Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

• Healing Spring: This skill is now categorized as a trap skill. (Also renamed to “We Heal as One”.

First of all, I’m going to assume this is a typo and that you plan on renaming Heal as One instead.

EDIT: Oh it’s getting changed to a shout. Ignore my previous remark it makes more sense now.

Slaet.4513:

TBrother.9138:

What did you get as a reward?

A rare and 100 Dragonite Ore.

Is that really all?

Just feel I need to post on behalf of the people who are in the game enjoying it. The megaserver is great!

I finally FINALLY feel like I can just go out and do open world stuff.

It looks like most of the complaints are coming from world events, guild missions and such. However, I’ve always said those have a nasty side effect of facilitating hate between players. It’s not the megaserver that needs to be fixed, it’s the mechanics of these events.

The idea of WvW map completion was to have players drawn to WvW.

It’s not having that effect.

All classes: N/A

I want all the weaps!

1. First person zoom
2. More karma armor sets
3. (PvE Only?) Ranger skill 1 no longer auto-pilot

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Pact destroyed
Trahearne dies
Pale Tree is controlled by Mordy
Rytlock emerges from fractal asura gate

Please send your resume in and apply for a writing position.

They did say that after they did the con, they’d do a beta which would ultimately help them formulate a release plan. Once that’s settled, we should indeed be seeing preorder info.

It sorta goes like this:

In PvP, warriors and rangers are TOTALLY different.

In PvE, essentially a ranger is sort of like a modded warrior with a pet, yes.

The major differences are:

WARRIORS don’t have the accident prone auto-pilot auto attack that is mostly useless in PvE.

RANGERS have to do more work to keep their DPS up (watching pet’s HP and such.)

WARRIORS do not require as much help from their team to reach full potential.

RANGERS work very well with eles and maximize healing and summoned weapon DPS.

Both a RANGER and a WARRIOR are required to maximize team DPS buffs.

WARRIORS have a 5 second weapon swap trait that would be useful to melee RANGERS because the barrage/rapidfire combo on the LB can be applied at point blank range but does not require 10 seconds.

Basically it’s a bunch of little things like that.

LF spaceship transport to T4 Dry Top

Totally gonna catch on.

Dadnir.5038:

I was slowly reducing my playing time because LS2 over exploit everynew map they release. Asking players to farm mindlessly a freeloot map. Overdoing the same thing : “Kill these boss during breach for an RNG chance to get the thing you need” = Hey we are at chapter 7 each boss need to give you 3 item (you can only have one item at a time, you can, and you will, have past item instead of the one you want)

Thanks anet, you’ve bored me.

To be fair. We did ask for armor skins we could work toward and earn and this is still easier than most of the other earned armor in the game.

As soon as I relinquished the mindset that each piece was simply a chapter completion reward, I found that whole breach process more fun.

They would have to redo every jumping puzzle if they did that.

Though I do enjoy running fast.

If you roll a ranger with Power/Toughness/Vitality gear you won’t be glass cannon and you’ll get some really nice long range damage.

Otherwise you can stat toward condition damage, healing and your pet and use a shortbow along with axe/torch. Your pet can put out raw damage or support, your choice.

Eles don’t have to be glass cannon by the way, but their builds are a lot less straight forward and I have yet to make a workable one in my experiments. I know plenty of other people do well with them.

Basically there is no motivation at all to do minion events.

Based on experimentation I did, it would only take about 20 people who stay on minions during aethers to progress it down. They have to split up.

So finding 19 other people who are willing to sacrifice spending any time on aethers, that’s the requirement for winning.

Also +1 on not being willing to spend 45 minutes of my life dedicated to earning hundreds of sprockets and reward of 5 champ bags and 5 dragonite.

Terkov.4138:

(for example I could cry LB buff destroyed animation and I’m unhappy with Kudzu).

ARE YOU CRAZY?!

You just said “animation” on the Ranger forums where THEY can see it.

:P

After you’ve done Teq 400+ times, you really can’t ever think, “Wouldn’t it be great if we had more first battery phases at 7:00 and less at 11:00?”

I mean if you really want to fail after wasting a significant portion of your life, you could ask that they bring back the Scarlet Invasion events so you can sit around in a zone having your win-attempts ignored in map chat by an overwhelming horde of champ farmers. That event lasted 45 minutes and failed pretty much every time. It sounds just perfect for this thread.

anduriell.6280:

I don’t do Fractals, i hate the toxicity in the community that plays that content, simply because i roll a ranger and those are speed runs mostly that kick out any player that don’t fit the meta.

My ranger is my fractals speed run meta character. I think most people have come around to accepting rangers these days too. It was always a high damage melee class, but it took a longbow buff for people to realize that xD.

That said, I agree there shouldn’t be double fractal dailies.

Ray’s Concise but Thorough PvE Overview

Overall, the synergy is missing. I can become either a healer or a ranger, but not both at the same time. Flexability should be added so that the healing can either compliment a damage build or that the rest of ranger’s abilities can compliment a healing build.

Staff: Not only is the damage low, but it has no condition damage. In other words, after swapping to it, you are no longer using the the stat Condition Damage at all and Power, Precison and Ferocity aren’t worth mentioning. Healing Power is the only outgoing stat not wasted.

Suggest adding conditions to synergize with a Condi+Heal Apostate build.

Celestial Avatar Form: As a power or condi ranger, this takes forever to charge up. As a healing based ranger I’m hearing it charges up perhaps too fast. The skills are very nice to have, but they seem kind of redundant.

Suggest normalizing the damage vs healing charge up rate.
Suggest giving one of the skills the ability to add health to the bar of downed allies. At least something to slow death and protect allies helping resurrect the downed player.

Now for the minor traits:
1. Celestial Being – Basically a tutorial slot explaining the new mechanics.
2. Live Vicariously – This is good, it encourages healing builds.
3. Natural Mender – This is good too, it helps bring druid above other healers.

Suggest that all Elite Specializations should be getting an added bonus to this first slot, I don’t feel that just adding the mechanics is enough.

Trait slot 1 (forgot what these were called):
1. Druidic Clarity – Kind of encourages you to waste your Celestial Form, fairly useless and redundant in PvE. The original non-trap Healing Spring was better for Ranger.
2. Cultivated Synergy – This one is good. Allows non staff builds to do healing.
3. Primal Echos – Probably very annoying in PvP, but the stun part is not very useful in PvE. Again, it encourages you to wrongly time switching to healing.

Suggest Druidic Clarity applies smaller instant condi removal to successful heals instead.

Trait slot 2:
1. Celestial Shadow – Encourages wasting Celestial Form. Not useful in most PvE situations.
2. Verdant Etching – This one is fine as far as I can tell.
3. Natural Stride – Probably useful in PvP. Encourages playing badly in PvE.

Suggest rethinking Celestial Shadow.
Suggest Natural Stride ony applies condi reduction while swiftness is active, does not apply passive swiftness BUT casts 6 seconds of Glyph of Empowerment (separate 20 sec ICD) on all allies (and self) that Ranger applies swiftness to.

Trait Slot 3:
1. Grace of the Land – Redundant. Druids should be removing those conditions anyway.
2. Lingering Light – Seems pretty good.
3. Ancient Seeds – A nice small bonus to condi builds, but limited use in PvE. Probably OP in PvP.

Suggest Grace of the Land looses passive condi reduction and applies protection and/or regen to allies who have had a condi removed from them by a Druid in Celestial Avatar form.
Suggest Ancient Seeds instead applies damaging conditions (Poison/Bleeding) to enemies near an ally that has been healed by the Druid.

Glyphs:
1. Rejuvenation – This one is great. Just needs to apply the self heal to the pet as well.
2. Alignment – Kind of “Meh.” in PvE.
3. Equality – Same as above.
4. Empowerment – Very much a step in the right direction for Rangers in instance parties. More exclusive support options.
5. Tides – Seems like it should do something else in addition to the CC. Great for trap rangers though, except for the fact that it steals a trap slot away.
6. Unity – Alright for tank builds I guess. The healing variant can be a little redundant on Druids with high Healing Power.

Conclusion:

Rangers should be able to say: “I want to do damage and also heal.” OR “I want to heal and also do Ranger things.”

As a DPS Ranger, switching to staff turns you into nothing but a weak healer for 10 seconds.

As a Healing Ranger, switching OFF staff turns you into a weak damage dealer for 10 seconds. Might as well have made Druid a new class and disabled weapon swap.

Celestial Form charges too slow for damage dealer Rangers to the point where it becomes a rare gimmick and not a stable method to support the team.

The traits are so narrow to Druid that you either become a single specialization Druid with two throwaway Ranger specialization or a double specialization Ranger that has thrown away the third to be called Druid.

Otherwise, the skills are fun and it’s a generally goo idea. A few balances and a lot more integration with the rest of the class should make Druid a viable option for many playstyles.

What about for the people who actually compose music but don’t want to program a macro?

It’s official. GW2 is a social research experiment.

Game doesn’t need a sub fee because of government grant money.

Built into the game itself are clues why berserker stats do NOT need to be changed.

PvE involves slow, easily avoidable attacks and stacking. The result is every stat combo being sub par compared to berserker.

PvP involves unpredictable, goal oriented and unstackable gameplay. The result is better use of other stat combos AND condition mechanics.

Again, changes need to be made at the content level, not the balance level.

Give us a reason NOT to use zerker. Give us a reason TO use the other stats. Don’t just nerf us as if we’ve been cheating this whole time.

a t s e.9614:

and there should be a limit of people killing them.

No no no no no, Devs, you did not read this. Fix the kill credit bugs, don’t restrict them more.

Vol.5241:

It takes 15 minutes to do it. If you win, you get massive rewards. If you lose, well tough luck, you lost 15 minutes.

What’s the problem?

Correction:

It takes about 45 minutes to get in a server capable of getting him down to 75% : 30 minutes to reserve your place in the spawn window and 15 minutes to do the fight

2+ hours to get in a server that is even capable of going beyond 75%.

Electro.4173:

Who the swarms go after seems to be kind of random. The first time I did the fight, they mostly stuck to my allies like you said. The second time they were pretty much after me the entire time.

It’s not random. It’s called: If I am online, everything targets me.

Yes, even from your instance they still target me.

Where are all the Tequatl AoE circles?
< This guy

Where are all the luminescent lurchers?
< This guy

Who is the champ bandit shooting at?
< This guy

Where are all the flies?
< This guy

Ever see one of those snipers in CM or Arah randomly shooting at a wall? That’s because they are reaching out of their instance and trying to headshot me while I’m peacefully trying to finish a jumping puzzle miles away.

:)

Gibson.4036:

I like to imagine what the game might have been like if they could have found a way to follow through with pure DEs and get people to engage with them.

After the first wave passed through Queensdale, the rest of the players would have been stuck by bugged events

Ahem, more seriously. I like hearts. I feel like ArenaNet needed the game to be released before they could perfect DEs. For example, Dry Top and SE are everything Orr should have been. They couldn’t have possibly, during prerelease, predicted every direction the community would take.

As players we faced an equal problem. Most of us instantly search for a goal. Early on we’d unlock all of our weapon skills and immediately feel a bit depressed that was all we were getting. So to combat that depression and buyer’s remorse, we’d march toward the next goal, 100% map completion.

Me personally, I went hardcore and burned out. Took a few months break, came back and I’ve been here ever since. I had to slow down and smell the roses in order to appreciate the game. However, I would have never have gotten there if it weren’t for hearts.

A little direction to get me invested in the game so I’d have something to return to when I’m ready to slow down.

Fungalfoot.7213:

And what if the turret is already occupied by someone who doesn’t know how to use it?

Get their address!

Kidding…

Sort of

Actually I think you’re unfortunately already on the right track.

For most dungeons you start out needing to tank and use special utilities, but as you repeat it and become more experienced you start to focus on speeding up subsequent runs. Therefore straight up DPS starts to become more and more attractive.

As your dodging skills increase you find less and less of a need for tank stats. Infact, due to the way aggro works, its often better to have less tank than more. Enemies seem to want to smack the biggest tank in your group.

Try picking up a 1h sword and an offhand axe to compliment your LB. Put Ruby orbs on all of your Power, Prec, Crit armor.

Have a shortbow ready for some battles, because while the goal is to melee as much as possible, some battles just won’t support it. SB does better sustained damage than LB.

Sadly, warriors will pump out more DPS than you. Rangers have a lot of interesting condition builds, but the current condition system needs some help. Couple that with a lot of bosses with TONs of vitality and average toughness.

Toughness nerfs direct damage and starts to make conditions more attractive compared to raw damage, however very few dungeon encounters trade vitality for toughness.

I overdid it just a lil’ bit.

I agree with what the OP is saying. Don’t get me wrong, I think free content is unbelievably great, but I’ve been slightly depressed by the success of the living story.

I think it’s 60% a good idea. Making memories is important. However the other 40% includes nasty side effects especially to those joining later or returning after a break.

I’ve never wanted ArenaNet to collapse in any way and do not wish any harm on any of the developers, but I do admit to wishing certain aspects of the games would fail quite visibly in a way that would motivate a change or fix.

I was very happy to read about achievement rewards, I think that’s a big step in the right direction. It’s going to depend on what the rewards are and how they are chosen of course.

Maybe it can have the chain reaction of bringing some of my guild back into the game and making guild missions viable perma-content as well.

I don’t usually take pictures of people I killed in PvP, but when I do…

ALPHAWOLF LOOK AT THIS!

I hear you are going to be doing Google Fiber things from April 8th to April 22nd.

Certain areas in Florida could greatly use this service.

Please come visit!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It’s my Achievement Points from doing jumping puzzles and killing ambients, with my shield no less, that make me especially skilled in dungeons and worth keeping in PUGs.

Hey now!

I like having people who can do jumping puzzles to be in my Fractals groups.

We save a lot of time on uncategorized and jade maw when people aren’t falling off.

Rivindor.7258:

For high AP groups I usually take out my logging axe and chop down a tree to prove I can complete the logging daily if I wanted to. That usually gets my dungeon groups pretty confident that I’m a meta pro. If I really want to be nutty I may even uncover a vista but I don’t like to show off too much.

Sometimes I call target on my cat (not a bear) and then ping Frost Spirit. Most groups don’t give me trouble if I don’t though.

Then again I have 21,000 AP

I used to call target on Mini Liadri :p

Does the queen now expect perfection?

Will Logan never see us again?

Are the recruits going to become bleedin’ useful?

Is there going to be no one left to pound into the ground like a big nail?

These are all VERY serious questions.

It’s not that complicated.

Say you like chocolate bars and you like pizza. WvW is pizza and PvE is a chocolate bar. 100% map completion is like a chocolate bar with a pizza mashed at the end of it.

For most people, they’d prefer to have them separately.

The two just feel so unrelated that adding one to the other just doesn’t sit well.

Don’t know what to say except: Agreed.

Paradox.1380:

3. I tend to judge people based on how they make their characters look. And despite doing it on occasion myself I dislike when people make skimpy outfits.

I have an unusual rule for my elementalist. I never let her armor break in front of other players. She has all of my instant repair canisters. If i’m around friends, I’ll use diving goggles when we run across them. However, if there’s a random person out there, I let them get out of sight first.

A few times I slipped up, but in all but one case it was only boots/shoulders/helm/back items.

Novuake.2691:

How do I make a beating heart emote?

LOL yeah I am EXACTLY the same, did level 20something fractal once and ended up condi’ing the anomaly to death while running for my dear life.

Best in game moment of my life!

First time my guild did fractals above level 9 we brought a necro who hadn’t even done level 1. By the time we got to the boss at the end of the ascalon fractal, he had died so many times he had only his boots left.

However, the boss wiped us all except for him and he managed to almost survive the last 40% of the boss’s HP. His final dying attack (while downed) applied the condition which killed the boss.

SOL.5018:

Is it true that human is the most beautiful race?

In general, humans tend to be attracted to humans.

We are humans.

Lets see:

Kudzu is a female character.

When paired with a male PC you have a male/female pair.

It’s kind of like a navy ship full of men. The ship is often referred to as “her” or “she.”

So I did some rough (scrubby) math and determined that at the current drop rate:

1. Assuming roughly 55 of the players on a server at any given time would link it if they got it
2. Assuming on average you’d see 1 link per 5 SW completions

It would take an average of 275 SW completions to get a portal. Now let’s break that down:

1. You’re willing to grind through 5 SW completions per day
2. You manage to tag twice the events/mobs the average player does

1 week = 25% chance to get into the beta
2 weeks = 50% chance to get into the beta The update says “a week or longer”

Keep in mind that this does not mean 25-50% of the playerbase will get in. It’s just a number of hope/despair for the very very dedicated.

Also keep in mind that these numbers were all pulled from pure speculation and this post should not be taken seriously at all. I just start typing stuff in whenever I’m holding a calculator. It’s addicting, so sue me.

I’m still hoping that ArenaNet makes positive adjustments as the week goes on. Keep in mind 300 portal getters does not make 300 participants

Valento.9852:

/kiss (don’t know how to describe this properly in english, but this would be like moving your head forward and closing your eyes, much like kissing… would make sense if someone else did the same! <3)

Not sure you want this while people like me are still in the game. Nothing will be safe!

Beware:
Air
Walls
Cows
Skritt
Queen Jennah
Charr tanks
Broken waypoints
Trahearne
Belinda’s Ghost
Lion Statue’s ankle

I’m coming for you!

Interesting. The OP was actually about defiance and blind. However, the word “Zerker” was used.

It’s a magic word really.

We’ve heard all sorts of incantations like “Hocus Pocus” and “Abracadabra,” but none have been as powerful as the word “Zerker.”

It LITERALLY summons scrolls and scrolls full of text.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Is the loot getting worse or is it the way its being given out, I seen a convo in map chat the other day that said only so many people get loot from an enemy/boss everyone else gets nothing, I never thought anything of this, but then I got thinking, in the mornings I usually do the world bosses, and ive noticed that they no longer drop champ bags, ( MAW, Taidha Covington, sometimes Karka Queen, usually all 3 champs and final boss at Ulgoth ) these are just some of the events I fail to get champ bags from on a daily basis, no matter how much damage I do,

This is a serious bug that has been around since the beginning of time. However, due to the players’ experiences with other MMOs, the community tends to think its a feature. Therefore there are not enough complaints about it.

Basically the system works like this. Everyone who does a certain amount of damage gets loot. HOWEVER, due to a bug, there is a cap. When things get crowded, only the first people to reach that damage threshold receive loot. This is why people in groups get loot more often (because the whole group gets damage threshold credit together) and why staff guardians get loot more often.

I have tested it. I have kitten so I loaded the karka WP first. Ice bowed the queen, then backed off and watched the rest of the fight. As a lousy mooch who did about 5k-10k damage total, I got the champ box off the corpse. Meanwhile others were complaining it didn’t drop for them. They were the ones who stuck around and did hundreds of thousands of damage to it.

The idea of getting more loot in a group and encouraging cooperation is a good one, but it has had some nasty side effects:

• Before Lost Shores the only place to find a loot group was in Cursed Shore
• Most other zones became useless to even set foot in
• If other zones had good farming opportunities, we never knew because it was impossible to form a loot group in them
• Spending a lot of time around penit/shelt LFGing despite that being one of the main things GW2’s open world dynamic PvE was supposed to prevent
• After Lost Shores even Cursed Shore became hard to form a group in
• Hours spent solo killing enemies in Southsun has yielded very few drops

Before release in an interview about endgame, developers mentioned that unlike most MMOs the endgame in GW2 shouldn’t have to be different than the rest of the game. You shouldn’t have to play a different game from the one you played leveling up to 80.

However, this has never been the case. The end game options have always been Cursed Shore or dungeons and now its leaning toward just dungeons.

I have tried really hard to find open world ways to make even half as much money as CS farming and dungeons, but I’ve failed everywhere else I go. The entire time I wonder if the profits wouldn’t be so bad if I had a full group following me around. I’ve never been able to form one and I shouldn’t have to.

Now GW2 has a robust trading post which means a lot of profit comes from trading with players. Due to the laws of supply and demand much of the prices and profits come from the material cost of high demand high level items and the supply of the most common/efficient methods of procuring those items in materials. In other words, the ‘cost of living’ (so to speak) gravitates around the most effective farms.

In order to keep up with the latest gear, each player needs to pull in gold at a rate comparable to which the market is based. It doesn’t have to be equal, just comparable. By that I mean, even 50% might be acceptable. The problem is the market gravitation is based on loot groups. A dungeon is a loot group and so is a group farming in Cursed Shore. We’re not just looking at the most efficient farm, we’re looking at the most efficient farm IN A GROUP.

The gap between dungeons and open world PvE is further increased by groups.

Little example chart here:

It kind of creates a sort of negative snowball effect where low profits caused by the lack of available loot groups lessens the population in a zone, in turn that makes the ability to form a loot group in that zone even less possible. Without forming a loot group you get very few drops and it becomes very difficult and not in the least bit fun to achieve the gear and materials you desire.

Currently the only solution is to not play those zones. To not play the way you want to, but instead just to do what everyone else is doing. Granted, there is a lot more contributing to this than mere loot groups, but I feel they play a significant role in the gap between open world PvE and dungeons. Making one endgame a much higher percentage better than another endgame.

Currently the difference between solo and full loot groups can sometimes be compared to the difference between “very little” and “a lot.”

I’m not saying we take loot groups down to “very little” I’m saying we take solo up to “a lot.”

Think about how much better the world would get if solo loot was buffed in such a way:

• You could play the way you want to and still get rewarded for it
• You can run across strangers at big events and be happy to see them for their aid in combat rather than worrying about the need for them seeing and accepting your LFG
• You could take a day off from dungeons without taking a day off from the game
• You could go check out some new scenery and not be wasting time financially
• You could take pride in the fact that you just soloed an event and have more to show for it than 1.3s and two salvage items
• You would have an honest chance at a reward from all the effort you put into soloing a tough veteran enemy
• Zones can begin to repopulate as the lack of drops would not drive people out of them so quickly
• You have other ways to make money when misdirected elitism prevents you from joining a dungeon group
• You have other ways to make money when low population days prevent you from filling a dungeon group

In summary: I’m proposing that the loot for soloing be brought closer to the loot for groups as to reduce the market/cost gap between isolated content (dungeons, cursed shore stationary events) and open world PvE thereby making zones like Southsun and Frostgorge more enjoyable and worth doing.

Look at the attachment.

I wanted this as an armor skin. Not a list of one-at-a-time tonics.

It was a travesty enough when it was removed from the store, now this?

EDIT: I’m excited for the normal armor skin acquisition changes though. Don’t get me wrong.

The strafe speed reduction is a balance thing. In the beta you could go faster, but it was possible to to run endlessly in tight circles with a ranged weapon and become pretty much immune to melee.

Anyone who does not have their culling options on max when the dungeon is started will not be able to see the boulders and this makes that section very difficult for groups without a mesmer.

Surprised there isn’t a glaring post about this on the front page.

So here you go.

Arcane Brilliance is probably the best heal in the game.

In some ways I really would like it. They could do away with anti-exploit NPC invincibility, which is commonly very unfair to honest players.

Hard mode and vanquishing would be pretty cool.

Check out the suggestions forums tomorrow though, I hope to start a nice discussion on 200% map completion so we can have some of these benefits without the need for instancing.