Guild Wars 2

Hm… so you’re saying that the devs took it for granted? I’m used to CoH (rest in peace) where the animation time was the activation time, and the biggest obstacle to calculating DPS was the baked in game refresh rate to processing actions.

But if the attack delay on skills is applied prior to animation time, and animation time is just tacked on, then this does lead to a very big problem in balancing. This throws the effectiveness of many classes into the air, and also explains why scepter mesmers are still quite horrible.

I did notice something while playing a thief. In PVE I like to use s/d and d/d dual skills to evade enemy attacks and fight at the same time, so I spend half the fight auto attacking and the other half using the dual skill to evade. This works… only about half the time. The other half of the time, the delay between button press and move execution is so wide that the dodges in those skills become unreliable. Death Blossom has a quarter second dodge, and there are times when I press the button and the enemy attack lands long before the attack even executes. Then, on the next use, I’ll press the button and the attack will execute so quickly that the dodge period occur before the enemy attack even lands.

Ideally, there should be 3 factors that are accounted for when balancing skills:

#1: Delay in processing input due to the game’s refresh rate. These are usually a fraction of a second, but in long term it adds up, and also it factors in more with quickly used skills.

#2: Delay in skill activation baked into the skill.

#3: Animation time.

You miss any one of them, and it leaves a glaring hole in game design that makes balancing impossible.

There is a world that is just for me. It is not a very nice world, but alas it is mine, in the sense that it is new, and it is made just for me.

After walking for about 45 minutes, I am home. And at such a great time to be home, for the servers have reset, and now I can do my dailies. The first task I am up to do is Quartz Crystal farming, as it gives a lot of money in a short time. I just have to get onto a t4 or higher drytop map. But then, as I often do, I encounter an anomaly.

Tier 1, 41 minutes past the hour. Tier 1 is a level that is surpassed easily by a single player doing single events on the map. I must conclude that this map, it is new. There were no others before me. It is world for me.

Or is it? As misfortune would also have it, updates tend to roll around at server reset time. When updates are released, the tiers of drytop are reset, and the world for everybody is low tier. But, how do I know this is the case? The other worlds, I cannot see. The only thing I see is the world for me.

As I rush in and out of the map, the only thing to see is still the subtly diabolical map that is the world for me. I check the LFG, but there’s no taxi to see. I plead for a taxi, but there is none who sees me. Filled with doubt, but fueled by frustration, in and again I run through the doorway. For 17 minutes, back and forth every which way, I run and run, but to my dismay, I still see only a world for me.

It has happened before. It’ll happen some more. At the end of the line, the threshold of failure, I will get in to a world for everybody. Tier 4, Tier 5, I know they exist. I know there is room, because I can taxi and be taxi’d. I wonder why so few taxi. I guess others don’t know about the world for me. Or they just don’t care, it could be.

At 3:47, I notice something strange. The world I am in is not for me, but it is only tier 3! The updates have rolled out, and have killed our progress. It causes all of us here great distress. To see that we could not go past tier 3, it nearly brings out a tear in me. I must try again at a later date, and hope at night so late, I will not see a world just for me.

So, now that the world knows how much I suck a poetry, I have to reiterate a very common complaint. The way events and maps are being designed, the random scattering of players throughout different maps, capping at 85% capacity just doesn’t cut it. The taxi system is a workaround, but nonetheless it is frustrating precisely because it requires players to be both lucky and generous enough to get into a functioning map to begin with, and try to pull in others, and also fight against taxi’s for less desirable maps. The volunteer system is broken, and will frequently dump me into a less populated and less complete map, but I have to go there because several poor saps volunteer as tribute without knowing that the whole system is broken.

We need some kind of reliable shard selection if we keep designing maps in such a way that organization and the completion of pre events are necessary for one big, regularly scheduled event.

I’m not that happy with the game, either.

The PVE game has been broken down to a science. So much so that I can go into any dungeon in this game with my thief, and know exactly how to handle each wave of enemies that comes up with no communication with the team prior: LoS enemies into a corner, spam blind fields while attacking in melee to melt the enemies down in a few seconds, then run past all non-essential enemies and bosses.

Rinse, repeat, and do this every single day. No meaningful contributions from gear and build diversity, no noticeable unique or pivotal clutch plays. The enemies are nondescript and die quickly, most content is skipped from time and boredom, and my individual contribution is bleached out in a sea of flash particle effects and bright lights.

Outside, we have zerged events where the lack of individual contribution and flash effects are taken all the way up to 11, where at no point does anything I do seem like it matters, or if anyone even cares that I am there. The success or failure of any event is
wholly out of my control.

The PVE game has left me uninterested, due to how homogenized and easy it is. Then, we have the PVP side.

WvW is basically the same as the overworld events. SPVP, however, just really isn’t my game. A big problem I have with competitive gaming is that I am not good at gaming. My reaction time is slow, my reading speed is slow, I’m constantly shaking so I don’t have precise movements, I can’t think for the future, and I’m nearly blind. So, sPVP in GW2 for me consists mostly of me getting ambushed, mashing buttons randomly in a panic because I can’t see or understand what is going on, and getting outright beaten by players who can precisely move, turn, and attack on a dime. Random noob fights at hotjoin are the best I’ll ever get at sPVP, and now that the game has been out for more than a month, that isn’t a satisfactory level anymore.

GW2 just isn’t fun to play anymore, and it looks like Anet will never fix these problems. Maybe when I get the urge to stack in a gigantic flashing effect I’ll play the game again, but until then I’ll do little more than lurk on the forums hoping for a change.

You know, there’s two kinds of conspiracy theories that I hear often. The first kind is the one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain a complicated issue where nobody is in control. The second kind is is one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain away common sense. This conspiracy is the latter.

You guys are trying to come up with an elaborate deception to explain something that is really simple. Anet sets up a gem exchange system, and puts in a 30% reduction on the gold -> gem exchange to prevent stock market exchanges. They used a fixed set of gems as a basket, and then program a dynamic exchange rate based on ratio of gems that have been created or destroyed in respect to this basket. The whole “manual manipulation” thing is silly and pointless, when you can just write a simple program that does it for you. It isn’t like the whole “people will buy gems if gems are cheap” thing is going to go away, so you set up an automated system to have the price of gems be adjusted automatically, and let basic economic principle take care of the rest. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Its just fractions!

The throttle on gold -> gem conversions isn’t mean to make things a gigantic gamble. It is meant to make things a stupid gamble. It is there to make using real money to buy gemstore items more appealing, and in-game gold less appealing. I’m fairly certain it acts as a market stabilizer, too.

And there you have it. The conspiracy is that no, Anet didn’t go with an automated, low-maintenance system and explicitly weighted it toward real money exchanges. Instead, they secretly manually manipulate the prices of gems and the prices of items just to mildly inconvenience players, but only in such a way that it makes sense to economists.

I’d hate to be the one to tell you this… wait, no. Scratch that. I love to be the one to tell you this: Liquid rewards in game don’t mean squat regarding the gem conversion. Under an automated system, the price of gems would adjust to inflation eventually. Under a conspiracy based “they’re controlling EVERYTHING!” system, they’d just manually adjust the price anyway, so again it doesn’t matter. Either way that line of thinking doesn’t work.

There is also no way that your exchange can be construed as a misrepresentation. If you buy a $25 gift card for 2000 gems, that is exactly what you get. These gems don’t go away. You can buy the same things you wanted to buy. If you happen to buy something and later regret the decision, there was still no deception. You got exactly what you paid for, as it was listed. Anet isn’t lightly adjusting the value of gem → gold exchanges ever so slightly just to eek out cash from you. It wouldn’t work. You can still pay the same amount of money for the same amount of gems to buy the same item, and if you happen to want to convert gems → gold anyway, you end up in a better position than you were prior. The entirety of the whole “buy it for real money instead” hinges solely on you having the exact amount of gold such that the supposed false-inflation for highly demanded items would adjust the price into a range where you not only don’t possess enough gold, but also lack the ability to make that amount of gold in the allotted timeframe. To elaborate in list form, you would need to be someone who:

A)Is in that narrow range where you could’ve afforded it, but can’t after the gem price spike.
B)Has a playschedule that prevents you from acquiring the difference in price before that item leaves the store (set timeframe undetermined)
C)Is in that specific group that highly desires this item so much that they have to get it
D)Is a person who does not have a resting amount of gems in your pack, thus forcing you to acquire them.
E)Is a person capable of shelling out money as needed to buy the product, but also be a person who would shell out money to buy any product. In a sense, you have to be IRL rich enough to spend cash on a frivolous game, but not IRL rich enough to not care about spending cash on a frivolous game.
F)Is in a specific, very narrow section, wherein the natural inflation that would emerge from a high demand gemstore item via an automated system would insufficient to move the price of that item into such a state that conditions A, B, and D are fulfilled, and thus special intervention is required.

This is not an untapped market. It is a fluke in customer demographics. There is no money to be earned in this. It is the most trivial of things to be deceptive about.

Ayrilana.1396:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now I have yet to hear a disproof of unlucky people in general, let alone game accounts.

The burden is on those seeking to change the status quo to prove that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. There’s been no evidence shown in this thread (or any other) that demonstrates that the results are anything other than predictable.

At any given moment, some people have had better drops and some have had worse. Everyone agrees that happens.

The question raised in this thread is whether that same ‘luckiness’ applies to the same accounts tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…and there’s zero evidence for that.

tl;dr past performance cannot be used to predict future earnings.

The thing is, that conclusion is just pressing the prior assumption that these drops are all independent of each other. If they aren’t, well…

BTW I don’t think there are lucky or unlucky accounts. I just recognize that, without the actual code displayed for determining luck and drops, that there’s no evidence to discern between a fair system that has a random awards resembling a bell curve, or a system that is randomly unfair, and this distribution of unfairness itself resembles a bell curve.

Let’s assume that Anet released the actual code. Do you think most of the players would even understand it? They’d be relying on the what others say about it which is no different that relying on what Anet says about it.

It’s quite a bit different, really. Peer review and third party verification are useful things, and they speak volumes more than whatever company officially sanctioned post will say.

I don’t mind the occasional duel. I like the greater build diversity and different environment.

Kentaine.4692:

Here is the problem with balancing though. I have never seen a game balance well. They always go for the nerf bat and forget when you nerf something, something else needs to be increased. Take the Mesmer for example. Nerf their support abilities, but that better mean they get an increase to their DPS too. Ah, but this is how it works for PvE… GW2 balances around PvP. I’d love it if my Mesmer did more base damage after its support got nerfed, but since that would make them OP in PvP it isn’t going to happen. Hence why a split from PvP and PvE skills should happen.

Your perspective is confusing here. The whole point of nerfing something is that it is performing better than the other classes, and so it needs a reduction overall. If you nerf one thing, but then boost another to compensate, then you’re still stuck with the same class being overpowered.

We engis are pretty chill overall. It’s been known around our forums for awhile that we’re one of the most satisfied professions.

I posted this in another thread, so I’ll repeat it here:

I have been wondering why the runes didn’t have an internal cooldown. Something like 15 seconds or so. The reasoning for this is quite simple: the proc on the x6 bonus is superior to every confusion skill in the game.

Every. Single. One. Let me give some examples:

Confusing Images: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 15 second recharge.
Pry Bar: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 15 second recharge.
Concussion Bomb: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 18 second recharge.
Pain Inverter: 3 stacks for 5 seconds, 30 second recharge.
Sonic Shriek: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 25 second recharge.
Cry of Frustration with Illusionary Retribution: 6 stacks for 3 seconds. 30 second recharge.

Notice a trend? Highest is 5 stacks for 5 seconds, at a 15 second recharge.

The rune set gives 5 stacks for 10 seconds, no recharge. The only limit to this is whatever access you have to interrupts, and many classes can stack a whole lot of interrupts. This rune set gives confusion twice as potent as every other confusion skill in the game, and it does this as freely as your ingenuity permits.

There is nothing about it that doesn’t scream “overpowered”. Those runes are awesome, and I want to have them on nearly every condition set I own. The only thing stopping me is the fact that I am almost certain that they’ll be nerfed in the future. If they aren’t nerfed, then the entirety of 1 vs. 1 combat becomes dictated by a rune set from strictly temporary content.

I think the tempest is fine. I’m actually looking forward to using it when it is fully released.

Yes, some traits/skills need to be buffed. But I’m not going to throw my hands up and declare that Anet start over again.

Sword has more or less just been a niche weapon in PVE. I love the phantasm, but the other skills are lackluster. The only time you ever whip it out is if you absolutely need to hit something at range.

I find that people’s definition of elitists is too narrow, which leads to some confusion when people start arguing about them.

Elitism as a word holds its history in government, being related to those who were selected or chosen, and so the words “elite” and a “election” share a relationship. It is from here that elite had “ism” attached to its end, and it became about the state or practice of being elite, particularly with ruling bodies and government. Elite came to mean “the privileged” or “the wealthy” or “the gifted”, and elitism was being rule by them; a notion which wasn’t popular when the word was invented.

This old world definition is how it came to be applied in games. “Elitism”, or governing by the elite, ultimately meant the exclusion of those who were not elite. From this, we’ve found the term “elitism” applied to places where some select group or club has status that excludes everyone else by direct action. Thus, the most appropriate definition in gaming, as well as the most encompassing definition, is

Elitism (gaming): A group of players with self perceived privilege or skill that emphasize play only with other privileged players.

The primary tool for doing this is exclusion, much as it has been for all “elite” groups in history. This can describe nearly every circumstance of elitism mentioned in this thread, and also brings to light some misconceptions:

#1: The elitist does not have to be good at the game.
#2: The elitist does not have to be right about how they gauge others.
#3: A player who is good is not necessarily an elitist.
#4: A elitist does not have to and can acknowledge that they do not fit their own criteria.
#5: An elitist does not need to want to be an elitist to be an elitist.

That is where a great many misconceptions lie. It’s like this in real life, too. We’ve all seen a great many people who are full of themselves, but can’t make sense of it an have nothing to show for it.

I’m not really bored with dungeons, but I also don’t run them to nearly the extent that other people do. A rule of thumb, though, is that everything that doesn’t change gets boring after awhile. When running HotW to get a full set of armor and weapon skins, I had to run HotW path 1 so many times that I actually started to tune out during the runs. I had to keep myself interested for in the dungeon by constantly trying new builds, changing classes, and adapting new tactics. Running the dungeon the same way over and over again 30 times, finding someone who would run it the exact same way each time and not get bored would be difficult. However I digress:

The OP reminds me of an extremely popular thread on another MMO (active, so I won’t say the name) called “there be dragons” or something along those lines. It was years ago. The thread used dragons as a metaphor for the unknown, which was the driving experience for exploration. The game had become formulaic and bland, and there was no true surprise or wonder about the game anymore. This was true, of course. Something interesting one of the developers mentioned in that thread is that, in large part, the a lot of the lost wonder came from the fact that players would default to guides and walkthroughs whenever new content was released (which was 3 times a month or so), and in this fact they weren’t “exploring” anymore. Eventually, they released an area with elaborate randomly generated dungeons, and that is my favorite part of that game.

Looking back, my favorite dungeon runs were within the first two months after launch. Everyone did them blind, and were inexperienced in the game. So, each battle felt like a mountain to climb, and we’d spend time in voice chat just trying to figure out how to beat things. That anticipation of not knowing how to play your class well, and not knowing what was around the next corner… what I wouldn’t give to get that feeling again.

Now, it’s all so routine that voice chat is unnecessary in dungeons.

There is a much better way to fix the monotony. I loved the randomly generated dungeons from that other game, and I would love to see them here. What anet should do is throw in a whole lot more randomly generated content. The enemies shouldn’t always be in the same place, and they shouldn’t always be the same enemies. There should be dynamic events that are truly random and meaningfully impact the dungeon. The troll in AC explorable is a start, but there should be ten times more of that. And no, I don’t mean “giant bag of HP”, but the randomness of it all.

I’d like to elaborate a bit. There’s a difference between smart movement and nonsense movement.

If you’ve ever watched woodenpotatoes’ videos, you’d notice that whenever he fights enemies he is constantly jigging and jukeing in place. This annoys me, because this is the wrong way to fight enemies. It is nonsense movement that accomplishes little to nothing.

Smart movements are movements that accomplish things.

#1: Approach an enemy so you can attack them with melee. It is safest to attack most enemies from behind, as their attacks are cone effects that face forward. If an enemy abruptly turns to you, it is about to punch you.

#2: Walk out of the way of large telegraphs. You don’t necessarily need to dodge, as many moves are slow enough that a light jog will get you to safety. A mild strafe or running through the enemy model is usually enough to guarantee safety.

#3: Juking is a technique, but it is only useful in select situations. Against certain ranged enemies with slow moving projectiles, wiggling back and forth in place will cause their arrows to miss. This works because the arrows fire to your projected path will be when they hit, and not to where you currently are. You can use this technique intelligently, such as against a siege devourer. When you see the animation for a big ranged attack, walk in one direction until it fires, then quickly snap back. The attack will now fly safely by you.

#4: Don’t stand in fire. This references damage patches that many enemies lay out. If you see a patch coming your way, get out of the way.

#5: Try to avoid drawing aggro. The enemies in hot are designed to be decently challenging in small groups. In large groups, they are much more deadly. It is beneficial to avoid biting off more than you can chew. If necessary, open with ranged attacks to get an enemy’s attention, then when it comes close you clobber it with a sword.

#6: Kiting is a thing. Some enemies will destroy you in melee, so to avoid being wrecked, be sure to run in circles. Not small circles: you have to be largely moving away from a melee attack to avoid a melee attack.

There’s a relevant joke to all this, too:

Q: How many forumer’s does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: 100. 51 to vote to get it changed, and 49 to complain about it.

Someone is sitting under a bridge and telling riddles.

nethykins.7986:

One thing I think you missed, which really can change how gamers play is:
“How is the player rewarded for learning the game?”

Woah, woah, there…I’m not talking about loot drops, i’m talking about rewarding the player in other ways for learning the game, or at least (when a tutorial is put in) for when a player succeeds in applying something from the tutorial beyond just damage dealing. (Getting a boon that lasts for a quarter of a second is hardly rewarding, and if boons aren’t explained properly, then it’s kind of pointless. This is where DPS is a big thing. The game in centralised around being offensive – in PvE at least)

Get into any fight, solely focus on damage = Gold award on dynamic events, get loot drops from champions, kill quicker.
Get into any fight and solely focus on support = Bronze on dynamic events, if you don’t tag the champion with enough damage you may not even get loot, kill slower.

In the end, really “learning to play the game”, becomes counteractive because they’ve set it up to be that way.

I agree with all you’ve said, but I think a lot more probing needs to be done on the implications of GW2’s “learning” system.

Now I feel like a moron, because I forgot that there is a carrot on the end of that stick. You are totally right here.

As far as I can tell, in GW2 there is two forms of “reward” for the players. The rewards are as follows:

#1: Success. Not merely loot, but the essence of accomplishment. Currently, this is extremely lax, since many activities in the game are designed to allow any composition of any gear and clkittenout, so success can be quite easy.
#2: Loot. This is the reward for an activity. Gold/karma/drops/tokens, these work as little pellets for players to om nom up.

Now, the current way GW2 works, greater skill encourages greater rewards in both of these factors, however there is an issue. The greater rewards in these factors are a bit abstract. For #1, players usually impose new challenges on themselves, like soloing content, or speed running content, or beating content with novelty setup. For #2, more skillful players do receive more rewards, but only because they can complete more content in the same amount of time. This is abstract, in that “capable of doing more stuff” doesn’t immediately seem like greater reward, but mathematically it works out that way.

This may be one of those issues that is dependent on other MMOs. Some MMOs have raid content on weekly or monthly resets. So, the prospect of “faster = doing more = rewards for more” is completely lost. As long as the raid is done once a week, there’s no rush to do it 10 minutes faster.

In many games, the “skill” is synonymous with getting higher tiered gear, and sometimes content is gated behind having this gear. Growth in skill becomes about growth in gear, so many players will assume that having open content means that they have all the skill they’ll need, even if it is just hanging back, pressing 1.

Incentives is a complex topic, especially since it delves into the “chicken vs. egg” territory. You can say that the reason why we don’t have challenging content is because players aren’t informed, but you can also say that the reason why we don’t have informed players is because content is easy, or not properly rewarding. I favor the former, since just making stuff harder won’t change player expectations and difficulty dissonance and the disconnect between GW2’s game design vs. other MMOs. A hard part of changing incentives is doing it “The GW2 Way” as the devs have said before. Sure, the devs can make tiered gear requiring beating difficult content for exponentially growing statistical advantage, or the devs can make content locked behind specific challenges and achievements that further gates more achievements, but this would just tick off players and ruin GW2’s identity.

But I can’t say that changing how some incentives work is a bad thing, either. I’m totally for dungeon gambits.

If I wanted to play an ugly character I’d look in the mirror.

I’ve played this “outside” game before. The worst part is, there are bad luck accounts.

Yes, I am one so unfortunate to have received a “bad luck account”. The RNG for Outside must be broken or something. As soon as I start it off, I’m swamped by a myriad of problems that prevent me from playing the game. Several permanent debuffs in the form of severe pains, half the food which is supposed to restore health just damages it, a graphical glitch that causes the subtle punctuation and emotes of other players to be completely invisible, a broken interface which causes a third of my button presses to not respond, the graphics are in Atari-2600 era resolution, and the worst part is my tutorial mission was completely broken and didn’t work right.

Until I read your experiences, I didn’t know that my game was broken. I just thought that it was supposed to be a convoluted and complicated mess to appeal to some kind of old-school challenge mode.

You have to build specifically to stack vulnerability in order for the valk set to be near equivalent damage to zerker. Otherwise there isn’t much difference.

I’d definitely go with spite (bitter chill, rending shroud, other trait), soul reaping (unyielding blast, deathly perception, other trait), reaper (decimate defenses) if you plan to run valk. That setup should give enough vulnerability to sustain decimate defenses high enough outside of shroud.

The raining numbers vs. big blob of damage comes down to your user interface settings. In the options there is a way to change the damage indicators for conditions. I can’t remember the exact settings, but one option uses the old version where little white numbers rain from your enemy. The newer setting tells you how much damage the sum of this little numbers is every second.

There’s no operational difference between the two, really. The fountain of little white numbers shows how much damage is done by each individual stack each second, while the big blob just shows the total damage for all the stacks of that particular condition. Conditions work the same either way.

Now, to answer the other questions:

2.1-2.3: Asrat got it.

2.4: This is technical. The short answer is they benefit. The long answer is, the more conditions you lay down, the harder it is for the enemy to cleanse them all. Condition cleansing skills tend to affect a limited number of conditions, so the more unique conditions you put on an enemy, the less likely and less frequently they’ll be able to cleanse a really damaging one. So while your conditions don’t do much damage, they do help other condition builds out. Also, necromancers with epidemic spread conditions using their condition damage stat, so they benefit from it as well.

The technical thing is, that unless you’re running a condition build, damaging conditions aren’t worth that much. They do very little damage compared to the power damage you can output. Disabling or inhibiting conditions like weakness, blind, cripple, and vulnerability are good no matter your build, but laying out as many conditions as possible on a non-condition build isn’t an effective strategy in the least. Your teammates would probably benefit better if you used power tactics on your power build.

3: Already answered

4: Well, this is one of those great debates among condition cleanses. The truth is, no one is sure. There are many camps of people:
FILO: First in, last out. The idea that only the most recent condition is cleansed, so if you apply a burn and then a cripple, the cripple will be cleansed.
FIFO: First in, first out. This is the opposite of the above.
Random: The order in which conditions are cleansed is random, and any trends are just anomalies in the RNG.
Global Hierarchy: This is the theory that each condition has a hidden priority ranking, and so the cleanses will always go in the order of this ranking. The ranking is unknown to players, and is not public knowledge.
Personally, I’m in the camp that each cleansing skill has its own set of priorities. That is, from one cleanse to another, there is no set order, but each individual cleanse does have an order. This is one of those subjects where there has been no explanation by the devs, and even if there was an explanation there’s a good chance it would be wrong. It is due to how GW2’s code is a gigantic knot of spaghetti.

4.2 Condition removal should never “miss”. There’s a chance that it appears the removal hasn’t worked because the enemy you are fighting applies conditions so rapidly that it looks like nothing happened.

Personally I didn’t start using chrono until at least I unlocked the grandmaster minor.

One of the reasons no one has suggested a build is because with how everything has changed, no one is sure exactly what to do yet. It is like being given half a dozen ways to melt face, and having to pick one. I can give you some fairly basic builds, though.

Illusions + Domination/Dueling + Chronomancer Avenger Build: Compounding Power, Phantasmal Haste, Chronophantasm are the real important traits. Basically, with how illusions only receive 1/20th the damage they used to, it is fairly easy to get 3 Illusionary Avengers up. These avengers pulse out AoE alacrity and slow on hit. Personally on this build I run 4 wells + time warp, and also use All’s Well that Ends Well and Improved Alacrity for traits. After summoning a few avengers, you continuum shift, time warp + wells, then use the wells again after the shift ends. Soon you’ll have 3 phantasmal avengers giving out near permanent alacrity and slowness. Sword/Shield is recommended.

That build is good for a long haul fight, but for more burst, there’s another one:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/PvE-The-New-Chronomancer-Dungeon-Rotation/first#post5517427

This isn’t my build. It is a bit complicated, but basically by spamming as many shatters as possible the mesmer is capable of giving out large amounts of group quickness, alacrity, might, and other assorted boons.

Now those are more support-oriented builds. For solo roaming in HoT content, I have a rather strange “lol wut?” build going…

Domination: Empowered Illusions, Furious Interruption, Mental Anguish
Dueling: Phantasmal Fury, Fencer’s Finesse, Deceptive Evasion
Chronomancer: All’s Well that ends Well, Improved Alacrity, Chronophantasm

Sword + Pistol/Sword. This is basically the same Dom/Dueling/Illusion build you’re familiar with, but replace inspiration with Chronomancer. It has that strange mix of clone summoning for shatters, phantasm sustain for long term DPS, and alacrity love (the other chrono traits more more PVP oriented, as interrupt traits and slows aren’t that good against break bar). The thing with this “build” is that nothing is set in stone with it, and I change weapons/traits as needed.

For non-chronomancer builds, we have the standard Dom/Duel/Inspiration for group support.
Empowered Illusions, Blurred Inscription (with Signet of the Ether), Mental Anguish.
Phantasmal Fury, Fencer’s Finesse, either Deceptive Evasion or Harmonious Mantras.
Compounding Power, Phantasmal Haste, Master of Fragmentation.

Ether Signet. Sword + Sword/Focus. Basically, summon a bunch of phantasms then auto attack, as usual. Stronger now that phantasms take reduced non-targeting damage. The support variant runs Inspiration, mostly for the minor traits but also for Warden’s Feedback. Reflects are still useful, after all.

Having now attempted it twice, I do feel like the F/U path is too difficult. I haven’t managed to get past it myself yet.

The biggest problem is, the circumstances for success and failure are determined in the first 10 seconds, and by group composition when first formed. First group I had, they ran in to melee the boss, 2 dropped instantly and couldn’t be healed up from the tree’s attacks. Once that was failed, there was no way to try again.

No matter how hard we tried to pull the innumerable spiders around the corner to prevent more spiders from spawning, it didn’t work. An endless stream of high damaging mobs just kept coming our way, reflection and projectile destroying be darned. At that point, there was nothing to do. The spiders did too much damage, you couldn’t kill the spiders quicker than they spawned, and you couldn’t kill the tree quicker than the spider’s spawned. We tried stacking and using reflects + projectile destruction. We tried kiting and circling the tree. We tried having a designated kiter while everyone else DPsed the tree. We tried having one person fight the tree while everyone else fought off spiders. We tried dodging randomly when the tree shook to avoid spawning more spiders. When limitless blind fields, projectile reflection, and stacking heals + melee attacks wasn’t enough to get through the sea of spiders… then what is?

The second group I had didn’t stand a chance either. Mostly because no one in that group had DPS gear or even played in a manner that did effective damage. On my zerker + valkyrie thief, I was over a third of the team’s damage output. Literally. I tested this on archers, and my archer solo was at half HP by the time the rest of the group brought down their archer. And that… was accomplished with my auto attack. Yeah, that team could never beat the tree. When we got there, the team was slaughtered laughably and I was left kiting the tree while surrounded by hordes of spiders from every direction.

I suppose the biggest problem is that I am at a loss on how to handle this tree in a manner that doesn’t involve getting 1 mesmer + 4 berserkers together, running in and DPSing the tree down as fast as possible. Well sure, I know that works, but I don’t have the resources to pull that off. I can’t get in on that action, because I hybrid my berserker with valkyrie gear on my thief (50% crit rate. don’t need higher), and my other classes are engineer and necromancer. People tell me to dodge when the tree shakes so more don’t spawn, people tell me to pull spiders around the corner so more don’t spawn, and to use reflects, but none of that works.

Axiom.6137:

It’s impossible to be shocked at bad changes to GW2, the trend has been sustained and predictable. There might be some entertainment value in checking out new patch notes to see how they will outdo themselves in the realm of self sabotage, but it is nothing but frustrating for those who want to see the game become great once again.

I’d play again if they offered GW2 Classic servers that reverted the game to it’s state in spring of 2013. Wishful thinking though.

As to the trait system changes, I don’t get it. Every person I played with who came from another MMO wished that the game would introduce traits at an earlier level, because it was one of the clearest ways of obtaining a sense of progress for their characters. I don’t think I ever heard or read a comment any where suggesting the desire to see the trait system pushed back further and I definitely never heard anyone wish for fewer, less frequent trait point dispersals.

They gave us one good thing on traits, ease of respecs, which many people did ask for, then ruined the trait system almost seemingly as if out of spite.

I’ve never seen an MMO so determined to ignore the player base and focus on things people don’t want. If they were doing what was best for us and the game by turning a deaf ear and blind eye, that might be courageous, but little they have done in spite of the players and the original GW2 manifesto has been anything but detrimental for the game.

The trait pushback was done, in part, to encourage players to experiment with their skills before they have to deal with traits.

I think it is a horrible idea, though.

OP: I bought chocolate ice cream, and for some reason it didn’t taste like chocolate. Why is that?
Brasil: Don’t buy chocolate ice cream. Problem solved. RESPECT ME!!!

Leo G.4501:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

At some point in time, I do wonder when this discussion became about legendary armor, instead of about then nature of raiding in MMOs as a whole.

That may be partially my fault and I apologize.

The OP does talk about so much more and I was hoping to get discussion going on making your characters more personalized to instill more personality to your character besides the whole skin-race that results in most people settling on a look like their wardrobe projectile vomitted on their character model.

Rather than poking holes in raids, gear tiers and what not, how about adding journals, character bios and other unique features to the game. shrug not the best ideas, just what was on the top of my head.

I’m definitely all for character bios. Had them in CoH, and I want them here.

As far as characterization goes… I think one of the better things is also one of the harder things. The best way to personalize a toon is to make them operationally different. To invoke other MMOs (city of heroes again), the different classes weren’t just different in name. They were different in play. Picking up a controller (control/manipulation main, buffs secondary) was a completely different experience from playing a scrapper (melee main, armor secondary). Scrappers would flip out and kill things at point blank, taking on multiple foes at once. Controllers would divide and conquer, disabling and separating enemies while picking off targets one at a time.

The classes in GW2 are actually very homogenized. They have the ability to, at least to some extent, do everything, and the combat of nearly every class can be broken down into a 3 step process:

#1: Melee auto.
#2: Use skills higher than melee DPS when off cooldown.
#3: Use occasional utility skill/dodge if and when they are demanded.

End of every class strategy ever. When taken at its most basic elements, the only real difference between my thief and my engineer is how much I have to mash the keyboard to do DPS.

The reason why this is hard to fix is because this was intended by design. GW2 was made PVP-up. Each class was designed specifically to be capable of fighting off and beating any other class (give or take some “skill”) in numerous ways, and so a great divide between types of play between classes would run contrary to this design. It would create a paper > rock > scissors > effect that would lead to rage and ineptitude in the players.

The good news is, this is on the way to be fixed. By “on the way” I mean that elite specializations increase the divide between class types. While ranger and thief are scarily similar, Daredevil and Druid are quite different. As more elite specializations are released, the identity of the classes are going to become more separated, and their builds more personalized.

Hopefully elite specs will be released at a rate of more than 1 per xpac.

reedju.5786:

I feel like (for the most part) those who main necro want dhuumfire gone (because they know what we are capable of without it) and those who mainly fight necros want DS brought down (theyve faced burst before, but don’t realize how situational/squishy DS really is).

The supposed nerfs aimed at bringing necro in line for PvP, however, have started conflicts in balance between PvP/PvE players.

And then there are those that think condi necro should be a quasi-melee class…

Hopefully Arenanet has a better sense of what they want done with the necro than the community does because if not…I don’t even want to imagine it.

We never needed extra damage, we had a strong control/teamfight niche with (even if it was limited) some diversity. Now the undisputedly apex build is 30/20/0/0/20, for me simply the effect on class diversity, and the communities sanity is enough evidence that burning was a bad idea. It literally has no counterplay. Coming from a previously “UP” necro I’d rather return to that time when we could play well and get good results in return. Anyone who tries to argue that a skilless RNG ability is a good direction for this game can forget competitive play.

Yes the engi has it, but it doesn’t have any of our access to control or boonstripping. Also, it is only supplementary to the burning they have interesting ways to use. Too much is too much, the recent changes to DS, LF, weakness, blind (sorta? people act like we have so many applications of this when in reality we have a single weapon/utility/elite), and torment were plenty. Honestly if anyone should have had this much added at once it should have been warrior or any of the countless other unplayed condi classes (thief/mesmer/guard/ele/etc.)

To be honest, I’m not a fan of Dhuumfire. I don’t find it to be overpowered due to how frequently it goes wrong, but it does seem like it is a big bandaid to a problem that should’ve been solved other ways.

I was against giving Necromancers burning long before they got burning. If they needed more condition damage, then they should’ve received better access to poison, bleeds, and confusion. If they needed more raw power, then they should’ve just buffed the base damage of those attacks. It is a simple solution, but a relatively effective on.

I would’ve preferred confusion instead of burning. For one there’s play involved, since confusion is based on action instead of a straight DPS. Second, confusion is rarely used so it won’t be overwritten by other classes. It provides depth while providing either offense or defense through enemy inaction. It works great on an engineer for both purposes, so it would make sense that it would also work well on a necromancer.

I find the whole thing inelegant, and if Dhuumfire was removed I wouldn’t be sad about it. My concern is whether necromancers would loose too much by losing it. Without that burning proc, Necros do lose a lot of power in a 1 vs 1 situation, since the bleeds are slow to accumulate, and the auto attack chain is often interrupted before poison is applied.

Purple Miku.7032:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m not sure ice bow will ever stop being used as long as line casting is still a thing.

Line casting is not a thing…

Jesus christ, Nemesis seriously is a thorn in this community’s side.

I see people doing it. Besides, so long as it is possible it is still an issue. Just because a certain group of people refuse to use it doesn’t mean that it stops existing.

arkealia.2713:

Was probably needed to avoid the “must have 5 eles” on raids.

I think the icebow had the nerf coming for awhile, but this is an important thing. Immediately after being announced, I knew the optimum comp would have 5 elementalists just for their icebows. Thea ability drop 1.28m damage on the boss in 3 seconds forces a difficult balancing decision: make bosses have so much health that you need these icebows, or don’t balance around that strat and make the bosses too easy when you do have icebows.

Ice Storm is still a good skill. But now it is a marginal increase in DPS instead of a whole number scalar multiple.

I knew it felt like the forums were abandoned. There were literally 3x as many posts when HoT was released.

Personally I’m a fan of Occams Razor. The simplest explanation is that, yes, forum activity reflects in-game activity, because to arrive at the contrary you have to take some very special and unusual circumstances and extrapolate them to the entire population with little evidence. At least, for purchasing players. F2P doesn’t have forum access, so forum activity becomes less representative of in-game activity at that point.

They’re working on it. The gold seller issue is complicated, because with every invention Anet makes to stop them there’s a real life human being who programs around it on the other end.

It comes in waves, and nobody likes them, so take solace in the fact that Anet is working on it.

azuzephyr.7280:

I was talking to you, and I stand by that there is no point talking about pvp in terms of numbers, especially in terms of bleed pressure when neither profession is reliant on it. Bleed might account for more damage than any one other source during an encounter by virtue of being atached to auto-attack, but my output comes from other sources, bleed is merely the most common filler.

I’m rank 48/84.59% win ratio and highest ladder rank being 59[albeit a currently retired one]. Never have me or my team wanted bleed pressure from any source, not from engi, or necro.

…No point of talking about numbers in PVP? What do you think governs the system of PVP? It is about how high your numbers are, at what rate those numbers come (divided by activation and animation time), how reliable those numbers are (procs and chances to hit), how available those numbers are (recharge time), and how those numbers defend against other numbers (vitality, toughness, protection, cleanses, invulnerability frequency, etc). It is these very numbers that Arenanet changes to balance classes, and since we have seen unquestionably the effect that these numbers have on the metagame, then it means that the numbers are a foundation of the game.

I’m going to stop you here, since your case for reasoning is that objectivity, mathematics, and logic have no place in discussion where they are fundamental. Get rid of those and you are left with nothing but unverifiable hearsay, incomplete anecdotes, and paranoia drudged up on the same level that the boogeyman is around every corner and is going to get you no matter how strong or well armed you are. This train of thought will devolve into nothing but a “But no, I can counter their counter by doing this counter on their other counter”, which will never produce anything meaningful.

People know, but don’t do it anyway. Without a steady timer there isn’t a way to gather people up to do it. Whenever I go there and ask, all I get is silence. I haven’t heard of a single “event” where people have been forming for the Queen Karka, and likewise I have enough trouble getting people together for dungeons, let alone 4 times as many for this event.

The amount is random, because the droops are ultimately random. If someone gets a good or rare drop, the values increase significantly.

No, the big point is that ultimately they are an ineffective waste of space, even when used at the same time. The problem being you’re always taking damage “sometime”. The point is that gaining lifeforce is vastly inferior to evasion and blocking and controls as a defensive mechanic. Given the option to take damage and gain LF or not take damage, the latter will beat out the former. Every single time.

I also never said dagger. The weapon skills in general will outpace spectral skills when fighting against bunkers, and sure you can use those spectral skills to get a burst gain in LF, but you most likely don’t need a burst gain in life force when fighting against a bunker. You’re better off putting something else in those utilities. And the biggest problem with SW and SA is that, as utilities, they accomplish very little. SW is a stun breaker that grants swiftness, making it the most useless stun breaker a necro has. You can’t use it to grant yourself swiftness before the fight because then you’ve lost your stun breaker for the fight. SA is useful as a stun breaker because it grants protection, but is never around to do it. This makes the life force gain of SA at best a tertiary perk.

And that is a big problem with traits and utilities: whenever you pick one you must pick it over another one. If you put your traits into life draining and spectral abilities and choose utilities and weapons to life drain and gain LF, then in the end you aren’t doing much of anything at all. First because SW and SA are horrible as far as utilities go and are horrible with gaining LF, second because life draining heals for paltry amounts when it does work and most of the time it doesn’t work. LIfe siphon is weak because it takes 3.5 seconds to heal away 1.5 seconds worth of damage, and does about a third of the auto attacks damage in that time.

Again, the comparison between regen and vampiric traits isn’t that they are exclusive, but that it is far better to invest into something else and just use regen for healing, for investing in both requires requires a lot of resources to do not much more than just using regeneration.

Look, I’ve been down that road. I’ve tried running multiple spectral skills for stunbreakers, and I’ve tried using life siphoning skills to heal, and I’ve tried doing them both at the same time. It doesn’t work because, in the end, all you end up doing is chasing around an enemy trying to use the dagger’s auto attack while you get controlled and beaten down by another class who either fights at further range, simply has more damage per survivability, uses burst damage to bypass all that nonsense,, or has enough controls that those do-nothing stun breakers get used up then end up on cool down. You don’t have any combos that can do massive amounts of damage because your utilities are all used up for spectral skills, and your weapons clash because you’re running dagger and staff or something like that, or you use the scepter and staff and make Deathshroud utterly useless as anything but a sponge where you absorb hits and do nothing back in return and then not regenerate life force because the scepter sucks at it

Ah, the melee meta post? I read through that thing.

Yeah, the forums are like this. There’s a general crowd that vehemently defends keeping everything exactly the same. Problem is, they aren’t necessarily concerned with proving themselves right, so they’ll result to troll logic and petty insults first.

Your story isn’t unique. In fact, it is quite a common occurrence on the forums: someone has an issue with how something is done in the game, they go to the forums to talk about it, then they get yelled at by “vets” and “leets” insisting that nothing is wrong until they leave. Of course, the vets and leets bounce between near identical threads on the issue and keep insisting nothing is wrong in spite of so many complaints.

The best stats, or the gear prefix that offers the highest possible performance, is glass cannon gear. Viper, Sinister, Assassin, Berserker. Going lightly into defensive stats usually means very little, because the big attacks from enemies to enough damage that getting 700 points of toughness doesn’t mean much.

But, if you absolutely must have some defensive stats, there is a passable set. Marauder gear only does about 10% less damage than berserker, but the vitality it gives can help the low HP classes survive an extra hit or two.

Preferably though, you’d just switch to more defensive tactics, utilities, and traits. Because changing those is free.

Shirk.6421:

Sorry, but I don’t understand why so many people say HoT is so “hard” and “challenging”.

Have you tried playing poorly?

Personally I wanted the precursor to be obtainable via alternate currencies, like how it was with high value stuff in City of Heroes. The legendary crafting mastery is basically just an experience dump to get an alternate way to pay more money for the precursor.

The one to Rule.2593:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Random.4691:

It’s starting to sound as if they are selling an incomplete product.

You need to do X to get your Elite specs eventually, sorry Guild hall arenas will take X time to get, Raids won’t be released until X date.

So wtf exactly is it we paid for ? The ability to eventually play content ?

This is exactly right. One of the big things that nobody brings up about expansion packs is that after release, all new content requires the expansion pack. Even content that isn’t explicitely listed as part of the expansion pack. You have to pay if you want to play all the new stuff.

Did you really expect any less?

Nope. Not my first rodeo. I bought the x-pac as soon as it was announced because of this kind of nonsense.

Wanze.8410:

Whatever items they will promote during the anniversary sale was probybly proposed and approved weeks ago.

Whatever you post here, will not influence what we will be getting in the next 3 weeks.

I’ve got some bad news for you: “probably” is not a certainty. There’s no proof that Anet will not change their minds upon seeing a highly requested item.

TheLastNobody.8319:

what if they redesigned gravedigger? Make it so if you hit an enemy below 50%, it reduces the cool down of all GS and RS skills by….idk, 50 to 75 percent?

Reapers already have a trait similar to that. Its called Soul Eater. Each time Gravedigger hits an enemy, all other greatsword skills recharge by 3%. It also adds lifesteal to greatsword attacks.

As a trait, Soul Eater would be alright, were it not for the fact that it competes with Chilling Force (Might and Life Force per chilled enemy hit) and Decimate Defenses (2% crit chance per vulnerability stack), both of which are extremely powerful. In PVP you’ll want chilling force for the extra might stacks and life force + blighter’s boon synergy, and in PVE Decimate Defenses will give cap out a zerker reaper’s crit chance. Those two traits also work with every weapon. I guess maybe if there’s some pre-made group that manages to nearly max out precision, then Soul Eater would be preferable.

A simple fix would be to put Soul Eater at another tier. The hard part is that it seems like no matter where I stick it, another combo gets broken somehow. The best candidate is Reaper’s Onslaught, since in PVP you’ll be taking Blighter’s Boon anyway. I guess the theoretical Curses / Soul Reaping/ Reaper condi shroud knight build will take a hit by losing chilling force, but the Reaper line is so tightly packed that it is hard to make a change without breaking a combo.

ManaCraft.5630:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

SPVP is where necromancers have the most problems. In PVE they are fine, and in WvW is where they shine.

To be precise, necromancers do not shine in WvW. They shine in zergs. Once you move outside of the Babysitter Blob™ the exact same dynamics that you see in PvP begin to apply across the board.

Although most WvW is zergs, you are neglecting to mention that sPVP and fighting in WvW are completely different, even if it is 1 vs. 1. For one, in WvW there are more builds to choose from. Second, sPVP is about level skirmishes at points where WvW is more about assaulting/defending keeps and towers and choke points. Third, individual kills and the ability to “pwn noobs” means almost nothing in the long run of WvW whereas in sPVP that ability is quite important. Fourth, in WvW is it a lot easier to group up, even with just 3 or so people, whereas in sPVP the multiple objectives makes soloing an important skill to have. Fifth, in large scale fights the situational tools are far more useful since the chances of that “situation” arising approaches 100%. All in all, even away from the zerg WvW is almost nothing like sPVP.

Sure, in sPVP the inability to kill your target means less team points, both from the lack of kill and the lack of control on that point. In sPVP the ability to escape is important since you can quickly run to support another fight, where you’ll be far more useful than in a stalemate. Sure, in sPVP the ability to fight off more than one player at a time is important due to how the chaos of the field leads to players ganging up on each other more often. But none of that is true in WvW.

I hear about thieves who run zerker builds who try to burst someone down. Either they fail to kill their opponent and run away, or they manage to kill their foe and maybe get a loot bag. Either way, that thief has accomplished very little in WvW. If a thief attacks you and then gets away, that is a victory. Your goal is not to pwn n00bs. The goal is to capture outposts and defend towers, and the necromancer’s tools are excellent at that. Those are where all the points are acquired, so doing something other than that is an exercise in futility. In the zerg, the necromancer’s unavoidable AoE damage and support abilities are great, and net way more loot than if they ran around by themselves trying to burst down random lone players.

The odd thing is that I usually do pwn n00bs in WvW on the rare occasions I am attacked while by myself. The only time I’m ever solo’d is when I’m trying to capture outposts by myself, and someone manages to attack me from behind. The best way to get anything other than a thief is to use the chills from chillblains, dark path, spectral grasp, chill of death, and spinal shivers. In all probability, the necromancer is running multiple forms of those, and also has cripple from grasping dead or locust swarm or unholy feast. Even against a thief these are quite useful, since thieves rarely have an answer for chill and cripple. Using DS at strategic points is important, since if used correctly the combination of things like the chill, the fear, the high direct damage of the auto attack, retaliation, and instant enfeebling blood can down something quickly, being both and offensive and defensive maneuver. On offensive it can counter-attack and down zerker thieves quickly, and on defensive it can waste the mesmer’s shatter and apply conditions to them at the same time. Doing things like using epidemic on the nearby NPC that you’re fighting can sometimes drop multiple players in one go, giving them 20 stacks of bleed in an instant.

I also don’t have problems escaping fights. This might be from my tendency to main the staff in WvW, but should a situation arise that I don’t want to be in I just run away while laying down marks and wells behind me, making chasing me suicidal. The chill from Chillblains and the condition transfer form putrid mark really help, since any disability they throw on me gets sent right back at them. I really don’t know what the complaint is. Even against thieves who pop in and out of stealth a lot, you can just lay down marks for protection or use unholy feast to escape + grant retaliation, depending on what set you use. Heck, shadow refuge basically paints a gigantic target that says “Marks and Wells here!”.

There is one MMO that I liked unquestionably better than Guild Wars 2.

It was City of Heroes. Rest in Peace.

There are several reasons why I liked this game better, and now I will list them:

#1: Your character design was unique. Something I could never really get past in games like WoW, Monster Hunter, and Runescape is how your appearance is wholly dictated by the equipment you are wearing. Because of this, in those games you don’t have an identity, you are Paladin # 3009. Guild Wars 2 helps with this a bit, making personal customization the goal of character progression, but it still heavily limits players via the dye system and that armor choices can be less than stellar (I am sick of trenchcoats on medium classes).

City of Heroes didn’t have this. Your customization didn’t mean a thing toward your performance in game, and you could make nearly everything in that game. I remember taking screen shots of other people’s characters, just because their ingenuity in their design made me laugh out of my seat. You could go with dim, bland colors, or bright and vibrant colors, you could make yourself a simplistic golden-age hero, a gritty 80’s hero, a funhouse rob liefield hero with way too many pouches, you could make yourself an asian samurai elf, a gigantic purple alien, a surreal glowing god, and with so many customization options it was limitless. Every person looked unique, and left a lasting impression when designed right.

#2: Your character build was unique. The way the ability system in City of Heroes worked was like this: You pick your archetype, 14 to choose from with 10 letting you select a primary and secondary power. Then, you selected your primary power from a list of 8 to 12 powersets that were often fairly unique to your archetype. Then you selected a secondary powerset from a list of 8 to 12 powersets, again many specific to your archetype. Then, as you leveled up, you could pick up to 4 from 10 different universal power pools that were available, and then you could choose one of 5 ancillary power pools that were based on the AT, or if you completed the arc you could get one of 4 patron power pools to choose from as well. Among all of this, as you leveled up you picked the powers you wanted from all of your power sets, often skipping out on ones that are lower priority or less interesting. As you leveled up, you could put “slots” into these powers, maximum of 6 minimum of 1, that would let you enhance different aspects of that power, like how much it healed or how quickly it recharged, and you received a lot of these slots. Aside from basic enhancements, there were enhancement sets that would give you bonuses for slotting multiples in the same power.

Seems like a lot, right? Well, it was. All of this customization made it so every character was extremely unique in their abilities. Not only could you accomplish nearly any idea you set forth to do, but the high level of customization made it so the characters you made were wholly unique, even when compared to someone with the same AT, Primary, and Secondary power choices. Compared to all of this, GW2 has nothing on customization and class diversity. Nothing

#3: You were powerful. The whole game was balanced around the idea that you were going to be fighting multiple enemies at the same time. You’d fight mooks 3 to 6 at a time. You’d fight lieutenants 2 to 3 at a time. You’d fight boss enemies 1 to 2 at a time. You fight underlings 12 at a time. When you gathered together a group of 8 players, you’d end up fighting against a sea of enemies near innumerable, and you could plow right through them if done right. The challenge was presented in the enemy’s numbers, and not in their unique stats and abilities, so you played and felt like a kitten while doing it.

Most MMOs, GW2 included, don’t do this. In GW2, you’re group of 5 players has to fight against 3 silver mobs, and often times they’ll decimate you. You feel quite powerless at times, only going “plink, plink” with spells and “pew pew” with guns. Unless you use zerker you don’t feel the impact of the fight. Enemies seem like bastions of health and power that you are dwarfed beneath. Sure, in GW2 there was Archvillains who were designed to take multiple people to fight, but they were rare and were only present after hallways of mooks that you plowed through to get to them.

I’m fine with raids myself. The biggest problem with raids in GW2 stems mostly from the fact that GW2 wasn’t built to handle raids. Having to get into squads to work around the party limit, no designated area or LFG system or Queue that would handle the difficulty of organizing a raid. For a loose and free player such as I, the inability to group together for a raid like that is quite problematic.

Second small issue is that certain ascended gear sets (viper) have their trinkets gated behind the raid.

I eventually watched the whole video. I suppose the biggest problem wasn’t that raids were bad for WoW, insomuch as it is that WoW was eventually made to be basically raiding and nothing else. As the game was expanded, raids kept being pushed further and further. Raids were the high level thing to do, so the game became much more focused on raiding content as a whole. The game was designed in such a way that raiding became as convenient as possible, constantly making everything in the game obsolete. This left the rest of the “World” of Warcraft barren and useless.

Having large member multiplayer content isn’t bad in any sense. It is bad when the entire game becomes just that. So long as Anet continues to expand the rest of the game, it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

They’ve already told you when: “Indefinitely”. That means there is no definitive time for which legendary weapons will be returning.

My biggest concern is how this affects PVE, particularly when soloing champions or fighting temple bosses.

The whole “soaking up a big hit with DS” in PVP was quite hard and a bit of a crapshoot. You could pop into DS at 10%, but a good thief would just use cloak and dagger once stealth dropped, then follow up with a backstab after DS is gone. So basically unless you time it just right, you won’t be soaking up a big hit.

But in PVE, I used this tactic all the time. When fighting the Priest of Melandru or the Statue of Dwayna or something like that, I would use the little LF generation I would get to use DS to soak up a big attack. Since I don’t have vigor or endurance regen or blocks or dodges or invulnerability, I HAVE to use death shroud in order to soak up those ridiculous 30K damage hits. But now I can’t…

So shed a tear for me in PVE.

I haven’t see much “harassment” myself. But I can definitely see where it comes from. The thing with squads is they are very handy for organizing numbers or distributing players, but they only work of players cooperate with squads.

I myself bought a commander tag, and the ability to rally players to my call has nearly paid for itself. The most use I get out of my tag is from Tangled Depths. I regularly command a lane there. Now, even though it was nerfed, King of the Jungle is still a marginally more difficult event than usual, and requires a degree of organization not found on most places.

I usually command Nuhoch or Scar lane, as those are the most important. And, every single time, I have to go through the same cycle over and over again.

Phase 1: while recruiting players for the lane, nobody shows up until 5 minutes before the event starts. This leads my numbers low, but generally once I have enough players I broadcast in map chat" Nuhoch lane is full! Please fill other lanes!".

Phase 2: Upon actually going into the lane, I will get several players (up to 10 or so) who will follow me into the lane who
A) Haven’t joined my squad
B) Haven’t messaged me saying they were going to become part of my “group” regardless of squad status.
C) Refuse to communicate
D) Or Cooperate
E) And refuse to go to the other lanes.

Keep in mind that Nuhoch lane is usually organized first. So, while I’m sitting at 10 extra, SCAR and Ogre are all sitting at 4 or 5 players, begging map and local chat for people to come help them.

Phase 3: Eventually half of those players will wise up, join my squad, and just go willy nilly anywhere doing anything, regardless of any instructions. Now, Nuhoch lane is divided into 3 subgroups specifically to deal with the complicated nature of the lane mechanic. It doesn’t work that well when a sudden influx of players piles on squad 1 and just runs around doing whatever anyway.

This… fails events. Much more so before the “bugfix”, in which a few misplaced players have literally killed the event countless times, but even after the bugfix there have been cases where swaths of unaccounted and uncooperative players have ruined the event.

Personally I’ve never been venomous. I’ve been extremely blunt and direct, but I don’t toss insults lightly. However, my skin is much thicker than others, and so I can definitely see where players might be coming from.

Harper.4173:

Snip

That’s why I’m telling you your idea is a purely theoretical one – in reality a 5man newbie zerker party will wipe AC like there’s no tomorrow because they have no experience with the game.

Snip

You are drastically underestimating the damage done by enemy attacks, and how little damage is actually mitigated by passive defenses. Kholers spin, for example, will still OHKO players who are in knight or carrion armor. The same goes for Colossus Rumblus rocks fall everyone dies attack. Same goes for the trolls leap. Same goes for the Howling King’s Scream. Same goes for the Scavanger’s Pounce and consecutive stun. Maybe if you are in PVT armor and you don’t get focused/crit you’ll survive, but a surprisingly large amount of time having twice the effective health means nothing. Getting twice the effective health is actually pretty hard, since you need full soldiers in order to achieve it.

These proportions are tight, and active defenses are very finite. So, the correct statement would be “Should the attack deal enough damage to kill a GC toon but not a non-GC toon, then you get one additional chance to dodge”. Sure, you technically get another chance to dodge, but this neglects the fact that the longer lived enemy gets to launch far more attacks. Even if you dodge precisely in tanky gear, you’ll end up taking more damage because of the enemy’s longer lifespan. If you imprecisely dodge, you’ll get the same amount of progress either way.

You’re also assuming that there is an entire group wipe every time something goes wrong. Even in a full newb group that is rarely the case. The couple of players who survive can rez the downed ones, thus giving them a much larger margin of error than what you are depicting. They still have heal skills, they still have protection, they still have stun breaks, etc. and so on. Even at launch, players were using their utility bar to increase their survival, and were quite effective at it. They’re also good at running away and attacking at range. Back when the game was first launched, the strategy of the time was one person kite while someone heals the others. Keeping at range is a surprisingly good defensive tactic.

You’re also forgetting that higher DPS is a cumulative bonus, whereas higher durability is a personal bonus. The faster an enemy dies, the faster it stops dealing damage to everyone. Every player with higher damage contributes more and more to the groups survival. The sum total of this contribution is quite staggering, and it makes the tools available to the players more potent.

EDIT: I mused over these points years ago. There’s really two factors that changes how well GC gear does over durable gear:

#1: Healing Capacitance. This is the capability to receive heals. The more durable you are, the more overall healing you can receive. If you are in a situation where you’ve managed to avoid the threshold of lethal damage, this is only meaningful if you are receiving enough health to compensate for that damage. Otherwise, the loss in power just delays the inevitable.

#2: Clinched thresholds. Enemy damage isn’t constant. It is segmented into bursts. Because of the massive heal after every fight, you only need just enough effective HP to survive. This burst delay is the period of time in which more durable gear can make up for the damage they’ve lost. By survivng the lethal hit, a more durable gearset can be more effective if they are capable of downing the enemy between bursts. This benefit lies in the fact that going full tank or full GC isn’t the most efficient combination of EHP x DPS.

These are both rare circumstances in PVE. You brought up one sort-of brought up one in rezzing other players, but this isn’t true healing capacitance, since it requires another player belly up and sacrifice their own safety to bring someone back. Given the statistical similarity between the two gear sets, unless one of those content-specific thresholds are met, GC gear will outpreform tank gear by sheer statistical fortitude alone.

I’m just glad that I won’t over-level and miss content because I am too high level to enjoy it properly. That is one thing that ’ve found to be really annoying in games with a level system. Heck, when I played FFX by the time I got to the final boss I was effortlessly killing everything in one hit.

I think the biggest problem is more about how players play than how they build. The slow prevalence of berserker builds didn’t come from superior skill or mathematical proofs, but out of better tactics. People discovered that by gathering together they could share boons, share the aggro equally amongst each other, all the while maintaining the highest offense possible. They discovered that, by actively engaging bosses at close range, when someone needs to pull off to heal, the boss doesn’t chase them anymore. Doing this allowed players to build more and more for offense.

The hardest time I ever had in my HotW marathon was on a power necro. Knight armor, zerker everything else; a hybrid in essence. I played through the dungeon as I always did, and I swear I downed every 5 seconds. It was odd, because I’d done this path on a power necro build a half dozen times before and I never had this problem. The issue was, as I eventually learned, that all of my teammates did nothing but stand very far back and auto attack at range. They didn’t use utilities or multiple weapon skills or even weapon swap. Just stand back, and auto attack. Because of this, I would end up drawing all of the aggro of enemies, and also maintain permanent aggro on the boss because even when I turned tail and ran, my teammates weren’t doing enough damage to draw aggro away, so the boss would chase me down and kill me. I couldn’t “not” take aggro, because until I ran forward they would just hang back doing nothing until their complaints of how “this sucked” eventually became worse than the sting of having to die.

It isn’t the first time I’ve seen it happened. Once I refused to run forward, and the team disbanded on the spot. It didn’t matter what build they had, since they couldn’t play at all. Their tactics involve letting competent players die, and then dying themselves because even with defensive stats they couldn’t defend themselves.

I think this might be why it is so many people run PVT gear. If you hang back and let people fight for you, dying one by one, then it seems like PVT gear wouldn’t be enough. The fact is, a player has to pull their weight no matter what gear they wear, because nothing can compensate for bad gear