Guild Wars 2

First off, I have to voice this one. A name is just words and the least offensive thing. If I’m in a uproar about not being called what I want, I feel my priorities are in the wrong place.

What I feel the issue here is the mechanics. You can call them traps, or wards, or magical light bringing beacons of activation upon proximity of placement devices……“traps”, the mechanic is just not a popular one apparently.

In essence symbols were simply pre-activated “traps”. Now this new thing is simply a symbol that won’t activate till an enemy steps in it…not so offensive now is it? Maybe it is because symbol mechanics are mostly laughed at and unused.

The frustration is derived from the idea that we work our characters up and develop/grow/progress them to make them stronger, and when we expect them to go into a cocoon and come out as a beautiful butterfly, they show us an unveil of a fugly moth.

Let me counter argument myself now. These specializations are not inherently meant to be taken as a matter of fact. They are supposed to provide an alternative mechanic that was lacking on the class. Thus guardians had poor ranged and poor soft CCs.

The “creative thinking team” at ANet decided to throw us a curve ball and try to answer the solution that was not the contemporary way of thinking. I applaud them on that actually, but I feel the resistance as well. Did they miss the mark? Time will tell…

On the log in screen it would be nice if you could click on the banners of each order and rewatch the in game cinematic for each order that your characters have joined.

Small suggestion but it just feels like those icons were meant to be clicked, yet they do nothing.

That is why I was suggesting a “on crit” effect to give guardians the same stat synergy with precision and condition damage that other classes have.

It could be a 60% chance on crit to cause 3 seconds of torment.

Numbers I’m sure can be adjusted to be more optimal but not OP. Would it be a major or a minor trait? Maybe remove Spirit weapons cause burning and replace it with this new conditions on crit trait.

I also think healing power is scaling well enough as is. Although, I do think some of our class based abilities need to have a higher base heal for the given intention of the lower hp design.

Namely Virtue of Resolve. As it is now I think it only heals for somewhere around 84 hp a second. If you spend 20 points into Virtues you get a 1.25 better improved VoR that brings it up to 105.

I want to be really cautious about doing a class comparison with warriors, but hear me out. They have higher stats because they are supposed to be heftier and we have lower stats because our class mechanics are supposed to make up for the lack of health.

Yet the warrior Healing Signet heals for 392 health a second without any healing power or traits. I think this is backwards since warriors have a high health pool as it is. Was it buffed to make up for the lack of pvp survivability in a recent patch?

VoR should heal for as much if not more than Healing Signet as a class mechanic that relies on boons/virtues to accommodate for the lower HP pool.

I do know that early in beta VoR healed for more, but was nerfed because people found it difficult to kill Guardians, but I blame that on lack of experience and level of skill of beta testers versus 1yr+ release players.

VoR should be re-evaluated and given a higher base heal

Didn’t mean to cause an argument. I did see in my original research that necros have condition conversion on a 60-48s timer depending on if traited or not.

I did ask if it was readily available as in, can you maintain vigor throughout the duration of a fight.

The intent of my original research was that guardian’s have a trait called vigorous precision which provides vigor on crit for 5 seconds. With a moderate amount of crit any guard can keep vigor going. In turn they have Selfless Daring in the same trait line that provides a heal on dodging.

While I was looking around I was seeing if the game was intended for everyone to take dodge traits to increase survivability and every class had “on dodge” effects but necro did not have easy access to vigor.

I don’t consider the blood is power+well of power easy access but it is there if you need it. Smart use of condition conversion in natural combat would also provide a lot of useful boons as mentioned with the 1m of vigor on high stacks of bleed.

I did see a recent necro lupicus solo who had smart use of Death Shroud to avoid attacks, so I inferred that DS was the necro dodge. Good points on the speed of regeneration and PvP vs PvE making it seeming lackluster though.

Hope I cleared up your argument, but I did learn a lot from you all. Thank you!

When I first heard the term “Action Oriented Combat” I envisioned something more akin to what we have going on in the Super Adventure Box. Sure, I would want it a lot more complex than this 8-bit remake has us playing, but very true to that old school game with less stats and more moves.

I think this has captured the idea of Action Oriented Combat really well, and should be used as a foundation to build upon. Not everything has to be “auto attack” oriented or DPS.

Examples include the frog boss, where you have to maneuver around attacks while setting up to create an opening to do damage.

As it is now, we really still have auto attack on and just spam cool downs. A “little” bit better than older MMOs but the root of it is still there.

I could care less about loot
the achievement points I don’t worry about
the storyline is easy enough to keep up with.
the living story rewards such as minis or weapon/armor skins are not critical, but are nice to have. Some have been so RNG that I never even saw it drop and I"m ok with that.

It is seeing the achievement tab filled to the sense of completion. This is what I like, a small challenge to myself that keeps me engaged and goal oriented.

Having a glaring hole in the achievement tab is irritating and it will never be fixed.

I have not 100% my other achievements like dungeons or mini pets, because they are not engaging enough for me to care about.

I don’t think it is fair to ask people to just stop liking what they like to do and change yourself.

This is akin to me saying, “why don’t you stop making money, if you change your view and understand that monetary gain is nothing but a distraction from true happiness, I think you will feel better.”

Sure it is true to a point, but no that is not something I’m interested in. If I do miss out on an achievement then oh well, I will survive and keep on playing. I will not have that same sense of pride in myself though, every time I see a missing achievement. It is a goal I set, for myself, and not reaching it is disappointing.

I could set my goals lower…but does that sound good? Maybe…maybe not. Just be happy with what you got? or strive to better yourself…depends on your philosophy.

^ disheartens me and I dislike the trend with gear progression.

One way, only way, best gear way…. Regardless, it is true, ascended has more stats available so we have to accept the gear grind :p

Sorry beating a dead horse hehe

bauble master two broken

Personally I wanted to keep the tomes and fix them instead of scrap them. BUT I think that this has potential, but needs tweeking.

Currently the cast time is an understandable risk/reward case on not getting interrupted or getting the heal off. Although when casting it, I feel I"m taking more damage getting the spell off than anything, so if I would have just “NOT” cast it, I would be better off letting it tick passively. So the decision making aspect makes it feel like 90% of the time, your worse off trying to activate the signet.

The passive aspect has great potential to bring us near passive regen like a warrior with Healing Signet and Adrenal Health. We can combine Virtue of Resolve with Signet of Courage (SoC). The numbers are still behind but getting close there. I think the biggest thing that would help SoC work better would be to shorten the tick time to 3 seconds and reduce the healing per tick appropriatly.

Right now they have it ticking at 900ish, and it seems cool to get near 1k life every 10 seconds, but waiting for that 10th second can be a death sentance. Other similar traits/skills/utilities tick on a 1 second interval or a 3-5 second interval. 10 seconds is an exceedingly long time.

In essence SoC is about 90 health per second (HPS). VoR is also around 90 HPS, putting us roughly around 180 HPS. Off the top of my head I think warrior HPS with signet and trait is close to 250.

So I think to make this new signet more viable the passive should occur more frequently (3-5 second ticks) have increased base heal (bring it up to 150 HPS?).

For the active I feel there needs to be a negative after casting instead of during casting for risk/reward. Right now you take far more damage trying to channel the full heal. Channel time at maybe 2 seconds and self stun on after cast possibly?

If only 3 or 4 of them are viable, then we have some options.

a) re-evaluate those skills, make adjustments and look for ways to make them more dynamic and applicable in more combinations.

b) throw everything else away

Also there is a sort of “mini-game” for some players who enjoy the idea of “failure”. By that I mean, the ability to wisely understand the synergy between each skill and figure out how to combine them in effective and powerful ways. After you create a build (theory craft) and when you try it, it turns out to work well, you feel a sense of pride and achievement. You created something and you stake claim to your build and feel unique and more invested in your character.

TLDR
Right now, the sense of investment in the game has been removed for some players because the impact of their decisions has been reduced or removed.

Zeal does its job as far as trait selection (all damage) but it seems to focus on symbols too much.

It is a bland trait line for sure, but it satisfies its role at ramping up your raw damage.

Our offensive stat setup is flimsy and spread thin.

High precision and crit damage do nothing without good power.

High power is never going to achieve the heavy hits without good precision crit damage.

Full P/Pr/CritD makes us more glass than other classes because of a lack of survival traits in those trees and extremely low HP.

Arguably PvE can survive without those survival traits though, but for arguments sake, it is not very pretty on paper.

kRiza krimos.1637:

So you fight one smart mob in melee and other ranged mob put 2 arrows in you from 1200 before you even noticed it joined fight, poof you are dead and what fun it was. Fighting more than 2 opponents would mean you lost since there is no chance to avoid every attack.
Besides, gw2 is game about heroes. Some heroes we would be if a minion could get 1 shot at you and defeat you. What you are asking is fight with champions, only you have to hit him more than once while 2 shots on you is enough for him. Isnt that even more compelling and exiting…

edit: wassn’t 1 hit KO thing that every1 complained about, and suddenly it would be better if every fight was 1 hit KO.

As it stands now, the game can not work the way I described it due to things based on stats and the ability to be hit a few times over and over.

That is understood and acknowledged.

For a game to work like I suggested it would have to minimize or do away with stats and be all animation/cool down dependent.

As far as ranged attacks, that would have to be throttled down or changed into control moves as well as providing everyone some way of dodging/blocking/absorbing/reflecting “some” projectiles to give people a chance to survive a ranged attack or two.

After that, it becomes very compelling and positioning, situational awareness, and teamwork come into play.

Maybe those ranged attackers have an effective range of 1200, fight on the outskirts of that ranged attack and be aware of the distance.

Maybe a guardian or mesmer is with you with projectile blockers, now you can survive a volley or two and close the gap to fight in melee. Now the ranged attacker has to swap to melee or they are very vulnerable (npc and pc weapon swaps).

It is a very compelling and interesting way to fight…brings in the realism and threat of death in combat, versus what we have now. I can just auto attack or spam buttons and I will win. If its a vet or a champion, then I roll around every now and then but mostly just spamming buttons till the red bar of life whittles away.

You could do it in the tune of how some first person shooters are today. No HP, but a successive strike system, where if you are hit too many times in a row then you die. Get out of the damage for a bit and you recover slightly to be ready to get back into the fray.

Lots of ways to do this and I think they are more compelling than auto attack… but it will never happen because it would be a complete revamp and negation of all the things that have progressed so far with the game.

@ Lord Trejgon
OH! really, they “do” count as projectiles? Quite interesting… Like you said, ground fire fields, but really I am looking at how that works as far as group play and other fields, since we get a majority of our burning from VoJ.

As far as the #1 bullet. More burning (more stacks of burning) do not increase damage in intensity, but it does increase in duration. If I put 25 stacks of bleed on I get 25 different bleed ticks in 1 second.

If I put 25 applications of burn on (25 stacks) I have to wait for 25 full second ticks to see the burn happen, thus the 25 seconds to see the damage remark. Burn does not have a “burst” capability, it will always do the same damage no matter how many burns I put on a target.

So if my tool tip says it will do 3000 damage in burning….but I read that it has a duration of 10 seconds. In essence that is 10 stacks of burning doing 300 damage a tick for 10 seconds.

If I read that bleed will do 100 damage per a stack in 3 seconds, then I put 3 bleed stacks on. I am now doing 300 damage a tick in 3 seconds. If I put 10 bleeds on, now I’m doing 1000 damage a tick in 3 seconds. If I put 25 bleeds on, now I am doing 2500 damage a tick in 3 seconds.

So 2500 damage in 3 seconds bleed, or 3000 damage in 10 seconds burning.

One is more overall damage, the other is more damage per a second. High DPS is more threatening in pvp scenarios and faster kills in pve scenarios as well (if it can be maintained and not just burst).

Addressing bullet #2, apothecary is meh? I have not seen any functioning builds utilizing it…yet. So I will not discount it, but I have not seen a revolution on condition bunker either.