Guild Wars 2

That’s kinda funny, I see nothing but elementalists everywhere i go, 3 in a party of 5 dungeon, 7 hitting the same dynamic event out of 20 people, lol. Earlier i think there were so many elementalist even all the nonelementalists had a fiery greatsword of their own to wield.

Frankly not being able to enter the forums might have been the blessing in disguise. It’s a pit of dispair and malcontent in here.

So since you moved this post to “forum and website bugs” from general is that an indication that it’s a bug that’s causing the dev tracker to keep track of every trivial response to closing threads? If that’s the case, great! I hope that means it won’t in the future and it’ll actually lead me to dev comments that are about actual content and game changes.

Right now under the dev tracker it says “what is the arena.net team saying?” I can answer that question. In general the arena.net team has been saying “we’ve closed your thread” more than anything else I’ve seen in weeks. That is the loudest message and anything useful requires sifting through tons of that to get to.

I check out the dev tracker because i figure that it’ll lead me to actual new information on some of the current topics the community is curious about. I hope it’ll lead me to developer comments like a recent one, well two weeks ago, about what is being done about botting, or if a developer has commented on things like the change to ori spawns at 24 hours and not just 24 hours from mining them but resetting at the daily reset. These are the informative things I want to know in the absence of a blog or new information. Like i keep checking to see what the details for the holiday and other events announced for this week are.

Now what I get is mostly a string of “this thread has been closed” which makes me curious so I go read the thread, lol, it’s human nature, but in reality what’s going on here is that many topics or innapropriate threads just have a lot of attention called to them and I wouldn’t have read them otherwise. Can we have the dev tracker just track actual new information? It’s not really necessary to track 5 “this thread has been closed” responses in a row. It’s also not necessary to track every dev response to a specific customer account issue that has nothing more to do than figuring out how to restore their account or diagnose their computer problems.

As I see it right now, all this feature is doing is calling attention to the very things you want to curtail which leads people to go, “hey, this guy’s right, why is that?” so they reword it and make a new thread compounding the issue.

This is such a great idea, my main is a mesmer and after getting to max level and trying to compete in the aoe zerg fest, i decided to gear out an elementalist with magic find and let her do all the farming, it’s just so much easier to get loot that way. I can get a decent amount on the mesmer but i have to attack the split second something shows, get an aoe phantasm out and switch quickly b/w my 1 aoe on the staff and greatsword for some bounce and a tiny aoe. My mesmer is so much better on single targets and my preferred toon but all these events just encourage aoe blasts of quick damage. The recent nerf to the only real aoe field on the the mesmer now having a longer cooldown doesn’t help. I understand chaos field is a powerful tool b/c it buff, debuffs, and stuns, but not all toons are created equally in terms of aoe capability.

So it’s kinda sad I’ve had to level an ele to efficiently farm a legendary for my mesmer but that’s what I’ve done.

I’m 41 as of a few days ago, lol, and I so know what you are saying about video game stories being trite, cliche and derivative. Fortunately, there are lots of avenues out there for every genre where quality stories are being produced, the video game industry just isn’t the place to find it. I think some of it is a limitation of the media in general and it does have to pander to a huge audience and it certainly seems they choose the path of least resistance.

This storytelling thing has just been at the forefront more lately as I’ve seen it in star wars and guild wars 2. I think it’s early for us to decide how the genre will develop this and it does sound like an intriguing premise that you get to step into a character’s shoes and through a myriad of decisions change the outcome of a story, but as long as they’re trying to follow the rather trite main storyline, it is certainly predicatable. I mean as unique as anyone can want the storylines to be in gw2, they are all eventually going to end up at the same place with a few minor character changes b/c we all know that zhaitan is the big dragon threat and we’re propelled that way. This makes me less likely to want to do it again. Now in swtor the various characters actually had very different stories and some were better than others and they didn’t all end up at the exact same place. I think we should have detached the personal storylines from the main story line here in gw 2 so that it became more of a personal journey and less of everyone being the same. In years to come I expect we’ll have a solid story based mmo that really sucks you in with a quality story that’s truly unpredictable but right now all those choices have to be coded, artistically created, etc and it’s just a rather daunting prospect to offer any real choice b/c you’re designing for the masses and too many choices just creates too much work.

On the bright side, you can enjoy games for many things like exploring the world, experiencing the dungeons, belonging to a community, setting small or long term character goals for aesthetic or statistical advantage. The real power of mmo’s is in your relationships with other players and how your character relates to this open world. I played wow a lot longer than I probably would have because of the huge friendships i created and for a long time we got together 3 times a week and chatted and had a blast while also clearing content, but the magic of karazhan and the mmo in general had faded a long time before that.

Play games and read and seek engaging tv, movies, etc. Life is long journey and entertainment and intellectual pursuits should always have a place. I’m not sure you’re going to get dostoyevsky out of the fantasy genre, lol. I read plenty of escapist fantasy and have a good abilty to use a suspension of disbelief. If you’re after something in fantasy that’s truly different from the young hero on the quest, you might try Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy. It’s quite different from what’s generally being offered and I was swept away.

well, you do have some ranged options, and ta on any path is really not that hard. On 2 of the 3 last bosses most group choose to stand in the entryway and kill from ranged, it’s safer, you can almost ignore the mortars unless one spawns close to you on that particular boss. On the spiders you’ll need to clear out any that get close to you and those in front of the tree but after that you can just shoot the tree. Now the path where he summons veteran oakhearts you should be fine, but you will have to stay on the move even if melee if an oakheart roots you and comes after you, then kill the root and strafe around the boss until safe.

On some of the other bosses you’ll have to see what works, for the archers in bubbles, you’ll be golden if you can get in the bubble to melee at will, for laurent and his knights the group should try to pull them separately and they do a lot of damage up close as does that spider boss on another path, most group like to kite her, but as a melee you’ll need to learn animations if you get in close to avoid her direct attack or her poison aoe which is generally more deadly and happens closer to her.

I haven’t played a warrior but I do have a dagger/dagger thief though i haven’t done dungeons on him, there are some encounters I’ve though about how I’d approach them as melee. Thief is a bit different than warrior though b/c they are very evasive and can get in and out quick, so you’ll have to play to your strengths, but have a weapon swap to a ranged alternative is probably going to be must until you really get the hang of looking for when to dodge and how fights go.

I hope this helps, but what i can guarantee you will help is getting to 80 so you have more talent points, getting decent gear with some survivability esp as a melee and not speccing as a glass cannon. Focus on group utility some and survivability some as well as throughput. Also as you learn encounters it can be quite valuable to change out special and elite skills to suit what you’re fighting or a particular dungeon. See if you have access to a stability skill if you’re facing things like knights that knock you down, see if you have a special that removes conditions if you’re getting poisoned alot. . .

Good luck. Melee doesn’t have it easy, that’s for sure, but as you become more familiar it should get easier.

What matters is that if you like to play with a group of people or guildies then you need to be able to play together, so you can’t start until 5 pst or 8 eastern, the eastern person has to go to bed before they can do their 3 runs of a dungeon and the pst people continue on leaving the easterners to have to get home from work and find stragglers and play with random people just to finish their daily paths for a specific dungeon. All this would be solved by just having dungeons reset at anytime between 2 am pst and noon the next day when it wouldn’t impact prime time and split people up. Or you get into a gaming session and then it’s like, well reset’s in 45 minutes, let’s wait until then. . .

5 pst for dungeon resets puts this at 7 central and 8 eastern, smack dab in the middle of normal evening play hours for most people. Shouldn’t dungeons reset during offpeak hours so that a person can actually manage to do their 3 runs in one normal evening play session. I don’t suppose 5 is bad for the west coasters but 8 is getting rather late to get started for many east coasters who have jobs and have to work the next morning.

I realize that not everyone lives in the U.S. and certainly these time might be ideal for an aussie happening when they normally sleep and yes even european players play on american servers, but shouldn’t reset times happen for each server during that server’s expected offpeak. I’m certainly happy to have people play on our servers from all over the world, but I’d expect to adapt to an australian or european server’s timezones and make a conscious choice to do so if I played over there.

4. I’ve now done all 3 paths atleast 2 or 3 times each now. I find some of the monsters engaging and I think some of the trash pack groups are fun too, but there is freqently random skipping of mobs entirely that varies between groups and they expect you to know what they will or won’t skip intuitively. Atleast 2 of the 3 end Tree bosses everyone just stands at max range and fires a long range spell and ignores the mechanics of the seed turrets or most of the spiders. The summoned oakheart one is actually a lot of fun, requiring a lot of movement and I feel this encounter I get to shine on by circle strafing the boss and assisting other players to escape roots and oakhearts and creating clones that draw their attention. I also feel the mesmer boss is a great deal of fun though I think she does randomly just one shot you from full health for no reason, I do love the common sense of not attacking and killing yourself with confusion stacks if she has the shield up and not standing in her aoe. For most bosses I’m not entirely sure if we’ve bypassed part of the mechanics b/c we pull them to a hallway or something. The spider boss seems pretty balanced around kiting and crippling and is also a lot of fun.

5. Some boss encounters where there are multiple mobs people keep running to tag one and pull it back and then reset the others so they can whittle the group down with less risk, perhaps this is intended. Most other games I’ve played you can’t just pull 1 mob out of a group of 4 and the strategy is more centered around managing these multiple mobs with cc or cooldowns, etc, but we don’t have the holy trinity and perhaps this is intended. I do find the multiple stuns from groups of knights or husks to be annoying, though i find it more annoying when I’m told to run through and skip them. Sometimes things work, or my invis is up or other things, but even with careful planning someone else can get charged and I can be knocked down, and then stunned and knocked down again by another, etc. Part of this is just the root of the problem of trying to bypass packs altogether and run like crazy people past 3 sets of trash mobs to jump off a small overhang and let them reset.

So, I am sorry if this was long winded, but I think it’s the type of feedback you’re looking for in regards to how these dungeons are truly received by players and actually being ran. I’m enjoying them but I am certainly perplexed by some design decisions like leashing mobs or that group mentality would actually rather have a mesmer or I suppose a summon based necro do nothing in an encounter at all but hide b/c their participation makes the encounter more difficult. I like to participate and experience content and work as a team and bring my unique abilities to encounters such as these, not be told to sit here and do nothing. I also personally think dungeons should be designed to where you have to clear logical group of mobs with planning and the class synergy that is so touted in this game as an alternative to the typical holy trinity and not just leashed and skipped and then repeatedly ran through like a crazy person if you wipe later in the dungeon.

1. Looking for a group can be difficult and even after asking twice 5 minutes apart in map to find a group to do TA story I was informed i was spamming and not allowed to post anymore. With no dungeon finder, how is one supposed to actually find a pug group to do a story or explorable mode if one can’t advertise for more players in map or indicate you’re looking for a group. Despite this I found a story mode group after a while and with patience finished so I was ready for explorable mode and could start working on my first set of dungeon gear. I had already crafted almost full exotic gear but was after my first skin.

2. I get into a group with a guildie and some people he met and had run once or twice with and away we go. What I’m immediately thrown into is run quickly and stay alive b/c we’re not actually going to fight any of the mobs on the way to the first boss’s room. I turns out the monsters leash inside of a dungeon, a concept I was unfamiliar with as I don’t think I’ve ever been through a raid or dungeon where I could just skip entire packs of trash mobs b/c they’d just go back and stop chasing you.

3. We get to the first boss and are killing some worms to spawn a larger one. My guildie tells me on vent that if you are at range from the worms then you get targetted by random ground aoe and if you get close you only have one big aoe to run from occassionally. I see one elementalist standing on a ledge lobbing only spells when something is in range and mostly hiding. I’m told about a safe spot and to stand there. I’m on my mesmer, i think well okay, but i’m not actually able to hit anything from this safe spot so dart out to hit and stand back, we get aoe’d frequently. In another run a hunter tells me not to use any clones at all as it’ll hurt melee. I’m thinking he’s crazy as this is how I’ve built my mesmer using phantasms that apply bleeding but then in a later run with these people I started with I’m told that they want me to just hide and do nothing or only attack using no clones. I can just hit staff 1 i suppose but I can’t believe this is the dev’s intention for this encounter. I can’t say I find this entirely inspiring as a game mechanic and it does nothing to combat the stigma I’m already seeing comments in chat and on forums that mesmers aren’t good in pve, though I can tell you they certainly are, they just have a ramp up time and are better on boss type mobs than large low health trash mobs that swarm you. They do have a huge toolbox and some great group synergy with time warp, mass invisiblity and moa and they do a great deal of random buffing and debuffing.

I guess I mentally just shut those voices out b/c i’ve done a bunch of crafting, I may also just lower overall volume when crafting in bulk. However, I would like to say that I love the random conversations that I’ve overheard in game, and let’s not jeopardize some of those, they really make the game special. I remember fondly in my story quest stopping on the steps to listen to children playing at being destiny’s edge, or the asura talking about sylvari and the salad joke on the way to the trading post. If anything I’d love to add more random things to npc’s and have less repetition but still keep the world so alive.

The greetings can be a bit much, but not nearly as bad to me as some of the escorts where a guy repeats the same thing like every second, forget which that one was, but even halfway through i was thinking he was a drama queen and I’d just as soon feed him to the wolves as put up with him enough to save him.

Take that map with a grain of salt just after a cursory glance at the 70-80 zone i can tell you that it’s missing possible spawns on northwest corner by skill point, at the m on dimotki waters and west of the slough of despond.

Gear can be totally customized with a variety of runes that make it do all sorts of different things or sigils on weapons. You’re going to have to put together a magic find set if you want to get yellows and good loot. I’ve come to this realization of late and am building a second set of gear to wear when farming events. As for the item skins there are a number of them and most are purely cosmetic but your customization is there in the form of using multiple runes from a set to get unique effects.

I was previewing items on my mesmer at one of the temples in orr and thought, hmm wonder what the leather set would look like on my thief and I accidentally spent 42k on a pair of leather pants that i can’t even wear and are soulbound to that one character. No “do you really want to purchase this?” or anything. In the past i had a habit of previewing everything on these high priced vendors and it didn’t matter b/c i didn’t have that kind of karma, but I’d be very careful interacting with any high priced karma vendors, it’s very easy to accidentally buy something you don’t want and can’t even use. Not sure why it would even let you buy an armor class that is soulbound and unusable. If it had atleast been a piece of light armor i could have used it, and I was thinking of getting a light armor piece until i got the brilliant idea to preview all the models.