Guild Wars 2

I have to constantly say this: there are still roles in this game. The roles are simply more subtle and nuanced:

Thief: Defiance stripper, aggro management, defensive utilities, evasion tank.
Guardian: Offensive buffer, Healer, block tank, projectile management.
Elementalist: Offensive and defensive buffer, healer, combo field user/finisher highest PVE DPS, miscellaneous utility
Engineer: Debuffer, high CC and immobilization, Healer, buffer, combo field user/finisher, extremely versatile miscellaneous utility (capable of fulfilling any role to a satisfactory extent)
Mesmer: Mobility, aggro management, high CC, block and evasion tank, projectile management, high miscellaneous utility, and also sometimes healer.
Warrior: unique buffs, self buffer, high durability for sustained DPS.
Necromancer: Debuffer, high durability, miscellaneous utility
Ranger: Rage magnet (seriously though, I don’t know much about rangers)

Running around in dungeons with pugs a lot, I’ll find that we’ll be lacking in the strangest utilities that other classes have. For example, sometimes we’ll fail due to a lack of projectile blocking/reflecting, or a lack of condi cleanses, or a lack of defensive utilities via protection/blinds/heals, or the strangest one which was a lack of range. Different classes have different combo fields, which and different finishers to use in those fields.

At no point in fulfilling any of these roles should a class have to sacrifice independence. This is what the trinity does, though. To have the trinity, you need DPS that is too weak to take hits, heals that are ineffective except with durable targets, and an aggro manager who lacks the durability and DPS to fully survive an encounter.

jief.2509:

Is there a power build that would work in high lvl fractals that doesn’t involve camping the bomb kit? I’m new to engi and I just can’t stand that the main attack animation I see is squatting down and placing a big bomb lol.

I’ve done a few more tests, and the advantage that bomb kit has over hammer (for scrapper) has dwindled severely.

Going with every buff (no food) and every condition, camping hammer averages around 26k, whether you use Rocket Charge or not. Camping Bomb kit and only switching to hammer for thunderclap does about 27.5k damage. While this is better, it isn’t that much better. Vanilla engi camping the bomb kit does around 28-29k.

It is unfortunate, but peak engi performance was nerfed this patch.

I love passives. With lack of a mouse or the ability to hold right-click, my peak PVP performance is severely limited. I only have so much mental capacity to both maneuver my character, pay attention to tells on the screen, and click on my various utilities. To say that builds like these do not take skill is absurd, since it requires maintenance and positioning and timing. Using their activation abilities at the wrong time is just as costly and wasteful as if you wasted a skill that didn’t sit on the field before using it.

Building for them requires sacrifices, too. When a player picks something like dagger training for their utility, they have to do this at the cost of picking something else for a utility. They have to invest those trait points into that line, and then pick dagger training over improvisation or quick venoms. These abilities aren’t some free benefit that gets thrown on top of whatever it is you use. It is there instead of something else.

Maintenance =/= skill. The fact is that players exist that choose to use builds that are lower maintenance than some 20-cooldowns button mashfest (my biggest criticism as an engineer main), and there is nothing wrong with having a low maintenance build. The only thing wrong here is that players are intolerant of other people’s playstyles.

Ranger. Particularly the druid specialization. It heals well and it also comes with a large series of unique buffs to increase the whole party’s DPS.

Ross Biddle.2367:

I don’t think you understand.

Mesmer’s arent going to give up their much needed decoy, blink, portal, MoD, Mantra Cleanse, Signit, etc for iDefender. It’s simply that Gyro displays how iDefender should be and raises the question of why iDefender is in the game at all when they can obviously get it right all along.

No, you don’t get it. I can tell you don’t get it because you listed 6 utilities, and you can only pick 3 in the first place. You’re padding your own mind, not thinking logically. This isn’t just about iDefender. It is about all the QQ all over the forums where people are whining that Engineers have better utilities. The mesmer is no exception. Keep in mind that in your mythical six utility mesmer, all that is still only equivalent to a single kit from the Engineer.

Not only am I not even sure bulwark is worth a slot, I’m not even sure bulwark is better than idefender. Bulwarks cooldown is up to twice as long. It’ll be cleaved just as easily, even easier if it has lower health (note: Idefender can have up to 21,209 health). You can only daze in PBAoE with the bulwark, whereas Idefender can be shattered in a multitude of ways at range, inflicting confusion, torment, vulnerability, granting boons, cleansing conditions, stripping boons, and healing. Idefender can inflict bleed on crit and can be spawned with retaliation, whereas bulwark doesn’t do additional damage by just existing. The Idefender can also increase your direct and condition damage, and reduce damage overall. You can’t summon bulwark on dodge/block, either.

So what advantages does bulwark have? #1 is that it is instant cast, which makes sense given how little bulwark actually does. Idefender is as much as an offensive skill as a defensive one, so like all phantasms it has a cast time. #2 is that it stays with you after an enemy is dead. This isn’t that useful: once your opponent is dead, you’ve won and don’t need it to hang around. #3 is that it comes with a reflect. Other classes this might be valuable, but a mesmer is bleeding reflects out of their ears, so the advantage is redundant. #4 is that it doesn’t require a target. Thankfully, the enemy you’re fighting is usually a target, and so Idefender can be used when needed. #5 is that when the drone is blown up, it dazes in an AoE without traits. This isn’t something that is lacking from the mesmer, just in a different place.

Think of how the engineer must feel, getting a trait that is arguably inferior to Idefender. That’ll never be worth a kit.

Something I’ve suggested before, and will continue to suggest, is to make stability much more widely available than it is now. Currently, stability lasts for a few seconds on very long cooldowns, making stability in PVP nearly useless. It’s never around when you need it, and opponents can just wait a few seconds for stability to wear off.

Stability granting utilities need to be more common, and give stability for much longer durations. At the current rates, I’d say to double the availability of stability.

I say this a lot: any class can have high DPS when played right.

I used to think that Rangers had low DPS. That was until I saw them do something other than spam the shortbow auto attack at range. The combination of Sword, Warhorn, and utilities actually meant for offense, and a ranger can dish out a ton of mini hits all at once.

A lot of people say Necromancers have low damage, but since I play a necro I also know that isn’t true. For condi necros, Epidemic is arguably the strongest attack in the game, moving 25 stacks of bleeding, poison, burning, and torment to 5 additional enemies at 1800 condition damage. Power necros can blow through enemies with 8K damage lifeblasts that pierce, stacks might, and stacks vulnerability at the same time. They also have 100% crit rate in Death Shroud and Lich Form, to boot.

A lot of people say engineers have low DPS, but that also isn’t true. They have difficult-to-use DPS. Engineers are the best hybrid class in the game. I run a hybrid HGH grenadier build, and I end up with 2700 power, 1700 malice, 50+% chance to crit with fury, 70% condition duration once my might stacks get going. My grenades hit like a truck, and they stack masses of bleeds and poison. I also have access to cone burns and AoE burns, ensuring a permanent burn on multiple enemies at once. We’ve already seen an example of what a bomb kit can do in this thread.

Right now, I’d probably say the lowest DPS* class is the mesmer. There’s a “*” there because mesmers can inflict a ton of damage in the right circumstances, as those 18 second Lupi videos have shown us.

Personally I find that daredevil makes acrobatics even less attractive. I’ve already written at length about how that line is the worst line ever, but now that DD takes up its many niches, there’s no reason to run it at all.

First, it is bad at endurance regeneration. You get more vigor and weapon dodges from Trickery, and maybe even critical strikes if you’re running Signet of Agility with the recharge reduction trait. The difference being that trickery provides useful utility and critical strikes provides a lot of raw damage, whereas acrobatics provides barely anything.

Expeditious Dodger is a vastly inferior version of Unhindered Combatant, so inferior it is nigh useless. Basically combine Don’t Stop and Expeditious Dodger, and you’ll have half of what Unhindered Combatant can do.

Assassin’s Reward is only about as strong as Driven Fortitude, assuming no further additional dodges other than those innate to the Daredevil Specialization. Throw in a single skill based dodge and Assassin’s Reward, a grandmaster, is now inferior to the worst trait in the Daredevil line.

The rest of the acro line is filled with traits that are nearly useless. The worst part is, these traits don’t even compound with daredevil. The _ on evade traits are crap, and the line barely helps you to evade. It doesn’t provide as much as any other trait line in any capacity with which you could possibly evaluate a trait line.

I wouldn’t call it an endorsement at all. If anything, the achievement is biting criticism of alcoholism. The time it takes away, the money it costs, the relationships lost… quite clever, really.

Wethospu.6437:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

—
The condi food is weird. While it does give technically more stats than any other food, it is also the only food where its primary “stat” will vanish once a certain cap is reached. I mean, sure, the other effects of food diminishes as you stack on more and more buffs, but it never outright stops.

—

Precision also vanishes.

Question: Does the extra precision help against up-leveled enemeis? I vaguely remember a discussion thread about it back then, but I can’t remember if increased precision had an effect against the crit rate reduction from being underleveled.

Cyninja.2954:

He’s using poor language in order to grab peoples attention for a maybe valid point of discussion.

The mere fact that TC has to create such a smokefield just to get people interested in his complaint/idea should be indication enough of how much attention this point might have gotten otherwise.

My memory is a bit longer, so I remember the nature of condi food being discussed multiple times in the past. Particularly when it was at +40% duration, and the difference between having it and not was far more substantial. The issue is one that hasn’t really gone away, just reduced a bit over time. I’ve been wondering for quite awhile why it is that Anet hasn’t fully embraced the expertise system, and converted food buffs and other sources to static additions. What we have now is kind of a messy patchwork.

Dante.1508:

Sartharina.3542:

Danicus.4952:

Thank you all for the cogent responses. After reading the comments to date, I would like to make a few small clarifications. My primary concern is not one of difficulty. Well conceived challenging content is a good thing. I don’t want additional nerfs. What I ineffectively articulated was that the design choices in the expansion diminish population access, and when people express their frustration, it is not productive to engage in ad hominem attacks about their skill or understanding of what an MMO is.

Consider the first HOT map zone for example. Run out of endurance while gliding and fall to your death in pulsing vine twitch. This insta-kill feature is not present on later maps. Seems like an upside down design choice. Consider all of the character trapping map features in the wrecked ship canopy areas in the first zone. I typed in /stuck many many times. Consider all of the locked waypoints on all of the HOT maps (there has been improvement with this). Consider how movement becomes easier as you become more experienced – (an upside down player skill progression imo) when accessing areas. (Doesn’t it make more sense to need to develop skills to access the most challenging areas on later maps rather than the first map!) Consider how the terrain mesh and the 2d layered maps / minimap are purposefully obscure to make pathing difficult. Compound those concerns with convoluted 3d maps, group timer meta events, megaserver and lfg challenges, and it feels – that by design – HOT does not invite casual player drop in, play, drop out experiences.

Mob attack mechanics,placement and strength will always need to be tinkered with, so that’s not what I consider a HOT specific design issue. People are frustrated to some degree with that, I get it, but I think the underlying source of frustrations are about design choices and not difficulty.

I think the idea they were trying to go for with HoT maps was a “Metroidvania”-style progression with the masteries. The first time through the maps, you’re supposed to take your time and see what they have to offer, with a few things locked behind higher-level masteries to allow for re-exploration, and other upgrades making the maps easier to navigate to reduce the tedium of backtracking through the massive maps, once you’ve already explored the new details.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in opening and learning maps, and truly exploring them and how they fit together (instead of just “Go here to hit Point A”)

You know that makes sense after doing HoT but the thing to remember is this is an MMO which had its direction planned for in Core, changing the whole game into a Metroid type experience is jarring to be polite.

As a customer i personally hate Metroid and all the clones it made, i just dislike those style of games and i’m not interested in playing them..

Which probably explains why i hate Heart of Thorns with a passion.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

For me personally as a Daredevil the frog things are almost unbeatable, they are teleporting, unhittable and do incredible damage solo, in a pack i am dead.. i may as well stand still and let them kill me because even if i attempt to fight them the end is the same.

I tried to pass two on a vine in VB and was killed 10 times in a row didn’t even drop one of them in the 10 tries, that to me is broken mechanics and i move on, its no longer fun after 10 frustrating tries so i logout, i did not go back since.

Say what ever you like “l2p” “git gud” if you cannot pass something in 10 goes no amount of “git gud” will help.

So you fought the same enemy ten times, but didn’t try to use stealth to simply run past them, or smokescreen to block their projectiles, or dagger storm to reflect the projectiles back to kill them, or basilisk venom to disable an burst one of them down, or double dodges/vault their arrow volley to close in and kill them, or scorpion to pull separate and kill them?

The whole journey thing is a load of crap. If I want a cake, the fun isn’t in making the cake. It is in eating the cake.

O.K. We’ll try this “respectfully” this time.

The most important thing when writing a story is to make things interesting. For a videogame, this usually involves gameplay. When playing a traditional RPG, we care about the relationships of the characters for several reasons:

A)We are often guiding or choosing the relationships and how they play out.
B)The relationship is often a product of the gameplay itself, and not the other way around.

This is why the Rox and Braham story is interesting. We met them though our gameplay and fought next to them. Then, they met up, and we went through what was IMO the best dungeon the game had. The interaction those two had was interesting, because the whole time we were bashing in dredge heads and yanking off charr tails. Their friendship was fun, literally. We had fun because we were playing a game. Granted, lately their story is has become more bland as time has gone on, but a strong beginning goes a long way.

But Marjory and Kasmeer… We met Marjory in a cutscene, and then… didn’t do much with her. Kasmeer was there too, I think, but the first time I ever noticed her was at the Southsun Event. I think many people will agree with me on why that is the first time we noticed: http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/gw2-southsun-mini-kasmeer.jpg

Yeah… not a strong character there. We learned about these two from cutscenes and text. It wasn’t until the end of the Tower of Nightmares before we actually fought alongside of them, and by that time I had already checked out of the living story for being lackluster overall. Kas/Jory falls into the same fault with much of the living story as of late: I wasn’t given enough of a reason to care at the beginning.

Elephant in the room: the heavily implied lesbian innuendo. The fact is that not everyone likes, agrees with, or is comfortable with homosexuality. It could be that they find the physical act to be disconcerting. It could be that they don’t agree with notion of contemporary homosexuality as a whole. It could be something less, like how many don’t like how the fanservice angle is patronizing men, or how their sexuality is being used to crutch an otherwise uninteresting story, thus exploiting the entire demographic.

I am one of them. The lesbian innuendo makes the relationship more than just stale. It makes the relationship unsettling, which drives players away from the game faster than something that is simply uninteresting.

I think I’m going to be a particularly difficult individual, and just cut this next post up into little bits. Personally I find it hard not to, given its content and the lack of reference points.

Canakun.8031:

You are a particularly difficult individual, I’ll give you that much.

First of all, no.
You’re wrong.

It should be self evident that, given the existence of a discussion, that one party is assuming the other party is wrong. It’s kind of a given.

Canakun.8031:

The metagame in any MMO is the most mathematically optimal way of clearing content that develops after many hours, of many days of many weeks of many months of testing and developing builds until there is no further way to optimize your play.
That is literally all that it is.

The hilarious thing is how wrong this all is. Traditionally the metagame is a reference to using outside factors to influence how a game is played. In particular this is done in reference to how other people will be playing the game. This is important in the PVP side of things, since a player will make their build choices trying to counter a build the other player is using. Thus it is called “meta” or “abstract”. In PVP, the metagame is a thing. But in PVE, you don’t do this. The most appropriate term is optimum, not meta. But nonetheless everyone throws that term around, so we use it.

I will say one thing: given the intangible nature of the “meta”, the name might be appropriate. If we are to assume that meta is slowly built upon, this comes with the implicit assumption that the meta is always wrong, even in its own goals. It will be either improved upon eventually, or the nature of the game will change and thus it is no longer applicable.

Then we have the application of the meta. The mathematical extrapolations are only as good as their practical use in the real world. The theory is only as valuable as how well it explains reality. All the numbers on all the spreadsheets in the world don’t mean a thing if it doesn’t work. Thus, we have the appropriateness issue: given the skill level and experiences of the average player, what is mathematically the best is not always practically the best. For this individual, the "meta’ objectively does not produce the best results. Thus, there needs to be a necessary distinction: a theoretical optimum, and a practical optimum.

This is important, because the practical optimum is what Anet has to balance around. Things have to be hard but attainable for the average customer, not the top 5%. Otherwise people go away and take their cash elsewhere.

That’s what the term means. You can’t place a new meaning onto this term, base your assumptions and accusations around that meaning and expect it to be taken seriously.

Wrong again, my not-so-good man. Or… I don’t know your sex. Nevermind. Anyway, what I am doing here is not inventing. I am investigating. Analyzing. Discovering how the word is used. Diagnosing inconsistencies and impracticality. Language is dynamic, and glorious imprecise, my good not-so-good woman. English is an art as much as it is a science.

Canakun.8031:

Sorry.

See, you say this, but I don’t believe you mean it.

Canakun.8031:

That’s not how words work.
It’s not something made up – it’s an optimized form of play that has been mathematically proven to be the best (read: fastest, most efficient) way of repeatedly clearing content.

Let me pose to you a theoretical situation. Suppose someone cracked the code and created a new, mathematically best way to play the game. No one could find any errors in this code. Suppose also that no player was able to actually replicate this performance in the game. Whether it be by the structure of the content, the player skill, or completely unknown reasons, not a single person was able to reproduce this predicted result. Would then, that theory be meta? Even if no one can or ever will do it, and other things do better in practice?

When I say “invented” I don’t mean in a Godzilla-and-Barbie-have-tea-with-the-Queen kind of way. The meta is based around, in large part, fact. However, by its very dynamic nature it is necessarily fiction. The meta for fractals isn’t necessarily the same as the meta for dungeons, and each dungeon can have its own meta. Even in its roots, it is a flawed assumption that the mathematically optimum way to play is the “best”. I.E. people might be looking to have fun first and foremost, and not find the number crunched way to be fun. But that’s another topic for another day, my not-so-good eukaryote.

When I say a few, I’m referring to theorycrafters. Particularly PVE focused dungeon/fractal theorycrafters. When you compare the proportion of these that contributed to the meta to the people who didn’t, you’ll find it is quite the relatively tiny group.

Canakun.8031:

Secondly, while you’re absolutely correct in what you said, which is essentially that player skill contributes to performance just as much as statistical optimization, you fail to realize how irrelevant that is.
The meta is the mathematical optimization. The meta gets played out through user performance, and they intersect. That was my point in the opening paragraph. That players who cannot master the user performance necessary to make the most use out of the mathematically optimal statistics, tend to drift away from them.

This just isn’t true. First, the meta is practical use. Math just plays a portion. Second, players who cannot master the tactics don’t drift away. They just keep playing. No one “masters” it. I see rants all the time about players playing with other players who think they’re doing meta stuff, but aren’t. Heck, I still see heavy only LFGs. I’ve seen the words Dunning-Kruger uttered in this game more times than I can count.

The thing with “mastery” is that it is ambiguous. You can’t measure it. You can’t quantify it. The idea that a player who follows the meta in the weakest sense will one day get up and proclaim themselves incompetent and stop trying is absurd. Preference in play is independent of competence in play. This should be self evident.

Canakun.8031:

Thirdly, whether the meta should be considered the default form of play or not is entirely irrelevant and just an attempt for you to, yet again, characterize me as an elitist. It’s boring.

The problem is that this wasn’t a debate. You consider (or at least considered. You might not now that you are observing yourself) the meta as the default, and other people deviants. It ends there. When talking about the topic of this thread it is irrelevant, but when denying your elitism and the oppressive nature of the meta, which are tangentially related topics, then it is important.

Dude… or dudette. Dudine? Whatever. This would be a whole lot easier if you would just admit your elitism, then apologize and change your ways. The discussion on the nature of the new meta is not dependent on you being an elitist. It just so happened that you are a closet one.

Canakun.8031:

Because the meta is the most efficient way to clear content – and this isn’t just GW2, but all MMORPG’s, ever – it is generally understood to be the standard form of play, as most players will generally aim to find the most efficient way to do the content they want to do. There is nothing wrong with detracting from that if someone wants to, nor is there anything wrong with acknowledging the existence of detractors.

This isn’t right either. The aim of most players is to have fun. This is a videogame. It is leisure time. There’s only a couple of different people who aim for optimum compositions. A) The person who enjoys the mental puzzle of optimizing. The person who wants to feel superior. C)The person who feels inadequate under the assumption that the optimum is demanded from them. See, this is why I keep calling you an elitist: your ideas are so backwards in how they follow through, that the only explanations are that you are thoroughly brainwashed or you’re the washer. And how you got to be a 1337357 isn’t my concern here.

Canakun.8031:

Next point.
It is entirely your issue if you see faster as meaning better. Personally, for me, I DO find faster to be better, but that’s my subjective experience and as I’ve mentioned previously I understand there are people who don’t want to rush through their content. There’s nothing even remotely close to a superiority complex going on here.
I’m really concerned about the types of human reactions you’ve had to have such negative reaction to literally everything somebody says to you.

You’ve missed the point. You didn’t characterized non-adherents as just people. You denoted them as envious of how fast you are. A quality that you are admitting right now that you consider superior. You are constantly denying the validity of their complaints in the most dismissive ways.

The meta can still be better. Even if it has problems, then what is to say that the game won’t be improved upon even further later? Until it eventually reaches the Meta-Meta? The best way to be the best way?

Canakun.8031:

You mention that the meta provides a societal pressure. That’s true, and that will always exist because the majority of players, and this is factual accuracy not what you will inevitably label my “superiority complex”, wish to play their game in the most time efficient way.

Myopia is a curse. The majority of players left the area for which there is a “meta”. Dungeons and Fractals are abandoned compared to other content. The only reason why it seems like everyone to you is because that’s who you hang out with.

Canakun.8031:

The ironic thing, though, is that the current state of Guild Wars 2 actually very comfortably allows players do play whatever they Gods kitten ed wish to play. It’s as simple as putting “PHIW” into the party finder.
Very bizarre that people still find this difficult.

Except it doesn’t work. You put casual run, relaxed run, all welcome into the LFG and you still get metazerks who will come in and ruin your party, or you get no one at all. It doesn’t matter how theoretically relaxed it is if elitists will still come in and ruin everything. The roles have to be properly enforced, or else you end up with no role diversity.

Canakun.8031:

You remind me of a quote I read earlier:
I’ve never met someone who didn’t justify their prejudices in experience. That’s why bigotry is so pervasive: no bigot thinks they’re a bigot. They just think they’re “right”.

It applies to you pretty well.

Prejudice requires having a set of beliefs applied before knowing someone. My issues with you come from what you have provided me. Continually.

Canakun.8031:

I’m gonna finalise this discussion with this final point.

Yay I get last word.

Canakun.8031:

When the new meta develops, I’m going to adapt to it. I’m going to play it, whether that means playing full zerk like I have been, or changing to clerics, or sentinels, or whatever the meta requires because that’s how I want to play. Efficiency is an important part of the way I play my games, and that’s all there is to it.

So you’re a PHIW?

Canakun.8031:

And here’s the kicker – I know you’re gonna love this – there will still be people who refuse to play the meta.
The fun part is, this new content is going to be harder, more challenging, and a lot stricter.

So you’re going to take joy in other people’s malcontent, and are proud of how exclusive raids will be.

You just don’t get it: The zerker meta has an intrinsic problem to it, in that it doesn’t enforce traditional roles. Look, I’m not a fan of requiring tanks and healers myself. I like the self-sufficient action style combat. But I can’t deny that the role homogeneity GW2 has is a problem. I see it everywhere, all around the gaming world. “I don’t feel a sense of cooperation while playing GW2”, “GW2 feels homogenized and stale”, “I don’t the impact of my skills on other players”, “GW2 has a selfish combat system”, “GW2 feels like a single player game next to 5 people”, “Don’t try having no trinity, because GW2 tried that and look what happened”. I don’t even know what people mean when they say “look what happened” and yet the room nods in agreement.

There’s a point where stupidity becomes a sin. Repent and ye shall be saved.

Canakun.8031:

Call me elitist all you want, it means absolutely nothing to me, but I think I’m going to enjoy playing the game a lot more than you.

Well, my not-so-good elitist, if you didn’t care then you wouldn’t have kept bringing it up. Who exactly do you think I am, anyway? Oh wait, final word. My bad. I’ll answer it for you: Queen of England, having tea with Godzilla and Barbie.

I agree with this. I was saddened with my bomb kit when I found that I can’t light the fingers on fire.

Linken.6345:

The problem is they see the top guys not wanting necros and rangers and oh there must a reason so we dont want them either.

Actually, the problem is that players on average have a discouraging experience either playing with or playing these classes.

I have a confession to make: I hate playing with rangers. I still do, of course, but every time I see a ranger I steel myself for hard times ahead. This is for two reasons, first being that the ranger is a newb class, and the second that they are generally ineffective.

The ranger is a class with a lot of appeal to newbies, which is unfortunate because it does the worst job at teaching the game. A new player on a ranger can get to 80 just by bearbowing, never learning the intricacies of how they’re actually expected to play. So, when one joins a group, all they’ll do is use the longbow at point blank range, spamming skills when they’re off cooldown, ruining enemy positioning and defiance. Their pet will be an uncontrolled nuisance that will attack the wrong monsters, draw aggro, and ruin skips and stealth.

Even when played well, the ranger adds very little. It starts with vulnerability, it ends with frostspotter, and there’s very little in between. Miniscule random offensive buffs, mostly. When I see a ranger on my team, I know that despite their best efforts they will not save me. They don’t have powerful defensive utilities, healing, synergy, or unique utilities to accomplish a goal.

The reason why it is rare to see a good, experienced ranger is because as a player levels up, they quickly see their own ineptitude when compared to other classes. When a thief stealths, a memser time warps, a guardian reflects, an ele ice bows, or a warrior caps might, that is a visible, distinguished, and potent contribution.

I’ve thought on this issue so much that I actually made a ranger to see what the deal was. Now, the ranger is arguably the most extreme case. Were I to rank the classes in order of peer hatred:

#1: Ranger
#2: Necro
#3: Engi
#4: Mesmer

With all other classes not hated. Mesmer straddles the line. I’ve already spoken at length on rangers, so I’ll talk about the others for a bit.

Necros are hated a lot for their petting zoo, which is an uncontrolled ranger pet x6. Necros are also hated because they are slow, and they lack evasion (which is far more important than taking the hit in many circumstances).. The last straw is how the necro’s best skills are all dark fields, which override the more useful ones. That said, Necros are in a better place regarding support, especially when running blood magic. Necros apply plenty of weakness, strip boons, give minor bouts of regular healing and damage. They can cure and transfer conditions when needed, give the whole team protection, and are decent at vulnerability.

Engineer’s are a weird one. I’d argue quite strongly that engineers are the second best class in the game. And yet, it is so painful to play next to them. Why? Well, the engineer is the hardest class to play well. It is so difficult that it actually hurt my hands, which is why I reluctantly rolled out of the class. Anyway, to be at its best, the engineer needs to be flexible with their utilities and traits, never settling on a single cookie cutter build like all other classes do. This contrary nature makes playing Engi well a rare skill. Instead, you’ll get random kit spam and inappropriate turrets. While the engineer can do nearly anything, all too often I find them doing nothing at all.

The mesmer is not really hated per se. However, a lot of players see them as inferior guardians. Mesmers only do a lot of damage when their phantasms are up, so unless that rare fight occurs, the mesmer is left lightly plinking away at the enemy with their sword.

So far I’ve raised it up to 6/10. I haven’t done much, though.

+The events are challenging
-But require groups and people all over the map to complete
+The enemies are interesting and challenging
-But they are everywhere and makes their uniqueness moot.
+The maps are pretty and once you unlock gliding you have a lot of exploration
-On Foot the maps are linear and confusing
+The music is great
+The details are pretty
0No comment on story
0No comment on achievements

The big suggestion seems to be that axe #1 and #2 should cleave. Just repeating that here.

Azure.8670:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now, I’d rank Daredevil DPS as #3, behind two other classes: Herald, Tempest. And tempest is a technicality, as there are plenty of situations where Daredevil does more.

Daredevil DPS in my experience is highly variable. It depends on several things:

#1: The location of the target. Next to a ridge or against a wall is preferred.
#2: The size of the target. Bigger is better.
#3: How well paced their attacks are. An even paced moveset is best.
#4: If they have projectiles that can be reflected, and how well I can predict it.

It all comes down to how much I can cut loose with Weakening Charge. Against a near-ledge target or a cornered enemy, I can cut loose a full fury with Weakening Charge, and do just massive damage. Against large targets, too.

Against smaller targets I have to use the Bound -> Vault -> Charge -> Auto to maximize DPS, with Fist Flurry thrown in for good measure. If the target is particularly troublesome, I can tank it by standing in its face and using vault in place to avoid each attack. That tactic is… surprisingly effective against certain enemies. Against enemies with wide sweeping attacks, I’ll occasionally use dust strike -> auto -> dust strike to disable their moves. Or sometimes I’ll just chain my stuns to keep something disabled.

Even against dangerous enemies I can stay engaged for quite the time. I definitely recommened channeled vigor as a heal, because its healing potential is massive and that extra 1.5 dodges means quite a bit of maintained engagement time.

As for the competitors…

Tempest beats Daredevil against large targets, stationary targets, and enemies that must be engaged at range. As much as I like unload, the fact is that font + fireball is better. Tempest loses to Daredevil against mobile targets, or targets that you have to engage at melee range, and also in situations where sustained damage is unavoidable. The glass is real here, but I’ve found the DD more than capable of surviving.

Herald beats Daredevil in most circumstances, except that in which sustained damage is unavoidable in melee. Heralds don’t have a real “heal” as much as they have a few utility skills that grant health along with their other functions, so I’ve found that in bouts where I need sustain, the Herald starts to fall short. Otherwise, the herald does stupid good DPS by just auto attacking with sword. There is a note here: Heralds have to sacrifice a lot to deal with projectiles, but thieves sacrifice very little.

Well if you’re talking power, I’m pretty positive berserker has higher dps. If we are including condi builds thief isn’t even in the top 5. Engi and berserker blow it out the water. Also as for the healing, herald heal is top tier to the point of being broken. Swapping between Glint and shiro you can heal so often you never stop attacking Champs solo.

Thief is probably around reaper dps. Thief is higher but when enemy drops below 50 it’s much closer with reaper possibly doing more, but I think thief still wins

I have to disagree about herald healing. Swapping between Glint and Shiro has me awkwardly using the hammer to try and proc Enchanted Daggers because I have run out of health. Glints heal, while theoretically limitlesss, is really an invulnerability skill that comes with the benefit of converting damage to health. Because of this, I frequently find my health ticking down much faster than it accumulates, and stalling for time while I wait for Facet of Light to come off recharge.

Now, I don’t play warrior, and I haven’t played engi in years, so I do not have experience with how much damage they output (although Reaper is definitely behind DD in my experience. Weakening Charge does more damage than gravedigger and in half the time). Though unless I am missing my guess, if you include condi builds, Daredevils are still in the top 5, as that only adds warriors and engis (on top of eles and heralds).

Though I have watched some videos on condi berserkers, and though I can see them hitting 18k DPS for certain time periods against a golem… I’m getting up to 6.7k per hit on Weakening Charge, and 21k on vault, all just zerg running. If I calculate it right, Fist Flurry is hitting for 62k damage total (over 1.75 seconds, that would amount to 35k DPS). There’s going to be down time for initiative regen, bound, and auto attacks for proper positioning, but overall I wouldn’t throw my hands up and say that condi berserkers necessarily beat power daredevils.

I do have a few comments. First, on the composition as a whole:

#1: Why guardian? The guardian looks redundant in this spec: Fury comes from the herald/ele, a ton of group quickness comes from the chronomancer + herald, chrono brings reflects… what is there after that? If the guardian is just a condi cleanser, then that role can easily be fulfilled by a Scrapper or a Reaper, who will bring blind fields and either condition or direct damage respectively. Thieves/Daredevils can bring stealth, blind spam, and group vigor + endurance regen. Rangers/Druids provide more unique damage buffs and burst healing + cleanse.

#2: PS warrior might not be necessary. The warrior banners are good, but the might stacking capabilities of the chrono + herald are already sufficient to cap. Staff ele makes it easier, too.

Those points aside, I do share Iris Ng’s concerns. I am fairly certain that the two teams are going to have to split to different objectives. While the comp you listed is good for melee stacking a boss, if something strange were to happen, such as limitless elites spawning from particular areas, then you might need two different types of teams. A DPS team and an alternate objective team.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

ZoSo.4867:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.

Wait a sec, what is so bad about using knight gear?

Probably that it’s not Berserker or Assassin, because apparently, that’s the only way to play the game, didn’t you know?

I use Knight’s on my Ele, actually. HoT isn’t hard, but Ele is way too squishy for me to be comfortable in Berserker gear with it.

It is worse than that. The problem with knight gear is that it scales everything in the worst way possible. It goes off of toughness, which is the most inefficient defensive stat, and has power/precision as its secondary stats but the precision barely makes up for the loss of power being a primary stat. Overall it ends up as having the same offensive power as Soldiers, but a fraction of the effective HP, and no defense against condis. I maintain that Knight is one of the worst gearsets in the game. You’re almost always better off with anything else.

The implication here isn’t necessarily the gear set. It is the mindset that active defenses and counter-burst don’t exist. When I watch pugs play in this game, they violently wiggle in place while auto attacking, ultimately doing almost no damage while avoiding no damage. I always wonder what it is the randoms think when, while fighting an enemy for 10 seconds, they see someone else come along and slaughter an adjacent enemy in two attacks. But alas, these post NPE players are used to a game where you can walk around naked auto attacking things and win. HoT comes around, and suddenly everything is terrible. This frightened mindset is what prevents a lot of players from performing well: they’re spending their time so frightened of big, scary attacks from mordrem they don’t realize you can literally walk out of the way and take very little damage.

The Chak Gerent meta has two features about it: #1 is that it is a DPS race, and a relatively tight one at that. #2 is that many of the Gerents attacks hit so hard that it’ll plow right through 1k extra toughness anyway. The end result being you cut offensive power to invest in stats that see no returns in play. Because of this, you’ll almost always want to go high damage in the event.

If you want more durability, I’d first suggest changing traits and utilities around. Gear is expensive, but changing traits/utilities is free. But if that isn’t enough, I’d suggest Marauder gear. On low HP classes it gives 50% more durability but sacrifices only 8% power. Unlike knights gear, which sacrifices 31% power for 67% greater durability. If you can’t afford Marauder, then hybridized gear of GC with… well, anything but knight works pretty well, too. Or if you want to go the condi route, Trailblazer is surprisingly tanky for how much long-term damage it can do.

Malthurius.6870:

All that matters is that the raid itself knows what’s going on; raiding isn’t meant to be a spectator sport. My group fighting the vale guardian had no problem recognizing mechanics and AE during the fight.

That’s the problem. Watching the videos, the effects were so bright and huge that I couldn’t see the circles many times. I’m hoping that it is because the players didn’t turn down LoD and post processing, but if that is what it looks like even after reductions, then I am not looking forward to raids.

You know, I am really not sure how class roles fit in to stacking…

Anyway, another idea I had for an anti-stacking mob is an enemy who only takes direct damage when his target is at range. When his target is in melee range, he just puts up a barrier and melee attacks from it. This enemy would be, by default, a ranged mob with a high fixation aggroing by first sight, and he would attack via a brightly colored channel attack, so everyone knows who he is targeting. This one would be group content only, but of course the shield goes down when CCed.

Another idea: a mob that has a short range AoE defense buff that they only apply to each other. By themselves, they would be fairly standard enemies. But, if you get them all together into a ball, then their buffs stack, and they become much more difficult. The idea is that these mobs are deployed in formations, and only begin chasing players once they are in melee range, so at the beginning they are only half buffed and you want to try and split their formation. But if cornered they become much more difficult. You’d have to use pulls/knocbacks to move them, or in worst cases splitting up so different aggros will follow you by default. Though I do fear that this idea might be a bit too difficult for standard enemies…

Or, for more just utterly stupid chaos, an enemy that, once dead, creates an AoE short duration knockback explosion 2 seconds after death. That way, it is encouraged to either knock away enemies before they die, or to move away from their corpses after killing them. Of course, what would be funny is if these explosions also damaged their friendlies, so if things go right/wrong there would be this cascade of explosions that knock players and enemies around like ping pong balls. The idea is that, since there will be a bunch of enemies that arrive sequentially, after the first kill or two the stack will eventually devolve into more panic as people run in different directions to avoid the explosions. The “friendly fire” on this attack scatters enemies, making the fight more dynamic and unpredictable.

Unfortunately, that’s all I have for now. I was trying to think of an idea involving quantum physics/ the weeping angels, but I couldn’t really think of a system that discouraged stacking with that.

I am a bit hopeful for the mirage, all things considered. Mostly because Anet has already answered my prayers when they buffed core mesmer. I now do significant damage in the power spec and don’t have to take conflicting traits to do it. Mesmer is now one of my favorite classes to play again, because I am not relegated to the role of wet-noodle buff bot.

The PVE build idea I had for mirage is essentially point blank mirror spam:

1. Jaunt when off Cooldown
2. Mirror Images
3. Crystal Sands (spawns third clone and mirror)
4. Ether Barrage
5. Dodge -> Ether Barrage
6. Illusionary Ambush → Ether Barrage
7. Cry of Frustration (Spawns mirror)
8. Ether Barrage
9. Dodge -> Ether Barrage

And so on. I don’t have anything too solid, but in theory if you could keep mirrors and vigor up you could spend most of the fight just spamming mass clone ambush attacks. If the numbers were buffed significantly, the clone-ambush-shatter spam trifecta could be an interesting way to play. I’m pretty sure that is what they’re aiming for, too, since core mesmer is anchored so heavily to phantasms.

But yes, everything on the mirage is flimsy and ineffectual. The utilities are impotent, half the traits should be innate, the weapon doesn’t work with what the class wants to do, and the ability to change illusion targets should be f5. The only reason people will take this line is because Nomad’s Endurance and Dune Cloak are better than Chaotic Transference for raw damage, and it will never be taken in PVP.

Maybe I read it differently, but I think that 98.228% of the mails that were higher than 500G were RMT. So, that would mean that the legit traders were 11.772% of the 0.175%, amounting to 0.0206% of players. Or, one in every 5000 players.

Generosity is a virtue. Recognize that patience, too, is a virtue. Although I am highly suspicious that the OP isn’t actually generous, but is in reality a RMT who is brazen enough try and get the limit removed publicly.

My ratings are subjective. I gave it an 8/10 because Hard to Catch is good enough to make me consider taking acrobatics just to have it. I’m a fairly low-skill PVPer myself, and those “activate upon being stunned” traits save my life over and over, time and again. As far as activate when stunned traits go, Hard to Catch is really good. Not as good as Protection Injection, but definitely above Hide in Plain Sight and Retaliatory Subconscious.

Don’t stop falls into the same category for the same reason. Somewhere along the way the entire thief board got this notion in their head that the acrobatics line exists just to supplement a single weapon set. That is bad design, which is why every other specialization in the game doesn’t do it. Either you make everything nigh useless, terrified that it’ll culminate into an unstoppable beast, or you nerf the weapon set to the point where you can’t use it without the specialization.

Embolism.8106:

Do people really Shatter with 1 illusion or less that often? I get doing it for utility like Diversion, Distrortion, Boon Stripping or a panic blind/heal/cleanse but generally I don’t Shatter unless I have 2, if not 3 Illusions anyway.

Continuum Shift changes the field a bit. Illusionary Reversion under a shift meant that shatter spam was twice as effective. 2 diversions + 2 wracks + 2 frustrations in that order is quite strong, especially if you get them all back a second later.

So I see Wooden Potatoes has broken the game somehow.

Cool. Don’t go changin’, wood.

That doesn’t make what I said false. That’s just getting into specific technicalities when comparing a real world resource to a virtual one, in that there’s an additional limitation in the real world.

coso.9173:

I wonder why everyone says that all modern MMOs are WoW clones? Excepting a few, I don’t see it. How is GW2 a WoW clone? Because it has armor and levels and dungeons and crafting? I think too generic to categorize it as a wow clone

#1: Gear Tiers that require high wealth/grind to ascend (note)
#2: Leveling and statistical based combat
#3: Over-the-head camera placement
#4: Menial tasks handed out as quests
#5: Generic Fantasy Setting with machines and magic
#6: Cooldown restrained skill based combat
#7: General interface layout
#8: Multiple species as “races” to play
#9: Similar dungeon and raid like content (note)
#10: Randomized loot drops and tables
#11: Crafting and Gathering
#12: Similar build customization schemes.
#13: Compartmentalized and segmented PVP
#14: Themepark style design
#15: Guilds and their associated perks
#16: Class based skill restrictions
#17: Large economy that drives much of the in-game content

There’s probably more. My knowledge of WoW is limited to the occasional video/article on the subject. But, let me put it this way: If I were to take a screenshot of both of these games and show them to someone who is completely unaffiliated with videogames, would they be able to pick apart what is different between the two? Or would they just say “these look the same”?

Notes: GW2 is attempting to be a rebel in a certain fashion, using, for a lack of a better word, socialist design philosophies with how they make their game. They make all but the most extreme gear tier readily available, with the highest tier not being significantly stronger. Everyone gets rewards and can participate in whatever event they walk in to. Everything is heavily level scaled as to not give an advantage to higher level or better geared players. Everything grants experience. Every class can fulfill every role. So on and so forth. While many of these are QoL upgrades from the former systems, these aren’t new systems. They’re the same system, but with a different spin on how things work.

GW2 isn’t an outright WoW clone. As far as the genre goes, it is comparatively far from it. But, the similarities of WoW are so engrained into the genre that even when attempting to make a different game, it end sup looking and feeling like WoW on the surface.

I listed my build but it is basically the QT build.

I’m trying to get my kids back from my second ex-wife. Who cares if I don’t have a job? Somebody needs to teach my son how to hot-wire a car, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be the yoga instructor.

… Oh wait, you meant in-game goals, didn’t you?

Serious note, I’m getting all the ascended trinkets, weapons, and gear early for the new specializations. I’m mostly done now. Just need to get a few more condi bits for the Mirage, and then let fractal pages take care of the rest.

^^To be fair, chaos storm is not instant. The damage it does only “works” when you loiter in the field, meaning that a large portion of the effects can be avoided simply by moving out of the field.

This is a distinction that needs to be made, and I think it is something that needs to happen more often in skills. There are a lot of skills that, while they themselves don’t have a big animation, their effects are delayed, they are channeled, or their damage is strewn about several slower hits instead of one big hit. I’ll give an example of each one:

Delayed effect: Dragon’s Tooth and Shatterstone. Activating the skill is really short, but they loiter around for a second or two before hitting the ground. Thus, their high damage is justified by the fact that players can just walk out of them, and they provide a means of area control because of it.

Channeled Effects: Confusing Images, Blurred Frenzy. These skills can be interrupted mid use, and lock the player out of preforming different tasks. Here, the attack themselves is the tell, and while avoiding the first or second hit is impossible, 75% of the attack can be avoided by positioning, counter-stunning, blocking, or dodging. These are fine in the sense that they enforce proper timing in use, or else the opponent has a dozen ways to mitigate the attack.

Strewn damage: Well of Suffering, Lava Font. While the wells themselves do not have a long activation time at all, in order to suffer the damage from the wells, a player has to loiter in them for several seconds, with most smart players leaving after the first hit. This is similar to a channel, but unlike channels these delayed attacks do not limit the user, so after placing them down the player is free to fight as normal. This encourages play, again, because it rewards effective area control and player control.

It is fine for these skills to be instantaneous because you’ll rarely ever take full damage from them due to their effects. Something that is truly instantaneous, however, generally isn’t that fun.

For example: Blunderbuss from the engineer. Absolutely no tell at all when you’re going to get buckshot to the face. The only thing you can do is guess that, when an engineer approaches you or you approach the engineer at close range, that they will use Blunderbuss immediately.

I’m in SoR, and I worked hard to get as far as I did in WvW. We also have good commanders with better strategies than “push and pull back”. I can’t count how many times I’ve been in a zerg vs. zerg fight where, through better tactics, SoR won despite being outnumbered. I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking my build and coming up with tactics that aren’t to just pwn random wandering n00bs, but to actually win at WvW. And the results have been awesome.

I second this. When an asuran tries to bash my head in with a mace, he better be jumping up like mario to hit me in the head.

The funny thing is, I hear players complain about how they’re neglecting PVE content for PVP all the time.

That is a lot of “could have” “may be” and “well, they didn’t specifically say” to dance around the link that is obvious to the casual observer. You’re invoking the argument from ignorance as a way to justify shooting down a perfectly valid hypothesis.

Lanaeris.3845:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

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.

I love your arguments, but I think you are using far too many “can’t do this” “this is impossible” type logical statements. Don’t see things so black and white. I am not saying there is a group of people watching the gem exchange at every single second on Anet’s side; That’s outlandish like a conspiracy. I am thinking much more concrete and simple. Point being, there is no law against changing their numbers in any small or large way, they can do whatever they please. The world given as an example, if there is money on the line and there is no law prohibiting you from pursuing extra money, chances are you are going to go for it. I am pointing out how easy it is for them to tweak something because it is unregulated. (I am not calling for action from anyone)

There is not a single “can’t” in my arguments. “Can’t” only appears when you are dealing with conspiracies over elaborate and large issues. This is a conspiracy over a simple and small issues. Here, the question is “why”. Like, “why would Anet adjust the income of liquid assets to encourage buying gems when they could’ve just adjusted the exchange rate far more easily”. Or, “why would Anet be manually adjusting the exchange rate when the program as described would take care of everything automatically”. Or, “why would the exchange be based around fixing a gem-exchange gamble when the exchange rate is so heavily taxed in one direction that gambling is heavily discouraged”.

Things like that. The difficulty in your hypothesis is that it is asserting a series of counter-intuitive and deceptive methods to accomplish an ends best achieved by simple and obvious means. It would make for a great Monty Python sketch, and if Dale Gribble said it I would find it funny, but when someone really thinks it…

Lanaeris.3845:

Side note, it amuses me to see how many people are so stressed and angry in their lives that they have to attack the points of someone else’s claims or opinions. Don’t like it, move on. Stop trying to impose your views on mine. This thread would disappear if people didn’t care or didn’t want to attack someone else. It’s sill really.

This is a bit funny here. You made the thread yourself, but then take the high ground and say that it should be buried, instead of having people respond to what you’ve said.. That’s not how it works. If you’ve come to an incorrect conclusion and someone corrects you on it, you should be happy that someone has helped you fix your errors, not defiant because people don’t accept them. If you make a hypothesis, it has to stand up to criticism.

You can’t get away with making an assertion and backtracking by calling it an “opinion”. Opinions are value judgements. Whether chocolate ice cream is good or not is an opinion. Whether Anet is manually manipulating gem prices for hidden motives is not an opinion. It is an assertion of fact. More than that, it is a statement of character, asserting dishonesty in how Anet handles things. The reason why you come to these conclusions is because you’re in a wrong state of mind. You are looking for evil in Anet, and it has led you down a corridor of madness.

There’s also a hypocrisy here: by claiming that others shouldn’t impose their view onto yours and should move on, you are imposing that view on to others. That aside, truth be told, I like doing this. Sometimes I like to pick things apart and see how an argument works. I also like imposing a “view” because the wrong kind of “view”, such as one that seeks evil in others regardless of logic, can cause further problems down the line. Believe it or not, your “view” is not some super special way you get to be a unique individual. It has implications, produces effects, alters behavior. A bad “view” causes bad things to happen. And thus, I have no qualms about correcting someone elses view. You would understand this, as you had no qualms about trying to correct other people’s views.

Frankly, I think profession and race changing just causes way too many problems and not enough return to be implemented. If you want to play as another race or class, just roll another race or class.

Canakun.8031:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’ve been around the sun a couple dozen times, and I’ve seen this kind of superiority fueled analytic BS before. Every time somebody goes on a stint explaining why other people disagree with their one true way I die a little inside, for my faith in the human race gets knocked another notch. Take this quote and remove the kid gloves, and you get this message:

“Other people (the PHIW) don’t want to play the way the rest of us play because they’re not competent enough to do it right. For whatever reason. I don’t care why.”

Which is ridiculous. It should be self evident that preference in play and competence in play are two unrelated qualities. I shouldn’t have to explain that one doesn’t lead to the other.

Don’t let the passive wording fool you. It is just fancy dressing on top of an elitist diatribe.

I base my opinions off of my experience, and my experience is that the majority of players who don’t want to participate in speed running content is due to (typically) latency, but more often than not age and ability have also been contributing factors.
You can make assumptions about my wording all you want, though, but the only time I ever play PHIW with no skipping is when I’m playing with a younger cousin of mine, or an elder, or a guildie who has trouble differentiating colour, etc.

My point is that this will be even more difficult for them under what I’m perceiving to be the new meta.

You’ve clearly had some bad experiences though, if your immediate reaction is to assume elitism in anything you read.

I’ve never met someone who didn’t justify their prejudices in experience. That’s why bigotry is so pervasive: no bigot thinks they’re a bigot. They just think they’re “right”.

EDIT: Spelling. “they’re” is hard apparently.

condition specced builds only require 1 single stat to be effective.

I stopped reading there. Condition builds don’t require 1 stat to be effective. They require nearly all stats to be effective, sans power and crit damage. For their offense you have the standard 3:

Malice: This is how much damage conditions do.
Expertise: This is the duration of conditions. This determines, among other things, the is stacking amount of stackable conditions, and the frequency of uptime for non-stacking conditions. A 50% increase in conditiona duration is effectively a 50% increase in DPS and damage.
Precision: This determines the frequency of procs. Without precision, the hated traits of Dhuumfire or Incendiary Powder wouldn’t do anything at all.

And then we have the defensive stats of Vitality, Toughness, and healing power. The difference here being that durability is necessary for condition builds because they don’t do all of their damage up front. They have to be durable enough to outlast the enemy. Power builds don’t; they do all their damage immediately, and because of this they have the option to burst down opponents with pure DPS instead of having to build defensively.

I can’t take the suggestions of anyone who says otherwise seriously.

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

PvE – Soldier all the way (well i do have 2 ascended items that aint, but thats for lore reasons, i wish you could transmute them) since we have pretty bad power scailing overall, but nice base damage, also being able to facetank boss attacks and siphon up with dagger and staff 2, as for condi (hybrid actually) id say Rampager with Rabid amulets
PvP – Carrion with Rampager gem
PvP – 1v1 Rabid with Soldier/Carrion/Shammy gem

Soldier on any class in pve is just facepalm. The max defense you should ever go is knights gear. You are actually making dungeons harder by hindering your groups dps so much.

Soldier’s actually does the same damage as knights when looking at just the sets. To compare the two sets, you would get the following attribute bonuses:

Soldiers: 1003 Power, 698 Tough/Vit
Knight: 698 Power, 943 Tough, 757 Precision

For the ratio of damage increase:

Soldiers:

(916 + 1003)/916 = 2.09
4% Crit Chance
Adjusted Ratio: 2.09 x (1.5 × .04 + 0.96) = 2.13

Knights:

(916 + 698)/916 = 1.76
40% crit chance
Adjusted Ratio: 1.76 x (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) = 2.11

Which basically means that there is about a 1% difference between the two in damage. Comparing the durability, I’ll us the total effective HP, which is basically HP multiplied by armor value. Since this is highly class dependent, I’ll use the Necromancer as a base since we are, after all, talking about them.

Base HP: 18372
Base Armor: 1836

Effective HP 33,730,000

In Soldier gear we get:

New HP: 25353
New Armor: 2534

Effective HP (Soldiers): 64,240,000

In Knight Gear we get:

Base HP: 18376
New Armor: 2779

Effective HP (Knights) 51,070,000

So Soldier’s is superior to Knight in durability while having roughly equal damage outputs. There are only two times you’d ever want to go with knights: One if you are mixing it with something like Zerker gear or specific trait-dependent abilities so you can have more durability without sacrificing precision for the crits, and two in PVE if you plan on using attrition on champions mobs and want to be able to tank them indefinitely due to the increased healing efficiency gained from that toughness.

The latter will never be important for necromancers, since with Life Force scaling with vitality, they get a form of increased healing from LF gain in vitality. What soldiers will let you do, however, is plenty more face-tanking. This is really important for a necromancer, since they lack blocks, invulnerability, vigor, reflects, stealth, and some control effects. The only thing a necro can do is face tank, so maximizing this ability is important for the class. This creates a nice reinforcing loop for the necromancers, too:

First, they get the stats that let them face-tank better.
Then, they can use the dagger auto-attack at point blank longer, giving them more Life Force.
Finally, this extra LF lets them face tank for even longer.
Repeat.

This also lets the necromancer take point in encounters, drawing as much aggro as possible away from the zerkers so they can do more damage without leaping about like a circus monkey on red bull.

Depends on what you mean by “well”. There’s three things to look at:

#1: How long
#2: What intensity
#3: How consistent

I’d argue that half of the classes fulfill those 3 criteria: Engineer, Warrior, Ranger, Necromancer. The other ones… not as much.

Thief: On their condi builds they get Skale Venom and Deadly Trapper for bursts of vuln, but on power builds they don’t get much vulnerability at all. There’s a paltry amount from sundering strikes, and the weapon skills are too short duration to be meaningful.

Elementalist: Ele’s get a massive burst with Glyph of Storms in air attunement. Otherwise they have miniscule amounts from Weak Spot, and some from water attacks, but water attacks are rarely used.

Mesmer: Gets minor amounts of sustain from the domination line, but often requires interrupts/dazes/shatters to inflict small amounts. Fairly consistent, especially with the sword auto attack.

Guardian: Can get consistent amounts from Symbolic Exposure and Blinding Jeopardy, but won’t be getting high intensity anytime soon.

From my understanding of anatomy… skin tone is largely the result of a single chemical: Melanin. How densely this chemical populates the skin determines how dark skinned they are, and if there are certain genes it forms into blotches AKA freckles. Now, the genes that control melanin are quite prone to mutation, and because of this it is very easy to get a dark skinned offspring from lighter-skinned parents. Or at least that’s what my wife keeps telling me (j/k I’m not married).

A tan or dark norn could easily be the result of a mutation in skin pigmentation.

This is one of those things where I hear it suggested a lot, but I’m not sure it is even needed. Changing your build and gear isn’t some big to-do. It is the mildest of inconveniences. Actually, I wouldn’t call it an inconvenience, because there is no barrier between wanting to change your build and changing your build.

Swapping between builds is very fast. The specializations are just a few button clicks, and it is done. There isn’t enough of a build system that a preset would be required. The gear is pretty fast two, as everything except your weapon swap and one set of earrings and rings can be changed just by double-clicking them in your inventory. If I want to change my build, it doesn’t even take me 30 seconds.

I’m not sure the feature is needed. It’s like making a robot to grab a beer for you. Yes, it is convenient, but all it does is save you the trouble of standing up, and grabbing a beer.

Guess I’ll try and simplify the math for all those who don’t quite get it (Leablo):

Whenever you increase any of your stats, you can think of this ultimately as a proportion of what you had previously. This is an effective measurement of damage and durability, since it accounts for individual circumstances and compares your performance against itself in any circumstance that you can comprehend. This is also important, since it represents the inevitable diminishing returns from your stats as you invest them.

Let me give some examples: for the first 916 points of power, your damage doubles. For the next 916 points of power, your damage increases by 50%. For the next 916 points of power, your damage increases by 33%. Because of this, eventually it is more productive to invest you stats into something else like precision and crit damage after you get enough power.

So yes, 1 toughness does have a higher effect than 100 toughness on a point by point basis. However, the difference each individual point of toughness has is incredibly small, so you stack multiple points of toughness to get a cumulative effect that you desire. But never forget that the more toughness you pile on top, the less effective it becomes. The same is true of nearly any stat.

Not sure if this isn’t meant to be, or just a feature. Unless it proves to be an actual problem I’m all for an endless swarm of horrors.

I think people who think it is just a numbers game haven’t seen some of the tactics I have. I have been on both the winning and losing side to these tactics, and they are incredibly effective.

What usually happens (in SoR, anyway. Since I’ve seen other servers do this I assume they do it, too) is we get into mumble or raidcall or something like that with each other, and then we have a commander who is good enough to actually command on the field give orders. We’ll do our standard “how many guardians, how many staff elementalists, how many necromancers, how many mesmers” tallying to get our specs before we run off.

Then, we’ll try every method in the book to take other people down. What we’ll do a lot of the time is we’ll break off into two distinct groups that travel together: the melee group and the range group. The melee group is full of thieves, guardians, warriors, mesmers, and a few support players. The range group is full of elementalists, necromancers, engineers, rangers, and also some support players or players that don’t quite fit the bill.

The two groups, often times having individual commanders, will act differently. The melee group will hold point while the range group attacks form afar. The melee group will push while the range group will provide support to push. The melee group will self sacrifice while the range group retreats. The melee group will siege while the range group provides defense for that siege. Ultimately, with a series of walls and pulls, the melee group provides the most DPS, and by charging forward they can fragment enemy groups while getting tons of kills. The most important tactic is pincer formation, in which we attack an enemy group from two angles. Since they can only look one way and support tends to only function in one way, a well done pincer maneuver can put the end on a larger and superiorly equipped zerg.

Then there are also the class specific tactics that get used. The mesmers are often on the melee group because they have veil, and the melee group will often stack veil so they can run in undetected, then burst DPS the center of an enemy zerg as hard as possible inside of a time warp. Once the core of the zerg is either dead or dying, their strategy falls apart and lets the rangers control and kill them off. As the necro I often run in the melee group so I can use spectral wall to give everyone protection, and then use Putrid Mark in the melee train to transfer their conditions away, making the melee train nigh unstoppable for 8 seconds. When you have 10 or so people bashing everything in sight with a hammer and greatsword, those 8 seconds means victory. Antoher thing done is the groups will bunch up, while having an elementalist/engy drop a fire field so they can spam blast finishers to stack up 25 stacks of might, and once that is enough they’ll use a light field to get massive retaliation. Often times the best weapon against an arrow cart is mass retaliation, so knowing when to stack might and when to stack retaliation is quite important for the zerg. The elementalists with staves will use the lightning field to stun the enemy, while guardians will use warding to lock opponents down and defend a spot, and then necromancers will use well of corruption to remove stability, making a big control spot at a choke point in which everyone can use everything else and obliterate whomever comes through. This controlling choke point tactic is capable of downing zergs of nearly any size when done right, due to how zergs tend to trail behind themselves as time goes on.

The thieves are excellent at bursting down troublesome targets. I’m not talking about those wimpy ambush thieves that attack for no reason. I’m talking about coordinated thieves that target a single guardian or elementalist or memser in the group, and hit them at the same time. This takes out the time warp or the portal or the lighting field or whatever is causing the problem. The rangers and engineers provide wonderful offensive pressure at maximum range, and the rangers can provide great single target pressure at that range as well.

As far as everything else goes…

#1: I’m going to throw my hat into the “more defense” option for weakening strikes. Even if this isn’t a condi specific option, it is still useful in condi builds. Likewise, with a relatively high reliance on brawler’s tenacity for endurance regen, this provides a non-endurance option for defense.

#2: I love that Fist Flurry, AKA Pai Mei’s Five point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, just keeps getting buffs. Right now I’m getting anywhere from 1k to 1.2k tooltip DPS per use, making it 38% more damage than perfect weakening charge spam.

#3: The impact strike chain still needs a buff. Reduce aftercast by 1 second and increase the damage by 50%. This will give it usability at any point in the fight instead of just the end. Also, this will give it usability over Basilisk Venom in PVE.

#4: Impairing Daggers and Distracting Daggers should still be 100% projectile finishers. This adds a bit more usability to them, particularly the ability to blind when used through a smoke field.

The OP does have some good points, but is wrong overall.

It is not their job, nor should it be, to make sure that every class is equally represented at all phases in beta.

It is their job, actually. All of these specializations are being worked on simultaneously by different parties specifically to give equal representation. If it wasn’t, then the classes would be worked on one at a time.

As much as I’d like to assume that there is no form of class discrimination by the devs, it is highly unlikely. First, discrimination isn’t a conscious decision, so no matter how much they say they aren’t showing favoritism, they have favorites. Second, each class is not only different, but each class community is different as well. Spend an adequate amount of time in the necro and engineer forum, and you’ll swear they were from different planets. Third, because each dev is going to have preconceived notions about the class, this will change how open to feedback they are. “Skill” is a concept that can be used to dismiss a surprising amount of legitimate criticism.

EDIT: Forgot this.

The biggest complaint currently isn’t the performance of the tempest per se. The tempest overall was alright. The problem is that all of the feedback that was given was ignored largely.