 15 pointer in precision tree gives our illusions bleeds on crits, if you swap to sword/pistol with 3 illusions up you get 14-16 bleeds just from them and if you pop a chaos storm or Null field on/nearby the mob they’ll give him 24 stacks of confusion.

I am confused how exactly does using chaos storm or null field give them 24 stacks of confusion? When I use it all it does is pop random conditions or at best give me chaos armor which does not seem to cause confusion at all. I would love to know since I have been trying to have a build with a consistent way of applying high stacks of confusion.

So I have noticed in multiple groups even when someone is calling targets people often ignore the called target. Communication can correct this (usually over vent or teamspeak) and telling the group to focus fire.

The problem is that the group often thinks they ARE focusing fire when they are not. Primarily b/c they hit t and then their target inadvertently changes or because they see the cross hair over a target and the camera makes it look as though its on the target they are currently hitting.

Suggested solution – put a more indicative crosshair over the enemy frame bar or icon to indicate that is the called target. Perhaps even putting out some sort of frame that wraps around the entire enemy frame bar; making it really hard to confuse (IE not on the battle field floating above it. This should force people to actually hit ‘t’ instead of trying to click on it).

Also I kinda liked being able to see party members targets in wow where you could always see what the tank is targeting. Since there is no trinity here you could just always see what the puller is targeting but perhaps the earlier suggestion works around that issue?